The Failed Fellowship Page 2

  She advanced, covering his weapon and feeling for his response. He disengaged and threatened her face. Leah cut into his blade and exploded forward at an angle. The blades covered her advance, and her point struck the big man inside the shoulder.

  King pulled back and saluted.

  The mask couldn't hide Leah's grin. After months of floundering as the newbie, they were finally back in her wheelhouse. She'd given up on swords for a while after that ill-fated tournament as a kid, but come college, it was her escape from the incestuous world of the improv comedy. And now that she was a Genrenaut nearly 24/7, fencing was the one hobby she had left.

  King was methodical and very efficient, no wasted motion. But Leah had youth on her side and won a couple of bouts on pure athleticism. Have to thank Roman for his workout routine, she thought.

  Several touches later, Leah was up 3–2, with one pass where they'd both taken kill shots. She'd failed to clear King's blade while entering, and they both ended up skewered.

  "Good. Switch." King tagged out after the fifth pass, and Mallery took his place, a longsword over her shoulder.

  If there was one thing movies and TV had taught her about sword fighting, it was that fencing was an A+ vehicle for flirting.

  But could they keep it subtle with King around?

  Leah kept her sword but adjusted her approach. Mallery had a shade of reach advantage thanks to her height. But while her arm was out of its cast, the doctors had told her to take it easy. This barely qualified, but it did give Leah some ideas of how she could both protect Mallery from injury and score more touches.

  "Naturally, you must expect me to attack with de Rada?" Leah tossed out as they began to test one another's defenses.

  Mallery grinned, picking up what Leah was putting down. "I find Meyer cancels out Rada."

  Leah kept her movements short, using thrusts to counter Mallery's powerful cuts, cuts to turn aside her long-range thrusts. Leah danced around the mats as Mallery turned up the aggression. With one arm still weak, her winds and lever actions were weaker, giving Leah the opportunity to break or interrupt the comedienne's moves.

  And all the while, they spiced up their bouts by trading modified quotes from Zorro movies, Lord of the Rings, Hero, and more.

  She nearly lost her edge a couple of times, chuckling or flush from the sight of Mallery's legs in a lunge or the look of concentration on her face during a bind.

  Leah called a break not because she was tired but because she needed to cool off. They were at work, after all. Probably wouldn't do to be rolling around on the mats in anything but actual wrestling positions.

  The next bout, Leah kept the flirting-with-quotes game up until she found her moment. Mallery dominated Leah's blade with a heavy parry, giving the smaller woman an opportunity. Leah raised her sword into a hanging guard and launched forward, wrapping a hand around Mallery’s wrist. Leah twisted Mallery’s wrist and swung her sword to chop into the back of Mallery’s helm.

  "Nice!" Mallery said, hugging the smaller woman. Through the sweaty armor, Leah felt the taller woman's curves, their bodies fitting together with sweat and sensation.

  Keep it cool, Leah, she told herself. They could pick this up later, after work.

  "I've seen enough," King said. "You said you've been practicing on your own. Take two hours a week here on top of that. I'm sure you can convince Roman to spend time behind a blade."

  "Roger that, boss."

  "Just because he's done doesn't mean I am," Mallery said.

  Leah looked to the door and waited until King was out of earshot.

  "I need a break to cool down. I about melted into a puddle just then."

  Mallery winked an audacious stage wink.

  Leah pulled her helmet off and took a long slug from her water bottle. "First, I did not know you were that good with a sword. Second, I definitely need to bring you to my fencing club."

  Mallery removed her own helmet, some of her hair slicked to her face, the rest tumbling free.

  This is just hitting all of my buttons, Leah thought, accepting the reality of this marvelous day. Here she had the advantage of experience, though with the Genrenauts' kind of work, Leah guessed that more of Mallery's experience was practical than sparring.

  "If I'd known crossing swords would be this much fun, I would have begged King to do it long ago. Though I would've had to fight one-handed."

