Rogue Galaxy, Episode 3: The Golem Gambit

by J. Boyett

  Miller’s expression was not designed to give anyone much hope. “Crap,” he said. “He’s the best we’ve got.”

  It was on the tip of Farraday’s tongue to demand to know why they’d sent their very best man planetside on such a run-of-the-mill mission, but in the nick of time he remembered that he himself had ordered Miller to send the best, because he’d been paranoid for Jennifer’s sake.

  So instead he hailed Sickbay, got Witch Walsh on the horn, laid the problem out in as few words as he could manage, then asked, “In your opinion, would this Du’Thokk have to honor the results of a duel, according to the terms he’s has laid out?”

  It was a lot to throw at the witch all at once, and they could hear him struggling to put together a coherent response. “Well,” he said, “if it’s a mystical pact Du’Thokk will probably have to stick to whatever terms he believes himself to have set forth. So he shouldn’t be able to come in with any direct psychic attack. On the other hand, even if the champion did beat Boulton, I don’t see any reason why Du’Thokk couldn’t just turn around and possess him, instead.” They could practically hear the shrug in his voice as he said, “Sorry—that’s the best I can tell you, without more data.”

  “What about that psy dampener? Any way we could make use of it against Du’Thokk?”

  “Sorry, Captain, but I don’t see how. Dr. Carlson and I do believe it works, but in the case of a psychic as powerful as this Du’Thokk you’d almost certainly have to make direct physical contact. I mean, you’d have to place the headset directly on his head. I don’t see how someone with Du’Thokk’s powers would let you get that close.”

  Farraday signed off on the relay, turned back to Miller, and said, “Well, we’ve got to find someone who can take Boulton down.”

  “I guess it should be me,” said Miller. He looked glum about it.

  Farraday’s mouth twisted into an expression so grim and wry it took those around him a moment to realize it was a smile. “I may have another solution. Maybe.”

  He got back on the line with Jennifer. After a bit more back-and-forth with Du’Thokk, it was decided that the combat would not take place till something Du’Thokk called “The Hour of the Marsh-Fly’s Buzzing,” which seemed to be something along the lines of “eight o’clock.”

  Six

  When Dobbler reported to Sickbay as ordered, the officers all fell silent, as if they’d been arguing but didn’t want an ensign to hear them fight. It was the captain, Miller, and Blaine, plus Dr. Carlson and Witch Walsh; Ensign Fiquet stood off to the side, hands folded before her.

  Captain Farraday explained that they needed someone to go into Du’Thokk’s mind, find out if the duel he was offering was even a valid offer at all or rather a trap, and discover any hidden rules. “The dangers are pretty extreme. I’ll let Witch Walsh explain them, he has a better grasp than me of exactly what they are.” The door chimed as a couple of tech mages entered: Barney Butters and Melvin Fisher. “These guys can chip in,” Farraday added.

  Dobbler said, “It doesn’t matter about the dangers, sir. Sign me up.”

  Commander Blaine shifted her weight uncomfortably. “Ensign, you should take a second. Really listen to what the captain wants you to do.”

  “Ma’am, sorry, but I didn’t think I was supposed to question orders.”

  “They’re not orders, son,” said Farraday. “I may one day order you to lay down your life. But I would never order you to risk your mind.”

  “It’s no problem, Captain. All I ask is that, if that Du’Thokk does take me over, you have someone standing by here who’s ready to kill me.”

  Captain Farraday nodded. He gave Lieutenant Commander Miller a significant look; Miller’s mouth twisted, but he nodded too.

  Witch Walsh, with the help of Dr. Carlson, had set up a bed for him, complete with restraints. Dobbler was ready to lie down and get strapped in, but the witch wanted to explain everything to him first. It seemed to ease the guy’s conscience, so Dobbler waited with no protest. He could have told the witch that he needn’t feel responsible for whatever might happen, but decided the best therapy for Witch Walsh would just be the feeling that he’d prepared Dobbler as best he could.

  Besides, he decided, it might be important for him to know all this stuff, after all. Not so much so that he might stay alive, himself. But it could come in handy in taking on that little bastard Du’Thokk.

