by John Daulton
And of course, there was Master Spadebreaker. The kind old mine foreman, Ilbei. That loss still had the bite of recency. And guilt. Aderbury had been so glib, joking with the old miner about working with anti-magic as if it was just the easiest thing. He’d teased the man about his reluctance and his fear while trying to hide behind a door. Sure, it was a joke, well intended, but what made that particular action seem like the funny one? The truth, that’s what. Anti-magic was new, unknown, dangerous, and he had ordered Ilbei to face it. Laughing. He knew he was going to wish he could take those jabs back for a long time to come.
Just then an explosive spew of orange marked where the first of the incoming orbs had been merged with another. That was quickly followed by another just like it. He saw one of the huge crystal spikes hidden in the surface of Citadel light up suddenly and streak off as well, if streak was the right word: it glowed, it blurred and then it reappeared, embedded in one of the smaller Hostiles like a massive icicle. The impact sent a plug of the orange lava substance spinning off like a gob of spit mucus.
And so it went for a span of perhaps a hundred and a half heartbeats. In came the twenty or so Hostiles, and then, they were dead. Merged, severed, pierced, or turned to solid blocks of ice or stone depending on the mood and aptitude of the transmuter that had made the cast. And just like that, it was done, leaving Aderbury once more contemplating what he might do next.
From the increasingly huge globs of Hostile guts he could see, the concert hall mages were gathering Hostiles up in clumps of fifty and even approaching a hundred at a time. It was a spectacular display of power, but even that didn’t seem to make any discernible dent in the threat. At this rate, it would be at least another day or two before they could clear enough of them out to call it hopeful, much less a victory. It was like trying to bail out the reflecting pond at the Palace with a teacup. Meanwhile the Earth ships were being steadily destroyed. Especially the smaller ones.
It was obvious from the volume of rupturing Hostiles that could not be attributed to the wizards on Citadel that the Earth people had mastered the strategies Captain Asad and Commander Levi had devised. Their ships wrung the glowing orb blood from their attackers with frightening efficiency. Unfortunately, it was also obvious that this was a numbers game.
Aderbury didn’t want to think about how many people were dying out there. How many fathers, mothers and sons, sisters and cousins and wives, lovers, all for whom others would weep and wear the emptiness forever in their hearts. Empty chairs at dinner tables, images on mantles and hearths. Sad tributes and misty prayers come each passing holiday. And for what? So that the infernal Blue Fire could cleanse their world? To what end? So she could claim that it was back to natural? That it was pure? Pure of what? Pure of joy? Love? Friendship?
What kind of end was that?
Whatever kind it was, it wasn’t one he was going to let happen, even if the Earth people never spoke to them again, which he thought was a pretty likely scenario. That brought his thoughts back to the task he had. He was the one who was supposed to make sure that didn’t happen. And that began by helping clear out all these orbs.
As if resenting his thought, a new pack of Hostiles separated itself from the haze of all the rest around the planet. He couldn’t count them, but if he’d had to guess, he would have said about a thousand or more.
“Cebelle,” he sent to the telepath down in the concert hall. “Are you seeing this?”
“We are,” she replied.
“So, you may want to help us out on that.”
“We will,” she said.
The knot of Hostiles flew up at them at breathtaking speed. One moment they were distant forms and the next they loomed like an inbound stampede.
Then they were one giant ball, a massive clump of lumpiness, like a tiny moon that had died of a hideous case of smallpox, the boils of the disease spraying out thick streams of glowing guts, many of which slopped against the diamond surface of Citadel and clung to it like flung paint.
“Get that off,” Aderbury ordered, yelling through his brass megaphone to the magicians below him. “Do it now.”
Soon the “windows were clean” again, as that process would eventually become known, and with about as much effort as it would take to swat away an insect, the Hostile threat to Citadel was, again, gone.
“Nicely done,” Aderbury sent to Cebelle as he watched his redoubt mages jumping about and whooping with glee.
“Conduit says, ‘Indeed,’” reported the concert hall telepath.
