by John Daulton
Her alarm woke her in what seemed only an instant after that, an atonal clarion of misery. It was time to go back to work.
“They’re regrouping,” Roberto informed her when she sat back down in the com-station chair. He pointed at the main monitor with his chin as he started shaking his head. “Look how many now.”
Any vestiges of lovesickness that may have been haunting her were immediately whisked away. At least twenty orbs were now visible on the screen, and another appeared even as she watched. “Good God,” she said. “How far away is the rest of our help?”
“That’s your job, Pewter. I suggest you make some attempt to do it now.” That from the captain, of course.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “On it.” She was never going to have his favor back, but she had to at least make an attempt. The cessation of his contempt had been nice to have in those few days that followed her contribution to the cure; she’d actually been able to relax, almost enjoyed being on the bridge—at least during those moments when they weren’t under attack. For a time he’d at least treated her with respect. But deep down she knew that this time the damage was permanent. She sighed and pulled up the data from the fleet. All three squadrons should be arriving at any time, and she made the announcement as soon as the specific distances came up. “Twenty minutes to Echo, forty for Bravo and Delta to arrive. They’re almost here, sir.”
He made no answer, and the raw fury radiating from him confirmed her sense that the friendly banter on the bridge had come completely to an end. Roberto sensed it too, and, unaware of her brief foray down into Altin’s tower, he shot her an inquisitive glance.
She waved him off, indicating with a shrug and the expression on her face that the answer would have to wait. She returned her attention to the com.
“Twenty seven,” she announced as she picked up a handful of orbs coming into scanner range but not yet on the screen. “Five incoming.”
“Tell the admiral to bring the entire fleet.” Then a moment later, he said, “Stow that.” Three more orbs had just joined the growing swarm. “Just radio our report.”
She did, and after a moment, the admiral’s face appeared upon her screen. She punched it up to a quarter of the large monitor on the wall. After a brief exchange between the captain and the admiral, it was decided that the rest of the fleet should assemble a half-day’s distance from where the Aspect currently was. The three squadrons already on their way were to continue coming to their support, but the rest of the fleet would gather in full at a distance first, and then move in to help if there was anything remaining of the smaller group. Deciding to leave the four squadrons to fate was a hard decision to make, and both men walked away from the conversation looking grim. It was not the kind of decision Orli ever wanted to have to make: deciding who was going to live and who was probably going to die. The callous emotional distance required to make that kind of call reminded her of the first few hours of vaccinations when the crew was dying faster than the doses could be brought. No, she never wanted to be party to that again.
After his exchange with the admiral, Captain Asad sat quietly in his chair watching the screen without comment as Orli occasionally announced the latest tally on the orbs’ steadily growing swarm. They were up to nearly a hundred by the time he finally spoke. “Any idea what your friend over there is going to do?” He was looking at the portion of the monitor that still kept Altin’s tower securely in its sight. Orli had been glancing at it occasionally too. She wished she were there. If the orbs were going to kill her, she’d rather die with him.
“He said he had to send his dragon home. That’s all I really know. I wasn’t over there long enough to learn anything else. He had to recast his language spell, so we didn’t get much chance to talk.”
The captain grimaced at the use of such ridiculous words, but let it pass. “Do you know if he’s planning on staying long enough to fight?”
Her first instinct was to say, “Why the hell should he? You shot him, you fucking ungrateful ass?” But instead she managed to say, “I have no idea,” though not without a tremendous amount of restraint. Thinking of Altin like that stirred up an emotional force that had her hands trembling against her console by the time she finished speaking on his behalf, her skin moist and slightly sticky where it pressed against the glass. The fact that the captain considered Altin a potential ally after treating the magical man so poorly was both evidence of the captain’s recognition of Altin as a potent military force and of the captain’s sense of just how dire their circumstances had become. The former had to be more painful for him than the latter was.
She looked up at the monitor and saw that the dragon had just disappeared. She said as much aloud. The captain nodded and gave the briefest hum.
“He must have teleported it home,” Roberto said, daring to butt into the captain’s ominous mood. He heard the captain grunt again. He hesitated, reluctant to go on, but, given the obvious misery that had settled upon Orli since the last time he’d seen her, he felt that whatever had transpired between her and the captain, he would rather come down on the side of his best friend. “Captain, with all due respect, you are wrong about him. The magic is real. I saw it too. So did Doctor Singh. He does it.”
“Lieutenant, I’m too old to believe in fairy tales, and not spiritual enough to believe in miracles and myths. There is no such thing as magic. The hologram of the dragon has simply been shut off.”
“Fine, sir, call it what you like. Matter transmission. Dimensional shift. Whatever. But that don’t change it. The effects are real. I’ve seen them. I’m telling you: it’s real.”
The captain nodded. Clearly he’d considered that option, but he was just not sure how he wanted to proceed from there. The whole idea of magic was ludicrous, but the circumstances were such that any options had to be taken into account, even ridiculous ones. And at this point, it probably didn’t matter if Altin turned out to be friend or foe anyway. With a hundred orbs out there, they were all going to die shortly after the orbs decided to attack. What difference did it make if it was by the onslaught of a hundred Hostile shafts or some trick of that enigma out there floating in a tower made of stone? The only difference was that the robed man at least presented the possibility of being an ally, however unlikely that might seem. And, once again, it would make little difference in the end.
