by Scott Baron
The pale man came to an abrupt stop.
“What is it?” Leila asked. “Are there more tracks?”
“No,” he said, scanning the empty ground. “Quite the opposite.”
“What do you mean?” Rika asked.
“What I mean is, the tracks end here.”
“But that doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it makes perfect sense,” he said. “There was a craft here. One powered by Drook magic and large enough to allow these men and their cargo to easily enter. That would be a sizable vessel.”
“So they have a ship?”
“Yes. And this area is still under surveillance. Which means their entire ship is cloaked by a shimmer,” he said.
“That’s not good, Bob.”
“No, it is not. I will work on a counter-shimmer spell, now that I have an idea of the basic variety they are using. It may or may not work, but even a glimpse of them might give us an edge. The power used to sustain it must be quite substantial, but if I can disrupt it for just a moment, the spell I have in mind might work. I need more information first, though.”
He turned to Charlie. “We should go see the other locations, though I fear we will find the same results. Someone has a powerful ship. One that we cannot see.”
Chapter Sixteen
The flight back home was the highlight of the day for Eddie’s exhausted passengers. They’d made arcing hops through the atmosphere over and over, visiting each and every one of the five cities where abductions had been documented, the disparate points spanning the globe. It was a grind, and one and all longed for the warm comfort of their own bed.
Eddie took Ripley home first, as he always did. Say what you will about his occasionally over-exuberant nature, he was a loyal friend. Apparently, he had been something of a difficult mind to birth. The new system of bringing AIs online, letting them grow more naturally, rather than following a strictly regimented course, was imperfect at best.
The end result, however, was a group of young AIs who, if they’d been fortunate enough to pass the late-stage psych evaluations, would be installed into a ship. Those who developed any one of a variety of deficits or personality flaws would not be so fortunate, dedicated instead to monitoring terrestrial or lunar systems, or even in the worst cases, overseeing waste disposal machinery.
For obvious reasons, flight installation was a goal all of them shared.
Fortunately for Eddie, his precocious young friend happened to be very close to some of the most powerful AIs the planet had ever seen, and when they asked if she might take a look at his “unusual” quirks and talk to him the way only a teenager can, she was happy to lend a hand.
Things had gone better than either anticipated, and what began as a job, wound up becoming a rather unexpected friendship. Ripley was a handful, no doubt, but together, they found a delightful synergy. Pilot and ship. Pals. Working through the training together––and talking a fair amount of trash––Eddie was finally ready for his flight tests.
He was put through his paces, and regardless of Ripley’s connections, no leniency or favoritism was imparted. At the end of the demanding test cycle, he passed, and by a good margin to boot. Eddie was officially installed in his ship and tasked with assisting Ripley for his first active year. After that, he would be able to choose if he wanted to stay with her or venture out on his own.
They were in week seven.
“Okay, I’m gonna pass the hell out,” Ripley said to her new friends as she disembarked.
“Don’t forget to eat something,” Leila called after her. “It’s going to be another busy day tomorrow. You want me to fix you something?”
“You know there’s always a ton of food in my house. Trust me, I’ll have plenty to eat.”
“Of course. Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” Leila said, blushing slightly. Of course she knew there was food in the girl’s house. Her father was something of a whiz in the kitchen, and there she had gone, accidentally reminding her of her frozen parents with an offhand comment.
Eddie next made the quick hop to Charlie and Leila’s home before setting a course for Downtown and Rika’s loft.
“You sure you don’t want me to drop you at your place?” Eddie had asked Bawb when he climbed out with Charlie and Leila.
“Yes, I am sure. But thank you for the offer, Eddie. However, this evening, I think a little walk before going home would do me good.”
Charlie winced inside. He shared a look with Leila. Their poor friend was going home, and Hunze was still there, frozen in stasis.
“Bawb, are you sure you don’t want to take one of the guest rooms? It’s no trouble, and we could all have breakfast in the morning,” Leila offered,
Charlie got the hint. “Yeah, we’d love to have you stay. And I’ll be a sport and even break out the good coffee in the morning.”
Bawb cracked a pained smile at his friends’ efforts. They’d all become exceptionally close over their time together, but Charlie and he had developed a particularly unusual bond. The man with Zomoki blood in his veins––one who would have been a valuable prize for the power-absorbing Wampeh––had become a closer friend than anyone in his adult life.
Their intentions were appreciated, and he felt the love they offered, but on this night, he had plans of his own.
“I thank you for the offer. But I am feeling that a walk along the shores might be a welcome respite from the troubles of our day. I have always found the ocean helps me think. And even on this world, the sound of the waves and smell of salt in the air is familiar.”
“Okay, man. Whatever you need to do. But I’m serious, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Thank you, Charlie. And you, Leila. My king and queen are most gracious,” he said with a wry little smile that told them that, while he was hurting, he would be okay.
“All right. We’ll see you at command in the morning. Sleep well,” Charlie said.
“And you, my friend.”
