(This is only the second draft of the book Worthless. Expect typos, plot holes, odd subplots and the occassionally wrongly named character, especially minor characters. It is made public only to give people a rough idea of how the final story will look)

Chapter 56

The ferry. It had been a long time since using such a simple convenience. A boat to one of the handful of Danish islands that were far enough away for it to be an actual journey. Ages ago, the bottom of the Baltic Sea had cracked, and at an intersection of such cracks, a small piece of rock, roughly in the shape of a square, had broken free of the Earth's crust. Pressures from deep inside the planet, pressures similar to those that cause volcanoes to erupt, had pushed against the piece and shot it upwards until it rose above the waves. Now, the result of these massive forces was known as Bornholm, famous for its round churches and smoked herrings. Less famous for being a prized military target in both the world wars and the Cold War, simply because of its strategic location at the mouth of the Baltic.
And mopeds. So many mopeds.
Against that backdrop, the bright blue car stood out like a signal flare. But as in Nakskov, barely anyone cared, and all it got was a casual glance and a smile from the occassional passerby. If anything, the man leaning against it, looking horribly bored but strangely content, got the most looks of any from the meager crowd of morning people near the ferry harbor.
"So," he said, taking off the sunglasses with the purple tint, the ones that were almost synonomous with him at this point, "this is a first." He smiled, but he not the actor he thought himself to be. The uncertainty and curiousity was practically bursting out of him.
"What? You picking me up?"
He nodded, rather slowly, as if he was actually unsure of that.
"More the fact that I managed to track you. I don't think I ever did that before."
Acting as if his casual mention of illegal tracking of civilians was nothing to make a big stir over, he got up from leaning against the car and, in an unexpected display of gentlemanship, walked the entire way around the vehicle to open the passenger door and get back on his driver's side of it.
"Yeah, the invisibility cloak is at the cleaner's. Hope you don't mind."
"Mind? I take pleasure in knowing a little about your journeys, for once."
He waited patiently, sitting down slowly into the rather soft driver's seat, from the looks of it. Leaning into the passenger's seat confirmed that the seats had been chosen for their plushy quality, at least among other things.
"Im just wondering w..."
"Medical issues."
The quick answer made him fall silent. Not because he felt uncomfortable, or at least, he showed no signs of that. Rather, it seemed to fascinate him, causing him to pause before putting the shades back on, making a head to toe visual check.
"You sick?"
"No."
"Injured?"
Not answering, of course, proved to be more than answer enough.
"What, you get here by cannon usually?"
"Yes, Jonathan, I get here by being fired out of a cannon. The Embassy provides free circus education. Go socialism."
It was meant to be a more cheerful comeback than it ended up sounding. Daniel's voice still seemed to hover above everything, protesting leaving the 2250 branch office. Bones had healed, skin had healed, organs had healed, but he clearly still felt that the riskoutweighed the benefits. In all honesty, he was right. But the bored impatience outweighed both.
"Well, no sling or cast, no bandages. Your head isn't in one of those plastic cones, either, so you weren't sterilized."
That one got a slight laugh. A slight one.
"I assume microfractures or internal injuries? You're sitting comfortably, so no lower abdomen. Broken heart, perhaps?"
"Stop flirting, you."
This time, he laughed. The road out of town had already come and passed, and now, the car was on the one between this town and the next. Only about 50,000 lived on the entire island, but it felt like being almost anywhere in Denmark, with the biggest cities as a logical exception.
"Anyway," he said after a bit, "it's good to see you again. But what brings you to the east coast, so to speak?"
Trees zipped by here and there, but most of the place was open land. It was a different feel, in spite of all the similarities. It had hills, lots of up and down terrain. Mainland Denmark did, too, but it was all about the ratio. Bornholm seemed sometimes to be made of them.
"Yeah..."
More landscape passed, Jonathan remaining silent for a few seconds.
"With all due respect, Marie, that's not really an answer," he chirped. His smile was feeling more and more fake, frustration bubbling inside. Or maybe that was just projecting things onto him.
"I know you deal with crap dropping from space."
His smile seemed to flicker a bit, like a candle caught in a draft wind. Then he simply let it fade, exchanging it for a small and cautious smirk.
"So, I'm not the only one with spies, am I?" he said, sounding a little defeated by the notion.
"Nope, I gots 'em."