  There was a big apparatus hanging over the bed right above where his head woud be, an overblown ball of metal and plastic. Clearly it was something Witch Walsh had cobbled together out of two or three other machines, on orders from the captain and on short notice, probably with some input from the tech mages. Dobbler kept his attention off its clumsy physical appearance—once he closed his eyes and went under, that wouldn’t matter. Instead he listened to Witch Walsh and tried to anticipate what his experience would be, once he was in the trance.

  “In a way,” the Witch was saying, “it’ll work to your advantage that you’re so weak and he’s so strong, psychically speaking. You’ll be like a lightning bug flying into the sun. The odds of the sun noticing the bug are pretty darn low. But even a half-blind lightning bug ought to be able to hone in on the sun.”

  “You do know that I’m not actually a psychic, right, sir? I mean, not a formally trained one, and I’ve never been rated. You establish a mild psychic link when you go para-ape wrangling, but you use a pretty light touch and it’s all sort of intuitive.”

  “That’s what this component is for,” said Witch Walsh, laying his palm on a metal box poking out of the big ball. “It’s a mentalist booster.”

  Dobbler nodded. Meanwhile he was correcting himself: That’s what you used to do when you went wrangling para-apes. But not anymore, not ever again. There are no more para-apes—the New Christendom killed them all.

  Witch Walsh was still talking: “The mentalist booster is what will help you see. And the ship’s general warding spells will, we hope, protect you from Du’Thokk’s influence, as well. We’ve also rigged this up, to help bolster those protection spells.” He patted another component of the big jumbled apparatus and identified it with a collection of tehno-thaumaturgic syllables that meant little to Dobbler. “But,” Walsh continued, “as we said, once a tendril of your spirit leaves the protection of Galaxy’s spell shield, there’s only so much we can do—your main hope will be that you’re too insignificant for him to notice you.”

  Dobbler was getting tired of everyone explaining again and again how dangerous the job would be. “Let me be sure I know what I’m meant to do,” he said. “I strap my brain into that thing and just sort of try to go into the same sort of trance as when I would wrangle, only deeper. Then that thing gives me a boost and sharpens my focus and basically turns me, artificially, into a genuine psychic. After that, according to you, I should be able to just kind of vibe my way down to Du’Thokk’s mind. If he wanted, he could turn himself into a brick wall, but hopefully he won’t be expecting any psychic probes, meaning I’ll be able to peek around and find out exactly what the rules are for getting Lieutenant Summers back and whether this single-combat thing is really valid, then zip back up here with the info before he notices and zaps me.”

  That indeed was basically it. When Dobbler repeated the plan back that way it began to strike his superior officers as pretty thin, though Dobbler himself simply lay on the table and fidgeted while impatiently waiting to be strapped in.

  Witch Walsh supervised the two tech mages as they made some final calibrations to the apparatus. Miller’s unhappy expression grew more sour still. “Jan Horowitz is the senior tech mage,” he complained. “Shouldn’t she be here to oversee this?”

  “Horowitz is working on a related project,” Farraday said.

  Witch Walsh moved the apparatus into place over Dobbler’s head. It blocked out most of his field of vision. Walsh clicked on the psychic amplifiers and put his finger on the booster beam’s switch. Before flipping it, he gave Dobbler a serious loo
k and said, “Ready?”

  Dobbler reflected that in just a few seconds his mind might be completely smashed or erased, leaving him a mere puppet for Du’Thokk. The steady hum of the amplifiers somehow made the prospect more nerve-wracking than it had seemed a moment ago; but he reminded himself of Bone World, and that helped him regain his fatalistic calm. Peering around the big obstruction of the apparatus at the witch, he said, “You do promise to kill me right away if Du’Thokk takes me over?”

  “If he only takes you over physically then we’ll just keep you restrained till we figure out a way to exorcise him,” said Dr. Carlson.

  “Fine, I guess,” said Dobbler. “But if he smashes my whole personality so as to leave a space clear for his will, I’d prefer to be put down.”

