Lodestone TLR-99

Prologue 2 - Deferred Responsibility

A pair of geodesic domes stood defiantly in the middle of the largest cluster of crags and canyons in the southern hemisphere of Planet 44. Wind, weather, temperature, did not matter to those inside of them. For those who designed and constructed them, these domes represented pain, sweat, and spite. Each was easily 20 miles across, separated by another 20-some miles of twisted, dusty, inhospitable desert canyon. Gods only knew how they fit them in there, but each was designed to identical specifications, each a mirror to the other, the very same arrangements of buildings and roads and zoning ordinances between them. To the Galactic Royal Family, they were members of a well-worn template, in use for a thousand years because it still worked. On Planet 44, the domes existed as a pair of middle fingers extended towards not just nature itself, but also to each other.

The domes had been given the rather hopeful names of Mimisbrunnr and Idunn City. The former had been the name of the river at the base of the World Tree Yggdrasil, in ancient times. The latter was the ancient Goddess who carried with her a basket of apples of immortality, distributed among the gods to keep them forever youthful. And while the low-born residents of the Twin Cities of the Sunnr Principality believed they lived well despite the climate, there was still the matter of the war going on. And on top of that, petty rivalry among the higher folk.

"Madame Mayor?" the timid attendant called out, the crack in his voice echoing over the cavernous chamber that should never have been called a mere office. "Madame Mayor, there's a call coming in from the Mayor of Idunn City."

"Thank you, I'll pick it up in here." Mayor Alma Rasmussen had barely spoken up, but her voice still carried the entire breadth of the chamber, though it extended several hundred feet in all directions. The door closed noiselessly as she flicked a desk switch, popping up a little video panel from behind her old-fashioned blotter. "Yes?"

"Alma! How are things over in beautiful Mimisbrunnr?" asked the man on the screen, the thick lenses of his glasses managing to conceal most of his expression.

"I know you don't make social calls, Landvik," she said. "You want something."

"Want? Oh ho ho, no, the time for wanting anything is long passed." Landvik's laugh was almost too joyous. "If anybody should be wanting something, it'd be you, and what you should be wanting is to start evacuating."

"Mimisbrunnr hasn't had an attack in decades. What do you know that I don't?"

"You know that information campaign you've been running since 203? 'Idunn City, Pride Before the Fall'?"

"It astounds me that your city is still standing, with the amount of infrastructure cuts you've been making to keep your great tower funded."

"Riddle me this, where do you think Idunn City is located?"

Alma said nothing. This was a trick question. She'd have to pull up a map, and make herself look weak in the process.

"Since you're not going to answer, let me explain something to you. Your city's education system teaches self-sufficiency. Nobody need ever leave. Am I right?"

Her mouth remained resolutely shut. The effort left a grumpy expression on her face.

"Meanwhile, nobody outside the cities knows which one is which."

"What did you do, Landvik?" She was already tired of him dancing around the subject, as if he were enjoying it somehow.

"A little bit of counter-information, Madame Mayor. You see, I've been keeping tabs on the advance of Kerlaugar forces for the last year, and I know it's only a matter of time before they reach our beloved Cities. They have among their ranks a certain talented pilot, and rumor is he plans to make an appearance very soon."

Pilot. The word echoed in her mind like the drop of a pin in her overly spacious office. She only remembered the name of one such pilot, and there was only one reason for her to know such a name. Her eyes remained shut, failing to block out the visions of the hellfire and damnation that had been brought to her home town so many years ago. Intelligence had code named him Red Baron.

Landvik continued, ignoring the discomfort on Alma's face. "And it just so happens that Idunn City has the most powerful news broadcasting system in the hemisphere, directly from the top of Tower Yggdrasil."

I knew we should have smashed that damn tower when we had the chance. "Landvik. What the hell did you do."

"Counter-information, dear Mayor Rasmussen," Landvik repeated. "Even my widest broadcasts cannot replace your damned slogan in the minds of the people. But what I can do is spread a little information of my own, in regards to which of our wonderful twin cities is which."

"What in the world would that accomplish?"

"I know the Red Baron is leading an attack on Idunn City with the aim of crippling our information network. I've responded by letting him know exactly where Idunn City is." The face of Mayor Landvik was suddenly replaced with a regional map of the Twin City area, with the names of the two cities positioned the wrong way around. "I spoke with him personally, you know. Told him to come and get us. Nyah-nyah-nyahhhh and all that."

He had to be bluffing, on top of that. Nobody knew who the Red Baron was, and if he was really a subject of the Viscountcy of Kerlaugar - or even a member of the family, as the title implied - he would never deign to speak to the common folk of the opposing side. "That is possibly the stupidest intelligence campaign I've ever heard of; you really expect that to work?"

"Who can say? You'd probably better get on the evacuating part though, just in case it does." Landvik vanished from the screen completely, as the speakers gave forth an audible pop.

All was silence for several seconds. Then came the rhythmic thud, thud, thud of an approaching instrument of death from just outside the walls of the Mayor's Office. From this deep inside her chamber, it was hard to tell if they were the iron footsteps of the Red Baron, or some other military weapon. But the time to wonder was over - the alert needed to sound. Alma opened a desk drawer labeled "Emergency Use Only," inside which was a large red button. She slammed a fist into it, hard enough to threaten to remove the drawer from the desk entirely. Raid sirens bellowed out, all across the city of Mimisbrunnr - nearly drowned out by the devastation in progress.