“It’s a long story, but as you can see, we are fully capable of taking care of ourselves,” Sara insisted with a little more anger than she actually felt. The fact that he was watching out for her made her go a little gooey inside, and she had to fight that part of herself down.
“I believe there is nothing on Earth that could stop the two of you, after what I saw one War Mage do on Colony 788, but I have my orders. Just think of me as a friend, catching a ride,” he suggested, his smile coming back. “Or I could always catch a ride of my own.”
Double shit. He knows where we’re going, so there’s nothing keeping him from following us.
Sara hung her head in defeat. “Fine. Stow your armor, we don't want to scare the locals by showing up in full battle rattle.” She reached over and slapped the ramp controls, forcing Baxter to move quickly to avoid getting caught in the closing gap.
She stalked to the pilot’s chair and started the engines. As soon as Boon was seated beside her, and Alister was safely in her lap, she punched the throttle, shooting off the landing pad at high acceleration.
An evil grin lit her face when a bang sounded from the floor of the cargo area, and she heard Baxter curse.
Boon wisely didn't look back to see if he was okay.
An hour later, Sara was making a wide, sweeping bank around the eastern most island of São Miguel. Baxter was strapped into one of the passenger seats between the cabin and the cargo area, far enough away that Sara was sure he couldn't hear them talking softly.
“Is this it?” she asked Alister and Silva, who were both standing on the dashboard, their faces pressed to the window, looking down at the island.
Silva turned and chattered excitedly, and Boon said, “Yeah, that’s it.”
“Okay. I’m supposed to aim for the volcanic crater on the west of the island, right?” Sara asked, just to be sure before she began their descent.
Silva chattered again, and this time Alister joined with a “Merp,” not taking his face from the window.
Sara circled a few more times, bringing the shuttle lower with each revolution so they could better see the lay of the land from above. When they were only a few hundred meters from the ground, Silva turned and hopped into Boon’s lap. She leaned over the navigation map and pressed a small paw to a location on the screen, leaving a navigational marker.
“Thanks,” Sara said, giving her a look that said ‘not bad’.
She leveled out the shuttle and brought it down into a clearing that bordered a thickly wooded area. The gravitic engines kept the noise to a minimum, making the landing a quiet affair.
She cycled down the engines and put the shuttle in standby as Boon unstrapped and headed back toward the rear of the ship. Baxter undid his own lap belt and fell in behind her. After shutting down the craft, Sara slid out of her seat and joined them as Boon was lowering the ramp.
“Hold up, big boy, where do you think you’re going?” Sara asked from behind Baxter.
“I’m going with you. That’s why I’m here,” he reminded her, smiling at her over his shoulder.
“Not right now. We are meeting with some very shy people, and I don't want you scaring them away. You’re just going to have to wait here.” She crossed her arms to let him know she was serious.
He didn't seem to take the hint.
“It’ll be fine. I’ll just keep back, out of the way.”
Boon—with Silva around her neck, and Alister following closely behind—escaped down the ramp before she could get sucked into the argument.
Sara sighed in impatience. She leaned in and put a hand to his chest. “Baxter, I know you want to help, and I appreciate that, I really do. But this is a delicate situation, and having you here is throwing a wrench into it. I really need you to stay here, otherwise I’m not going to get anywhere. I’m a War Mage, I can take care of myself,” she assured him again. By decreasing the space between them, she had been hoping to elicit his feelings to her cause, but her own feelings were rearing their head.
Fuck. Why does he smell so good?
“Please?” she pressed on. “Just twenty minutes. I’ll keep in contact the whole—”
“Uh, Sara?” came Boon’s uncertain voice from outside.
Sara closed her eyes in frustration, dropping her hand from Baxter’s chest. “Give me a minute, Boon. I’m kinda in the middle of something,” she said, her voice rising an octave.
“You should probably come out here. Like, right now.”
Boon’s voice was artificially level, setting off warning bells for her and Baxter both. Together, they turned and ran out the back of the shuttle, their panic rising. Sara leapt from the side of the ramp toward Boon’s voice, her hands coming up, ready for a fight.
She could see Boon standing stock-still, her hands held up in surrender. Silva and Alister were both on the ground, sitting at attention. All three had their backs to her and were staring into the woods.
Sara stumbled to a stop beside Boon, one of her eyebrows rising in confusion at the sight before her.
Standing at the edge of the clearing a few meters away were eleven pixies. Ten of them were standing in a semicircle around a central, female pixie. The ten were obviously guards, in their suits of Aetheric armor, holding coil-rifles. What was odd was that the armor and weapons were nearly identical to the equipment that Sara’s group had stowed on the shuttle. The helmets were slightly different, to accommodate the pixies’ long, pointed ears, but it was the same design otherwise. The weapons were small, but still looked like they could do some serious damage.
The central figure wore white robes, and her hood was thrown back to reveal a head of strawberry blonde hair with a tan face that was sporting a serious expression. She looked like a priestess to Sara, but the golden tiara she wore on her head suggested nobility.
Baxter slid to a stop on the other side of Boon, looking left and right. “What do you see?”
He was oblivious to the eleven tiny humanoids arrayed before them.
