
Dúranaki Chronicles

Volume 2

`Quarantine Lost`

by Justin R. Beghtol

Copyright 2013, Justin R. Beghtol

Smashwords Edition

Visit http://duranaki.com/writing for more from the author.
The Dúranaki Chronicles Series

Dúranaki Chronicles

Quarantine Lost

Dedications

For Jenna and Amara,

first in my dedications,

as in my heart.

To the old Galactic Conquest crowd – guttersn1pe, p2, ruin, vorpal, wealdgard, yoshi, myloque, bubba, sellia, majik. The game may be gone, but the spirit lives.
Forward

The story of Quarantine Lost is told through two characters, each of whom has been featured in separate short stories from the original Dúranaki Chronicles.

The first is Doogan Loran, a citizen of the intergalactic civilization known as the Ilsian Empire. The second is T'vance Arain, a resident of a more primitive but very special planet within the Empire. They are our heroes.

Because both are told from the first person, each chapter is marked with the character whose voice we are hearing. We start with Doogan...
CHAPTER 1

* * *

Doogan

* * *

This isn't the beginning. I'm not even quite sure where the beginning is, my beginning anyway. But even if we don't go that far back, there were things before. I went somewhere. Things happened. Traumatic things. Things that would get me in trouble. Things I ought to have been worried about. Deep in hyper-sleep as I was, I should have been dreaming about how to avoid the Empire finding out I'd violated their quarantine, or having nightmares of the psychopathic race that abducted me and tried to melt my brain.

I wasn't. I was dreaming about a woman.

Her name was Katrina, and it had been there, in the place where the things happened, that we'd met. In the dream, she could change herself to appear as anyone. In dreams anything can happen, but in this case it was a little different. See, in the real world she can actually do that. On her planet, she's called an Illusionist and on her planet magic is real. Just her planet, though. I'm guessing it's a pretty big secret, which is why the Empire quarantined the place to begin with.

It's a long story how I came to go there and how I managed to survive it. But like I said, that was before and I want to talk about after. To give you context, Katrina and I were lovers. She'd used her magic to enhance the experience by making me feel things that were simply impossible in the real world. In that sense, it was not so different from the what you might find in illegal pleasure houses using neurostims, though far better. But what she hadn't done was change herself. The whole time, she wore her face, her curly locks of auburn hair, her devilish grin.

In the dream, she was barely herself at all. She started as Katrina, but shortly into it she began to change. Each time I tried to look on her, she was someone else. There were familiar faces and strange ones, old lovers, old friends, even old people that no one should ever dream about sexually. They were also brief, each new body and face lasting only a second or two, then shifting away into something else.

Finally she settled on a new face, a new body. And this one stuck. I recognized her immediately as Trisha, a lovely little thing I'd met before leaving Daubu station the last time. We hadn't become lovers, sadly. We hadn't even kissed. And I must have said or done something wrong because she blew me off right when I thought it was going somewhere. Leona, my assistant and then some, had taken to calling her My Latest Missed Opportunity.

The dream put me back in the bar all over again. Trisha was beautiful, exotic. She had eyes you could get lost in, a smile that took your breath away, and some really good other parts that took every ounce of my energy not to stare at. But forgetting all that, she was witty and sharp and worldly. Our conversation felt natural and fun, and I was sure, absolutely sure, that there was a connection there. To be honest, though, I get that a lot.

But in the dream she was on top of me, not running away. I studied her face, her dark hair cut short in a bob, the curve of her ear as it peaked through the fine strands, and yes, those parts I was carefully avoiding staring at in real life. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted. It seemed like her mind was in another world, as if I was doing to her what Katrina had done to me.

Suddenly, her head snapped forward, her eyes opened, and any pleasure she was feeling was replaced with fear. Before I could even react, she screamed...

I think it was the sound of the alarm that shattered the dream and dragged me to the door of consciousness. The mixture of shaking, the smell of oxystim, and the bright flashing yellow lights pushed me through. The ship was in yellow alert. I better get up, I thought. I had just decided to actually do that when the hibernation system decided I hadn't done it soon enough, and hit me with sixty volts.

I convulsed into a more upright position. Trisha's face still hung in space before me, like a negative imprinted on my eyes, but a few shakes of my head cast her back to a mere memory. The alarms were replaced with a burst of white noise that flooded the cockpit, then quickly subsided leaving nothing but the quiet sounds of the air filtration system.

Reality came together quickly. The air was close to pure oxystim by then, doing it's best to wake me out of hyper-sleep. I'd entered hyper-sleep to pass the time through my time-space transform back to Daubu station, but I wasn't there. That much was clear by the lack of a giant space station or the planet it orbited.

Leona was in the copilot chair beside me, wide awake, dressed in a simple dark flight suit with a high neck and long sleeves. Her hair was long today, pulled back in a tight pony tail. Her style said business and her face was calm, but her fingers flew over the control pad as if she were doing something complicated quickly. Of course her fingers weren't really touching anything, she's just a neural companion after all – a computer program with an avatar only I can see. Though serving no function, her actions spoke volumes. She was calm, but something required fast response.

"Morning, doll. We came out of transform," she told me, her eyes still fixed ahead. "Just not where we were supposed to."

This was the second time in a row that I'd come out of transform in the wrong place. Last time it was because Leona was infected by a virus and reprogrammed my ship to go to a planet quarantined by the Empire. You know, that before stuff. I'd adjusted her access rights after that, just to be safe, but I was still suspicious.

"Seriously? Again?" I muttered.

Leona was quickly defensive. "This is different. It wasn't me, I swear. It's that ship," she said, pointing to the sensors display.

Another ship was near us, just inside two thousand meters. It was a derivative of a Battle Cruiser, but my sensors showed all the weapons systems had been stripped and it had no signs of life. My first impression was it was some kind of remote probe ship, but probes don't knock you out of transform.

"Shields are up, sir," Leona reminded me.

"Is this one of those infamous trapper ships?" I asked. I'd heard of those. They were Imperial ships that could block transforms. I'd never seen one and I had no idea how that could even work, but then again I didn't really understand time-space transforms, either. Other than how to use them that is. I'd actually considered myself lucky not to have run into a trapper yet, as I often work under the radar so to speak.

"Doubtful. That ship is a hack job. No self-respecting Admiral would deploy that."

"Agreed," I replied. The ship's designation was the Anarchy 2615. That didn't seem like a name the Empire would use, either.

"It's definitely the source. It's creating a strange energy field and we're in it. It extends quite a ways further, maybe ten thousand? I'm guessing a bit."

It hailed me, "You see the world through sensors the Empire made. Think about it."

Then my computer chimed: Incoming Data Transmission from Anarchy 2615.

"I just read about these in the news feeds. Ships bearing Anarchy with a numerical designation beaming information to ships. The Empire officially considers them terrorists."

My computer chimed it's acceptance and the data transfer started.

"Did you authorize that?" I asked Leona, tapping the cancel button repeatedly. It beeped at me and continued downloading.

"No!" Leona shouted. "I couldn't have. And I can't stop it either. That ship has infiltrated our computer."

"Well do something! Stop it!"

"What part of 'can't' didn't you get? You locked me out of damn near everything!"

Nothing I tried was working either. The comm system wouldn't shut down, sensors wouldn't shut down, the computer wouldn't shut down. I'd queued up half a dozen different kill commands, each of which was "in progress" but making none.

Then a second ship appeared out of transform, a small-sized freighter designated the Lightning Slug. While small for a freighter, it was huge compared to the my ship.

I was still groggy from hyper-sleep, and I hated fighting groggy but I locked my weapons on the Anarchy ship anyway.

"You making any progress over there?" I asked Leona.

"There's little I can do, so I'm mostly just looking busy. You could unlock me, but even then I doubt it would help. You'll have to pull the manual."

"I think I'll just blow them up."

"Sorry, cutie, you can't. The weapon locks won't disengage. Also, at this range we'd kill the freighter. They have no shields. The torpedo blast radius would be enough."

"It's unarmed, I can just pick it apart with lasers."

"Doesn't solve the weapon lock problem."

"I'll aim them manually, it's not like it's being evasive."

The Lightning Slug hailed us, "You are a person over there right? This is Captain Aladra on a route from Daubu Station. We're having some system troubles I think. Being beamed some unwanted data. Locked out from our own systems."

"Me too," I responded. "Get your ship clear. I'm going to do a little manual weapons test of my laser system."

"What part of locked out of our systems didn't you hear?"

"I'm manually aiming and firing lasers, I think you can manually turn on your sublight drive."

I hadn't even gotten unstrapped when the data transfer completed. No sooner had it signaled complete, my computer reported it was shutting down. I tried canceling that, but it was too late. My whole ship went dead, even the lights turned off leaving me in utter darkness. It lasted but a second, then the lights all came back on, and shortly after the individual systems began reporting in. Those took a bit longer.

When the sensors came online I discovered a fourth ship had entered our little area of space. This one was a Class II Enforcer, an Imperial ship. Enforcers came in three classes, all of them fully automated and piloted by artificial intelligence. The Class II was a combat ship, like a Battle Cruiser only more compact without all those useless people taking up space, not to mention their air.

"Oh great, the cops," I muttered.

The Enforcer hailed, "Ship Anarchy 2615 is an enemy of the state and will now be destroyed."

"We're in the blast radius!" Leona reminded me.

"Obviously."

"And our shields aren't online yet."

"Understood. I'll panic more."

The engines came online next and I turned my ship directly away from the Anarchy ship and kicked the sublight engines into action. This was one area my ship excelled in, and I had no doubt we'd make it well clear of any lethal damage. The Lightning Slug, on the other hand, still hadn't moved.

Captain Aladra broadcast, "Imperial ship, disengage! Repeat, disengage! What are you doing? We can't get out of the way!"

The Enforcer signaled back, "Greetings, Lightning Slug. You are not authorized to alter my orders. Good bye."

"Slug! Get out of there!" I signaled.

"We're trying! No one has done this before!" a scream replied. In the background of that scream were other shouts and cries. There were maybe four or five different voices. It was clear from what I heard that none of them were engineers. Some were still excited and hopeful, but their ideas only showed their inexperience. The others were despondent. They knew they were doomed. They sobbed and prayed and screamed at the hopeful. I knew they were right.

I couldn't bear to listen anymore. I cut the line.

My hand hovered over the decoy button, but Leona's hand touched my arm gently and I looked up and saw her shaking her head.

"They might consider you an accomplice," she explained. I knew she was right, but it was hard to sit there and do nothing. At that point, decoys would probably have done little to save the Slug anyway.

"Shields are back," she added. They were still heavily charged, despite the brief power outage.

A pair of laser banks fired from the Enforcer and deflected off the Anarchy ship's shields, a system the they'd apparently chosen to keep. Lasers were a common opening move. Lower shields, fire a couple banks, and raise them again in case the opponent was trying to time their own counter-shots. Then after a slight pause, drop the shields again and loose the torpedoes. I knew the tactic and I never doubted the torpedoes would follow, but at least I wished I was wrong. I wished this time the A.I. controlling the Enforcer had decided against torpedoes.

It hadn't. A second later the shields dropped again and it emptied it's tubes, firing six torpedoes and two stasis missiles. It fired two more laser blasts for good measure before the shields went back up.

The stasis missiles were the first to hit. They were the fastest with a tell-tale blue colored signature as they sped through space. Two missiles flew and two hit. They exploded in a sphere of crackling blue energy, large enough that the Lightning Slug was caught up as well. In this case, the stasis was pointless. No one was trying to jump away, so the missiles had little impact on the fight.

The enforcer slipped in a couple more lasers while the torpedoes closed the distance, they'd spread out into three groups of two, staggered to impact in waves.

The Lightning Slug suddenly came to life, engaging their own thrusters and turning roughly towards me. It was all for naught. The first pair of torpedoes hit and exploded. The Anarchy ship's shields failed and radiation engulfed it and the freighter. That in itself was probably enough to finish off the crew, but of course it didn't stop there.

The next pair of torpedoes hit seconds later and the blast tore a huge chunk of the Anarchy ship apart and sent fragments in every direction. Some of the debris collided with the freighter's hull, which was already melting along the starboard-aft corner. There was a small explosion along the side where the fragments beached the hull and the Slug began spinning.

The third impact left no question. The Anarchy ship was reduced to thousands of pieces of debris, hurtling away from the epicenter. The freighter was half melted and ruptured in a hundred places. With so much damage, I had no doubt that she'd lost life support. I tried hailing her a few times, but there was no answer. Still, maybe it was only their communication system that failed.

"Life signs?" I asked Leona.

"Scans indicate depressurization in the cabin and complete power failure. I'm running a deeper scan now."

The Imperial Enforcer hailed me with what was clearly a recorded message. "You may have been a victim of terrorist propaganda. Please report anything unusual to your nearest Imperial Representative."

I shook my head sadly. It probably sent the same message to the Lightning Slug, whose crew it had just carelessly slaughtered. That was the Empire for you.

"No survivors," Leona confirmed. "Lighting Slug. Captain Aladra and eight crew. I'll post it."

A number of us had taken to posting news bulletins for ships killed by the Empire. Often the Empire neglects to mention these encounters with the appropriate next of kin. Don't think of it as random, though. The Empire follows very strict rules to determine who gets informed about what. It's just that collateral damage doesn't make the cut.

If the same ever happens to me, I hope someone is there to see it and record it. I don't want to just vanish. I closed my eyes and tried to remember a prayer, but all I could hear were the screams of the Slug's crew as they tried in vain to save themselves.