The landscape kept passing by. The ride was only around ten to fifteen minutes, and even that was because Jonathan hated undue risks, including driving even remotely fast.
"You here to get pointers for Space Invaders?"
It took a second to make sense of his remark. He was in his fourties, he remembered an older generation of video games.
"Not really. But I am actually here for some historical stuff, so you're not entirely off the mark."
The jab was meant to get a bit of a smile back on his face. It didn't seem to work.
"I want to check your written archives. I need to know about the things you fight."
Now he seemed honestly confused, trying to refrain from frowning too much. It was an odd sight, the man being usually all about staying in control, in charge. The people serving him had long ago nicknamed him Conductor, and it seemed to be a sign of respect. He had been at the same station for over twenty years, according to files at The Embassy, and had more or less run the place for more than a decade. He wasn't the kind to get caught off guard, and even less the kind to let it show.
"You could have just called," he remarked calmly.
"You could have just lied."
Finally, he laughed again. Well, chuckled.
"Not the trusting kind, I can dig that."
"Dig?"
"So you want a look at the archives, and you think your, let's call it impressive physique will intimidate people into not holding out on you?"
"Not really. But it's harder to hide things from someone who is there and looking, than from someone on the other end of a phone."
The car slowed down quite suddenly, as if he had forgotten to keep an eye on how far it had gotten. Up ahead, an old compound, built from traditional red bricks, emerged from a line of trees. It had a low wall around it, enough to hide the immediate things going on, without seeming flat out creepy. A sign on the wall said "Closed for repairs". It had hung there for at least a few years, now.
Jonathan's own car seemed a bit our of place as it slid perfectly into the vacant gap between mostly military vehicles, emergency vehicles, and large vans. The brilliant blue seemed almost like a taunt of the mix of dull and practical colors that now surrounded it, like the one guy on a football team that just insisted on having a rainbow mohawk. As he got out, though, he walked away from the vehicle without even looking back, so one way or the other, it was just the usual to him.
"I'm gonna set you up with Mehmet, he's the head archivist at the moment," he said, again appearing as if it was all just business as usual.
"Just like that?"
"Just like that," he answered, sounding oddly pleased with himself.
"No strings attached?"
Jonathan cracked a smile, pushing the ridiculously small, purple shades back up the bridhe of his nose.
"Always strings attached, Marie, you know that. But there are enough strings between us, so a few more won't sour our business with The Embassy."
He never even turned around, just walking at a rigid stride towards what seemed like the biggest building not built to house an assortment of vehicles. Closer up, it had a small plaque that simply said "Administration", in a font that seemed scientifically designed to be as boring as possible.
The term did seem to fit, though. Upon entering the place, the first thing that stood out was rows of people behind desks, looking at screens and now and again typing for a brief burst. It had so much of an office feel that, like the sign outside, it seemed almost designed to come off as boring. Jonathan was no dummy, of course, so there was a good chance that much of it was some kind of charade, something to disguise the real purpose of the place. Although it was done very well, and seemed to be a big show for no one in particular.
"Mehmet," Jonathan called out, and a short guy with shallow, very hipster, mutton chops shot up from a table he had been leaning over, apparently talking to a man that looked disturbingly old, thin and serious. "Please escort this young lady to the archive. She has a one-time clearance level of Jinx Heracles."
"Jinx Hera..."
Before it was possible to ask the question, Jonathan had turned around and left. Mehmet wasted no time, either, walking with brisk pace towards a small hallway of densely packed doors.
"Hi, Mehmet."
He turned briefly, to give a polite smile and a nod. In a strange way, the excessive politeness was enough to make anyone feel very unwelcome!
"We use non-linear security codes to prevent people from figuring out how high up the ladder they have been placed," he said dryly, not turning around for eye contact while talking.
"So is Jinx Heracles high on that ladder?"
He briefly turned his head and smiled a very, very polite smile.
"Sure."
Without another word, he opened the second door on the left and flicked on a light. There was nothing but a downward stairway inside, and he didn't wait around before hurrying down it, enough that it felt unsafe to rush down the steep steps fast enough to keep up with him!
Although a bit long, the stairs finally ended in a small room with just one door, on the opposite side. Mehmet pulled out a key, and actual, physical key, one that looked old enough to have been used in a castle at some point. With a meaty clunk, the door unlocked, and he stepped in, stopping for long enough to hold the door open a bit.
