Mission Pack 1: Missions 1-4 (Black Ocean Mission Pack)

by J. S. Morin

  Nancy pressed a program into his hands. “It’s a twentieth-century themed show. The music is period. To set a mood, I imagine.” It was twangy and fuzzy, with a pronounced rhythm and up-tempo beat. There were lyrics, but Mordecai would be damned if he could tell what language they were. It sounded Earth-like. After a moment’s devoted listening, he picked out a word here or there and realized that the whole bloody thing was sung in English, but with the most horrid enunciation imagined.

  As the crowd packed in around him, Mordecai grew tense. Something felt wrong, but he couldn’t place it. Nancy put a hand on his knee. “What’s eating you? Did that hearing go worse than you’re letting on?”

  “Yes,” Mordecai murmured. “Much. Someone’s following us. I can’t place them, but feel the air. Someone’s steadying the room, down in the lower seats.” It would have been a hard concept to explain to a non-wizard, but Nancy’s arcane powers were nearly as strong as his. A wizard not working magic kept an area of the universe stable around himself. The laws of physics did not bend so easily when someone else believed strongly in the status quo. A subtle mind could sniff out when such supernatural stability was in play.

  “Mort…” Nancy said. “Why are you being followed?” Damn. He had let too much slip.

  He patted her hand where it rested on his knee. “Nothing that will spoil a show,” he assured her.

  When the show began, headlining comedian Chuck Ramsey came onto the stage, smiling and waving, an old-fashioned handheld microphone clutched in one hand. “Good evening, everyone! Great to be back on Earth. It’s been so long, I feel like a xeno on my own planet. Did you folks evolve while I was gone? Everyone seems to have more hair than me. I’ve been touring the borderlands, and let me tell you, the food is nothing like what we get here on Earth. I mean, where else can you get a snyth-meat hamburger with chemically simulated cheese and bacon, soy byproduct fries, and medical treatment for it the same night…?” The audience laughed, and Mordecai chuckled along with them. The comedian was making fun of modern Earth. It was stupid, childish humor, and it was funny.

  Chuck Ramsey introduced several other comedians for short bits, then put on an hour-long show himself. Topics ranged all over the spectrum. Why couldn’t Earth stop itself from invading smaller planets? Poor service on interstellar transports. Child-rearing tips and the best threats to use on children, as learned from his father. Seven words that you couldn’t say on Mars. How Luna was terraformed just to get all the lunatics to move there. He even went back to his burger joke from earlier and expounded on how the iconic meal differed throughout Earth-controlled space.

  Mordecai couldn’t get enough. It was low-science, low-complexity humor filled with an overriding folksy wisdom that felt timeless. He laughed along with Nancy, and thanked his lucky stars that he had a wife who understood him. It took his mind off his troubles, at least for a little while. After Chuck Ramsey took his bows and the spotlight disappeared, house lights came up. It was just an historic building in the theater district of Boston Prime again. Mordecai stood and let out a long, wistful breath that carried that momentary sense of wonderment along with it.

  “You seemed to enjoy yourself,” Nancy said. “See what happens when you leave the house to go someplace besides work?”

  Mordecai nodded. “I needed that. How would you fancy a walk home? It can’t be more than a couple miles.”

  “Actually, I’ve got one more surprise for you,” Nancy replied. “But I wanted to see how you liked the show first. I got us backstage clearance.”

  Mordecai raised an eyebrow. “You know, I wouldn’t half mind meeting that Ramsey fellow.”

  # # #

  The dressing room for the comedy show wasn’t quite what Mordecai had envisioned. He had assumed it would be a bustle of production assistants and comedians half changed between stage attire and what they wore about town. What he hadn’t anticipated was a childcare center. The comedians were in the anticipated state of dishabille, but the rest was a mass of yowling children and the wives and husbands trying to wrangle them.

  “You must be the Browns,” Chuck Ramsey greeted them, sticking a hand out for Mort to shake. He had removed his suit coat and tie, and his brow glistened with sweat from standing under the house lights for an hour. “Wizards, I hear. I always wondered what sort of nutter paid extra to meet me. Guess now I know.”

