Pop's Cabin

It is also a foray for the Arrowsmith in battle.

Warrior people throughout the galaxy have a sense of art - though much moe contained than the Mayulu. To Race the Arrow is a metaphor created to train te mind to view combat as an event so spiritually inspired that to be a part of it is to be a part of a God's dream.

So a battle begins, not in response to the enemy, rather warfare commences within the camp of the Arrowsmiths - at their command. On that most famous morning of battle Thedous, his command of 5,000 all said these words. "Walk through the field and learn the meaning of life. Run through the enemy and learn the reason to live!" Then they passed an arrow between them. Whoever held it was allowed to speak freely and no one would interrupt.

Each had to tell his idea of how the battle should be won. Every idea was considered equally. It would be weighed and voted on at the conclusion of everyone's talk. Not all would participate but those who asked for the arrow were given. Any one of them could be a freely inspired individual or a political messenger. And you could be certain any above average plan would be considered.

Theodus' bunch considered over a hundred before the dawn. Ted's own idea of The Race slowly rose to the surface and was considered and reconsidered until it was accepted by all as nothing less than a divinely inspirational vision. "To Race the Arrow is to run through the enemy." Ted explained, as he went over the drill once then twice. 5,000 Arrowsmith warriors divided into two simple groups, those skilled in longbows, those skilled in crossbows.

Once the Mayulu stormed the field, the Arrowsmiths would begin their march. They formed a single line of 5,000. The crossbows would break loose running twenty-five paces while the Yomen longbow archers fired a volley over the heads of the crossbows. The instant the arrows struck the enemy, crossbows would stop and fire. While they bowed to crank and reload, the Yomen would shoot another fast round over the crossbow heads then run 25 paces forward, loading as they raced, firing when they stopped. The loaded crossbows would run at the heels of the longbow arrows. Twenty-five paces later the longbow's round would reach their target , almost immediately, over two-thousand crossbow darts would fire precisely aimed at the the enemy exposed by previous fire.

You could drive an army through the hole until the arrows ran out.

The entire event solely depended on fast, precise movement. If the enemy who vastly outnumber you react in time, they will fill the hole behind you.

Race with great speed and even this will not matter.

Outcomes always lay ahead, never behind.

Sis knows what she has to do next. Her complaint against the Hivers had been sent. Her words as powerful as they were carried greater impact with a voice from an inhabitant, an unexpected, intelligent being. Any resolution will take time. Sis knows this. She knows somehow the Hivers must be stopped, now, before costs associated with the construction of reduction mills will weigh more heavily against the words of her complaint.

Pop drives up in the boat. Before he ties off, Sis and Ted begin to detail how they will corner the old fighter. After all, they'll be saving his planet.

"You two don't even know how many of those creepin' assholes are here, do ya? Could be millions. Den what the hell you gonna do? Talk to 'em? Shoot at 'em?"

Everyone expects Pop to be pissed. So things don't really tense up, that is until Pop turns to Aldo and speaks. "And what about you? You gonna turn out puny over this. Hey you're going home in a few days. What's it to you?"

Ted speaks up for the first time since the trip began, tells his father to back off.

Sis says, "...wait. Maybe he has something to say..."

Aldo's world screeched to a dead stop sentences ago. In fact, the Fifthian's floating around in his timeless vacuum this very instant.

He snaps back into reality as his guts tense up like a tight fist.

"As much as you love to waste time arguing over this and that, you over look any possible solution. Look. Ted and I are System Controllers. That alone gives us total clearance to access, program and direct Fifthian Trisecular monitoring buoys like the hundred or so sent to our local system these last few days." Aldo waves his hand in front of Pop's face. "Just like this, I can locate any Hiver in these parts and if necessary," Aldo grins wide at Pop and forms his hand into the shape of a blaster, "I can send each of those assholes a little ray of starshine, like this."

As simple as that all their thoughts take on a different shade.

Ted is stronger for the way Aldo's strength reaches across generations and family.

Lee is brighter, after all Dad did say, "assholes."

Sis warms to a man who can respond to what she cares about.

A little suprised, Pop simply glows as the uni-malt reaches his stomach with the realization he just might be able to stay the rest of his days at his cabin on this most beautiful of beautiful worlds.

He passes his bottle to the Great Aldoni.

"How is it that strong people put all their faith into one idea or even one man?"

Theodus Redshaft quickly shrugged off his brief venture into self doubt. His lungs were filled with the rich air of dawn. His mind went fishing, literally recalling a fish he once hooked out of a mountain stream before sunrise. Theodus vowed he'd be fishing as quick as the fastest ship could put him there - after this day was over.

"If those blue pricks would just get to pipin' their bladderhorns," he and probably every other Arrowsmith thought.