  "So. You want to go another round?" Leah asked.

  Most of an hour later, when both women were happily soaked in sweat, nursing nascent bruises and headed for the showers, the breach alarm filled the training room.

  Leaving the blades behind, the pair raced toward Ops.

  King stood by their handler, Preeti Jandran, at her station. Both were intent on the many screens and the story they told.

  "What have we got?" Leah asked, eyes racing across the screens. She was still hopped up on adrenaline from sparring, which was now transitioning into twitchiness. She usually went Giddy > Twitchy > Ravenous, and in short order. She'd need a black bean burger or massive protein shake before too long, or a nap. The adrenaline had fueled, then displaced her libido, which was good for keeping up standards of professionalism and not causing a scandal.

  "Fantasy World-Heroic Region," Preeti said. "The Stats department is showing personal leave spiking by ten percent overnight, and a four-percent increase in depression diagnoses nationwide."

  "Nationwide?" Leah asked. It was one thing to know the way that story breaches impacted their world, but seeing the numbers unfold in front of her eyes was something totally different.

  "So, we gear up, yeah? Cloaks and swords and staffs are go?" Leah asked.

  Preeti shook her head. "Council hasn't given any deploy orders. This storm just won't let up."

  The dimensional storm that had nearly screwed Leah and King’s detective mission was just the first of a whole system, grounding Genrenauts crews around the world off and on for weeks.

  "When is it going to blow over?"

  "Forecasting doesn't have a good answer for that yet. Three days, maybe four?"

  King crossed his arms, disapproval clear on his face. "Which will amount to as many weeks on-world. Time moves faster in that region. The stories play out over months and years.”

  "That's a lot of time for a breach to get worse," Leah said.

  "It is. For now, shower up and work with Shirin to get our gear ready. I want us to be prepped to deploy the minute we're cleared."

  Which meant that they'd be sleeping on-site for the next few days. Leah spent less and less time at home, to the point where she was regretting upgrading to a larger apartment. She could get by with a studio as long as it had a proper bathtub and a good internet connection. But since Contrast Cable & Internet still had a city-sponsored monopoly, she'd have to settle for the tub.

  HQ didn't have single-capacity bath tubs, but they did have some pretty amazing showers. Leah and Mallery behaved on the way in and out, despite the lingering glances and energy built up during the fencing.

  If they were on-call for several days running, there would be more pent-up tension than just romantic. It could get really antsy in their ready room.

  The shower helped her focus but didn't wash away any of the worry. Since she’d joined the Genrenauts, the dimensional storms and the rate of story breaches had just kept ramping up. And if they couldn’t deploy for this mission, if other teams were grounded as well, it’d all come to a head real damn soon.

  ———

  Leah came back to Ops and found King still standing at Preeti's side, reading the screens.

  "Any change?" she asked, still drying her hair. Mallery was still changing, in all likelihood. Advantage, shorter hair.

  Preeti shook her head. "None of our projections show this storm clearing up anytime today. I have to stay here, but you two can go do something else."

  Leah gestured out of Ops. "Come on, boss, let's stop hovering over the nice lady."

  King sighed and flexed h
is fingers—a sign of frustration, as she’d learned. They returned to the ready room, where Shirin had already claimed her traditional spot in the bowl chair with a huge book in her lap.

  Roman was running all-out on the other treadmill, zoned out to wherever it was he went when exercising.

  Leah had come to learn that of a Genrenaut's job was waiting. But not just any kind of waiting. Active, responsive waiting. The kind of waiting where you had to be totally committed and active, but also ready to drop everything and move at a moment's notice. Like firefighters, she imagined.

  It wasn't a skill that came easily to her. She loved to lose herself in a good book but only when she knew she could forget the world. Waiting to deploy here was like trying to read on a busy commute, standing up while crammed into a bus like so many sardines.

  Leah puttered around for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do. Facing seventy-two hours of downtime where she couldn't go home was paralyzing. She had an infinite amount of work to do but the leisure to choose the order she did it in.

