by J. J. Green
“Thinking isn’t good enough. It’s vital that we blow all the fuel storage tanks at once. We’ll only get one chance. There are hundreds of Dirksen ships there. If we only cripple the station, we’ll have a cloud of bees on our tail.”
“Wasps.”
“What?”
“You mean wasps. Bees only sting once and die. What’s really scary is wasps. They’ll sting you over and over again. Or you could say hornets. They’re twice the size and ten times as mean.”
Stefan thumped the desk and yelled, “Stop trying to be clever. Do you think you can make a fool of me by failing to destroy the shipyard? Is that your plan?”
“There wouldn’t be a lot of sense in that, would there? Like you said, we’ll be in a much more dangerous position if we don’t make the Cast.”
“I’m warning you, Carina. If you have some trick you’re planning to pull, I’ll make you regret it for the rest of your long, agonizingly painful life.”
“I’ll bear it in mind.” She regretted not including the murder of Stefan in her escape plan. Maybe she could make an adjustment.
He sat down. “Is there anything you need to assist you in teaching the children?”
Carina’s eyebrows lifted at his uncharacteristically civil question. “Well it’s hard to teach when you have a gun aimed at your head. If we could lose the threat of imminent death that might help.”
“Out of the question. The guards stay.”
“Why? What do you think we would do? Like you said, it’s in our interests that we perform the Cast. And do you really think one woman and a bunch of kids could take over the entire Sherrerr flagship?”
Stefan’s flinty expression broke into a sly smile. “Not as stupid as you like to make out, are you? Neither am I, sadly for you. I repeat, the guards stay. Anything else?”
“The crew has been good at placing fuel canisters at the right distance from the ship. I don’t think there’s much else I can ask from them.”
“And you have plenty of elixir?”
“Yes. Where’s it from? I thought I would have to ask one of the children to make it for the lessons.”
“We have a plentiful supply aboard the ship. Your mother made it. And, no, I’m not going to tell you where it is.”
“Then, no. I can’t think of anything.”
“You know you only have thirty-five hours before the attack?”
“I’m aware of that, yes.”
“You need results, and soon. Or things won’t turn out well, especially for you.”
“Is that it?” Carina asked. He was right. She had little time left. Too little time to sit around while he threatened her.
“You can go.”
Carina rose and went to the door. A guard opened it. Before she went out, however, she turned to Stefan. “Mother’s sinking fast, you know. I don’t think she’s got long now.”
Stefan had already turned his attention to his interface screen. He didn’t look up. He only flicked his hand at her, gesturing that she leave. The guards escorted her away.
It had been too much to expect the brute to give a second thought to the woman he had held captive and tortured for fifteen years. And it wasn’t like her mother wanted to see him, but Carina couldn’t help but feel a deep despair over the situation. Her own feelings regarding her were too powerful to face right then, though she knew that one day she wouldn’t have a choice about it.
A line of troops were also in the corridor, heading toward them. Carina didn’t take a lot of notice. It seemed like the corridor was always full of soldiers on their way to exercises. Nightfall was packed with them to defend it from boarders and to board enemy ships.
Then she thought she heard someone say her name. She looked up and caught a glimpse of a familiar face. The next moment, the person she’d seen was past her but looking back, smiling, as she turned to stare.
It was Mandeville. The next second, he faced front and the troops marched away.
The sight of her former fellow soldier momentarily lifted her mood. She wondered what he thought she was doing aboard the ship and being escorted by two guards. He hadn’t seemed surprised to see her, as if he already knew she was being held captive. Did the Sherrerrs’ troops know about the mage powers of her family? Was it common knowledge? Or did only the officers know?
Carina realized that if the entire ship knew what they could do, they weren’t only at risk from Stefan and the other high-ranking Sherrerrs—the entire complement of women and men aboard might be interested in capturing them too.
Chapter Forty-Two
The officers wanted a dummy run. They wanted a demonstration that Carina and her sisters and brothers really could do what she’d promised. It made sense. The mage strike was a prominent step into their battle plan. It was probably the most important step. They needed an assurance, if not a guarantee, that the plan stood a reasonable chance of success. Carina wasn’t sure herself if they could do it.
A test site had been set up and drones sent out to record visuals of the result. The officers were back in the briefing room, and this time the children were there too. The room was filled with quiet conversations as everyone waited for tanks to be maneuvered into position. Carina spotted Calvaley, sitting at the top of the ranked seats, speaking with Tremoille.
The children still hadn’t succeeded in hitting the tanks with their Casts. Their problem was, the only feedback received during practice was a no-hit. All they knew was that the fuel tank they’d been aiming at hadn’t exploded. They didn’t know where their Cast had appeared, whether it had fallen short or gone too far or veered too far up, down, left, or right. So they didn’t know what corrections they had to make. Essentially, the mage children were shooting blind.
Carina couldn’t bother her mother about the problem. The poor woman was so ill she hardly seemed to notice anything anymore. Carina also couldn’t tell Stefan about it even if she could bring herself to voluntarily speak to the snake. He would only become furious and suspect that her failure was deliberate. And apart from the guards, her mother and Stefan were the only people she saw.
