Mage Hunter (Lost Tales of Power Book 8)

by Vincent Trigili

  You’re a wizard now, you fool, I scolded myself, and hid myself from the sensors just before they could scan me. Of all the talents that magi were born with, this was the most annoying when you were trying to hunt them.

  “Hey, you two, wait!” called out one of the guards, who could see that we had passed through illicitly.

  Master Raquel called out a command word and waved her hand back towards the entrance. A shimmering green wall appeared and then solidified between us and the guards. It looked like moss or some similar plant. She barely looked back as she cast and kept walking.

  The guards were now cut off from us and probably calling for help, but any assistance from outside would have to contend with her wall.

  “Well, that’s handy,” I commented and rushed to catch her up.

  “You have a similar spell and we both have more effective ones, but that will suffice for now,” she said.

  I followed her deeper into the complex. Oddly, we saw no one else. She stopped in front of an ornate double door. It was made of the same composite material as the walls on the station, but it was inset with what looked like gold and silver in the pattern of the seal of the Phareon government.

  She tried the door. “Locked.”

  I assumed she would cast some unlocking spell, but instead she spun and launched a side kick, landing just above the latch that held the two doors together in the center. There was a loud crack as the latch broke apart, then an even louder bang as the doors slammed into the walls and slowly swung back.

  Note to self: never stand in her way.

  She pushed through the doors and said, “Ambassador, I believe you summoned me.”

  The room beyond the doors was plush; no, that was an understatement. All the furniture was plated in one precious metal or another. Lights were adorned with gems that scattered rainbows everywhere, and the chairs were covered in animal fur. I assumed it was all fake, produced by the same manufacturing processes that made the more mundane materials, but the effect was not marred by that.

  There were four guards and three staff members, if that was what they were, all lined up in front of a desk behind which was a tall humanoid. I didn’t recognize his species. He looked human, but his arms, legs and even his neck were too thin and too long. His eyes were huge compared to his narrow head, and his body was adorned with jewelry. His skin was red and so taut I thought it might tear if he moved too fast.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

  “You summoned me and I came. I trust I have not wasted my time,” answered Master Raquel. There was ice in her voice, and I suddenly grew worried that she had forgotten we were supposed to try to find a peaceful means of resolution.

  I stepped forward. “Please allow me to introduce Sub-Master Raquel, Ambassador of the Wizard Kingdom.”

  “Guards, seize them both,” said the ambassador.

  “I strongly recommend you do not follow that order,” I said. I couldn’t imagine any situation where seizing Master Raquel would be wise.

  “How dare you break into my office unannounced and attempt to give orders to my guards!” he said.

  The guards aimed their weapons at us and walked forward.

  Master Raquel called out another command and vines sprang up around the guards and staff members, holding them fast.

  “Master, this is not going very peacefully,” I sent.

  She did not reply but turned on the ambassador and said, “You sent me a message stating that you had taken one of my people hostage and threatened to cause him harm. That was a grave mistake.”

  He sat down and folded his hands. “I don’t think so. You see, that’s not how this works … ”

  His voice trailed off as Master Raquel walked forward and drew one of her swords. I had never seen its like: in place of a metal blade, there was fire. She swung it around the heads of the guards, just close enough for them to feel the heat but not near enough to do any harm.

  “Now, Ambassador, I admit I am inexperienced in the art of diplomacy, but it seems that I have seven of your people here and you have but one of mine. I suggest you start talking,” she said.

  He slowly stood up and stepped back from the desk. “You are risking war.”

  Master Raquel’s sword came down and sliced through the desk at which he had been sitting. One half fell over with a loud thud, leaving him standing behind half a desk. “This realization has come to you too late, Ambassador. You have already taken a hostage, and war has come to you.”

  He swallowed hard. There was panic in his eyes. “But I can’t - ”

  “You don’t actually have him,” I said out loud, without meaning to. There was something about his demeanor that told me he had been bluffing all along.

  “I know where he is and will have him soon,” he said.

  “Where?” asked Master Raquel.

  “Don’t bother; he has no idea,” I told her and walked over to his computer. “May I?” I asked without waiting for an answer. Using my datapad as a firewall and its processors for computing power, I interfaced with the machine on the desk and started searching his files. The information was flying by on the screen too fast for me to read, but the computer in the datapad was pulling out any hits on my searches and displaying them in my contacts. It was almost like being my old self again.

  He would be trying to get home, so he probably made for the Hospital Station. It’s been about a week, so he’s probably hitched a ride by now, I thought to myself as I adjusted my search parameters.

  “I’ve found a good lead, Master. About the time he would have arrived, a Resden fleet passed through and was hiring guards. They picked up some men here and were heading for the Hospital Station. If I were Stones, I would have taken that job and left when I reached the hospital.”

  She nodded and sent back, “Good. Erase your tracks and I will gate us out of here.” As I did so, she turned to the ambassador and said, “I shall contact your superior and inform him that you almost started a war this day. Remember this: if you should ever attempt such treachery again, I will come back and you will regret it.”

