Last Merge (Wine of the Gods Book 34) Read online

  Last Merge

  Pam Uphoff

  Copyright © 2018 Pamela Uphoff

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN

  978-1-939746-35-1

  Cover Art by Geralt

  This is a work of fiction.

  All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional.

  Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  The God of Spies takes a look

  Chapter One

  The Bad Guys

  Chapter Two

  Hail, hail, the gang’s all home!

  Chapter Three

  Q explains the problem

  Chapter Four

  Rael gets roped in

  Chapter Five

  Working together

  Chapter Six

  Rael and the Witches

  Chapter Seven

  Eldon the Honest Gold Miner—for as long as he can stand it

  Chapter Eight

  There’s always something more

  Chapter Nine

  More gates

  Chapter Ten

  Business opportunities for Eldon

  Chapter Eleven

  The Helios think they’ll miss . . .

  Chapter Twelve

  How to throw a party

  Chapter Thirteen

  The worst has been averted

  Chapter Fourteen

  Oops!

  Chapter Fifteen

  Eldon meets the Cops

  Chapter Sixteen

  Technically speaking, a cross dimensional no-no

  Chapter Seventeen

  Gates on a Dinosaur World

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mass Kidnapping

  Chapter Nineteen

  Another raid

  Chapter Twenty

  If you can’t grab those kids, try these . . .

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Xen’s mission

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Fly free little birdies!

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Run for it!

  Twenty-four

  Clean up

  Epilogue

  Bonus Scene

  An Excerpt From Black Point Clan

  About the Author

  Other Titles by Pam Uphoff

  Prologue

  The God of Spies takes a look

  Xen Wolfson cursed his invisibility as he leaped out of the way of a truck pulling into the main road.

  For some values of "road." Bulldozed and packed rubble of a civilization furiously rebuilding after the disaster they'd deliberately engineered was a better description.

  Why the rush? What little we know about the Helios world, or miniature universe . . . we don't even know for sure whether "Helios" refers to either or both. And then the people refer to themselves—we think—as Helaos. But the histories we found and translated have them merging every twenty to thirty years. So why the rush, just a year after they killed billions in their careening course across dimensions?

  Xen turned away from the road and climbed again. From above he could see two of the squat black cubes of their magnetics centers.

  Sealed and guarded, and, most likely the single structures they most carefully merged, when their world cannibalized another.

  Worlds, the worlds we perceive everyday, are supposed to be amalgams of hundreds of possibilities. Every decision everyone makes causing a tiny local split, a blister, that heals as soon as it no longer matters. We swim unknowingly through them, seeing only what we believe is reality.

  It takes a huge calamity to split off an entire separate universe.

  Or, in the case of Helios, to rip a twelve lightyear diameter chunk out of one universe and send it hurtling across the multiverse.

  "And those magnetics centers somehow force merges not the whole miniverse, but just the Helios World, with the Earth of the universe it's passing through. And Helios rips the other Earth right out of its universe and carries it along. It merges, not like a blister healing; it brutally merges everything. Planet, plants animals and people. They all merge with something. And if it's not pretty damn close to the same sort of plant, animal, or person . . . they die."

  He pulled out graph paper and started sketching out a map.

  I may be dedicated to stopping cross dimensional raids—but in this case, sabotaging the magnetics centers is going to be really tempting.

  We will prevent another merge with a populated planet.

  Chapter One

  The Bad Guys

  Helios, Office of the ArcHelaos

  "We've located five possible Worlds to raid, and two Wilderness Worlds to settle. The scouts are comparing the Wildernesses. We may, in the long run, keep both, but we'll start with one, to minimize the Gate switches. Now that we've eliminated the Blasted World as our next merge, we have more time to perfect our plans." The Techno gave him a nervous glance, then continued at his nod. "The Beast World would certainly be interesting—the merge will kill all those hideous creatures, but the air is thick and humid. I hope we pass it by. The Savage World has a much nicer climate, and humans to merge with. But I prefer a more civilized and technically educated Damos for merges. The High Tech World would be best. Even if we don't merge with them, that technological world will be quite easy to raid for mergees."

  ArcHelaos Nikostratos nodded to the Techno and turned to the third man present. "ArcAlexos?"

  The Commander of the Armies nodded. "My teams are ready. As soon as we've pinpointed the world we will merge with, we will, if needed, start harvesting the targets we've picked out. On the advice of the technos, we will include mergees from several Worlds, for genetic variety, but we think the more technically advanced Worlds will yield more evolved intelligence types. We will therefore seek out akademies of higher learning on two or three Worlds, and make our plans to pluck the healthiest looking students. We will begin, on your authorization, the process of picking which two of five possible Worlds we'll raid first."

  "You have it. This is the time to start picking specific targets for raids."

  Chapter Two

  Hail, hail, the gang’s all home!

  Grantown, Comet Fall

  Fall 1401

  Eldon eyed the rest of the gang. "If we're going to pretend to be honest miners, doing some actual, honest, mining would be useful. There's a bunch of stuff we need to do, or buy, starting with a team of horses and a wagon. For carting gold, four horses and a heavy wagon would be best."

