Tales from the Void: A Space Fantasy Anthology

by Chris Fox

  Mealtimes became almost convivial as stories of old missions were recounted, then the mood would turn melancholy as the dead were remembered. Silence would eventually fall as the mercs no doubt inwardly reflected that their fate would be similar.

  Captain Speidel was up and about the day following Smitz’s attack, looking more than ever the old soldier with his eye patch. The skin on his face glistened with burn-healing gel and only very pink, fresh color remained of the damage the Dirksen guard’s weapon had done.

  Carina was happy to see him looking not too the worse for wear, and not only for his own sake. The plight of the Sherrerr boy had lain heavy on her mind and heart ever since the failure of their mission. She had made the Cast and found the child, but the knowledge was useless if she had to attempt a rescue alone. The Dirksen force was formidable, and she doubted she could defeat them even using her special abilities.

  She needed help, yet how could she convince anyone she knew the boy’s location unless she explained how she knew it? She would have to reveal that she could cast. The thought of it alone made her break out into a sweat. Nai Nai had impressed nothing else upon her more than the fact that she must never divulge her secret. Even the idea of it felt like an act of betrayal to the woman’s memory, but if she didn’t do something, she would be leaving a young child to suffer—perhaps even to be murdered.

  Carina was glad the captain’s recovery was going well because she’d decided that, of all the people she knew, he was the one she trusted the most. He’d also expressed his concern about the missing child and he might be persuaded to help her mount a rescue.

  When her cabin was empty, Carina removed the canister of base elixir from its hiding place in her mattress and went to Speidel’s room. She found him alone.

  “Come in, Carina. I’m glad to see you. Have you come to tell me what you’re going to do next?”

  She stepped into the man’s single cabin and waited for him to close the door before she spoke. “I have, and I need your help to do it.”

  Speidel sat on his bunk while Carina took the chair. The captain rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands. “Would you like me to write you a reference? I’m happy to, but I’m not sure how relevant it will be if you’re giving up the soldiering life as I hope you are.”

  “I’ve thought about it,” Carina replied, “and maybe you’re right that I’m not suited to life as a merc. Maybe I will give it up, but it isn’t over for me yet. I have one last mission I have to do. I want to rescue the Sherrerr kid.”

  Speidel straightened up. “I understand how you feel, but as I said, we’re hamstrung on that. We don’t know where—”

  “I do know where he is. He’s in the smelting plant. He was probably there all along. We were just tricked into going to the wrong part of it.”

  Speidel’s expression was a mixture of confusion and disbelief. “But surely you’re speculating. You can’t know for sure, and we can’t return to the plant on a guess. It’s far too dangerous.”

  “I’m not speculating. I know where he is.” Carina took a deep breath, trying to quell her racing heart. “I know because I cast to find him.”

  “You…?”

  “Sir...”

  The captain was looking concerned. Carina became even more aware of her flushing face and anxiety. Was she making the worst mistake of her life? Perhaps, but she was committed. “You must swear to me that you will never tell to anyone what I’m about to tell you. If you can’t make that promise, then we can’t do anything about the Sherrerr boy. It’s very important that what I tell you remains a secret between us. My life depends on it.”

  Speidel nodded. When Carina waited expectantly, he said, “I swear.”

  “Thank you,” Carina said. “It’s a little difficult to explain, sir, but I can do things that most people can’t. Things that I can’t rationalize and that don’t make sense scientifically, as far as I understand. Yesterday, when I was with you in the sick bay, you said there was something different about me. That’s because I am different, though I don’t know how or why.”

  Speidel didn’t speak. He was giving her the space to finish what she wanted to say.

  Carina explained how her Nai Nai had brought her up after her father died and her mother disappeared, and how the old woman had taught her to harness and hone her casting power. She didn’t tell him the details like the Elements, the Seasons, the Strokes, or the Map. Those weren’t necessary for the captain to know. He only had to believe what she could do and that the Sherrerr boy was where she said he was.