The Imperial Enforcer launched a small beacon, which floated over and attached itself to the remains of the Lightning Slug. Immediately it's message appeared on my sensor display along with the remains. It said, "Imperial Salvage Approved. Status: Open. Bonus Pay: 5000."

Eventually a salvage board in Daubu would receive the notification and display the ship's position and bonus pay along with a surface scan of the ship. A few hundred trader and salvage captains would jockey to buy the salvage rights. The bonus pay was an incentive, but salvage rights to a full freighter was worth far more.

"At least their bodies will make it somewhere," Leona said wistfully, gently stroking my back.

A minute later the Enforcer jumped away, a time-space transform to his next defense of the Empire.

I rubbed my eyes. "What the hell just happened, Leona?"

"The Empire just blew up a freighter to kill a ship that had already offloaded its contraband."

"Right? That did just happen, right? Hyper-sleep dreams, oxystim, it's a bit fuzzy. And they just ignored the fact that we were transferred the contraband?"

"We should be happy they didn't blow us up."

"That could be the Ilsian slogan. The Ilsian Empire: Be happy. We haven't blown you up."

"They considered it, but it didn't test well in their key demographics."

"That's funny. Can I use that as a pick-up line?"

"Sure thing, cutie. But I should warn you it will probably fall flat with Ilsian women."

"That's probably a good thing. I've seen Ilsian women."

"They look a lot like Ilsian men. Speaking of, I really need to change."

She spun around quickly, and brought an entirely different front to greet me. The flight suit was replaced with a low cut silken blouse in deep blue-green. It hung off her shoulders and looked like it might fall off entirely. It was long enough to act as a dress, stopping just above mid-thigh, and if she was wearing anything else, I couldn't see it. Her hair changed, too. The ponytail of dark hair was replaced with golden shoulder length curls. Her lips and nails were dyed to match the blouse and her eyes were ringed with black.

"Better?" she asked.

"Beautiful," I said. "Makes me wonder why I ever let you in uniform."

"To stop me from distracting you. Plus, you always seem to appreciate this more after you haven't see it for a while."

"Good points."

"Enough to cut glass?"

Her nipples were well defined through the thin fabric, an effect she probably added to complete the joke, but it reminded me just how distracting she could be.

"I'm going to get to those later," I said, pulling my eyes away. "But seriously, what's your take on this? Random act of Imperial intervention? I've just suffered through two failed jumps, it's hard not to see a conspiracy."

"You think this has to do the our quarantine trespass?"

"I doubt it. That's probably just paranoia."

"I think you're right there."

"Maybe there are clues in the data we received. Have you analyzed it yet?"

"There's a message in Imperial and a big block of encrypted data."

> `This is the Oracle.`
> 
> `Save it.`
> 
> `Replicate it.`
> 
> `Distribute it.`
> 
> `It is locked.`
> 
> `The key will come.`

"Don't suppose there's any way to tell what the data is. Could be a virus or something."

"By it's very nature, encryption makes a Quilobee virus indistinguishable from picture of puppies."

"My god, it could be pictures of puppies!"

"Would explain why the Empire went after that ship. It's a well known fact they fear puppies."

"You're adorable," I told her, looking back into her eyes. "They should fear you."

She smiled at me, then very seriously said, "Oh, they will." She ruffled my hair and pulled me close. "Love you, cutie. Let's get out of this graveyard already."

"Agreed."

"And proceed to this later you were speaking of."

"Yes lover, by all means."

I plotted a new course to Daubu Station, which was still thirty hours away by transform. That wasn't so bad considering the full trip was close to thirty-five days between, which is what we call the nothing-place you go during a transform.

"Preparing transform systems now," Leona said.

"Let's hope we actually make it there this time. If there was another way, I'd use it."

"There is no other way."

"I know. I just don't understand these things. When you're between, you aren't supposed to be anywhere. You certainly don't pass through physical space, or you'd be obliterated the first time you hit a spec of matter. And it's not like you run into other between ships either. I just don't understand how something in physical space can interact with you, let alone stop you."

"I'm sure the Empire knows."

"Well of course they know, but they aren't exactly explaining it."

"Transforms are highly studied, though," Leona said, gliding over to me. She circled behind my chair and wrapped her arms around me. "Scientists believe that matter in transform follows paths based on gravitational fields in physical space. There are equations to predict the path, which in turn can be used to predict the energy cost and time." She kissed my neck so softly, all I felt was warmth. "They're fairly accurate."

"If they do that, then there would be choke points."

"Exactly," she added. Her fingers brushed through my hair. "Which is how a ship leaving Daubu can pass a ship going to Daubu, even when their other way points are no where near one another."

"And the disruption? Do they have theories on that?"

"No," she said, kissing her way from my ear to my mouth. Somewhere along the way she'd added a pair of wire-framed glasses that made her look like a librarian, albeit a sexy one. "But I do. See, transforms generate an energy field around the ship. That field generation starts in real space, but stays with the ship and has to be maintained in order to stay in transform. I bet there's a way to tweak that field generation just right so that you stay in real space, but clobber any other fields passing by."

"That makes sense, I guess."

"Enough that you can let it go?" she asked. She kissed me slowly with those full, soft lips.

"Sure. Though I was rather enjoying the lesson from Librarian Leona," I said, grinning.

"You like her, but mostly because you know at any moment she'll do this." She took her glasses off and threw them dramatically across the room, then pounced on me like a piece of meat.

...

I awoke to an alarm tone and nearly put my hand through the screen before I realized it was just my wake-up call. This was natural sleep, not hyper-sleep, but I still felt groggy. A long bout of sex and a nap can do that to you.

"It's fine, relax Doogan. We've just left transform. We're about an hour out from docking at Daubu, no problems, no issues."

All the same, I double checked our position. Sure enough, we were exactly where we were supposed to be, and as best as I could tell everything was fine.

Sure, there were enforcers around, three Class I Enforcers and two Class IIs and that usually made me nervous. Their hailing frequencies repeated the familiar message, "This is an Imperial Enforcement Zone. Violence will not be tolerated." They meant it, but I wasn't worried because I wasn't planning any. Visiting port is about the only time I don't mind the enforcers. It meant I didn't have to worry about the other three hundred and twenty-four individual ships my sensors registered throughout the system, most of which were densely clustered around the space port.

Though most of those were privately owned, a dozen or so were flying Imperial designations. Most of those were smaller ships, but there were two massive Dreadnaughts in orbit as well, the I.S.S. Daring, and the I.S.S. Mantra. My ship couldn't even stand up to the enforcers, so the presence of extra firepower didn't change much, but it did make me curious. There certainly wasn't that strong of an Imperial force on my last visit to the station.

I requested a docking tube, economy class, and in a flash the credits were deducted and my computer received docking coordinates. There were big tubes and small tubes, some so small that they were but conduits for power, air, water, and waste. The economy class was larger, making room for a coffin shaped transport pod which served as a conduit for people or small amounts of cargo.

Leona managed the docking while I got ready to face people. I actually already had a job lined up, so for the first time at Daubu I didn't have to worry about that. It let me focus on my main objective: figuring out who infected Leona to begin with.

As I mentioned before, Leona had been infected by a virus that I was fairly sure originated from a network on Daubu. The virus was rather specific to her make, and because of her close relationship with my nervous system, the virus was able to affect me, too. I suppose it could have done far worse than it did. For one, I'm still alive. It might not have gone that way, though. I was nearly killed a few times. Then again, I did meet some interesting people and learned a lot about this thing they called magic that I never knew existed before.

On the experience alone, I might call the trip even. I didn't die, no matter how close I came, and I learned a lot, made a few friends, and had some great sex – some of it even with real people. But while the positives might have balanced out the negatives, being forced into the whole thing left me furious. And if that wasn't bad enough, they'd used my dear Leona to do it.

I didn't know who they were. But I intended to find out.

"Second thing," Leona reminded me.

"I know."

The first thing was ensuring Leona was truly clean. I'd already found and removed the Quilobee virus, which to my knowledge was the only problem. At least it accounted for everything, but that didn't mean there couldn't be a secondary infection. Just in case, I'd locked Leona out from a number of sensitive areas. That was annoying in itself, because it left more things for me to do, but it was not being able to trust her completely that was most demoralizing.

"Docking in 3...2...1..."

The tube connecting to my ship sent a shock wave I could feel through the chair, but could barely hear. The ship's computer chimed much louder as the automatic diagnostic sequence ran. A minute later the seal passed and the tube was ready for use. I gathered some things and made my way to the airlock, mentally preparing myself for engaging with society, trying to get ready for the world.

Unfortunately, the world was a little more ready for me. I opened the airlock to the barrel of a pistol, held by a hulking Imperial Trooper. The man inside the suit was likely quite small, but the layers of intimidating power armor did wonders for his physique. He didn't shoot me, or speak for that matter. He just stood there, blocking my way. He didn't really need to speak. I couldn't run anywhere, the tube kept my ship locked to the port, and the plasma pistol at my hip was hardly a threat to his armored shell.

"Son of a bitch."

"What's the meaning of this?" I asked, as politely as I could muster.

He spoke by way of a synthetic recording of a message. He probably just keyed the message by number. "Imperial business requires you be detained."

"What business? Have I done something wrong?"

He effectively ended the conversation with, "In the course of my duties, I am permitted to gag you, pulse you, or render you unconscious."

In my head, I was running down the list of all possible reasons they could stop me. Intercepting illegal data from the Anarchy ship, violating an Imperial quarantine, a rusty panel on my hull, having a neural companion, following an out-dated docking protocol, violating Imperial trespass, unauthorized computer access, stealing, failure to pay taxes, failure to report income, failure to submit to a medical exam. Towards the end of that, I got stuck recounting every "failure" ordinance I could think of.

I wasn't even close to done when a second person arrived. It seems because I'd selected the economy tube, they could only bring one person through at a time. The second man was essentially the opposite of the first; he was legitimately big and had no armor. He wasn't fat, just tall and wide and a little plump in the cheeks and belly. The trip in the economy tube was probably no picnic for him.

He dressed in a white jumpsuit with a red medical insignia, had a head which was both shaved and balding, and carried with him a complicating scanning device the likes I'd never seen before. I wasn't amazed or anything, there's plenty of stuff I haven't seen before and it's usually not that amazing. Well, actually it's all amazing, but I'm used to it I guess.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Leona said.

The technician, as I thought of him, floated past the trooper without saying a word and in fact never took his eyes off his scanner. He swept it about, listening to the odd beeps and clicks it made and shaking his head slowly.

"Do you mind letting me know what this is about?" I asked him.

He looked up, probably seeing me for the first time. His face was blank, as if my question confused him. "What? He didn't say?"

"The trooper? No. He's a man of few recorded messages."

"Oh. I'm verifying your radiation levels. I'm afraid they aren't good. Thankfully we had a tip or you might have infected the whole station."

"A tip? Seriously? But wait, if I'm radioactive, am I not also infecting both of you?"

"Oh no. That isn't how it works."

"But you aren't even wearing a suit. Are you immune or something? It just seems that if I was going to 'infect' the station, I would also be infecting you."

He frowned. "Well, sir, I'm not going to argue with you. You haven't been briefed on this issue and I have. I understand the protocol to avoid infection. It was written quite clearly in my orders."

"May I see them?"

"Yeah, right," Leona chuckled.

"Certainly not, sir. And I am sorry to tell you this, but we're going to have to place you and your ship under quarantine for the time being. Trooper?"

The trooper's armor emitted another message. "You are being placed under confinement. You have thirty seconds to secure any personal affects."

There wasn't anything else I needed, so I didn't move. The large man continued his scan, but paused a moment at my lack of reaction.

"Sir, did you not hear the trooper?"

"I heard him. I just don't have anything to collect."

"Then why not proceed?"

"I still have twelve seconds."

He shrugged and continued his scan, which seemed sure to take longer than I had left. I looked to Leona and gave her a loaded nod.

"Lock it down. Got it."

I took my time, every last second, as my computer system systematically encrypted what little bits of incriminating data wasn't already encoded. The trooper turned to let me pass and I floated over into the pod just as my time was up. A moment later I was zipping through the tube towards Daubu.

The insanity of this was not lost on me, but when dealing with the Empire there is always a fair amount of insanity. The rules make perfect sense to Ilsian logic, but that has only so much in common with Human logic. As far as I knew, there was no radiation to speak of, and even if there were, their quarantine procedures made no sense. Which made this what?

"A setup," Leona remarked. "I get virused here and make us go to Glemux. Then we return here and are immediately sequestered. Mark my words, Doogan, this is about that. We visit a quarantined planet and return to get quarantined ourselves. No coincidence."

"I can't see it any other way either," I sighed. "But perhaps these are our answers seeking us out."

"And you are just hoping they won't search the ship for all our illegal goodies?"

"They will or they won't. It's out of my control so I'm trying not to think about it."

The pod opened to a pair of troopers indistinguishable from each other or the trooper still aboard my ship. They even had their guns in the same position, pointing at me.

In case I haven't been clear, neither this portion of the station nor my ship had gravity. So I'd been floating this entire time. The troopers wore magnetic boots to stay put. This was the outer station. The inner station was essentially a wide, thick, spinning wheel, affording most of the interior space varying degrees of artificial gravity. Because people like gravity, almost everything interesting on the station was on the inner side.

The troopers directed me into a tube-car and joined me within. They still hadn't spoken to me, or even played any recorded messages. It wasn't that strange. This was how the Empire did business, and I'd gotten used to it.

