The Nuclear Druid

by Felix R. Savage

  Dhjerga’s face reddened. “What can I do that those big armored bastards can’t?”

  Colm observed that the surviving copies of Janz were leaving the fight as the Marines relieved them. They limped down the hill and flung themselves face-first into the stream that flowed between the village and the fields, drinking greedily. Dhjerga was conserving them, now that there would never be any more.

  It was up to Colm now. He didn’t want to get killed on the very point of going home, but he had to make sure they won. He left the Ghosts and ran up the hill, zigzagging between the dead and dying. On top of the ridge, the battle raged around the wind turbines. Colm took cover behind some bushes.

  The Marines’ combis were simply mowing the khaki soldiers down. Well-placed grenades vaporized a dozen at a time, spraying flesh shrapnel over the hillside. Meanwhile the Ghosts’ bullets bounced harmlessly off the Marines’ battlesuits. It would have been a grotesquely unequal fight, except for the same factor that had often defeated the Marines on human colony worlds: the fuel cells in their own battlesuits. New khaki soldiers spawned on their backs and shoulders, driving them to the ground with the sheer weight of their bodies.

  Colm saw that he was going to have to do something more. He was now close enough to the wind turbines to feel the esthesia heat from the generators in the tops of their trunks.

  Desperately, he turned out his pockets. He had nothing useful except one of the thongs the Ghosts used as bootlaces. That might do. Fumbling in his haste, he knotted it into a loop, slipped it over his pinky fingers and thumbs, and began to weave a cat’s cradle.

  Over. Under. Through and let go.

  His father used to be able to make all sorts of designs with cat’s cradles. Everything from the Eiffel tower to an owl to the golden arches of McDonald’s. That was when they were driving back from Edinburgh, Colm and Bridget hungry enough to eat a wolf, and miracle of miracles, there was a McDonald’s at the next rest area.

  But Colm wasn’t trying to conjure burgers.

  Over. Under.

  In a trance of concentration, he wove the thong into a jagged bolt of lightning.

  Pulled it taut—

  —and lightning answered his call.

  Static electric discharges from Atletis’s upper atmosphere arced down like whips out of the clear sky. They struck the wind turbines one after the other, with bangs so loud that Colm was left opening and shutting his mouth, convinced he had lost his hearing.

  One of the wind turbines toppled sideways and crash onto the corpse-littered hillside.

  Where it had stood, a dimly lit hole gaped in the top of the ridge.

  “Shit,” Colm breathed. “That’s why we couldn’t see the Magus’s headquarters from the air!” It was underground.

  The Marines rallied. As one man, they charged into the pit.

  Axel, it appeared, also wanted revenge on the nemesis of Earth.

  *

  Colm brought up the rear of the Marines’ charge. Lady Terrious joined him. They picked their way down a wooden staircase, cracked by the weight of the battlesuits, to a long, not-quite-straight tunnel which sloped gently down.

  Colm felt an unpleasant shock of recognition. Red and yellow stripes wound horizontally along the lumpy walls. Stalactites hung from the ceiling, dripping. The gray, indeterminate lighting seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

  “It can’t be,” he muttered. “A sentrienza mound?”

  Midway down the corridor, the Marines were exchanging fire with a fresh horde of khaki soldiers.

  “So this is the Magus’s headquarters,” Lady Terrious breathed. “It is not as I remember it!”

  “It’s a faerie mound,” Colm said. He ventured into the middle of the corridor to see if he could see around the curve to its end. His boots squelched on squashed land urchins.

  Lady Terrious gave him a curious stare. “Faeries? There are no faeries on Atletis. That I can personally attest to—beware!” Stray bullets were zinging past them.

  Colm lunged back into cover. Too late. Pain seared his right hand. He sat in a heap at the foot of the wall, staring in disbelief at the bloody mess on the end of his arm. A bullet had gone through his right palm and out the other side. Bone poked out of the pulpy red exit wound. He started screaming.

  Lady Terrious knelt at his side. Bandages magically appeared in her lap. She bit a length off. “You may be a powerful mage, but you are also an idiot.”

  Colm sealed his lips to stop any more screams from getting out. Below them, the battle raged on.

