(W.I.P) Dreaming days.
This story contains adult themes, viewer dicretion is advised.
So this is the story 'm working on right now. it's going to eventually be edited to hopefully be published. which means more pages, more un-needed words, and no explicit sex. But i am going to post it here, sex and shortness and all. I will post it in episodic format, and then at the end i will post the whole thing in iall it's glory. Please keep in mind that this is unedited and unproofread. totaly RAW story, the final whole version will be proof read and edited.
also, the tags are hinting at what will come in the future, stay tuned sports fans :)
Now that that's out of the way, enjoy! Questions and comments always welcome. (Just don't be a dick about it ;) )
Peter contemplated the pattern in the crinkles of the foam ceiling over his head. He was sure that, at any moment, they would offer up a deep and meaningful secret about the universe. The longer he stared the more intricate and intertwined they seemed to become. The gray foam of their manufacture giving way to infinitely complex, beautiful patterns that expressed fundamental truths about life, the universe and everything. It was unfortunate, Peter thought, that he was so hopped up on morphine he couldn't enunciate his way out of a paper bag, much less give voice to these amazing phenomena. Perhaps if he were a little less drugged, and a little more lucid the meaning to the patterns would reveal itself to him more speedily.
As peter thought this, his head lolled onto his left shoulder, and he came to the conclusion that perhaps the morphine wasn't such a bad idea. Once again he stared in somewhat abstract disconnected bemusement at what was once his left arm, now a mound of gauze bandages terminating where his shoulder used to be. It was, he thought, good of the hospital staff to keep him high off his tits. The part of his brain devoted to violence would no doubt have led him to harm himself and a good many others in his panicked and traumatized state.
Peter did not know how long he had been in the hospital, but it must have been some few months. The weather was starting to change; he could feel the pressure shifts that signaled it from within the confines of his room. Not for the first time he wondered where in the world he was, not in the sandbox surely, the nurses here were usually buxom and friendly, not swarthy and unresponsive. Perhaps he was back in the U.S, or maybe in one of the nicer European countries with the big hospitals, Sweden perhaps, or maybe Germany. Wherever he was, he wished that he were back in the box with his family. But he knew that that was an unreality. The morphine could dull his senses and block his nerves, but he had been through too much; training, trauma and experience, to allow it to block his memories.
They had been assigned as backup for a group of secret servicemen guarding some political mover and shaker on a tour of the bases near Kabul. It shouldn't have been that big of a deal. But it turned out that, like always, whoever it was behind the planning department wouldn't know a big deal from a hole in the ground, not to mention his ass. The only thing Peter could guess was that the Chechnyans had gotten wind that an American big wig was in town, and that this was a golden opportunity to either kill him, or capture him for leverage. They started it like any other attack, mortars and a few RPGs for flavor. But as the detachment of Rangers was leaving to engage them, in came a damned Vietnam era hind, loaded up with rockets guns and angry Chechnyans. The pilots were flying low, hoping to dodge the radar peter guessed. They were on top of the Rangers before they could get to any real cover, tore through them like tissue and opened the way for the rest of the ground force to assault the main gate. Peter and his platoon were out of the bunker in less than 5 minutes. They were rigged and ready but were ordered to wait for the Rangers to soften up the attackers.
As they were staging the hind had hovered into view and began strafing the assembled Marines. Peter remembered with some pride that his fellow marines had returned fire on the hind without missing a beat. But before their rockets had taken it down it had reaped a fearful harvest. Peter was taking cover behind one of the up-armored suburbans the spooks used, and when he looked around for his sergeants he found none of them alive. He looked for his corporals and found none alive. He in fact located all 26 men under his command, and not one of them was alive. A full two thirds of the marine company stationed at the base had been wiped out by the antique helicopter. As Captain, Peter had started shouting orders to the marines still standing he had felt several thuds against his lower left side. Pitching to the ground he saw masked men yelling in a language he didn't understand come streaming through the now open main gate. Peter had returned fire with his M14 while crawling towards cover. He didn't know who it was that had picked him up and began to drag him towards the defensive line his brothers had built. But he remembered her face. She was young, probably not even old enough to drink yet, with freckled cheeks and wonderful green eyes and a wisp of dark blond hair just visible under her helmet. He was watching her when a bullet struck her in the head and replaced her visage with blood and bits of bone.
Peter didn't remember much after that. Just flashes of battle, pieces of thoughts and half conceived recollections. He remembered commenting on how pretty the web of tracer fire was at night, not to any person in particular, just an uttered comment set forth to the ears of whoever might claim it in the midst of a maelstrom. It was mildly aggravating to peter that he couldn't remember the battle. He had been serving in the marines for 15 years and had been in SpecOp Recon for 10 of them. He had seen and done many things, and he could remember them all with ease.
He remembered going to the recruiter station when he was 16 with parental dispensation to join the corps. He remembered sitting in the back of a black hawk three years later when someone radioed to the pilot that his father had died.
"It was to be expected, he was quite old you know." He had said. But there had been emptiness to him for months afterward.
His parents were an oddity he had never figured out. His father had been like him, young, and patriotic. Just not for the United States. His father had come from a line of metal workers and machinists in the Ural Mountains. He came from a village of hardy Slavic people, Cossack people.