Bawb was true to his word, and rather than taking the direct route back to his and Hunze’s home along the bluffs of Malibu, he instead descended to the shore below. Waves broke against the nearby rocks, the bioluminescence in the water making a slight glow from the agitation. Farther out, the sliver of moonlight reflected across the rippling ocean.
The assassin from another world breathed in deeply, his senses open wide as his lungs absorbed the clean, restorative air. He was in pain, yes. But he was nevertheless able to appreciate the beauty that had somehow inserted itself into his life.
“I wonder if the others would expel me from the order,” the assassin mused as he began the walk home, sticking to the damp shore at the water’s edge.
Perhaps they would banish him from the Wampeh Ghalian. But given his new life, he couldn’t help wonder if that would be such a bad thing.
His stroll lasted a good half hour before he ascended the far end of the bluffs and retraced his way along the dark roadway to the home he and his love had taken as their own. She would be there, he knew. Silent. Still. Frozen in place, exactly where he had left her, lying in bed, softly slumbering.
It would be hard, staying in the same house as her still shape. But it was Malibu, and the property had many rooms, should he want to sleep in one of them. But she was his, as he was hers, and every night he lay at her side. Her protector.
But he had failed. Somehow, he had been unable to keep her safe.
He crossed the perimeter of his property, the first of several alarm spells tickling his senses as he passed. Many layers of magic protected the residence, increasing in power––and deadliness––the closer in you went. Hunze had felt it was overkill, but he hadn’t lived this long by being complacent. Besides, she and their friends were explicitly safe from the spells’ wrath, a subtle modification added as he cast them.
Bawb placed his hand on the doorknob and was about to open it when something off caught his eye. There, on the doorframe, was a tiny fleck of fresh blood.
Hi
s fourth layer of spells––those that protected the building itself––were far more violent than the ones guarding the perimeter. And despite a good cleanup job, it seemed someone had tripped the outermost.
He reached out with his konus and tested the spells he had just passed, a horrible truth hitting him as he did. He had been distracted, worried about Hunze. And this was why his kind did not form attachments.
“These are not my spells,” he realized.
And in fact they were not. Someone had gone to great lengths to copy his work, but no matter how clever the fake, an artist always knows his own brushstrokes.
Bawb turned the knob, needing to get inside and gather his most powerful weapons to defend his home, and perhaps even his thin armor, lined with a portion of the powerful hair Hunze had gifted him. It was a good plan, but he realized it was already far too late for that. While the innermost rooms’ spells would keep Hunze safe with their exceptional violence, the intruders were within reach.
Quickly, he stepped back from the doorway and spun, knives flashing from his hidden sheaths as he dispatched three masked Tslavar mercenaries as their shimmer cloaks sloppily shifted aside to better allow them to strike out.
Despite the added speed they gained, it was poor strategy against the Geist, and he was simply faster. The dead men quickly fell, and the next two after them––despite keeping themselves properly hidden within their shimmers until the last second––followed their friends to the ground.
Still more attackers emerged, suddenly pummeling him with spells from all directions. He managed to land a hard kick to the ribs of one, toppling them over as at least a few of the ribs in their left side cracked. Another took Bawb’s hard elbow to the weak point in the neck, snapping it as the assassin had been trained to do without a second thought.
Bawb fought with the ferocity of a man cornered and knowing he could not possibly win. As such, he would be sure to take as many down with him as he could. But the onslaught was too great, and a series of stun spells landed with great force.
They want me alive, was the last thing he noted before slipping into darkness.
Even unconscious, the deadly assassin inspired fear. And with good reason. Those tasked with capturing him knew full well what a Wampeh Ghalian could do. Bawb’s inert body was rapidly stripped of both weapons and clothing, his captors ensuring he was not wearing any hidden device, or even a layer of Ootaki hair woven into an undershirt.
Trussed like so much wild game, he was hastily loaded onto a floating conveyance and hauled away, the bodies of the many he had slain carried along with them into the depths of the night.
Chapter Seventeen
“A stealth tech ship? This complicates things significantly,” Cal said. “And while we have adapted scans to better track the masking technologies of our worlds, this magic is an entirely novel manner of power use and device shielding.”
“Just think of it as plain old magic and it’ll be easier,” Charlie said, sipping a cup of coffee as he reclined on one of the command center’s comfortable couches, Leila curled up next to him, likewise nursing a steaming cup of caffeinated joy. “I had a hard time wrapping my head around it as well at first. But once you simply accept it as honest-to-God magic, it’s a lot easier.”
“Kind of how we were with the workings of your tech,” Leila added. “We all thought of it as tech-magic for the longest time. But once we arrived here, in the place, and time, where it powers everything, it became clear that we just had to accept it as how things work here.”
“You have all adapted quite well. It is an admirable flexibility you and your friends have demonstrated. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy transition,” Cal said.
“After months living here in this world without magic, it did somewhat ease our transition.”
“But that doesn’t exactly count, Leila. I mean, we were in medieval times, after all.”
“Regardless, you’ve learned the workings of this time and civilization quickly. It shows an impressive flexibility and quickness of mind.”
