Chapter Ten — Fracture

Alianora felt a deep chill as she saw Aucliostratus standing where Grandfather should have been.  Ever since she was a child, him standing next to the display of the moon was a familiar sight.  Of course he did other things, but seeing anyone else in that familiar spot was just wrong.  The armed guards were wrong too, incipient violence bubbling around them, since one of the first rules that Grandfather put down was no fighting in the war room. 

“Alianora,” Aucliostratus said, seeming far more in control of himself than he had been when they’d first arrived.  “Guests,” he added, eyeing Isaac and Sarah with disfavor.  Sarah had dispensed with the illusions when they’d arrived in Muiraton, but that would have hardly mattered.  It wasn’t like there was anyone else flying around the moon on raptor-back.

“What have you done, Ostra?”  Lia readied her runes, starting to scry around but finding that there were already obfuscation effects in place.  Ones she hadn’t noticed simply because she was coming home, and had never thought they’d be needed. 

“What have I done?” He shook his head.  “No, the problem is what your grandfather, and everyone of that generation, has done.  Or rather, not done.  They have not solved this war.  They refuse to, which means it is up to us.  We could use someone like you, Alianora,” he continued as Isaac and Sarah obviously readied themselves for some form of action.  Though what, she didn’t know.  If Grandfather was fine, that was one thing, but if he wasn’t…

“Where is Grandfather?” She decided to simply ask, rather than try and push through the obfuscation while Ostra was there and watching her.  She probably could, but it’d be a foolish waste of time when words would do just fine.

“He’s in his quarters,” Ostra said.  “I’m no savage!  I don’t go around killing people just because they’re inconvenient.  Unlike the elder generation.”

“Grandfather hasn’t—” Lia began, then stopped because it was useless to argue with someone who had long ago made up his mind.  “What exactly do you even think you can do?”

“Win the war,” Ostra said, blunt and confident.  “Will you be joining us?”  His eyes flicked to Sarah and Isaac, and Lia turned to glance at them. 

Lia had to admit that even under the circumstances, the offer was tempting.  The royalist runes were so very alien, the perversion of meaning disturbing and the mangling of understanding contemptable.  Part of her did want to see them crushed, even though her own parents were royalists, living on Aristarchus Island the last she’d heard.  She’d almost thought about seeing them when she’d stopped by the place with Sarah and Isaac, but thought better of it.

But at the same time she knew down in her heart that winning, if it was possible, was also losing.  It’d destroy so many people and most of the cities on the moon, to say nothing of the fact that they’d have to live with the horror that they’d wrought, on strangers and family alike.  Some might not worry about it, but many would. 

And even then, even if they crushed every single royalist left, the knowledge was there.  Some lunarians gravitated toward a different set of runes than the ones than their parents had, switching from royalist to reestablishment or the other way around.  In time, the problem would raise its head once again.

“No,” she said after a long pause.

“Ah,” Ostra said.  His hand came up, bearing a polished sphere or coral, and he shot her.

It was Immobilize, Incapacitate, the lunar equivalent of Star Central’s precious collection of stun rays, and she instinctively tried to pull up a shield against the thing designed to flatten even High Meisters.  But she was too late, and the bolt hit her square in the chest.

It tickled.

She blinked, and realized that if there was one thing that being on Earth was good for, it was her physical heartiness.  Lia had spent over a decade at six times normal gravity, and fully one quarter of her runes were designed for adaptation and support.  Unlike Moonblast, who merely ignored the gravity, Lia had to bear up under it. 

Which meant that things tailored for even a hearty lunarian simply didn’t describe her.  She had muscles that matched even human strength, enough to live normally in six times gravity; she drank water rather than maer, which meant that she’d lost all the buoyant support it granted to her joints and organs and needed to replace it with more robust sinew, cartilage, and connective tissue; she had adapted to moving faster, a closer reaction loop required for movement in higher-gravity. 

