Stefani nodded, but she focused on Carlee, running through a quick set of medical checks to make sure she was fine. Jeff watched as Carlee followed fingers with her eyes and made various facial expressions. By the time she was answering Stefani’s questions about who they were, she was well enough to cut the exercise short.
“I’m fine!” Carlee sat up and looked at the massive floating vehicle she had just pressed into existence in her own time line and cursed. “I might have overdone it.”
“Might have? Look at that thing—it’s like we’re going to be riding on the back of an Apostle,” Stefani said.
“I wanted it to be a sign. Inspire confidence from other humans, make them trust us, even join us.”
“Well, you’re never going to do it again even if something takes that thing out. And they might! Something that big is going to have every leech within a hundred miles taking shots at us.”
“If I pressed it right, it should be fully stealth equipped from a more advanced time line. If not . . . oh well. We are going to be killing a lot of leeches anyway.”
“I knew we should have put you in charge years ago.” Stefani helped Carlee to her feet, and they started toward the new floating fortress.
“Press your supplies in the back; there is a cargo area for it,” Carlee said.
“There’s an area for everything,” Stefani cut in.
“Jeff, use your hood to send it the coordinates you want to go to first,” Carlee said. “Then work on our supplies. Be sure to get Stefani some artisan beer, the best another reality has to offer.”
He followed Stefani and Carlee up the steps to their home base. It was astoundingly intimidating, and Jeff felt chills run down his back just stepping aboard. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the start of something big.
“My hood doesn’t work,” Jeff said.
“I’m not going to have to press you in a new one, am I?” Carlee asked.
“No, ma’am.” After what he had seen Carlee do, he knew he could press things as trivial as a hood or beer.
He steadied himself against the outside wall of a room, which a laser cannon rested on top of, while he replaced the hood in this time line with the hood from a time line where he hadn’t damaged it. It wasn’t a difficult story for him to convince his mind was true, and after a few deep breaths, he had recovered enough to connect to the fortress’s mainframe. He sent it the location of Townend.
33 TOWNEND
“AND THERE’S THE SIRENS YOU promised us,” Carlee said. She stood at the front of their floating fortress as they inched closer to Townend.
“Every able-bodied man in the community is going to be rushing to the walls now,” Jeff said. “Almost all of them are going to be expecting to die for their families.”
“How many people?” Carlee asked.
“I’m not sure . . . I’ve only been there a few times.”
“Didn’t get out much, eh, Handsome?”
“I would guess they have a few hundred fighting men. It’s not as big as Fifth Springs, but they were pretty well armed if I remember correctly.”
The fortress crept forward, hovering over some of the crops that the people of Townend relied on. She was glad the fortress wouldn’t hurt their crops. They needed the food, and it wouldn’t make the best impression to ruin a community’s food supply. She wanted to start this new adventure off on the right foot even if she still had her reservations about the entire thing.
“Hopefully, they’ll recognize that we come in peace,” Carlee said. She glanced up to where their fortress had a white flag flying above them. She’d been shot at plenty of times under that sign, but she doubted these people would want to start a fight with their fortress—although, truthfully, they should be more afraid of Stefani than their floating base.
“They’ll recognize we don’t want to kill them when it becomes apparent that we could, but we haven’t. Eventually, at least,” Stefani said. “Maybe after they’ve emptied a clip or drained their energy cells.”
“Just make sure that you don’t accidently fire back,” Carlee said flatly.
“That was one time.” Stefani made no effort to sound innocent. She carried her signature sniper rifle, as always.
The towers and makeshift walls surrounding Townend were among the better preparations she’d seen in a while. Some of them were even made of cement that had been poured after the Ascension. She had a soft spot for people who tried to create rather than destroy. There were so many people willing to tear down and kill and not nearly enough people wanting to build. Hopefully, they could change that ratio.
The towers and wall filled with men, who opened fire on their floating fortress. Metal bullets smashed into the force field guarding the fortress and slid off the practically impenetrable defenses. Energy blasts sent translucent cracks spidering across its surface for the briefest of moments.
It might have been enough to slow a leech or send a warlord running, but their fortress was unabated. The panicked faces of the men guarding the wall came into view; they ranged from old, grizzly-faced men who had seen hundreds of battles in their depressing lifetimes to boys who looked equal parts enthralled and terrified.
“So much for the white flag,” Jeff mumbled.
“That’s close enough,” Carlee said.
The fortress pivoted to the side and stopped about twenty-five yards from the edge of Townend. She sent the command to lower a set of steps so they could meet with the leadership of Townend on their feet.
“We’ll approach them when they stop shooting,” Carlee said. She felt oddly nervous as she anticipated the interaction. She’d been driven out of countless communities over the years, but she she’d never approached them as a vagrant before. It was almost as if she had been hiding behind a mask all these years, and now she was worried what people might think of the real her. She paced to the back of the fortress and manually lowered the crates of supplies to the ground. Arming them didn’t feel natural, but Jeff had made a compelling case for allowing good people to defend themselves. She just hoped she never regretted this.
The attacks on the shields slowed to a stop as the men trying their hardest to defend their home with comparatively weak weapons gave up. Trying to break through the force field generated by the fortress with a twenty-year-old energy gun was like trying to chop through steel beams with an iron ax.
“Let’s do this,” Carlee shouted. She made it back to the stairs before Stefani and Jeff. The two of them had been talking quietly to each other, and they caught up with her slowly. Jeff looked to be fighting nerves with determination, and Stefani had an odd air about her. But she had been changing ever since Jeff had joined them.
Carlee led the way with her hood still up. She didn’t carry any weapons openly, but she kept her energy pistols concealed on her side. Jeff didn’t bring any guns with him, although he had successfully pressed in a fully automatic scattergun, a devastating weapon that sprayed energy in a wide net when fired at enemies. It had been Stefani’s suggestion, of course, but Carlee was pleased to see him pressing so successfully. He had picked it up faster than any of her former students, but she hadn’t told him that. He could be special if he could control himself.
“I’m bringing down the shields,” Carlee said.
“It’s pretty hard to shoot vagrants when they know it’s coming, and it’s still pretty hard when they don’t,” Stefani said, addressing Jeff’s unspoken concerns.
“I dodged your knife in the game, but I don’t know if I could dodge bullets,” Jeff said.
“You’ll get better,” Stefani said as the three of them approached the walls of Townend. Plenty of the men had abandoned their posts and gone running, but the ones who remained had not fired on them yet. Instead, they looked shocked that three people had emerged from the massive transport.