The Cow with Green Spots

The Cow with Green Spots
by
Bobby Derie

On the green pasture dwelt Glas Gaibhnenn, the cow with green spots, in the low country near the spring of sweet water where the grass grew tall and lush. She was of the lineage of Auðumbla and Kamadhenu, and Hathur was her cousin; her milk flowed bounteous and thick as the best cream, and whenever she was studded she gave birth to twin calves.

Now Glas Gaibhnenn belonged to Goibniu the Smith, in the Ridge of Fire, where he lived with his brothers. One day there came to Goibniu the giant Balor of the Fomorians, Balor of the Evil Eye, and Balor hired Goibniu to help build him a castle in his own land across the straight, on a rocky islet known as Tor More, for which he would need nails and hinges, chains and joints of iron, and frames of lead for the windows. So Goibniu left Glas Gaibhnenn in her pasture, under the care of his brothers, who would go out to milk her in the morning, and see her returned safely home at night.

Now Balor lived under a doom, that he would only be slain by his own grandson. Wily was Balor, and locked up his only daughter Ethnea in the top floor of his tower, which formed the donjon of the keep that Goibniu was to build, and never let her out or to see another soul. Yet Balor was wary and wise, and so he ordered his castle built, as another layer of defenses about his precious daughter, whom he could not bring to kill but dare not let marry for fear of the doom promised to him.

Now Cian was brother of Goibniu, and so too was Samthainn. It was to Cian that Goibniu entrusted his cow, Glas Gaibhnenn of the green spots. But Balor knew of Glas Gaibhnenn, and lusted after the precious cow, who could swell his own herd. So with Goibniu gone, Balor rowed across the straight, and commissioned from Cian a great sword. So Cian set to work, and left Samthainn to watch Glas Gaibhnenn. Yet as Balor was set to leave, he went not straight to his boat, but wandered over to the pasture where Samthainn had watch over the cow with green spots. There the Evil Eye shared with him a flask of mead, and with careful half-truths intimated that Cian and Goibniu had treated Samthainn poorly, in leaving him to watch the cow, and were besides using up Samthainn's third of the steel and iron.

Samthainn, enraged by drink and lies, flew back to the brothers' forge, where Cian labored on Balor's sword. While they squabbled, Balor loaded peaceful and wise Glas Gaibhnenn onto his boat, and had already rowed halfway across the strait by the time that Cian and Samthainn were done with their argument. Both brothers berated themselves, but neither so much as Cian, who felt it was his fault, for Goibniu had left the cow with green spots in his care. Yet more, he feared Balor of the Evil Eye.

Now Biróg of the Mountain was a druid, and one of the first of the Tuatha Dé Danaan to come to those shores. She had foreseen the wars of the Tuatha Dé, and had sought out and learned the doom of Balor. So as Balor set out across the strait with his prize, Biróg came up to the side of Cian and spoke to him of her plan. Under Biróg's guidance, Cian shaved his beard and plaited his hair, and hid himself in women's clothes, and so the two sailed across the strait, where Goibniu yet worked as a smith on Balor's castle. To Balor, Goibniu introduced Cian and Biróg as his kinswoman, a widower and her daughter, in need of work, and Balor took them into his household to wash and clean, cook and spin, and care for his imprisoned daughter Ethnea.

Now in time Cian and Ethnea grew close and fell in love, and he would visit her in the night and in rare moments when none else of the household looked, and as the castle rose around her tower, Ethnea in secret gave birth to three sons. Long did Cian, Ethnea, and Biróg labor to keep the children secret, yet once did one of them cry out, and Balor was roused to fury and stormed his daughter's rooms, discovering the great deception. Wroth he was, and cast the three grandchildren into the sea ere his doom could fall upon him...yet one, Lugh, survived.

Now in later years would the revenge of Lugh come on his grandfather, and the doom of Balor would come as had been foretold, though neither Cian or Biróg would live to see it. But that is another tale, and one of greater interest to most, for it deals with kings and wars, and in such great tales the tellers have quite forgotten about Glas Gaibhnenn, the cow with the green spots.

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Radio Invocation

Radio Invocation
by
Bobby Derie

"We conducted our courtship by letters," the needles clicked in her hand, "And were married by radio. He was a radio-man, and he liked that. Wanted to be a science fiction writer when he came back from the war. Tell stories of how boys and girls would fall in love on rockets to different parents. Except all of his science romances always had a sad ending - the time dilation was wrong, so when they met up the boy had grown to an old man, or the girl fell in love with him only to find all the messages had been sent a hundred years ago. Well, we had our own troubles, but we worked them out."

