"Good. Now, the rail drive. Nudge it most gently at first, it does not matter if I see any results at first. Make it glow just a little, to show me that you can control it." He even made some placating moves with his hands.
"Sir, just to clarify: Is there a risk that I might drive the academy away from the moon?"
"Yes, Prime Cadet, there is. The runes are bound very strongly, but only with Master Engines in mind. You, son, are almost certainly beyond that. So, tune yourself back a lot for now."
I nodded and focused on the rail drive. Just a tiny little bit. Then I projectile vomited and fell to my knees.
The instructor held his stomach, he was laughing so hard. When he caught his breath again, he explained: "The motion sickness is always equally strong, no matter how much power you throw at the runes. Rail drive sickness is a couple of leagues worse than sub-light, eh?" I moaned and nodded. My head was still running circles around my stomach and I wondered how I managed this mess - I should have skipped breakfast.
"Is there no way for me to shield myself from it?"
"Yes, there is. But first, it is important for you to know what you shield yourself from. And no, I won't make you do the same thing with the jump drive. First, clean this room up, then go to your quarters and clean yourself up. Take a break, and tomorrow I'll teach you how to shield yourself. This was is good day indeed!" He grinned and walked out.
Luckily, he sent me a Storage Wizard with a cleaner and a bucket. The cleaner was a heavily runed stick with a bushel of straw at one end. The runes made the straw absorb any fluids it was swiped through, and all the dry bits stick to its surface. When the straw was full, I dunked it into the bucket and the runes made the straw push out all the fluids and let go of all the dry bits. Clean again, I swiped up the rest of my mess and looked at the Storage Wizard. "Where do I bring this, sir?" He just smiled and had me give him the cleaner and bucket. I smiled. "Thank you, sir."
I dragged myself to my quarters, happy that the other cadets were busy. There, I took my time to clean myself and my uniform until we both all but sparkled, then I fell onto my cot. My head was still spinning, but not as bad as it used to.
The exercise in the afternoon was wonderful, I got myself together again. After a good night of sleep I felt refreshed and ready to tackle whatever the engines instructor was going to throw at me.
He threw... a smile. Okay, that I could work with. So I smiled back and bowed slightly. "Sir."
"Prime Cadet, today you are going to shield yourself from motion sickness and then you'll operate both the rail- and jump drive. So let's get to it."
It turned out that what I had done on the way here, when I focused on my relative position to the Brick and not to space through which we'd been moving quickly was totally wrong. All I had to do was to focus on myself, center myself and by doing that kind of dull out all movements other than my own. That meant that both traveling and navigating would be difficult at best, so I kept my own method in the back of my mind and decided to practice both, just in case. Also, I got one of those almost prophetic inner feelings that that was the right thing to do.
After centering myself, I tested whether I really was centered by operating the sub-light drive. Feeling nothing of motion sickness, I warily activated the rail drive.
And pumped my fist. Nothing! No ill effects, no queasy feeling at all. Then I asked a question that had been in the back of my mind for some time: "Sir, The slowest drive is called 'sub-light', but in the name of the others there is no mention of light at all. Why is that?"
"Good question, Prime Cadet. Operate the jump drive and I'll reward you by answering it." He grinned. Okay, that was closer to his demeanor of yesterday.
So I centered myself and activated the jump drive. Its thick, large complex of runes glowed faintly and I felt its enormous power. Trying to understand each drive and the differences between them, I then activated the whole room. Understanding the drives and their differences I became aware of a whooping sound in the room. Shutting off the drives, I looked at the fist-pumping instructor. "A Master Adept Engines Wizard! I was hoping I'd find one before my retirement! Yeah!"
Huh - That guy was a bit different in his head it seemed. But in a nice way. So I did the only thing I could think of. "Congratulations, sir! well done!" I grinned broadly and he just laughed loudly.
After he caught his breath, he looked at me. "You are Master Adept because you obviously can operate all the engines runes at once. I hear that Master Adepts can understand the drives just by feeling them. So, what is the answer to your question from before?"
"Well sir, the sub-light drive is for short distance traveling. It can go fast, but cosmically speaking still slow as a glacier. The rail drive will, if properly activated, wrap the Brick into a bubble of sorts, essentially creating a bubble of its own space somehow. With that bubble the Brick can then travel many times the speed of light, depending on the strength of the operating wizard and their willingness to endure pain. Pain, because that bubble is similar to shield magic and the surrounding space presses inward, always threatening to burst the Brick's bubble. When traveling slowly that pressure is little, but it quickly increases with rising speed."
"Last, the jump drive. That is very different from the other two, the Brick does not move at all when that drive is activated. It somehow folds space, and punches a hole at the touching point which is, for a short moment, both the point of departure and the destination allowing the Brick to glide through to the other side. Space then unfolds itself, and the jump is finished."
