In the end, he had won: without the efforts of the Circles, the warfleet could never have broken through the barrier at the Gap and gone on to take Galcen Prime. And on this ship, at least, a Mage-Circle functioned as Circles had done in the old days: guiding the attack, providing their fighters with support where support was needed, luck where luck was needed, comfort where comfort was needed.
Here among his own people sus-Airaalin felt the most at home, even during combat. The details of tactics he left to those who were trained in such things, the younger sons and daughters of families with a tradition of service.
It had taken a generation for the Resurgency to bring them together—all the ones who had been clever enough or lucky enough to escape the killing time. Finding teachers for them had taken almost as long. Of those who understood the military arts or possessed the skills of spaceflight, only a handful had survived the great purges at the end of the War. From Raamet to Eraasi, the family didn’t exist that hadn’t seen one or more of its members taken away by the Adept-worlders, never to return.
And what had happened to the Circles … it hurt sus-Airaalin yet to remember. He hoped that now, after his victory, he could persuade the Resurgency to have mercy.
Or else we are no better than our enemies
, he thought,
and I have worked all my life for nothing.
A hand grasped his shoulder, shaking him back to present awareness. He opened his eyes.
“Who dares—?” he began, but then he felt the messenger’s burden of news pressing against his own spirit, and he understood. He rose to his feet.
“Prepare a shuttle,” he told the messenger. “I have to go down to the surface.”
Errec Ransome grounded the aircar on a strip of concrete near the Space Force Headquarters at Galcen Prime. The sky overhead had gone from a sharp-edged midday blue to the softer, blurrier colors of twilight, but the invisibility that had protected them during the flight still seemed to be working. A ground trooper in an unfamiliar brown uniform—a Mageworlder, Ochemet presumed—hurried past them without reacting, only a few feet away.
Ransome retrieved his staff from the clips that held it and opened the door of the aircar. Ochemet put out a hand to stop him. “I think it’s time you told me where we’re going.”
The Adept Master shook his head. “I follow the patterns of the universe,” he said. “Sometimes I can see where they lead, and sometimes not.”
Ochemet looked at the headquarters building, its windows broken by explosives and its elegant walls pitted by blaster-fire. In the marble-paved plaza out front, amid the splashing fountains and expressive monumental statuary that had brought its architect galaxy-wide acclaim, troopers in blast-armor stood guard over several hundred men and women in Space Force uniform, lined up in rows with their hands on top of their heads.
Prisoners,
Ochemet thought, and the realization filled him with bitterness.
“I suppose this is what happens when you don’t know where you’re going,” he said to Ransome. “Or did you see it and keep on following your damned patterns anyway?”
Ransome’s mouth tightened. “You don’t know enough to understand your own questions, General. Stay quiet if you don’t want to get us both captured.”
Ochemet and Ransome entered the headquarters building in silence, stepping through the wreckage of the blasted-open doors and past the half-buried body of a guard. Inside, they walked up the long, curving ramp to the upper level of the grand rotunda. The lifts that should have taken them higher were dead, sliding doors frozen halfway open on empty shafts. At a gesture from Ransome, Ochemet led the way to the emergency stairs, tucked out of sight behind a pierced metal screen and a full-sized Khesatan
ilyral
tree in a marble tub. A bolt from an energy lance had burned away half the screen, but the
ilyral
remained incongruously green and healthy.
Somebody had found the stairs already and taken out the lock with another energy bolt. But the fighting at Prime was long over. Ransome and Ochemet climbed all the way to the top levels of the headquarters building without passing anyone.
Once out of the stairwell and into the office blocks, they saw more of the men and women in unfamiliar brown fatigues: the strangers were shorter than Space Force troopers, on the average, and tended toward dark hair and pale skin. Most of them looked tired; none of them noticed the two intruders, one in the Republic’s uniform and one in Adept’s black.
The General and Ransome passed the open door of Ochemet’s office. The room was unlighted and empty, but otherwise it looked just as Ochemet had left it the day before. Clearly the Mageworlders hadn’t bothered searching there yet. They’d get to it soon enough, though; Captain Gremyl’s much smaller cubicle, only a few doors down, already had three of them, one sorting through the hardcopy and physical files while the other two conferred in quiet, alien voices over the desk comp.