The needles paused for a moment, and she worked with her nails to undo a part of the work. "You'll see. There are parts of the letters I never showed to anyone - I'd die if my mother ever saw them. Or the things he sent - his instructions were quite plain. Like out of a textbook. But don't you worry," she laid one hand on her swollen belly, "when you're old enough, you can read all the letters your father wrote to you too."

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The Radios of Heaven, the Televisions of Hell

The Radios of Heaven, the Televisions of Hell
by
Bobby Derie

Hallway after hallway we walked back through the decades, institutional beige 90s giving way to the muted green of the 60s, fading into the pale grey and dun of the 40s which always reminds me of navy ships and quonset huts. My heart started beating faster as we passed a small door into halls of whitewashed stone, the paint curled and bloated around pipes. It reminded me of Spanish forts in Florida, opened now for tourists to stand on grass-covered battlements and stand blinking in dark, close rooms without windows. Yet we did not stop until the paint gave way entirely to rough, unpainted red brick, and the bare yellow bulbs overhead were strange, antiquated things set in porcelain bowls in the ceiling that brought to mind CCC projects, grubby men working for a few of Uncle Sam's dollars, glad for work, any work, to keep them out of a breadline.

The final hallway was a stretch of doors on either side; heavy metal painted green with plates at head-height for viewing, and others at floor-level for the passing of trays. A gully ran down the center of the hallway, where water collected. All it was missing was a rat. I tried to focus on the General, who led the way, and the queer round scars at the back of her mostly-shaven head, but she moved quickly and the light was poor. The General strode down the hall, counting out the doors. At number VI, she stopped turned to face me. Her lips pulled back into a chimp's threat display; like if she had ever known how to smile, she had forgotten it. Wordlessly, she pulled the plate aside, and gave a nearly-mechanical shrug of her head, the kind a puppet gives when its string breaks suddenly.

I looked, and saw only darkness. But as I stared into the abyss, the voice came to me.

"The court of the Nephilim held forth to the Moroni, and said until them we wish to discuss the purchase of additional M4 carbines and light assault vehicles, for they are the weapons of righteousness of the Lord, with which we shall preserve the true faith and balance the budget of souls; for the legions of Baphomet have been in league with the Chinese and are procuring late-Soviet era Kalashnikov, and are providing training for the cambions of the seventh circle..."

Through the chatter my eyes adjusted to the frail form within, dressed in the bright orange shirt and pants, head shaven, eyes wide and staring, mouth working independently. His hands were encased in heavy mittens, and his head encased in a kind of padded helmet like boxers wear, the feet in slightly incongruous padded slippers. With a very soft colored crayon, he added to the mural on the wall, which depicted in great detail a six-winged figure riding an Abrams tank like a chariot, which was pulled by four white horses with flaming manes.

"The official term, these days, is glossolaliac radiotelepathy." The General chimed, "Type 4."

"Speaking in tongues." I said.

"Transmitting, actually. Type 4's like him are only receivers, tuned to...another spiritual dimension, let us say."

I cocked an eyebrow. "Heaven or Hell?"

The General slammed the plate shut, cutting off the string of babble.

"Neither and both, depending on your beliefs. The alien entities involved describe themselves and their surroundings in religious terms, but we have no way of verifying that information. The physicists are still having fun trying to figure out the cause of the condition; as near as they can tell it's caused by microtumors in the language-processing center of the brain, which allows the subject to interpret some sort of signal that they still haven't defined - except that they've ruled out EM, because it works in Faraday cages, but the name stuck. Right now they're betting on gravity fluctuations from higher mathematical dimensions, if you believe it."

The General turned then, heading down the hall.

"As you might have guessed, most suffers down the ages have been mistaken as madmen or prophets. A couple started their own sects. It wasn't until the 1880s that systemic exploration led to three important discoveries: First, that the glossolaliacs actually were in contact with alien entities," the General paused at the end of the hall, at a particularly heavy door, and swiped a card, then beeped something into a keypad, "Two, that in certain cases we could talk back to those same entities through them, and three, that the fucking Krauts and Frogs had beaten us to it."

I squinted at the sudden glare of track lighting as we moved into a hallway modified sometime in the 70s with bright orange foam pyramids on walls and ceiling, and a thick orange carpet with dark tracks worn in it. As the General closed the door behind us, I was suddenly aware of the oppressive silence - all the little sounds of the world suddenly locked away.