  “Done, Master,” I sent.

  She nodded and opened a gate, and I followed her through. We came out in her office on the Hospital Station. She collapsed into her chair as soon the gate was closed.

  “Master, shouldn’t you have canceled those spells before you left?” I asked.

  “They will fade in an hour or two,” she said.

  “With all due respect, Master, I don’t think that was exactly what was meant by ‘trying to find a peaceful means of resolution’,” I pointed out. I might be crossing a line here, but it needed to be said.

  She sighed deeply. “Perhaps not.” She was quiet for some time. Eventually she said, “Thank you for saying that. Do not hesitate to speak freely when you think it necessary. However, to all intents and purposes we are at war with Phareon. They sent a fleet to attack this station, which Grandmaster Vydor repelled. They have refused to attend any peace talks. We have treaties and agreements with virtually everyone in this sector except Phareon.”

  “Master, when you worked with the previous Council of Wizards, the one from ten thousand years ago, how did they handle something like this?”

  She looked at me with hardness in her eyes. “No one would have dared to hold one of their wizards; but in the unlikely event that they had, a group of wizards would have been dispatched to free him and kill everyone on the station.”

  I gasped. That was about as far from the answer I’d expected as one could get.

  “It was a different time,” she said with a sigh.

  I thought carefully about how I should respond. She had said that I should talk freely, but I had just watched her kick in a door and wield a flaming sword. “Master, I don’t know much about the politics out here but I feel that Grandmaster Vydor would prefer peace to war with Phareon, and those negotiations probably didn’t help that cause.”

  “No doubt you are correct and I’m sure I w
ill hear it from Grandmaster Vydor for my actions, but next we must find Stones. Do you have the designation of the convoy?”

  “Yes; their next stop is at this station,” I said, pulling up a map on my datapad to show her. “They’re scheduled to arrive there in three days.”

  “I have no marker at that station; what else is close by?” she asked.

  “What is a marker?” I asked as I zoomed out the display.

  “A location to which I can gate. There, that station will suffice. We can gate to it and then take a shuttle over to the station where we can find Stones.”

  46

  05-13-0067 — Lyshell

  After providing me my room accommodations, Master Raquel told me to take the rest of the day off and report back at first light. I had never heard that expression before but assumed that it meant six hundred hours, when the standard day officially started. She seemed pensive when I left, and I wondered if I should leave her alone with her memories. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be her. Everyone she had known had died ten thousand years ago; every place she had known was gone. She had literally had to start again from nothing. That must be terribly lonely.

  I almost turned back and offered to take her to dinner to distract her, but when I checked the time I realized that Joan would be getting ready for work, and if I hurried I could catch her before her shift started. Fortunately she had told me all about her new place recently, so all I had to do was find it on the map and start running.

  Her door looked like any of the other doors along the corridor, distinguished only by number. There was still a good fifteen minutes before she would leave, assuming she was still on the same schedule.

  With a deep breath, I raised my hand to press the chime. My hand was shaking a little and my stomach felt as if it were tied in knots. It was just a door, Joan’s door, but my chest grew tight as I considered pressing the bell. My implants would have prevented such emotions, but they were gone now. A simple door was about to undo me. My feet seemed to be trying to move of their own accord, in any direction that would put the door behind me.

  Gulping for air, I pressed the button and waited. Joan would be able to see who it was before she opened the door, so there was nothing to do but wait. Almost immediately the door flew open and she charged out, yelling, “Ly!”

  She crashed into me, almost knocking me down, and drew me into a hug. Warmth traveled up my body and my tension eased as we embraced. I buried my face in her hair and we held each other. Nothing made sense anymore, but I knew that hug felt right; very right. I guess that’s all I really needed to understand.

  Eventually she let go and stepped back, leaving her hands on my shoulders. She asked, “How long can you stay?”

  “I just came off shift, and I’m not due to report back till morning.”

  “By the Emperor, that’s great! Come in!” she said as she took my arm and brought me inside. I don’t think I have ever seen her so happy. There was a bounce in her step and her whole expression shone with joy. “I want to know all about how you got here, but first I have to make a call.”

  I sat on her couch and tried to get my mind under control. I had never before felt this way in her company, and I wasn’t sure what it meant. My mind kept flashing back to that movie I had watched while still a cyborg, the one with the couple having dinner, which had seemed to have a subtext I couldn’t grasp. The woman had looked at the man in much the same way Joan looked at me. This must be how they had felt. Had Joan looked at me like that before? As a cyborg, would I have known if she had?

  “Hey, Emily? It’s Joan,” came her voice from the other room. There was a pause, followed by, “You know all those times I covered for you when someone special dropped by?” Another pause. “Well, I’m calling a solid ‘you owe me one’.” Another pause and a giggle, then she said, “Lyshell is here.” Another pause, followed by, “Thanks! I’ll talk to you later. See you tomorrow night!”