Reactions that let her shift her stance, launch herself off of Norastra’s side in a decidedly un-lunarian fashion – the raptor’s crystaltech wings flaring as they absorbed the force – and punch Ostra right in the face.  The sound of lunarian flesh meeting lunarian flesh was startingly loud, and the feel of bones crunching queasily under her fist had her recoiling even as Ostra was sent pinwheeling away.

Ostra’s guards all pointed their weapons at Lia, but she was pretty sure they weren’t really willing to use them.  They were all young, younger than her even, and she knew that Isaac had been pushing the idea of peace hard.  Posturing, threats, and stun runes were not quite physical violence, and shifting from one to the other was harder than it should have been.  Nevertheless, she felt a sort of sinking in her gut, because she really wasn’t a combat expert.  Isaac and Sarah, on the other hand, kind of were.

With a rush of smoke, Sarah’s army appeared between Lia and the other lunarians, each of the dopples holding very nasty-looking guns.  The kind that were clearly made by villain tinkers, not hero ones.  Isaac didn’t have his own, horrifyingly destructive pistol out, thankfully, but he did hop off Shay and advance with the kind of terrible inevitability that meant he was fully invested, impossible to stop or deflect. 

“Stand down.”  The voice croaking the order was, surprisingly, Ostra.  Lia blinked in surprise as he staggered to his feet, pastel blood running from his nostrils.  She let out a breath, glad that she hadn’t done more than injure him; eyeing her undamaged knuckles, she flexed her hand to try and shake off the feel of bone giving way and dropped it, a little uncomfortable with how much stronger she was than the ordinary lunarian.

Ostra’s toadies looked pretty uncomfortable as well, both at the order and also being bracketed by weapons that had spikes or glowing lines.  One rifle even had visible motes of light whirling around the power source, which Lia really hoped was just decoration.  As Ostra straightened, he snapped a light dispel rune at the guards, the equivalent of a cuff about the ears. Not enough to actually threaten the integrity of any of their constructs, but enough to make his point.

“There is no need to fight here,” he said, in obvious hypocrisy.

“You shot first,” Isaac said, somehow having crossed the rest of the intervening space without Lia noticing.

“A harmless stun,” Ostra said, not apologizing.  “No offense, Alianora, but given the strange powers these earthlings wield I thought it better to separate you from them.”  He eyed Isaac and Sarah, and the smoke simulacra that were easing off their weapons now that the guards had stopped energizing their offensive foci.  “I still think it so, but obviously I cannot force the issue.”

“Awful chatty for someone who just lost an ambush,” Sarah drawled, in her guise as Scheherazade.  Her gaze was more felt than seen, obscured by the broad hat and smoky veil. 

“You have been very careful not to use too much force,” Ostra shrugged.  “Besides, I doubt you would want to ruin your goal here by making an enemy of the entire reestablishment faction.”

“We’re not your people,” Lia said, stung.  “Grandfather and the other elders—”

“Have all been relieved of their positions,” Ostra interrupted her.  “A very silent and civilized revolution.  We are running it now,” he said, gesturing to himself and the other youth.  “Here and elsewhere.  And we’re not going to simply sit idly by.  What you do to me won’t matter in the slightest.”

“I don’t remember you being this decisive,” Lia said, watching Isaac slowly relax from the corner of her eye.  Unfortunately, Ostra was correct and now that the heat of the moment had passed it wasn’t likely that either Isaac or Sarah would do anything permanent.  Well, Isaac probably wouldn’t.  Lia was less certain about Sarah, especially when her Scheherazade doppelgangers still had their guns. 

“Times change,” Ostra said.  “And people.  Especially of late.”  Lia had to suppress a wince.  Ostra couldn’t possibly know exactly how Isaac’s talent worked, but his careless articulation made it pretty clear to her that this was a consequence of it.  Lacking a violent outlet, of course something else would happen, and the elder generation naturally found change to be far more difficult than the younger one.

