“Any idea whether they’ll come in?”
“They don’t know yet either. Caution … greed … they’re afraid of your luck, you know.”
“Think it’s going to scare them away?”
“Maybe. Or maybe you’re going to draw them in. The Magelord who breaks your luck can call himself a powerful man.”
“I see.” Jos watched the floating strands of light outside the viewscreens for a while. Green … blue … violet … bright enough to believe in, but not real enough to steer by.
If my luck breaks, and I die here, I’ll never know … .
“Errec,” he said. “Whose kid is it?”
He heard Errec draw breath and let it out in a faint sigh. “An Entiboran would say, yours. By law and custom.”
Jos didn’t say anything. When he glanced over at the copilot, Errec had gone distant and remote again—searching inside his mind for Mages somewhere out beyond the Web.
That’s all he’s ever going to say about it,
Jos realized.
And I suppose that’s my answer.
The poor son of a bitch.
“Boss?” It was Nannla, over the internal comms.
“Yeah?”
“Can you give me a bit of lateral? I think I’m getting something.”
“How much?” Jos asked.
Errec came back from wherever his mind had gone. “Turn sensors to five-seven-one, high.”
Jos touched the maneuvering jets. “Five-seven-one, high. How’s that, Nannla?”
“Something’s out there, all right. What do you have on your screens?”
“Not much, in this soup … weapons burst, far.”
“That’ll be the Mages,” said Errec. “They’re coming in.”
“Getting here was damned hard,” said the First of the Mage-Circle to his Second. “The public safety restrictions—Internal Security might as well have labeled them .aimed at us.”
The Second pulled off his outer wrap—in Sardanis, one of the cities in Entibor’s southern hemisphere, the winter wind was bitter cold. His voice was hoarse. “And start a panic—‘Mages on Entibor’? I don’t think so.”
“I hope you coughed on a lot of people on your way over.”
“And offered their despair to the working,” said the Second. “Every little bit helps.”
“I’m glad you still have a sense of humor about this. Now’s when we find out who believes—truly believes—and who wanted to join a Circle because Mamma and Dadda would be shocked if they ever found out that sonny was a big bad Mage.”
“And you don’t think we’ll have enough true believers?”
“In my darker moments, no. But don’t worry,” the First continued. “Just in case—I’ve offered up
my
despair for the working.”
“There are times,” the Second said, “when I wish we could be more rational about this.”
“I was afraid you’d say that. There’s no other way to.become part of the working of the universe.”
The Second pulled his black robe on over his head and reached for his mask. “The Adepts seem to think there is.”
“Spectators at the banquet,” the First said, “that’s all they are. They try to pull us down to their level. And speaking of pulling things down to levels, it’s time to see who else is here.”
The two men finished putting on their robes and masks, and descended into the ritual chamber. The empty basement room had a circle chalked on the floor, with a bucket of water standing by to wipe it away. These days, no one dared keep a more permanent meditation room. The agents of Internal Security had been ruthless in tracking down anyone even suspected of Magery.
Only one other man waited in the white chalk circle. “Cold night out tonight,” he said.
“That it is.” The First looked around. “Are we all that’s left of the Sardanis circle? The faithful few?”
“Felspath won’t be here. The plague took him. He died well, and gave his power to us all.”
“Not as well as if he’d died in the Circle,” the Second said. “But I suppose we can’t all be that lucky.”
The First stepped into the circle of chalk. “Shall we begin, then? It’s past the time. The others will already have started.”
As he spoke, the silver cords of light that appeared in the corners of his eyes—their presence made clearer and more visible by the ritual mask—began to glow and shift. The First wondered if anyone else saw them. It was gratifying to know that his faith was the true one, and that every time there was a working, he could see the objective reality of the good that they had done.
He pulled his staff from the clip at his belt.
“Such workings as this are rare,” he said aloud, holding up the staff. “We are called to great honor and great sacrifice. We go willingly, knowing that we will become the silver threads of power, not merely be their manipulators.
