by John Daulton
Air blew inside of his helmet. It was cool. Or cooler. Anything was cooler than the steam pit of this vessel.
Finally the clunking at the back of his suit stopped. The lights went off. He called Orli’s name again.
The tentacle pushed him toward the window, the giant hatch.
“You really are going to throw me out?” he said. “By the gods, why?”
He was going to fall what had to be at least several miles if he was as high in the blowing clouds as he thought this window was relative to the planet’s surface. Was that what they were hoping for? Or did they just want him out there until the air they’d just recharged in his suit ran out, the whole ordeal simply something as mundane as an experiment with his equipment?
But then it occurred to him that, whatever they were up to, if they put him out there, he’d get the mana back—or at least he hoped he would. But then what? He couldn’t get Orli out. Hell, he couldn’t even get himself back in. The ship was a mana-free zone. What if they left? He knew he wasn’t going to fall to his death, but they didn’t. And it wouldn’t matter. They could take Orli away.
The alien reached two tentacles to the controls near the hatch. It poked the tips into holes. Lights flashed along the rows of color. Loud thumping sounds came from above.
He looked up and saw what at first looked like a house being lowered from above. Like everything else in this place, it was made from the green-brown protein. It was suspended from thick ropes made of, of course, more protein. It swung down over him. The alien lifted him up and put him inside. The object was a five-sided box. The open end, at the edges, was slightly convex. Altin absently wondered if they were going to teleport him somewhere.
The box moved toward the hatch. Altin realized the box was slightly higher and wider than the hatch. The alien put him in it and held him there until the leading edge of the compartment was barely three hand widths from the hull. Then the tentacle let him go. It uncoiled itself quickly and slithered down out of the gap. The box clamped tight against the hull. Altin stared out the window. He was so high up he couldn’t see the ground. Just red, dusty clouds blowing all around.
They really were going to jettison him.
The edges of the box glowed faintly, a dull brown light that illuminated the seam for a time. He could feel more than he could hear a crackling sound. Then the hatch itself began to vibrate. White plumes of air and steam flickered out and were snatched away by the raging wind. Then all was roaring and loud. The fury of the red planet’s ever-present storms. It buffeted Altin violently as the hatch opened, swinging down and away.
The moment it did, Altin felt the gravity change. He braced himself to be crushed, as he had been the first time he lowered the Polar Piton’s shield on this world. But he wasn’t. He was reaching for his Higgs prism, hoping he knew how to work it well enough, when he realized he was fine. The gravity had just changed. A little. That was all.
He didn’t understand what the aliens wanted him to do. He damn sure wasn’t going to leave Orli behind. The back wall of the box began to creep closer to him.
They were going to push him out.
It came very close, within a half step of him. He turned to watch it. Backing toward the edge. He reached for the mana. It was still all in a bubble around him, though he was very close to the edge of the confinement. Maybe if he jumped out.
He was going to be pushed out in a second anyway.
Then the wall vanished. So did the floor. All of it, all around him, was just gone. The whole ship. He panicked, clutched for the wall he’d been standing near, his knees bending, bracing for extra balance he did not actually need.
He was still standing on something solid.
Something touched the front of his suit. He reached forward, felt it. Solid. Moving. The back wall was still coming at him, invisible now.
Out of reflex, he looked for the mana again.
There it was. The pink mist. Everywhere around him, returned to him at last.
“By the gods!” he muttered. In that instant, he cast a seeing spell back onto the tabletop where they’d examined him, half-expecting it to be gone, invisible like the rest of the ship. It wasn’t. Orli was lying there. An alien had stripped her suit away and now held her down, stretched like a prisoner on an invisible rack in only her underclothes. It held itself above her, the bottom portion of its body poised and puckering, about to launch something vile from its nether parts. Or worse.
That was all he needed. It was hardly even a thought. It was the seed of a thought, the barest flicker of an idea, and he teleported himself there. Right to her.