"Russian people" his father would say.
"We were Russians from before the time of Alexsander Nevsky. Always we fought for mother Russia. And when the Fascists invaded, I knew that it was time for Russia's children to defend her."
His father had joined the red army at a younger age then he had joined the marines. Oli Morozev would never tell his son how old, save that it was to young for men to be fighting each other in earnest.
He had fought from the invasion to the fall of Berlin, earning a hero's star in the process. But, after the war, Oli had watched his motherland do terrible things, things he had not believed his nation capable of. He had not been able to remain in a country that would hang it's staunchest defenders for speaking their minds. So he had defected to America. After being questioned by American authorities he had been given leave to remain as a citizen. After many years of work in factories and machine shops he had been able to move to the coveted Midwest. A place that many Russian expatriates congregated for one reason or another. After buying a house and building a shop he had met another group of Russians. These he could tell, were not like his fellows.
Peter's mother's family was old aristocracy. They had fled during the uprising to come to America. They found relative peace and had started a family. One Natasha Zietseiv was the result. Born a good 15 years after Oli, she was the epitome of grace, class and scorn when it came to manual labor. Oli had been persistent of his courtship however, never once backing down off of his love for this woman. Eventually they were married, and they would remain married for many years. And for many years they would be without offspring. Until the summer of 1983 when Natasha had given birth to Peter. She had wanted to name him Piotr, but his father had convinced her that he should be given an Americanized name. His father was fairly old by this point, well into his 60's, yet he still worked in the machine shop.
Peter's best memories took place in that shop. He had a knack for machining metal and his father took great joy in teaching him the craft. By the age of 15 Peter had taken his turn at gunsmithing. While his father's business was more for tools then guns, he was somewhat of a hobbyist when it came to antique firearms and their manufacture. But where Oli's touch was experienced and methodical on the lathe, Peter's was swift and sure with the knowledge of ability. He knew that this would be his great passion in creation. The making of weapons, and their history fascinated him. But the next year a large multinational company bought his father's lease, and he was forced to sell much of his business. Peter had never thought to see his father in such a broken state, nor his mother anything but coldly imperious in her aristocratic way.
Peter knew that he had to do two things, help his family, and prevent himself from killing those responsible. So he had joined the marines for a 4 year hitch. Which had turned into a lifelong commitment after the events of 2001.
Now, lying here in this hospital bed in an unknown European country, peter found some small amount of humor in the thought that his father's rabid sense of patriotism, his near blind love of his dear mother Russia, had found root in his son as well. only in Peter's heart, there was room for a motherland and a fatherland. Once again a nurse entered his field of vision, smiled at him in a sad way, and injected something into the bottle attached to his remaining arm.
He remembered losing his arm. It had been during a firefight. He and several other marines were taking cover behind some jersey barriers next to a door leading into the base. He had lost his M14 somewhere and was now in charge of an M249. After a burst of fire he had heard a tink and *clunk* noise from his right near the door. He saw the grenade and moved before he could think. Opening the door and grabbing the explosive with his left hand, he slammed the door shut on his arm. The resulting explosion was immensely painful, but luckily cauterized the major blood vessels. He had remained conscious for another 30 minuets, firing his sidearm at the attackers still trying to reach the entrance. He had been proud to be a devil dog that day. Proud of his family, of his brothers and of what he could accomplish. He had woken up in this hospital, many weeks ago now, and knew that he was lucky to be alive.
**The interesting thing about luck, is that you don't always want to thank it.** Peter mused before once again passing into a drug induced coma. Denied the chance to come to an understanding about the patterns in his ceiling foam for yet another day.
Peter sat outside in the rain. There was something soothing about the rain. Perhaps it was a Russian thing as his father had enjoyed it as well.
Not bothering to wipe the moisture from eyes trained to ignore such insignificant things as moisture, he lifted his still steaming mug of coffee to his lips and took a long pull. It seemed as though it was always raining in Seattle. He understood the weather patterns, the pressure fronts and sub tropic climate. But it extended to something more in his mind. The people of the city had become so used to rain, that their force of collected will power brought it on more often then was required, they needed the rain to feel normal. To have something to complain about, to have a sense of normality; to feel, even if just about this one thing, that they knew a portion of the nature of the world.
Peter silently scoffed at the idea of the nature of the world being something like rain. He had seen too much and done too much to fall into that existential trap. He knew also, that if he went to his counselor with such thoughts the man would proscribe him some anti-depressant or other. It didn't matter which, Peter had run the gamut of them over the past 2 years since his medical discharge.
Attending school for a degree in political science and history may not have been the best idea with his background, but it was fairly easy and it was something he enjoyed. The mere fact that he was functioning gave his doctors nightmares. They had told him he would be lucky to live in a wheel chair with the amount of damage he had sustained. And that it would take years of physical therapy to get him to even that point. These statements had only angered peter, who were these whiney sycophants to tell him what he could or could not do?