“Who has a quick mind?” Rika said, walking into the room, making a beeline for the coffee dispenser. “Not Charlie. You must be talking about Leila.”
“Hey!” Charlie objected.
The snarky pilot flashed an amused look at Leila. “Us girls gotta stick together, right?”
It was slow going for Leila, accepting this woman from Charlie’s past as part of their circle. She had tried to kill them, after all, and having been so recently under the thrall of Malalia Maktan’s magic, there was still a slight hesitancy to trust her.
Then there was the fact that despite Charlie being with her fully and completely, a history still existed between him and this other woman. Leila knew it was just friendship, but a little nagging awkwardness nevertheless reared its head from time to time. Fortunately, Charlie put any concerns to rest the moment they arose by simply being himself. Her man. Her king.
“Hey, gang,” Ripley grumbled, trudging into the room. “Why, again, are we meeting this early?”
“It’s ten a.m., Rip,” Charlie said.
“Yeah, like I said. Why so early?”
“Teenagers,” Rika said with a laugh. “Though, to be fair, I was quite a night owl too, until I became a pilot, that is. Then those late nights became a thing of the past, for the most part.”
“It’s my body clock,” the groggy teen replied. “I can’t help it if my natural sleep cycle doesn’t align with all of you weirdos.”
Rika filled a second cup of coffee and brought it over to the sleepy girl. “Here, it looks like you need this.”
“Thanks, Rika.”
“No problem.”
“So, we gonna get this shindig rolling?” Ripley asked, sipping the steaming beverage.
“Soon, Ripley. We are waiting on one more arrival.”
“Hey, weren’t you and Eddie going to give Bawb a lift?” Charlie asked.
“He didn’t show.”
“Did you go by his house?”
“Hey, the guy was kind of out of sorts, in case ya didn’t notice. I figured if he wants some alone time with his frozen lady, I totally get it. Give the dude some space.”
Charlie hated to admit it, but she was right. Bawb had put on a strong face and done an admirable job, but his distress at Hunze’s condition had to be constantly weighing on him. Hell, Charlie had only just recently gotten together with Leila, and he knew how bad he would feel if he were in those shoes.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he admitted. “Let’s get started without him. We’ll just fill him in when he gets here.”
“As you wish,” Cal said. “So, to begin with, I have some bad news. There have been more abductions observed. This time on this continent. Seattle and San Francisco, just last night.”
“Again? And in our part of the world? How did we not see them coming? Aren’t you guys on the lookout for things after we got all that intel yesterday?”
“We are refining our scanning. Ara was very helpful in devising methods to track these cloaked parties. She has an impressive intellect, being able to understand our technology so quickly despite being a space dragon.”
Charlie laughed. “Still kinda weird saying that, isn’t it?”
“A bit, perhaps,” Cal conceded. “In any case, we had extrapolated possible disturbance patterns and devised an experimental algorithm to track minuscule incidents that might combine to suggest the presence of one of these invisible vessels or its men.”
“And?”
“And we actually did encounter something in San Francisco. The AI there was recently installed––the original was destroyed in the war. She is a more modern design, and quite powerful, though I must admit, calling herself Fran was lacking creativity, in my opinion. In any case, Fran also possesses a new array of automated defenses, which she used to target what appeared to be nothing.”
“But there was something, wasn’t there?” Rika asked.
“Yes. The Chithiid that had been snatched wa
s not recovered, but she used a targeting algorithm to follow likely movements of cloaked foot troops. Instead of randomly firing, as some of the older systems did, she fired individual rounds. Not only did that keep collateral damage almost non-existent, but it also resulted in a response from the hidden attackers. Observe,” he said, flashing on a pair of the display monitors.
Images of the city on the bay flashed on screen. With the spell in place, it was eerily silent, not even the pigeons moving, but rather, laying where they fell. Then a few shots rang out. Triangulating in, walking the rounds closer to something.
A flurry of debris launched into the air, flung at the cannon, followed by a wave of power. Normally, that would have ended things, but this was not an AI who would easily give in. Instead, Fran brought multiple other defense cannons to bear––some from across the city––lobbing rounds in all manner of trajectories, pummeling her invisible quarry.
That certainly elicited a reaction, and the sheer power and speed of the counterattack took Charlie aback.
“Shit. I recognize that spell,” he said. “This is bad.”
“How bad?” Leila asked.
“Either someone has a very powerful slaap to cast those spells, or we have an emmik on Earth. Maybe even a visla.”
“So, this is a substantial adversary?” Cal asked.
“Oh, yes,” Charlie replied. “This does not bode well.”
The possibility of natural power users of that level being on the planet was a complication none of them had expected. Sure, they had encountered, and defeated, Malalia on Earth’s soil, but that was thousands of years in the past, and she had been blasted back to her own galaxy, and in that same time, no less. Malalia would have long become dust by now.
But some other powerful entity appeared to be interested in their world. And from what they’d already seen, a larger play than just snatching random people was in motion. But without more information, they had no idea what that might be. Charlie knew one thing, though. Whatever it was, it was undoubtedly not something good.