Two lines, perfectly formed, crossbows in front longbows behind, every one of the 5,000 also thought silently realizing the success of their maneuver boiled down to how long they could stand there before the enemy came close enough to enable the Race to have its maximum effect.

"Pass it down," Theodus said. "Stand steady and enjoy the show."

The star slivered above the horizon. The deep pipe of unseen bladderhorns echoed against the Peace Temple.

Theodus made out an audience of sorts sitting in rows along the highest steps of the temple. Some were brightly dressed. Dead center on the highest row several were seated dressed in iridescent blue.

"Pass it down," Theodus once more said. "Dat blue is the eye we target."

Colorful commotion poured out the bottom doors of the temple. Some carried long spears. Most waved spiked war clubs. All ran and turned in meaningless directions. Feathers and banners flowed behind their movement like wings in flight. Thousands and thousands shouted three syllables creating a discordant but powerful rush of sound. Demons were at play.

Last to appear were the drummers whose sticks would pound the dreadful rhythm and could instantly switch out razor thin blades. Every one of them was by age no more than a boy trained from infancy in the art of Rhythm and Blood. The drummers were in the metaphors of the Mayulu Warring Epic the beating heart. No Mayulu Drummer had ever been slain in battle.

The great Mayulu playwright Shocko began as a drummer. So it was his extreme honor to beat the big drum ordering the final steps of the Call to Battle.

As expected, from the confusion emerged an organized mass of warrior/performers. Shock troopers formed the bulk of the design - a bird of prey - the Mayulu weather demon, Thunderbird. Allied soldiers were unable to fully appreciate Thunderbird's shape from their positions spread out over a slightly down-sloped plain. The performance's effect was available only, literally to the higher-ups who paid unimaginable ticket prices for seats near the top of the Peace Temple.

Shocko's vision of the grandest of battles was sensational. It incorporated power and motion and breathtaking cleverness in a unique method for dishing out death on a battlefield. Thunderbird's wings shouldered their mass in the form of storm clouds. Its neck, head and beak became that most dizzying phenomenon of weather, a cyclone. Once struck into a massive whirling the bird would slowly, randomly wind across the battlefield, shock trooper dervishes devouring everything in their path.

An eerie drone of bladderhorn pipes and human howls was followed by a loud repeating drum cadence. The greatest performance of Mayulu invention had begun.

The first pocket of allied troops was sucked up by the elegant twisting created by thousands of warrior/performers. Shock troopers ran a perfect unnerving twirl never missing a step grabbing, clubbing, shuffling body after body into the center of their storm just as one would imagine occurring within a cyclone. Pipes, howls, drumming billowed as a natural part of the storm which had already turned to meet its next set of victims.

Theodus estimated there were over twenty-five thousand Mayulu dancing to form the cyclone. He watched the movement with a steady eye. The cyclone was constantly fed by new troops moving in from the cloud-wings. They would run and twirl following a single line that traced in a circle to the forward-most point in the twister returning to the clouds where Theodus guessed the runners were replaced by fresh warriors. There were over a hundred of these lines twisting in unison layers to create the effect of the cyclone, thousands and thousands of Mayulu in locomotion.

He watched several gatherings of shock troopers inside the cloud-wings. In every group, dozens angled mirrors around a team who held up a large jeweled lens pointing it to the daylight star. A beam suddenly lased flashing like cloudspark far across the battlefield. Theodus watched the light hit a tall boulder. A smoky bang gave way to the appearance of several Mayulu that he recognized as Ad-Ministers from his study of previous performances. "Demons of Mercy," he uttered. They were there to offer a painless death to any who would ask for a solution to the approaching storm by passing out a small capsule and a blessing.

"Madness," was Theodus' judgment. "Why would these bozos go to so much trouble?" He knew the Ad-Ministers were placed in hidden tunnels throughout the field (but why the pretense of cloudspark?) The Arrowsmith mind had no room for theatrics in battle.

At this point Theodus calculated the point at which The Race would begin. The Mayulu storm had swerved far to the port side of the field. He spied closely at the movement and discovered the potential weakness lied at the place where the cloud-wings merged with the cyclone. Precise timing would give the Arrowsmiths brief advantage to pierce the jugular of the Thunderbird.

He quickly decided to narrow the Arrowsmith lines by angling back from the center point - "like the head of an arrow," he marveled.

The order was passed down.

"Spread fire over the closest arm of the one before you. Run forward and true."

The Mayulu twister turned starboard. It now moved deliberately towards the Arrowsmith lines.

The first wave of arrowfire was deadly. Hundreds fell.

Yet Mayulu skillfully swept up the bodies without skipping a beat. Against a lesser people, this would undo any steady resolve. They were too well trained and too many.

