Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. It is a draft; there are mistakes, many misspellings and sometimes long periods of no updates. copyright: ion fyr 2025
After the third time, and the fifth grate he had lifted up to search under, Luc could sea the pre-dawn light hitting the hills below. The shadows of dunes, first stretching blue-black over the salmon hues of the sands, then becoming richer in color.
By the time the shift of whoever was pilot to the next, the day was bright and they were crossing the great Nile.
Luc guessed they were well south of the northern cities. He could see the threads of roads below, but none of the great mausoleums of Kemet.
It was a brief crossing. At their speed the river, famous throughout the world, passed beneath them in less than a minute.
Desert followed, here and there speckled by oasises of green, then a sea.
Finally, the wide floodplain of the Land Between the Rivers.
Luc thought it was Etelka piloting at that moment. BYH swung to port without warning, away from the sea below, over a wide expanse of green.
“Mr Luc, sir,” Beatrix popped her head in to the lounge.
Luc looked up from the floor grate. Having exhausted the search in the cargo hold, he had moved on to the unlikely lounge floor. The adjacent grate was digging into his knees.
He pulled himself to his feet with the edge of the lounge table, patted Nila’s ankle–he should probably take her boots off–and acknowledge Beatrix.
“Madam Etelka would like your opinion.”
“I’ll be right there.”
***
Etelka heard him enter the cockpit and reached down to the chair next to her and grabbed up some maps, which she rolled into a disorganized tube and tossed onto the opposite chair.
“Sit, please, Mr Maron.”
“You know, that isn’t my name…” Luc had told her this many times. “Nila just made that up…”
Not waiting for him to finish, “We are nearly there, to your Tesifon. It is currently 189x. There will be Brethmanic border patrols that leave from here as the city is the largest hub to the immediate west of Pars.”
“I would like to jump to your time, but then there is the issue of keeping BYH hidden from the surveillance of your time–I am told it is constant and thorough.
Luc looked around at the horizon, noting landmarks. The 19th C city was no more than a corral for camels and contraband from Pars and the Sind, only blossoming into a thriving city (small compared to Londbridge) later.
“There is a hill…it’s actually the buried ruins of some ancient place…on the east side of the river, but not to close. The stories say that hundreds of years ago the river shifted its banks and that city died.”
“The locals think it is haunted, and the only people that go their in my time are looters and smugglers. Both of those pay off the cops. If we land there, the cops won’t bother us, but we might have some looters. If Tokey is still working the smuggling, then I can talk to him. As long as his brother isn’t there, that fucker wants to kill me.”
Etelka had known a little of Luc’s …creative past, but to hear him say it like that, so nonchalauntly, made it somehow more real.
She had seen Nila lay waste to invading tiger-demons from space. She had fought (or assisted in the fight) against alligator-worshiping fiends on far off continents, surrounded by stinking swamps. Never had she engaged with mafiosos. It was new territory for her.
There was still dried blood on her hands, having insinuated itself into the nooks and crannies, mostly around her fingernails.
She hoped Beatrix had been mostly joking about emptying the boiler tank, save for a few liters. There were no baths on Baba Yaga’s Hut, but she could afford some minor comfort–in this case a hot wet towel.
Maybe Luc’s degenerate-catering nightclub would have a bath available somewhere. It certainly should have one.
Ion Fyr 