“One in being, one in thought, let it be now!”
He struck the man to his right, a friend he had known for years, and felt the power, willingly given, willingly taken, flow through his staff. The power of the whole universe filled the tiny room. His staff was glowing. The silver cords were shifting.
Then darkness crushed him, and he fell.
Jos squinted at the
’Hammer
’s cockpit chronometer. Seventy-seven hours since the last contact with a Mage ship. Longer than that since he’d eaten or slept—not since before heading into the Web. Nobody else on board was in any better shape than he was, either. They were all glassy-eyed with fatigue.
If I had enough energy to stand up, I’d probably fall over
.
He glanced at Errec. “Time to get out of here, do you think?”
Errec closed his eyes briefly. There were lines on his face that hadn’t been there before; for an instant, Jos thought he was seeing his copilot as Errec would look years from now, if he survived to grow old. Errec opened his eyes again.
“Yes. There’s nothing more to find.”
“Then it’s fallback time,” said Jos. “Out to Farpoint, and see who’s left.”
Errec laughed without humor. “If we can find Farpoint.”
“Do you have a fix on our location?”
“Realspace somewhere.”
“No kidding.” Jos suppressed a yawn of exhaustion. “Get us out of the Web, then, if that’s the best you can do. Once we’re outside, we can get a fix.”
“All right,” said Errec. “Setting course, seven-one-two. Out of the Web.”
Jos keyed on the intraship comms. “All hands, stand easy on station.” He turned back to Errec. “Any beacons in sight?”
“That’s a negative.”
“Well, keep your eyes open, and we’ll see if anything familiar shows up.”
The
‘Hammer
proceeded steadily through the treacherous spacescape of the Web. Jos didn’t touch the controls, even when the instruments showed his ship veering wildly in course and speed. He knew the feel of the
’Hammer
at all speeds and in all maneuvers—regardless of what the instruments said, his ship wasn’t corkscrewing all over the volume.
The internal comm link clicked on. “I make something, bearing six-two-five low,” Nannla called from number-one gun bubble. Her voice was ragged with exhaustion.
“I’ll take her down for a look,” Jos said.
What they found was a spaceship, broken apart and twisted by energy fire. A thread of atmosphere leaked from a partly sealed interior compartment to make an incandescent plume against the darkness.
“Anyone still alive aboard that one?” Jos asked.
“Yes,” Errec replied. “But they’re Mages.”
“Leave ‘em, then,” said Jos. He continued on course. The wreck, slowing spinning around its longitudinal axis, passed below the
’Hammer
’s ventral side.
“Beacon showing,” Errec said a few minutes later. “Correlates with Poddit’s Ledge.”
“Recommend me a course and speed.”
“Steer one-five-one, this speed is fine.”
“Got it.” Jos changed to the new course.
A call came up from engineering over the intraship comms. *How much longer are we going to be out here? We’ll need to refuel soon.*
“We’re on our way out,” Jos called back.
Within half an hour, although it felt much longer, the first true stars’ showed through the drifting clouds of gas.
Warhammer
wasn’t the first ship to the rendezvous point, but it was far from being the last. Reports were still coming in of battle actions completed or in progress—the mass of accumulated data was being compiled on the larger Per-paynard cruisers, with their ample ship’s memory and up-to-date hardware.
“Not as bad as it could have been,” Jos said a while later. Bone tired, he still was unable to sleep; instead, he was sitting up in the
‘Hammer
’s common room with a cup of cha’a and a sheaf of reports.
The very young Fleet ensign who’d handled number-two gun smothered an involuntary yawn and asked, “Did we win?”
“Yeah,” said Jos. “I guess so. We’ve got most of our ships back. And counting up the after-action reports … it looks like none of the Mages have come out.”
“A victory?”
“I’d call it one.” Jos put down the stack of reports he’d been reading and started drafting a message instead. “Contact the Fleet, tell them to get the couriers ready. Start by sending the word to Gyffer and Khesat and Suivi Point. Tell them we finally did it.”