And so, more to spite them then any sense of self worth, he had stood up and walked in less then a week, and been discharged in slightly over 4 months. He had been shipped back to the States and been honorably discharged. They even wanted to give him a medal for his actions at Fort Tomahawk. He acquiesced after it was made clear to him by his mother the amount of harm he would come to if he refused. The medal lay at the bottom of the trunk containing his past life in the service. Untouched since it had been laid there. He did wear the pin however, normally on the inside of his jacket, over his heart to remind him of the cost of valor. Taking another sip of his coffee peter again turned to the pleasant thought of rain. It really was quite soothing. His thoughts were interrupted by an incessant buzzing from his coat pocket, sighing, peter set his coffee down and reached inside the old faded fabric of his great coat to retrieve his phone. There was a text from his lady friend, where this might be a happy thing for most attached men, it left a somewhat sour taste in Peter's mouth. Something for which he chided himself almost immediately. It was not fair of him to resent Patricia, she was like him, doing the best she could with what she had. It just felt to peter as though her best could be a little nicer. She wasn't a beauty by any means, but nor was she ugly. The best descriptor of his live in girlfriend was Plain she was almost painfully plain in as many aspects as possible. Save, perhaps, for her hurtful words and pacifism. She controlled much of Peter's life now, and he was perfectly fine with this. It let his mind free itself from his broken and abused body long enough to find a small measure of contentment.
Sighing once again peter slid his phone open and read the message.
[Brin hm onoins.]
Peter slid his phone closed again and pinched the bridge of his nose. He liked to reserve the first few moments after a text from Patricia for silent indignation and hatred for her poor grammar and spelling. After that was over with he slapped the heel of his single palm into his forehead, forgetting his phone was still in his hand and bashing himself with the device. After some cursing that veered from English to German to Serbian to Finnish and back to English, peter hoisted himself from his chair, drained his coffee and returned the mug to the barista. Hoisting his ruck one-handed he left the coffee shop and went to the store. It wouldn't be a very enjoyable week if he forgot onions...again.
Honestly, peter didn't remember forgetting them the first time. He would sometimes have bouts of nothing in his memory. Just blank spots with nothing to fill them. He had only talked to a doctor about it once, after the man started spouting rehearsed responses about PTSD and survivor syndrome peter had determined that he would simply deal with it. He was, quite frankly fed up with people telling him what was wrong with him, as opposed to what was right.
Peter bought the onions, and just barely had enough time to catch the bus back to the campus apartments. Peter hated the bus; it was full of to many people, all shifting, all wary and suspicious of each other. And he always got the lion share of that suspicion.
"You're a one armed man who exudes an aura of repressed violence." One of his counselors had told him, and peter thought that was an apt description, though he didn't feel like it earned him a three seat bubble of angry stares and fidgeting. The children were the worst. If they weren't scared of him, then they thought he was a pirate. And he had found out early on that trying to play pirate with a kid on the bus doesn't endear you to the public.
Peter leaned against the window and watched the moistened city slowly roll by. His hand drifted to his pocket, inside his fingers curled around his most favored position, the last thing his father had ever made. It was the beginnings of some kind of cylinder, he couldn't tell what it was supposed to be, it was merely a steel tube with a few grooves and a slim hole drilled all the way through the center.
The feel of the cold steel, crafted by his father's hand, always made Peter's soul a little...not lighter per-say, steadier would be a more apt description. The little steel cylinder steadied peter in world that sought to unsteady him. Peter exited the tube of silent judgment near his apartment. He walked up the stairs and passed the other college students just leaving their homes for a night of drunken debauchery. Peter couldn't help but sneer inwardly. These children felt so sure that they were adults, that they were entitled to their divergences and distractions. It was maddening sometimes to see the state that the children of his homeland had sunken.
Peter unlocked the door and walked into his shared home with a sense of automatic motion. He wasn't paying attention to his world anymore. He didn't wish to be reminded of what he had had, and what he would never have again.
It took a moment for him to realize that Patricia had been shouting at him for several moments. He had zoned out once again. This phenomenon wasn't exactly a new thing. When he was a child he had had quite an active imagination, playing with invisible friends and spending hours sitting by himself totally engrossed in his own thoughts. Since his discharge however he had been slipping into fugues easily and without provocation.
"...ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?! YOU'RE NOT EVEN LISTENING TO WHAT I HAVE TO SAY! HOW CAN I HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH A IDIOT WHO WON'T GIVE ME THE TIME OF DAY? DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"
"Da- I mean, yes dear, I understand, I apologize, my mind simply floated away there for a moment. I shall try to restrain it more securely in the future...darling." Peter liked to imagine that the endearment wasn't forced. He liked to imagine that he was with Patricia because he wanted to be, not because she was the best he was likely to get. Not because he didn't wish to be alone, not because he craved closeness with a significant other so much that he settled for someone of her...credentials.
Peter liked to imagine many things.
"I just wish that you would pay attention to me Peter, I love you, I hope you know that."
After informing him of what she expected him to do while she was at work she left peter with a rather stiff kiss and a look that said, in no uncertain terms that her list had better be completed upon her return.
Peter would see to the chores. But first he would indulge in a beer. He wasn't really supposed to have them with the cocktail of medications he was taking, but he figured that if drinking a beer killed him...well that wasn't such a bad way to go.
Peter went to the fridge and retrieved one of Patricia's awful light beers. They weren't what he liked, but they were better then a kick to the head.