Aderbury turned back to watch for an even larger incoming attack, but none readily shaped itself. This allowed the concert magicians to get back to work crushing clumps of Hostiles in the main body of the fray, if such a thing could be said to exist. They focused their efforts around the edges of the fight nearest to the largest of the Earth ships, the one Aderbury and Envette had so recently watched moving in the distance. Aderbury felt those largest ships must hold the greatest numbers of people, not to mention the greatest defensive power for Earth, so by those two reasons, those ships were deemed the most essential to protect.
The fight went on for some time after that. He watched and tried to keep count of casualties amongst the Earth ships, but there was little he could do. The small impact their efforts had on the overall numbers was frustrating. He was about to order half the redoubts out to help on the offensive, convinced that the Hostiles had learned better than to mess with Citadel, when a formation of Earth ships could be seen heading their way.
At first Aderbury felt a rush of hope as it occurred to him that Envette must have already met with luck, but then he realized she probably hadn’t even got off the fortress yet, and if so, barely so.
Then came the first of the missiles. Eighteen of them. And forty-six beams of laser light. Fortunately, the energy coming from the Earth ships was easily diverted through and out the back side of Citadel’s armor. Though no one would ever say it aloud, that particular enchantment was a direct order of the Queen, and Aderbury for one was, at that particular moment, quite happy that he had so willingly complied. The missiles were another matter, however. Citadel did have a variety of Altin’s original Combat Hop spell, the one he’d adapted for his tower, but it had been devised for the Hostile weapons, the long battering rams of stone, not the Earth weaponry. There was no description woven into the spell to trigger it to leap away from the explosive missiles the fleet ships used. And from what Aderbury had been made to understand, it was not just the impact of these weapons that was cause for concern: close was bad too.
“Conduit wants to know what you want to do with those missiles,” Cebelle said, her thoughts and those of Conduit Huzzledorf clearly in echo of his own. Fortunately, the woman’s constitutional calm remained in place, though there was an edge to the telepathic request that let Aderbury know he didn’t have much time to decide. “Will it be you or us?”
“You,” he said. “Ice walls. Time it so they don’t have time to dodge. And make them thick. Forty spans.”
She didn’t answer, but he felt her leave his mind. He turned and, through his megaphone, called down to his men. “Illusionists’ marks by sector on those missiles in case the ice walls fail. Get them up now. Teleporters grab them if they get through and send them out behind us as far as you can. Keep sending them away if you have to, until we can coordinate merges and transmutes.”
He saw the movements indicating his people were setting that plan into motion, and he turned back to watch as the blue auras of light that glowed from the back ends of the missiles grew in size with their approach. He waited, his fingers tapping the stone ledge of the balcony in anticipation of the first ice wall. The Earth weapons were still too far away for him to see the conjured ice walls very well in that darkness, but form they did, and, one by one, the missile fires flashed in one manner or another, then either snuffed out immediately or went spinning off wildly before burning out. None of them made the enormous blinding flashes Altin and the teleporters who had fou
ght alongside the fleet had spoken of. He wondered if these were different kinds of missiles, less powerful than those he’d heard of. Or perhaps hitting the ice walls had simply broken them before they could go off. Either way, it didn’t seem to matter. At least the threat was past. For now.
It might be called bad timing that the particular moment of Envette’s arrival on the NTA II’s bridge coincided with the complete obliteration of the first salvo of missiles the fleet sent at Citadel. It certainly did not set the conversation off on very good footing. It did, however, give her a chance to see what had happened, for when she arrived—carefully placed at the back of the bridge out of danger of merging with anyone—she was able to watch as the ship’s lasers, like those of its squadron mates, skewed and fanned out harmlessly, shooting off into the vacancy of space after being diverted through Citadel. While none of the crew seemed overly surprised by that, they were all made instantly furious by the appearance of the ice barriers, into which the missiles collided like goats charging into a castle wall that had suddenly appeared before them. Even though the NTA II herself had no missiles to add to that barrage—a condition that they would say came thanks to the Prosperion deception that had disarmed them during the attack on the Hostile world—everyone aboard felt the letdown when those weapons were all so easily destroyed. In that moment, it became clear that lasers and missiles all meant nothing against Citadel.