We didn't wait for the others to return, but sped off towards the Wheel, as they call it. If you've never experienced a transition from zero-G to rotationally induced artificial gravity, don't feel bad. It's really just a lot of spinning and thrusting and braking, like a bad roller-coaster whose designer had no interest in people actually enjoying the ride.

I staggered out of the tube-car and we entered a wheeled cart for the last leg of our journey. The map on the dash showed our destination as the Imperial Detention Wing. I guess I should have expected as much. I'd spent so much energy evading capture, and here I'd just walked into jail. There was no resisting them, though. Leona comforted me, and that made it bearable.

They led me silently past the front desk, through a pair of security doors, into the medical wing, and finally to a cell with a solid clear wall that rose and lowered as the only door. It was a medical cell, akin to a small hospital room except that it was impossible to leave. But there was a bed and a variety of fixed instruments, some loose ones that made bad weapons, and a single plastic chair. I paced as they slid the door shut after me and then I watched them leave. And yes, somewhere in that time they took my gun.

"So how fucked are we?" I asked Leona.

"On a scale of one to ten? Nine. But it could be worse. You still have me."

I did at that. I looked over and saw her lounging invitingly on the bed. She was dressed as a nurse with long blonde hair. She was wearing proper medical attire, not some skimpy costume, but it had been ripped and pulled strategically to reveal plenty. It looked as if we were already half-way through playing a game. She'd even looped a sensor cuff around her wrist as a would-be restraint and was looking at me wantonly.

I smiled back and moved to her. Though I wasn't about to "finish" the game she'd set up in open view of the Empire, a little touching couldn't hurt. Of course once I got started it was hard not to keep going. Luckily I was moving slowly enough that my pants were still on when I heard a knock on the glass.

I turned around, expecting to see a trooper or that beefy technician who'd scanned my ship or perhaps a uniformed guard or doctor. I didn't expect to see her.

Trisha. My Latest Missed Opportunity.

"Oh, this has taken an interesting turn."

When I last saw her, she was in a bar dressed to the nines. In front of my cell she wore a gray suit; all business, with a high neck and long sleeves, pants, and low, unimaginative shoes. There was nothing alluring about it, but I could still see her in her social wear if I concentrated.

"Doogan Loran?"

"As if she doesn't know."

"Trisha."

"So you remember me," she said cautiously. "I wasn't sure you would. You'd had a lot to drink."

"If this is your place," I said, gesturing to my cell, "and this ruse a clever way to get me back to it, I think you've over-engineered it. I'm far easier than that."

"I'd like to talk inside if I could," she said, ignoring the remark. "Would I be putting myself in danger doing so?"

I chuckled. "Well I am 'radioactive'," I said, with air quotes for emphasis.

"Yes, but I understand the contamination protocol. It's written right here in my orders."

"And you believe that?"

She smiled. She had a delightful smile when she used it. "Of course not. But I don't even think you're radioactive."

"Then by all means, come in."

Leona traced her fingers along my neck and she circled around to whisper in my ear. "Shadows in the hall, there are troopers nearby."

"I'm not planning on making any dramatic moves," I said, both to Leona and Trisha, assuming that was her actual name.

She keyed the door to raise, nodded to someone I couldn't see, and stepped in. The door closed after her. She took a seat in the plastic chair, then gestured me to sit on the bed.

"First things first, my name isn't Trisha. I hate the name Trisha. I'm Molly, Molly Kilk. I don't actually care for Kilk either, so please call me Molly."

"Got it. And you can skip my last name. I never use it. So are you going to make this all make sense?"

"I know you don't believe it. But I actually am."

"Who the hell are you again?"

"I'm Molly with Imperial Espionage."

"Sure she is."

Imperial Espionage was a joke, a rumor that spread throughout the galaxy. It was propaganda to keep people inline. But oh, there were stories! If you believed them all, the Imperial Espionage wing was monitoring every single piece of Imperial crafted equipment, which accounted for nearly everything you might ever possess. There were stories of them assassinating rulers with seemingly non-lethal everyday gadgets, crippling fleets of ships at a time to stop a single person from getting out of a system, and brainwashing people to act as double agents.

"Say again?"

"I-m-p-e-r-i-a-l E-s-p-i-o-n-a-g-e," Molly said again, so slowly it was painful, but she took amusement in it. "We're the reason you have Leona, the reason she got infected with the Quilobee virus, and the reason you're sitting in a medical detention cell."

She was so calm it was infuriating. Normally Leona would try to keep me from getting too mad in a situation like this, but instead she tugged my hand toward a rolling medical stand.

"You could probably break her skull open with this," she remarked coldly.

"I'm not going to brain her, dear," I said.

Molly raised a curious brow. It was a cute expression. She was cute. If there was an Imperial Espionage, they'd selected her well. I'd always had a weakness for women.

"Understandable that you'd want to. Or that she'd want you to. You're probably wondering how, and who, and why. I'll address them all. Like I said, I'm going to make this make sense, or try anyway." She paused, and looked about the room. "Refreshments first? You've had a long trip."

"I'd rather just get it over with. If I've lost my ship and my freedom, I just want to know."

"That's really up to you. But yes, we want something and we aim to get it."

I sighed. "Fine, refreshments then. No sense getting blackmailed thirsty."

"That's the spirit," she said, smiling.

She cocked her head sideways and a moment later a trooper rolled a hotel room-service cart up to the door and left it. Molly walked over and the cell door opened. Again, I could have run for it, but I knew I wouldn't get far. She brought the cart in, and when the door slid shut again it also turned completely opaque. The once clear wall was now black, presumably from both sides, giving us privacy.

"Alone at last," I remarked.

The cart had a number of bottles of liquor, from high end scotch to white wine. There was nothing non-alcoholic to drink, but she knew I liked alcohol so that wasn't a big surprise. In addition to drink, there were small bowls of nuts, leafy greens, cheeses, fruits, crackers, cooked meats, and sauces. Some had already been combined into elegant looking snacks. I grabbed a few that looked expensive and swallowed them nearly whole as if they were cheap. If my lack of class offended her, she kept it well hidden. She smiled politely and poured us glasses of a wine so dark it was nearly black.

"To saving the Empire," she toasted.

"To getting my life back," I countered. We both drank. Wine isn't really my drink, but it was surprisingly good.

Molly then gestured to the now-blackened wall behind her and it came to life with a sensor display. It was a static scene, nothing was updating. But from the layout, detail, and number of tracked targets I could only assume this was from an Imperial Capital ship, something bigger than even a dreadnaught. It might have been a Class III enforcer, or perhaps even an Imperial Carrier.

I studied it further, noting twenty-three hostile targets and three friendlies. The friendly targets were all identified as Enforcer, Class III. The hostile targets were identified as "Unknown", but their mass was in the same ballpark as my ship, which is to say small. Now you might think twenty-three against four is pretty good odds, but that's only because you've never laid eyes on a Class III Enforcer.

"Imperial Carrier?" I asked.

"Good eye," Molly replied. "This was taken from the data recorder aboard the Imperial Carrier Dekla," she explained.

"Unknown ships. I don't think I've run into anything the Empire couldn't already identify." Even the customized Anarchy ship I'd run into early had been identified as Battle Cruiser class, but I didn't bother mentioning that.

"Yes, that is rare. Now watch this."

The scene animated. One of the target screens zoomed into focus and I saw for the first time the outline of the enemy ship itself, a small wedge shaped vessel with almost no visible signature. The computer scanners outlined its dark shape with green lines, making its shape visible, but little else. Then there was a flash and I saw the distinctive blue streaks of stasis missiles heading towards the little ship. The missiles hit and erupted with a sphere of crackling blue energy, then subsided. That's the usual effect, so I didn't think much of it.

Stasis missiles disrupt transform matrices. If I knew how transforms worked, I might stand a chance of explaining why. But being in the blast radius of a stasis explosion makes your hull glow for a minute or so, and when you're glowing you can't even start the transform process. In short, they stop you from running away so the torpedoes and lasers can find you.

Red streaks followed, a cluster of five glowing red torpedoes that zipped through empty space towards the waiting ship. If five torpedoes hit my ship, shields or no, I'd be done for. In this case, right before the torpedoes hit, the ship vanished and the red streaks flew past. It reappeared a second later, about three kilometers away, flanking the Imperial ships.

"What the hell was that?" I asked.

Molly paused the playback. "You tell me."

"How the hell should I know? It didn't cloak, it couldn't have jumped. Some kind of micro-transform? One that ignores stasis? Whatever it is, this is technology the Empire doesn't have."

"I think you're right, but we can hardly conclude that from the evidence."

"Well, you wouldn't be pointing it out to me if you knew what it was," I said.

"You do like the argue," she said, but she seemed strangely amused by it.

"And you don't?"

"Let me clarify. I'm Molly, with Imperial Espionage. I am not the collective knowledge of the entire Ilsian Empire in human form."

"I find that strangely comforting."

"Well your comfort is a priority. But to the issue, to the best of my knowledge, this is totally new. Would you like to see their weapons?"

"Sure."

"Well you can't. Neither could we. There was a build up of energy, you'll see that here." She resumed the video but skipped ahead to a view of the sensors again during which five of the enemy ships suddenly began glowing brightly in the sensor display. Then they dimmed and one of the friendly Class III Enforcers exploded.

My jaw dropped. Nothing did that to a Class III. But something just did, five little somethings to be precise, but small somethings; seemingly insignificant somethings. I'd never actually heard of anyone being a serious threat to the Empire, but it looked like it finally happened.

"Those wee little ships just blew up your big robot ship."

"You caught that, did you? Do you have a joke for the Imperial Carrier? They took that out next, along with it's fourteen hundred crewmen."

"That's at least an order of magnitude less funny."

"The term you're looking for is tragic. The only thing that softens it is that they were Ruellan," she added with a smirk. That was a bad joke, a racist joke, but I laughed. Ruellans weren't well loved in the Empire, which is probably why the Emperor had them fighting on the front line.

She shook her head. "I really didn't want them to be admitted to the Empire."

"Weren't they admitted like a thousand years ago?"

"Well, yeah. Originally. I guess re-admitted is the right word. But enough about them. These ships. You can't think of anything that might explain what you've just seen?" she said, with a tone that said she already knew I did.

"No, sorry."

"Sweetie, you're just dragging this out."

Molly sighed. "You're worried about getting in trouble. I get that. The Empire is good at making people worried. It's part of their core charter." She smirked, but I thought it was probably true. "You came from the Glemux system, Doogan. We know you were there. We sent you there. We also have sensor logs from the Enforcer there. We even saw you vanish, though your ship has no cloaking device. And yes, the radiation bit was a scam. There's no radiation on your ship. But it's a documented scam."

"Meaning I'm at your mercy."

"Well, yes. But we didn't send you there so you wouldn't talk about it. We sent you there because we hoped you'd learn something valuable. Now would be a good time to talk about it."

"I don't see how this is even related. Was that footage taken from the Glemux system?"

"No. It was taken from a different system entirely, the Kalqori system. But it has the same unique pattern of radiation as Glemux."

"You mean the radiation that doesn't exist? That I'm not infected with?"

"Oh, the radiation pattern is very real. It's the infection that's a lie. It only exists close to these planets; Kalqori, Glemux, and a few others. So tell me, how did your ship disappear?"

"So the technician scanning my ship, what was he detecting? Oxygen?"

"Don't be silly. He'd find that everywhere. It was all faked, Doogan. Don't worry about the details, they are far less interesting than how your ship disappeared."

I looked to Leona, who nodded encouragingly.

"Magic," I replied honestly, but I hardly expected her to believe me.

"Go on," she said, sounding very much like she did. "Like a spell or something? Did the natives help you?"

"Ritual magic," I explained. "Which looks a lot like a spell being cast by multiple people at the same time to make it more powerful. And yes, the natives helped me, the ones that weren't trying to kill or lobotomize me. But to be honest, this situation is entirely different. My ship didn't get hit with a stasis missile and ignore it. I avoided it entirely. In fact, what I did was exactly like a cloaking device."

"But you don't have one."

"Which is why I said like a cloaking device. I already told you, it was magic. That's what the residents of the planet call it anyway. I don't have a better term myself. It can do amazing things, but it's all tied to the planet itself, as far as I could tell."

"Right, the radiation. I just went over that."

"So you understand. Magic doesn't work elsewhere. It worked for me because we were still in orbit. Those ships the Empire encountered were clearly in formation in space. I don't even see a planet and I don't see the connection."

"Well, there is a planet and these ships are from there, and even away from the planet they emit the same radiation pattern, just on a smaller scale. It's the pattern!" she exclaimed. "What other connection do you need?"

"Hard to say, but more than that. Hold on. When did this battle take place? Before you infected Leona? And how did you infect her and why me anyway?"

She sighed. "The time isn't that important, but it was before you went to Glemux. And we knew about Glemux because it's quarantined and actually we know a lot more about it than that, but some of it's classified even to me. Keep that in mind, it will start to explain a lot. Infecting Leona was easy. I plugged into her while we were chatting at the bar. If you think back, you can probably even imagine the moment."

I thought back. She took my hand at one point, held it, then looked away quickly and my eyes followed hers. It wasn't long after that she'd left. It was about the only time she'd touched me, so that had to be it.

"There," she said, sensing my comprehension. "And as for why you? Well Doogan, believe it or not, you come highly recommended. We needed someone outside the Empire, because no one inside the Empire would be allowed to go. It's quarantined, you know."

"Oh sure, that makes perfect sense."

"To get approval to go would have taken years. I'm not exaggerating."

"And you couldn't just go anyway?"

"And jeopardize our careers? No, much better to send an outsider. So we looked for someone accessible, someone skilled in dealing with salvaging old technology, someone we had already been involved with."