  So, she started by curling up in the new comfy chair she'd requisitioned and diving back into the romantic comedy she'd been reading about the accountant and the chef. Which was totally not also functioning as a way of trying to process her feelings for Mallery. Nope. Not at all. Nor was it about giving the two of them something else to talk about than the more mundane work small talk.

  Not that Genrenauts small talk was that small. The Genrenauts took the long view, played the high-stakes games. Even their water-cooler chatter had big implications.

  "How's that inter-dimensional tune-up coming?"

  "Not bad. You done assessing the worldwide sociopolitical implications of the Oscar finalists?"

  "Yeah, next year's going to be rough. Expect a three-percent increase in self-satisfied man-children. We’ll need to keep a real close eye on the No Means Yes crowd."

  Mallery joined the group a few minutes later, once again made up but wearing Comfy Girl–style yoga pants and a sweatshirt. She picked up her eReader and took the seat beside Leah. They toasted with their eReaders, smiled, and got to reading.

  Leah and Mallery had found that reading was the best way to stay focused on work and not one another during downtime. It was the thing that would let them sit side by side and be in one another's company without being too obvious.

  Shirin had already found them out, but so far, King hadn't said anything. And the longer they could keep it like that, the better. Probably. It could be that whatever she and Mallery had would fizzle out in another few weeks, and they'd settle back into being colleagues, and life would move on.

  But if things went the other way, it'd be better to go to King with something more serious than the Getting To Know You phase they were still enjoying.

  Or so they'd decided in one of their delightfully-not-too-stressful check-ins a few days back. Leah had been in relationships where any discussion about the relationship itself would take all of the air out of the room. And others where they'd talk, but it'd be incredibly difficult to get the other person to open up.

  Usually, this was with guys. Thanks to BS gender norms, guys were far more likely to have underdeveloped emotional intelligence. Some learned the score, figured out how to say what they wanted instead of just flailing around and trying to take what they should be asking for.

  Leah let that train of thought roll off into the distance and got back to her reading.

  Hours passed. Several hours later, King rejoined the team and took a seat, lost in data and reports and projections or the like on his tablet.

  Chapter Two

  We Are the Waiting

  Two days later, they were still waiting.

  Leah had logged plenty of time on mission prep with the entire team. Fantasy-world history with King, some more flirty fencing with Mallery, hand-to-hand with Roman, magical theory with Shirin.

  The whole team had also spent time sparring with some Genrenauts from Mendoza's squad—Deanna, a Horror specialist, and Ernie, a historical buff.

  All of that still left them with lots of downtime, since they still weren't allowed to leave HQ. She'd made a huge dent in her reading list, though new titles appeared as soon as she crossed one off her list.

  And she and Mallery had eaten lunch together and taken several walks around the HQ, joking and sharing stories from their respective histories on the stage.

  And while they waited, the bad news kept rolling in. Social indicators got worse and worse: Depression diagnoses continuing to spike, productivity dropping, and more. King relayed reports that other Genrenaut bases were detecting breaches in their territory worlds but were just as unable to plot a course through the storm. And so, HQ kept their hands off the deploy button.

  Come five AM the third day since the breach was spotted, King called the team to attention.

  "This is ridiculous. I'm stepping the team down to on-call status. Everyone go home and get some real sleep."

  He said that looking more or less at Leah and Mallery. They were at the middle of the team, but it was hard to not be paranoid.

  King stayed behind with paperwork, but the rest of the team rushed to their cars to head home, Shirin first of all.

  Walking out to the cars, Mallery caught up to Leah.

  "Hey, want to hang out some now that we're free? I was about ready to pull the fire alarm just to get some time alone."

  Mallery looked at her, expectant and hopeful. Her eyes held promise and hunger. She imagined what a not-restful but very relaxing evening in Mallery's company would be like, and goose bumps ran up her arms and down her back.

