Iris had been alone in the dark since her interrogation ended, suffering the effects of withdrawal. The Docking Witch had kindly left her hands free and given her a big bucket of water, plus some bread, but no one had come to see her since then. She’d kept herself hydrated, though it was hard to keep even water down, after the way all those pleasure spells had screwed up the chemistry of her body.

  The dark made the pain worse, because it left her senses deprived and focused her mind on the strongest thing she felt. She wasn’t sure how long it had been, though she’d fallen unconscious a few times, despite how awful she felt.

  She tried to cast spells a few times along the way, but that had only led to a runic device set in the ceiling shooting her with a high-intensity stun spell, which seemed able to detect and respond to words in the witch’s tongue.

  She focused her mind for a time on how much she hated the Queen, and how enjoyable it would be to attack her once Amelia showed up, which only occupied her mind for about half an hour.

  Eventually, as she lay in the dark, wishing she could escape the nightmare her body had become, she tried applying her anti-interrogation training, because she had no better option.

  “Iris Blackwell, Specialist, L-F-7-5-9-0-2.” She spoke aloud, then repeated it, “Iris Blackwell, Specialist, L-F-7-5-9-0-2.” She kept repeating it for hours on end.

  It wasn’t much, but it helped with the pain, leaving her only the troubles of nausea, anxiety, insomnia, excessive sweating and a runny nose.

  As the mantra became automatic and filled her mind from corner to corner, leaving no room for pain, she gained a strange sense of lightness as all the other symptoms faded.

  After a moment, she realized she wasn’t the one speaking anymore, because she’d left her body again, which seemed to be running on automatic in her absence.

  Iris stepped out of her cell and into the hallway, using her strange gift to map the corridors of the place in her mind, because she had nothing better to do, at least until Amelia showed up.

  Days went by, until something akin to an explosion left the ship trembling for a time, followed by a brief wind, which could only have been caused by a hull breach.

  Iris invisibly smiled and concentrated to take herself to the bridge, hoping to discover Amelia was the cause. She wasn’t at all disappointed to see Starwitch parked there.

  Knowing it was time to act, Iris entered the main hall, in search of the Queen, because it was time for a little pay-back!

  Amelia checked the external pressure gauge and was quite pleased to see it in the normal range, indicating her atmosphere bubble spell was working properly. It was really strange, but she didn’t feel like she was the one holding that spell in place.

  Unbuckling herself, she got up and looked backwards, paying attention to her sense of magic. She wasn’t at all surprised to feel magic swirling around, outside her body. She followed the emanations, coming to the workshop, where The Book of Newts glowed with a white aura, as it processed the waste magic of the monolith, pouring it into the spell on the ship’s masts, something she hadn’t realized it could do.

  “Thank you.” She bowed her head to The Book, then stepped into the spell-core’s room, “Uh, rats, I’m leaving Starwitch in your care. I’m not sure if you can help or not, but I’m going to leave a little surprise for you, just outside the main hatch. If you can, use it to keep the zombies away.”

  With that, she headed back to the entry bay and struggled to open the main hatch a little, allowing the pressure to equalize. With that done, she rolled the door to one side, then removed her helmet, bothered by the rotting stench of the monolith’s crew.

  She removed her pressure suit, put it away and stepped into the workshop. She loaded six lead balls into her hand-gonne, cocked every barrel, put it into a set of loops on her hip and filled some of her pockets with more lead shot for it. Next, she retrieved a small steam engine from the workshop, which still had a little water in it, and headed back to the entry bay, where she hung the exit ladder out the door and left the ship.

  Moving cautiously, four diminutive figures came out of hiding in the entry bay.

  The first appeared around the edge of a small crate of emergency tools permanently mounted in one corner. He was the tallest, at three inches high. He wore a tiny, green shirt, with buttons carved from stones and a set of overalls in a mud-brown shade. He had little, black eyes that resembled those of a mouse and dark skin. Due to his size, his dark hair stood on end, though it was of medium length.

  The next was slightly shorter, by two-tenths of an inch. She resembled the first, though her dark hair was long enough that the ends dangled and bobbed around as she moved, though her bangs had been trimmed to prevent them from blocking her sight.

  The third climbed out of the gap between the ceiling and the hunk of quartz that Amelia had enchanted with runes to provide light, which was mounted to a short pipe, rather than a chain, so it wouldn’t float around in zero-G. The Brownie jumped down, totally unbothered by the fall, because with so little mass, terminal velocity was quite survivable.