“So what is your plan?” Isaac asked, sounding decidedly less hostile.  Which Lia had to just take, because his stake was not hers, and all he cared about was ending the war, not necessarily preserving reestablishment mores.  “We’ve been through the cities.  Some are on the verge of open war, but others seem to be talking things out.  Obviously, coming to an understanding is a lot better than all-out fighting.”

“To press our case and our advantage in every venue,” Ostra said, wiping at his face again.  Lia was impressed at his aplomb despite herself, since her punch had definitely broken bones.  She’d felt it; and still could, in a lingering ghostly sensation across her knuckles.  Then again, he likely had the room for healing runes, something that would be useful for most people in most professions.  “Whether it is by fighting or by words, we will claim victory regardless.  The royalist perversion cannot stand; their people are murderers and hypocrites, a millstone on the neck of the lunarian people!  They must be held accountable, now or later, if this war is to be finished.”

“Supervillain monologue,” Isaac muttered at the end of the stirring speech, though not to Ostra. 

“Yup,” Sarah agreed in an undertone.

“Well, unless you’re planning to ignite a war right this very moment, we can figure it out once we’ve had time to digest this,” Isaac said.  Lia was about to protest, but he held up a hand to her.  “You’re going to let Lia’s grandpop out of his quarters.  He can join us in ours; I’m not going to try and force a reversion of this coup.”

“That is acceptable,” Ostra said, inclining his head to Isaac.  Or rather, The Custodian, since he was certainly not acting like the Isaac she knew.  More like a proper sovereign, for all that he protested against the term.  The few times Lia had encountered Glorybeam, she’d been a little bit the same way.  Forceful and maybe even domineering, without the hollow arrogance of a lot of supers who were drunk on their own power.  The latter kind didn’t last long in Justice for Hire.

Ostra waved his hands at the other guards, a few of whom Lia knew by face if not by name.  None of them had interrupted the conversation with words, but she had seen their runes flicker in group consideration, and knew they weren’t fully pleased with the situation but far from confident enough to actually object.   Two of them stepped back to head off to Grandfather’s room, in the back of the building, while Isaac and Sarah stood, absolutely solid.  The faint ticking of Isaac’s bizarre artifact implied there was some power use going on, but she had no idea what he might be manipulating.

She stared at Ostra while they waited, the flow of blood from his nostrils finally stopping.  With some discreet scrying she could tell that he did have the standard rune set for physical confrontation on the back of his right leg, including strength augmentation and healing, and felt very awkward that she had been able to overwhelm him with muscle alone.  A discomfort that was almost better than trying to sort out what she should do, since she couldn’t rely on the framework she was used to down in Star City. 

By the time Grandfather emerged from his quarters in the back, striding ahead of the guards with exaggerated dignity, she still hadn’t been able to decide exactly how she wanted things to go.  Decisions that were easy back on Earth, when neutrality seemed an obvious thing, were far harder here now that she was seeing her people, feeling the difference between them and the royalists. She absolutely understood where Ostra was coming from.  Yet at the same time, she just couldn’t see him as doing anything useful, since he surely couldn’t solve problems Grandfather had found intractable.

Giving up on the worries, she went over to give him a hug, which he returned while scowling furiously at Ostra’s flunkies.  For a moment she was pretty sure an argument was going to erupt again, but Isaac cut off any attempt at further conversation.

“We’re going to go take a break from all this, come at it with fresh eyes.”  There was a weight to the words of The Custodian, and Ostra bowed in silent concession.  Shay stumped up behind Isaac, snorting derisively before padding off toward the renovated human quarters.  Lia took a breath, and then tugged on Grandfather’s arm.

“Come on,” she said quietly, as Scheherazade followed suit, the three smoke-clones still screening them as they walked out of the war room.  She called Norastra to follow her, the raptor actually the last one through and closing it with her tail.  Emphatically, too, the banging of the door making Grandfather jump with its un-lunarian noise.

“I cannot believe them!” Grandfather said, after a beat to recover.  “Alianora, they can’t be allowed to just ruin all these years of careful planning and maneuvering!  Which they will.  Aucliostratus is not subtle!”

