Here's version 2... WOLF AT THE DOOR A Tale of the Black Moon War 2984 Monterey Southside, CAF Guard duty throughout reality is boring as hell. This truism is inescapable no matter what one's species or situation; it applies equally well to humans in banks, small furry rabbitoids at nest entrances, shoggoths at the Mountains of Madness, and Nemesians in conquered territory. Therefore, the statement "Kortz and Purl were bored out of their skulls" is needlessly redundant. It does, however, describe the situation particularly well. So: Kortz and Purl were bored out of their skulls. It was understandable, really. The two soldiers assigned to night-watchman duty at Monterey Southside Base in the occupied Californian-American Federation had little to do beyond supervising a squad of security droids; there hadn't been even a hint of insurrec- tion in the area since the first months of the war, and the garrison troops were almost unnaturally well-behaved. All of which added up to a complete lack of nocturnal activity. It could, they agreed, be a lot worse. The communities on the north side of the bay were resisting Nemesian rule with a fervor that was, frankly, awe-inspiring; the last commander assigned to pacify the area had tried taking hostages, only to discover that every man, woman and child over the age of six was heavily armed. Whatever their motivation, though, the rest of the former CAF didn't seem to share it. Thanks to some interclan grudges that had escalated into a three-way brawl, Kortz and Purl found themselves assigned night watch duty for three months. After three weeks of total inactivity, they'd left the guarding to the droids and started a marathon game of vokka. There was nothing else to do but try to chat up the droids (a sure sign of desperation, and futile as these security models--despite their crafter's aesthetics--weren't programmed for *that* sort of thing). Kortz looked over his hand. "I'll take three," he told his younger partner. Purl flipped him the cards and took one for himself. "I'm in for fifty," Purl decided, tossing a bundle of CAF currency into the pot. Gambling for Nemesian money was strictly forbidden, but the local stuff was still in circulation, if somewhat devalued. "Say, you hear the latest from Northside?" "What, the killer hostages? Saw that coming down the Tunnels-- those people are *nuts.* I'll see that and raise you twenty." Luck was with Kortz; the Queen of Towers, combined with the King of Tunnels and the Prince of Worlds, made a nearly-unbeatable hand. Purl must be bluffing again, poor bastard. "Nah, not that. You know my cousin Tektyte's attached to the base up there--raise you thirty--well, he was caught in the middle of the last raid, and he says--" Purl shivered "--he saw something." Kortz cocked an eyebrow. "What's newsworthy about *that?* I see things all the time. Raise you twenty." Now what the hell was he thinking? Could Purl have a *real* hand? No way. "Not like *this* you don't. The wardroids had a band of resis- tance fighters cornered down in the old amusement park, he said. No way out, totally outnumbered--*and* outgunned, which is damn hard to do to Northsiders--raise you thirty...when something came outta no- where and tore into the droids like they were cardboard." "So what was it? That Twilight monster everyone's so freaked about? Raise you forty." "Not the way Tek tells it. He couldn't get a clear view, but he said it was ten feet tall and covered in fur...and it tore those droids apart with its *hands!* Claws and fangs like titanium steel, he said, and it *howled* like a demon..." "Oh, voonoth crap," Kortz snorted. "I remember this story-- Mom used to scare me to sleep with it! 'Be a good boy or the Warwolf will come in the night and eat you up.' Your cousin's been sniffing nightflower fumes. You gonna raise or what?" Maybe it wasn't part of the bluff. Purl was genuinely scared. "Uh...yeah, raise you twenty." The younger soldier doggedly continued: "You know, there *are* animals called wolves on this planet. Fur, claws, fangs, *and* they howl..." "...And they're four-legged nonsentients that don't pose a threat to anything with opposable thumbs. I've seen a couple in the zoo downtown--if those critters are deadly monsters, I'm Prince Demand! It's just some pre-colonization legend that's got nothing to do with reality. I'll see your twenty and call." Kortz slapped his hand