The Race began with the freeing of arrows . Blood had been drawn.

The Arrowsmith war cry trilled off split tongues like a wailing wind that rushed over the field to the top of the temple echoing down.

It was the Mayulu who blinked as the savage wave of crossbow darts struck.

The blue assholes had been seriously upstaged.

The Race rushed into the hole between the tired and the new Mayulu runners. The cyclone twisted to shut off the rear of the Arrowsmith advance. The cloud-wing had no place to go. The cyclone could do no more than struggle to keep its force in motion.

The Arrowsmiths did not look behind. They knew the Mayulu were supreme fighters. Their numbers and skill would permit no way back.

All that would be lay ahead, as long as the arrows held out.

The Arrowsmith phalanx majestically forced on wave after wave. From the top of the temple both armies must have seemed like masses of organic, fluid motion. The contrasts in their movements less opposed, rather testified to the excellent military styles developed over generations on two separate worlds. Mayulu warrior/performers were more idiosyncratic since they held no distinctive rank on the field. They were a mix of extreme individuality that created an odd devotion to team play. Free will had no better purpose than service to the whole. Arrowsmith bowmen possessed an equally unique sense of warriorship. They placed more value in weapon skill. They were devout masters dedicated to tactics and marksmanship. Every sense of their imagination grew from metaphysically challenging personal relationships with weapons. In combat, weapons were as much alive as any comrade who they would fight and die for.

As all contests of war, outcomes distilled the notion that one philosophy - by emerging in victory - was better than the other. Like in all battles thoughts like this were overshadowed by the reality at hand.

Arrowsmith losses increased in proportion to their proximity to the temple.

The Race was nearly over.

The Mayulu cyclone squeezed the gap shut. They no longer carried away the fallen.

The drumming had grown louder. Now nothing was left to contain the sound amplified by the temple wall.

Theodus realized the young drummers would become a line of defense. Suddenly he sensed opportunity as The Race shot down the last of the Mayulu warriors in front of them.

He remembered.

He yelled, "Hold your draw!"

The command raced down the Arrowsmith lines.

Theodus checked to see if the command would hold. Looking back since the first time since The Race began, he was astonished to see Allied troops storming the underbelly of the cyclone.

Sticks to blades, the drumming stopped.

Boys, a thousand of them all at once feigned their switchblades at the Arrowsmiths who literally held at least four shots at each of their heads.

Tens of thousands Mayulu warriors instantly responded to the threat by shutting down.

Years ago Theodus Redshaft failed one of many test in Mayulu production. The only question he'd answered right was true or false: "Mayulu drummer boys are highly trained in close-in knifing. Those who have died fighting are regarded as Mayulu heroes..." The answer was false.

"Babied little chicken shits." Theodus remembered as he rushed forward to grab the boy closest to him. The kid dropped both blades as his eyes crossed to focus on the crossbow dart gleaning between them.

"Dis way." Theodus motioned to the steps of the peace temple. Halfway up, Theodus stopped to look over the field where everyone stood still, perhaps confused. The fighting, the drumming, the yelling, the twister had stopped. He looked at the Allied troops, almost all were Fifthians.

Close to the top, Theodus recognized his college headache, Shocko.

"Everybody goes home, nobody dies." He yelled, motioning that his crossbow was cocked and ready. "Hey Shockmon, I hate your drumming much to see it dead, understand?"

Shocko bowed to the Arrowsmith, arose and said, "You know my word is everything down there. So it is over."

Without a thought, Theodus released the boy and headed back down the steps to his fighters.

Shocko ran down to the drummer and embraced his son.

In defeat, the Mayulu discovered an unexpected metaphor. "A greater enemy is a blessing upon a lesser people." Perhaps they were tired of their techno supremacy. After all these massive staged fights proved nothing in the end. The decks had been stacked too high.

This notion came hardest to the father named Shocko.

Before he left, Theodus was given the name "Ted the Red," not by his troops or the other surviving Universal allies. The Mayulu named him in honor. None realized Ted never had time to fire a shot during the battle. He had slain no one.

With this name, Shocko offered Ted anything he desired.

With a playful glint, Theodus told his college headache all he wanted was a simple structure build for him out of wood describing all the details his mind had drafted since he had been kidnapped by the Mayulu.

A year later, Theodus received a message. A Mayulu containment globe had entered Arrowsmith orbit. It was a personal gift from Shocko.

Aldo's war against the Hivers begins. He convinces Pop and Ted to relocate the two Starbirds to a hidden rock shelf on an island near the cabin where the inboard systems could link and transmit more freely to the Trisecular buoys.

His second act of war consists of a request to TGMS for extened leave for Ted and Aldo. The pair has no clue that they will never return to the station alongside the Rolling Stones.

To Be Continued....