Peter spent the next 10 minuets downing the beverage and enjoying the sound of rain against the windows. Peter stood up a few moments later and headed for the bathroom, beer went right through him these days. He got to the door and turned the knob. As the door swung open it seemed to peter that the room beyond was unnaturally dark. He turned around to flip the light switch in the hall but found nothing behind him. No wall, no floor, no apartment, only darkness. Thinking only slightly impaired, peter decided that this would be a good time to start screaming.
Peter caught flashes of trenches, tracers, explosions and many MANY people in what was no doubt frantic conflict. He had a bird's eye view and was treated to many sights he didn't fully register or comprehend. It was like he was falling through the air after a high altitude drop. Save that he had no parachute. Peter looked over to his left arm and found it still missing. Usually in his dreams he had his arm back. Peter was only a few thousand feet from the battlefield below now. As he fell he looked around at his horizon. Many mountains and distinguishing land characteristics greeted his inspection. Forests, deserts rivers glaciers great lakes and tundra landscape. Geographical zones that had no business being this near to each other. Peter looked down and saw he was mere hundreds of feet from the ground. Not particularly caring what happened to him he continued to fall, until he was about 20 feet off the ground when it felt as though he had stuck his finger in an open light socket.
Peter sat straight up in a hospital bed; the doctors who had just defibrillated him took a somewhat consternated step backwards. Peter was fully lucid and aware after being shocked back from the dead by, what he assumed, was an emergency room doctor.
"Quite interesting. I'd like to lie down now if you don't mind very much." This is what Peter thought he sad but in reality it came out sounding more like a string of gurgles and moans. So saying he fell stiffly back against the bed, the remaining undamaged muscles in his body protesting the electrical abuse they had just received.
Peter spent the next week in the hospital while his doctors attempted to diagnose his sudden bout with coma. So far he had been through the MRI, the CAT scan, blood tracing, blood testing, hormone balancing, X-ray and he suspected that they had hit him with a radiation treatment just to see what would happen. He tolerated it mostly out of a sense of respect for their desire to aid him. But his patience was coming to a speedy and abrupt end. It was bad enough that he had to deal with doctors asking him inane and repetitive questions, but he now had to put up with Patricia and his mother calling him, sending him messages or just generally being nuisances. Patricia seemed to think that there was nothing wrong with Peter, that his blackout was little more then a cry for attention and that he needed nothing more then a swift kick in the rear. How she could continue to labor under this concept when he had been defibrillated back from the edge of death he wasn't certain, yet she remained stubborn on the point of not allowing him to be released until all tests had been completed.
Peter Honestly would have rather gone home the first day they had pronounced him fit to be discharged. But he needed Patricia to sign him out of the hospital so he put up with her nagging about his poor acting skills, hoping that they would just let him go home soon.
Peter, understandably, did not care much for hospitals. They brought back too many days of pain and memories of uselessness.
Peter was halfway through his second reading of Plato's Republic when Patricia bustled through his door for the third time that day.
"I swear, the staff in this place is horrible. Next time you decide to throw a fit can you try to land in a different hospital? One that can actually recognize someone who is ill as opposed to someone who's hamming it up? Anyway, I came back to tell you that I've been called by my professor to attend a symposium in Atlanta, so I've got to sign you out today, I get on the plane tonight so I need to get you taken care of right now. I'll go down to the front desk and get the paper work started. You can take the bus home yeah?"
Peter nodded his assent. He was torn between a happy feeling and a sad one at the news of her trip. It was true she was cruel and slightly abusive to him, but he cared about her, she was important to him.
Seeing his assent, Patricia made to leave the room to go handle the paperwork. Peter called her back as she was closing the door.
"Patricia? I just wanted you to know, I love you."
She looked at him for a moment, contemplating him he thought. Then she smiled and told him that she loved him too, and that she would see him at home in about 4 days. Peter knew that she loved him, and the tightness to her eyes and the way he was reminded of Brutus speaking to Caesar before his assassination was probably just the leftover drugs in his system playing ticks on his mind.
Several minutes later Peter was dressed and walking down the last flight of stairs to the reception desk to sign his paperwork. He was thinking that it had been a good idea not to mention the vision he had had while blacked out. It was never a good idea to suggest psychological imbalance to a doctor, they seemed to love to use that as an excuse to charge you large sums of money for doing no actual work. He approached the desk and smiled at the receptionist. He walked up to the desk, and looked over her shoulder at the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle, felt the air of the AC system washing over his face. And then suddenly there was nothing. Blackness. Peter didn't bother screaming this time; he knew where it was he was going to end up.
Again there was a feeling of dislocation, of being thrown upside down and right side left. Then he was falling through the air about 12 feet from the ground. Peter didn't scream. He was trained to survive falls of much greater heights. He landed on his feet and rolled on his shoulder to dissipate his momentum. His roll took him to the feet of another person who was in the ditch with him.
Peter crouched in the trench, dazed and somewhat disoriented from his fall. He shook his head slightly to clear the haze from his mind. Peter's bare feet squelched in the thick and gooey mud that coated the bottom of the trench. Planted right in front of him were two medium sized brown leather combat boots. Peter looked up and stared directly into a face out of horror filled nightmares.
The creature was bipedal and slightly human shaped. It's back had a pronounced hunch to it, this gave the creature a stooped look as it towered over Peter. It's face seemed to bespeak of Ursine ancestry, it's long muzzle and small ears combined with small brown, close set eyes studied peter with shocked intensity.