  That one turned out to be a little male, about two inches tall, who was obviously a child, though his clothes resembled those of his parents. His hair was even longer than that of his mother, though the length was irregular and it somewhat blocked his eyes, forcing him to lean his head back, just to look in a straight line. His clothes were dirty, covered in clinging dust bunnies.

  Last of all, another female appeared from behind one of the tracks the door rolled on, where there was a thin gap along the wall. She leaped down to the floor, beside her younger brother. She might have been a teenager, reaching two and a half inches. Her hair was the longest of them all, as well as the most shiny and clean, also neatly trimmed around the face. She wore the same style of clothing.

  “What do you think, dear?” The mother asked her mate.

  The tall male shrugged, “We’re not supposed to do anything other than household chores and fixing things.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Uh, I’m…not-”

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  There was a distant, metallic shudder, which was surprising enough that he stopped talking.

  “I think we should help,” the teen girl suggested, “mostly because I don’t like the way this bigger place smells.” She sniffed, “It’s full of death.”

  “I like the cheese Amelia leaves out for us.” The boy grinned through his hair, “It’s the good stuff.” He licked his lips, “If we don’t help, are we gonna keep getting good cheese?”

  “Well, when you put it like-” The father frowned as he trailed off, because a distant steam engine had roared to life, once more startling him to silence.

  His mate prompted, “Yes?”

  “This is a good home.” The teen girl pointed out.

  The father again left his thoughts unfinished, probably because that was exactly the right word to describe them, “That’s true…”

  “It’s a weird home,” the boy supplied, “but I like it.”

  “It’s full of love.” His mother nodded, then looked at her mate again, “What do you think, dear?”

  The children also looked straight at him and he started to look very uncomfortable for a long, silent moment, before he reluctantly spoke, “I think…” he trailed off again, causing the intensity of his family’s stares to grow, before he finished the thought, “a good home is worth fighting for.”

  All four of them climbed the lip at the bottom of the door and looked outside, while Amelia walked away, having left a device with a long pipe on one end on the floor of the bigger ship, which was linked via a belt to the little steam engine she’d been carrying. At one end of the device was a canister with a cone-shaped bottom, which hung in the air to one side. The back of the device ended in a stock like that of a crossbow, complete with a trigger in a loop. There was a little, wire basket attached to that, which looked just the right size for a Brownie to use as a seat, giving them comfortable access to the trigger. The whole thing was mounted on a tripod with a platform, which included a little pair of handles that would have been annoyingly small for a human, but which were just small enough to be adjusted by a Brownie. Below the platform, the steam engine’s drive belt had been linked to the mechanisms of the device.

  “What is that?” The mother asked.

  Her son grinned extra wide and spoke with the enthusiasm of one who’d been eagerly observing Amelia work for month, “Wow! That’s a spring-gonne! I’ve read the plans! I know how it all works! She set it up for us to use! Wow! Can I pull the trigger? I want to try it out!”

  The boy’s father looked over at him with terror and muttered, “No, but you can tell the rest of us how to use it.”

  “Fine.”

  They cautiously climbed out of the ship and watched as Amelia drove away in her war wagon, entering a rather wide hallway, followed by an immediate turn.

  After the family of Brownies climbed down the ladder, the boy gave an explanation of the device Amelia had left for them.

  “You can turn the engine on and off.” The mother suggested to the son, since there was no way any of them were going to let him near the actual gonne, due to his enthusiasm.

  “Defending the family is a man’s job.” The father claimed as he climbed up to the trigger, while his mate smiled with amusement, because pulling the trigger was the easy part.

  The women of the family climbed up to the tripod’s platform, where each of them laid hold of the handles responsible for turning and elevation. After a few experimental turns, each of them had a good idea what they were doing. The mother was on rotation, while the teen took care of elevation.

  Within minutes, zombies began streaming into the room one and two at a time, while the family got to work, revealing how fast a Brownie could move when they needed to, the arms of the women blurring as they rotated their handles, shouting whenever they wanted the trigger pulled!

  The barrel of the gonne zipped back and forth, though they missed quite badly the first few times, before the mother seemed to figure out what she was doing, getting more accurate with each shot.

