Spectra's Gambit

by Vincent Trigili

  I found an empty office and viewed the security footage of the earlier incident. Doctor Hawthorne’s story did not make much sense, nor did his casual dismissal of the occurrence. The men who had attacked him were well-armed and were flying a high-end cruiser. They did not seem the type to strike without reason.

  I watched as the ship docked. They sent what turned out to be falsified medical reports, to which Doctor Hawthorne and a nurse rushed to respond. As they approached the airlock, it cycled open and several men charged out with their weapons drawn. The nurse ran away, and presumably tripped the alarm.

  “What is going on here?” asked Doctor Hawthorne.

  “You’ll pay for what you did!” called out the leader of the men.

  “What are you talking about?” asked the doctor. He was perfectly calm, but obviously puzzled.

  “Don’t play games with me! You got my brother killed!” he said.

  It was then that the alarm started to sound and the men with the leader became agitated. The leader took a swing at Doctor Hawthorne who, with the skill of a prizefighter, slipped out of the way of the blow. He made no move to counterattack or escape, other than that dodge. It seemed likely that he intended to try to defuse the situation before it escalated into a firefight.

  Before the man could do anything else, I heard Saraphym call out and the two of us ran into the footage. I watched Saraphym’s fight again and was impressed by the speed and accuracy of her blows. I knew that Dusty and Spectra spent each morning doing combat training, but I had not realized it was so advanced. I would have to join them some morning. Based on her skill, they may have something to teach me, I thought.

  I rewound the footage and watched her pull her staff right out of the air, and after the fight she put it back into the air. The camera did not catch where it came from or went; one moment it was not there, then the next it was. That was an amazingly useful trick. I wondered if she could teach it to me or if it was something only a magus could do.

  I leaned back in my chair and listened to the dialogue again. There was no mention of the convoy, which disagreed with Doctor Hawthorne’s version of the story, but maybe he had assumed that that must be what they were referring to. It did seem the most logical guess in some ways, but not in others. Why would you assume that a hospital had taken out a contract on some of its clientele?

  The hospital’s database had no entries for the ship or the men who had disembarked from it. I missed my access to the Phareon government’s database, but it was likely they would have not shown up there either. Their ship was stripped of all possible identification and their clothes were nondescript. They were obviously used to hiding.

  I checked through the records of all recent patient deaths, but nothing jumped out. If one of them was connected to this in some manner, there appeared to be no way to tell. I also checked for any history of this kind of incident, and the database corroborated what the doctor had said. Seemingly random attacks like this just happened from time to time. There were even several reports that suggested a need for guards at all airlocks, but Doctor Hawthorne had denied the request every time.

  My computer search having reached a dead end, I decided to go for a walk. As I strolled, I wondered about these magi I had joined. For the first time I was accepted and trusted on the basis of who I really was, not what I pretended to be or whom I represented or any leverage I had to use. I had full, unrestricted access to everything too, which was more than even Zah’rak had trusted me with.

  As I walked I came across an office with the light on, which was unusual for this late hour. I poked my head inside and saw Shea tending to some plants.

  “Oh, hi there! Come on in,” she said.

  Her office was well-lit and filled with all kinds of growing plants, most of which I had never seen before. She had a small desk with a standard terminal on it, but for the most part the room was devoid of any of the normal office equipment; instead, everything was geared toward caring for her extensive garden.

  “Hi,” I said. I was unsure how to address her and did not know her rank or official position. “Sorry, I did not mean to disturb you.”

  “You are not disturbing me at all. Come in!” she said.

  She had a way about her that made you want to trust and like her. I could not identify it, but its effect seemed universal. Everyone trusted Shea, and it seemed that everyone loved her too.

  “Thanks, but really I was just wandering the halls, trying to understand this place,” I said.

  “Well, maybe I can help you with that. What is bothering you?” she asked.

  It occurred to me that she had everyone’s ear, and if anything was going on she was likely to know about it. “The attack earlier today did not make any sense.”

  “Does violence ever really make sense?” she asked.

  “It usually has a reason, however illogical,” I said.

  “True, at least in the minds of those involved,” she said.

  “Do you have any idea why it happened?” I asked.

  “No. I only heard about it in passing, but it is par for the course out here. Doctor Hawthorne has learned to play the various powers that be against each other in an ever-changing political battlefield. If the truth be known, he was probably involved in whatever it was made them angry enough to attack.”

  That seemed reasonable and did fit all the data I had on the hospital from my prior life.

  “But that is not what brought you to my door,” she said.

  “Really, I was just walking by and saw the light on,” I said.

  “Tell me, what do you think of your new shipmates?” she asked.

  I stared at her for a minute and then made a connection. “You are good. You must be a counselor here.”

  “What makes you say that?” she asked.

  “Because you are leading up to asking me about Saraphym.”