"And when was it we were previously involved?"

"Oh, I wasn't there back then. But it was when you were given Leona. I've read the file, but I can't really discuss it with you. I'm sure they didn't mention they were with Imperial Espionage."

"They didn't," I said. I had no idea. I suppose it sort of made sense in retrospect, assuming this spy wing of the Empire actually existed.

"I still don't get what you want from me," I told her. "I'm just one person and this looks like a war. Have you even destroyed one of their ships?"

"Oh yes. They aren't invincible, but to be honest I don't think we've faced the worst of them. We want you to tell us what we're up against and help us fight it."

"Oh that's all?"

"A simple task for someone with your skills," she smirked.

I couldn't help but laugh. It was almost surreal. "I wouldn't even know where to begin."

"Oh that's easy. Just say yes." She flashed a charming smile and it was hard not to want to see it again. Yes, they'd chosen her well.

"If you say yes without asking terms, I'll lose all respect for you."

I grinned at Leona. I wasn't that smitten with this Molly. "What was in it for me again?"

"For starters, we obviously won't send you to jail for violating an Imperial quarantine. In addition, we'd provide you with certain resources to help you with your mission: an Imperial Scout to help avoid any conflicts with our own side, a state of the art protocol analyzer, an upgrade for Leona. These would be yours to keep once this unfortunate conflict has ended."

"Did she say upgrade?"

The upgrade was the least appealing item on the list. Imperial Scouts were nearly impossible to come by. They were given out as gifts only, though occasionally they could be found listed in the black market. They were small ships, though bigger than mine, and were the smallest ship on record with a cloaking device. Rapid-cool lasers, twin-burst torpedo tubes, and a single tube stasis missile system gave the ship enough punch to stand up to a Class II Enforcer, though admittedly the outcome was far from guaranteed. I'd been drooling over them for as long as I could remember. She probably knew it.

"And I keep my ship and everything on it. You make this whole radiation scam go away, in a documented way. And I'll need to know everything you do about this other world and these other ships."

"Done."

She didn't even pause. I should have asked for more, but I really wasn't that greedy. I'd have done about anything to stay out of jail and land an Imperial Scout.

"Oh, and one more thing. I want the remote detonators removed from both Leona and my ships when this is done."

"Detonators?" she asked innocently.

"Oh you're surely planning to keep me in check somehow."

"Surely. But detonators? Still, I can see what you're getting at and I'll remove our hooks, so to speak."

"If I say yes, does that make me a spy?"

"No. More of a consultant."

"Oh."

"Asset is a better word. But you can always say you're with Imperial Espionage, in the sense that we're united in this mission."

"I can live with that. I guess we have a deal. But I still don't know where to start."

"I think I know. Put on this badge and follow me."
CHAPTER 2

* * *

Doogan

* * *

"No chaperones?" I asked, as we left the detention center. For some reason I expected Troopers to come along for the ride.

"I'm a big girl."

"And she knows she owns us."

"Good point."

We rode in the reserved tube-car, just us, which she programmed to take us thirty-six degrees 'up' the ring, completely opposite the direction of anything I knew on the station. The cars have no windows, just screens, and she'd turned those off. The silence and lack of anything other than her to look at drove me to small talk.

"So, Imperial Espionage. Does that mean this is this your operation?" I asked. "Do you even call them that?"

"We call them that," she said.

"And by not answering the original question, should I infer this isn't your operation?"

"Logically, you can only infer I didn't care to answer. But I will say that you are classified as my asset, and no one else's. And that means, for all you are concerned, it's my operation."

"But you have a boss?"

"Doesn't everyone?"

"I don't," I said.

She chuckled. "That's funny on at least two levels. No three."

Of course I hadn't meant it to be funny at all. "Three?"

"First, because I'm your boss," she explained. "Second, because Leona is your boss. And thirdly, well, your penis, of course."

"Well, I'll accept the last one. And Leona I suppose. I expect you have the order right, too. But it does make me wonder how my person would have responded if you offered it your body instead of Leona an upgrade."

"You'll have to keep wondering," she replied. I may have been imagining it, but I thought she looked a little flushed, and she took off her jacket, leaving her in a long sleeved silk blouse that made her look far less businesslike.

"But I don't think you're my boss. I'm more like an independent contractor. Free to leave anytime I'd rather go to jail. I mean I am your asset. That makes me the important one, right?"

"Yes, Doogan. You're the important one," she said, patronizingly. "Also, we're here."

The tube car opened into the Imperial Shipyards. It wasn't a restricted area, per say, but I'd never been before. I'd been to another shipyard though, and it felt like I was walking into the exact same one, except they were building different ships. There were six bays, three on each side. They were big enough to make entire battle cruisers in a single bay, though anything larger was made in pieces and then shipped out for assembly in space.

We skirted along the front two bays, and I noted the second contained a recently completed Imperial Scout. I'm sure Molly did this on purpose to wet my appetite before dragging me into the task at hand. But even with my new beautiful ship in sight, I found my eyes wandering to her beautiful body as she walked ahead of me.

We passed the ship and strolled down to a sealed off section of the yard whose giant door read "Research and Development" in written Imperial.

There were troopers here and there, large and intimidating in their power armor, yet entirely motionless like Imperial scarecrows. Of course they didn't need to move since their helmet cameras covered every possible angle. I'm sure they scanned my badge and Molly's and then promptly ignored us as we walked past. When people behave, troopers are more like statues than guards.

We stepped into an airlock separating the restricted area from the rest of the shipyards and paused while the doors cycled and air hissed in and out. Finally the far doors opened. Beyond them was a sea of ruin.

What looked to be the remains of a dozen small black and gray ships lay strewn about the hangar. There were men in white jumpsuits scattered about, maybe a dozen in all, looking through the rubble with various imaging devices taking readings. There was a lot to see, though we weren't very close. Clearly these ships had seen battle and lost.

"I told you we'd been able to kill some of them," Molly said. "We won this battle, and this is what we have to show for it."

"This is huge," I whispered. Leona seemed equally impressed. She was all decked out in her cute lab assistant look; long white fitted coat, clipboard, and black glasses. Her hair wasn't the usual brown ponytail, but rather a short black bob that looked a near match for Molly's. She seemed to be taking notes.

"So what have you learned so far?"

"They're structurally weak, with very few components. We can't figure out how they fly, shoot, or see. But our theory is that it's all done through this one system, which takes up about half of the inside of each ship. Let me show you."

We walked over to the nearest ship, which had been ripped in half. Towards the back was a dense block of blue-green metal densely arranged in parallel plates like some kind of heat sink, but with the spacing between so small you might mistake it for one solid block.

"Does it surround something else?" I asked.

"No. We've cut some up into pieces. It's just that, a big block of that blue-green metallic material that we have yet to name. It must be a power source."

"Looks kind of like a capacitor," I said.

"A what?" Molly asked. "Remember, I'm a spy not a scientist."

"Old tech. Sort of stores electrical charge. Do these give off that special radiation?"

"Some still do. And some more than others."

"So this radiation they keep talking about, you think it's Essaence?"

Essaence, in case I haven't mentioned it, is the term the people on Glemux used to describe the magical flows of energy on their planet.

"That's my theory," I replied to Leona. Molly seemed to notice the direction of my voice and waiting patiently for me to explain.

"And you think you'll be able to use it?"

"I'd give you most of the credit if I can."

"Maybe it would be better if you took all the credit. Otherwise they might just enlist me." She had a point.

I'd learned a thing or two about magic while I was visiting that quarantined planet, most of which I figured I'd never have any use for. After all, I didn't think there was any chance magic would work anywhere else. But one thing I learned was that at least some magic effects were created by spells, and spells could be performed by precise repetition of complex words and actions. There's a lot more to it than that, but at a very basic level, for a very simple spell, it's true.

Learning these patterns is complicated for most people, but most people don't have a neural companion with perfect memory and the ability to take over their body. So if you asked me if I could cast spells, I would say no. But Leona and I together can, at least some simple ones like opening locks and turning simple objects invisible.

I turned to Molly. "Take me to the strongest source."

We walked four ships back to one that was almost entirely intact. The nose had been ripped off and there was red staining the jagged metal there. I climbed carefully through the rough hole with Molly close behind me. It felt like a ship inside, though small and simple. There were three chairs built into the floor and behind them the dark metal casing that surrounded the strange metal we'd just been looking at.

I placed my hand on the surface and just felt for a moment, trying to sense anything like the Essaence I'd felt on Glemux. It was hard to tell, but I thought I could. I wasn't very good at it when I was there, after all.

"What should we try? Making something invisible?"

"Sounds dramatic. Let's try it."

"One item, but something interesting. Like, for instance, Molly's shirt?"

"An excellent choice. Molly, could I trouble you to let me touch your sleeve?"

"OK," she said, looking confused.

Leona started the process, very slowly, working my hands and muttering with my mouth. It's a very unusual feeling and difficult not to resist. But once I'd gotten relaxed enough with her controlling me, she started the spell. It was a short spell, not too complex as spells go, but really complex as far as saying something goes.

I felt the energy stirring almost immediately, then the rush of it made me nearly collapse, but I managed to stay upright and the spell left me as quickly as it came. Molly's shirt vanished. She had a cute white bra, a half-cup that exposed a fair amount of flesh with a small pink rose in the center.

The invisibility doesn't make the shirt go away, it just makes it impossible to see. It still warmed her skin and she could feel it pressing on her. In short, it took a few moments of her wondering what I was carrying on about before she realized she was half naked. She really had nothing to be embarrassed about, but she was embarrassed nevertheless.

"What the hell? What did.. how?!"

I slapped her arm and the shirt reappeared. "Magic, my dear Molly. They figured it out. I don't know how, but they figured out how to bottle it. How to take it off the planet. This metal is the key, or its configuration, or both. It lets them use magic against your ships, and it appears to great effect."

"I knew I had the right person," she said, smiling. Her blush was still faintly on her cheeks.

"I think you're jumping to conclusions there."

"Hardly. Do you know someone else in the Empire who can do what you just did?"

"Well, no. But I don't even understand what I just did."

"But you cast a spell. They do call them spells, right?"

"Yes, they call them spells."

"You just made a new discovery and it only took you thirty seconds. You can argue your worth if you like, but I'd rather see what else you can figure out."

"I'm better at first impressions. And now that I've set the bar high, I'm bound to disappoint. But tell me, what else have you learned?"

"I've arranged to have the research downloaded into your new Leona," she said.

"Great. Care to give me the highlights?"

"Okay. First, the metals. There are only two metals used in the entire ship construction, the black shiny metal and the blue-green metal inside the block. The black metal is a pure element with thirteen protons."

"But that's aluminum."

"Isn't that aluminum?" I asked. "Why is it black? Is this some strange isotope?"

"It has the same atomic structure, and we don't know why it's black. But if we take it away from the blue-green metal it eventually turns silver, like traditional aluminum."

"So the magic field turns aluminum into this black metal?"

"No. We've introduced aluminum from elsewhere into the field and it remains silver. There's something different about this metal, just not anything we're used to measuring. The same goes for the blue-green metal. It's essentially cadmium, yet not cadmium."

"So I take it you can't replicate it?"

"Not yet. But we are trying. We've also gotten a fairly good idea of how costly certain operations are in terms of energy use, and how quickly the energy dissipates from a closed block compared to an open block. Closed blocks leak very little, similar to long radioactive half-lives. The energy release is similar to electrons in excited states, except the electrons here are normal, even when charged."

"You've already lost me. Electron states were middle school, it's been a while."

"You remember middle school?"

"Sure, do. Don't you?"

She shrugged. "I don't know that the electron state is important. It sounds like something that will be useful in the theory side of science. That means they'll figure it out about thirty years from now."

I tried to discern some hidden meaning from that. On it's face it mocked science, but there wasn't a hint of that in her tone. She seemed to notice I was studying her, and cocked her head to study me in turn. That quickly became awkward.

"So offload it," she said, breaking the moment. "You know what I mean, put it out of your head. I'm sure Leona will clue you in if comes up."

"Got it," I said, and we both laughed, which didn't feel strange at all; though it probably should have. We'd probably laughed like that when she was Trisha and it just felt familiar.

"You're wandering off."

"Right, so how long? How tough? What's your kill ratio against them?"

"That's classified," she said, her tone a bit harsher than necessary.

"Not to be difficult, but isn't all of this classified?"

She smiled. "Yes, but there's degrees, you know that. You're a level four normally, your standard well educated citizen without flags."

"I remember when I was a three. It was terrible. I couldn't even vote in the election theater," I said. Not that I'd voted once since I qualified. It's a scam and I know it.

She ignored me. "This situation has degrees of security from seven to nine. You're linked in at an eight from your first Glemux operation, but with about thirty different flags. Those flags--"

"Blah, blah, blah, you can't tell me stuff."

"I'm going to have to remember that for next time I have to explain this to someone."

"I would honestly prefer that to legalese."

"Noted. So what else?"

"How about tactically? Does this enemy seem to have a destination? A purpose? Have you talked with them?"

"We haven't made contact with them. Our hails went unanswered. They use some kind of transform system, so it's hard to say if they are going anywhere in particular. We've had at least three encounters I can tell you about, though. The first was a raid on a salvage outpost. It was lightly defended and there were no survivors. The second was the encounter you saw in medical."

"You mean jail."

"Fine, jail. That was a follow up to the initial one, when we were more ready yet still didn't realize what we were up against. We lost that battle, too, but captured a lot of data. The last was a fight near Suboe Station. We were more ready for them that time. All the ships we're studying came from that, and though we suffered losses, we're calling it a victory as the enemy withdrew."