The priestess-or-noble cocked her head at Baxter and, in a deeper than expected voice, said, “He is not bound to one of you?”
“Bound?” Sara asked, looking from the pixie to Baxter, who hadn’t heard either of them talking.
“He must be bound, if he is to proceed further. Otherwise we may not continue our conversation,” she said, locking eyes with Sara.
So old. Her eyes are so old, Sara thought with a shiver.
“I have a few questions first,” she answered.
Chapter 15
Grimms sat in his command chair on the bridge, watching the view screen along with Dr. Hess, who stood beside him. The view was almost completely expanded once again, signaling the end of their journey. The science team had been busy, collating data from the jumps and taking readings and measurements of the warp field. Dr. Hess consulted his tablet, mumbling to himself in his usual fashion.
“We are coming out of warp in ten seconds, sir,” Connors reported from the helm.
Dr. Hess dropped the tablet to his side and watched the final seconds of the voyage. “This is incredible, Cora. I don't know how you did it, but the compression on this Aether thread is beyond anything we Elif are capable of.”
“It comes down to the core, Dr. Hess. It is able to translate my spellforms much more efficiently,” Cora said cheerily.
“Dropping from warp in three, two, one,” Connors counted down. There was a flash of blue Aetheric light, and the view screen displayed an entirely different set of stars.
“Mezner, confirm our location,” Grimms ordered. He stood from his chair, rolled the tightness from his shoulders, and made his way to the holo projector.
As he and Dr. Hess approached, the projector came to life, displaying a golden icon and not much of anything else.
“We are within a million kilometers of our target destination, sir,” Mezner reported, after the computer calculated the positions of the stars around them.
Dr. Hess nodded. “Very good, Ms. Cora. A jump this
distant is difficult to make accurately, even for our twin sets. That you’ve accomplished even this approximation without Captain Sara to guide you is incredible.”
Cora laughed, “Thank you, doctor. To tell the truth, we may have gotten a little lucky, but I won’t know ‘til we do a few more warps for comparison. A data set of one is useless.”
“Not ‘useless,’ just inconclusive. We now have a ‘ballpark number’, as you humans say, to start building our model for the next set of jumps,” Dr. Hess said, typing furiously on his tablet. One of the human scientists on his team joined him, and they consulted quietly.
Grimms patted the edge of the holo projector and said, “Good work, Captain.”
“Did you just pat me?” Cora asked in his comm unit.
Grimms felt his face flush; he had done just that. He cleared his throat. “Uh, no. I spilled some coffee on the projector earlier,” he lied, hoping she’d buy it.
To his relief, she laughed in his ear. “Good to know you’re keeping me clean, Commander.”
Grimms smiled. “Just doing my part, ma’am.”
“So, doctor, how did we do? Did you get some good data?” Cora asked over the bridge’s speakers.
Dr. Hess lifted his head from the quiet conversation he was having with his colleague. “Oh yes, Ms. Cora. We have the final measurements on the Aether thread, and they are fascinating.”
“You keep mentioning the thickness of the Aether thread, doctor. What does that have to do with our speed?” Grimms asked. Does this have something to do with why Cora is more suited for controlling a ship than anyone else?
“Do you understand fluid dynamics, Commander?” Dr. Hess asked.
Grimms shook his head. “Not any more than the layperson. What does flow dynamics have to do with warping through space?”
The doctor began flipping through screens on his tablet until he found what he was looking for, then turned it so Grimms could see. It was a 3-D model of a pipe with water flowing through it. The water started in a wide open pipe, six centimeters in diameter, and flowed at ten meters per second until it came to a flange that narrowed the pipe to three centimeters, and increased the speed of the water to forty meters per second.
“This is an example of flow rate. The same amount of water is flowing through each section of the pipe every second, but because the second section of the pipe is half as wide, and therefore has one fourth the area, the speed needs to be four times as fast to get the water out in the same amount of time. Do you understand?” Dr. Hess asked, raising his eyebrows.
Grimms nodded as visions of his physics classes at the academy flooded his memory. “Because the fluid can’t compress, it is forced to move faster. What does this have to do with warping?”
Dr. Hess smiled as he lowered the tablet, obviously grateful he did not need to explain further. “The warp thread is like a pipe that the ship travels through. A warp bubble is formed around the ship and a small volume of space around it. The bubble is made of Aether, which creates a barrier between the reality inside the bubble and the one outside. Then a ‘pipe’ is created between the starting position and the destination, and the reality inside the bubble flows through the thread. So, like in the example, the ship and the reality around it is the water, and the Aether thread is the pipe.”
Grimms nodded. “So the thinner the pipe, the faster the water needs to flow.” He rubbed his chin in thought. “How did you drop the rock out of warp in your final test, Captain? Wouldn't the rock need to travel through the barrier from one reality to the other?”
“I didn't actually push the rock out through the barrier; I just created a second barrier closer to the ship that didn't include the rock, as I dropped the larger one around it,” Cora said.
Dr. Hess’s eyes bulged at that. “You changed the shape of your warp bubble while in warp? How could you do that? You would need to cast two spells at once.”
