The Chemical Mage: Supernatural Hard Science Fiction (The Tegression Trilogy Book 1)

by Felix R. Savage

  Teaching karate to sentrienza was like teaching ballet to penguins. They lacked reach and flexibility, and she’d heard a rumor that they had no fast twitch muscle fibers, which aligned with her own observation that they could not put power behind their kicks and punches. But she had a duty to teach them to the best of her ability.

  “Well, Emnl, in Japanese the stomach is called the hara. It’s where the ki, um, energy, kind of sits or resides. When we give our kiai shout, we’re channeling the ki from our stomach. But I know that your center of balance is different from a human’s. It’s natural for the sentrienza to move from your chests. So although I would never advise a human student to keep their center of balance that high, it may actually work for your physiology. Just try not to move from your shoulders. That makes it very hard to put any energy behind your punches.”

  “No,” Emnl said, before she even finished. “I want to understand more about ki. Energy. Where does this energy come from? How can I get more of it?”

  Oh God. Not this again.

  All her students were fascinated with the notion of ki. They saw karate as a means of acquiring it. Meg couldn’t decide if they completely misunderstood the concept, or if they understood it better than she did. Growing up as a bilingual Japanese speaker, she’d always used ki as an everyday word encompassing the concepts of mood, feeling, and yes, energy. Her karate practice had acquainted her with the more esoteric idea that ki came from some cosmic source, and the martial arts were just methods of channelling it. Science validated the existence of a link between mental focus and physical achievement. But so what?

  “Just get your katas right and you’ll find that your kiais are more effective, too,” she said encouragingly.

  But while her words were travelling to Sakassarib, Emnl transmitted another request. “Will you show me the tameshiwari again?”

  Meg inwardly ground her teeth. She was not a circus performer. But she had to keep Emnl sweet.

  She went to her supply closet at the other end of the dojo and took out two folding chairs and a plank. The ‘plank’ was actually a planed length of dried seaweed, as strong as flexible steel. She taped it to the chairs and stood in front of it, knees slightly bent.

  Inhale. Exhale.

  On the screen, Emnl had dropped into the squatting posture the sentrienza found most comfortable. She watched hungrily.

  Inhale.

  Exhale.

  Meg dropped to one knee and simultaneously brought her right arm up. As her knee hit the floor, her arm whipcracked down. She thought of this as a soft, falling motion. Her palm slapped the board with a resonant thump, followed by a crack as the plank broke in half.

  “Amazing! Superb!” Emnl exclaimed.

  Rising, Meg hid a grin of satisfaction. It was nice to do something well and be admired for it, even if it was just a party trick. She’d made a video of herself breaking a stack of concrete pavers, put it on the net; that was what brought the students in.

  “That was a soft break, as opposed to a power break,” Meg explained. She picked up the two halves of the plank and showed Emnl that her palm wasn’t injured, wasn’t even reddened. “It’s also called a ki break. It doesn’t have anything to do with strength, so you could definitely learn to do it.”

  “How? How?”

  There are limits to what can be explained. Some things just have to be learned.

  “I let gravity do the work for me,” Meg fumbled.

  “Did you learn this trick from the other man who came with you to Sakassarib?”

  “Who?”

  “The one who ...” Emnl lapsed into the sentrienza language.

  “I don’t understand,” Meg said, carrying the chairs back to the supply closet. “Anyway, no, I learned it from my sensei, back on Earth, a long time ago.”

  “They want me to stop studying karate,” Emnl said.

  “Who does?”

  “Everyone here. They think it is dangerous. They think you are dangerous.”

  Meg tensed. “That’s ridiculous, Emnl. Tell them ...” That you’ll never be good enough to hurt anyone? True, but not tactful. “Tell them that it isn’t really about fighting. Or breaking planks. It’s a spiritual thing.”

  “That’s it!” Emnl hissed. She bounced upright on her four-toed feet. “That’s exactly why they say it’s dangerous!”

  Meg frowned. The doorbell of the dojo rang.

  “Sorry, Emnl, hate to cut this short, but I have to go. It’s time for my next class.”

  Of course, that wasn’t true. After bowing goodbye to Emnl, she opened the door to Axel.

