1 In Which We Have Mystery, 1

Five thousand years later, and the curtains still drew on that crisp scene like it had happened yesterday.

The horses appeared over the hills in single file, and the tallgrass parted as they entered and dismounted in the thick of the forest.

The first soldier knelt down and pressed a gloved hand down into the black soil. He spotted a tuft of grass that was flattened by what looked like a bootprint so heavy it was a stamp. He raised his hand.

Another soldier came forward, a red phoenix on the breast of his coat, every deep wrinkle in his face taut. He carried his authority with him so tangibly that you'd ask to carry it for him. He tugged on the edge of his officer's cap lightly, but it still showed it's age as it drooped like a mustache.

The soldiers moved forward, the lines dispersing into circles, like pack predators surrounding their prey.

One of the soldiers lined up next to the colonel, but she treaded lightly. She took off her helmet, and her blonde hair fell out, plastered to her face. Unlike the other soldiers, she was not wearing her coat, only a vest over a white, starched button-up that was wrinkling where it was tucked into her pants. The shirt was wet around her armpits, and her soft mouth was curled into a whistle. Her jaw moved around, and it did that every time she looked like she was thinking, which was all the time, but it seemed acutely reflexive, as if she could not think without grinding her teeth and stopping that would prevent her from ever thinking again.

"Xiansheng." she said. "Will you be wanting your Icar-Gear?"

The Colonel looked at her as if he had only now noticed her. He tugged at the brim of his hat, bringing it low over his eyes as a cloud fluttered past the sun, spraying the light through the trees. His voice was low, gruff. "Not this time."

She nodded, the collar folding, and as she fell back behind him, she adjusted it, unbuttoning the top and shifting a necklace under the shirt. She cracked her neck and sighed. "Let's get the whole perimeter cut off here." she said. "We don't want anybody getting away, like last time. Yannis?"

A hollow-eyed, short man stepped forward, combing back his neatly done blond hair, completely shaven on the sides, showing three clean scars by his left ear. "Servicing," he grunted.

"I don't want any more high pressure. We're not after Alto's here."

"Are you sure? I believe in the safety of my men first and foremost-"

"Surely you've equipped your men to deal with a small family?" Her neck went stiff as she looked at him, light brows furrowing, demanding he say more.

"Of course, furen Mordeci." Yannis bowed a bit, shrinking into her peripheral.

Now the trees gave way to a clearing in which lied a log cabin, round windows sealed shut, wood rotting and chimney leaning dangerously to the side. A soldier tripped over something, and signaled to her as he was met with chuckles from his comrades. She nodded. "What's the issue?"

He got to his feet, and thrust a fist up, his arm at a perfect 90 degree angle. Mordeci absently saluted back, eyeing the ground. The soldier finally registered where her attention was, and picked up the item. He offered it to her, then tucked it back when she didn't take it, then finally looked her in the eyes. With a grind of the jaw, she plucked it from his arms.

It was a steel gauntlet, leather workings hanging from the entry, and she peered inside. She lifted her elbow and let out a puff of white steam from her arm pipe, glossing over the gauntlet. She held it closer to her eyes, then walked to the Colonel. They spoke to each other for a moment, before the Colonel had a soldier bring forward a box, tucking the gauntlet inside. Mordeci turned around. "Soldaten!" she shouted. "We now request that you spread out in search of material on the premises. Anything found, or tripped over," a wave of laughter spread over the company, "will be brought to me or Colonel Zelani immediately." She repeated the motion of the nervous soldier, bending her arm at the elbow in the same 90 degree angle, fist balled. The soldiers repeated the motion and dispersed.

The nervous soldier pawed his way through the grass, boots sucking up a puddle of mud, then letting it settle. The day was cold, a harsh wind trying to claw its way into the forest, the sun beating it down as hard as it could. It smelt of wheat and dust, with the underlying of yesterday's rain. The smell grew fatter as he neared the pines. He stopped just outside, and thought of what Lieutenant Strauss had said during training.

They feed for pleasure, not for nature.

"There's nothing pleasurable about them," he whispered.

"You can try and ask the trees for whatever we're trying to find, but I don't think they'll answer." Sascha put a hand on his shoulder. "Jacob, who were you talking to?"

"Don't mind me, I'm just going crazy." Jacob walked into the trees, and Sascha followed.

"When do you think we're going back?" Sascha asked, in a way that expected no true answer. "We've been out here for three months, you'd think something would actually be going on."