“I did cast two spells at once, but only for a split second, and they were almost exactly the same, so it wasn’t all that hard. I couldn’t cast two spells for much longer than a split second,” Cora said modestly.
“You shouldn't have been able to do it at all!” he exclaimed. “And this was before you had the core? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Like I said, it was only for a split second, and I was basically casting a copy of the same spell. Sara and I did it all the time while practicing quick spellwork. It’s like priming yourself for the next spell with the back of your mind.”
Before Dr. Hess could continue what Grimms thought might be a long series of questions, Mezner spoke. “Sir? We have an Aether communication coming in.” She double-checked her console. “It’s coming from an Elif relay station close by.”
Grimms frowned. “Is it being sent to us directly?”
“No, sir. It is being broadcast to any human or Elif ship in the area. They are sending the signal wide, though, so it’s not getting far,” she said.
“Put it onscreen, Ensign,” Grimms said, looking up as the image of the star field changed to the face of a particularly young looking Elif male.
Dr. Hess gasped in surprise, but the stranger began talking before he could comment.
“To any friendly ship in the area, this is High Prince Paelias DeSolin. I am in need of rescue. I have escaped the destruction of Effrit, and am currently aboard my private yacht Empori. Please respond to the private channel included in this message. Our vessel is damaged, and we are unable to maintain warp for a long jump. We are currently in deep space, but the ship is only minimally armed, and is therefore unable to defend itself from a Teifen attack. Please send a message as quickly as possible.”
The prince’s eyes were rimmed in red, as if he had been crying, and he tugged on his ear tip nearly the entire duration of the message.
“What do you think, Captain?” Grimms asked, his eyes narrow as he regarded the frozen image of the prince.
“We must save him,” Dr. Hess demanded, nearly hysterical. “While the prince lives, the royal line is still in place. His presence would do much to rally my people.”
Cora’s voice was much more measured than the doctor’s. “He’s right. We need to save him. If for no other reason than the fact that he knows what is happening in the Elif’s home system. This war is far too large for just us to fight; we need the Elif backing us. The return of their prince would go a long way for their morale.”
Grimms nodded. “Mezner, forward this to the UHFC and include a request for instructions.”
“You are not going now?” Dr. Hess looked as if he had been slapped.
“We will send them help, doctor, but I need clearance from UHF Command before I can put this ship in danger. I shouldn’t need to remind you that we are fairly defenseless without Captain Sonders onboard. She shields us and maneuvers our offenses in battle,” Grimms reminded him, running a hand over his short, white hair. “We are the only working ship with a tank system, and possess one of only two cores ever discovered. If the prince’s message is a trap, we don't want to lose the Raven.”
The doctor threw up his hands. “How could it possibly be a trap? The message was encoded. The Teifen can't receive it, so they have no idea he is out there, but you can be sure they are looking. The longer we wait, the more danger he is in.”
“I understand your feelings on the matter, Dr. Hess, but the fact remains that this ship is far too valuable to risk without orders. My first concern is this ship and her crew. We wait,” Grimms said with finality.
He returned to his seat with a scowl on his face as he thought through all the ways this could go terribly wrong.
“You think it’s a trap?” Cora asked in his comm.
Grimms nodded and murmured, “What are the odds that message could have found us out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“Well, if they were passing it from relay to relay, then I suppose it’s not that far-fetched,” she said, her voice not all that convincing.
“Could be, but I just have a b
ad feeling about this. How did he escape a planet that, presumably, was surrounded by thousands of Teifen battleships? If their warp is damaged, how did they get so deep into space? It doesn’t sit well with me,” Grimms said.
“Fair enough. But remember that we are not completely defenseless. We still have weapons, and the hull armor is rated for Aetheric cannon blasts,” she said.
“Only one or two, and I’m sure the damage would be substantial.”
“True, but I can always jump us away if it gets bad. I’m just saying it’s not a suicide mission,” she soothed, and Grimms could imagine her putting her hands on his with the comment.
He gave a grim smile. “We’ll see what the UHFC says.”
It only took the UHFC an hour and a half to answer Grimms’ request for further instructions. It was a text-only message, three words long.
[Retrieve the prince.]
“Connors, get me a heading and prepare for warp. It looks like we have a rescue mission to complete.”
“Aye, sir. Heading imputed, awaiting Captain Cora,” he replied.
“Warp in three, two, one,” Cora said.
The screen smashed down to a point, and they were underway.
“I hope this goes better than I imagine,” Grimms said quietly into his comm.
“Me too, Commander,” Cora replied.
Chapter 16
The pixie priestess bowed to Sara, then to Boon. “I am Nyx Morenna, Keeper of the Records. We felt your presence when you returned to Earth a few days ago, then yesterday we felt the birth of a second War Mage. We have been expecting you,” Nyx said, in her deep and feminine voice.
Sara and Boon both bowed, copying Nyx’s movements. “I am Sara Sonders, and this Alicia Boon.” When Nyx looked to the familiars, Sara quickly continued, “And this is Alister Burke, my…” She wondered how best to refer to him. “Companion. And this is Silva August, Boon’s companion.” The familiars gave the best bows their animal forms would allow.
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