"Who the hell are you!?"
Peter jumped back at the sound of the creature's voice. It had spoken to him, not only that, but it had spoken slightly accented English. It was only now, after the initial shock of seeing something that came very close to being a werewolf, that Peter noticed other things. The creature was obviously wearing a military uniform; it had leather straps and tools attached to a pack and wide leather belt. It wore a helmet and clutched in it's hands a shockingly modern looking combat rifle, a 7.62mm G3 if Peter recognized it correctly. Now that he looked, the creature wasn't entirely animal either. It's furred and bestial features were tempered by other, human traits. It's face resembled that of a hybrid human and bear mixing. It had human looking hands and wore human shoes. And it was pointing a very human weapon at Peter's head.
"I said who the fuck are you? Are you a queen's man or alliance? Answer right fucking now or I put a bullet to you!"
Peter held p his remaining hand and slowly started to stand up straight. He didn't have a clue where it was he had landed, but it seemed as if a wrong answer now would cost him his life.
"Neither, I don't know what either of those two names mean, and as you can see, I'm hardly a threat."
Peter said, pointing to where his left arm should have been. Without a shirt the gnarled mass of scar tissue and damaged muscles was plainly visible. The scarring started just to the left of his sternum and got increasingly worse the closer it got to his shoulder. Combine that with the other numerous scars on his body and the harried and disheveled expression he wore, and Peter hardly cut an intimidating figure.
Peter was watching the bear man closely, he wanted time to react if the creature decided that he was indeed a threat. Peter was under very little illusions as to who would be the winner of that particular contest.
The man thing tensed as if it would ask him another question, but before it had the chance the world turned white for a split second, and suddenly everything was flying through the air. Peter recognized the flash from an artillery shell landing close by as he was thrown up over the back ledge of the trench by the impact. Laying on his back looking up into the clear, almost painfully blue sky above his head, Peter wondered if he hadn't finally given in to mental instability. Everything he was feeling right now, from the grit of the mud under his back to the ringing in his ears from the explosive shell, to the beautiful sight of the sky felt absolutely real to him. He didn't feel like he was still in the hospital, then again, for all he really knew, he could still be in an intensive care unit at Rammstein. Peter heaved himself into a sitting position and surveyed his surroundings.
He seemed to be sitting in the remnants of some kind of crop field. There were even now stubs of plant material scattered here and there in between the shell craters, trenches, and lanes of barbed wire. Dead bodies littered the area on the other side of the trench, he saw many other things that looked like the bear creature he had encountered in the trench, but he also saw human men and what looked like human women. There were also great swaths of dead livestock and decaying horses. If he didn't know better, he would have said that the horses had been part of some sort of Calvary charge, which would have been stupid considering the fact that he heard the distinctive chatter of M240 SAW's and M60 squad support guns. Not to mention the other unidentified guns being fired. They would have turned any mass charge like that into a complete slaughter, which, to be fair, was exactly what he was looking at out in no-man's land.
Peter looked up and down the field of battle, for as far as his eyes could see there was fighting. Men, women and animal things clashed in varying degrees of combat. Horses to his left were charging a group of armored assault vehicles, to his right a squadron of tanks fired their main cannons at a more heavily fortified section of the opposite trench line. Peter heard a loud droning whine and looked up in time to see 3 WWI era tri-planes come in low over the field firing their Morris guns along the trench he had just been ejected out of. Bullets stitched the dirt in front of him and he instinctively rolled backwards to avoid being hit. Just as Peter came to his knees he saw a Line of tracers lance out from behind a dilapidated barn and take on of the tri-planes high in the fuselage, marking a jagged line down the side of the airplane and leaving a smoking, bloodstained wreck to spiral down to the earth.
From behind the barn lifted the predatory nose of an antique (To Peter at least) Bell AH-1 SuperCobra attack helicopter. Peter knew that the Cobra and SuperCobra had been phased out in favor of the more modern Apache and Comanche Attack Helicopters, however the army liked to retain working vehicles on the premise of "Just in Case" and he had seen several pilots taking the old birds up for inspection. There was no mistaking that slim profile and hungry looking prow. As he marveled at the old war machine it tilted it's nose forward and began to chase the even older air-machines, firing it's Vulcan at the tri-planes intermittently until the sound of it's guns disappeared into the cacophony of battle.
Peter looked back toward the opposite trench in time to see a glint over the top edge of the berm. Once again his instincts saved his life as he rolled to the side to avoid the sharpshooter's bullet. Dirt and muck sprayed his back as he rolled out of the way, deciding that he would be safest in the trench, Peter rolled over to the edge and slid down the wall of the impromptu fortification. Climbing quickly to his feet, peter looked around for someone who was in charge, he needed to find out where he was and what the goddamn hell was going on.
Seeing a cluster of activity to his left he headed in that direction. Coming closer he saw that about a platoon's worth of the strange animal things were clustered around a table where another animal thing was sitting. This one wore pips on it's shoulder that looked almost exactly like those worn by an army lieutenant. As he came closer he could pick out what it was they were saying.