Ochemet held up a hand. “Wait,” he said—only the movement of the word, without voice.
Ransome frowned, but stayed.
Ochemet went on through the door into his office. If the room hadn’t been disturbed, there should be a fully-charged blaster in the lower right-hand drawer of his desk. General Metadi had always insisted that his senior officers keep sidearms within easy reach. At one point Ochemet had considered the order unnecessary, not to mention somewhat paranoid, but no longer.
The desk was on emergency self-power, but it answered to his ID scan. As soon as the lock clicked over he pulled the drawer open and took out the blaster. He felt marginally better once he had the weapon in hand.
The top of his desk held the usual pile of printout flimsies—he’d left a stack behind unread when he’d hurried off to the Retreat, and more messages and paperwork had accumulated while he was gone. He tucked the blaster in his belt and started riffling through the messages, looking in vain for any hint of preparation for the Mageworlds attack. Near the bottom of the stack, he found a sheet tagged “Personal for CO,” with a timestamp only minutes after his departure. It was a situation report from one of the nearspace patrol ships. He broke the seal and read through the message in silence and growing dismay:
Vessel identifying itself as RMV
Warhammer,
captain identifying herself as Beka Rosselin-Met-adi reports that the Net is broken, hi-comms are down, and a Mageworlds warfleet is inbound. Request instructions.
Knowledge pressed down on Ochemet like a weight, and he closed his eyes.
There was time,
he thought helplessly.
If I’d known, there were things we could have done
.
There was time
.
He looked up, the flimsy crumpling in his hand, to see Ransome beckoning impatiently from the open door.
He knew!
For a moment he felt like using the blaster on the Adept, but he mastered the urge and followed Ransome once more.
They went down that corridor and then another. Finally Ransome halted before a closed door labeled 44-55 (CUSTODIAL).
“There’s nothing in there but the top-floor cleanup robot and a couple of emergency pushbrooms,” Ochemet protested in a hoarse whisper.
Ransome ignored him and opened the door. Inside was a dark room, far larger than the closet that should have been there, with a white circle painted on the concrete floor. In the circle a group of eight people, masked and hooded in black, knelt facing inward. None of them turned or looked up when the door slid open and Ransome and Ochemet entered.
“Mages?” Ochemet asked in a whisper.
“Yes.”
“What are they doing?”
“It doesn’t matter. They are guilty. Their treason helped to bring down Prime. You have a blaster—kill them now.”
Ochemet lifted the weapon and trained it on the oblivious, kneeling circle. His finger brushed the surface of the firing stud. Then he shook his head and reversed the blaster to hold it out butt-first to Ransome.
“Do it yourself.”
Ransome didn’t reply, or even look at the blaster. The Adept Master stepped away from Ochemet and into the middle of the white circle, brushing past the kneeling figures as if they didn’t exist. He lifted his staff above his head in both hands and closed his eyes.
Blue-green fire began to play around the ends of the staff, and Ochemet felt himself growing cold. The Guild had broken the power of the Magelords after the last war—he’d always known that, and thinking of Entibor and Sapne and Ilarna, he’d been grateful. But now he was seeing how it must have been done. Slowly, inexorably, Master Ransome was calling forth more and more of the blue-green light, drawing on reserves of internal power whose nature and extent Ochemet could scarcely imagine, making ready to deliver a single devastating blow.
Ochemet stepped backward almost unconsciously, moving away into the shadows until his shoulders came up against the concrete wall. He wasn’t certain any longer what he feared: the Mages in the Circle, or the thing that Errec Ransome would do to them.
Time seemed to slow. Ochemet held his breath. He knew that in the next moment Ransome would strike.
Then, in the instant before the gathered energy came smashing down, another figure appeared in the open doorway. This one was also robed and masked in black, but between the hem and the boot tops showed the ubiquitous brown fatigues. He carried a short staff loosely in one gloved hand, and green fire ran up and down the weapon’s length.