“That’s actually something we need to talk about,” Isaac said, scratching Shay’s muzzle before letting her wander off to the raptor area.  He dropped down on the couch and Sarah joined him, her Scheherazade disguise gone.  Lia steered her grandfather to one of the properly – which was to say, lunarian – sized pieces of furniture, able to tell he was still a bit shaken even if nothing had actually happened to him.

“So, I was a bit afraid of this,” Isaac said, bringing his hand up to pass it over his face before looking at them.  “Change.  My talent has started it going, and as I warned you, I don’t really have that much control over what exactly it does.  I understand you’re not too pleased with what just happened, but maybe it needs to happen?  I’ve been pushing against outright violence, which means that this is the next most likely fracture line.”

“You’re saying that all that needed to happen to change things was for us to step aside?” Grandfather sounded half-insulted, half-incredulous.

“Not even slightly,” Isaac said.  “Just that it was the easiest change to make other than exploding into violence.  I can’t even guarantee this is a necessary step.  All I can do is keep up the pressure and see what happens.”

“But the royalists,” Grandfather protested.  “If we have completely different people changing the way the reestablishment cause operates, they will simply destroy us!”

“Maybe, but I doubt it,” Isaac said, looking resigned.  “What makes you think it’s just your side that’s changed?”

***

Directory Ichabod wished he was surprised that his vacation had been cut short.

He packed the last of his effects into the travel chair with rather more force than was absolutely necessary, not quite able to restrain his pique.  The only thing that remained out was one of the paintings, where he had unfortunately misjudged the size of the canvas and it didn’t quite fit the geometry of the chair’s storage compartments.  It wasn’t actually very good though, so he wasn’t too heartbroken at leaving it behind.

With one last glance around, he manipulated the controls of his travel chair, out onto the beach and then right out over the waves.  The engines within the saucer hummed as he called upon them in a way that was rarely used – even if they’d been built for it – as he zipped out and away from Aristarchus Island.  The usual forceplast slid up and over his head, encasing him in an atmospheric bubble and severing him from the wind.

He had a damned good reason for getting out.  The feel and atmosphere of the city there had changed, abruptly switching to being insular, secretive, and hostile to outsiders in what was now clearly a result of Hartson’s power on a grand scale.  They were drawing themselves up, preparing for something.  Obviously some major move against their counterparts elsewhere, which wasn’t likely to end well.  Possibly explosively badly, even.

Ike was very aware of Moonblast’s outright obliteration of trouble spots, likely more than most, and while he didn’t exactly approve it wasn’t his place to disapprove, either.  She had inherited a mess, a completely intractable morass of truly terrific proportions, and it wasn’t at all clear that there was any good way to go about addressing it.  The two options seemed to be ongoing but sporadic violence, or complete genocidal purge, neither of which were acceptable.  There was a reason moon problems were left on the moon.

Misting maer slid off the frictionless forceplast as Ike skirted around one of the many storms Oceanus Procellarum was named for.  In a way he was less bothered by his vacation being interrupted – he had been about ready to call it and head back to Earth anyway – than he was by the fact it was interrupted by Hartson.  After the incident with Mechaniacal, the kid had been quiet and unproblematic for months, to the point where Ike had nearly put him out of mind.  Plenty of former problem supers faded into the background after some initial difficulties, after all.

If Ike weren’t on the moon, he wasn’t sure how much he would have cared about Hartson’s latest tomfoolery.  Depending on how things went, maybe a slap on the wrist for violating some technicalities that were mostly there to prevent villains or corporate interests from pretending they were moon-based.  Or, if something really bad happened, remanded into Moonblast’s custody.  Either way, it was something safely far away from Star City and not something to concern himself with too much.

Except he was here himself, and couldn’t get back to Earth.