  CHAPTER 29

  THE VIENNA HAD DROPPED anchor in the harbor at Haravalding, one of the islands on the equator of Juradis, to sell fish meal and krill oil and take on fresh water. The factory ship did not require refuelling—it was nuclear-powered, and only needed an overhaul every century or so. Gilliam Tripsilion Nulth tore himself away from his work in the planetary administration center and went out to the ship to see his friends Sully and Bella Tan.

  Bouncing across the harbor in a water taxi, he noted a lean human male waving to him from another taxi. They reached the Vienna at the same time. It was Admiral Hyland. “What a pleasure,” Gil said warily. He had worked closely with the Rat during the active phase of the CHEMICAL MAGE project, but they had not seen much of each other since, as each had his own duties and they were rarely on the same planet.

  “Skiving off?” the Rat said with a hollow laugh.

  “I have a capable staff,” Gil said defensively.

  “Just joking,” the Rat said. “I know you’re the hardest-working queazel on Juradis.” They climbed the companionway to the foredeck. The ship boomed gently under their feet as unseen supply vessels tied up and cast off. Admiral Hyland strode into the sunlight. “Sully! Long time no see. Where are those girls of yours?”

  Sully Tan, wearing a salt-stained wifebeater and shorts, visibly braced himself, determined not to show deference to his former commanding officer. “Down below, helping. Crystal says she wants to be a ship’s captain when she grows up.” His smile was strained. “It’s crazy when you think about it. We were born on Mars. Now we’re fishermen in the Betelgeuse system. I feel like this should be our happily ever after. The girls think it is. Are we going to have to run again?”

  The admiral mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “I’m doing everything in my power to ensure that you don’t have to run again, Sully.”

  Gil felt his carefree day off slipping away. Were they no longer even to have the luxury of pretending for a little while that everything was all right? “Hello, Sully,” he said. “I have brought some presents for Bella and the children.” He rose onto his hind legs and held out a bag. It contained cimes from the north pole, some little toys, and a drawing that he had done himself.

  “Oh! Gil! Didn’t see you down there …” Sully took the bag, looked inside, and grinned. “Cimes mean margaritas. Hang out while I make them.”

  As he vanished, the Rat called after him, “The queen?”

  “I’ll try and get her to come down,” Sully called back, with an edge of anger.

  “It cannot be easy for them,” Gil said delicately, “playing host to Emnl ki-Sharongat.”

  Since Meg and Axel fled the system, the sentrienza princess had been living on the Vienna. Bereft of her Walking Guns, she was no longer a threat but only an inconvenience.

  “She may still be useful,” the Rat said. “That’s why I’m here, in fact.” He and Gil sat on deck chairs in the shade of the ship’s superstructure. The Rat took out a computer and switched on its holo display. The Betelgeuse system sprang into life above the table, not to scale, surrounded by a selection of the nearest stars. The Rat drew a red aurora with his forefinger around Rigel, where they expected the next wave of sentrienza reprisals would come from.

  There were six deck chairs around the table. Only two of them were occupied, by the Rat and Gil. Then, suddenly, a third person was sitting at the table.

  Gil and the Rat jumped.

  “
I remember this ship,” Dhjerga Lizp said. “Hello, queazel. You get around, don’t you?”

  Gil gripped the edge of his deck chair tightly in his claws, ready to spring. But the Ghost just sagged, smiling dazedly. He wore a baggy forest-green uniform. His boots were very muddy. He had a scruffy beard.

  The Rat found his voice. “Who—what are you?”

  “You ordered Colm Mackenzie to go and ask us for help. He did; so here I am. I forgot how hot it is here.” Dhjerga undid the top buttons of his shirt and fanned air inside it. At that moment Sully came back from the bridge, followed by Bella and the girls, with a tray of margaritas.

  “Dhjerga!” Crystal squealed. She ran at Dhjerga and hugged him. Chuckling, the Ghost rose, picked her up, and swung her around.

  “You’ve got about one more year of that before you get too heavy,” he said.

  “Me, me!” Zainab begged.

  Gil relaxed. Dhjerga Lizp was a violent and dangerously ignorant man. But at this point he was starting to feel like a friend.