He appeared beside her. He spared only an instant to catch his balance in the ferocious wind, glaring up at his enemy. His brow furrowed, and he reached back into the mana. He gathered up vast clouds of it in his mind, drawing it in as he drew in the breath that would fuel it, a fireball that would engulf the creature entirely.
The blob of ochre jelly flew through the fireball even as it formed by Altin’s spell. The blob struck Altin at the same moment the fireball struck a crackling barrier. The flames wrapped around an energy field for a moment, then blew back on the wind at him. Altin cried out, but no one could hear him but himself. He was encased in an ochre blob again.
He waited for the flames to pass, staring helplessly down at where Orli lay. He screamed at her, watching the fire blowing away. It was gone in an instant.
Orli lay steaming and motionless. He’d killed her, his own wrathful fireball the thing that did it. He should have just teleported them home. So stupid. He’d had the chance.
She was looking up at him. She smiled. Her mouth moved. She said something to him. He gasped, almost a sob. She was alive. He could breathe again, with something to be grateful for in all that wet, blowing steam.
“I’m sorry,” he called out to her. Shaping the words carefully that she might read his lips. “I’m sorry. I tried. I’ll think of something. I love you.”
He reached for the mana again. It wasn’t there. He was in the gods-be-damned manaless bubble again. “By the eyes of the gorgon, you will suffer for this,” Altin swore up at the alien. “You shall see. We are not playthings!”
He vented out a few more strings of threats and frustrated epithets. All he could do was watch helplessly. He stared back at Orli lying there. She stared at him. She was so beautiful. She had the face of a goddess, perfect, a likeness like those that had been carved into every statue of every feminine deity across Prosperion. And she loved him. Foolish, reckless, bumbling him. She let him marry her. And this was her reward. Pinned to a table by aliens, half-naked and as vulnerable as she could possibly be. Steaming no less, nearly burned to a crisp by the man who’d sworn to keep her safe. Rage and frustration filled him so full he was sure he must go insane. He thought it impossible to feel so wholly consumed by helplessness.
He was wrong.
Another alien roped and towed its way toward them, its tentacles reaching up and down, hauling itself against the wind. He thought it might be the same alien that had taken him away, but he had no way to be sure. He was only sure he wanted to kill it in some horrible way.
The recently arrived alien snaked a few tentacles high and low, guy-wiring itself between the grates again. It positioned itself as it had been when the aliens were examining Altin before.
It wrapped a tentacle around the blob of jelly he was in and moved him, setting him aside like some captured pawn on the edge of a chessboard. It left him there, then reached up into the darkness. Lights glowed, and a bulky upper portion of the pronged machine lowered toward Orli.
Altin could see her depicted in an oval of light at the center of the protein mass, a clear, rounded shape like an eye. He could see her image in it, larger even than he could see her in real life only fifteen paces away.
The machine rotated its conical arms and the black bulbs of glass. The alien on the other side of the tabletop flickered more colors and patterns across its flesh. Altin saw Orli lying there, an image o
f her visible on the alien itself.
The alien nearest him flickered something back. It turned the machine with the eye-monitor toward the other alien. More colors flashed. That alien snaked tentacles up and did something on the other side of the machine. More colors. Altin could see Orli’s belly now. It was depicted bright and clear upon the alien’s bulbous central part, an extreme close-up. He could see her navel and the soft blonde hairs, tiny upon her bare flesh, made more visible by humidity and sweat.
The farther alien spun the machine back toward the first. There was something pink and whitish on the eye-shaped screen. Altin didn’t know what it was precisely, but it was much like the sorts of images he’d seen on Doctor Singh’s examination machines in the sick bay of the Aspect. They were looking inside of her.
The machine moved up and pointed over Orli’s skull. Again Orli could be seen in the eye-like monitor, her beautiful goddess face. Light patterns flashed across the bodies of both aliens. Orli’s face was distorted on the alien’s body opposite. More patterns flashed between them.
The image in the eye-monitor changed. Altin recognized it immediately. He’d seen that image, or one like it, many times. It was a human brain.
The image repeated itself on the alien opposite him. Then it swelled, seemed to go inside the brain. There were long, arcing things, and two oblong objects depicted there. More patterns flashed between them.
