Editing Story:ROAD TRIP! (Warhammer High)/Part Five (section)

===A Wise Father===


Several hundred meters below, and nearly five klicks south, Jake brushed his hands as he rose.  “Moment of truth,” he muttered, sliding the power switch on his old computer on.

It started up with the quiet hum of electronics turning over, and a muted buzz of fans.

“Superb,” he chuckled proudly.  His old computer now contained a new, massive hard drive, and his old drives were tucked away for transport to college.  “Now I can use this as a server when I’m home,” he said.

“Did you blow it up?” his father asked from the door.

“Not yet,” Jake replied idly, turning the computer back off.  “Hey, check this out,” he said.

George appeared at the door.  “What?”

Jake gestured to a custom case mod he had installed earlier that day.  A small metal switch, with a safety cover over it, now decorated the top of the black box.  “What is that?” George asked.

“Watch,” Jake said, flipping the cover off.  He flicked the metal switch, and an audible *clank* resulted.

George blinked.  “I think you just launched all the missiles.”

“No, it’s an emergency hard drive formatter,” Jake said.  “Hit it while the computer’s on and it blanks the drive, flushes the memory, and resets the BIOs to factory.”

“Uh.”  George looked at it askance.  “And…what happens when someone just flicks it idly?”

“Nothing, since the cover is biometrically linked to me,” Jake said slyly.  “Remilia gave me a lot.”

George raised an eyebrow.  “How much, exactly?”

“Enough that I could build two or three more computers’ worth of parts like the ones I brought home, switch included,” Jake said.

George shook his head.  “She’s a generous girl.”  He shut the door and sat on the tiny bed as Jake assembled his machine on the floor.  “You understand that they’re going to work your ass off at Kouthry, I’m sure,” he said.

Jake suppressed a sigh.  “Sure.  I can handle it.  I doubt Vulkan would have made it conditional if he thought I couldn’t.”

“Right.”  George hesitated for a moment before waving it away.  “Right, of course, sorry.”

Jake set his old computer on its table and booted it as soon as it was plugged in.  “You want my old power strip?  I bought a better one for myself.”

“Absolutely, we can always use more at the shop,” George said.  “You know, Jake, I gotta admit, you sure got used to having met Vulkan quick.”

“I lucked out,” Jake remarked, rooting around under his desk for the power strip.  “Vulkan’s probably the nicest one to mortals.  Can’t imagine dating Kelly or Morticia.  Nice girls, if distant…but man.  The Night Haunter and the Reaper.”

George flinched.  “Yeah.”  His son rose and started coiling the power cable around the strip, dusting it off with his hands.  “Well, I guess I still can’t quite get used to it,” he said.  “I mean, I grew up during the end of the Crusade.  Day in and day out, we would get word of how the Primarchs and their Legions were ‘over there,’ were cleaning house at the edge of the Compliance zones, all of it.”

He leaned back against the bare wall and remembered.  “You’d think you would get used to it, but the old-timers, my grandparents and co-workers, they were so excited over it.  Apparently the whole galaxy was getting tense and anticipatory, the Crusade was going to end within their lifetimes.”

“Yeah?”  Jake looked back at his father as he groped about in the pile of packing material for a twist-tie.  “What was it like?”

“Scary.  Nobody knew what would come next,” George said.  “We all wondered if the Legions were going to be forced into peacekeeping duty, you know.  That intimidated some people.”

“I can only imagine,” Jake said, tying up the cord.

“Don’t.  We didn’t like it.”  George shook his head.  “When the Primarchs came home…started families, like your mother and I were doing…we wondered what they would even be doing.”

“I bet the image of nineteen strategically adorable, squealing babies probably kicked off a baby boom like nothing the galaxy had seen,” Jake said drily.

“Oh my goodness, you have no idea,” George chuckled.  “Half of the Terran Praetors coming home at the same time didn’t help things.  Hell, we probably wouldn’t have rationing as harsh as we do if the planet’s population hadn’t gone up by a full third in the span of ten years.”

“That much?  Yikes,” Jake said.

“Yeah, it was quite a thing,” George said.  “Well.  You grasp the concept, I think.”