"Doing that does take lots of energy, so as you said the wizard operating the jump drive must be powerful. The accuracy also depends on the wizard's power and ability to focus. Interestingly, it feels like folding space for a short jump is far more difficult than for a long jump."
The instructor had been nodding during my whole speech. "That's correct, Prime Cadet. Just a couple of additions: First, the jump length: When you do a long jump, the fold in space can be wide, more like a curve. Short-distance jumps require hard folds which is much more difficult. There is the term 'Miss-Jump'. That means that the target was missed by a significant distance. That distance varies though: If you try to jump into the neighboring solar system, a miss-jump would be if you missed the system all together. If you land inside the system, but on the wrong side of the star, it as an inaccurate jump but still a successful one. If you try to jump to one of the colonies and end up closer to another colony, it was a miss-jump."
"If you have your rail drive bubble burst, the Brick will stop almost immediately. That happened twice, I think, so far. There were no survivors each time. A bit less catastrophic is a misalignment of the rail drive runes. If they do not point exactly into the same direction, traveling with them will cause great stress on the engine room, ultimately ripping it apart. If the engines wizard survives this, they can still shut down the rail drive without their bubble bursting. Misalignments happen every now and then, but there are warning signs so no Brick has been ripped apart so far."
"It sounds like if the engine messes up the Brick's crew is in real danger."
"Yes, Prime Cadet. That's why no engine is allowed to operate an engine room alone. There are always four Engines Wizards on board of a Brick, two shifts. Many captains prefer to have a fifth, the 'Odd Engine', who can fill in whenever needed. That fifth is always the most powerful engine on board, to ensure that they can help no matter what is happening. Their job is among the easiest on boar of a Brick: They just are present and ready, on the bridge on one of the Odd Rods."
"Odd Rods, sir?"
"Yes, the three Control Rods in the bridge are the Odd Rods where the Odd Engine and all Omni-Wizards who serve on board have their stations. Normally, those rods are not in use, but as soon as any permanent Stack is formed, the most powerful wizards, who are not part of a Brick's command, get collected to the Command Brick. You'll learn more of this in the advanced part of the academy."
He looked at me considering. "Wel
l, there is nothing more I can teach you here - all further lessons will have to be on board of a Brick. You might as well move on to the next color. Master Adept Engines Wizard." Then he salute me.
That was quite a shock, but I did manage to salute back. I even remembered that the recipient of a salute will also end it, so I put my hand down in a crisp move after a second. So did the instructor, grinned at me and left.
I took a deep breath. Another very strong color!
Chapter 7: STORAGE AND NUTRITION (attention to detail)
Storage- and nutrition magic were very different from everything else. Their introduction and training was rather dry and kinda gray, so I won't bore you with it here. Both colors were an accountant's delight. They required attention to detail above all else: Loading a storage room looked like this:
The wizard went into the empty room, took hold of one of the many little knobs in the wall (those were the Control Rods), and poured his magic into the knob, programming the room with the items that were to be stored there. Item by item. 300 pairs of shoes had to be programmed one after the other. One mistake and that pair would not be wearable. The same went for the nutrition dispensers. I had had no idea! Programming each element of the meals into the dispenser I suddenly greatly appreciated the fact that the dispensers here had such a wide variety of elements to choose from.
At least until the last day of the nutrition week. Then I was handed a wand. The instructor grinned at me and said: "Sorry for not telling you, but the storage guys wanted to pull a prank on you and we could not resist." He did not look sorry at all. "This here is a programming wand. You program blueprints for items into it and then touch the Control Rod with the wand. Focusing your magic first through the wand and then the rod will give you access to those blueprints and thereby facilitate filling up a rod immeasurably. This one is empty, as we all make our own wands with the items that we can make. You as a Master in both colors can make a good variety of items, but Bricks for example will only by refilled by Adepts or, preferably, Master Adepts. Lesser ranks can keep the common items in good supply if no one else is at hand."
After that, I filled the wand with everything I knew and tested using it - it really was as easy as choosing the blueprint, pouring magic into it and kind of washing it through to the rod.
Having this ability would save me and my crew many, many times in the future. I have always been happy that I endured that training as I did.
The rest of the first half of the term was infinitely more interesting: I rotated through all the colors, but mostly focused on close combat training. Another of those feelings told me to do so, so I did - learning to heal myself instantly after receiving a small injury like a broken nose for example. The other colors were repetitions of what I had done in the first week there, so I won't write lots of empty words about that.
End of book 3.
More adventures of Xandrian will come in the next short-book, Xandrian Stone Book 4: The academy Part 3.
Thank you for reading this short-book, dear reader. I hope that you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it. More are coming!
May I humbly ask you to rate this book as you see fit, both to let me know if you liked it and to help make and keep it visible for others to find? That would be most nice, thank you. :-)
Yours humbly,
Christian A. Breitenstein
Xandrian Stone Book 3: The Academy Part 2 Page 4