"...But top! What the fuck are we supposed to do? This is a cluster if there ever was one! It's the goddamn big push, and it's happening on both sides. They got armor, birds, and just as many Legacy weapons as we do. And the brass want us to trench charge the fuckers?! Damnit tops, we're not fucking meat, we're soldiers, warriors, they cant just th-"
The soldier who had been shouting at the sitting animal thing was interrupted as the sitting being abruptly shot to it's feet and grabbed it by the lapels of it's coat. Peter had to restrain an muttered curse of awe, the one known as "Tops" had to be at least 7 feet tall, not including the ears. As he looked up into it's snarling visage he noticed many more human traits in this one, and the ones around it then he had on the bear thing. And none of them had hunchbacks.
_Perhaps that first one was just deformed._A part of his mind thought to himself. As he looked over the large creature holding the other one off the ground he came to a startling discovery. The giant soldier was dressed the same as all the others besides it's pips, it carried a rifle slung across it's back that looked like it fired 30mm shells. It seemed to be related to a hyena, with it's slightly spotted fur, canine appearance and spiky mane of hair.
It also appeared to be female.
Now that he saw it's feminine assets he wondered how he had missed them at first. They were not disproportionate to her size, but her size was larger then most by a factor of 3. The globes on her chest were well proportioned to her body in fact, however this meant that they reached into the somewhat absurd when it came to bra sizes. Her hips were defined and he would have bet money that she had a shapely rear. She wasn't overly muscular either, simply extremely toned and athletic, as was to be expected from a soldier and lieutenant . Her face was a balanced blend of canine features and humanoid ones, she had a muzzle, but it was not as long as a true hyena's, she had canine ears and sharp teeth that were on prominent display as she dressed down the younger, smaller soldier.
"I don't give two flying fucks what's on the other side of that wall Lewis, I don't care if it's the three elders themselves! You WILL climb over that partition, you WILL assault those positions, and you WILL goddamn TAKE them. Or so help me I will live through this damn war and find the Salt gates and I will tell that damned cursed hoard that I want to go back in time and kick your grand pappy so hard that maybe some of his balls find their way down to your goddamn generation. NOW GET OVER THAT WALL BEFORE I SEND A LETTER TO YOUR MISBEGOTTEN MOTHER EXPLAINING HOW YOU TRIPPED AND HUNG YOURSELF WITH YOUR OWN GODDAMN SHOWLACES! WE ARE QUEEN'S MEN, AND WE WILL WIN THE DAY!"
All around her there were shouts of approval, this lieutenant certainly knew how to push her men's buttons. They were turning to grab their M4s and FN FAL's when they noticed peter standing there, naked and covered in mud, minus an arm and not looking to happy to be in the trench with them.
"Umm, Zdravstvu?te- I mean, hello, I don't really know where I am, but I'm not a spy, I was just hoping you could help me out."
Peter felt like a fool, standing naked in front of a bunch of human/animal hybrids, some of them females, asking for help and telling them he didn't have an earthly clue as to where he was.
"What's your name?" Asked the large female lieutenant , a curious and guarded expression on her face. Or at least Peter assumed that's what it was; he didn't know how their facial expressions worked.
"Peter Morozev, I'm from Wisconsin."
They all gave Peter blank looks, he began to feel a ball of dread forming in the pit of his stomach. They didn't have any clue what Wisconsin was, which meant that they didn't have any clue what the United States was. And considering the equipment they were using, he guessed that it wasn't because they were in a third world country.
_I have no idea where I am, but it's not on earth._Peter thought to himself.
"Well, Peter, if you hadn't noticed, we're in the middle of fighting a war, so we can't really help you right now. How about if you take a number, and when we're done with those chaps across the field, we'll come back and get you sorted out."
The lieutenant said in a tone dripping with sarcasm
The platoon laughed and continued gearing up for their assault. It was all Peter could do to keep from screaming right then. They thought he was crazy, probably just another soldier that had cracked under the pressure. He didn't know how to explain what had happened in a way that didn't make him sound crazier. As he was thinking this several of the soldiers snapped their heads around to stare at the wall of the trench. One of them shouted to the rest of the men and women as he dove to the ground.
"FOUNDATION SPELL! HIT THE DECK!"
Peter had just enough time to kiss the mud at their feet before the earth started shaking and tossing him a good 3 feet in the air before depositing him back on the ground. There was a mighty roar, like a thousand Harrier Jump Jets going VTOL right next to his head. The noise made him want to rip his ears off it was so loud. Just when he thought he would go deaf the noise stopped. Peter looked up in time to see the three tanks he had spotted earlier go flying about 3,000 feet overhead, smoking and trailing debris.
Peter Popped hid head up over the lip of the trench to see a crater the size of a football field where the advancing armor column had been. He saw now that there had been several dozen tanks of different classes and time periods in that area, obviously trying to push a break to the enemy lines. Peter's mind went blank at the power that had been unleashed mere hundreds of yards from him.
He didn't think anything short of a nuclear blast could cause such devastation. Then he remembered what had happened to him, and what the young soldier had shouted before the explosion.
Maybe what had happened to him didn't sound so crazy after all.
"Look, I know it sounds insane, but I was in the hospital, back where I come from, and then all of the sudden there was a flash and I was falling though the sky here. Landed in your trench, please, you've got to help me, I don't know two shits as to what's going on, and from the looks of things I'm likely to get killed for it."