  Mordecai couldn’t take offense with Chuck’s rough assessment. In truth, he had always found that he and his fellow wizards were proper nutters. “I’m Mordecai, but anyone without a stick up his ass calls me Mort. This is my wife, Nancy.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Chuck said. He twisted around and checked over his shoulder in the dressing room mirror. “Mort.” He winked at Nancy, who giggled. Mordecai couldn’t even fault the man’s flirtation—he was a showman, after all. It came with the territory. “This is my wife, Becky. My two youngest, Mike and Rhiannon. My oldest is around here somewhere, too.”

  “Hi!” a voice caught Mordecai’s attention from behind. “My name’s Bradley Carlin Ramsey. Pleased to meet you, Mort.” The boy was eleven, possibly twelve years old, with an unruly mop of hair and bright green eyes that look like they were aimed at something. Most children had eyes that wandered—even his own were prone to inattention—and few gave a thought to looking square at an adult. The boy stuck a hand out in imitation of his father. The young Ramsey gritted his teeth as he squeezed, but it was a boy’s handshake, however much he tried.

  Mordecai gave the boy a fearsome mock scowl. “Shouldn’t that be Mr. Brown?”

  The boy shook his head. “I don’t have a stick up my…” The boy glanced to his mother, whose face bore a more threatening scowl. “…bum.”

  Mordecai tousled the boy’s hair and turned his attention back to the father. “So, what gets a man into comedy?” Mordecai asked. He eyed the backstage setup critically. “Doesn’t look like it’s a path to riches.”

  “Mort!” Nancy exclaimed.

  Chuck laughed. “Don’t worry, Nancy. Gotta have a thick skin in this business. Besides, Mort’s right. It keeps fuel in the engines and food on the table. All you need really. I get to set my own hours and captain my own ship… see the galaxy on my own terms. You can join the navy and see the before-and-after from a bomber’s window, but I like my way better. Plus, I can have my family along.”

  “You own your own ship?” Mordecai asked. His opinion of the man rose. “Must make things easier for your line of work.”

  “Can’t break even these days paying other people to fly you around planet to planet, gig to gig,” Chuck replied. “Just not enough money in it. Worst I gotta pay now is fuel costs and star-drive repairs. Damn things break down every five drops or so.”

  “Magic and science shouldn’t mix,” Mordecai replied. “Those things are fundamentally flawed. Constantly at odds. There’s a whole legion of drooling half-wizards employed in fixing them. That ought to tell folks all they need to know.”

  “Mort, don’t go on one of your tirades,” Nancy scolded him.

  Chuck waved a lazy hand. “Naw, let him go. Comedians are the philosophers of their time. Meeting people from all walks of life and getting snips of the galaxy through their eyes, that’s what it’s all about. Maybe one day I’ll do a star-drive mechanic bit.”

  “You’re… going to make a comedy skit based on me? On what I just said?” Mordecai asked. He turned to Nancy. “We didn’t agree to any of that, did we?”

  “Woah, woah, big guy,” Chuck said, holding up his hands. He grabbed a bottle from the dressing room table and popped it open. “You don’t want to be in a joke, fine. Can I interest you in a bottle of Chateau Noir, ‘40?”

  Mordecai eyed the bottle. “I assume that’s this year’s vintage and not some number of hundreds of years old.”

  Chuck grinned. “Stuff’s not even old enough to walk.”

  “Got any beer?” Mordecai asked.

  “I’ll have glass,” Nancy replied politely.

  “Becky
, we got anything like a glass?” Chuck asked over his shoulder.

  “Spill-proofs for Rhiannon,” Becky suggested.

  Chuck dug into a cooler and tossed Mordecai an Earth’s Preferred, the cheapest dishwater suds the planet exported.

  “I didn’t even know they sold this stuff on Earth,” Mordecai said.

  “They don’t, far as I know,” Chuck replied. “We always pick up extra when we’re heading for Earth.” He took a second can for himself.

  “This is lovely,” Nancy said, sipping newborn wine from a bright red plastic cup with a molded-in straw. She forced a smile.

  Chuck shrugged. “Nothin’s fancy in this life,” Chuck said. “But I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I scrape by, raise my own kids, and don’t have anyone looking over my shoulder all the time.”

  “You have quite the interesting life,” Nancy said, and Mordecai knew she was saying it just to be nice. For all the rough edges though, Mordecai could see the appeal.