“Who’s going to tell Entibor?” asked the ensign.
“I’m going to carry that message myself.”
(GALCENIAN DATING 966 A.F; ENTIBORAN REGNAL YEAR 30 VERATINA)
J
OS STAYED in Infirmary Three, Yasp Reception, for three days after he regained consciousness.
On the third day, the medical staff judged him recovered enough to let him access the infirmary’s text readers and the general comp files, and he found out what Yasp Quarantine Berthing was charging
Wandering Star—
or
Warhammer,
as he supposed the ship now was—in docking fees. That led him to check on the charges against
Warhammer
’s account for his own medical care. An hour later he was arguing with the physician in charge.
“Am I contagious?” he demanded.
“Well …”
“If I were contagious you’d be talking to me from the other side of an armor-glass window. And if I’m not contagious I want out of here.”
“Captain Metadi, you’re still convalescent. You’re in no shape to go anywhere.”
“I can berth on my ship. As long as I have to pay docking fees for her, I might as well do it some place where I can look for a cargo.”
The physician continued to protest, but in the end he agreed that Jos could leave. Jos took his old clothes—now laundered and decontaminated to the point of being threadbare—and his pilot’s license. Aside from a dubious claim to a spacecraft of unknown history and obsolete construction somewhere in the quarantine docks, he had no other possessions.
The clothing wasn’t really his either except, like the license and the ship itself, by survival and inheritance. His coveralls from
Meritorious Reward
hadn’t made it through quarantine; he supposed they were already recycled into bedsheets and deckwipes. The clothes the infirmary gave him came from
Warhammer
, and most likely from the locker in the captain’s cabin: Jos assumed that the garments belonged to the man or woman who had been captain before Maert. Man, most likely; the clothes were cut for somebody Jos’s size or larger.
But the fit wasn’t too bad, if he belted the shirt tightly and stuffed the pants legs into his boots. The style and cut were a bit gaudy for a merchant-spacer, but Jos wasn’t inclined to complain, since the same orderly who’d brought the clothes also brought him a Gyfferan Mark VI blaster in a sturdy holster. He’d never had the money to buy one of his own.
He checked himself out at the main desk of the infirmary. After he’d signed four or five slips of printout flimsy and the main-desk datapad, the clerk on duty handed him an envelope stuffed with all the loose change Yasp Quarantine Berthing had found aboard
Warhammer
when they decontaminated her. The folding stuff was a bit faded and limp from the decon procedures—only the metal bits in the hard cash actually looked better for the experience—but paper and hard together added up to a respectable amount of walking-around money. Not enough to get his ship out of hock, but more than enough to buy a good meal and a drink. Definitely a drink. Convalescent or not, Jos decided, he needed one.
First find the docks
, he told himself.
There’s always bars by the docks.
He couldn’t read the local alphabet—the physicians and the desk clerk had spoken to him in careful, accented Galcenian, and the paperwork had run Galcenian translations under everything that needed a signature—but the signs had enough pictures to make up for the lack. He followed the stylized spaceship icons for a while, then discovered that they led to the main station-to-surface shuttleport.
Not exactly what he wanted. He tried again, this time asking directions of anybody who looked knowledgeable. After several hours of not-quite-random searching, he located the docking area. The icon wasn’t a spaceship after all, but a nullgrav skipsled.
And outside of orbital docking he spotted a bar, with a man in a black apron polishing glasses behind the counter. Jos took a seat at the bar and called for a cha’a and chaser.
The bartender fetched him the two drinks. The cha’a had its familiar stimulating tang; the other was something he hadn’t seen before—local, apparently—that smelled like a combination of swamp water and cleaning fluid. He tasted that one. Even cold, it made a pleasant burning on his tongue.
He paid for his drinks and put the envelope of cash back inside his dark leather jacket, itself another legacy of the captain he had never met. It was only then, as he sipped alternately at the cha’a and the strong drink, that the real question came to him: even if he did pay his port fees, how was he going to fly
Wand
—fly
Warhammer
—without an engineer?