  Not, evidently, to the Rat, who snapped, “Where’s Lieutenant Mackenzie?”

  “He took a bullet,” Dhjerga said, sitting down with Zainab on his knees. Gil’s heart skipped a beat. “Only through the hand.” He helped himself to one of the margaritas.

  “And what, exactly, do you think you can do for us?” the Rat said. Hostility tinged his voice. Gil cringed. These two men were on opposite sides of a titanic clash that had left millions of humans dead. Bygones could not be bygones, while the Ghost army still threatened Earth.

  “That’s what I’m hoping you’ll tell me,” Dhjerga said, wiping his lips.

  A high voice buzzed, “There is nothing you can do to stem the vengeance of the Gray Emperor. Nothing!”

  They all looked up. Emnl ki-Sharongat was leaning out of a porthole in the superstructure.

  “The Rigel fleet will arrive here in less than one Earth year. That is how long you have to live. Enjoy it!”

  Sully grimaced. “She’s been like this,” he said in a low voice.

  The porthole slammed, not before Gil heard a flurry of shrill yelps from Emnl. The sentrienza girl was crying.

  “A hostage?” Dhjerga said.

  “To meet the definition of hostage, she’d have to be useful,” the Rat said. “I was going to ask her about the fleet—ship numbers, weights, armaments, and so forth. I thought she might have changed her mind about talking to us It’s her own life on the line, too, after all.” He shut his computer with a snap, extinguishing the holo stars. “I could strangle Meg Smythe for leaving us in the lurch like this.”

  Bella Tan said, “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same for your child, sir.”

  “I haven’t got any.”

  “Nor have I,” Gil said. “But I see no value in rehashing what has been done, and cannot be undone.” His gaze rested for a moment on his drawing of Uzzizriat, which lay unheeded on the table. The Rat had put his drink down on it. He was guilty of what he denounced: he regularly spent hours dwelling, with pen in claw, on the past—on a planet which had been destroyed centuries ago. Sometimes when he was drawing he almost felt as if he were really there, perching on a frowsty crag above a silver waterfall. But Uzzizriat was no more. All that remained was to save Juradis.

  Though he wanted to ask Dhjerga about Colm, he refrained from doing it in the presence of the admiral. “Rather,” he said, “we should discuss Mr. Lizp’s offer to help us defend this system.”

  “That’s it,” Dhjerga said. “The queazel’s the most practical of you all. What’re we talking about, then? Spaceships? Lots of them?”

  “Yes,” the Rat said.

  “Hmm.” Dhjerga’s gaze turned inward. Gil sighed to himself. The Rat’s skepticism was well-founded, he thought. The Ghosts might be unstoppable on a planetary surface, but they were helpless against spaceships. Dhjerga just didn’t want to admit it. “I’d have to think about that,” he said evasively. “These things need planning. But there’s still time, you said?”

  “A few months to a year.”

  “Right. In that case, maybe I could trouble you for some supplies in the meantime?”

  The Rat let out a loud bark of laughter. “You slaughter millions of our people and then come asking for supplies. Good God!”

  “We’re fighting a war of our own, you know,” Dhjerga said.

  “Really? I had no idea.” The Rat slotted his computer back into his bag and rose. “I’m afraid I can’t stay any longer. I came to talk to the queen, but it looks like that’s a non-starter.”

  Gil accompanied him to the head of the gangway. He obscurely felt that he should apologize. “Do come and visit me at Kevesingod.”

  “Make sure that bastard leaves. And don’t give him anything. Especially not weapons, for God’s sake.”

  When Gil returned to the foredeck, Sully was showing Dhjerga a GIMP crew-served machine-gun.

  “We’ve had this on board since the uprising,” he said. “You’re welcome to it. Not as if we’ll be able to use it to shoot down the sentrienza fleet.”

  The girls were playing with a piglet. It was skidding all over the deck and squealing. Bella held out the toys Gil had brought and shouted to them, “Why don’t you play with these?”

  “We’re calling him Pinky,” Zainab screeched back.

  Bella said to Gil, “Sorry. Nothing can compete with animals, apparently. Last time he brought them a rat.”