"The Communist Russians, God bless their Godless Marxist atheism, thought the whole thing was a crock of shit; our version of Psi-Ops, trying to get them to waste their time and money on a bunch of supernatural bullshit." The General continued. "The Nazis kept trying to tune into Valhalla and not liking what came out. The Chinese have started in on things - they were looking to contact previous incarnations of the Dalai Lama so the state could contact and declare and control the next one, and they stumbled in on it. Still, they were never one to turn down an information source."

I saw up ahead that the corridor opened up into a beehive shaped chamber, the foam pyramid-points looming accusingly from every direction. There was a dentist's chair there, upholstered in untanned cowskin, the scar of a scrape with barbed wire across the headrest. Beyond it, I could see what looked like an altar. She walked past the chair and headed straight for the altar - which, as I got closer, I could see was a desk-like slab of plastic and metal, with peddles like an organ and a small indented screen up top.

"Sit," she said, not looking back. I hesitated, then did as she commanded.

When she returned, she had put on - I guess they were vestments, a kind of purple-green shawl woven with symbols in gold. I could make out her rank, and a few letters of Enochian. Wordlessly, she began to tighten the straps at my wrists and ankles.

"Susceptibility is the first symptom," the General said, as she tied the strap around my head. "Open," she commanded, and I did, her deft hand forcing the rubber ball in until my jaw ached, crushing my tongue to the bottom of my mouth. Instinctively, I tried to bite down, but couldn't really budge it. "Can you breathe okay?" I tried to nod but failed, a gurgle came up from my throat and I blinked twice. "Good enough."

She left my field of vision then. I stared straight ahead - I had no choice - at the wall of orange spikes.

"You registered for the Selective Service Program before you started at seminary," the General's voice came from my right, along with the whirr and click of electromechanics. "Where you were infected by a passive version of the virus that causes the microtumors associated with glossalalia radiotelepathy. We don't know why, exactly. The forensic pathologists are still looking for the vectors of transmission. What we do know is that passive candidates can be activated by a concentrated, controlled exposure to different strains. When done in conjunction with activities on the...other side...we can pair subjects to create true two-way communication." The General stepped back into my field of view. She held before her a syringe - although in my mind, I could see it also as a golden chalice; the two images seemed juxtaposed in my vision. Contradictory, yet both true, both real. Her voice took on a strange double tone, a sliver of reverb and delay. She moved forward, simultaneously inserting the syringe into a hole in the center of the gag, and pouring a golden wine from the chalice.

"We are now drafting you for active service."

Our throat burned. Vision dimmed and expanded again, the sudden fever burning bright beneath unfamiliar skin, trying to flap wing-nubs that were no longer there, the strange burning weight of an erection, the gaping endless need below that...saliva ran down my chin, and my lips were cracked and dry, but there was no pain, not as I thought there would be pain, it was an effervescence, filtering through us, the music we could suddenly hear. Foul smelling hands dislodged the ball gag, removed the bit from my mouth. The figures loomed over us, searching, gazing, judging.

"Can you hear me now?" The General said. My mouth aped her words. Our hearts beat. Then I opened my cracked lips and replied. "Yes, we read you. Loud and clear."

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Duel at Uto Academy

Duel at Uto Academy
by
Bobby Derie

TIE fighters screamed across Bastion's skies in tight formation. Stormtroopers and officers tramped the streets of the Imperial Remnant's old capital in snowcapes and heavy boots. In the unheated warehouse on the edge of the city, Eiven Task sat cross-legged in his meditation chamber, replaying the events of three months ago. The blank faces of the Imperial Knight students, their bright blades burning in perfect synchronization, guided by the will and power of the blademaster, Uto. Anger flashed through Task at the memory of the calm confidence with which he had been bested, the smugness of his enemy, the pain of his slow-healing wounds.

Anger is power. The shade of Darth Modas had told him, the ancient hologram grimacing down at the human. But power requires focus. You must channel it, or the Dark Side of the Force will consume you. What is your purpose?

"Revenge." Task whispered as he came out of the meditation, and scratched idly at the line of scar tissue  where pale flesh and the dark line of Sith runes tattooed on his breast gave way to his prosthetic left arm. Standing up, he crossed over to the wall, where he had laid out the map of the Uto Academy. His brown eyes flicked to between the student dormitories, latrines, library, armory, the thick outer walls of the ancient fortress, the open-air training hall where the last fight had taken place, mentally reviewing the plan. Satisfied, he checked the time, and began donning his armor and weapons.