“You look like you know your way around the docks,” he said to the bartender. “Where’s the shipping office around here? I need to sign on a crew.”
Jos had spoken very slowly in Galcenian. The bartender answered the same way.
“Shipping office is at mainside complex.”
The term was one Jos hadn’t heard before. “Mainside? Where’s that?”
“Down below,” the bartender explained. “On the dirt.”
“Thanks,” Jos said. He took an unhappy gulp of the strong drink. With the shipping office located dirtside, he’d have to spend more money riding the shuttle down and back, with the docking fees charging up for each minute he was away. All that just to find enough crew to lift.
If Yasp Quarantine Docking would let him go at all. He needed to check over those account cards that Captain Maert had left him. Those were what he needed to tell him if he’d have to sell his ship to pay his way out of quarantine. He needed to go aboard
Warhammer
to get those numbers, if for no other reason. While he was there, it was nobody’s business if he decided to walk around the first ship that he could call his own.
Not bad
, he thought,
for a kid not quite ten years out of the warrens on Gyffer. My own ship. Even if I don’t turn out to have her for very long.
He downed the last of his drink, paid the tab, and stood up as if to go. The bartender held up a hand to stop him.
“Wait a minute. You the captain of that armed merchant in Quarantine?”
Jos turned back to look at the bartender. “Maybe. Depends on why you’re asking.”
“Looking for a crew?”
Progress
, Jos thought.
Maybe I won’t have to go dirtside after all
. “I might be, yes. Why?”
“There’s a lad here,” said the bartender. “Needs a berth. His ship came in shot to pieces and couldn’t be made spaceworthy—got sold for scrap to pay fees. You talk with him?”
Jos shrugged. “Talk’s easy.”
“I call him, he comes.”
“Right,” said Jos. He sat back down and ordered another drink. What came through the door of the bar a few minutes later wasn’t anything Jos had expected. The “lad” the bartender had summoned was a big saurian type, almost a third again taller than Jos himself, with a scaly, grey-green hide and a bright green crest rising from the top of a rounded skull. The creature opened its mouth, revealing a formidable array of pointed teeth, and let out a bass-voiced bellow that rattled the glasses behind the bar.
“This here’s Ferrdacorr,” said the bartender, indicating the scaly green one. “He says that he’s pleased to meet you, and he’s the best damned engineer that
you’ve
ever seen.”
“Yeah?” Jos had never met a Selvaur before in the flesh, but he’d read the descriptions and heard the stories. Port gossip had it that Selvaurs were tough customers but good workers, if they could be convinced to work for you at all. Gossip also said that they didn’t care much for weaklings and pushovers.
The Selvaur didn’t say anything, just looked Jos up and down, like a customer eyeing the chops at a butcher’s stall. Jos ignored him and spoke to the bartender.
“Tell your pal Ferrdacorr that he’d better be a good engineer,” he said. “Because I plan to take my ship into some dangerous places.”
The creature let out another roar.
“He says he understands you well enough,” said the bartender. “But if you want him, you’d better take his partner too, the best damned hull technician in the galaxy.”
“What’s his partner? Another Selvaur?”
“No,” said a voice by Jos’s elbow.
“I’m
his partner.”
Jos turned toward the speaker, and found that this time he was looking at a young woman of about his own age. She was wearing the same kind of flamboyant outfit that Captain Maert and the
Wandering Star
’s other crew members had worn, this time with ruffled cuffs and a vest embroidered in crimson glitterthread. She carried a blaster in a cross-draw holster and what looked like a knife in her boot.
“I’m Rak Barenslee,” she said. “Hull technician. Also pilot in training, cargo appraiser, and gunner, late of the privateer ship
Strahn’s Luck
. Are you the captain of the
Libra-class
that came in a couple of weeks ago? Because if you are, Ferrda and I can help you run her the way she wants to be run.”