  “It isn’t a simple or easy process,” she went on. “The reason I was able to cast to find the child was because I had something of his. I had the transmitter that Atoi found. I can’t find people randomly, or at least I never learned how. Nai Nai died when I was ten, and I was alone after that. I couldn’t fit in where I was. Maybe the people in my neighborhood could sense the same thing that you can—that I wasn’t like them. I used to get picked on a lot.”

  She stopped. She felt she had said enough for Speidel to take on board for the moment. Oddly, though all her life she’d feared someone finding out that she was a mage, she now felt relieved, as if a burden had been lifted from her. It felt good to share her secret with someone else. She realized how alone she had felt before.

  Speidel rubbed his stubble. “That’s quite a story, Carina.” His tone was non-committal.

  Carina’s heart sank. He didn’t believe her.

  “I take it you can prove what you say,” he said.

  “Yes,” she replied, her hope rising. “Yes, I can. I thought of a simple Cast I can do to show you, but I don’t want to unsettle you.”

  “I’ve been a merc for eleven years and in the military for thirteen,” Speidel said, laughing. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do to unsettle me.”

  Carina took out her canister of elixir and sipped a mouthful. She scanned the cabin for a handy object and saw the captain’s uniform hat on a table. She closed her eyes and drew the ideogram in her mind. The Cast was an easy one.

  She opened her eyes to see that the captain had an indulgent, disbelieving look on his face. He opened his mouth as if about to say something to mollify her, but then his hat appeared on his head. He reacted as if a poisonous spider had just fallen on him. He threw the hat to the floor and leapt up so fast that his legs hit his bunk and he overbalanced, falling comically onto it.

  Carina tried to suppress her laughter but was unsuccessful. In all the years she’d known him, Speidel had been the model of self-control. She’d never seen him so surprised or amazed.

  Still lying on his bunk in an awkward pose, Speidel blinked his single eye several times. He sat up. “Well, I asked you to prove it, and you did.” He straightened his pants and ran a hand through his graying hair. Reaching down to the floor, he picked up his hat and turned it over in his hands. “I guess I believe you.”

  “You do?”

  Speidel nodded. “It’s a lot to take in, but to tell you the truth, it isn’t the first time that I’ve heard about such abilities. Of course, I never believed the stories before. What else can you do?”

  “Quite a lot of things, though some are easier than others. I can move things, as you just saw, and find things that are missing if I have a part of the object—something to link to it. I can heal, though it’s difficult and not fast. I can’t prevent someone who’s been shot from dying, for instance. I can start fires and engines at a distance, open locks, change my appearance—”

  “Can you hurt people...kill them?” Speidel asked softly.

  Carina looked down and slowly nodded. “But it isn’t straightforward. Shooting or knifing is much easier.”

  There was a moment’s pause as Speidel considered her response. “Oh,” he suddenly blurted, his eyes wide. “It was you! At the Matahman Embassy. It was you who made the enemy soldiers disappear.”

  She gave another quick nod.

  “Did you kill them? All of them?”

>   “No. Like I said, that’s hard to do. I just moved them about a kilometer away.”

  Speidel whistled in admiration. His brow furrowed. “I saw you drink from that,” he said, indicating her canister. “Is that essential to what you do?”

  “Yes. I must take a sip of elixir. And...do some other things.”

  “So if I drank that, would I be able to do magic too?”

  A shadow settled over Carina’s heart. Was this what Nai Nai had meant when she’d said that knowledge of her abilities would turn friends into enemies? A change of direction to the conversation was needed. “I don’t think of it as magic. ‘Magic’ sounds like something out of children’s stories, like three wishes and wizards disappearing in puffs of smoke. I think my ability is natural, only it’s very rare and outside our current understanding of the universe.”

  She paused. “Even if you had the ability, you wouldn’t be able to cast just by drinking the elixir. It takes training and practice and there’s a lot more involved besides.” She handed him the canister. “Take a sip and try if you don’t believe me.”