The alien near Altin ran its tentacles around the machine, touching things, inserting the tips into holes. The image of what had to be Orli’s brain moved to match the image on the alien’s body bulb. The alien near Altin began to shift color some, turning pinkish and then a faded shade of burgundy.
The other alien flashed another brain image, briefly this time, different, though clearly human, but it passed too fast for him to pay attention to it.
The alien above him turned from burgundy to pale blue, then gray again.
There followed a brief exchange of patterns, then the alien holding Orli down released her arms. First one tentacle uncoiled, then the other. One tentacle released her left leg, and Altin dared hope they might let her go. Then the tentacle binding her right leg jerked her off the table and flung her away like a bit of trash.
Altin watched her sail off into the darkness. Then she was gone, leaving him to scream her name.
Chapter 17
Black Sander related the last part of the story to the marchioness, who sat upon a couch that was embroidered with quotes from her long-departed father, the Margrave of South Mark, last to fall in the great war that had finally brought all of Kurr under one rule a pair of centuries back. She’d been particularly attentive as Black Sander related the part about Jefe’s desire to take back the place called Texas. Now that Black Sander’s report was done, she sat quietly, a faraway look in her eyes as she absently stroked the barrel of a Colt M-9XR laser rifle, one of several weapons Black Sander had delivered to her. “Absolute state of the art,” El Segador had said of it.
Black Sander stood quietly, watching her, waiting. He had nothing more to say. He’d been paid. He needed to get back to Murdoc Bay and see about sourcing more stray wizards. It was not the sort of crop that was going to be in ready supply.
As if reading his mind, the marchioness finally spoke. “They’ve sent five hundred sorcerers to Earth,” she said. “Enchanters, all of them.” She set the weapon down beside her. It lay upon a quote that read: With its eyes open, the littlest basilisk makes statues of dragons. “I hope your friends are not foolish enough to go after them.”
“I cannot say, My Lady. Jefe and his man El Segador are aggressive. And well connected.”
“Well, they’ll all have some sort of devices in them,” she said. She rose and went to a long table that sat beneath a mirror of the same length on the wall. She pulled a shiny object from a plastic crate sitting there, a half-span steel bar with a black-handled grip at one end. She pressed the button at its base, and it began to hum. She turned back to him. “What did you call this again?”
“It’s an ion baton, My Lady. Don’t touch it on anything. It’s like a stick of lightning magic without the flash.”
She grinned and pushed the button again. The humming went away.
“What did you mean by ‘devices in them,’ My Lady?”
“I meant exactly what I said.” She fingered a handheld laser pistol, one of several, stroking it like it was a beloved pet. “Something the Earth people insisted be stuffed inside their bodies somewhere, wizard and blank alike. A very small machine that allows them to be tracked at all times.”
Black Sander nodded. That was good to know. “I will mention it,” he said. “Although I suspect men like Jefe and El Segador will already be aware of such things. It is likely a common practice on their world. Like the runes we tattoo onto criminals here on Prosperion for the diviners to find.”
“Indeed.” She went to the last crate on the table, where the rifles were. “Speaking of which, my diviners have twice caught Crown City diviners divining me. I do hope that none of your local boys have thought to profit from both sides.”
“They haven’t, My Lady.”
“Well, don’t you think it odd that that gold-plated imbecile in Crown should be poking around at me just now? What with all her … other activities?”
“She’s never trusted you, My Lady. It hardly seems a surprise. Who knows what might have slipped from Lord Vorvington’s tongue. He is a heavy drinker, after all.”
She spun on him then, her eyes turned to slits. “You will fail me far sooner than Vorvington ever will, commoner.” She spat that last as if it were the worst of epithets.
Black Sander realized he’d stepped on an enchanted stone with that one, so he apologized immediately. He began moving toward the door. His business here was done anyway. For now.
“May I go, My Lady?”
She turned back to the box of rifles. “Is this all there is?”
“No, My Lady. There are five more cases of each at Gevender’s. For now. And we have accounts under various names on Earth with NTA credits totaling three and a half million.”