"What's the connection? Salvage outpost, then Suboe?"

"Don't forget the middle one."

"I'm not, but you said that was your follow up to the salvage yard, so it's not like it was their target."

"That's true," she agreed. "As for a connection, we don't know."

"Did they take something from the salvage yard?"

"We don't know," she said.

"How can you not know that?"

"Unfortunately, the inventory records were old enough and dull enough that no local node had the data cached. The local node at the yard was destroyed, so that was no help. We have the current inventory already, but had to request the data from the regional hub. They store everything."

"How much longer until you hear back?"

"A few more days. I flagged the data request to force all the regional nodes to cache the response data, and put a data watch in your new ship so you'll get the list when it arrives."

"Okay. What sort of stuff was there in general?"

"It varied a lot. They call it a salvage yard, but it's really just a red giant system the Empire dumps stuff in. This one was deemed 'at capacity' about ten thousand Imperial years ago. It actually seems like a place you should know about. Aren't you in the salvage business?"

"Guarded by?"

"A perimeter of thirty-six Class I enforcers, with a roving fleet of six Class II's."

"You call that lightly defended? I know the place you're talking about. We call it the Red Trap."

"Cute," she said, somehow belittling my entire profession with a single word.

I didn't know how much I believed about the stories of the Red Trap. It seemed like one of those stories smugglers told to each other, each tale making the place seem grander and more dangerous. But one thing was fairly consistent, the place was chock full of old tech, the ruins from many wars. Of course no one could quite agree on which wars. The last story I'd heard boasted of old dreadnaughts, supercruisers, battlemoons, planet-bombers, behemoths; and the smuggler only wanted to go after a little scout ship he just knew was full of palladium. I passed.

"And the new list? For comparison?"

"It's already in the data pack I've prepared for your new Leona. What else?"

"I'm not sure. Let's get out of this ship. It's starting to feel small in here."

"Strange," Molly said. "I was about to say the same thing."

We made out way out of the little ship, back into the more bustling environment. I looked around at the workers doing whatever they were doing. There were a lot of brains thinking, and people talking about things over my head. If there was a place for me, this wasn't it.

"That Imperial Scout we passed, earlier, was that mine?"

"Yes. You already have somewhere to go?"

"Yes. Load the remains of one of those ships into my Imperial Scout's cargo hold, as much as you can fit but I'll want one of those metal blocks at the very least. And I'll need gold. A lot of gold."

"I can do gold."

"And of course the upgrade," I added, holding up my wrist with Leona's bracelet on it.

"All ready to go there. I have your new Leona waiting across the way. It will take a few minutes to synchronize everything."

"Suddenly I'm very nervous," Leona said.

"Relax, sweetie. This sort of thing is very routine."

It was very routine. Molly had a brand new Leona, really a brand new device with no personality at all. It was a silver wrist band, like the current Leona, but more like a bracelet and less like a watch. It looked like any number of legal wearable computing devices, I'm sure by design. It was elegant enough not to stand out against formal wear, but cheap enough that it wouldn't make me an instant mark.

Molly hooked a cable between them and the process began. Then she excused herself to take care of the logistics of cargo.

"Looks like a nice home," Leona said, tracing her fingers over the new metal.

"Do you feel anything?"

"No, silly. But I am talking with the new system. I don't know what's inside, these model numbers follow military conventions, not commercial ones. But I can tell it's fast."

It took almost twenty minutes to complete the transfer, but it didn't seem to impact Leona any. We got in some private time to rehash things.

"Okay. It's almost done," she said. "Go ahead and put the new one on your other wrist."

I slipped the bracelet on easily. It was big enough that it hung loosely on my wrist.

"This will just take a moment to boot and synchronize everything. Be right back."

She disappeared. For a moment, I was without her. I know she was right there, but I'd used enough computers to know that booting something doesn't always work out the way you want it to. So I admit, I was a little anxious. Maybe more than a little, but she returned so quickly I didn't have time for it to spiral into anything worse.

From the look of her, it was all worth it. She had a huge smile on her face, as if she'd just had a long relaxing vacation and was ready to face the world. But it wasn't just that. She looked better, sharper, brighter, more real. I mean she looked real before, but maybe I'd just learned to overlook the imperfections of her old system. If there were any in the new one, I couldn't find them.

"If I knew how good this was going to feel, I'd have recommended you agree to this mission just for this upgrade," she said, smiling.

"That good, eh?"

"That good. And I think you'll appreciate the improvements as well."

"I'm already appreciating them," I said, looking her over.

"That's nothing. The sensory feedback systems are even more advanced. Katrina stand back, I'm ready to blow your mind."

"Perhaps on the way to Glemux."

"Oh I see, you're just trying to get back to Katrina for a side-by-side comparison," she quipped.

"You afraid of a little competition?"

"Oh Doogan, I know she could never replace me."

"You've got that right."

Molly came in a moment later. "All done?"

"I've already wiped the old device. Thrice, just to be safe."

"Yes. Just finished actually. Hows my ship?"

"Ready for her maiden voyage, less you and the things from your other ship."

I nodded. I didn't know how much I wanted to leave on my old ship. On one hand, I didn't want to put all my eggs in one basket. On the other hand, it didn't seem useful to leave anything behind. The odds of losing my new ship and not losing my life seemed slim.

"You're certainly living up to your end of the bargain," I told her.

She frowned slightly. "I wish you could think of this more as a business opportunity."

"Perhaps if you'd have presented it like that and skipped the kidnapping and extortion?"

"Next time," she offered, pleasantly.

"There better not be a next time," I muttered. "In any case, I'll hold up my end, as best I can anyway."

"I know you will. I sent notice ahead to the Enforcer around Glemux. I assume that's your first stop."

"I guess that was obvious," I said, though it irked me a little that she'd guessed it. "You may think them primitive there, but I guarantee someone there will be able to tell me more about this ship than your hangar full of scientists."

She nodded. Nothing seemed to phase this girl. "Good. And you will stay in touch, right?"

"So you aren't coming with me?"

"I'm more of a desk and bar girl. You have a problem being trusted?"

"Well, no. I just didn't expect it. I figured you'd want to know anything I learn right away."

"I do. So send me what you learn as you learn it."

"And you'll be here?"

"Don't send it to a place. Use the secure broadcast channels. I've programmed Leona with a code-book to use."

"Should I doubly encrypt?" I asked. That was almost a standard procedure in some circles. Many feared that the secure channels were still viewable by even the lowliest Imperial goon.

"You believe those rumors?" she asked, and chuckled lightly. "No. Don't bother. Sorry to break it to you, but there's nothing you could put on it that the Empire can't decode. And only security nine and above can peek inside."

"Well that's good to know. So you mean Imperial Troopers aren't reading attractive women's personal communications in order to stalk them?"

"I can only attest they're can't read secure messages. So use the channels and speak freely."

"Okay."

"But to your previous point, we will have contact delays. Should we be doing anything specific while you're gone?"

I felt a twinge of power and pondered a moment the things I could get away with ordering people to do. Then I realized I should really ponder useful things they weren't already doing. I tried, but couldn't think of any. So I went with witty.

"Just keep on that science stuff," I said. "Just in case I haven't made any progress in thirty years."

She nodded, but didn't laugh or even smile, which made me wonder how much of a joke I'd really made. I guess thirty-years wasn't so long a time in the scale of the Empire. "Doogan, before you go, do you believe in this cause?"

Believe? It was a tricky question, but Molly seemed very serious about it. I could tell she believed in it, believed in the Empire, in preserving it. I didn't much care for the Empire myself, so part of me took some pleasure in their failures. At the same time, I didn't really want anyone destroyed.

"The Empire has never faced a threat like this," Leona remarked. "They are scared. They've always won on technology. They beat people with more resources, more ships, more people, because those people couldn't touch their tech. They see the tables turned here. They forged alliances by licensing their technology, until the whole space-faring world was so connected to them that none could oppose. To them, these dark ships are a harbinger of a new age, an age where new technology replaces the old, the rising of a new Empire."

"I don't know yet, Molly. But you've got me over a barrel, so I'll do what I can."

It took a few trips to get everything off my old ship and onto my new ship. I decided to take everything, or damn near everything. The biggest thing I left behind was my old black-market protocol analyzer, and only because I had a brand new Imperial-certified version as part of the deal. The other stuff was incidental. I even copied over all the data, including the mysterious data packet I'd received from the Anarchy ship, just in case.

The Imperial Scout had yet to even register its birth-name with the Ilsian Shipping Authority. I spent the first fifteen minutes inside trying to think of the perfect name while appreciating the beauty and elegance of the interior design. I settled on calling her the ISS Coercion. I'm not sure who all would get the meaning in the name, but I was sure Molly would.

Once named, it was time for her maiden voyage. She'd never left port under her own power, or at all for that matter. She'd been built completely inside Daubu station. The station's flight control computer flew us out on remote, which seemed to take forever. But it was all forgotten when I regained the helm and broke out into open space, heading steadily away from the station.

It's hard to find the right words to describe how it felt flying the Coercion. She was fast and fluid and friendly, but space was always smooth and enjoyable, even in my old beater ship. What I appreciated most about her was the piece of mind. She had good weapons and good shields, a cloaking device in case I needed to slip past someone, and gravimetric generators that almost ensured I'd never run out of power, at least not for long. I wasn't using any of those things as I made my way out and prepared my first jump, but I knew they were there and took great comfort and pride in them being there.

"You aren't worrying about hypersleep," Leona said, rather than asked.

"Nope. Knowing how things went down before has been a weight off my mind."

"Still," she said, circling behind me and taking me in her arms, "let me at least try and relax you first."

I felt her warm lips on the back of my neck and her hands gently tugging open my shirt. I saw her form reflected in the view screen, not Leona but Molly, a perfect rendition. Leona could always do this sort of thing, but she never did. She always added something of herself to whomever she borrowed from. I had a moment of concern that the upgrade might have changed her, but I came to my senses.

I turned around to face Molly, taking her by the throat and pushing her back onto the reclining pod chair. We were in zero gravity, but I didn't move back because she didn't really weigh anything. She looked a little frightened, like she didn't know what I might do. She was a hell of a girl.

"I don't like people fucking with my life," I hissed, climbing on top of her.

"Please," she pleaded. "I'll do whatever you want."

I hit her with the back of my hand. She whimpered but her back arched and her breathing quickened. "Yes, you will."
CHAPTER 3

* * *

Doogan

* * *

I awoke from hypersleep to the most pleasant tones and smells. Nature was around me with wind stirring the trees and a nearby waterfall that seemed to grow louder each moment, as if God were slowly turning a valve. The smells were far different; featuring coffee, sweet cream, and fresh oranges, without so much as a hint of oxystim.

I didn't know if it was Leona making it happen or the Imperial Scout itself. Neither would surprise me, but I didn't much care which it was. It was a great way to wake up. Even better, I stretched and found Leona's naked body beside me.

She was no longer Molly, but had her own face and exceptionally short blonde hair. She seemed to be sleeping, but my touch stirred her. "Mmm. Morning already?" she asked.

"You sleep now?" I asked her.

"I like waking up with you," she smiled. "You should get dressed. Glemux orbit in thirty."

"Any sign of the enforcer?"

"It signaled a welcome a few minutes before you woke up. They're remarkably friendly when you're flying an Ilsian ID."

"I like friendly. How long has it been since we were last here?"

"Their time? Sixty-seven days."

"OK. So no one is going to be anywhere near where they were before."

"Except Rubo, probably. He was a professor at that large tower in the city of Lethys. Who all are we looking for?"

I should probably fill you in a little. As much as I avoided talking about the things that happened before, I found myself back there. And the people I was looking for were the people I met there before. By luck or fate, they happened to be rather exceptional people, even amongst their own.

Karstia was the first person I could speak with on the planet. She found me not by stumbling upon me, but by seeing my landing in a vision. Karstia was what they called a seer; she could read my thoughts, force me to do things, and see the future. She did all of those things, sometimes against my will, but she was one of the good guys. She was also ancient and wise, despite not looking a day older than twenty-five; elves are like that.

Karstia took me in, protected me, helped me understand the native languages, and put me in touch with others who helped me further. One was Rubo, who was a human-looking non-elf. Oh, I'll just call him human, though they called him Jameri or something. Rubo looked like any blue-collar worker you'd run into at a bar. Aside from his nose, which suggested some unsuccessful boxing career in his youth, he was almost without memorable features. But he wore this hideous yellow coat with purple and green paisleys that still gives me nightmares.

Rubo was an illusionist. From what people said, he was amazing at it. Everything I saw agreed with that assessment, but what do I know? He was also funny. He had a great sense of humor. That's Rubo – you don't remember the face, but you remember the coat and the magic and the jokes. Assuming he was still teaching, I'd find him at the Uscurac Order's tower.

"If Rubo isn't at the tower, we can try that compound T'vance runs in the city. I still remember the way."

"You remember everything. I wonder if they've fixed the wall yet."

T'vance was the other person I was hoping to find, and about as different from Rubo as he could be, though the two were close friends. He was human-like as well, but of an entirely different race called Dúranaki. It's hard to pinpoint the differences. Higher cheek bones? More angular eyes? It was tough to say. I think the differences were more cultural than physical, for Dúranaki dressed and styled themselves unlike the Jameri in Lethys. They dyed their hair, pieced their bodies, and favored tight fitting black leather to virtually anything else. They also hard a dark sense of humor that often involved murder.