  # # #

  Morning had neither crept up, nor sprung upon him, but Mordecai was awake before the dawn. Nancy still clung to her slumber, wrung out to exhaustion the night before by their invigorating walk home in the small hours and the lovemaking that followed. The house was quiet with the children away at their grandparents’. Too quiet. This wasn’t how he wanted to remember it. He wanted to bump into Cedric’s blocks levitating in the hall, or catch Cassandra trying to curdle the milk in his cereal without him noticing.

  “What’s wrong, grumpyface?” Nancy mumbled half into her pillow. She had one heavy-lidded eye focused on him.

  It was time. The darkened hours alone with his thoughts had assembled the disparate pieces of a plan that had floated within the twisted halls of his mind. He had to tell Nancy. “I have to go,” he said.

  “Go where? It’s Saturday, Mort,” Nancy replied. “Sleep in.”

  “I’m not going to find that book,” Mordecai replied. “Neither is Wenling.”

  “Hmm?”

  He threw off the blankets and stood. Warmth from the magically heated oak floor seeped into his cold feet, soothing them as he walked to the bureau. “Last night was wonderful, but I can’t afford to lose more time. Those three days were a reprieve, a farewell.”

  “Mort, you’re scaring me,” Nancy said, sitting up in bed and pulling the blanket to cover herself.

  “I’m sorry,” Mordecai replied. “But you might need to be, at least for a little while. But be scared for me, not yourself. After I’ve left, go stay with my parents until things cool down. My father won’t let anything happen to you or the kids. You’re innocent in all of this.”

  “You lost a book,” Nancy said. “Even if it never gets found, what’s the worst they’re going to do, make you resign? You’re over—”

  “It was me,” Mordecai snapped. “Everyone who’s ever held my post sticks their nose in the forbidden texts once in a while. It’s no big deal. Builds character, resisting those nasty old words left by dead wizards of old. But this one got to me. I read every word of it, and it still haunts me. I burned it.”

  “You didn’t…”

  “I’ve covered my tracks. Fudged a few records. I thought I might get past the book census, but those buggers under Kramer were thorough. I don’t know how long I have before the Convocation figures it out, but if I’m here when they do, I’m done for.” Mordecai stuffed garment after garment into a knapsack, long after it should have been stuffed to overflowing.

  “This is crazy, Mort. Go see your father. There’s no need for this to get blown out of proportion.”

  “My father?” Mordecai scoffed. “The great Alastair The Brown, defend a book-burner? Only three copies of that book ever existed, and the other two are lost. I’ve destroyed priceless history, and the only thing that might stop them reducing me to cinders is the fact that it carved its wicked words into my mind. I might be the last copy out there.”

  “What book was this, anyway?”

  “I won’t speak its title aloud. The less you know, the better.” Mordecai scanned along his bookshelves, picking out a selection to shove into the pack with the rest of his travel supplies.

  “So you’re going to run away?” Nancy demanded, letting go of the blanket and folding her arms. “Abandon me and the children? Think this through, Mordecai The Brown.”

  “I have,” Mordecai replied. “I was up all last night and for weeks since the census was announced. I’ve wondered what I’d do ever since I put that book to the flame. You had no part in this. You and the children will live with the shame of what I’ve done, and I’m sorry for that. But life will go on.”

  “And what am I supposed to tell Cedric and Cassie?” she asked. “That their father is a criminal on the run? How will they face up to their mistakes if you don’t?”

  “Well, if anyone is ever after them to carve the eyes out of their skull to see what they’ve seen, I won’t hold it against them if they tuck tail and run,” Mordecai replied. He took his best staff made from ancient oak—from the days when Earthwood was still legal—and packed it away, along with his pendant of office.

  “Good god, Mort. Really?”

  “If I’m lucky, they wouldn’t kill me in the process,” Mordecai replied. He snorted. “Lucky…”

  “But where will you go?” Nancy asked.

  “If I told you, you’d only have to worry about letting it slip. There’ll be hell enough to pay when you don’t run straight to Bertram and tell him everything I’ve just said to you, but that I think my father can protect you from.”

  “How long will you be on the run?”