  Gil dipped his head in a deprecating gesture, pretending not to feel hurt that his gifts had been rejected. The margaritas were all gone, too. “Is Sully giving him that machine-gun?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “And explosives,” Dhjerga said to Sully. “Colm specifically asked for explosives. What do you call them, shaped charges?”

  “We might have some of those in the hold,” Sully said, rubbing his hands.

  Gil followed them down the cool, echoey companionway. Below decks, the pungent smell of fish pervaded the ship. They climbed down to the cargo deck, where Sully unearthed some crates of explosive, detonators, and fuses. “All yours. Hope it helps.” He screwed up his stolid, good-natured face. “I hate to think of Colm marooned out there—wherever there is.”

  “He’s not alone,” Dhjerga said with a mysterious smile. “He’s with us.”

  Gil could restrain himself no longer. “Is Colm all right?” He swayed on his hind legs. “You said he was wounded …”

  They were crossing the reactor deck on their way back upstairs, walking in single file along a catwalk, Sully in the lead. Below, the reactor’s cooling system rumbled. Dhjerga stopped and looked down at the tangle of machinery. “Is that a thorium reactor?” he said.

  “Yeah,” Sully said, raising his eyebrows. “You know about reactors?”

  “I know someone who does.”

  He had to be talking about Colm. Gil stretched himself to his fullest height, so that Dhjerga could no longer ignore him. “Colm?” he persisted. “When is he coming back? Last time you were here, you said he was building a spaceship—”

  Dhjerga looked down at Gil. “Yeah, he did. It’s a beauty.”

  The queazel’s heart filled with anticipation. “Then, he will be returning soon?”

  Dhjerga reached out and rubbed Gil’s head roughly behind the ears. Gil recoiled indignantly. “You might have to get used to the idea that he won’t be coming back.”

  “What?”

  “The place for a mage is with other mages. The place for a warrior is a battle.”

  “Colm, a warrior?” Sully snorted. “He’s just a spaceship mechanic! I might call him a pilot if I was feeling generous ...”

  Gil was frightened. He no longer trusted Dhjerga. “He must come back! I miss him,” he said, startling himself. At the same time he wondered whether he should wish for Colm’s return. Everyone in Betelgeuse system was living under a death sentence.

  “I’ll pass it on,” Dhjerga said.

  He suddenly vaulted over the rail of the
catwalk, and disappeared. He reappeared a second later, standing beside the reactor.

  “Tell your wife thanks,” he yelled up to Sully. “I’ll be back for another of those margaritas.”

  The air shimmered.

  Seconds later, he was gone.

  And so was the reactor.

  A shiny square on the deck indicated where it had stood. Water dribbled from the end of a neatly severed coolant feed pipe.

  “Fuck,” Sully swore. “My fucking reactor! Goddammit!”

  Gil sank back onto all his legs. “I think he was telling the truth,” he said limply. “We will never see Colm again.”

  CHAPTER 30

  MEG STOOD IN THE cockpit of the Eagle, absently bouncing Nicky on her hip.

  Axel sat in the pilot’s couch. One of the screens in front of him counted down the seconds to their exit from the zero-gravity field.

  The numbers stopped whirling. Sensors poured information onto the screens that had been blank for so many months. “Hello, Sol,” Meg murmured, waving at the composite optical feed.

  Nicky did not notice that anything had changed. He was an interstellar baby, born in the zero-gravity field.

  “There’s your home, sweetheart,” Meg said to him. “Look. Third planet from the sun.”

  They had emerged at the inner edge of the asteroid belt, 50 degrees out of the plane of the ecliptic. This was the closest available zero-gravity point, but it would take them another couple of weeks to reach Earth.

  Axel stretched and sighed. “Well, I guess my fighting days are over.”

  “Fingers crossed,” Meg said. It worried her how tired and sort of faded he looked, although the Shihoka’s diagnostic robot said there was nothing wrong with him.

  This was the first time in six months she’d seen him out of his battlesuit, except when he took it off to grab a quick bite of food or a few hours’ sleep. The rest of the time he had to be ‘on call’ in case Colm needed him. Meg often wished Colm would pay them another visit so she could tell him what she thought of his goddamn using ways. But he never had, and now he could not. At least, not until they reached Earth.