down. "Broken straits, sun-high. Beat that, wolf-boy!" Purl grinned as he fanned out his cards. The Primaries of Towers, Tunnels, and Worlds--and both Cats. "Five primes. I think that'll do the trick, don't you?" Kortz just stared as Purl raked in the pot. The Sharpeye security droids guarding the base perimeter were stuffed to the pseudomatter gills with sensory equipment, both gravomagnetic and magical. They could sense the life-aura of a fly at three hundred yards. None of them noticed the impossibly delicate mana-construct floating a few feet above Kortz and Purl, recording everything it saw and heard and transmitting the data north. Many miles away, in the heart of Monterey Northside, a tall man looked into a mirror and chuckled darkly. "Well, well. So *that's* where those bozos wound up." It seemed his decision to go into combat personally had more benefits than just a last-minute rescue and a morale boost. A thousand years and they were *still* scared silly of the Wolf. Maybe it was time to remind them why. And then there were those new spells he'd been itching to try out. This should be...entertaining. Another night, another vokka hand. Kortz was well on his way to making up for last night's fiasco. "Gimme two." Purl handed him the cards and stood pat. "I heard from Tek this morning..." "Oh, not *this* again. What'd he see this time, the Spirit of Darkeve?" "Hey, I'm serious here!" Purl protested. "The forensics team went over the amusement park battlesite, and you know what they found?" "A cure for Korall's Syndrome?" "I'm in for sixty." "No, they found *footprints!* Well, *paw* prints anyway. Nearly a foot long, with two-inch claws!" Purl hesitated, then raised by ten. "Now *you've* been sniffing. Why don't we just drop this whole crazy line and concentrate on the game? And by the way, I'll see you and raise you forty." As Purl pondered the situation, both soldiers' attention was captured by the abrupt stiffening of the Sharpeye on station. Quietly, without fuss, it turned gray and crumbled to dust. "What the *hell*...?" Kortz sputtered. He dashed to the watchstation console while Purl grabbed his rifle and checked the perimeter. "They're all down!" he exclaimed. "Every one of the Sharpeyes just dusted on us!" Kortz hit the all-base alert button...and nothing happened. "What's the deal, man?!" Purl shivered. "Droids don't just turn off like that! What's goin'--" He stopped dead as the howl arose. It was bone-chilling, hair-raising. It carried echoes of ancient nights when primitive men cowered in caves and feared the darkness, and feared what lay in it more. It filled the air, seemingly coming from everywhere at once. Purl barely managed to control his bladder... ...and lost it when the burning crimson eyes glared out of the night, boring straight into his soul. Kortz saw them as well and tried to raise his rifle, only to discover he could no longer move below the neck. "Wha'... what in hell is that thing...?" Then a mouth opened below the eyes: a mouth lined with three-inch, gleaming fangs. It spoke in a voice filled with broken glass, mouthing words out of legend. "I am the Beast that cannot die..." Purl desperately tried to restart his legs. "...the Guardian of the Central Coast..." Muscles bulging under shaggy silver fur, a huge sword slung across its back, the Warwolf strode out of the shadows: eight feet tall and terrible to behold. "...the Wolf who Walks." The monster studied the two paralyzed, terrified Nemesians for a moment. "I chased your ancestors off this world a thousand years ago. You really shouldn't have come back. I'm afraid you two are going to be an object lesson to the rest of your garrison..." Kortz gibbered in sheer terror. Purl had fainted. "Oh, quit your whining. I'm not going to kill you. Well, not as such..." The next morning, the watch relief was shocked to discover seventy dusted droids and two immobilized, horrified soldiers raving about a legend come to life. The Base Commander read the message gouged into a titanium-steel wall and shivered. GOOD MORNING, OBSYDIUN, it ran. CONSIDER THIS A WARNING. THESE MEN ARE NOW USELESS TO YOU, AND WILL REMAIN SO UNTIL THEY ARE RETURNED TO NEMESIS. DON'T BOTHER TRYING TO BREAK THE PARALYSIS YOURSELVES. True enough. The base docs were baffled; there didn't seem to be *any* cause, magical or otherwise, for their continued inability to move. DON'T BOTHER SHIPPING THEM BACK