“Vilmonica, do you read?”  He kept trying to get through to Star Central, though he wasn’t particularly optimistic about being able to make contact.  Someone, somewhere had clearly put up a moon-wide jamming field or the like, tapping into the vast powers of lunarian rune-magic, and while Ike doubted he was the target he was certainly a victim.  If anything, he suspected it was meant to keep out Moonblast, and had already failed in that regard.

The resulting static hiss was irksome, especially since they’d just gotten access to moon-earth communications thanks to Machine Head.  It was purely electromagnetic, so there was a bit of a delay, but only slightly noticeable.  Other people could manage faster communications, but not in ways that were as easily reproducible or controllable as Machine Head’s work. 

He wasn’t as worried about himself as others likely were, since even if he was dependent on the life support chair, he wasn’t helpless.  It was true that as the administrator for Star Central he spent most of his time inside the building, making decisions and coordinating responses.  With the way his power worked – or rather, didn’t work – that was the best thing he could do.  But Ike hadn’t entirely forgotten his days as a super, and was more than capable of making it on his own until something resolved.

Or, more than likely, until he or Moonblast forced something to resolve.

There was no telling where Moonblast was, and when or if she’d return.  Or if, quite frankly, he could trust her.  There was certainly mutual respect between them, and perhaps even some degree of friendliness, but Ike was well aware that wasn’t a guarantee of behavior, especially when it came to her home territory.  If it came down to it, he was entirely certain she’d choose her own politics over his life or comfort, which was why he was exiting the area with all due speed.

He chewed over his options as the travel saucer sent him speeding over featureless ocean, a journey that would be hours of nothing much in particular.  The waves and clouds were picturesque enough, but blended into a sameness that very quickly stopped distracting him from his internal contemplation.

If Moonblast decided that she needed to wipe the island, she would.  If she decided she needed to wipe everything else, she might still try.  Either way, his best bet was to avoid lunar population centers and see what he could do to try and track down the interference, or to see if he could catch Hartson and get read in on what exactly was going on.

He knew that he wouldn’t be able to stop Hartson.  Not on his own, and not in general.  If he still had his full powers available to him that would be one thing, but with only the travel chair he was relying on the genius of Star City’s tinkers.  Which was, admittedly, expansive even if it didn’t quite rise to, for example, Mechaniacal’s standards.  It was enough at least that he had no worries of running out of resources no matter how long things took. 

But he could probably find Hartson far easier than Moonblast.  The lunarian had only the vaguest and most tangential knowledge of the boy, whereas Ike was very familiar with Hartson’s profile.  If he was here of his own accord, which he likely was, then the Miller girl would be with him. The two were joined at the hip, and their powers did synergize quite nicely.

He was, in fact, glad that Smokeshow had been taken out of the villain game, even if Ike wasn’t particularly pleased with her aiding and abetting whatever nonsense Hartson was up to.  Crash was enough of a menace by himself; if the Miller girl had ever tried to take her powers seriously, Blacktime’s forces in Star City might have escalated into something truly dangerous.  As it was, he was perfectly happy to let her change her coat and follow her mother’s more acceptable example. 

Beyond the young Miss Miller, they’d have their raptors, because such creatures were far too useful not to bring along.  Star Central had gotten the official blessing from the Deep Kingdoms for Hartson, Miller, and the lunarian to keep their mounts only a few weeks ago; by the documentation that came along with it, those raptors were worth nearly as much as Ike’s travel chair.  The thought made him pause and be grateful that, regardless of whatever else was going on, the Deep Kingdoms weren’t aware Hartson was on the moon.  They might have decided to send someone up to safeguard their interests and he couldn’t help but imagine the meeting of lunarian and ikiski culture would be explosive.

As it was, the raptors were probably the easiest thing to track, though he doubted they actually looked like Deep Kingdom creations.  Miller’s illusionary powers were almost certainly being used to cloak them, but it would be hard to hide their abilities.  Flight was not terribly common among lunarians, and those who did fly used their own runes.  Conveyances were vanishingly rare to nonexistent, and even the local groundcars were closer to wagons. 