  When she was younger and more likely to drown herself in a new romance, she'd have jumped at the opportunity to blow off steam together. But she'd put together enough self-knowledge to know her needs right now, and they were boring and solitary.

  "I'd love to, but I'm totally wiped. I need to stare at a wall and be a hermit for a while; sorry."

  Mallery failed to hide the disappointment, but she nodded. "I get it. I could probably use some time to myself too. Tomorrow?"

  "Tomorrow. Either we'll be on-world and have fun things to do, or we'll desperately need to get away from HQ again."

  Leah gave Mallery a just-slightly-too-long-for-friends hug and then turned off toward her car, trying not to regret the decision to be a responsible grown-up.

  She barely remembered the ride home.

  Leah was torn from sleep by the on-call alarm, sitting up with a start in a room that still smelled like stir-fry. Every Genrenaut had to use the alarm app for their phone or carry a pager. Since she didn't relish living in the 1999 version of office life, she chose the app.

  It was midnight. She'd had four hours of sleep at home. Better than nothing. Plus, the alarm wouldn't come unless they had clearance to deploy.

  She also had a text from Shirin.

  Meet me outside.

  ———

  Leah dressed at light speed and headed down to the street, where a red-eyed Shirin met her in the typical family-of-four minivan. They picked up Mallery on the way and arrived at HQ to see that King and Roman's cars were already on-site.

  King met them in the front hallway. "Good evening. The storms have let up enough for us to deploy to Fantasy World. Shirin, you're on gear. Leah, help her. Mallery and Roman, see to the ship. Our window is very short, so we have fifteen minutes until lift-off."

  And with that, King turned and headed toward the ship.

  Leah imagined "Yakety Sax" playing as the rest of the team set about their tasks, though really, everyone was speedy but organized. Even her, happy to say. By now, she knew the score, got what a crossing entailed. And deploying meant she'd get to use her sword skills in the field, albeit with drastically more danger.

  Her journey to the Genrenauts had started, at least as far as she knew about it, with her stand-up set about fantasy those months earlier, and now she was finally getting a chance to see the world up-close. Dragons and sorcerers and farmboys and ev
il advisors, the whole shebang.

  Watching as Shirin retrieved the crew's gear for the mission, already laid out when they got the breach alert, Leah imagined the crew in full Dungeons & Dragons adventurer kit, saving the visual to compare against reality. Chances were that King would not end up wearing a Kirby-level winged helmet, but she could dream.

  The gear for Fantasy World was heavy enough that they had to use a cart to haul it down to the ship, but Shirin and Leah made it aboard with a minute to spare.

  HQ was quiet but not empty, since Ops and Tech were already on a three-shift rotation, currently in the graveyard shift.

  "Prep for takeoff," King said from the pilot's seat. Leah and Shirin strapped in, five of the ship’s six seats filled. She sat on the bottom row, an empty seat beside her.

  "Mid-Atlantic Actual, this is Mid-Atlantic 3 taking off," he said, and hit the dimensional thrusters. As soon as they kicked on, the ship began to shake. She'd been through turbulence, and nasty turbulence at that, as part of her last trip home from a story world, moving through the first break in this dimensional storm system. The ship rattled, lurching back and forth and left and right and every other direction. The disturbance was so bad, they didn't hear the customary response from Ops acknowledging their takeoff.

  Leah locked her eyes on the viewscreen, which showed a psychedelic cascade of colors and flashes of light.

  "Are you sure we can get through?" Mallery asked through rattling teeth. Leah kept her mouth shut for fear of biting her own tongue off.

  "We'll be fine." He looked to Shirin, who would be playing the role Leah did on the way back, watching the flow of dimensional disturbance.

  "Twenty degrees to port, eight degrees down."

  Shirin called directions and King steered.

  Not being in the navigator's seat meant that the pressure was off for Leah, but that also meant she didn't have anything to distract her. She held on for dear life as the ship dived and swooped and juked around the roughest parts of the storm.