  She grumbled as she worked, “This is really hard!”

  “I’ll take your place!” Her son volunteered.

  “No!” The rest of the family shouted back, al at once!

  “Leave it to me!” The father called out, then spoke in the ancient language of magic, using words for ‘metal’, ‘seek’ and ‘skull’.

  “Thank you, dear!” The mother called back.

  From that point on, every lead ball went through the skull of an enemy soldier!

  The Queen was feeling particularly strange, because not only had the huge fluctuation in air pressure gotten to her, but Marta had somehow gotten the upper hand, making every bodily movement difficult. Worse, the Queen had lost her balance in the main hall, due to the rush of air.

  Bones whimpered at her with concern, likely because he didn’t understand how he could help.

  The Queen lay on the floor catching her breath and trying to get back on her feet as a loud roar echoed down the hall. She rose and looked toward the source, just as some great, metal-shod machine on wheels turned the corner at high speed and careened straight toward her!

  She didn’t even have time to dodge, at least not with the way she was fighting with her own muscles, barely managing to say, “Oh sh-”

  The war wagon knocked down a zombie and went over it, causing Amelia to ask, “Was that a zombie in a dress?”

  She shrugged and went on her way, chanting the words of a simple spell as she drew in a small portion of the monolith’s waste magic: ‘find’, ‘path’ and ‘sister’, followed by Marta’s name, spoken aloud. It was rarely done, but names could sometimes serve as words of a spell. In this case, Amelia was looking for Marta, who was in the most danger, based on how strong she was.

  Amelia hoped she wasn’t too late, but as the spell took hold, providing a glittering, illusory path for Amelia to follow, she relaxed a little, though she worried what state she would find her sister in.

  The Queen went under the machine, her body partially crushed by its tires, then just as fast as it had come, it was gone! Bones was lucky enough to have been out of the way, but having seen what the machine had done to his master, he charged after it!

  The Queen groaned and tried a little magic, using the words, ‘blood’ and ‘bone’ linked together, followed by ‘repair’ and ‘corpse’. It took all of her will to enact the spell in the face of Marta’s resistance, but her bones and flesh were soon knitting back to the state she’d been in before getting run over.

  “I hate that-” she growled a curse word for a female dog and rose to her feet.

  Iris grinned as Amelia drove right over the top of the Queen, with no understanding of what she’d done. The Queen’s dog chasing after the wagon was worrying, but on the other hand, he probably wasn’t fast enough. It was strange that the passenger side spring-gonne was missing, however, and Iris briefly wondered what had become of it, before turning her attention back to the Queen.

  Iris positioned herself behind the zombie witch as she healed herself and cursed at Amelia. Just as she was about to walk off, Iris jumped her!

  The Queen went down again, unsure what had happened as rather strong punches connected with her kidneys, leaving her screaming, just before her neck was hauled back, cutting her off! She looked down, but saw no arm holding her, despite the fact she felt someone’s arm against her throat! The lack of air hardly mattered, but as her attacker put a knee into her spine, it became obvious they weren’t actually trying to choke her! That combination was a really painful spine twister!

  The Queen tried to elbow her opponent, then awkwardly grabbed at them, behind her back, only to come up empty-handed, even in the vicinity of the knee in her back!

  That left two possibilities. The first was a ghost, which was terribly unlikely, due to the way she tended to consume them just like a living soul. The far more likely candidate was Iris Blackwell! The trouble with that one, however, was the fact she couldn’t possibly have cast a remote-viewing spell, because spells required words! On the other hand, the Queen remembered the day Bones died, in which she’d instinctively empowered the spirit of Bones to fight.

  That had to be it! Iris didn’t know how she used remote-touch, but she did it anyway! It was instinct to her, like protecting Bones was instinct to the Queen! It wasn’t much of a leap to imagine the little dog remote-viewing by instinct, based on the way people wanted out of their bodies during torture!

  Crap! I taught her how! The Queen complained inside her own head at the realization of the colossal mistake she’d made!

  My, aren’t we just underestimating people left and right? Marta laughed, Keep up the excellent work!

  Oh, shut up! The Queen mentally growled back!

  Marta chuckled, Make me!

  Iris adjusted her grip from a choke-hold and instead began twisting the Queen’s head in a particular direction, attempting to snap her neck!

  The Queen growled through the invisible fingers locked on her face, “No!”