  He swept in on a gust of wind from the stairwell, his coat flapping. He’d taken to dressing like a Juradis lifer: ankle-length duster, filmy scarf that could be wound around the eyes against the glare of Betelgeuse. What was he doing here? He never came to the dojo. They shared two rooms in the silk district. Meg had been planning to go home for lunch, knowing he might or might not be there. Most days she didn’t see him until evening.

  “Got a surprise for you.” He struck a gangster pose, gun-hands pointing at the mirror. Bang! He hung around with a bad crowd at the wharves. Mara, shablags, humans from the sketchier end of the security industry.

  “I have to change.” She went into the bathroom, changed into cutoffs and a tank top, folded her gi into her gym bag. “What’s up?” she called through the open door.

  “We’re going on a trip!” Axel did a clumsy karate kick at his own reflection. He was still wearing his boots.

  “Axel, shoes ...”

  “Oh jeez, sorry, sorry.” Clomp, clomp, he retreated to the door. “I’ll take them off.”

  “Don’t bother. I’m coming now.”

  She settled her sunglasses on her nose, tied her hat on with a bandanna, gave herself a grim smile in the bathroom mirror. At the door, she put her sandals on, using Axel as a support while she stood on one foot and then the other. He stood like a rock, letting her use his arm. This was the closest they came to touching each other these days.

  “So what’s this about going on a trip? I can’t, anyway. I have classes.”

  “Can’t you cancel them?”

  “And then who’s gonna pay our rent?” Meg couldn’t help reminding Axel that she was supporting them both, literally by the sweat of her brow. It was a far cry from the days when he’d taken her for breakfast and dancing at a private restaurant.

  “We’re going to Skaldaffi,” Axel said. “It’s an island. Long way from here.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “No more than usual. It’ll be fun. We’ll rent a plane.”

  Meg locked the door of the dojo. Sun baked into the stairwell. The thump and whine of the shablag sweatshop on the 12th floor forced her to raise her voice. “Axel, do you have the dough to hire a plane?” She knew he didn’t. He was expecting her to pay for it, the way she paid for everything else. She tried to strike a conciliatory note. “What’s on this island that’s so great?”

  “Not what. Who.”

  Meg’s heart skipped a beat.

  Collie Mack.

  He’s found Colm.

  It has to be.

  Hope stole her cool. Her knuckles whitened on the strap of her gym bag. “Who is it, Axel?”

  “Emile Zaragoza.”

  Hope died. Meg shook her head. “I’m blanking on that name.”

  “You’ve met him before. On Majriti IV.”

  CHAPTER 38

  THE RENTED SEAPLANE BANKED low above Skaldaffi. They had flown for nine hours straight. Meg gazed eagerly down at the island. She had not been enthusiastic about this trip, but now that she saw Skaldaffi, she liked the look of the place. It was a volcanic atoll: a donut with a bite out of one side. Forest covered it, so green it seemed to burn her retinas. A sight for sore eyes after the urban jungle of Haravalding.

  The flash of solar panels drew her eye to a village amidst the trees. Children ran along a dirt track, waving at the plane.

  Axel landed on the lagoon betwee
n the two ‘arms’ of the island. “Hey, you’re good at this,” Meg teased him.

  He kissed his fingertips. “Thank Captain Esthesia. Implants don’t get rusty.”

  A motor dinghy breasted the waves and nosed up to the seaplane for a precarious and very wet transfer. Meg ended up thoroughly soaked, salt water in her mouth, half-blinded by the glare off the waves, and feeling happier than she had in months.

  As they crunched up the beach, she grinned at Axel, trying to convey an apology. This had already been worth it.

  “Not much like Majriti IV, huh?” she said to the athletic young woman who’d piloted the dinghy.

  “Not much,” the woman agreed. “But it’s got a lot going for it.”

  “A notable absence of Ghosts.”

  “That, and swimming. And kite-surfing. And snorkeling ...”

  “Oh my God, I love snorkeling.”

  “We can go out later if you like. The skin cancer incidence on this world is through the roof.”

  “If that’s the only drawback ...”

