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Steamer

Teaser. Yes, this is a teaser. Yes, this is a teaser. Yes, this is a teaser.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007

The Old That Is Strong, Book IV: Fire and Water brings us this one. Here's hopeful for some whetted appetites. But first....








Warning space.





This excerpt is a bit on the violent side and may be disturbing for the fainter of heart.






**********
Thunder....

Flashes....

Fire....water....burn the land, boil the sea....

Burn and boil.

Fire and water.

Silently fitful, River Tam jolted from her side onto her back, unfeeling of the bedsheet entwined in her legs. The nightmares once again had her in their heartless grasp. In the depths of her bunk, none bore witness to her agonised tosses and turns, her whimpers went unheard: just as it had been three years ago, they, and she, were completely unheeded, alone in the middle of eternal night.

Danger.

She was danger, and danger meant her. She was between experiments, a time bomb that might level the place if mishandled. Wrapped in a straitjacket and doped half delirious, she was prone on the floor, leaning against the jet-black, soundproof glass door of her tiny, dimly blue-lit cell. She could not see out, but in her mind's ear she could discern the approaching danger, the heavy, determined footsteps approaching, coming straight for her.

Two men.

Them?

No, them....

The footsteps boomed closer, and in a sudden flash River saw the feet. One pair shod in gleaming black dress shoes. The other encased in heavy work boots. Their thunder, their fury, made the ground tremble, and in another flash of light from overhead River could see the forms. One form she knew implicitly - she had grown up with it, and it hadn't changed at all since she last saw it. The other was tall and powerfully framed. The forms and the footsteps grew, forbidding, and then all at once the faces flashed before River's recognitive eyes and she knew the two men.

Two men who loved her very much.

Mistake unmade, they were coming for her. Side by side they strode onward, thundered toward her: hidden though she was, they seemed to know intuitively where to look. The floor trembled and so did River: come what might, violence was going to ensue. In shadow they advanced, and the closer they came, the more palpable the fury - a fury borne of unconditional love.

Another flash and River could see the face to the left. Her brother, calm and collected as ever but still determined. Head level, yet racing without end for the means to release River from her darkness.

Then the face to the right caught her eye - and her fear. Her lover, passionate and powerful. He would die for her. He would kill for her, and it was apparent that he was about to do just that.

They surged forth through the black passage, pace never increasing beyond a booming stride - until an Alliance agent, in all his blank-eyed, blue-gloved abomination, appeared from nowhere in front of them. His supersonic disruptor was already in his hand, but her brother, showing barely a glimmer of a thought about the act, had smacked the device clear out of sight in almost the same instant it appeared: before it even shattered against the wall, her lover had grabbed the agent by the hair and crushed his larynx in one swift punch. There they left him, struggling to breathe, as their relentless march resumed.

No power in the 'verse can stop me....

They were barely a dozen paces onward when a side passage seemed to open out of nowhere. Therein lurked a guard, unarmed but large, unamused and on the offense. Her brother was inexplicably ready for him and the ham of a fist he swung at him in a downward arc, but River cringed as she sensed the guard's superior strength and speed swat her brother aside. His shock quailed her, but the harshest was yet to come, as her lover, physically equal to the guard and possessed of an emotionally driven strength far beyond his, sidled around her hunched brother and locked both hands on his adversary's head. The guard's agony smote River as her lover's fingers dug into his eye sockets and hurled him into a darkness all his own.

Neither of them, brother or lover, had yet gone for a weapon, and River recognised that they were going to blaze the trail of bodies all the way to her cell and back out to the exit with their bare hands.

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