Jacob looked into the treeline, and for a moment they all lined up, a solid wall of wood built up high, high high. He hopped onto a rotted log and searched around it, Sascha watching him. His eyes rose up Sascha's bulky frame, slim-razed brown hair perking up, long nose wrinkled and green eyes disgusted. "You smell that?" asked Jacob.

"Most definitely," Sascha licked his pink lips, and he kicked off a disfigured limb from the rotting tree. He picked it up, flipping it over to where the underside would have been when the sentinel was still standing. He ran his finger on it, and the tips of the gloves turned black. "Soot," he said. "This is recent. Something was burning here."

Jacob jumped down from the tree. "Then why's everything else here untouched?"

Sascha looked up to the hole the tree's absence had created. He walked by the tree until he came to its tip, concealed by ferns. He shifted them with his foot. The top of the tree had been charred off completely, a pile of ash. "The floor was not burning," Sascha turned on his pipes. "It came from above." He pressed the crank in his hand, and the steam lifted him up, shooting from his elbows, and once he reached the top he clicked a button at the thumb of the metal press, and the rope uncoiled sharply, spearing the trees with a small crack as the bark splintered. He pressed the crank again, and a burst of steam brought him to rest near the top of the trees. He hung down from the rope, feet planted on the tree. "Get up here." he ordered, and Jacob was quick to listen. He repeated the motion, albeit more clumsily.

Jacob lifted himself to a nearby tree, watching Sascha, waiting. "You need to conserve more steam," Sascha said. "In a combat situation…"

"Yes, in a combat situation which we're not nearly in, Sascha, and I doubt we'll ever be. Come on, now." Jacob pulled on the rope, and it went taut, pulling him higher. He clambered up to the top of the trees, and emerged above the sea of green. Snow-capped mountains glimmered in the distance, the watchful eye that was the sun half veiled in clouds. A swirl of smoke swithered sideways from their camp. The spires of rock westward stabbed into the blue, and they looked like giants from this view. Sascha climbed out of the green, legs hidden by the pine.

"We could end up in a dangerous place at any moment, Jacobi. You know that better than I do. Don't become stagnant like that."

"Look here." Jacob brushed his hands over a parch of pine. It was blackened, and some of it was crumbled. A path of it went towards the mountains, but it faded away and disappeared a few yards down. "It's like you do have some brain in there, Sascha."

Sascha picked out a whistle from his necklace, a long brown spruce, serpent carved into the side harshly. There were other whistles too, thick and thin, short or otherwise, birch or granite or woven. He blew in, and out came a bird call, a drawling owl's coo. A few moments later, the rest of Squad Nima appeared. Like a party of birds in the trees. Jacob near chuckled a smile spreading over his face. Captain Arlo looked at him, grey eyes cold and studying. His pale, thin fingers adjusted his blue ascot, and his black hair was parted directly in the middle, like tar over a cloud, lips colorless. He spoke as he always did - without care, bored. "Something funny, recruit?"

Jacob's smile dripped off his face, and he looked at the pistol in Arlo's holster, metal pump old but polished, the trigger beckoning, asking to be touched, fired. Those grey eyes would not flinch if they stared down the barrel at his face, Jacob knew. He nodded. "Nothing, captain."

"You say it is nothing, then you nod. You confuse me, Jacobi." Arlo looked at the burnt trees. "What is this?"

"That's what we were trying to figure, xiansheng," grunted Sascha.

Now Arlo nodded. "Soldaten," he said, nearly a whisper. "Spread out, find more of this flame. With haste. The iron serpent waits for none." He disappeared back under the trees.

Huoyan cracked his knuckles. "What's that guy got up his ass?"

"You're going to have something up yours if you don't get to it." Chui said. "You spend more time whining than you do getting anything done."

"And there you are, every time with me. Can you lay off for once? What the hell have I ever done to you?"

Chui's face went still, running his hands through his hair, a single thick lock hanging in front of his brown eyes. He had an alert mannerism, but exhausted, like a guardsman who knew nothing was going to happen on this particular night. A wrinkled mouth had smiled as many times as it had frowned. "You put us all in danger with your attitude, Huo. You'd do well to take a lesson or two from the captain."

"You'd both do well to shut up." Aristea said, yawning. "You're both so goddamn annoying."

"Let's get to it, then." Chui launched off, a trail of steam behind him. Huo went off in the other direction.