Four more orbs flew in and hovered with the rest.
“They’re here,” Orli announced a little while later. “Echo is finally here.” She quartered the view on the monitor again to allow the image of five long Earth ships to appear approaching on their starboard side, slivers of glowing metal hope, white against the darkness out of which they came. “Finally someone else is here.” She punched up the location of the other two squadrons and found they too were only a short time away, and in the span of half an hour, their numbers had grown to eighteen.
Unfortunately, the orbs now numbered one hundred and thirty-two.
Roughly an hour later, after the commanders of the other ships and Captain Asad had worked out a tentative plan for their defense, the captain addressed her once again. There was an aspect of reluctance in his voice that she had never heard him use, resignation and something else. Humility? It couldn’t be, not after the vehemence of his tirade.
“Pewter, do you think you can get him back, so we can talk to him again?”
At first she thought he was talking about the commander of Echo squadron and started to punch that ship’s com officer back up on her screen.
“No, Ensign. The magician. Can you get him to come back to the ship? We need to find out what he’s planning to do, if he’s going to fight again—assuming he ever was.” He couldn’t help adding the last.
“Oh,” she said, surprised. “Well…,” she stammered, thinking on it for a moment. Her bottom lip slipped unconsciously inward and she pinned it gently against her lower teeth with the press of the upper row. How was she supposed to get him back? She had no way to communicate. Although he did sti
ll have her com link. She wasn’t sure how his enchantment was going to work though, or if he’d even gotten it done. But it was certainly worth a try. “Maybe,” she said, letting go her bottom lip. “Let me see.”
She deactivated the com link on her shoulder, the replacement that she’d pinned on before she’d come back up to do her shift, and reactivated the original as default on her personnel screen. Then she keyed it up and began to talk. “Altin,” she said. “Are you there? Can you hear me?”
For a long time there was nothing, but finally his voice came back over the speaker. She couldn’t understand a thing. Apparently he hadn’t got his spell to work. Or else it didn’t work as she had hoped. Either way, at least she had his attention. It was a start.
“Altin, I need you to come back. Please come back. We need to talk to you.” As she spoke she must have let out a bit more emotion than she thought because Roberto turned to look at her with narrowing eyes and one brow raised.
“Wow,” he said after studying her and without the usual sarcasm in his voice. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
Her eyes misted and she only nodded back. He really had no idea.
Roberto bowed his head, humbled by the raw intensity of her gaze. “He’s a lucky man.”
“It won’t matter either way if he doesn’t answer soon. Pewter will be dead with the rest of us if we don’t figure out something soon. Get him up here, Ensign. We need to work his… magic… into the plan.” Orli could tell that it pained the captain to use the word, but she nodded and tried again.
“Altin, come up here, please,” she said again. “The captain needs to speak to you. Can you at least try to understand what I’m saying? Come up, come up, please.”
Roberto leaned over to Orli’s com and punched the key, “Yeah, dude, seriously. Get up here, man. The shit’s about to hit the fan.”
Altin appeared a moment later on his tower top, looking up at them. He closed his eyes and started chanting, then stopped a few moments later and went back down into the tower again.
“Where’s he going?” Roberto said, but the question was answered a moment later as Altin returned with a sheet of parchment, upon which he drew invisible circles with his finger. He placed it on the parapet and once more began to chant and sway. A moment later the parchment disappeared from where it sat upon the wall. Orli immediately turned and looked to the place on the floor where the first paper target had appeared. Sure enough, the blank parchment was now lying on the deck.
“Stay away from it,” she announced. He’s going to appear right there. If you stand there when he shows up, you’re both dead.”
The captain didn’t look impressed, but he made no move towards the yellow paper lying there.
“Captain, since I’m already doomed to imprisonment anyway,” she went on, “I can promise you that if you shoot him again, I’m going to blow you straight to hell.” She had no idea she’d been going to say the words until they were already past her lips. Both she and Roberto recoiled from what she said.
Space was not as cold as the look the captain gave her in exchange for that remark, but Altin’s arrival postponed that for another day.
“Don’t shoot,” were the first words out of his mouth when he appeared, both hands up defensively in the air.
“We were just discussing that,” Orli said. “The captain promises to behave.” Then she paused. “Hey, I can understand you now.”
“Yes,” he said. “I figured out the enchantment on your pin. Here, you can have it back.”
“But I couldn’t understand you just a minute ago.”
“Yes, well, Common Tongues has a radius as you’ll recall. We have to be within ten paces of this for it to work.”
“Gladly.” She smiled, willing the emotions in her heart out through her eyes and into his.
“What’s he saying?” the captain asked. “And how did you learn his language so fast?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “He’s enchanted my com link so that we can understand one another’s language. We have to stay within… ten paces for it to work.” She chuckled. She loved the way Altin thought of things. She looked back to him. “Why can’t the captain understand?”