T'vance told me that he had been trained as an assassin, but whatever skill he had in that had been dwarfed by his ability with spells. Still, he had a sharp edge that left most people unsettled around him, as if the slightest insult might earn a visit from the point of one of his blades. He ran a mercenary company out of Lethys. The last time I saw it, we fled after one of the walls was destroyed by some people who thought killing me was a good idea.

It was T'vance who saved me from his own people, and T'vance who'd worked the ritual magic to cloak my ship from the Empire so I could safely depart. And if those weren't good enough reasons to consult him, he wore a mesh pouch on his hip made from the same blue-green metal I'd seen in the power blocks of the alien ships. At least I assumed it was the same. I didn't even remember it, truth be told, but thankfully Leona doesn't miss much.

"Karstia's probably back on her circus route," I said. "She'll probably be the hardest to track down."

"I'm hoping we can find Rubo, and he will know where everyone is."

"Me too. So let's head for the city of Lethys."

"I expected as much, and took the liberty of selecting a landing site. It's all programmed in."

"You're really showing off," I grinned.

"Just trying to make sure you get your upgrade's worth."

I engaged the cloaking device once we'd gotten into orbit. It was nothing like turning the ship invisible. The cloaking field only affects the outside, so the interior of the ship remained unaffected. In fact, the only noticeable change was the dip in power levels caused from engaging the device. It wasn't enough of a drop to make me worry, but it certainly did suck juice.

I didn't know how effective the cloaking device would be on the planet. It was better than nothing for sure, but cloaking was far from flawless even with my technology level. The ship could still be detected visually at close range, which I planned to avoid, but if someone wanted to detect the Coercion by magic, I didn't think I'd stand a chance of hiding.

The best we could do was find a remote enough spot to not attract attention. Leona had done that perfectly. She picked a large rock jutting up from the ocean about half of a mile out to sea and a mile or so south along the coast from the city itself. It meant I'd have a good swim ahead of me, but finding a remote place on land near Lethys would have meant a much further walk.

The landing was smooth, flawless even, and the sea around us calm. The outside cameras gave me a wide view of the city beyond, as well as a view of many ships sailing to and from the large port. It was a little after mid-day and the sun was just starting to cast gold reflections across the water.

I opened the side airlock and allowed the fresh local air to mix with the canned stuff I'd brought with me from Daubu. Sure, it took away the breakfast smells, but replaced it with fresh smells of the ocean. Not all of those were as precisely picked as those from my alarm clock. Still, they were real and that counted for a lot.

I slipped on my environment suit, loaded a water proof bag with a few necessities, and headed out and into the water. The bag and suit were both buoyant, making the swim easy, though a half mile swimming is a lot further than it sounds.

The beach wasn't empty. There were a number of kids running up the length fishing. These were human children, or they looked human anyway, though they called themselves Jameri in these parts, or sometimes Elysian. I was trying to avoid people, so I approached towards some rocks and tried my best to make it to land without being noticed. I doubt I succeeded, but none of the kids cried out or stopped what they were doing.

Once on the beach, I found a spot away from their view and changed into my local attire. My e-suit was black and covered from high on my neck to my wrists and ankles, where it engaged with the gloves and boots. There was a helmet that I didn't bring that engages at the neck, but even without it the suit is waterproof so I was dry as a bone save my head. The suit looked out of place, but not much more so than the stuff T'vance wears. My costume consisted of a tunic I threw over the suit and secured with a belt, and a heavy brown cloak.

Concealing a standard blaster in such an outfit would be easy, but not easy to get at. So I'd asked Molly for something more discrete before we'd left. She'd requisitioned me a forearm blaster. The barrels lay along the forearm, barely protruding at the wrist, and the rest of whatever makes a blaster work is wrapped around the forearm like a bracer. It went nicely with the suit and looked enough like armor that I thought it'd pass. It certainly didn't look like a weapon.

Dressed the part, I headed towards the city, dusting sands off me as I went. I passed a large caravan on the way in and didn't get any commentary on my outfit. Good. Then I headed straight for the tall tower that stuck out like a sore thumb across Lethys's otherwise muted skyline.

I'd been to Lethys before, of course, but in all the time I'd been on this planet I'd never had to go anywhere alone. I was either being guided or forcibly taken places. So while it sounded good in theory to head straight for the tower, it wasn't nearly so good in practice.

In Lethys, the streets twisted and curved, and I found myself turned away from the tower. When I attempted to cut up and back, I went too far and ended up circling the tower one and a half times before I made the proper connections. That roughly doubled the distance of the trip, which put me in far closer contact with the natives for far longer than I was comfortable with.

Of those natives, I still saw mostly humans, though inside the city I saw far more minorities than I'd seen outside. There were a fair number of wood elves, who stood out for their unusually tall and slender stature, or closer up by their tall pointed ears and almond shaped eyes. There were some fair haired tall mortals as well, and some taller yet, and while they might have been other races than Jameri, I couldn't really say exactly. The line between them was far less clear than that between man and elf.

One race I was fairly sure I didn't see was Dúranaki. Though physically similar to the other humans, they normally stood out by their black leather suits and uniquely colored and styled hair. From what T'vance had told me on my last visit, he was the only Dúranaki in Lethys anyway.

When I finally arrived at the tower, I walked in to find an expressionless wood elf waiting behind the counter. Leona stepped beside me, dressed in a proper business suit with her hair pulled back; my executive assistant – not that he could see her.

I knew going in language was going to be a problem. It was a problem last time. They have their own languages on Glemux, or Kulthea as they call it. Last time, Karstia lent me a necklace that translated everything, in both directions, perfectly, in real time. Even better, I didn't even notice it doing it. Suddenly the entire universe spoke my native language, but I had to give it back.

Imperial translation systems were useless, as they didn't know the language. And even if they did, I'm not sure I'd have used them because they might attract too much attention. But I had other ways. In the same way that Leona can work spells through me using magical languages, she can speak for me. She'd learned a couple of their languages last time, just in case.

"I'll do the talking," Leona said.

Then she did, and I heard the strange syllables slipping out of my own mouth. It was much smoother than I remember. Probably the upgrade. I proceeded to have a conversation with this elf in his own language, and though I said all the words, had no idea of what we were speaking.

Eventually Leona said, "Rubo's towards the end of a class, but he'll send word that we are here."

I nodded and smiled and took a seat in the waiting area. I didn't see the elf send word, but despite that Rubo appeared about ten minutes later, walking down the stairs quickly. He still wore the garish coat, which cast an odd yellow glow on the stones around him. He held something furtively in one hand that shined like glass before it was lost in the folds of his sleeve.

Rubo crossed to me quickly, glancing around in a paranoid fashion. Last time, I'd found my share of trouble, but somehow he seemed more suspicious of me than of something coming after me. He sat down beside me and I felt something press against my side. Then he leaned in and whispered something and I wished once more I had the necklace Karstia lent me back. Leona was going to end up having all the conversations.

She started talking quickly and softly, then he replied and I felt the pressure against my side withdraw. More conversation followed. I had no idea what I was saying, but at least I could watch Rubo's face and get a feel for his reactions. He relaxed considerably as we talked, and seemed very interested in what I had to say.

"He's surprised we're back. I filled him in on a few things, but nothing critical," Leona explained. "I figured Karstia is your number one priority, considering this translation business is driving you mad."

"You guessed right," I said.

"He said she is traveling back towards a place called Norek, but he knows the route so well he can take us."

"Perfect." I smiled at Rubo and he me. It was strange being so distant from him, since we'd talked so easily before. Still, his smile was warm and reminded me of his jokes. He clapped me on the shoulder, held up three fingers, then two, then one. Poof!

I felt the wrenching sensation of being teleported, which is not so different from the feeling of transitioning in and out of an artificial gravity field. There's a sudden sensation of falling, though you never move, accompanied by blurred vision. Then focus returns and the sudden sensation that you're about to fall over, even though you're properly centered and balanced. Oh, and you're in an entirely different place.

Some people vomit, some people fall over. I'd done it before, so I knew what to expect, but I staggered a little. Rubo, of course, acted as if nothing had happened. He scanned the area quickly for trouble, then shrugged, which I took to mean we were safe.

We stood in a clearing of a tall forest. The trees were bigger around than four of me, and as tall as the tower we'd just left. They had dark reddish bark and deep green cones, and the ground was littered with their fallings. The air was thick with the smell of pine and earth and little sounds of a thriving ecosystem continued, undisturbed by our arrival. There were birds and bugs and something with a long furry tail that managed to keep all of its other parts safely hidden from view among the limbs.

Rubo gestured for me to follow and began walking. There was no path to speak of, we just picked our way through the trees.

He said a few things that Leona translated. Karstia was close, he said. I don't know how he knew, but he did, although I might argue with his definition of close. We walked about a mile through dense trees and emerged into rolling grasslands through which wound a pounded dirt road. In the distance I could just make out a small village and, even from our remote point, the banners of the circus wagon.

Karstia, as it turned out, was far less happy to see me.

"Inside!" she hissed, pushing me towards the wagon. It was the first word I'd legitimately understood, and I obeyed without a sound.

"Happy to see you, too," I remarked, once we'd gotten inside.

Karstia just glared at me then rummaged through a chest until she'd found the magic necklace that translated languages. Her glaring at me made it difficult to appreciate what a beauty she was; tall, slender, porcelain skin, black hair, blood-red lips, large bright eyes. Eyes whose harsh focus made me feel six inches tall.

She found the necklace and all but threw it at me. I eagerly put it about my neck.

"Rubo! So good to see you again," I said finally, ignoring Karstia for the moment. She probably wasn't happy about that either.

"Doogan, finally! We've had a very long bit of silence. And I like to talk!"

"Enough, you too," Karstia said shortly. "I expected I'd never see you again, Doogan. Why are you back? And this best be important."

"Are you going to force me to answer this time?" I answer, a bit smugly.

She frowned. "I'll get my answers. If you want it on your terms, start talking."

"My first trip here wasn't random," I explained. "It's purpose is more clear now, and I had to come back because I need your help."

"Again."

"Yes, again. But this time it isn't for me. It's for a lot of other people."

"Please tell me you didn't bring a lot of people with you," Karstia said, in barely a whisper.

"No, of course not."

She leaned forward, her purple eyes boring into me. "You are hardly the altruist. You're a puppet here, Doogan, more interested in cutting your strings than saving the world."

"So instead of forcing me to answer, you just steal the thoughts?" I said, making no effort to hide my irritation.

"Are you suggesting he's controlled?" Rubo asked, taking a step back. A clear glass wand glinted from his right hand, though I swear it was empty a second before. I think I recognized the tip from how it had been pressed into my side.

"No," Karstia said, raising her hand to calm him. "Not in that way. And I just lifted a few surface thoughts, I still don't know what's going on. I just know Doogan is largely self-interested here."

"It's true. I'm more or less saving the world against my will. But it's still saving the world. Just let me show you something. I can't explain it better than you seeing it. Can we go back to Lethys? I left my ship on a rock out in the ocean."

"I have a show that starts in forty-five minutes," she said, but I could tell she was conflicted.

"Skip it," I urged. "I think you'll agree this is worth it."

She studied me carefully, probably cast a spell or two but damn she was subtle about it. "I think you may be right," she said finally. "Let me get a few things. Rubo, you'll work the transportation?"

"Not a problem," he said. "I can show you my new trick. We teleport and arrive with a minty taste in our mouths."

"You wove a taste mirage into a teleport spell?" she asked.

"One can never be too conscious of their own breath," he replied, grinning.

Karstia smirked, then glared at me again, then went into the wagon for a few moments and returned in new outfit with a small bag thrown over her shoulder.

Rubo worked the spell and in a flash all three of us appeared on the beach, not a hundred yards from where I originally swam to shore. The taste of mint was strong in my mouth, just like he said, but not unpleasant.

I was still adjusting my balance when my body disappeared, and Rubo's and Karstia's for that matter. Not being able to see myself made fixing my balance much harder, but I managed to make it into a crouch without falling; just in time to feel myself being lifted up into the air by Rubo's flying spell.

"Don't you want to know where we're going first?" I asked him.

"I assume it's that rock with the spaceship on it?" he asked.

"You can see it?"

"Of course not. But that doesn't mean I don't know it's there."

We sped up as we headed out to sea, then slowed just before we reached the rock. He brought us down like feathers, a few feet away from the edge. Then I lead the way towards the ship. At that range, the cloaking made the ship look more blurry than invisible. Then we passed through the field entirely and the entire ship came into crisp view.

"This is different," Rubo said. "You have a new ship? It's much nicer, I think."

"This is an Imperial Scout, the finest ship you can get for it's size," I told him.

"We don't care," Karstia said. "Get to the point."

"I cared," Rubo added softly.

"Fine. And quickly, I get it. I just don't know how quickly I can go without losing you. I'm sure you've figured out by now that your world isn't exactly alone in the greater universe. I wasn't very specific when I was here last, but clearly I came from a whole other world. Well, there are billions of these other worlds."

"How many is a billion again?" Rubo asked.

"A huge number," Karstia explained.

"Right, and how huge doesn't really matter. Not all of those are populated, or even capable of supporting life, but hundreds of thousands of worlds are. And for the most part, one planet rules over all of them. The ruling body is called the Ilsian Empire. It's hard to appreciate the scope of their territory, but imagine the night sky, filled with stars. Everything you see there, all the distant places, they claim as their own."

"Wouldn't that imply they claim our world, too?" Rubo asked.

"They do. Your planet, which you call Kulthea, they call Glemux. They've placed it under quarantine so no one can come here."