  “Don’t worry, son,” said Witch Walsh. “We’ll have the spirit meter taking constant readings through your inner eye—if that does happen, we’ll do what has to be done.”

  With that he switched on the booster beam. Sickbay started to melt away. Dobbler didn’t notice for the first few seconds. It wasn’t that the melting wasn’t noticeable, per se; more that it didn’t occur to him that he was supposed to care about such stuff. That was because his will was melting too, he realized, his personal identity was dissolving into the weird primordial nuomenal soup. He roused himself, made an effort to pull it all back together. As he reconstructed his selfhood he became aware of a bright beam of light flowing steadily in a very definite direction. That was the booster beam, he understood. He willed his invisible, weightless body to float to it through the miasmic void. Once he was attached, in some mysterious way, he felt the beam carry him along, like the strong current of a river pulling along a sleeping fish. There was the whispering breeze of something brushing past; that must be the Galaxy’s spell shield. And then he was floating down planetside.

  There was a bright glowing fiery light down there, something like a ball. That was Du’Thokk. Dobbler had thought he was past caring about much of anything, but if he’d had access to his mouth and lungs he would have gasped in awe at what he was perceiving with these newfound senses.

  Witch Walsh had been wrong, it wasn’t quite like a sun; it was brighter, and stronger, and though it did pull him in he did not need to shield his “eyes” from it; on the contrary, he wanted to gaze on it, to fall into it forever....

  But he wasn’t going to, he reminded himself with a little mental shake. If his identity got swallowed up by this great ball of power and energy, then back in Sickbay Dr. Carlson would administer a quick and painless death to the empty-headed living corpse he’d left behind. Besides, he was here to glean knowledge that could help them rescue Lieutenant Summers, who’d always seemed a decent sort despite having nearly killed him when she was a werewolf.

  He did dive down into that ball of light and knowledge. He just made sure to keep himself from crumbling or dissolving into it, was all. Keep yourself together.

  He went swirling down into Du’Thokk’s mind like he ws being whipped down a whirlpool. Only it was not a whirlpool, he realized once he had arrived; it was a powerful but flexible latticework of humming energy, of incredible strength and even greater potential ... or something like that, anyway—Dobbler wasn’t clear on how he should articulate it.

  This guy’s mind is way stronger than we thought, he realized.

  Despite the incredible strength and power he could sense emanating from Du’Thokk’s mind and rippling through it, the shaman didn’t seem to have noticed Dobbler’s intrusion. At least, he had not yet swatted the ensign out of existence. While his luck was still holding, Dobbler delved into the mind to try to find what he’d come for, so he could sneak back out.

  After the shock of sensing Du’Thokk’s power, it brought some relief to Dobbler’s ego to see that the shaman didn’t actually know that much. And it wasn’t just a chauvinistic dismissal on Dobbler’s part of Du’Thokk’s “mere” hunter-gatherer’s knowledge; for all the power and strength of Du’Thokk’s psychic force, his mind didn’t seem very limber, or curious; in short, he just didn’t seem all that smart. Maybe being so powerful meant he hadn’t had to spend much time actually thinking through problems, since he could just will them to be solved, and that lack of practice had kept his intellect from ever fulfilling its potential. Maybe all that psychic power simply took up space that would otherwise have been used for high cerebral functions. Maybe the whole species was just dumb.

  Whatever. It was while he was still sinking through the mind’s outer layers that Dobbler formed these impressions. Once he pierced further into the meat of it, closer to its inner sanctums, he felt another phantom gasp, this time at the pictures he saw in those dream chambers: death, blood of many colors, stars, and a yearning, a dark horrible yearning unlike any he’d ever felt before; it was the yearning of a creature so accustomed to getting what it wanted, that any obstacle seemed like an affront to nature itself.

  Dobbler gritted his teeth (metaphorically speaking) and resisted the urge to retreat back up to the Galaxy. It was not fear that threatened to drive him off—it was because he needed to alert the captain and crew to what he’d discovered. But first he had to find what he’d come here for, in the first place. He forced himself to focus, to keep his mind clear, as he dove into Du’Thokk’s once more.