  “Oh? Is there a reason I should be asking about her?” she asked.

  I chuckled and closed the door. “Okay, okay, I give in. Yes, I don’t know what to do.”

  She smiled sweetly. It was the most disarming smile I had ever seen. “She is obviously attracted to you.”

  “Yes, and the others seem to be conspiring to make sure we have as much time alone as possible, considering our living arrangements.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “No. Well, maybe. I mean, what could she be attracted to? My eyes? My face? My hair? Maybe it’s the way I walk?”

  “Maybe you should ask her that,” she said.

  “It really does not matter. None of that is me. It is all fake,” I said.

  “Is it really?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you see a piece of art, can you not recognize its creator by his unique style?” she asked.

  “I guess, but what does that have to do with anything?”

  “The art he creates is something he made, but many people fall in love with a particular artist’s style and collect all his work.”

  “Sure, but … are you comparing my body to a sculpture?”

  “In a sense, yes. Your body is not really fake; it is a representation of you. Think about it: have you ever chosen a female body? Or a Zalionian one? What about a fat human or an old man?”

  I thought about it for a while and had to admit, “No, I guess not.”

  “Why not?”

  “I guess those never occurred to me,” I said.

  “Your bipedal form is reflective of you and it flows out of your inner being much the same way an artist’s style comes through in his work.”

  “But I am not even of this race …” I let the sentence trail off. I started to see her point. I might have thought I was hiding, but really I was leaving signs of who I was out in the open. “But still, she is a different race from me. Isn’t that, well, wrong?”

  “You mean, like Dusty and Spectra are wrong?” she asked.

  “Now, that’s jus
t not fair,” I said with a smile.

  “Sure it is. Besides, your race and hers are closer than theirs are,” said Shea.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You and she are almost a genetic match. I am still working out what that means, but my guess is that she might actually be one of your race without knowing it,” she said.

  “But how could she not know?” I asked.

  “You tell me. If she took a bipedal form shortly after birth and grew up an orphan – would she know any different?”

  “Yes, she would need to eat,” I said.

  “What would that look like?” she asked.

  “Well, she would need to absorb power from her environment,” I said.

  “Her parents are citizens of the Wizard Kingdom, and reported that at an early age batteries lost their charge in her presence and other similar anomalies occurred. It was assumed to be yet another poorly understood magus trait. Once she joined the Academy, they decided it must be related to her spiritual line and ignored it.”

  I thought about that for a while, but then a thought occurred to me. “But you and the others can see through race to the real person, or so everyone keeps telling me. Can’t you tell?”

  “It is not that clean-cut. I can see your aura, which is tied to your true identity. In your case, your identity is tied up in your Shadow People form. That is what you see yourself as, and you know it to be true. Her identity is tied up in her forest people form, so that is what her aura shows.”

  “So then a person’s aura can change over time?” I asked.

  “Yes, but not so much that we would not recognize a person. Think of it this way: as I age my physical appearance will change, but in most cases you would still know it is me. It is the same with auras. As a person changes the way they see themselves their aura will shift accordingly, but it will always be unique to them.”

  “And your DNA testing? Surely DNA is immune to all this?” I asked.

  “Yes, your DNA remains unchanged throughout your life, and hers perfectly matches the racial profile we are building for your race,” she said.

  “Why wasn’t this noticed before?” I asked.

  “We have practically every imaginable race represented among the Battle Wizards, but as you yourself pointed out, magi see themselves as a separate race from the rest of the universe. In short, we only really use DNA for identity confirmation and genetic disease screening. Everyone’s race is listed as magus.”

  In a weird way that seemed to make sense, but it made me wonder: “Are there more of us among your number, then?”

  “It is possible, but unlikely. Based on the data I have access to out here, you are an extremely rare find,” she said with a smile.

  “I like to think that makes me extremely valuable,” I said. “Does she know?”

  “No, not yet, because with only your DNA to build a profile for an entire race, I can’t be sure. I am still looking for more data on your people. It has been fruitless so far.”

  “May I tell her?” I asked.

  “What if I am wrong?” she asked.

  “I will know. In fact, I think I already know you’re right,” I said.

  She smiled and said, “Yes, I think you do. Go ahead. I will keep this to myself until I hear from you how it went.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  After receiving permission from Grandmaster Vydor, Spectra and I traveled through the Spirit Realm to the former Cathratinairian home world. We stepped out of her gate into a massive crater and had to teleport out of it in order to see anything of where we were.

  “Sorry. This used to be the spaceport,” she said.

  “We will have to leave our helmets on. This air contains more deadly poisons than I can count,” I said as I looked at the desolation around us. “They sure know how to wreck a place.”

  “Yeah, there’s not much left to work with. I think the city square was over there,” she said, gesturing towards a pile of rubble.