Peter thought that the lieutenant was going to brush him off again. But then she gave him a closer look, her eyes narrowing on inspection. She pulled the soldier that had given warning before to her side and pointed up into the sky and said something to him.
The young man looked into the sky and seemed to go into shock. He looked back down at the ground, at Peter's feet, then back up to Peter. His eyes were as wide as if he had seen a ghost. His jaw hung open and he started to tremble. Peter didn't like the way the soldier looked at him, it made him decidedly uncomfortable.
"I'll take that as a yes then." The lieutenant said somewhat shakily.
"Corporal Cooper! You're in charge of the platoon in this attack, Corporal Henderson, Engineer Fiskin you are to accompany me to the commanders tent on official diplomatic business, do I make my self clear?"
Her soldiers stared at her for a moment before snapping of clear responses of "Yes Ma'am!" and reforming their ranks for the coming assault.
"You're going to have to come with me Mr. Morozev, there are a lot of people that are going to want to talk to you."
She spoke to him this time with a tone of deference, like she expected a reprisal for her earlier tone of voice towards him.
"Thanks a million, I don't know what I would have done if you had sent me away. And no worries alright? You can call me Peter." He said, with his best "It's ok, I'm not going to flip my shit" smile.
The Lieutenant looked away from him quickly and said simply. "Follow me." She turned and walked deeper into the trench system. Peter followed and was trailed by a long skinny weasel-y looking creature wearing a carpenter's smock filled with tools, and a short, wide wall of a man who looked like nothing ever had, or ever would impress him. If this man hadn't been a sergeant Peter would eat his hat...when he found one of course.
After a long and winding journey through the system of trenches they came to a strong concrete building that looked like it had taken more then it's fair share of hits. As the female officer reached for the door, she stopped and looked back towards Peter.
"My name's Erika by the way." She said, before pulling the handle and door open and ushering them all inside. Erika had to duck quite a bit to fit under the doorframe, but she managed it and closed and bolted the door behind her.
The room was dug down into the earth, so the interior was much larger then it had seemed from the outside. This was obviously a command centre, there were clerks and orderlies rushing all over the place carrying papers and dispatches. Peter saw old telegraph stations sitting next to a UAV control center; there were old style walky talky arrays and what looked like a broken global positioning display. The vast difference between these forms of communication was mind-boggling, and the fact that they were working in tandem even more so.
Erika spoke to the officer closest to the door for a moment. He looked as if he were trying to brush her off but she succeeded in gaining them an appointment to see the commanding officer for forces in the area. A Colonel apparently, Peter guessed that their ranking system worked slightly differently, or they had suffered many casualties.
They sat in the staging area near the door to the bunker for about an hour. The entire time Erika would glance sidelong at Peter and then find somewhere else to look in the room. Henderson busied himself by breaking down and cleaning his shotgun. It looked to Peter to be an older style military pump action model. The engineer known as Fiskin roamed throughout the room inspecting various pieces of machinery for damage. Although Peter felt that he was doing more harm then good when the technicians had to pull him out of the inner workings of an old radar array that had been working perfectly before he opened the case.
Eventually a more senior officer came to collect them, they were led through the main bustle of the command center and into some of the hallways that branched off underground. It didn't take them long to reach a door with the symbol of a an Eagle on it, with the legend:
Colonel Von Martin, Steven
The officer opened the door and motioned for Peter and Erika to enter. They did so and Peter was greeted with the heavy smell of tobacco pipe smoke. Standing with his sleeves rolled up and his hands braced against the desk was a man of middle age and height. His hair was black shot through with grey; he had no beard or mustache, though he seemed to be developing a 3-day beard at that moment. On the table there was a belt with an old flintlock pistol in a holster and a long saber similar to those the Corps issued its officers. This one however looked far from being ceremonial.
The man looked p and Peter was shocked to see that his eyes were metallic. Not just simply a bright color but made of metal. As he looked his two visitors over Peter could hear the faint whine of microscopic servos moving the metal orbs around in his head.
Peter suddenly realized that he only had a blanket in the way of clothing; something one of the soldiers had given him. And just exactly what kind of sight he must be at the moment.
"Sorry to intrude on your time sir, but I think you might be interested in this man." Erika said from beside him.
"And why lieutenant, should I be interested in a mud-thing?" he said, a hint of humor tingeing his voice.
Erika remained straight faced and replied
"Because sir, he fell out of a portal in the sky, when I had my seeing man study the portal, he came to the conclusion that it was a portal of consciousness."
The Colonel's humor immediately disappeared. He looked at Peter with new eyes, studying him up and down, noting the lack of an arm, the scarring, and the confusion on his face.
"I will have to send some seers up to confirm this you understand?"
"Yes sir, but I suggest you do it quickly, I don't know how long the residue will last with so many damn foundation spells being flung around."
The Colonel nodded smartly and pressed a button on his intercom. After speaking a few curt orders he motioned for them both to sit in the leather and wooden chairs he had arranged around his desk.
"Mr. ...Morozev was it? I'm not sure as yet whither what the lieutenant says is true or not, but I'd like to hear what has happened to you, it will help me ascertain what I can do for you, and what I can do to protect the people of this land."