  And he found what he sought. Again, it was as if the shaman’s mind simply was not a particularly complicated place, as if the path from any one of its components to any other would never be all that hard to follow. Dobbler recognized his target when he saw it: a sort of list of rules, so rigid and firm that Dobbler felt sure Du’Thokk, at least, must think them unbreakable. He grabbed them and took off.

  ***

  When he retreated from Du’Thokk’s mind, Dobler was near panic, inspired by the sudden conviction that a mind as powerful as Du’Thokk’s simply couldn’t not see him, and by the sudden realization that, in this bodiless state, and here in this phantasmal, virtual environment, he had no clue how to escape from anything—no idea how to go anywhere, period.

  As it turned out, though, all he had to do to rediscover the booster beam and run up it back the way he’d come was to will it to be so. And all he had to do in order to will it was to want it really, really bad—no problem there. Seconds or eternities after he snatched the sought-after knowledge, his eyes snapped open in Sickbay and he yelped in alarm, psychedelically unsure of where or who he was. Dr. Carlson was standing ready and pumped him with a sedative, while Witch Walsh chanted and danced his fingers over the ensign in a calming mudra.

  Both the sedative and the spell were designed to calm him without clouding his mind, so as soon as Dobbler realized he was safe he was able to start explaining to the others what he’d seen.

  Relatively safe, that was. Part of what he’d learned was just how big a threat Du’Thokk could potentially be.

  Even before he heard the details of that, though, Captain Farraday wanted to hear how to get Lieutenant Summers back.

  “He told the truth—the simple duel should do it,” Dobbler told them. “We have to send down a champion, someone to fight his champion. Which would be Boulton, now that he’s possessed by Du’Thokk.”

  “No special conditions regarding our champion? No hidden rules or tricks?”

  “No, sir. No riddles I’ve seen the rules for how his duel system works, and it all looks pretty straightforward and unambiguous.”

  Farraday was unconvinced. “So, what, they just duke it out? And we trust Du’Thokk to be on the honor system? Couldn’t this guy melt our brains the second we step out from behind the spell shield?”

  “He won’t. He’ll follow the ancient rules of single combat—he’s not just a psychic, he’s a shaman, which means he uses magic as well as ESP.” Magic had word-binding requirements that had no equivalent in non-magic life—once a spell was cast, it would probably be impossible for the caster to back out of it without nullifying his or her own power. “He possessed Boulton to make him serve as his champion in the f
irst place. The code of the duel forbids any direct use of psychic power, and on a purely physical level Du’Thokk alone would be no match for any of us.”

  “Have you thought of anyone who could stand up to Boulton?” Blaine asked Miller.

  “I don’t know. I wish I could say me, but....” Miller glared at Dobbler as if he shared responsibility for the tidings he’d brought. “So, is this little duel a fight to the death? Am I supposed to send one of my people down to either get killed themselves or else kill my man Boulton?”

  “I think I have a solution for that,” assured Farraday. “Let’s head down to the tech mage labs. Horowitz has something she’s ready to show us....”

  “Wait.” After he’d delivered the information he’d been sent to find, a wave of exhaustion had come crashing through Dobbler and he’d been suddenly unable to stop his head from collapsing back upon the pillow. Now he roused himself, remembering all the other things he’d seen in Du’Thokk’s mind, the terrible things.

  He held the captain’s gaze as he said, “We’re not the first interstellar visitors Du’Thokk’s had. There was another ship, one that came in orbit around Lumley without an adequate spell shield—he sensed their minds up there, he pulled them down to the planet surface and stripped their brains of all knowledge of their homeworld and of space travel. Then he had the whole crew torture each other to death.”

  “Why?” exclaimed Ensign Fiquet from her corner of the room. It wasn’t really protocol for someone of her rank to intrude upon the conference without asking permission first, but nobody seemed to notice.

  “For fun, I guess,” said Dobbler.

  “When was this?” said Blaine. From her expression Dobbler could tell that she suspected he was just regurgitating bad dreams that his trip had spawned.

  “A long time ago, I think.” Dobbler frowned, trying to remember it all more clearly. “I think maybe Du’Thokk is really, really old.”