  “I’ll look for another copy of the tome,” Mordecai said. It was a lie, but one Nancy needed to hear. He could have written the book from memory if he chose, but there was no way he could bring himself to recreate it. No, if he were to look for the other two copies, it would be to burn them as well. “If I can replace it, maybe I can gain a reprieve. Or maybe Bertram’s successor won’t be such a hard-ass, and I can get clemency. Until then though? I’ll keep moving.”

  # # #

  Nancy stood at the doorway as Mordecai crept into Cassandra’s room. The soft glow of conjured fireflies kept the worst of the darkness at bay. She had been afraid of the dark once, and Mordecai had created them to make her feel safe. There had been hundreds at first, but night by night, Mordecai had reduced the fireflies in number until only a handful remained and Cassandra no longer feared the night. For her last birthday, she had asked for them back because they were pretty. As Mordecai navigated an obstacle course of scattered toys, he was thankful that he had obliged her.

  He hadn’t known Nancy at that age—they had met while both attended Oxford—but he had seen old pictures of her, and Cassandra was her time-lost twin, separated by a mere twenty-four years. His daughter slept heavily, worn ragged by a day spent horseback riding with her cousins. Touseled hair lay splayed across her pillow. A bruise darkened one cheek where Cedric had struck her with one of his alphabet blocks. Mordecai smiled—the simple, innocent dangers of childhood.

  Without a word, he bent over the sleeping Cassandra and brushed the hair from her face. She stirred and rolled onto her side, but didn’t wake. Mordecai planted a gentle kiss on her forehead. He whispered, too softly for Nancy to hear him from the doorway. “My little angel. Mommy’s going to need you to be strong and brave. Just remember I love you, and want nothing more than for you to be happy and safe.”

  He kissed her once again, and added a kiss for Nancy on his way out the door. By the light of the fireflies, he could see the wet streaks down her cheeks.

  Cedric’s room was simpler, kept tidy by the nanny. An arcane orb lit overhead at a gesture from Mordecai. The boy had outgrown his crib, but still slept in a tiny bed, low to the floor. Mordecai knelt beside his son’s sleeping form. The blankets were thrown aside, and the sheets tangled themselves around Cedric’s legs; even in sleep the active lad couldn’t keep still for long. Family stories said that Mordecai had been the same way a
t that age.

  Same as he had done with Cassandra, Mordecai kissed Cedric on the forehead. But he was no sleeping dragon like his sister; he was a watchdog. In an instant, Cedric’s eyes were open. “What is it, Daddy?”

  Mordecai swallowed past the lump in his throat. “I have to go away for a while, Ceddie. You’ll have to be the man of the house while I’m gone.”

  Cedric rubbed one eye with his fist. “When are you coming back?”

  “Not for a long time,” Mordecai said. “But every time you ask how long, or even think to wonder, I’ll be gone a little longer. Can you hold your tongue and still your thoughts about something you can’t change?” It was a horrible thing to ask of a four-year-old. But Nancy would go mad with worry if persistent little Cedric badgered her about him.

  “Yes, Daddy,” Cedric replied. Despite the yawn in his voice, and despite his tender age, Mordecai knew he would remember. Cedric was brighter than fire, even laying aside fatherly bias.

  “Good boy,” Mort said, stroking his head. “Now go back to sleep. Tomorrow is a big day.”

  Cedric smiled sleepily. “Every day is a big day.” Mordecai had taught him that one. But this time it was more true than usual. Tomorrow would be the day that Cedric lost his father. There was never any guarantee that a big day was a good one. It hurt in the pit of his stomach to know what was coming for the boy.

  As soon as the door shut, Nancy collapsed against his chest, sobbing quietly. Mordecai just held her there, waiting. There were words brewing, he could tell. Best to let them steep until they were ready.

  “Stay,” Nancy said, her voice trembling.

  “I wish I—”

  “You can,” she said. From within his embrace, she looked into his eyes, craning her neck as he towered over her. “You can beat this. You’ve got friends, connections. It’ll be ugly, but—”

  “No,” Mordecai said. “I have nothing… nothing but a family I need to keep safe from this business. Those friends, those political allies of convenience? The wind has changed, and their sails are already set for it. Lie to the children, or trust them with the truth. You’ll can judge which will be better for them, and I’ve got no right to a say. Just… never let them forget that I love them.”