“Well, that’s it,” said a lean fellow sitting at the controls near the large monitor on the wall. “We’re screwed. There’s no way we’re going to beat them with anything we’ve got.”
“Stay focused, Ensign,” replied Captain Eugene, a sturdy woman with a mound of gray hair bound tightly upon her head and old fashioned spectacles riding low upon her nose. “We’re not going to win the fight with the first punch is all.”
“They might,” replied the nervous crewman. “One punch from that thing and it’s over. Everyone knows it.”
“Ensign, be still. We’ll figure something out.”
The ensign didn’t seem mollified by this reply, but he fell still.
“If you don’t mind,” said Envette in her most mild-mannered voice, “we’d like to help you figure that something out.”
Everyone turned to see who was speaking, and no one seemed too startled, at least not at first. But in the next moment, four blasters were trained on her.
She raised her hands high above her head, her right hand opened, but the left, perhaps conspicuously, curled into a fist. “This was all an accident,” she said. “We had no idea Blue Fire was planning this.”
“Right,” sneered the ensign at the controls.
“Ensign!” snapped the captain. She pressed a button on her chair. “Security, I need a detail up here. We’ve got a Prosperion aboard. Bring a gag.”
“Please, Captain,” said the young teleporter. “I’m begging you. Just listen to me. Just for a moment. Then I will go.”
“You have until security gets here. If you move, I will shoot you. Please do not make me do that.” She pushed her wire-rimmed spectacles high up to the bridge of her nose as she aimed the weapon pointedly at Envette’s heart.
“I won’t. I promise,” Envette replied. She couldn’t help the hard swallow that followed. She sure hoped that damn enchanter got the Combat Hop spell right, or she was about to have one really short career as a space mage.
“Go on,” said the captain.
“We’ve been betrayed. All of us. Blue Fire lied. She deceived both our worlds. If you could see how badly that went with Her Majesty, with all of us, you’d understand. Everyone is completely stupefied. Her Majesty is right now working out how to force Blue Fire to recall the attack.”
“She wouldn’t have needed to work that out if she hadn’t turned on us the first time,” pointed out Captain Eugene. But at least she was still listening.
“Please, just let us explain. I am under orders to find someone in a position to make the decision to speak with us again. To speak to Master Aderbury on Citadel, or to Her Majesty. We understand why your people will be reluctant to do that. We know how it must look. But I swear to you on the soul of my departed mother I am telling you the truth.”
Captain Eugene shook her head, her mouth and eyes drawing parallel lines of doubt across her face. “I don’t think anyone is going to listen to you people anymore,” she said at length. “I want to believe you. I do. In fact, I am convinced you believe what you are saying right now is true.” Some of the severity left her face then. She even smiled. “You are young. Look at you. Strong, hopeful, maybe even smart. But easily manipulated.”
“No,” Envette began, her hands coming down reflexively, reaching out into the air in front of her defensively as if she might hold back those words, as if she might stop them before they became reality. Three beams of red light streaked from weapons held in nervous hands. Only the captain didn’t shoot.
The crew all stared into the vacant space where Envette had stood, their brows in rows of consternation, the bulkhead blackened and smoking where the lasers had hit. They looked around warily, knowing the wizard didn’t melt that thoroughly or that fast.
“I’m over here,” said Envette, once again in her least threatening voice and with her hands held high.
Three more beams of energy cut across the bridge, and the ship’s weather station burst into sparks that sprayed brightly for a moment then dimmed to a low yellow flame.
“You can’t hit me,” Envette said, this time from a place near the lift at the back of the bridge. “And I’m not going to fight back. I only want to arrange talks. Please, ask your king, or your emperor, even a duke … anyone with the authority to rethink this thing. Please, just tell them that we need to talk. It’s a mistake. All of it.”