She began to regret her argument with Bryce. He’d meant well, and he couldn’t be expected to understand her position. Perhaps he’d even been correct when he’d said that not everyone would want to exploit her as soon as they found out about her abilities. Perhaps Nai Nai had been wrong after all and there were people she could trust with her secret. It wasn’t like she had a whole lot of friends.
Calvaley stood and addressed the room. “The test tanks are in position. Private Lin, you may proceed.”
“Do we have the coordinates?” she asked. A guard appeared, carrying an interface. He handed over the screen, which displayed six sets of figures.
“Six sites?” Carina exclaimed. “We can only make five Casts.”
“No,” Stefan said, “six. We received additional intel and we need you to do six. That shouldn’t be too much of a problem, should it?”
The children looked at her nervously.
“There are only five of us, Stefan. Five mages, five Casts. What do you expect me to do?”
“I’m sure you can handle it,” Stefan replied smugly. “I have complete faith in you.”
She would have to Cast Fire twice, simultaneously, at two different locations. Did Stefan know that was possible? It would make her job even harder, but she could probably do it. She had to do it if she wanted the other steps of her plan to fall into place.
Turning from Stefan, Carina asked Calvaley. “Can I say something, sir?”
“Go ahead, but don’t make a long introduction. We all have plenty else to do.”
“I didn’t want to give an introduction. I just wanted to say, these are very difficult conditions for my brothers and sisters. Being observed like this puts them under a lot of pressure, and that makes it hard for them to Cast.”
“We’re at war,” Stefan retorted. “What kind of conditions would you like? A tea party? A soiree?”
His response
drew some muted giggles from the audience.
“They’re children,” Carina said. “Your children, and they’re attempting something that’s extremely hard for them.”
“They’re mages, and they’re here to do a job,” Stefan said.
“Stop it,” Calvaley interrupted. “Get started, Lin. Your words have been noted.”
Carina took a breath and turned to her sisters and brothers, who were seated on the floor in a square, facing each other. A jug of elixir and five beakers sat at their center. She showed them the interface and assigned a different set of coordinates to each child.
“There’s no need to hurry,” she told them. “It doesn’t matter whether we hit them all at once. We only need to try to hit them, okay?”
“Carina,” Oriana said quietly, “I don’t think I can do it.”
Oriana knew that she was the weakest at Casting of all of them. Her ordinary Casts were often feeble, let alone the difficult Cast she was now being required to do.
“Just try your best,” Carina said. If Stefan hadn’t suddenly sprung a sixth site on her, Carina could have tried to cover for one of the children’s failures with a second Cast of her own. But now there was no chance of that.
The starscape view out the window turned black, and a holo of the test site appeared. It was a merged image, showing the six barrel-shaped fuel tanks in close proximity, though in reality they were kilometers apart.
“Which one’s mine?” Darius asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Carina replied. “Don’t worry about it. Only concentrate on the coordinates.” At six years old, Darius was in danger of becoming confused and Casting at the visual, not the tank itself. The Fire he Cast would quickly go out as there was nothing but the air in the room to sustain it. It would be an interesting display for the onlookers but a failure nonetheless.
The audience were shifting in their seats and murmuring as they grew impatient.
“Are you ready?” Carina asked the children.
They nodded with an attitude that showed they weren’t feeling remotely ready.
“Okay,” said Carina. “Let’s do it.” She poured each child a measure of elixir and handed out the beakers. Then she poured some of the mixture for herself. “Remember, shut out everything. It’s you, the character, and the destination. That’s all there is.”
After waiting for the children to drink their elixir and shut their eyes, she downed her own, the bitterness of the liquid barely registering in her worry about what might happen if the children failed the test.
Would the Sherrerrs abandon the plan of using them as weapons in the attack on the shipyard? Would they call off the entire attack? Carina thought that was unlikely. Destroying the Dirksens’ main starship manufacturing yard was essential to crushing their strength. But if the Sherrerrs were unsuccessful, she and the others were at risk of capture or death. And Carina needed the vast debris field the explosions would create in order to mask their escape route. If they weren’t allowed or able to blow the shipyard to smithereens, she had no plan B.
Silence had fallen in the room as the spectators waited and watched for the mages’ Casts to take effect. Carina closed her eyes. She could provide them with somewhat of a spectacle at least. Maybe that would be enough.
She sank down into the darkness of her mind. The sounds of breathing, shuffling feet, and shifting bodies disappeared. The red tint behind her eyelids retreated to blackness. She was alone in the dark. The first stroke cut across her inner vision, silver-light and glimmering. The second followed, sweeping down from the first. A third appeared to one side, short and tapering. Its mate appeared on the opposite side. The character was complete. Fire.
Now came the difficult part. She had to Cast Split into Fire, severing the character longitudinally, creating a perfect mirror. This took great concentration. Dimly, Carina became aware of a trickle of sweat running down the side of her face. She forced her mind back to the character, Fire. A touch of mental effort, and it slid into two images.