“Master Ransome,” the stranger said, in rough but passable Galcenian. “What right have you to dispose of my Circles?”
Ransome brought his staff down before him into a defensive position. The witchfire still writhed and flickered along it, casting eerie shadows onto his set and uncompromising face. “Lord sus-Airaalin. What is mine to protect, I protect by all the means I have.”
The Magelord—Ochemet supposed that this was indeed a Magelord; certainly Ransome seemed to be addressing him as such—inclined his masked head in a grave nod. “So you do. And your name is known for it in the homeworlds. But I do not recall ever giving you the favor of knowing mine.”
“No,” said Ransome. “Nevertheless, I know it.”
Ochemet, pressed back against the wall in the darkness, thought for a moment that sus-Airaalin would demand the source of Ransome’s knowledge. Instead, however, the Magelord strode between two of the kneeling Mages to join Errec Ransome in the center of the white circle.
“Master Ransome,” he said formally, “we are too powerful, you and I, to stand by while others do battle for us. Will you fight me here and now, for the mastery of this Circle and for the possession of the galaxy?”
Ransome smiled without humor. In the blue-green light his features looked pale and haggard.
“No,” he said, “I won’t. I have too much to lose.”
“Then yield,” said sus-Airaalin, and the light died as he took the staff from Errec Ransome’s hands.
GYFFER: PORT OF TELABRYK DEATHWING: THE OUTER NET
G
YFFER WAS a world that lived by its shipyards and its weapons factories. More of the Space Force’s capital ships came from Gyffer’s massive orbiting spacedocks than from anywhere else in the Republic. On the surface, other shipyards worked in the construction and repair of smaller dirtside-to-hyperspace vessels like the old
Warhammer,
and arms dealers would sell a starship captain anything from a custom-modified blaster to a new set of energy guns.
The last time Ari Rosselin-Metadi had touched down on a Gyfferan landing field, he and Nyls Jessan had brought in the
’Hammer
after the raid on Darvell. They’d cut it close; the ship’s dying realspace engines had been held together with little else besides solder and positive thinking, and Beka—who had known the
’Hammer
better than anybody except Jos Metadi himself—had been in worse shape than the ship. By comparison, making planetfall in a long-range Eldan fighter with low fuel reserves and only the simplest of deep-space navigational gear was an easy bit of work.
On the other hand,
thought Ari as he cut in the Eldan’s nullgravs and lowered the craft gently down onto its landing legs at Telabryk Field,
the
’Hammer
had all her papers. They were fake papers, but at least they were in order.
This thing, though … how the hell am I supposed to explain a Space Force fighter and a Space Force uniform? I’m a deserter, possibly a traitor, and who knows what the local law is going to think
.
Hiding was impossible; Gyffer had its own in-system fleet, and maintained nearspace security as tight as or tighter than any place in the civilized galaxy. Ari had been hailed by a patrol vessel within seconds of his dropout from hyper. More out of desperation than anything else, and in order to buy some time for thought, he’d taken the high line when the ship challenged him—refusing to identify himself and demanding a direct communications link to the nearest Space Force unit.
That, he reflected, was when things had started getting odd. The Gyfferan patrol vessel wouldn’t give him a line to the Space Force, or even tell him which vessels were in the area. But nobody challenged him any more either, or demanded that he submit to inspection. Instead, the patrol vessel escorted him to orbit, patched him through to Gyfferan Inspace Control, and handed him off to an orbit-to-atmosphere fighter. Inspace Control had given him landing clearance here at Telabryk, and the fighter had stayed with him, making sure he didn’t deviate from his flight path, until he’d grounded.
Ari unstrapped from the safety webbing and climbed wearily down through the Eldan’s belly hatch to the tarmac. He hadn’t slept for over two days; most of the run through hyperspace he’d done with the autopilot, but the cockpit of a two-seat fighter wasn’t designed to be restful, especially for somebody his size. More than almost anything in the universe right now, he wanted a cup of hot cha’a, a bath, and a warm bed.
He didn’t think much of his chances for getting them, though. Not until he’d gone through all the explanations, paperwork, and still more explanations involved in letting the Space Force know that he hadn’t been deserting or absconding with government property when he left the
Fezzy.