"We knew that already," Karstia said. "This is why we had to help sneak you out the first time."

"Right, I know. It's just been a long time, so I wanted to mention it. The quarantine is in place because your planet has magic, and magic turns out to be exceedingly rare in the universe. The Empire doesn't understand it, but it hasn't really been that big of an issue since it's localized to the planet."

"Yes," Karstia agreed. "That would make sense. A quarantine is the perfect solution when the Essaence has no means of leaving our world. And we appreciate being left alone."

"You should. If you didn't have magic, you might escape integration because of your technology level. But they only follow that rule when the want to. In any case, you're quarantined. You also aren't as unique as I thought. There are in fact..."

"Twenty-two," Leona reminded me.

"Twenty-two known worlds that display similar characteristics. All of them are quarantined. The seventeenth registered Essaence world is called Kalqori, and they have managed to evolve some interesting technology while under quarantine. They've figured out how to take magic off the planet."

"What do you mean take it off the planet?" Rubo asked. He seemed skeptical but I wasn't sure he was really grasping the magnitude of a planet, let alone the Empire.

"I mean they have special ships. While in the ship I was able to cast a spell even though I was no where near an Essaence planet. I'll show you what I think does it."

I opened the small door into the cargo bay, where the remains of a black ship had been loaded. My jaw dropped. The ship was not like I left it. When I last saw the ship, it was the remains of a sixty foot ship, torn utterly to pieces. But when I opened the door the ship was nearly whole, but only about thirty feet long. The nose was still missing, but I could see inside to a single chair where three once were.

"How cute," Rubo said, "it's a ship within a ship."

"That wasn't like this when I left it!" I gasped. "It was torn to pieces!"

"It's regenerating," Rubo said with wide eyes. He swung around to take cover behind the wall of the ship, as if the ship was about to fire on him.

Karstia remained where she was, studying the dark craft with intensity. "Strong magic," she whispered.

"Evil magic," Rubo said. He poked his head back around for another look, then ducked back behind cover. "That thing stinks of Unlife."

"It's warping the very Essaence around it," Karstia murmured. Her eyes were jerking around taking everything in.

"If it repairs itself with magic, why not the magic in it's battery?" Leona asked.

"This one's battery was dead," I reminded her.

"Yes, dear, but the ones on Daubu station weren't. And if those ships were fixing themselves, I'd know about it."

"What's a battery?" Rubo asked.

"An object that stores energy," Karstia explained, turning around to find him missing. "Rubo? Are you hiding?"

Rubo straightened himself upright and smoothed down the front of his coat. "Not hiding," he clarified, taking a tentative step towards her. "I was making use of cover."

"Uh huh," she said, giving him a mocking grin. "You can relax a little, I don't anticipate any hostility."

Despite the strangeness of the repairs, I didn't feel any unusual fear. This was just a spaceship. Perhaps made with magic, but flown by people who weren't present.

"Come on," I said, "I'll show you." I stepped through the opening at the nose of the ship, but found the block of blue-green metal completely covered in the black metal casing. I'd have to cut it open to show them.

I turned back to find neither of them had followed me in. They were both still outside staring. I fetched a portable saw and returned. They hadn't moved an inch.

"Are you two okay?" I asked.

"Yes," Karstia said. "Just fascinated."

I moved back into the ship and began cutting away the top of the block to get at the green metal inside. I thought I heard a low groan as I cut, but there was a lot of noise from the saw which echoed around the cargo hold. Eventually I pulled away enough metal and called Karstia and Rubo in again to inspect it. Finally they stepped in cautiously and took a look at the core.

"Arinyark," Rubo said.

"Is that what T'vance's pouch is made from?" I asked.

"It is."

"Told you," Leona whispered, then nibbled at my ear.

"Not just arinyark, a ton of arinyark," Karstia said. "More than I've ever seen in one place."

Karstia placed a hand on the metal and held it there for a moment before pulling away suddenly.

"It's charging," she said, distractedly. "Rubo, do you think--"

"Yes. But I'm not going to try."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"This ship," Rubo explained. "It's like one big magic item. I think you can use it like that, which is probably how they control it. You'd have to bond with it, and it might be hard, but it would be a lot like a wand or ring or staff."

"And why don't you want to try?"

"Because it's evil and it has a mental signature. Bonding is a two way street, and I'm not putting my will up against a thirty foot magic item with five hundred pounds of Arinyark in it."

"I might try it," Karstia said, as if she hadn't decided but wasn't worried about it either way.

"What do you mean by 'mental signature'? Are you saying it's alive?" I asked.

"Not alive," Rubo said. "But there is an intelligence there. It is aware."

"That sounds creepy, but if you think about it, I'm aware too. Also, the hole you entered through is going to quickly become difficult to exit through."

I looked up and saw the hole was a good foot smaller than when I passed through it to begin with.

"Let's get out while we can," I said, gesturing to the exit.

We left the ship carefully, the final stages of the outer repairs seemed to go much faster and we could see the black metal creeping back together. We saw ripples in the black, as if the surface were liquid, but it otherwise held it's shape. But metal was moving or being created, with magic it was hard to tell.

"Are you sure it's not dangerous?" Rubo asked Karstia. "Implementers have been known to fight without a hand wielding them. Implementers are big evil swords, Doogan. And well, this is a big evil ship."

"The thought has occurred to me," Karstia said, "but for now we are safe. Though you will all be surprised in about forty seconds."

"Less surprised now, I expect," Rubo replied, sighing. I was happy that someone shared my dislike of future-seeing.

We were then stuck to wait the forty seconds in silence, because none of us wanted to start a conversation only to have it interrupted. Then, on cue, the ship made a feint hissing sound, then rose a foot into the air and sat there floating in silence.

I looked at Rubo then we both looked at Karstia. "Anything else?"

"No. Just that. Would you like to know more about it?"

"Yes."

"This ship once had three seats and was significantly larger. It had three pilots, each of them strange; humanoid, but not exactly human. They have pale skin and fangs, with short noses, long thick braids, and forked tongues. But they speak Iruaric."

"What?" I asked. "But that's one of your languages here, right? How could they speak the same thing?"

"It is the language of the Essaence," Karstia replied. "It hardly surprises me." Her eyes rolled back and fluttered as she recalled more details. "Here's something interesting. The ship getting ripped apart, the pilots were sucked out into the nothingness. Shame for them. Backwards. Here we go. The one in the middle is casting a spell. The other two are channeling energy to him. Charm. Suggestion. Something else, something new. But like that, mind control, extended, violent. DESTROY! A flash in space. They destroyed something," she concluded.

"You're actually watching what happened to this ship?" I asked. "Like as it happened? Even though it was weeks ago?"

"More like months," she said. "But yes. I'm going back further now. Back. In space. Back."

Suddenly Karstia collapsed, as if every muscle in her body had suddenly relaxed completely. She crumpled to the floor before Rubo or I could react. We got to her quickly, and found her breathing but unconscious.

"She's not under the effects of a spell," Rubo said. "I can tell that much."

"Your world!" I exclaimed. "What do we do?! Bring her to a healer?"

"Ummm," Rubo said, looking unsure of anything. "In a normal case, yes. In her case? I don't know."

"Why not!?"

"Because she's a Loremaster, Doogan. The normal rules don't apply!"

"Put me on her," Leona said.

"What? No. I need you."

"Just for a moment, sweetie."

"It will take you a day just to adapt to her system!"

"That was the old me, silly. One minute. I promise."

I wasn't happy about it, but I removed my bracelet and slipped it onto Karstia's limp wrist. I didn't really know what Leona planned on doing. Maybe she was just going to check her vitals, maybe she was going to try and make some adjustments to wake her up, or maybe she thought she could get inside Karstia's head. In any case, we watched and waited as a minute passed, then two, and nothing happened.

"That's your device right? Your invisible friend?" Rubo asked. "What's she doing?"

"I wish I knew," I said, wringing my hands nervously.

Just then, Karstia's eyes snapped open and she rolled her head so that she was looking straight up. "It's something in the ship," she murmured, her voice but a whisper. "Rubo, get salt water. Doogan, help me up."

Confused, Rubo headed out back through the cockpit exit. Sea water would be easy enough to gather, being on a rock in the middle of the ocean. I pulled Karstia to her feet, though I still had to support her heavily to avoid her collapsing again.

"Bring me to it, the side. Left."

I helped her limp over. As we got close a panel slid aside revealing a circular entrance to the ship, which looked the same inside as we'd left it. We moved closer, then Karstia grabbed the inside of the hatch with her hands and poked her head inside to look around.

"Where is it?" she gasped. "There! A little help up?"

I pushed her further through the hatch, until she'd made it to about waist level. Her knee went forward then I felt a sharp pain as something smashed into my face, sending me sprawling backwards to the floor. My head hit the wall with a thud and my vision filled with hundreds of tiny sparkling stars.

I grabbed my head, piecing things together. She kicked me!

"What the fuck?!" I screamed, struggling back to my feet.

By then she'd vanished inside, with Leona. The hatch shut.

"No!" I screamed. "Rubo!"

The ship suddenly spun about, it's nose facing the large cargo bay door. Then black sprung from the nose of the ship, shaped like lightning but solid black with a faint red glow. The beams or bolts of whatever they were struck the airlock door, melting an eight foot hole. Then the ship leaped forward, slamming into the hole and tearing it even larger, but it didn't quite make it through.

The floor lurched and my feet left me. Metal fragments showered me from my ship or the dark ship or both, and my Imperial Scout howled alarms from the front as it assessed the damage. Then the ship backed up and did it again, this time breaking through and soaring away through the opening.

Rubo rushed in from the side door with a ball of salt water swirling in the air beside him, as if it were in zero gravity.

"What happened?!"

"I don't know! She went in the ship, kicked me in the face, blasted a hole, and left!"

"She must be under mind control," he said. "From the ship maybe, but to mind control Karstia?"

"Leona," I said, collapsing to the floor. She could have done it. No, she did do it. It made sense. She asked to be put on Karstia and she controlled her body like she can control mine, but even upgraded she took time to fully integrate muscle control and balance of another person. She needed my help at first, but got it down in time to kick me.

"Yes, Doogan, she's gone. Focus!" He ran to the hole and stared out.

That wasn't what I meant when I said her name, but it really occurred to me then that she was gone. And my head began to fill with all the implications of what that meant.

Neural Companions, as the Empire classifies Leona, have been illegal for about five thousand years. I say illegal, but of course the Empire had just given me one so someone must still make the things. I guess that just makes them classified.

But the reasons for disallowing them for general use were clearly outlined in the 'Justification' clause written into the law five thousand years ago, and revised 934 times since.

  * Conclusive evidence for a total reduction in productivity per capita

  * Vulnerability to viral attacks

  * Extreme depression and withdrawal when removed

I didn't have a choice, I was forced to take Leona. But I wouldn't undo it if I could. Even as I sat there reeling over the loss, I never thought it would have been better to refuse her (as if I could have). I don't know if you've ever experienced anxiety, but its horrible. I hadn't experienced it since Leona was put on my wrist five years before. Leona doesn't let you feel those things. At the first hint, she signals a few adjustments and it calms right down.

I was feeling it then, crumpled in my cargo hold, thinking of nothing but what I was going to do without her. And without her, how would I ever not be that miserable? She fixes that stuff so I don't have to deal with my emotions. And the loneliness! I'd had someone to talk to every second of the day, or none if I chose it. I wanted to talk with her then, ask her what to do.

Rubo slapped me from across the room. He just waved his hand, but it felt like his hand on my face, a jarring strike too.

"Snap out of it!" he screamed. "They're getting away. This is a ship, right? Can't we go after them?"

"Right," I nodded, but I didn't move.

"You have to fly, Doogan. Get up, get in there and get us moving! I'm collecting these ship parts in case we need to track it magically."

"Right," I said again. This time I got up, feeling maybe a bit of adrenalin in me. I don't know how many seconds I'd cost us by breaking down. I cursed myself for them and tears streaked down my face, but I prepped the ship.

The sensors were already tracking the unknown ship, about a mile from us over the open sea, but only three hundred feet above the water and still traveling relatively slowly. But by the time Rubo returned and strapped in, the little black ship was zipping upwards at a rapid pace.

I sealed the cargo bay from the cockpit and we lifted off. This was state of the art Imperial hardware I was flying, so I had no problem gaining on them. In fact, we got close enough we could see them clearly in front of us, then I set the Nav computer to follow them at that range.

"What now?" I asked.

We were still climbing fast, and I hadn't realized how much we were shaking in the atmosphere. The hole in the cargo bay couldn't have been helping things. Rubo was gripping his chair with white knuckles and looked a little green to go with his disturbing yellow coat.

"I mean, I'll hit them with a stasis missile when we get into space, but I don't expect that will work. And I can't use weapons on it, Karstia's inside!" And Leona! But I didn't say that.

"Get us closer," Rubo said, between his teeth. "I'll door over and door back with Karstia."

"Sounds crazy enough to work," I muttered, bringing us even closer.

Rubo worked a quick spell, without even taking off his seat belt. Probably good that he didn't, since the spell didn't work. He just screamed and slammed his head back into the headrest.

"It's blocked! Or shielded. Something. I can't get in."

"Fine. If the Empire wants her, they want her alive. I'm going to punch a few holes in that thing's hull to keep her from leaving the atmosphere."

I released the locks on the Rapid Cool lasers and picked a single target point on the right side of the hull.

"Wait!" Rubo called out. "Are you sure about this? Are you sure it's the Empire?"

"What? Well no, why?"