"The archives," he said, in his apparently standard dry tone. "I'm staying here, both to keep an eye on you and to help retrieve files." He turned with a very serious look in his eyes. "Don't touch anything by yourself."

The archives turned out to be quite a bit larger than expected. Hundreds of different creatures that Jonathan's people, and those that came before them, had been dealing with. There were a fair handful of cases that matched Klaus' iron foxes, but they were far from the only ones. And with a few exceptions, they all had one thing in common. They all seemed to be related to something falling from the sky.
"How long have we been down here, Mehmet?"
The archives had no windows, likely being too far down to have any access to the sky. There were no clocks anywhere to be seen, either. It might have been just as easy to check the one on  the phone, but it seemed like the short, bearded man had been sitting quietly for over an hour. Perhaps it was as much to make sure he was still breathing.
"Five hours plus," he answered, voice still dry as salt.
"This is insane. Is there really no system to these things? No, I don't know, family tree, or some kind of solid timeline to them?"
"The first ones appeared in the late 1700s, that's about as much..."
Through the door leading to the stairs, a faint sound could suddenly be heard. Muffled by doors and stairway, and whatever might be blocking it beyond that, outside, it sounded like a strong wind howling, except for the rhythm it had.
"Is that... Is that an alarm, Mehmet?"
The guy looked nervously at the door, but said nothing. It did leave him inattentive, if just for a second. A second was more than enough.
"No, Marie, you can't..."
He was too late. Out the door, halfway up the stairs before he even got out of his seat to pursue, and out in the courtyard outside the administration building, the bright sunlight stung in the eyes after so long in the basement.
Everything was chaos, at least at first sight! At a second look, there seemed to be some order to it all, some system to the people running around. Vehicles were leaving their garages, and most parking spots were already empty. Not all, though. Jonathan's car was still there.
"You can't get in the..."
"Where is Jonathan, Mehmet? What is going on?"
He didn't need to answer. Looking over the rush of people and vehicles, Jonathan turned out to be fairly easy to spot, standing in the middle of it all, large trucks passing by him dangerously close, to say the least! Getting to him would be near suicide, which could have been Mehmet's point, had he been given time to finish a sentence.
"Mehmet, answer me, what the hell is this?!"
The man looked absolutely flustered, his facial expression jumping between panic and anger faster than a ticking metronome.
"What's going on?!"
"Something's coming," he let slip, in one of those moments of panic.
"Something? What something?"
His eyes briefly looked into the chaos, and it was easy to see that they were looking at Jonathan. Perhaps he wanted a sign, some idea what to say. Instead, he drew attention to the truck that Jonathan was now walking disturbingly calmly towards.
Mehmet yelled angrily, but his words disappeared in the noise. The worst of the chaos had already left, which was no doubt why Jonathan himself was now preparing to join in. The large truck, it's cargo trailer nothing but a white block with a red strip on it, had been one of many. Now it was soon to be the only one left at the entire compound.
"Hi, Johnny!"
His eyes lit up like a Roman candle, seeing the door to the truck's passenger seat open without warning.
"Marie, get out!" he snarled.
"No. I need to see this."
He looked like he could explode at any point in a fit of murderous rage, but he didn't. Whatever was going on, there was no time to argue, it seemed. Instead, he gritted his teeth, almost frothing at the mouth, as he slammed his palm on a plastic pad that somehow seemed to function as the ignition. The entire machine sprang to life in an instant, taking no time to build up the engine roar, and the acceleration of the huge vehicle felt like being launched by a rocket!
"Seat belt!" he yelled, his voice managing to drown out the sound of the engine. The sound itself seemed wrong, somehow. It seemed nothing like a vehicle that size should sound.
"Is this thing electric?"
"Seat belt!"
"Yes, sorry, okay!"
Even the seat belt snapped in in its own odd manner, some magnetic thing pulling it the last bit instead of requiring the usual fiddling.
"What the #*@! are you thinking, girl? I let you go into the archive, not run around as you..."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it! I'm an irresponsible pain in the ass. You're not the first to tell me that!"
His look was one of baffled frustration, as if not knowing whether he should keep his hands on the wheel or use them for a good, old-fashion strangling! He resorted to angry cursing, more or less under his breath, as he punched even harder down on the accelerator. The open road zoomed past, a single car parked at the side of it, a man in a blue windbreaker and oversized sunglasses looking at the convoy of vehicles blazing past with his mouth hanging a bit open.