  I swallowed the lump that had mysteriously appeared in my throat as I mentally filled in the other half of that conversation. My heart rate was increasing, and my stomach did not feel as stable as it should. I looked at the door and briefly considering a retreat to gather myself, but quickly dismissed the idea. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to be here, with her, so why was I feeling like this?

  Joan called, “I’m just going to change out of my work clothes; I’ll be right out!”

  Looking down at my outfit, I saw that I was still in my battle armor. That hardly seemed appropriate, but I couldn’t have risked stopping to change. I might have missed her. I took another deep breath. I didn’t understand my emotional condition, but I had been trained to read the signs. If I were watching this from outside and charged with guarding me, I would mark Joan as ‘emotionally tied’ to my charge and also in need of protection.

  She came out of the back room wearing a black top with three-quarter-length sleeves that hugged her body. She wore blue jeans and her dark hair was tossed forward over one shoulder. Her skin was lighter than mine and had a soft glow to it. Her outfit showed off her generous curves, and she was smiling brightly.

  Emotionally tied. Yes, that seemed to be right, if somewhat clinical.

  Her smile, her face, everything about her drew me and held me captive. This might be the first time I had ever seen her without my cold, calculating processors crunching her as mere data. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her in this way before, or indeed anyone else.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  My face felt warm as she caught me staring. “I couldn’t imagine it being any better. Did I hear that you have the night off?”

  “Yes. Nurses are typically on duty, well, pretty much all the time. So anytime one of us has a chance to get away, the rest cover her shift.”

  “Well, I should get out of my uniform also, then perhaps we can have dinner…er, breakfast?”

  “That would be nice. Are you staying somewhere close?”

  “Not really. It’ll take fifteen or twenty minutes to walk there.”

  “Let’s walk together, then, and you can tell me what you’re doing all the way out here.”

  As we walked to my place, I gave her a broad description of my current assignment, everything I felt I was allowed to share. “So I don’t know how long I will be stationed out here, but Master Raquel has an office here and apparently I have an apartment.”

  “Should I consider putting in for day shift, then?” she asked.

  “Why would… oh, so our breaks would line up?”

  “Yes. I like night shift, but not if it will interfere with seeing you.”

  There was that lump again in my throat. Emotionally tied. I never knew how much impact emotion could have on a person. “Probably not a great idea. Even if I’m stationed out here long-term, I could be away on missions for weeks or longer at a time.”

  “That part of your life hasn’t changed much, then.”

  “Going from one military outfit to another, everything changes and everything stays pretty much the same.”

  “Same is pretty much the case with hospitals.”

  We stopped in front of my door, and I waved my hand in front of the reader to unlock it. I hesitated before opening the door.

  A nervous chuckle escaped my lips. “I haven’t actually been inside yet. Master Raquel said all of my stuff should be here, waiting for me.”

  “Is there any reason for me to be concerned?” she asked as she pressed the control to slide open the door.

  “I hope not,” I said with a grin.

  The door opened to reveal an apartment not much unlike the one I’d had at the Academy. It had a separate bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and living area. It was spacious compared to how I’d lived back in the Empire, and far bigger than I needed. The room was decorated in gun-metal gray, with all the basic furnishings. Everything was bland and safe.

  “It could use a little color,” she commented.

  The few items I had left behind were here, so M
aster Raquel must have sent for them. There was a locked chest sitting in one corner which opened when it read my palm print; inside was my collection of weapons.

  “Looks like everything I own is here,” I commented, relocking the chest.

  Her smile broadened. “That’s a good indication that Master Raquel plans to keep you here for a while.”

  “Maybe. I intend to ask her when I report in tomorrow. Now, I’d better get changed.” I put my datapad and contacts on the table next to the couch, took my pack and went into the bathroom.

  Lyshell, what are you getting yourself into? It was unlike me to feel like this. Intellectually, I understood exactly what was happening; it was easy to work out. It was also easy to see that becoming emotionally involved with Joan would complicate things.

  It would not be fair to her. She would be stuck here alone while I traveled on missions. Whenever I came back, she would have to change her entire schedule so that we could spend time together. While on a mission, I could be distracted by a message from her or a stray thought, and that would be dangerous.

  Yes, intellectually this was stupid and I should try to end it. That was the logically correct thing, and I didn’t need my sub-processors to figure it out. I looked at myself in the mirror. A pair of dark eyes stared back at me and seemed to ask, “Can you really let her go?”

  “No,” I answered, silently and firmly. She was the one person from my previous life who I had left and the only one to whom I could talk about that life. Beyond that, in all my memory, no one had ever made me feel this way before. She wasn’t just a good friend; she was more than that. Hugging her was the best thing that had happened to me, and she seemed equally happy to see me. How could I let all that go?

  I finished washing and put on my best civilian clothes. Just before leaving the bathroom, I put on an armband that bore my insignia, a green seven that would mark me as a low-ranking Battle Wizard but also an employee of Master Raquel. Since she had her office on this station, I hoped that would make me look like a local.