  He took the offered canister and lifted it to his lips. His gaze upon her, he tipped back his head and poured a measure of elixir into his mouth. Immediately, the liquid erupted as he spat it out, splattering it across the floor. He coughed and retched for a minute or so. Wiping his eye, he said, “You didn’t tell me it tastes like weeks-old piss.”

  The corners of Carina’s mouth twitched. “You get used to it. Are you going to try some ‘magic’ now?”

  Still wiping his eye and mouth, Speidel burst into laughter. “Okay, you got me good. If I have to drink that sewer effluent, I’d rather stay non-magical. What’s in it?”

  “Nothing that’s important by itself. What do you say? Do you believe I’m right about the location of the Sherrerr boy? Will you help me rescue him?”

  “I do believe you. How couldn’t I after your little demonstration? And I will help you rescue the child. But I don’t think we should try to do it alone. I’ll speak to some of the others. I’ll tell them I received additional intel from the Sherrerrs. Maybe we can rope in some of them to help us. But we’ll have to start soon.”

  “Yeah. I hate to think about that kid all alone among those thugs, especially after what they already did to him.”

  “Not only that,” Speidel said. “I plan on us going in fully armed this time, which means we need to leave before the doctor lets Tarsalan get up.”

  11

  Somehow, Smitz got wind of what they were doing, and he insisted that he wanted to come along too.

  “He’s just saying that so he can get out of the brig before Tarsalan recovers,” Carina said to Speidel when he told her. “The minute we arrive planetside he’ll be gone.”

  “I don’t think so,” the captain replied. “There’s more to Smitz than meets the eye. I would have kicked him out of the Black Dogs ages ago if I didn’t think so. He talks a lot, but he always follows orders in the end. And he came on the previous mission when he didn’t have to. He could have bailed like most of the rest did.”

  “He was expecting a bonus, though.”

  “And when he found out he wasn’t getting one, he came along anyway. I think he wants to help.”

  “I don’t know, sir. I don’t like it.”

  “I’ve been commanding mercs for a long time. They’re a difficult bunch and it’s easy to underestimate their better motivations. I think you should trust me on this.”

  Carina sighed. “Okay, if you say so.”

  Atoi had also quickly volunteered when approached, and Stevenson was happy to fly the shuttle.

  Scans of the smelting plant showed that the explosions had put it out of operation. The damage the mercs had caused was extensive. There was little movement and the furnaces were cooling after being shut down.

  According to the results of Carina’s Cast, the Dirksens had the Sherrerr boy in what seemed to be a staff locker room on the first floor. The room was central, which meant another deep infiltration from the perimeter of the building. Approaching the front entrance was out of the question. They had no reason to be there as the place had closed down for repairs, and they would be recognized immediately.

  Carina’s idea was to approach at night from another direction and enter the site through a breach in its fence.

  “They won’t be expecting us,” she said. “They won’t think we’ll return to the same place.”

  “They might if they find out the intel about the kid was leaked,” said Atoi.

  A look passed between Carina and Speidel. “I’m confident that won’t happen,” the captain said. “But I have another proposal,” he added. “I don’t doubt that the Dirksens will have alerted the planet authorities about us. If we land at the spaceport, we’ll likely be arrested on a trumped up charge. Instead, we’ll catch them by surprise. We tell Stevenson to fly us right onto the plant roof. We fight our way down to the room where they have the kid, grab him, and fly right out again. They don’t have any spacecraft on site to pursue us. If we’re fast enough, it might work.”

  “What about ships orbiting the planet?” Smitz asked. He was chewing his disgusting herb again.

  “If the Dirksens had a starship in the vicinity that stood a chance of defeating Duchess,” said Speidel, “we would have been under attack by now. I’m guessing they didn’t want to draw the Sherrerr’s attention to Orrana by stationing one of their better ships here for no obvious reason. But that isn’t to say that one isn’t on its way to force us out of the area after our escapade.”

  “Will the roof withstand a shuttle landing on it?” Carina asked.