"Your boy Mehmet let it kinda slip that we're being attacked. By what, exactly?"
Jonathan muttered a very long and complex, and very foul, remark about people who couldn't keep their mouths shut. It seemed to be about Mehmet, but he left it vague enough to worry.
"It's a bit hard to explain," he grumbled, easing the big, fast truck into a bend in the road. In front of the truck, looking dangerously close, others like it were speeding down the road just the same. It seemed that just about every vehicle in their fleet had been activated.
"Oh, try me, soldier man."
That remark distracted him more than any other had! In a brief lapse of concentration, he drifted off course, only to have a faint ding alert him to pay attention again.
"We've been monitoring the Baltic for as long as I've been with the unit. Every now and then, something drops from space into it, something small. Then, a few days later, something emerges from the sea. Something big."
Flashes of the iron foxes forced their way to the surface. Something from space. Something that put a whole base of unofficial military people go into high alert.
"How big?"
"Big."
"How big?!"
He sighed, growling something incomprehensible.
"Last one was the size of a medium apartment building," he said, teeth less gritted as the road straightened out. "This one is bigger."
Definitely not iron foxes!
As the road stayed fairly straight and onboard navigation took over, apparently advanced enough to handle the slightly uneven terrain at the high speed. Jonathan never took his hands entirely off the wheel, but a bit of calm did come over his face.
"They've been increasing in number and size over the last three years or so," he sighed, completely without being asked. A weird look in his eyes hinted at something he wanted off his chest. Maybe that was it.
"Why?"
"No idea," he answered, briefly looking at his hands as they rested casually on the steering wheel. "Back four or five years ago, we'd get maybe one or two per month, rarely bigger than a large house. But something pissed them off up there, whoever they are. Now we get two or three a week, and much bigger!"
"Up there? Who's up there?"
He laughed.
"Damned if I know, I'm just a ground grunt. Little green men with a grudge, I presume."
The same green men, or whatever they were, that dropped iron foxes. It seemed impossible that it was just a coincidence, it had to be related. Creatures dumped from the sky for centuries. And far more over the last few years. The years that The Embassy had been in operation. Again, not a coincidence, it couldn't be.
Before he could get another question, Jonathan's attention suddenly switched to a small GPS device, or something that at least looked like it.
"Hold on to the seat," he said calmly, pointing at some fairly easy to miss handles on either side of the seat cushion. "No matter what, don't let go."
"Okay... sounds a bit omin..."
Without listening, he slammed the GPS shut and pushed a button displayed on a touch screen on the dashboard. Then he, too, grabbed those handles, and grabbed them hard!
The soft but rather loud click sounded like just a minor adjustment inside the vehicle, but that quickly changed! With a hiss and a snap, a transparent sheet split the cabin in two, a split second before firing both halves ouward, one to either side! The truck kept going, not slowing down in the slightest, while the two cabin halves landed rather roughly on the ground. At first, the thought of escape capsules seemed most appropriate, but the capsule did not stop going! Instead, it tilted backwards during the rather rough ride, sprouting offroad wheels on either side. The handles also seemed to come loose, but turned out to simply have changed into joysticks.
"Use the sticks to pilot the buggy," said Jonathan's voice out of nowhere.
"Where the #*@! are you?! What the hell is..."
Somehow, controlling the tiny vehicle with the sticks felt like second nature. To the side to turn, front and back to control speed. But what really caught the eye was the truck, now a good deal ahead on the much more driveable road. From the grassy meadow that the buggy was rather rudely plowing through, the entire convoy was more or less in sight. That is, what used to be the convoy was. Up ahead, multiple vehicles had come apart and dug into the ground, forming a ramp, like half a bridge, reaching out over the water. The lack of an other side to th bridge didn't stop the remaining trucks, though, as they simply hurled themselves, at full speed, off the ramp! And like some exploding toy filmed in reverse, cables shot between them, locking them together and pulling them in to join completely! When they finally splashed into the water seconds later, they had formed one large machine, a four-legged walking cannon, the barrel being formed as it rose from the shallow waves and cables pulled Jonathan's final truck into place. The trailer split open and swiveled around, as the cabin cracked open and dug into the back of the lumbering giant like a key in a lock. Had the two buggies not been shot out like they were, being driver or passenger would have ended up a very messy death!