  Grandmaster Vydor had warned us that the planet was very much uninhabitable now, but nothing could have prepared me for how bad it was. We slowly worked toward the pile of rubble that Spectra thought might have been the square. I had no idea what she could be using for landmarks.

  “Why would they destroy this planet so thoroughly? It could have been more useful for colonization,” I said.

  “They are a lizard race, so they prefer their planets to have much warmer temperatures and higher humidity than this one had. I suppose they considered it to be second-class and not worth keeping,” she answered.

  “What are we looking for here?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure yet, but I had hoped to find more of the city intact,” she said.

  We wandered around for a while and then I saw some movement. “On guard!” I called out and searched the horizon. “There!” I said and pointed to a group that was hiding.

  Spectra pulled down her staff and called out, “Show yourself!”

  Suddenly blaster fire erupted from behind several piles of rubble and we dove for cover. Our armor could easily take a few hits, but we were heavily outgunned there in the open.

  “You take the group on the right. I will get the one on the left,” she sent.

  I pulled darkness around myself and vanished from sight. Once invisible, it was a simple matter to stand up and walk over to my target group. I came up behind them and waited for Spectra to get into place.

  “Now!” she sent.

  I lowered my staff and called out, “Drop your weapons!”

  They foolishly spun and tried to shoot, but a few spirit bolts from my staff finished them off. I wrapped myself back in shadow and had started toward the location of the final group when I noticed something odd about the men. They seemed to be made of metal.

  “Dusty, they’re robots,” sent Spectra.

  “Same here. Is there anything left of your group to take back and analyze?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t take it easy on them, as they were aiming at you,” she sent.

  “Let’s try to save one from the final group. There might be something useful in its memory,” I sent.

  I moved behind their position, but it was too late. They had destroyed themselves. “It seems that someone does not want us to take them home with us,” I sent.

  “Do you think they were merely left over from the Zalionian operations?” asked Spectra.

  “No, Zalionians make big, nasty robots, not small ones like this that hide,” I sent.

  “Good point. Then these might have been placed as a trap, but by whom? No one could have known we were coming, and even if they overheard something back at the hospital, they could not have got here this fast,” she sent back.

  “Unless they have friends out here already,” I sent. “But that seems unlikely given the condition of the planet. Nothing could survive here.” The robots were much too weak to have posed a threat to us, unless they were counting on simply damaging our armor enough to let the poisoned atmosphere do its dirty work.

  “Well, we’re not leaving just yet, so keep that magical eye of yours peeled,” she sent.

  We explored the city for a while, trying to guess what had stood where now there were various craters and piles of rubble. I had no idea what we were looking for, but I knew she had something in mind. Spectra worked mostly by instinct, so I suspected that she did not know what she was looking for either, but would recognise it when we found it.

  We searched for hours. I was about to point out that our air supply was getting low when she said, “There!” and took off running.

  We came to a stop among more indistinct piles of rubble and between some random-looking craters. There was an strange atmosphere to the place, but other than that I had no idea what made this place any different from anywhere else out here. “What is it?” I asked.

  “Can’t you feel it? This is a cemetery,” she said.

  “Ah. And why are we here?”
I asked.

  “Because this city is where the outbreak started. That means someone in this cemetery might know something that could help us,” she said.

  “Perhaps, but they are all dead and hence in a cemetery,” I said.

  “That’s no barrier for us,” she said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “When a person dies, they leave behind an imprint of themselves. It fades over time, but while it is there you can sometimes get information from it,” she said.

  “Spectra, are you planning to contact the dead?” I asked. That would clearly cross the line into necromancy, I felt.

  “No, they deserve their rest. What I am looking for is more like footprints left in the sand after someone walks over it,” she explained, but before she could finish I saw someone appear.

  “Henrick,” I said.

  Spectra’s head jerked up. She drew her staff and moved between the old man and myself. “What do you want?”

  “Now, now, my dear, is that any way to treat an old friend?” he asked.

  He was not wearing any kind of environmental protection; he was just standing there as if daring the poison to try and hurt him.

  “Old friend? Hardly,” said Spectra.

  “Come now, if it were not for me you and Dusty would never have been married,” he said.

  “Really? As I recall, the last time I saw you, you tried to kill me,” I said, moving next to Spectra.

  “Dusty, I never laid a hand on you. In fact, I saved your life,” he said.

  “You would have killed me if Shea had not jumped in the path of that mage bolt that was intended for me,” I said.

  “Think about it, Dusty. If I had not created the friendship between you and Shea, would you and Spectra be so happily married now?” he said.

  “What do you want?” demanded Spectra.

  “What I have always wanted: only the best for you, my dear,” he said.

  “When have you ever done anything for me?” asked Spectra.

  “Surely you don’t think it was just random luck that the wizards found you and invited you to apply to the Academy?” he asked.

  “What are you getting at?” I asked.