Free Mercury Begins (Mercury Trilogy) by Robert Kroese Page B

himself.
    “What kind of name is ‘Dave’?” asked the sentry.
    Mercury pulled the parchment out of his pocket and peered at the paper. “Dean, maybe?”
    “I don’t know any Dean either,” said the sentry. “Hey, Virgil,” he called over his shoulder, keeping an eye on Mercury, “You know anybody named Dean or Dave?” A higher ranking soldier, evidently named Virgil, glared down from a knoll a stone’s throw closer to the beach. He shook his head.
    “Who’s your commander?” demanded the sentry.
    But Mercury had become distracted by the sight of a man standing on a rocky outcropping a hundred yards or so in the opposite direction. The man had a long white beard and he was pacing back and forth and muttering, as if trying to psych himself up to jump into a cold lake. Except there was no lake, cold or otherwise. The man was going to jump forty feet down onto jagged rocks.
    “Um, what is that guy doing?” Mercury asked.
    The sentry glanced up at the man. “Old Daedalus?” he said. “Who knows? Probably testing out some crazy invention of his. I don’t know why they keep that lunatic around.”
    “Daedalus!” Mercury exclaimed, looking at the note. A smudge obscured the second half of the name. “That’s who I’m supposed to talk to!”
    The sentry laughed. “You’d better hurry, then.” As he said this, the old man made a running start and jumped off the cliff.
    “Son of a –” Mercury gasped, running toward the cliff. He held out his hand, trying to harness some of the mysterious interplanar energy that angels use to perform miracles. He had just enough time to counteract the pull of gravity in the old man’s immediate vicinity. In his haste, though, he overcompensated, and a moment after Daedalus disappeared amongst the rocks, he shot some twenty feet into the air .
    “Wahoo!” cried Daedalus. “They work!”
    Mercury, still running toward the old man, saw that he was wearing some very odd-looking shoes. They were silver in color, and each one had a pair of bird-like wings protruding from its sides.
    “No , they don’t, you idiot,” Mercury yelled, gently setting the man back on the ground. “What the hell are you trying to do, kill yourself?”
    Daedalus stood unsurely on a boulder, eyeing his silver shoes. The wings flapped lazily against his ankles.
    “What on Earth would make you think something like that would work? Have you never heard of physics? Or animal trials, for that matter? You need to try that shit on a baboon first . ”
    “But…” said Daedalus. “ I was flying .”
    “You were defying gravity,” said Mercury. “ Thanks to m e performing a minor miracle. If I hadn’t been here, you’d be dead.”
    Daedalus regarded his shoes sadly. “Another failure, then. Just like the horse.” He climbed down to the ground from the boulder.
    “I’ve never seen a horse fly either ,” said Mercury.
    “Really?” asked Daedalus. “ That’s odd. Have you seen a house fly?”
    “Don’t think so.”
    “ Huh . They’re all over the place in Greece. How about a dragonfly?”
    “No thanks,” said Mercury. “Not hungry. So where’s this flying horse of yours?”
    Daedalus shook his head. “The horse doesn’t fly.”
    “Well, you’re zero for two, then.”
    “No, no,” said Daedalus. “The horse isn’t supposed to fly. It’s a weapon. I’ll show you. ”
    Daedalus led Mercury over a ridge, where a massive structure sat covered by a canvas tarp. He pulled a rope and the tarp fell away, revealing a gigantic wooden horse. It had to be thirty feet from the ground to its ears. [2]
    Mercury whistled in awe. “Wow,” he said. “So what does it do exactly?”
    “Well,” replied Daedalus, “It’s supposed to shoot fire from its mouth here, see? But it doesn’t work. I’m a terrible inventor. The worst.”
    “Now, now,” said Mercury. “Don’t let one little setback get you down , Dave . So what’s the problem, exactly? Do you have ignition? Is the fuel to