It was a bit of a struggle to get the buggy up onto the road, in part because of how strange it felt to handle it, and in part because of how the small, light vehicle bounced around on the uneven terrain. Jonathan, not surprisingly, got to the road first, looking like he was just another casual driver on the road, racing towards the half-bridge ramp. Catching up was impossible, but once at the ramp, he stopped, dismounting from his buggy.
"What the #*@! was that, Jonathan?!"
He was now standing by the ramp, which was slowly disassembling itself, carefully lifting its component parts back over itself, letting them drive down and onto the ground as they changed back into trucks and a few other assorted vehicles.
"I told you not to get on," he coldly remarked. "It's your own damned fault that you had to learn how to drive it on the fly."
He honestly seemed convinced that the topic of the question had been the buggy, never lowering the binoculars he was looking across the sea with.
"Not the #*@!ing buggy, I'm talking about... that!"
He finally looked away from the binoculars, giving the finger pointing at the lumbering monstrosity in the water a quick glance.
"Mobile cannon," he casually answered. "The marine cannons we have circling can take out small threats, but the big ones require heavy guns to take down."
As he spoke, he raised the binoculars again. The walking cannon was surprisingly far out at sea already, starting to look more like a lightbrown dot than four legs and an artillery platform.
"I don't see any threat. What are you..."
He handed over the binoculars without a word, helping to point them in the right direction. The impressive magnification made the cannon look like it could be hit by throwing a rock really hard, but what was more interesting was a darker brown dot that seemed to be waving arms around.
"Is that the threat?"
Jonathan nodded.
"The cannon should be in range soon. We can follow it better on screen," he said, putting down the binoculars and walking over to his buggy. He didn't flat out say so, but it seemed like a good idea to tag along, despite the allure of looking through the binoculars again.
At the buggy, he tapped the windshield twice, and a small interface projected on the glass. With swift fingers, he pulled up a set of eight camera angles, all clearly being mounted on the walking cannon.
"Is it just me, or does that thing look a bit like a dragon? Or one of those Godzilla things?"
Jonathan tilted his head a bit, as if he wanted to get another angle on the screen. His only real answer was to shrug.
"Maybe. I don't think the shape of the thing is that important."
Why would he? He wasn't the one who still remembered a dragon diving to sink its talons into him.
"And you have no idea who made these things? I mean, someone has t..."
There was a loud boom, like an entire thunderstorm had saved up all its power into one huge thunderclap! It took a few seconds, then a rush of wind came roaring from the water, spraying everything with a light shower of saltwater and nearly blowdrying it in the same move. Jonathan looked completely unaffected.
"That was..."
"Yeah, the cannon, I pretty much figured."
On the screens, the dragonish thing was writhing wildly, huge jaw open in a scream that no microphone was capturing, for better or worse. A large gash in its left side was dripping a very dark fluid, looking like blood and tar in some unholy mixture.
"Jesus... How are you gonna cover this up?!"
Turning with a perplexed look on his face, Jonathan said nothing.
"What? I mean, that has to be heard far and wide. Right?"
He smiled, like an adult smiling at the ramblings of a child.
"The only place nearby is Svaneke. We have a few people there keeping the aura of who cares going, but a loud noise from the sea? Come on, Marie. And even with those things, you can't see what's going on," he said, showing the binoculars. "As long as none of the fishermen get too obsessive, we're in the clear. Most of them don't mind staying quiet, with a bit of financial insentive."
"You bribe people to be quiet?!"
"Just the ones we need to," he said, shrugging with a smile. "We want to respect the locals as much as possible. Plus, you know, supporting local economy and all."
There really wasn't much to argue with, and other people were showing up, a few in their own buggies. All of them wore full or partial military outfits, marking them as part of Jonathan's unit, as he called it.
"Sir, the threat should be..."
Another boom sounded at sea, and everybody calmly waited for the blast of air and spray of seawater to pass.
"The threat should be neutralized within a few minutes. We've got air support on standby, but it seems like a closed file." His eyes then drifted a bit. "What about the civilian, sir?" he asked, followed by a quick lookover. "Drug and dump?"
"No, she's under my clearance, corporal," Jonathan quickly answered. As the soldier left, Jonathan had a sheepish, fairly awkward smile on his lips.
"Respecting the locals, huh?"
He just shrugged.