There were few onlookers at this time of night, even in a city-planet as busy as Bastion. His armor was based on that of the old Royal Guard, white instead of scarlet, a pale ghost moving through the light falling snow, the butt of his lightsaber-pike crunching through the crust of snow in the streets; the passing hovercar traffic compacted the snow it passed over, making strange paths like frozen streambeds. Eiven's senses were alive as he left the main streets and alleys, and crossed through the frozen marshland surrounding the academy-fortress, where the lightspill from the surrounding city was a bit less, and the moon shown bright and full.

Task's mouth tasted bitter as he left the main road and trudged silently over the frozen marsh, a sign that the combat drugs were beginning to take effect. The guards on the gate were students in padded full-length coats, whoever had pissed the blademaster off enough to pull the dead man's shift, cold and tired; even at the best of times they would have relied more on their nascent Force-tuned sensitivity than their physical senses. Task waited for them to report in, communicators squawking out sign and countersign. The first of Eiven's darts caught the nearest one just below the left eye; the second turned too quickly as his mate thumped to the ground, and Eiven's second dot caught in his fur-lined cheek guard, but the third dart caught pierced his nose and he too collapsed as the paralytic toxins took effect.

Standing before the great metal gates, Task smiled within his helmet as he flicked the lightsaber pike to life, it's silver-white blade a torch that cast strange shadows on the snow.

Time to make an entrance.

With care, and holding the pike at its base for the greatest reach, Eiven carefully burned through the hinges on either side; snow flakes sizzled on molten metal as he finished his work and switched off the lightsaber blade. Jogging back a few meters, he crouched and paused a moment to focus himself, feeling the anger burn in his heart, eyes itching from the drugs, and sprinted straight at the door. Task's last three steps were bounds, each one taking him higher and higher in gravity-defying leaps; he hit the center of the door at the top of the third arc, both feet launched forward in a Force-fueled double kick that caused the freestanding door to crumple along the center and fall backwards with a vast and audible crash.

Task slipped the lightsaber pike into the sling over his back, and unslung the DLT-19 heavy blaster rifle, clicking off the safety. Students began to spill from the dormitory, most in light exercise gear and nighttime jumpsuits, and the DLT-19 began to sing its song, a low humming buzz punctuated by the steady thukka-thukka of plasma bolts. Eiven aimed low, mostly at knee-height for the teenaged humans, and mowed through the first wave with hardly a break in his stride as he walked across the promenade to the training hall; most of the rest stayed inside, aside from a few that looked to be making a break for the armory. Task emptied the rest of the clip into that group, which fell to the snowy ground, steam pouring from the flash-fried meat that used to be their legs.

Picking up speed, he dropped the DLT-19 and unslung the lightsaber pike again, sprinting as he came to the training hall, which was pretty much as he had left it - an open-air pavilion, the eight-meter high ceiling supported by eight angular pylons; the gravel and sand floor had frozen hard as concrete in the cold, but that didn't matter much to Task. The whole place felt alive, even empty as it was, the wind whipping through it with a steady moan that rose and fell in strange patterns. Eiven wondered once more what temple or shrine had been here before Uto had built this place, and which aspect of the Force it has been dedicated to.

The blademaster was the first to appear, lightsaber already ignited, stepping carefully, artificial eyes easily piercing through the gloom and the murk. Behind him Task counted six students - senior students, if he had to judge by the way their presence rippled in the Force - each with a lightsaber drawn and ignited. The seven walked carefully, every step in synch, blades outward to face any threat and not endanger the others with an errant swing. Eiven could feel the pulse of their power, seven hearts beating as one - Uto's calm and experience reaching out and steadying his pupils, connecting them so that they moved as a single unit.

"Why do you hide?" He rasped, that strange, commanding imperative tone echoing throughout the hall. "Are you so afraid of a fair fight? Or do you only murder defenseless chi..."

The flashbangs and wailers Task had hidden cut him off in mid-taunt, catching even the experienced blademaster by surprise. From the dark ceiling, Eiven dropped down into the middle of them, lightsaber blades crackling to life from either end of his pike in his right hand, a small repeating blaster blazing away in his left. Two of the students fell in the three shots Task managed to squeeze off as he fell. Even still, Uto's instincts were those of a veteran of the battlefield, and his concentration had not entirely failed; the senior adepts moved into position to deflect further shots, and found themselves off-guard as Task dropped the blaster and lashed out with his blazing staff, the spinning weapon slicing through arms and legs in great arcs.