  “For real.” The woman stepped off the path. Her machete swung. She came back holding a spiny yellow fruit the size of a baby’s head. “Try this.” She broke off a spine, sucked on the stump like a straw, and passed it to Meg. “Nice and ripe.”

  Meg expected something like coconut milk. She got a mouthful of sweet, thick nectar with a peppery edge. “Wow. That’s delicious.”

  “Right?”

  “No wonder the sentrienza kept this planet to themselves for so long.”

  The woma nodded. “We feel so lucky to be able to live here, after everything that’s happened.”

  Children ran down the path to meet them. Meg realized that among this tanned, rowdy gang must be some of the very same kids she, Axel, and Colm had rescued from Drumlin Farm.

  “We’ve only been here a year, but now I can’t imagine raising my kids anywhere else,” the young woman said. She gave the spiny fruit to the children. “Share!”

  If they’d been here a year, they must have made it onto a Hail Mary ship when the prices were still in nosebleed territory. How had ordinary refugees from a colony world managed that? And how had they wound up on a heavenly tropical island, instead of mouldering on a prison ship?

  Maybe Axel’s mysterious contact, Emile Zaragoza, had the answers.

  “You don’t have to come in,” Axel said to Meg, outside the house they were told was Zaragoza’s.

  “Of course I’m coming in.”

  The village was low-tech, welcoming. Sunlight grilled an open clearing. A generator chugged noisily. Smoke trickled from an open firepit. Six-legged pig analogs, resembling warthogs with armadillo carapaces, snuffled around the clearing. Prefab huts stood on log stilts, canopied with solar panels. Saws and nail guns clamored in the forest—the colonists were building better houses, a school, a recycling plant.

  They climbed to the flat roof of Zaragoza’s house. In the shade of the solar canopy, a frail, silver-haired man reclined on a camp chair. He greeted them politely, but without warmth. Meg barely recognized him from Drumlin Farm. He’d aged a lot since then.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet with us,” Axel began.

  “How could I say no?” Zaragoza said in lightly Spanish-accented English. “You saved our lives on Majriti IV.”

  “We were just doing our job,” Meg said.

  “How is your father?” Zaragoza said to Axel.

  “He was on Gna fourteen months ago.” Axel shrugged. The void of uncertainty yawned. Meg thought about her own father, still on Earth. Or dead. Her good mood seeped away.

  “You came to Juradis alone?” Zaragoza said.

  “With Ms. Smythe and a couple of others.”

  “But then ...”

  “I’m afraid this is nothing to do with my father,” Axel said. Meg realized that they were here under false pretenses. Axel had let Zaragoza think they were emissaries from the Best family, rather than just another pair of refugees. “I found out you were living on Skaldaffi ...”

  “From me,” said a high, thin shriek of a voice.

  Meg whipped around. A mara climbed onto the roof, the whole house creaking beneath its weight. Meg’s skin crawled in a visceral reaction to this most repellent alien species.

  The mara had short thick trunks, sinuous legs, green skin. Their upper bodies tapered to small heads with sloping foreheads. They weren’t very bright. The sentrienza employed them as laborers. But this one seemed a bit different. Its lank black ribbons of hair fringed piercing eyes. It settled into a reclining position at Zaragoza’s feet, producing another fusillade of creaks.

  “It’s time to tell someone, Emile,” it said.

  Emile Zaragoza raised a hand to strike the mara. Fury mottled his face.

  Without thinking, Meg grabbed Zaragoza’s wrist. “Hey,” she said. “Hey.”

  Zaragoza did not fight her. She let go. He hunched over his knees, staring at the red marks her fingers had left on his liver-spotted wrist.

  “I apologize,” he said.

  “No, I apologize,” Meg said.

  “It’s just ...” He trailed off.

  “You’ve been through so much,” Meg blurted, understanding. “You escaped the Ghosts by the skin of your teeth on Majriti IV. Lost everything. But you made it here, somehow or other. Now you’ve got this great set-up, and you’re afraid you’re going to lose everything all over again.”

  Zaragoza sighed. He pulled himself together and turned to Axel. “Do I need to worry?”

  “That depends what you’ve got to tell us,” Axel said.

  “What did the mara tell you?”