“Is that a great amount?”
He nodded toward a parchment lying on the end table near the couch, where the marchioness had been sitting moments before. “I’ve included the conversions for NTA credits to gold crowns and silver marks on that list. The NTA is very efficient about posting that sort of thing on the global net.”
She returned to the couch and took up the document. Her lips curled in. The lines radiating around the grim stretch of her mouth looked like little shadow flames. “I want a thousand of each,” she said. “Everything in those boxes. Can he deliver that?”
“I don’t know, My Lady. But I imagine that he could given a little time.”
“See to it. And see to your men. If one of them is leaking information, I want his heart on a plate.”
“Yes, My Lady. Will that be all?”
“No. There is one other thing.”
He tilted his head, expectant, his hands curling the wide brim of the hat he held as he waited.
“On the subject of leaked information: I need you to leak something for me. And I need it leaked so that it gets to the director of the NTA.”
Black Sander did not allow his expression to reveal the volume of his curiosity. “Yes, My Lady?”
“Can you do it?”
“Of course.”
“Then let them know about Sir Altin Meade.”
“My Lady?”
“He’s been captured by aliens, you fool. Don’t you read the Crown City Sentinel?”
“Of course I do. So do the people at the NTA. I’m certain they are already aware.”
“But are they aware that Her Majesty intends to leave him there?”
“She what? But I thought Meade was her favorite. The Galactic Mage. He’s a pet.”
“It seems he was. I’ve got news that a plea was made to her to send Citadel to rescue Sir Altin and the new Lady Meade. The appeal came fro
m the Earth woman’s friend, the captain of that spaceship we’ve seen flying toward the plantations. Our plotting monarch gave him platitudes and vague promises, but would not commit. Even Tytamon the Ancient could see it, for he was there and misses little. The royal fool yawned and promised, and sent them away. And then, three days ago, Vorvington saw a Citadel teleporter delivering something to the Lord Chamberlain to give to the Queen. It was a collection of seedlings.”
“I don’t understand, My Lady.”
“Idiot! There are no plants on the red world. Sir Altin is not on a planet where anything grows.”
“Perhaps Citadel is fighting Sir Altin’s captors on a different alien world. Perhaps the aliens have taken him away.”
“They haven’t.” She went to the far side of the room, to another table, upon which sat a small black box made of enchanted tarwood. She took off the lid, and a mirror appeared, the box expanding in an instant and becoming quite large, with the mirror sticking up out of it even larger. The mirror was beautiful, its frame made of carved bones that twisted around one another. A sizable emerald was mounted at the top of the frame, and in the gaps of the contours were carved tiny replicas of the fleet ships upon which the first humans from Earth had arrived.
The marchioness closed her eyes, and for a moment she was silent, her expression consistent with one engaged in telepathy. She opened them shortly after and pulled the smashed remnants of a small fleet communications device, one of their collar pins, out of a fold in her skirts. She touched the emerald with one hand and pushed the rumpled com button into a slot near the bottom of the mirror with the other.
Black Sander moved closer. He was well aware that the mirror was enchanted. He’d been the one to get it for her. He understood that it had been enchanted by Sir Altin Meade himself, a gift for Orli Pewter back before she’d become his wife, locking sight magic that was bound to her into the mirror. He had made it so that he could find her and speak to her through it, though much of the speaking part was wound into associations with Earth ships and technology, the magic woven together by those inexplicable cross-school strands that only a wizard who was a Seven or Eight could do. It was a monstrously complicated spell, exquisitely complex, and it had been woven so tightly around Sir Altin’s lover, around them both, that it was almost useless to anyone else at all. But the marchioness’ Z-ranked seer, the idiot savant Kalafrand, had managed to burrow into the enchantments well enough that the marchioness could spy on Orli now, if only visually. Kalafrand had somehow muddled the mirror’s listening ability when he’d wormed his way into what Altin Meade had cast. But seeing was enough, and as long as Orli was near her new husband, the marchioness could also spy on him, the Queen’s Galactic Mage.