Aristea looked at the others. "Let's try and do this fast. Ignore those two assholes, my dudes."

"Chui gets pretty bossy sometimes, doesn't he?" Jacob said.

"He has good reason to. But yeah, sometimes it does get on your nerves a bit. That's big brother Chui for you all."

"What happened in here?"

Captain Arlo moved a toppled chair over with his leg as he walked in. The cabin was a mess. The table was flipped over, the sink head was broken off, drawers were open, and plates and utensils were scattered and spread across the ground. The carpet was mussed by the shoebox at the entrance, a torn coat on top of it, a piece still hanging on the rack. A picture frame was on the floor, face turned. Arlo picked it up, glass raining down, but when he flipped it over there was no photo. He smiled to himself.

Mordeci looked up from a fallen drawer she was shifting through. "Something funny, captain?"

Arlo's smile stayed the same, maintained, constant, but in the way you could see the sunset a thousand times from the same ridge over a beautiful landscape, it was different, somehow. Perhaps it was the knowing that the sunset would be there long after you were, and it would set long after you were gone, and one day somebody would come by and think the same, after many years.

"Nothing, Lieutenant Mordeci."

Mordeci reached out her hand. Arlo gave her the frame. She examined it, and pried the board off of the rim. Still nothing. She tossed it on the ground, Arlo following it till it piffed silent on the carpet. "The woman isn't here," said Mordeci. "And nothing of the rest of the family, either. They left in a strange manner. Look here. The bathroom."

They went the short distance to the bathroom, where Colonel Zelani was watching a soldier as he shifted through the medical box. The legs of the tub were bent in, the bowl resting on the ground. One of the blue tiles under a leg were displaced, yellow powder underneath. A single light bulb hang from overhead. "They left their clothes. They left their food." Mordeci said. "They did not fail to take their medicinals, however. We've turned over what was not already upturned, and found none of it."

"Father was a man of the practice, he wouldn't leave his things." said Arlo. "I'd say they left in a hurry."

"How's that? A person with all of those supplies… no hurry could account for all of those vials and caps."

Arlo shrugged. "Maybe he already had them packed away, expecting something."

"Would he not then have some of their other things packed as well?"

"It is purely speculation. Besides, I have something else to inform you of."

Mordeci nodded.

"Something happened in the trees. The roofs of the pines are a crisp. I overheard my soldaten speculating of something from the sky, but I think it more likely somebody hit the ground running."

Mordeci frowned, and she looked at the Colonel. He spun a curt nod at the soldier, who closed the medicine box tightly and left it on the cushioned toilet head, exiting the bathroom. The Colonel took off his cap and set it over the box, rubbing his bald head slowly, a single bead of sweat trickling down his face. "Describe these… burns."

"They were set on fire, for starters. The flames went out quick, very quick. There was a path in the markings headed towards the Commodores, but it doesn't go on long."

"And none of the area around was set aflame?"

"No. I speculate a high concentration of heat, a burst."

Mordeci picked up the medicine box. "Heat, medicine… it seems like something took place… maybe he didn't take the medicine with him, but used it? To treat a wound?"

The Colonel scratched his mustache, placing the cap back on his head with a tug. "If we can find anything nearby, bottles, juices, bandages… Mordeci, I'll need you focusing the search on the ground below the burnings."

Mordeci was about to say something, but was interrupted as Arlo spoke. "If I may, what was that gauntlet about? And this tub here - it's damaged."

"Everything in here has been touched, soldat. I would not think on it much."

"It takes more strength to shatter bath legs than to flip a table, I would think." The coldness of Arlo' voice did not reach Colonel Trelawney, or he refused to acknowledge it. The Colonel simply tugged open the blind and let the sun pour over the tile, light from the tile stabbing Arlo's eyes. He squinted, grimacing.

The Colonel stepped on the light, smothering it with his boot, and Arlo stared to meet him. They searched each others faces, looking for weakness. It can't be said whether one found any in the other, but the Colonel left the room, chuckling. Once he was gone, Mordeci tsked. "You should watch your manner around the Colonel, Arlo. Your bullshit won't get past him."

"I don't mean to take my bullshit past him, furen. I mean to hit him with it." Arlo followed out, leaving Mordeci with the medicine box. She looked it over for a few moments, the clasp gleaming in the light as she tilted it, flicking in and out of the hole, like a sickle, up, down, up, down, up…

The Colonel had forgotten his cap.