HERE, EITHER. THE SPELL WILL RESUME THE MOMENT THEY LEAVE NEMESIAN AIRSPACE. THIS WAS ONLY A WARNING. NEXT TIME MIGHT BE MUCH LESS PLEASANT. NEXT TIME IT MIGHT BE *YOU*. --THE WARWOLF Southside Base was looking much less appealing than it had yesterday. Obsydiun wondered if he could arrange a transfer to some more congenial location. Freezone, say. "Nemesians are a superstitious, cowardly lot." Michael Maxwell smiled, remembering days long gone. The old ploy of letting enemies see only the Wolf, generation after generation, was paying off in a way his ancestors would never have expected. So the survivors of Abaddon's little glee-club had found refuge on Nemesis, and they'd brought their legends with them. He idly munched on a darkfruit he'd "liberated" from the base's comissary on his way through. The little surprises planted all over the complex should have quite an effect on morale; random paralyzations, comas, and fits of insanity would shortly plague the troops. Nothing perma- nent--he'd save lethal force for the officers--but every soldier struck down by his spellmines would be a bigger problem than a dead body. No magic the Nemesians could bring to bear was likely to break his weavings, or even acknowledge their existence; they'd have to care for the afflicted here, or ship them back to the homeworlds--where they'd spread tales of Twilight, the Warwolf, and Earth's many other defenders. Ought to give their propaganda department fits. The weaves would go dormant in the Nemesian mana field, thanks to a scan of Beruche he'd managed to acquire before the war broke out; that scan had also confirmed something he'd suspected ever since the Black Moon Family showed up in the thirtieth century. Finally, all the insane policies coming out of Crystal Tokyo for the past millennium began to make sense. Some- time soon, the Uncanny Sisters were going downtime to the twentieth century, and the Senshi of the past would end up winning the war in the present. But only if everything went the way they remembered it. Any deviation from the script could be disastrous. And so, the Crystal Millennium. A thousand years of stagnation, ten centuries of wasted time, all because of Nemesian ambition and Demand's mad love. Michael spit the darkfruit's seedcore into a nearby wastebasket. Now that was another oddity: all the imported foods in the officers' cafeteria were native to Shaizaar. How in hell had they wound up on Nemesis? Was the subsystem some sort of refugee magnet? One mystery solved, another rears its head. Par for the course. He hadn't been surprised when Pluto showed up, by- passing the seals on his pocket-dimension headquarters as easily as he'd slip through normal magic wards. She'd had one simple request: stay out of Japan until the war was over. Michael bowed to no authority, but he'd learned the hard way that the words of the Angel of the Gates of Time were not to be taken lightly. There was more work to be done here, in any case, making sure the Nemesians didn't destroy the culture he'd spent a thousand years nurturing. Judging by the Sisters' current ages, the Black Moon War would end within two years. The loop would be resolved, and the stalled world could finally resume its interrupted journey. After a millennium of beating his head against the wall, it might at last be possible to *accomplish* something. He'd finally be able to complete his work, to build a civilization worthy of the name. The first truly *mature* society in the history of the System. The end of all his sorrows was within reach. Soon enough, be it this century or the next, the last of the Mazaels could let go of both the past and the future... and join ------ I think that works a little better, though I may have expanded the closing scene *too* much. Various minor changes, including moving it back a year to the first few months of the War; replacing Winds with Towers; and going into more detail at the end there. There's no real way around Mike working out the truth behind the BMF's twin appearances; he kept fairly close track of the Senshi during his "depressed voyeur" period back in the Nineties, getting a reasonable view of around 1 in 6 battles through his spy-eye network, and still has the records. So, Setsuna goes in for some more damage control. Which isn't all that necessary as Mike has his hands full in the CAF. --Sam "Slide show...boring...losing...consciousness!"