Jake shrugged.  “I think so.”  He dropped the power strip in his father’s lap and sat in his computer chair, swiveling it to face his dad from across the tiny room.  “So, what brought this on?” he asked.

“Well, it’s just that I don’t quite know how to react,” George admitted.  “The Primarchs were always, even during the Crusade, supposed to be the epitomes of humanity and accomplishment.”

“Dad, Vulkan can intimidate the hell out of me,” Jake said.  “Don’t think I don’t respect him or anything.  It’s just that he’s a deeply humanist guy, too, and he finds worship and fear distasteful.  Really.”

George nodded, accepting his son’s wisdom.  “Now…I suppose I have to give you the birds and bees talk,” he said heavily, hiding a smirk with serious effort.

Jake rolled his eyes.  “Let me save you the trouble.  Venus isn’t baseline.  I physically can’t get her pregnant.”

George stared.  “She isn’t.”

“Nope.  Which has its upsides, of course, but still,” Jake said.  “We’re good.”

His father turned that over in his mind for a moment.  “Well.  That’s a shame, really.”

“Yeah, but she says there’s ‘options.’  She also gave that to me in confidence, so lips sealed, m’kay?” Jake said pointedly.

“Sure,” George said.  He rose to his feet and opened the door.  “All right, I’ll let you pack.”



The day before the final pair of travelers departed, Jake flew up to Venus’ house for a final exchange of things to be packed, and to pick up his new slate legs.  Breezing past the single, token Treasury guard, Jake walked into the house, glancing about for anyone.

“Oh, hello,” Misja said from the far side of the huge sitting room.  She rose from her seat and walked over as Jake closed the door.  “Venus is in her room, packing up stuff.”

“Great, thanks,” Jake said, making for the stairs.

As he poked his head into her room, he spotted her lying on the bed, staring at the holo over her head.  “Hey, baby,” Jake said.

The door lit as she looked over.  “Hey, Jake, come on in,” she said.

Jake shut the door and walked over to the bed, kicking off his shoes and flopping down next to her.  “How are you?” he asked her.

By way of response, she held out one arm, and he rested his head on her shoulder, joining her in watching the holo overhead.

“Where are the Cities?” Jake asked.

Venus’ arm rose from the far side of her head and pointed at a nearly invisible silver dot on the black ash wastes.  “There’s Heliosa.  There’s Clymene…and in the ocean there is Aethonion.”

Jake gripped her other hand and clasped it to his side.  “Hard to believe we were actually there.”

“It is,” Venus chuckled.  “I’ve been staring at it for so long, then I was there.”

“We’re lucky the deserts were so dark from all the ash and obsidian dust, or I could have burned my eyes out on the glare,” Jake said ruefully.

Venus narrowed her own eyes to slits and smiled, letting her hand fall onto her bare stomach.  Her halter top was decorated with a new necklace, Jake noted.

“Like it?” she asked, spotting his gaze.  She lifted the little pendant to reveal the tiny silver bauble she had created a few days before.  “I’ve been spending six or seven hours at the forge every day since I got back.”

Jake leaned closer and looked at the tiny spiral pattern in the middle, as if it had been made by filling a seashell with silver.  “Cool.”  He sniffed the air from an inch above her.  She smelled like flowers, at that moment.  “You don’t smell like you’ve been at the forge,” he observed.

She rolled her brilliant eyes and let the pendant fall back to her breast.  “What am soap?” she drawled.

Jake leaned back, smirking.  “Is that new too?” he asked, pointing at the tiara on the nightstand.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, flopping over and crawling to the stand to grab up the circlet.  “Check this,” she said, setting it on her head.  The single tiny diamond she had set in the middle was from the small supply her father maintained for just that purpose.

Jake rose to his knees and looked at her.  She settled against the headboard and drew her knees up to her chest, gazing over her legs.  “Do you like it?”

He felt a slow smile spread across his face.  The shimmering light from her eyes brightened as he leaned forward and lifted the gold circlet from her hair, setting it aside as he leaned in to kiss her.  “It’s beautiful,” he said quietly, running a hand across her cheek and leaning in for another, slower kiss.

When he finally pulled back, she was grinning a bit.  “You didn’t even look at the tiara, did you?” she asked.

Jake blinked.  “Tiara?”

Venus sighed and took the pendant off.  “Boys.”