They’d likely be with the reestablishment lunarian from Justice for Hire as well.  He’d been suspicious of that contact from the beginning, and as it turned out he was right to be.  The connection was less of a problem with Mechaniacal retired under his own recognizance, as one of the fears had been someone trying to break the old supervillain out, or worse, attack him.  But getting the world’s supers sucked into a civil war with no clear sides or resolution was only slightly below that on the list, and under present circumstances more likely.

Or maybe less.  The communications blockade with the Earth might well be a conscious effort to prevent that.  Ike frowned at the displays on his chair, showing that there weren’t even stray radio broadcasts coming in to the moon’s surface.   Not that they’d be more than garbled echoes at this range. 

He consulted his map of the moon, dredging up information from the database that lived in his chair.  Flying over the ocean was not a target or destination, it was a holding action, and he needed to turn thoughts into action.  There’d be more if he was connected to Star Central’s systems, but he didn’t leave everything there for precisely this reason.  Some things he kept in his head, of course, but with his powers suppressed he didn’t have the superhuman breadth of memory that he had once managed, only able to operate at normal and mortal level of recall. 

Just on the face of it, he could cross out the purely royalist cities as a potential place for Hartson to be located, and of course most of the far side of the moon.  It was primarily a desert over there, with a few fringe settlements, and definitely wouldn’t have the resources necessary to support the raptors.  Meat was not terribly common on the moon, as only a few types appealed to the lunarian palate, so ranchers were localized to a few areas.  Obviously the raptors could fly so there was no need to be based directly there, but it was a logical conclusion that they’d be in the area.

Then, cut out all the larger cities.  He well knew Hartson’s ability with disguises, but he wasn’t alone and acting like a lunarian would be harder than pretending to be human.  Reproducing rune effects would be difficult to impossible, so he’d want to stay somewhere less obvious, where he would be able to control who he interacted with.  Likely the estate of a confederate.

His fingers played over the controls as he stripped out options, assigning them different groups in case he needed to come back to them later.  His map narrowed in on three different swaths of lunar surface, a handful of settlements and ranch houses in each.  If he’d had more information he probably could have done better; some of those places would be simply too poor to play host without it being obvious, others were likely to not want outsiders around no matter what.  But it was a place to start.

Another coded entry into the keypad started certain other machinery in his travel chair, and the exterior rippled, shifting into active camouflage.  It was actually better than invisibility in some respects, as most of the methods available to him required either magical ability he preferred not to exercise or the use of active sensors that gave the whole game away. 

The whine of the travel chair quieted, the engine far happier moving at higher speeds and altitudes, as Ike aimed himself in the direction of the nearest potential target.  He wasn’t actually certain what he’d do when he made contact with Hartson, but at the very least the boy clearly had his own way on and off the moon. And if that wasn’t functional, Hartson and Miller would certainly have an incentive to break the blockade. 

Ike had long grown used to having to rely on others, even if he still found it tiresome, with his own power so difficult to control and too potent to let run wild.  But those he relied on were his staff at Star Central, people who had long proven their integrity and competence.  Not a super with whom he had an indifferent relationship at best, and one with a less then stellar track record when it came to power use.  However, Ike had dealt with allies of convenience before, and was perfectly capable of being polite regardless of his personal opinions.

The degree to which he could convince Hartson was another issue entirely.  For all the trouble the boy had given him, Hartson had never exhibited any violent tendencies, so Ike wasn’t afraid that he would be in danger personally.  The worst that would happen would be that Hartson would simply reject him out of hand.  On the other hand, the Miller girl and the lunarian would probably be more amenable, as neither of them were fools and didn’t have the same attitude.

Ike activated the boosts on his travel chair, slipping soundlessly through the air toward his first target.  He was certain that he could find the boy before he got to the end of his list, and then the only challenge would be seeing if the kid would listen to reason. It would be nice if he could get Hartson’s talent to work for him for once, instead of against.