And if Gyffer turned out to be a willing partner in Admiral Vallant’s dreams of grandeur, then things could get really awkward.
At least there wasn’t anybody waiting on the field to arrest him. Stretching, Ari looked around and tried to take stock of the situation.
Telabryk Field, like most dirtside ports, was a flat piece of paved ground stretching out to the horizon in all directions. Off to local apparent north, Telabryk proper was a dark blue on the horizon, looking at this distance more like a range of low hills than one of the biggest cities in the Republic. The field was emptier now than at the time of Ari’s previous visit, when the ships in port had completely hidden Telabryk’s urban sprawl.
Scattered here and there on the tarmac were low concrete buildings painted with the insignia of shipping lines, planetary governments, and such other organizations as maintained their own interstellar fleets. General Delivery had a courier ship in; the vessel’s garish red and yellow color scheme showed up halfway across the field. The Space Force port complex—a couple of squat, blocky structures barely deserving the name—should have had a full wing of atmosphere/nearspace fighters, but it didn’t.
Ari wet his lips nervously.
This doesn’t look good
.
Still, his first duty was to report to senior authority. Leaving the Eldan two-seater behind him, he started walking across the field.
When he got to the Space Force complex, things looked even worse. Not just the fighters were missing; so were all the assorted ground and atmospheric craft—skipsleds, hovercars, aircars, and the like—that should have cluttered the area. Ari circled around to the front of the main building and the big armor-glass doors marked with the Space Force seal. The doors should have parted automatically as soon as he came within their sensor range. By now, though, he wasn’t surprised when they stayed shut.
He shielded his eyes with one hand against the glare coming off the field, and tried to see inside the building. No luck—the interior lights were off. Methodically, he tried the complex’s other entrances, all the way down to the hinged metal door of the machine shop skipsled-loading platform, which turned out to be as locked as the rest.
Ari leaned against the back wall of the machine shop and let exhaustion wash over him. No wonder Gyfferan patrols weren’t patching anybody through to the Space Force: the Space Force wasn’t here.
They aren’t just secured for the day, either. They’ve packed up and left. They’re gone.
Helmeted and pressure-suited, Llannat Hyfid stood in the main airlock of the Deathwing and watched the status light cycling—from yellow to purple, which at the moment struck her as odder and more unnatural than anything else about the derelict ship.
Not quite a derelict,
she thought.
Not any longer.
She wasn’t certain which had done more to convince Lieutenant Vinhalyn that they should bring the Magebuilt vessel back on line—their need to acquire the Deathwing’s potential firepower, or his own overwhelming scholarly curiosity about an artifact from a time long past. The combination, at least, had proved irresistible. Now, after two Standard days of nonstop work, the combined crews of Naversey and the boarding craft had achieved their first success. The Deathwing’s primary life-support systems were back on line.
The status light flashed rapidly back and forth between yellow and purple for several seconds, then settled on purple and held. A bell-tone sounded. The inner door of the lock cycled open.
Ensign Cantrel checked the readouts on the sensor pack he’d brought over from the boarding craft. “Mark one! The lock’s tight and we’ve got a good atmosphere.”
With a gloved hand, Lieutenant Vinhalyn slid aside a bulkhead panel with more of the yellow Eraasian script on it. The space behind the panel was full of dials and gauges.
“These all seem to agree with you,” the linguist-historian said after a prolonged inspection. “We’ll want some of the techs to double-check them later, but it looks like the old monitoring systems are still working.”
“It’s safe to breathe in here, then?” asked Llannat.
“Sure,” said Cantrel. “I can’t vouch for what the air’s going to smell like, but the sensor pack isn’t registering any known biohazards.”
The ensign was already unfastening his own helmet as he spoke. He lifted it off, revealing a face freshly de-iplated—except for the cherished mustache—and considerably less worn than when Llannat had first met him.
“Now that we’ve got atmosphere,” he continued, “we can start trying to figure out the gravity system. And after that, we’ll tackle the engines.”