“Your button is only enchanted for us, remember. I only had our hair.”
“Oh, of course. I forgot about that.” She relayed this detail to the captain who seemed resigned to this unending trend of fate, the irritant of Pewter’s indispensability.
“Of course it’s just the two of you.” The captain’s words had to slide out from behind a sneer. “That’s fine. Listen, just ask him what he intends to do about all those orbs out there. I’m guessing there are too many for whatever it is that he actually does, but ask him anyway. Ask him what’s his plan.”
Orli nodded and looked back to Altin. “The captain wants to know what you plan on doing about all the Hostiles gathering out there now. He wants to know if you are going to stay and fight.”
“What Hostiles?” was Altin’s response.
Orli pointed at the screen, directing the sorcerer’s gaze. “Those.”
“Whoa,” said Altin, taking a backwards step. “By the nine gods, that’s a lot of coconuts.” Orli actually laughed. How could he remain so unperturbed?
“So what are you going to do?”
“Well, I hadn’t thought about it up till now. Honestly, I didn’t even know that they were there. I was just working on the enchantment for your button and doing a few menial things. I sent Taot home. He’s very impressed with you.” His cheeks turned slightly pink at this last part, and he quickly moved along. “He ate all my food, so I sent my crate back to be refilled. I even tidied up a bit in case you ever decided to come back again. I’m usually not such a terrible slob.”
Orli laughed and highly doubted that. She’d already pegged him for being the cluttered kind, and she’d wondered why almost everything in his tower looked as if it had been burned. The table on the tower top made sense enough, having seen the dragon do its thing, but the one in his room was somewhat blackened too. And the rug was horribly scorched as well. General mayhem seemed to prevail in Altin’s medieval home, and tidiness didn’t seem to be one of Altin’s traits. Which made him unlike anything on the ship.
“Well?” demanded the captain. “What’s he saying? What’s he going to do?”
“One second,” Orli said, cutting the captain off. “He’s not done explaining. Try to be polite. Altin’s people are very courteous. Unlike ours. You’re just going to have to wait.”
“What’s he saying?” Altin asked.
“He’s saying that he’s sorry for being such an asshole and that he just can’t help himself.”
Altin frowned. “That’s not what it sounded like.”
“Well, it’s what he should have said. Actually, he still wants to know what you’re planning on doing about all of that.” Once more she gestured at the view upon the wall.
He grunted and scratched the stubble on his chin, staring up at the growing Hostile herd. “I don’t suppose there’s a teleporter or two on one of these other ships is there? That would really help a lot. And maybe a conduit as well?”
She wrinkled her face up at that, shaking her head, and then it finally dawned on her what Altin was missing that she was not. “Altin, we have no spells. There is no magic on our world. Not one tiny bit. To be honest, we don’t even believe in it anymore. Or we didn’t until meeting you.”
Altin matched her frown for frown before nodding that he finally understood. “Okay. It’s not exactly what I thought, but I suspected something similar might be at work.” He looked back at the growing mass of orbs up on the screen as his nodding slowed to motionless. He looked as if he were about to say one thing and then changed his mind to ask something else instead. “Then how did you get out here?”
Understanding his question came slowly, but finally she smiled. “We call it technology. You know, science and math. We figure stuff out and then we make machines.” She motioned around herself
with a hand, presenting the ship as evidence. “We’re pretty good at it really.”
He smiled and nodded again. “Yes, I can see that. Although, I have to say it’s not working so well against these… orbs.”
“No, it’s not,” she agreed.
“What’s he saying?” the captain demanded again.
“Hush,” she said to him. “Stop trying to interrupt. I’m finding out.” She asked Altin to carry on.
“What your ships need is a version of my Combat Hop. I think that spell would make a huge difference. Your ships move awfully slow.” He looked back out at the cloud of orbs and made a clicking sound in his cheek. “Although, to be honest, I doubt that it will prove to be difference enough now. They came at me in a formation of only four awhile back and managed to get in a lucky shot. If they come in groups of five or ten, I’m thinking that kind of luck will eventually win the day.”
“But do you think whatever that is you’re talking about could buy us time? We have reinforcements on the way. We just need to stay alive. We have over a hundred ships, if we can just hold the Hostiles off long enough for the fleet to arrive.”
“I make no promises,” he said. “But I’m certain it would help.”
She clapped her hands again and saw Roberto roll his eyes. She shrugged at him. She didn’t care how childish she looked. “So what does… Combat—whatever do? The captain will want to know.”
“Oh, it’s simple really. It’s just a short teleport, enchanted in place with many possible directions for it to go. I’ve actually worked out the specific description for those battering rams that the coconu—Hostiles use, so that part is already done. When they shoot the stone beams at us, the Combat Hop engages and my tower teleports away. I’ll have to figure out how to make it work for something as large as one of your ships though; I’ve only ever cast it on my tower. Modifying the spell will take some time. But I’m sure that I can do it if the Hostiles decide to wait.”