  Heso rolled his eyes. "I'd rather get back to cars, myself. I'd forgotten what a pain in the ass animals are."

  "Yeah, well, I kinda missed 'em. And I'll take care of that, while Rior and Falchion stake a mining claim." So we can get further away from civilization and stop hiding in the brush hoping no one sees us.

  Rior nodded. "Good idea. Not that we're going to choose a location for it's mining prospects. We want remote, hard to get to and then we'll hide everything we build."

  Epee sniffed. "I'm going to head for Karista and pick up news."

  "I'll see what the local farmers know." Heso shrugged. "They're too shady to turn us in."

  They all sort of shrugged and nodded, and went their own ways.

  Rior's the closest we have to a leader. And I don't know whether we're lucky he doesn't dump us . . . or unlucky. Damned Oner.

  Eldon walked the two miles into town. The livestock auction was empty, so he hopped through the corridor to Karista and asked around. Damn few horses for sale. Quite a few wagons, though. He took the short corridors that just went town to town until he found a little place holding a horse auction that night. The horses rang
ed from old to young, thin to draft. Eldon aimed at the middle range, and had to pay a hefty sum for two three-year olds and two two-year olds, all mares. Younger than he wanted, with pinto spots that were going to get him spat on, but the older horses were just too expensive, and most people preferred geldings for work. He chatted around and sacked out in the woods with his new acquisitions, then followed directions to a leather worker, who charged him a premium for four harnesses.

  Good thing the witches had plenty of local money stashed.

  "Ah, bought some of those hauler's horses? Don't mind the spots, they're all good horses, well handled and trained. Nice folk, for city."

  Eldon paid him, and led the horses to Karista where he picked up one heavy wagon for most of the cash he had left. He hitched up his new foursome and took them for a test drive through several corridors and back to Grantown.

  He parked the wagon near the SUVs and staked the horses out to graze.

  "Whoever trained you four did a damned good job."

  He chewed a thoughtful fingernail, and looked at the mares' good conformation. Heso came whistling back from the direction of the farms, looking smug. "Hey, you know what? Those old gals all look young, plus the second generation has grown up. Good hunting, down there." He circled the horses and nodded approvingly. "Nice, apart from the spots."

  "Hey, I wonder if a hair color potion would change that? I should have thought . . . "

  Heso laughed. "I don't think so, I think you'd just change the solid colored part."

  "Oh. Well, never mind. I'm going to breed them before we leave though. We'll be rolling in horses next year."

  "You're assuming we want to have more, and the mares will need time off and the foals won't be doing any work for years."

  Eldon nodded reluctantly. "I suppose." Did I just slip and start thinking long term? Stupid. We'll be lucky to last a year in one place. But wherever we go, horses might come in handy. "So, you pick up any news?"

  Heso hunched his shoulders. "Yeah, and it's mostly bad. Tyrone knew all about the raid. Zap and Ronnie are in prison, Xen took their magic. Umm, Mag, Ateb, and Hat too. And Smokey, Wenda, and Arrow. Bender, Kessi and Flori are dead. And, umm, Gauntlet."

  "Gauntlet! Old Gods . . . Epee and Falchion are going to be upset. Hell, I'm upset."

  "Yeah."

  "Well, we're criminals, so it's not like it's a big surprise, is it?" Eldon started down at the ground. I knew it would happen . . . but somehow I never expected it to be one of the girls.

  "Well, yeah, but . . . " Heso frowned.

  "Just because we usually hit people that aren't magic and can't hardly hurt us doesn't mean that we're indestructible. You know that, or you ought to. And if we're going to keep on being bad guys, well, we're going to keep on getting killed sometimes."

  "What do you mean, if? You quitting?" Heso frowned at him.

  "Thinking about it. I'll see what gold mining is like, and maybe I'll just keep on doing that."

  Heso stalked away, offended.

  Eldon shrugged. Do I want to quit? I can't go home. Not to Gemstone anyway. The wind whipped up, with a chilly edge to it. They needed to get settled, or at least move south before the first storms of winter found them camping in the woods.

  And if I breed the mares now, they'll foal next fall, and be ready to go back to work in the spring. And they're good looking horses, despite the spots. I'll find solid colored stallions and hope for the best.

  Star, obviously named for the big star on her forehead, was quite striking, with her dark, almost black coloring, and the white splashes across her neck and hips. Blazer, the other three year old, was bay and white. The two year olds were Banana and Muffin. A pale golden chestnut with lots of white, and a speckledy brown roan with splashy white spots underneath, pretty much the color of the oatmeal muffins they had for breakfast.

  He just needed to find four different stallions, then if he wound up on some odd world with them, he wouldn't have to worry about inbreeding.

  Finding a good stallion to breed Star to was easy in Crossroads.

  The hard part was evading the notice of Harry . . . and the over-eager troops who seemed to be practicing attacking through gates.

  They even had a tank to climb around on.