  “Enough to not collapse,” Speidel replied. “And that’s all that matters for our purposes. We’ll be suited up, so we’ll have some protection from the heat.”

  No more questions were forthcoming, and time was of the essence. Within a quarter of an hour, they were in the shuttle and descending to Orrana’s surface.

  The descent was rapid. Stevenson swept them in at maximum speed. Carina and the others gripped webbing above their heads for extra stability as the ship tilted at a forty-five degree angle. The speed lifted them out of their seats, then they were thrown forward as the pilot employed reverse thrusters hard. The shuttle dropped precipitously to the smelting plant roof.

  Before the shuttle had fully touched down, Stevenson opened the ramp, and the mercs ran out onto the smoking hot roof. The door to the building was locked, but in a heartbeat Smitz burst through it and led the charge down the stairs.

  The mercs’ attack was so fast that the first Dirksen guards they met were taken completely by surprise. Concentrated pulse fire from the mercs’ Jensen rifles was sufficient to penetrate their armor, and some weren’t even suited up.

  By the time they reached the second floor, the news of the attack had arrived, and they met stronger resistance. Turning a corner on the stairs, Smitz ran into a shot from one of the Dirksens’ advanced weapons. He was thrown back and lay unmoving on the steps.

  His chest plate bore a melted patch from the glancing hit. Carina lifted his visor. Above his mask, the man’s eyes were open. “M’okay,” he said. “Just gimme a minute.”

  While Atoi sprayed pulse fire down the stairs, Speidel started the twenty second delay on an explosive. Through her comm, Carina heard him counting down. As she helped Smitz up the steps, away from the blast zone, she mentally counted with him. Six. Five. Four.

  Speidel set the explosive rolling down the steps and sprinted up them with Atoi.

  Three. Two.

  The explosion roared up toward the mercs, sending a cloud of smoke and debris with it. Having no choice but to abandon Smitz for the moment, Carina, Atoi, and Speidel hurtled down the stairs and into the blast area, which was thick with a smoky haze.

  Unable to see where she was going, Carina collided with a Dirksen guard and found herself sprawling on the floor. A muzzle appeared in her vision and she grabbed it, hauling the guard on top of her where the cl
ose quarters would prevent him from firing. She tried to wrestle the gun from him.

  Letting go of the weapon, she jumped up and kicked it from his grasp. The gun went skittering down the stairs, and the guard tried to go after it, but Carina jumped on his back and wrenched open his visor. She ripped off the man’s breathing mask and tried to throw it, but he tackled her from behind, grabbing her around the knees. Carina’s helmet hit the edge of a step. The cushioning absorbed most of the blow but she remained tightly held as the guard fought to free his mask from her hands.

  Carina was lying face down, head downward on the steps and her blood was rushing to her brain. She held the mask and her Jensen under her and was kicking backward to force the guard away. Suddenly, she felt the man’s full weight upon her. She wriggled out from underneath him. He was dead, his face a melted mess, and Smitz was standing over him.

  They continued to the bottom of the steps, where Speidel and Atoi had their backs to a corner wall. They were at the corridor that led to the locker room and the Sherrerr child.

  Speidel lifted his weapon. Carina, Atoi, and Smitz nodded, then all four ran simultaneously around the corner, laying down suppressive fire as they went. Two Dirksen guards were in the corridor. The mercs’ pulses focused on the first, penetrating his armor. He fell. The second guard fired at Smitz and hit him, the shot sent the man spasming to the floor. Speidel, Carina, and Atoi turned their weapons on the remaining guard and killed him.

  Speidel lifted Smitz’s visor. He was dead.

  His voice strained, Speidel said, indicating a door, “The kid’s in there.”

  They burst through, expecting to meet more resistance, but the room was empty save for the Sherrerr child. A sound from the corridor drew Speidel and Atoi outside again, leaving Carina alone with the boy.

  12

  The child was smaller than Carina had expected, or maybe it was only that he was hunched in the corner of the room, his head bowed and turned to the wall. He was visibly shaking, plainly terrified.