Peter was all to happy to oblige. He spent the next hour or so describing the events up to his strange experience in the hospital, and the subsequent surroundings he found himself in. The Colonel asked questions periodically, attempting to determine a pattern he said. Just as Peter was finishing his short tale an orderly came rushing into the room, the women was some form of dog, her features were similar to those of Erika, though not as predatory.
She bustled up to the Colonel and started handing him papers and whispering in his ear. He began nodding his head, his expression going grim. Finally he held up his hand and motioned for her to leave the room.
After she left the Colonel stood up and stretched his back, then popped his knuckles and his neck. Then he looked back down at Peter with an undecipherable look in his eye. It was, Peter reflected, similar to the one that the young seer had given Peter just before they had left the front lines.
"Well Peter, it seems like you're going to be someone important, and before you ask, no, I'm not allowed to tell you why I think so. What I AM going to do however is put you on the next couch back to Capitol. We've had to bump up the jamming equipment so no cars or trains, every time we lower the blasted stuff to send armor or planes through they throw it back in our faces with close range re-dampeners. Get those damn helicopters into the air and waste everything I've got that runs on a motor. I wish to hell we could find the archetype for those bastards, even a more advanced model would do. But no, you wouldn't know anything about that. Listen, I'm sending you to central command at Capitol, they will know what to do with you. Until you see them, you must not tell anyone else how you came to be here, it could very well get you killed. Now I'm going to go and wire ahead that you're coming, the lieutenant will escort you out to the stables where the stage will be waiting. Lieutenant, after you direct the young man I want you back here to give me a report."
Erika snapped off a crisp salute and a "Yes sir!" before turning and walking towards the door. Peter turned to follow, hoping that he could get some clothes before he started traveling. At least this way he would be away from this strange war, maybe with some time spent not being shot at he could figure out how to get home.
"Oh and one more thing Peter? It's been... an absolute pleasure meeting you."
Before Peter could respond they were out the door and down the halls towards the stables. Peter was given a standard issue of infantry uniform, boots, and undershirt. It was all material that felt more at home in the 40's, but Peter wasn't about to complain. They reached the stables about an hour after being dismissed from the Colonel's office. Erika confirmed the driver knew where he was to go and started to walk back down the hallway.
Peter had to jog to catch up to the giant of a woman.
"Wait a second Miss Erika, I just wanted to say thank you for not, you know, shooting me when you first saw me. I think you probably saved my life, if you ever need anything just ask ok? I hope I see you again so I can make good on it."
He said, once again smiling.
Erika made a kind of coughing gurgling noise in the back of her throat and nodded her head once before turning and walking away.
Peter wondered what the local customs were, and if he were horribly flubbing them. But decided he couldn't really care about that. If he tried to emulate them he would likely cause even more distress.
He climbed into the old-fashioned stagecoach and settled in for what he assumed was to be a long ride. After several hours of attempting to map out and recognize the terrain, Peter gave up and wafted into the gentle arms of Morpheus.
Erika took her time walking back to the Colonel's office. Her head was pounding from pent up frustrations and distresses. She was still struggling to process this new information. Usually she had a lightning with and was very quick to adapt, that was why she was the only Morph to have made officer in the Queen's army. A fact none to few were willing to dispute, violently.
She replayed her interactions with the one armed man; he was polite, unassuming and somewhat deflated. But she sensed that there was a deep core of steel to him, and that it wasn't that far below the surface. At first he had seemed like most others in the queen's realm, bigoted and dismissing of morphs in general. But only several minutes of walking with him had shown that he had simply never seen any of the sights that were greeting him before. That would fit with everything else she knew of him. Erika was still having trouble believing that he was who the Colonel thought he was. Space did not warp around him; he didn't stop time or kill thousands with the merest brush of his eyes. And he certainly didn't walk on sunlight; his ungraceful landing in the trench was proof enough of that.
But still, she supposed that with the disturbances and his sudden appearance command had to be made aware of him. Better to be safe than sorry.
Erika reached the door to the Colonel's office and walked inside. The moment she opened the door, even with her thoughts as muddled as they were, she recognized the smell of blood.
Lying on the floor in a pile were two male soldiers, seers by their pips, and the desk clerk that had brought Von Martin the report earlier. All three had bled out from horrible gash wounds to their necks. Erika stumbled slightly then searched the room for the killer, lest he be waiting for another victim. She reached for her support rifle only to remember that it was checked in at the front door, along with her service pistol and combat shovel.
Erika didn't have to look around the room to find the killer; he was standing behind the desk wiping the blood from a set of ceremonial animal claws bound to a short handle. He was looking at her over the cloth.
"So sorry to do this to you Erika my girl, but I'm afraid that this is a matter of some delicacy. I know it won't mean anything to you for a long while, but I want you to know that I've stuck my neck out here. I was supposed to kill you and your entire platoon, anyone who knows he's here. This way, you'll be sent to a penal battalion, no rank, and no pay. Just fighting, and maybe, if you survive for 20 years, you'll be released. Don't worry; I got your two non-coms in as well, try not to hate me to much, I'm just doing what must be done."
Before she could respond a heavy weight crashed into the back of her head and she knew no more.