  The mara itself answered. “I learned from my cousins on Haravalding that a man—this one—was asking questions. Dangerous questions. And I think, Emile, that you are the best person to answer him.”

  Zaragoza said, “I’m no longer involved. And my people were never involved. They’re innocent.”

  Axel growled, “Bullshit.” He pointed into the trees. “I saw some very interesting things when I overflew the island. My plane’s got LiDAR, by the way. I wonder what the sentrienza would—”

  He got no further. The mara rose to its knees and swept him into a choke hold, one arm clamped across his throat. Axel’s face reddened. He tore ineffectually at the green-skinned arm that was cutting off his air. Meg jumped to her feet, but she was unarmed, powerless against the brawny alien.

  “Take them away,” Zaragoza said, no longer looking at Meg or Axel. “Don’t hurt them. Just take them ... somewhere safe. I’ll decide later what should be done with them.”

  *

  ‘SOMEWHERE SAFE’ TURNED out to be a pit in the ground, about a mile from the village. Meg figured it for the future cellar of a large building. Straight-sided, it was too deep to climb out of. She tried anyway, vainly digging footholds in the volcanic soil, which crumbled the minute she put her weight on them. At last she gave up, exhausted. The afternoon sunlight shone straight into the pit, and she’d lost her sunglasses. A throbbing headache split her temples.

  Axel had taken off his duster and rigged it into a canopy in one corner of the pit. She crawled into the makeshift shelter beside him. The material was not thick enough to block all the light. The shadow of the weave cross-hatched the backs of her sunburnt hands.

  “You’ll get skin cancer,” Axel said, touching one knuckle.

  “That’s the least of our worries.” She was too tired and headachey to start a blame game. “What did you see on the LiDAR?”

  “Couple of catamarans. A small nuclear power plant. And an anti-aircraft gun, probably a large-caliber Gauss. All hidden under the trees.”

  “Wonder what they need that kind of ordnance for.”

  “They’re part of the Organization.”

  “The what?”

  “The Organization,” Axel repeated. She could hear the capital O. “It started out with some of the vets who work security on the prison ships. Just bar talk about overthrowing the sentrienza. But then they
involved the mara and the shablags, and it started to get serious. Now, with more and more humans arriving on Juradis, they’re starting to think they have the numbers to actually take action.”

  Meg shook her head incredulously. “The sentrienza’ll nuke them from orbit.”

  “Probably.”

  “And you didn’t tell me about this before, why?”

  “Because you think the sentrienza are the good guys,” Axel said, and they were having that blame game after all.

  “I do not think they’re the good guys,” Meg said hotly. But the truth was, she kind of did. Hadn’t the sentrienza taken in close to a million human refugees? They hadn’t had to do that. No, the prison ships weren’t luxury hotels, but at least those people were alive, not rotting on Gna or Gliese 581g or wherever. The sentrienza were humanity’s last hope of survival.

  As for that contract Emnl had made Meg sign ... it was probably just some kind of sentrienza cultural metaphor. It would never apply, anyway. She and Axel hadn’t slept together for months.

  The afternoon wore slowly on. Meg got thirsty, and then very, very thirsty. Her head pounded. She curled up in the makeshift shelter and dozed.

  When she woke up, the sun had mercifully set. Her headache had abated some, but her thirst hadn’t. Rough fabric cushioned her cheek. Axel had folded his duster under her head for a pillow.

  “Meg. You awake?” He stood in the middle of the pit, looking up at the dark forest.

  She stood up. Shaky, dizzy. “I think I have heatstroke.”

  “You need fluids.”

  “Yeah. Shame we don’t have any.”

  “I thought I heard something ...”

  The insects buzzed. Waves sighed on the nearby beach.

  A twig snapped.

  A ladder angled over the edge of the pit.

  CHAPTER 39

  THE LADDER SETTLED AGAINST the side of the pit.

  Axel scrambled up it at a run.

  Meg, weak and shaky, took it slower. When she reached the top of the ladder, the young woman who had ferried them to the island pulled her to her feet.

  “Just go,” the woman said. “Go back to your plane and get out of here. The dinghy’s on the beach. I assume you know how to operate the outboard. You never saw me, and I have no idea how you got loose.” She stooped to lift the ladder out of the pit.