  From the gestures . . . Old Gods! The Auld Wulf! Eldon slunk low in the tall grasses. Peeked. From the Old God's gestures, he appeared to be instructing them on the weak points of tanks and how to attack them magically. From the way the horses were nodding and watching, they were probably magic themselves.

  Eldon closed his eyes. Yep. Horses and riders. Maybe not terribly strong, but if the horse can hold a shield and the rider slice—or the other way around—they probably could take out a tank.

  So . . . where's the war? Who is attacking us? Earth or the One?

  He retreated a dozen miles and circled wide to find the local herd. He looked them over, then removed the hormonal restriction on a three year old colt so black he was almost purple.

  Well after midnight, he rode the mare back down to the Tavern and through the corridor to Karista. Then over to the public corridor to Grantown.

  Wars have nothing to do with me. I'm going to mine for gold.

  ***

  "This will be a good spot for our mansion. Absolutely nothing there to recommend it to anyone." Rior tapped the papers. "Then we can corridor to wherever we're going to mine. Or pretend to mine, or whatever."

  Falchion nodded. "It's about two hundred miles from this 'Two Trees' place which looks to be the nearest corridor. If we go on foot, we should be able to climb down the wall of the Rip, cross the river and hot springs zone and climb back up. From the descriptions we own a mile long stretch of the eastern wall, with about quarter of a mile strip of land down in the canyon and three quarters of a mile up on the lava plains."

  Rior nodded, and led the way toward the local corridor concentration.

  They didn't have to walk the whole two hundred miles. Falchion could throw a corridor a good two or three miles, and she anchored another one in Two Trees, so returning there would be simple. Her other corridor was stretched from their camping spot, so they could easily retrieve the SUVs. They camped out four nights, then spotted the Survey Post Marking the boundary between Gold Rush Province and Desolation Territory.

  So their property was directly across the Rip.

  Falchion tossed a corridor down to the bottom of the cliff and they stepped through into the steamy sulfur smelling bottom of the canyon. Rior kept his eyes open for the notorious 'water lizards' as they called them locally. Apparently they were the only species of crocodilian to survive the cosmic bombardment that gave Comet Fall its name. Damned dangerous too.

  Another corridor got them across the river, where they sliced up a trio of hungry reptiles and kept walking. The far cliffs were jagged, picturesque, and tall.

  Rior gazed upward. "Perfect. Absolutely perfect."

  Falchion nodded, and paced, looking them over. She stopped at an angular outjut. "Right about here is the center of our mile, don't you think?"

  "Yes. Stairway first?" Rior stepped back to watch her work, to try and see how she molded the rock like putty. It simply wasn't something he had the talent for, even with his acquired witch genes. He could mold small things, and create microscopic details.

  A five kilogram rock was impervious to all his attempts.

  The wall of the canyon bulged out a couple of feet and Falchion walked up the spiral tunnel as she created it. She stopped every twenty feet up to push the rock out into the side canyon to form a small room, before continuing upward. At the top they looked around and chose a site well back from the rim to dump the filling of the rooms they made next. That became Rior's job, floating stone slabs up the stairs as she cut out the rooms they'd need. They worked steadily for a week, finally producing a series of windows hidden amongst the rough walls of the canyon, with spacious and well ventilated common rooms, a kitchen, bare now but ready for their imported appliances, and a wide sca
ttering of bedrooms. Rior had his suite with a library. Heso and Eldon had big rooms separated by the TV room. The four witches had privacy and distance, with the children's rooms located centrally.

  And they all had piped in hot spring water from below, and cold water from above. Or they would when they filled the cistern up there, probably over the winter.

  "If Eldon's gotten horses, as he was threatening, I'll build stables . . . down there I suppose, where they'll be on the warm rocks." Falchion nodded her satisfaction. "There's a lot of finish work to be done, but this will do very well for now." She pinned the end of the corridor to the living room wall, and stepped into it.

  Rior followed, and found himself back in the bare forest, beside the SUVs. A brown horse with little white spots pricked her ears at them. A couple more were tied up further back in the brushy forest.

  "Of course, no one's in camp, One forbid Eldon and Heso not take advantage of the local women."

  Falchion looked over a wagon, and nodded satisfaction. "It looks like Eldon's been busy. Four horses, apparently. And here's Heso, sound asleep."

  He grunted as Falchion kicked him. "Where's everyone else?"

  "Oww! Eldon's taking his mares around to a bunch of different stallions. Well, four different ones. You'd think he was going into business or something. Jade and Betelgeuse are sneaking around Ash, hoping to contact Ultra. Epee is in Karista collecting information." He hesitated, then shut his mouth.

  Rior eyed him thoughtfully, then looked around as Eldon rode back into camp. "Heso, why don't the two of us move the SUVs. The horses will have to wait until we've moved the corridor end." They drove the first two right into the living room, and turned them off. It made for easy unloading. "So, Heso, what didn't you want to say in front of Falchion?"

  "We heard Gauntlet's dead."

  "Oh. Falchion's not going to take that well. How about Epee?"

  "Haven't seen her since we learned. We figured we might need safety in numbers before we told her. I mean, those three were practically triplets."