The lift doors opened then, and with the exquisite reflexes of their craft, the two Marines saw her standing there and knew immediately that she was why they had been called. One grabbed her around the neck, his arm darting out quick as a shooting star, while the other snatched her right arm back and twisted it into a brutal lever of pain that prompted her to yelp.
“Gag her,” ordered the captain to her men. “Get those necklaces off of her and whatever is in her left hand.” To Envette she could only add, “I’m sorry, kid. I know this was never about you.”
“I’m sorry, too,” replied the young mage. With her free hand she struck the fast-cast amulet she’d been holding since leaving Citadel against the edge of the lift’s door frame, leaving the Marines groping at thin air.
When Envette returned to the balcony upon which Aderbury stood, Aderbury was staring open mouthed into a section of Citadel’s inner dome. He’d activated a magnification spell in a two-pace area of its surface, calling up images within it of the space that would, for all practical descriptions, be considered behind them. “We’ve got incoming from somewhere out there,” he said, pointing over his shoulder with a thumb, but still looking up into the portion of the dome showing the expanded view. “Another fifty or so ships, and two of them are those giant ones.”
“Where’d they come from?” asked Envette, seeing no need to force the explanation of her failure into the moment. Her return surely spoke clearly enough of how that enterprise had gone. “Were they summoned from somewhere else?”
“I have no way to know,” he said. “But look.” He pointed out in the direction from which Envette had just returned. “There’s at least a hundred more coming out to join the rest.”
“They won’t be coming to talk,” Envette said. “Even the patient Captain Eugene is not inclined to help put together talks. I just spoke to her.”
“Then it’s tea time on Duador for sure,” Aderbury spat.
Aderbury had been given access to the secret whispers of the Palace telepaths, and in a matter of moments, he’d explained the situation they were in to a messenger of the Queen: the Earth ships, roughly two hundred of them, were spreading out around them, despite the assistance they’d already given in the fight against the
Hostiles. Surely the commanders of those ships did not think the massive clumps of rupturing Hostiles were the work of their own weaponry. And yet, on came the ships anyway, peeling out of the defense of their own besieged world long enough to make war on Citadel.
“Do not engage them,” was the order he finally received. “Get out of there for now. Let’s not make things any worse.”
Aderbury could hardly believe they were retreating after only a few short minutes and nothing but victory after victory in the fight, but he knew well enough what Her Majesty’s orders meant, and it was the only thing they could do. For now. So, with a shrug, he sent down to Cebelle and told her to have the conduit take them home.
The collective groans of over seven hundred redoubt pilots greeted the great blue ball of Prosperion the moment it replaced the one of Earth. They all knew this wasn’t going to help anyone.
Chapter 8
Altin fumed as he left the Temple of Anvilwrath. High Priestess Maul wouldn’t even speak to him. He’d been brushed off, sent away by her assistant, Klovis, as if he were some foolish child seeking a healing spell for an injured cat. He hadn’t even been given time to explain what he was there to ask of them. They’d simply dismissed him. But such was the vanity of the Church sometimes, with its answers already in hand, its diviners full sure of themselves and often when curiosity would serve them best. But Klovis had told him they were working on the Hostile problem, which he supposed was hopeful. And she had healed his hands and knees, which he was grateful for.
While he was glad to know that the Maul was responsive to the request of the Queen and that she was working to get Blue Fire to call off the Hostiles, he knew it wasn’t going to happen. He knew it better than the Maul ever could, for he was certain Blue Fire would not open her heart to the priests any deeper than she had to him. Far less so, he surmised, and he’d been there physically. They’d never get that close. The love of Worship was not the same as the love of Love, and he knew with more than mere instinct that Blue Fire could sense the difference and would never allow the calculating nature of power, even in the background wisps of the Maul’s mind, into her private places, the deepest chambers of her heart, the vulnerable place where her life force was. And if the Maul didn’t have that kind of access, she wasn’t going to change Blue Fire’s mind and get her to call off the attack. Altin couldn’t prove it, but he knew it in the way one knows that rain has come by the petrichor.