It was time to Cast the characters to their destinations. The fuel tanks were large. She didn’t have to hit the exact coordinates. Pinpoint accuracy wasn’t the problem, it was the distance involved. Carina gathered up all of her mental and emotional strength into one powerful bundle, and flung the Casts far from her, out into space, across the distance to the fuel tanks.
She opened her eyes and held her breath. The tanks hung above her, spinning lazily under residue momentum. Her sisters’ and brothers’ eyes remained closed, their faces strained with concentration.
A tank exploded, quickly followed by another. The silent spectacle filled the room with dazzling light. After the flash had departed, however, four tanks remained untouched. The audience watched them. Carina watched them too. Might Parthenia manage it finally, in her slow, steady style? Or might Darius hit lucky with an unpredictable burst of mage power?
No. There was no change in the tanks. Carina might have drunk more elixir and destroyed them herself, but what she was doing would have been obvious. The officers wanted to know that all the children could perform the Cast. In the heat of the battle, they might not have time for Carina to destroy the tanks one by one.
Oriana opened her eyes and looked up at the holo. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I missed.”
“I missed too,” said Darius, also opening his eyes. Parthenia was shaking her head. Ferne looked glum.
“Idiots,” Stefan hissed. “Carina, can’t you teach them any better than this?”
“Be quiet, Stefan,” said Calvaley. “That was you who destroyed the two tanks, Lin?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then it seems to me that we should only rely on you in the upcoming attack. We can leave out your brothers and sisters, for now anyway.”
“No,” said Carina. If she was the only one to take part in the battle, the chances were she would be separated from her family. It was vital that they were all together when the shipyard blew. “I mean, no sir. I think they can do it. I really do. I just need to give them some more practice. If I might say so, it’s the pressure of all these people watching that’s the problem. Casting is much easier in private. If we were alone, I’m sure they could be successful. We can blow that place to pieces if you give us the chance.”
Tremoille spoke in Calvaley’s ear. He listened, nodded to her, then said, “You’ve got your chance, Carina. We’ve seen what you can do. Anything else your brothers or sisters can manage will be a bonus. We’ll arrange a private room when the time comes.”
“And guards,” Stefan said. “The children must be watched at all times.”
“Yes, of course,” Calvaley replied. “Guards will be assigned.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Faye heard the soft snick of her bedroom door opening. Beyond her closed eyelids, her room brightened. She opened her eyes. Light from the living area was spilling through the open doorway, silhouetting Carina in its frame.
“Come in,” said Faye, pulling herself painfully to a sitting position. “I wasn’t asleep. Just resting.”
Carina stepped inside and closed the door. Faye activated the light, telling it to dim to fifty percent when the brightness hurt her eyes. Carina came over to the bed and perched on its edge, not meeting her gaze.
Faye drank in the sight her daughter. Though they looked alike, she could also see Kris’ face in Carina’s. The fact that a part of him lived on gave her some small comfort.
Without speaking, Carina took her hand. She looked both sad and angry. It wasn’t hard to guess why. She knew that she’d betrayed her daughter’s trust when she’d lied to her about the state of her health. She’d only wanted more time to try to find the right words and the right moment, but neither had come until it was too late. It was only that she’d been unable to bear the thought of telling her daughter that, fifteen years after abandoning her once, she was about to abandon her again, and it was her own fault.
“Carina,” Faye said gently, “I’m—”
“Sorry,” Carina interrupted. “I know.” She sighed. “Ma, I need your help. I need to teach the children to Cast at a great distance. They can’t seem to do it, no matter how much I try to teach them or how often they practice. They just can’t hit what they’re aiming at.”
“I’m not surprised. I didn’t teach them well. I wanted to limit Stefan’s exploitation of them as much as I could.”
“I get that. But now I really need them to do it. Can you help? Nai Nai taught me what she could until she died, but after that I was on my own. Everything I learned from then on was guesswork.”
“There is a way,” Faye said, “but why is it so important that they do this task you’ve for set them? You know that the more they demonstrate what they can do, the more Stefan and the rest of the Sherrerrs will ask of them. Aren’t their lives going to be miserable enough as it is?”
“No,” Carina replied. “Not if I can help it. I have a plan, Mom. We can all escape. I only need them to do this thing, and it should give us our opening.”
“Oh, Carina,” Faye said. “I used to make a plan every week. I used to dream of the time when I would finally manage to escape. But look what happened. Here I am and here are your sisters and brothers. And whenever Stefan caught me, his punishment was severe. Do you want to go through that? What if he decides to punish the children too, in your place? Could you bear it? What about Parthenia? You know that he has his eye on her?”
“I’ve noticed,” said Carina. “His perversions are disgusting.”
“Like everything else about him,” said Faye. “I admire your fighting spirit. I wish with all my heart that you and the children could escape that dreadful monster, but it isn’t possible. I realize that now.”
“It is possible,” said Carina. “You’re ill and tired and Stefan has broken you. You’ve given up. But it is possible for us to escape. And, Ma, if you come with us, we might reach a planet in time to save you. You might still respond to treatment.”