“The manuals,” Vinhalyn explained to Llannat, “turned out to be very specific on the matter of proper cold-start sequencing.” The linguist-historian had his helmet off by now, and was cradling it in the crook of his arm. “The systems must interlock correctly, or catastrophic failure will result.”
Llannat undid the last seal on her helmet and took it off. She rubbed her nose vigorously with the back of her free hand; as usual, being inside a p-suit had given her a half-dozen maddening and unscratchable itches.
“Did the old-time Mageworlders have a problem with their engineering,” she wondered aloud, “or did they just like to watch things explode?”
“We may never know,” said Vinhalyn, with a faint smile. He turned to Cantrel. “You people were lucky in one thing, though. It appears that whoever abandoned this ship put it through an orderly shutdown first.”
“That’s what we were thinking, too,” said Cantrel. “Except for—well, except for what we found on the bridge. Looking at that, I still can’t figure out what happened.”
“Yes,” said Vinhalyn. “The bridge: That’s what Mistress Hyfid and I were intending to investigate. Now that we have atmosphere back, we’ll have to do it quickly, too. They’re going to start to get high pretty soon.”
Llannat nodded, but without enthusiasm. She’d put off the investigation as long as possible—the all-hands job of bringing the first of the Deathwing’s systems on line had provided an excellent pretext for delay—but there was no getting out of it now. She was an Adept, and she was going to have to walk into a scene of bloody murder on a Magebuilt ship, with a dewy-eyed innocent like Tammas Cantrel watching her and expecting a miracle.
“This isn’t like picking out a live target on the monitor screen,” she cautioned the ensign. “These were Mages, and it’s a cold trail. We may not learn anything at all.”
And maybe we’ll learn something we didn’t want to know
.
Sighing, Ari pushed himself away from the wall of the deserted Space Force installation. He wasn’t certain where he ought to go next. Even getting off Gyffer looked close to impossible. The Eldan two-seater had been pushed to its limit and wasn’t going to lift again for anywhere without refueling and a maintenance workover. He’d left the
Fezzy
in his working uniform, with nothing by way of assets except a Space Force ID card, a Mandeynan quarter-mark coin, and a fully charged blaster.
A quick message to Galcen Prime would go a long way toward solving his problem. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure that talking to Gyfferan customs was going to be a good idea. If Admiral Vallant’s mutiny had reached as far as Gyffer, the local government might well greet Ari with open arms and march him aboard a courier ship bound straight back for Infabede—or throw him in the local jail as a bargaining chip for their side, whichever side that was.
I need some local intelligence
, Ari thought, scanning Telabryk Field for anything that looked like a source of information.
And I need it now.
The gaudy red and yellow colors of the General Delivery building caught his eye, and he felt a surge of relief. General Delivery had its own fleet of courier ships making high-speed runs all over the galaxy, and maintained its own data net for electronic messages. The company’s entire reputation was built on its ability to keep the farthest elements of the civilized galaxy in touch with each other and with the Central Worlds.
If anybody can fill me in on how the land lies the G-Del people can. And they’re a Suivi-based firm, so they
probably
won’t tell the locals that they saw me
.
From the Space Force complex to the G-Del block was quite a hike, especially with the heat of the sun reflecting up from the tarmac at redoubled strength. Ari was sweating before he’d covered half the distance to the red and yellow building. This time, though, the doors opened at his approach, and he stepped through into the cool, dry air inside.
Most of General Delivery’s Telabryk Field operation was devoted to cargo handling. Employees in more subdued versions of the company colors were sorting through the incoming cargo from the courier, throwing the boxes and envelopes into tubs for delivery to G-Del offices all over Gyffer. Other employees were loading up a skipsled with the outbound mail. A long counter stretched across the front of the big room, separating the workers from the small reception area near the entrance.
The clerk at the counter was a thin man with worry lines between his eyebrows. He glanced up from his comp screen when Ari came in.
“I thought you people left already.”
“They did,” said Ari. “I came in-system from the Infabede sector a little while ago. I want to send a message to Galcen, fastest means available.”
The clerk pointed to another desk comp at the far end of the counter. “Flimsies and keyboard over there to write a letter. Hardcopy’s the only thing getting out right now.”