In the space of a few seconds, Uto's students lay on the ground, screaming and clutching burning stumps. Task quickly looked around for the blademaster himself - and barely brought his weapon up in time as the former Imperial Knight's boot caught him full in the chest with an audible crunch as the armor buckled and cracked. On his knees, Task scrambled for his weapon, but Uto laid his foot to rest on the weapon. His own silver-white lightsaber blade crackled, lightning playing along the edges.

"Get up, boy," the blademaster's voice was a vise that seemed to drag Eiven to his feet almost despite himself. Task's hand went to the Jedi-forged blade at his waist, and he felt the former Imperial Knight's influence fade as he focused and drew the long knife. From just above Task's left wrist, a fiery burst of crimson lit out as he activated the short-bladed forcesaber embedded in his prosthetic left arm. Rage swept through Task as the blade's dark side power drew him on, but the Jedi-blade in his other hand balanced the fury that nipped at the edges of his consciousness. Without blinking his durasteel eyes, Uto swung the white-silver lightsaber in front of him in an en garde position, as Eiven himself assumed a defensive stance, the crimson forcesaber held out in front of him, the Jedi-blade in near his belly, parallel with the floor.

Task didn't see the blademaster move, but he felt the ripple in the Force as the former Imperial Knight began his assault. Eiven brought his arm up instinctively, the forcesaber blade clashing with lightsaber in an electrical crash, then moved in with his Jedi-blade, but the blademaster was already moving. So they spun and danced; Uto the calm center of a swarm, his blade seemingly everywhere at once, the characteristic storm of blades that marked Vaapaad, the most dangerous and powerful of all lightsaber combat styles. The Force flowed through his muscles, lending him endless strength, speed, and endurance - but not foresight. Task dodged and parried, strained to his max after only a few moments; in a normal fight with another Force adept, the Sith runes that hid his presence in the Force and his own intuitive insight into the future would give him an edge, but here it barely allowed him to hold his own. It was no use to see the hurricane that was about to hit you.

The end, when it came, was with a suddenness that took Task by surprise. Raising his left-arm blade to parry, Uto's lightsaber suddenly clicked off and the blademaster slipped inside Eiven's guard, left hand grabbing Task's right wrist, right shoulder pushed into Eiven's chest. With a superhuman heave that kicked up gravel from the frozen floor, Task and Uto flew backwards, slamming into one of the pylons hard enough to dust from the rafters. Uto stood back, breathing heavily at the exertion.

Task, still standing, leaning against the pylon, tried to move forwards - but a sharp pain dragged a brief scream from his lips. Looking at his right arm, Eiven saw the Jedi-blade driven hilt-deep in the palm of his hand, pinning him to the pylon.

The blademaster's lips twitched into a smirk. "You are clever and resourceful, boy. I'll give you that. A decent strategist, too." The old man's lightsaber crackled into life. "I'll make this quick and clean."

Task raised his left arm - the crimson blade still burning fiercely. Without a word, he brought the blade down on his right wrist. Uto narrowed his eyes and moved forward in a deadly swing - but not fast enough as Eiven brought his charred stump forward into the old man's face, both men screaming in pain at the impact. Task launched himself forward, shards of cracked and broken armor falling from his body in an adrenaline-fueled assault that caught even the blademaster momentarily off-guard. Taking three steps back, the blademaster held the blade in front of him, level with Task's chest - and Eiven Task, heedless, walked straight onto the burning blade, steam and boiling blood erupting from the wound as the burning blade at the end of his arm swung down and through Uto's neck.

Sirens filled the cold night, and the snow had stopped falling from the sky, which was now bright and clear. In the marshy wasteland outside the Uto Academy, Eiven Task lurched forward through the ice and snow, leaning heavily on his lightsaber staff in his left hand, the stump of the right pressed up against his chest. The drugs didn't take the edge off the pain, but they let him ignore it and keep moving, which is what he needed right now. He pushed thoughts of tomorrow away - the inevitable manhunt, this time likely with Imperial Knights on his trail. Time enough for that if he survived.

Hovering over his corpse, the blue-lit shade of Uto looked down at his own sightless eyes. "Well done, boy." The shade said aloud, to no one in particular. "I didn't know you had it in you."

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