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 2026
“We can’t take the Hut in her current state. Even with Mr Maron’s innovations and the parts of his car, she is too damaged. She might limp there, but if something came up, we would be at a disadvantage.”
“What happened to the Hut?” Asked Nila.
“A similar afliction to ours, Ms Tagore,” explained Pool, waving his loose sleeve. “Several shots across her stern.”
“Yes, we did rather limp into port here. She’s hidden outside of the city.” Etelka turned to Luc, “would you have access to a non-descript transport, that could transport us along with Attila and Beatrix?
Luc nodded. “Of course. I’ll see what I can arrange on short notice.”
“I need to remove the…device from her. I don’t have time to rebuild the entire structure, but I can’t leave it to chance discovery by others. There are also some important notes and such, odds and ends, that I would like to recover. I should think, however much it pains me, we should have to scuttle her. Do you have access to explosives as well?”
Luc smirked and laughed at her innocent question.
***
“What do you mean you want the entire table?” Beatrix’s frustration came across quite clearly in her broken Hunnic.
The table in the lounge of Baba Yaga’s Hut had a detailed engraving [in brass?] of the surface of Terra.
“I can see the espresso machine, but the table? It’s so big, and it still has blood dried in the lines!”
“Just take the top. Have Attila help. It cost me a lot to have it etched. I don’t want to part with it or blow it up.”
Outside of the grounded Hut, sat their replacement transportation. “Happy Funtime Express” in the jarring, cartoonish script of three different languages. “Deliveries Anywhere Worldwide!” Announced the cartoon mascot of a major Sinese party snack brand. The puce background played tricks on the perception when coupled with the boulbous puce monster drolling orange snacks into a festive wasteland. It was even more unnerving to Etelka’s unfamiliar senses, that the image glowed from within and moved to look at the viewers, bellowing at them to eat more.
The truck, as Luck called, was a a little over 35 meters long, less than six wide and three tall, and designed to haul worthless food items over the landscape. It would, he claimed—she couldn’t believe such a box capable—travel faster than Baba Yaga’s Hut and, despite appearances to the contrary, would not attract attention.
It sat on the dried mudflat ground on stubby pylons. A rectagular box with one end sloped into a wedge with a rounded plastic window, from above it would have looked like a garrishly painted warehouse or large shipping container. It was inelegant and the only aerodynamic aspect was the nose.
The entire back end had unfolded to form a ramp from the ground into the darkness of the cargo hold.
“We’ve already faked the vehicle ID. There’s enough room for ever one and It will get us to Singhapol by end of day tomorrow.” He explained. “The downside is that the batteries are old and we’ll have to recharge twice on the way, which will take time. Otherwise, we wait two or three days for a battery change-out.”
She didn’t mind that Luc was deferring to her as if she were Captain. He even promised to show her how to fly it. She looked over at Attila and Beatrix manhandling the table top into the open rear swing doors of the hideous beast. They set it down, leaning it against the wall next to the cannons and, crates of Beatrix’s tools and Etelka’s travelling chests.
They could see each other’s reflection in their goggles. The dust was heavy in the air today and settled across the upper rims. She could taste the metals in it on her lips and reached for her breather. Luc had done the same. The wind had shifted and the air had grown thicker.
Etelka inhaled the faintly plastic-tinged air through the filters and felt purified; the air had grown very wrong in moments. She could hear the static sand-paper scouring against the goggles and mask, and the raw of her face; feel it settling into her hair, into her clothing.
Luc just shook his head like a dusty bear, shedding layers (the ones that didn’t cling) into the wind. “We leave as soon as you get your shit off the wreck and Nila gets here,” he shouted against the rising wind over his shoulder.
Humidity and dust are two very different things. In most regions of Terra, they are kept far apart, like crazy, antagonistic siblings. It might have been the time of year—a dry period followed by an approaching very wet season, but the barren lands, with clods crumbling in the fields, combined with the ever-present plastizine airborne debris, and of course industrial discharge—all of this had dumped gigatonnes of particulates into the atmosphere of once beautiful Terra.
The dust hung in the air, riding the currents, until the beginning of the wet season in the subsidiary of old Ctesiphon
Luc looked up at the sky, through cloudy lenses. “We need to get going. The rains will hit tomorrow.”
At that moment, darting over the desicated marshland to the outcrop blocking the deflated mass of the Hut and the parked monstrosity of Happy Funtime Express from the view of the city, came a non-descript untility vehicle.
He caught a glimpse of one of his crew, concealed in the shadows of the outcrop, raise his rifle at it, watching it approach, only lowering it when the passphrase dropped over their local channel.
It was Nila and Pool. The gull-wing door of the battered grey, egg-shaped pod opened as as it was still rocking on its legs. Luc could see the pilot wave in silouette through the pocked an scraped tinted plastic of the windscreen. He signaled back with a raise of his arm, then stroked back a lock of black hair from his face.
Nila not so much as disembarked, but rather she oozed out of the craft like a cat with her black-rooted blue hair suddenly flailing in the wind around her face. She had always been lithe and possessed of an untrained elegance, but now she exuded raw power. Something was different about her, he thought.
Pool followed her, exiting somewhat clumsily, unfamiliar with the handholds on either side of the open door. As he regained his balance, his new hand was visible jutting from his shirt sleeve. He used it to shield his eyes from the duststorm, perhaps forgetting that his goggles were perched on his forehead. His ubiquitous jacket was missing, possibly because it had been a light tweed, which was inappropriate for the local weather, but more likely because it’s right arm had been shredded and the entire thing had been drenched in Nila’s arm-gore.
They both had their masks on, but only Nila wore her goggles, and though he couldn’t read their lips, Luc could tell they were agitated.
Ion Fyr 