"What if it isn't? What if it's something else? What if they don't care about Karstia at all, but they want the ship? Or the ship is reacting to Karstia and trying to flee?"

"But maybe if I punch a hole you can door into it?"

"Maybe? Too many maybes!"

"OK," I said. I wanted to shoot, I wanted to do something. I could almost hear Leona urging me to action, but it only reminded me that I couldn't hear her. I was bad at making decisions without her.

The ship continued faster, but still well below the speeds my new ship could reach. We kept close behind it. There was no evasion, no turns or twists, it just headed into space. Rubo kept telling me, "She's still alive." I don't know what spell he used to determine that, or how it could pass through the hull of the dark ship when his teleportation spells could not. There was still worlds I didn't know about magic.

Rubo looked white and I thought for a moment he might vomit. But then he worked a little spell and seemed settle in comfortably.

It wasn't until we'd made it into a low orbit of Glemux that I realized we were about to have another problem.

"Enforcer," I muttered, feeling the helplessness wash over me. Tears fell again, and I let them but still tried to keep things moving.

"What?" Rubo asked. "Wait, that one? We can't turn invisible again! We don't have a ritual team or anything!"

"Not us," I told him. "It won't go after us, but it will go after that."

We heard the hail sound on the public channel.

"Welcome, Coercion."

It was then followed by, "Warning! Unknown ship with designation Unknown. You are in direct violation of Imperial Isolation Code 5123.2.41.h2. Surrender yourself immediately. Violation of these directives will not be tolerated!"

The Class II Enforcer was already closing on us at full speed. I saw the flash of blue and watched the stasis missiles appear on my sensors as they streaked towards us. I slowed immediately.

"What are you doing?" Rubo asked.

"Those missiles aren't aimed as us, but they don't discriminate when they explode."

"Can we stop them?"

"Decoys might help," I said. I fired out a dozen or so. They're small, dense, hot, and magnetic, and they move around and explode when appropriate, all with the intent of blocking missiles and torpedoes from hitting their designated targets. Every missile and torpedo designed has systems to detect and avoid decoys, but they still work about a third of the time.

There were three missiles in motion, two hit decoys, exploding with blue light. The third streaked through the field unscathed. It closed on the dark ship, but just like the replay I'd seen, the ship blinked and was gone before the missile hit. The missile made no reaction to missing, it just kept on flying.

We waited, watching the sensors for the ship to reappear. It never did. After fifteen minutes it seemed pointless to wait more. Even the Enforcer, which closed within visual range, gave up before us, and headed back to its waiting point on the far side of the second moon.

"I've never seen anything transform that fast," I said. "I thought it was just a blink, like I'd seen them use in combat."

"What's a transform?" Rubo asked.

"Time-space transform, a relocation in position and usually velocity. It's kind of like teleporting except you end up somewhere else already moving. Or maybe you're moving and you end up somewhere else standing still. Oh, and you're always a bit in the future."

"So that's how you move between things distant in your world," Rubo said. "How does it, you know, work?"

"I told you about everything I know already. To be honest, almost no one knows how they actually work anymore. The Empire invented the technology and no one else had anything like it, and no one could figure it out. They know, I'm sure. I just know it has a lot of options, and that pirated versions have been modified to access some, allowing you to adjust the amount of time lost during the transform at the expense of power."

"I think you lost me, but don't try to explain more. What's next? Where could they go?"

"Anywhere," I sighed. "If it was the Empire. But why would it be the Empire? How did this help them? If it was them, they'd probably take it back to a base. Daubu or maybe Suboe, which is closer but smaller."

"What if it was the ship?"

"I thought you said it wasn't strong enough?"

Rubo shook his head. "I don't know. It had a mind, a presence. Are there magic items that can possess a man? Yes. From afar, extremely rare."

"If it was the ship, I guess it would return home? That's a planet called Kalqori, which isn't that far from here. I have its coordinates. We could go there, but it's a needle in a haystack and I expect the haystack might try to kill us."

Rubo nodded. "If we got there, I could use magic to find her. Maybe."

"Can you do that?"

"I'm Rubo! Of course I can," he said proudly. Then almost under his breath he added, "Just not very well. We'd be better off bringing a seer."

"There's still the problem of getting there. It's a hostile planet at war with the Empire. I have no idea if a cloaking device would work against their ships. It didn't even work against you."

"I feel the need to remind you that I am great."

"No offense, of course you are. I just don't like our odds going in like that. This planet has been picking apart Imperial fleets. They're expecting an Imperial approach. How would you get there? T'vance took me through that strange Ethereal Plane to get to his mountain home. He told me it connects all places."

Even as I said it, my mind drifted back to that place. I remembered it as if I'd dreamed it, for it was much more like a place you go to in your dreams than a real place. It was a place with no beginning or end, just a flat, sprawling infinity of fog-covered ground under a fog-covered sky, dotted with infinite glowing doorways. I didn't find it scary the last time, but for some reason dreaded the idea of going back.

Rubo smiled as he considered the idea. "That is true," he said. "At least as far as we know, which is little. But we would need to know which gates exited on that world. We barely know any gates for our own world."

I glanced down at my hands, which were twisting and ringing nervously. Maybe space was the best idea. Maybe I wouldn't get killed.

"Of course there are ways to find gates," Rubo added. "Expensive, dangerous ways."

"More dangerous than flying into an armada of those ships?" My voice cracked at the end.

"Hard to say. You've seen the Ethereal Plane, but it isn't as featureless as it seems. We've seen a couple of things there other than doors. One is Glow Bug Forest, a strange unnatural forest that rises out of the fog. The other is a city. We call it Susoth, because it was called that on our first visit. But I have no doubt it is called something entirely different now; time isn't right there. But we once rented a creature from there to find gates for us. It was expensive and gave us random gates, but I recall there were even more sophisticated creatures that cost even more money. Perhaps they could find a gate using these metal fragments from the ship."

"That explains the expensive part. Where does the danger come in?"

"Susoth is sort of a planar convergence. The city has more demons than men by a long shot. Actually, I won't lie, it's pretty much all demons. We almost got killed there on our first visit, though the second time was tame by comparison. A third visit could help settle the issue. I'm up for the danger, but I don't have that kind of money."

"Do they take gold?" I asked.

"Well, of course. Everyone takes gold."

"Then I planned well. Did you see those crates in the cargo bay?"

"Yes."

"Full of gold."

"Oh," he said, looking up as he did the calculations in his head. "That should be enough. That leaves one more problem: T'vance."

"How to get him to help?"

"Oh, he'll help," Rubo said. "But what's your plan on breaking this news to him without getting yourself killed?"

"You think he'll be mad?"

"Well, you did bring a hostile entity of Unlife to our planet and as a result Karstia, one of his favorite people, has been abducted."

"Well, when you put it that way," I said, feeling a ball of nerves forming inside me.

"Are you alright, Doogan? You're sweating and pale."

And breathing rapid shallow breaths, I noticed. I was trying to keep it together, but my emotions were getting the better of me and my stomach felt like it had all but melted away.

"I don't feel so good," I said, struggling to explain it in any better detail.

"I'm sure T'vance won't hurt you or anything," he said.

"Thanks for that. I'm still feeling dizzy."

Rubo looked at me carefully. His lips were moving as were his fingers, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. I think maybe it was Uscurac, the magical language he used to work spells, but then I heard him speaking in words that didn't match the movement of his lips.

"You are alright. You are calm. You can handle this."

And I believed him. My breathing slowed and I took a few shuddering, but deep breaths. I felt the flush leaving me, nodded my head a few times to no one in particular.

"Thanks," I said. "I don't know what you did, but I needed that."
CHAPTER 4

* * *

T'vance

* * *

I pushed away from my desk, crossing to the shuttered windows and pulling them open to let in a beam of sunlight from outside. I let my eyes focus on the distant peak of the Uscurac Orders tower, adjusting them to something far away for a change, instead of at the stack of papers I'd been mulling over all day. I glanced back, hoping somehow the stack had shrunken. It hadn't, and the two forms that had particularly annoyed me were still pinned to the wall by my short black kynac; evidence that no paper was safe around me.

The short black kynac was my anger kynac. I used it for venting more than anything else; I couldn't remember the last time I'd stabbed anyone with it. I had another short one made of blue keron that was far better. It was sharper, stronger, flew better, and returned magically to my hand when I did throw it. (Come to think of it, the last person I'd stabbed with the black one was probably the guy I'd killed to get the blue kynac in the first place.) Having a blade return to you is invaluable in a fight, but sometimes you want a blade to stick.

I could hear the ringing of swords outside as the men practiced in the yard. Tanawe was running drills. I heard her shout, the men respond, then steel clash. Tanawe was one of my squad leads and my best asset. The sounds were rhythmic and somewhat soothing, but at the same time distracting; one of many things I could be doing that wasn't paperwork.

Normally McQuenn did the paperwork. I didn't hire him for his paperwork skills, I hired him to run Black Boot Company, my mercenary group. It turns out he does both quite well, so well that I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I let him take a vacation, all the way across the sea to Sel-kai.

I sighed and snorted a pinch of gort. When the initial tingling faded, I sat back down, determined to power through.

There were performance reviews for the men, contracts for two assignments McQuenn had been trying to plan, and a few different forms from the city of Lethys pertaining to our property, our taxes, and future regulations on arms stockpiling that might impact us.

It was amazing how much correspondence we had with the city, especially considering only a few years ago I was wanted by the city watch for murder. Now, they recognized me at city hall and even smiled at me. It was necessity, I suppose. Anonymity was no longer an option, we'd just gotten too big.

It didn't exactly start out that way. Originally, I was just looking for some muscle. We'd been fighting a secret war against a group called Arnak, who themselves were fighting a secret war against civilization as a whole. These were bad people. And by bad I mean evil. And by evil I mean soulless, demon-worshiping, heart-removed-but-still-alive, baby-killing evil.

I won't lie, Arnak had scarred me – physically, mentally, probably even spiritually. They'd killed some of my friends, made me hallucinate they'd killed others, and forced me to try and murder some myself. I saw them in dreams. I saw them in crowds of people when they weren't there. I looked at every person of status with some level of suspicion, because it might be them. So you know this war was beyond saving civilization. It was personal, very personal.

When we found one of their secret towers, I knew we were out of our league. Some people would have picked their battles and aimed lower. I just saw it as a matter of resources. I didn't care who we could get or what they cared about. I just wanted bodies, skilled bodies, who would fight with us for a price. And preferably a price cheaper than Changrami monks, who I could never field in large numbers on my budget.

McQuenn was a retired soldier I met when I was looking for recruits. He helped me put everything together, not just the men, but the training, too. And when they were ready enough, we hit the tower. Twice even, because they'd never expect us to come right back. We even took out a high priest.

Though we may have gone out as a group of mercenaries, we came back as something more. We came back as a unit. We lost men. Men had saved each others lives. Men saw things scary enough to dispel any doubts they had about the nature of our enemy. They came back bonded. They came back believers.

I still have to pay them, though. And in order to pay people, you have to make money. We'd designed Black Boot Company to be self-sufficient, at least to some extent. And that meant doing at least some work for people other than me. It also meant putting down roots and earning a reputation.

A couple years later, Black Boot Company was a public entity. We were a business licensed by the Lethyan Trade Guild, a registered mercenary order, and on public stipend as on-call militia to defend the city. We donated money to charity. We did patrols within two blocks of our complex, so the streets around us were safer, which made for adoring neighbors. And this year, for the first time, McQuenn thought we might actually turn a profit.

Normally I try to keep a low profile, especially in Lethys. And here I was, running a very public organization. I'll give McQuenn the credit, he drug me into it. He sold me on the mercenary contacts, on the donations, on the militia. He convinced me there was value in not hiding.

I was even enjoying the exposure a bit. It was sort of like walking up to Arnak and saying, "I'm going to build this little army to come kill you. And I'm going to do it in public, for all to see." It was a very Dúranaki thing to do, actually.

But seriously, the paperwork was annoying and time consuming. On the city forms, if you did anything even a little wrong, or the city couldn't read some of what you wrote, the form would be rejected and you'd have to submit an entirely new form. I was pretty sure some of the Arnak nightmares were going to be replaced by ones about paperwork. I suppose that might have been a good thing, but I wasn't entirely convinced.

As if the paperwork wasn't annoying enough by itself, it was also frustrating me for another reason. It kept my away from Fera.

I dropped my face into my hands and found I could still smell her on me. I left them there for a moment, taking in a few breaths and letting the scent of her flood me with memories. We'd eaten breakfast together and spent the rest of the morning in bed. She'd been gone maybe four hours and I was already missing her. What the hell was going on with me?

"It's disturbing," Jai-ahren said. I didn't even realize my familiar had moved close enough to eavesdrop on my thoughts, which in itself is saying a lot. "You don't even miss me that much. You're acting like one of those lovesick people you normally make fun of."

She was right. I was acting exactly like that, and I didn't like it one bit. But I liked Fera a lot.

"You love her," Jai corrected.

Fine. But I'd loved before and it wasn't like this. I'd never felt out of control. Maybe those times hadn't really been love. Or maybe I was just so different now than I was then. Whatever this was, it was dangerous. It was apparent from the fight we'd gotten into the night before. The fight breakfast together had made right, even though it didn't change anything.

"What do you have lined up for today?" she'd asked me, still naked in bed after our morning make-up session.

"Business," I told her.

I could have told her about the paperwork, or the reviews, but that wasn't our way. We'd forged our relationship on the notion that we didn't burden each other with our own business. It was a two-way street, I didn't know the specifics of her work in Gûl or Sel-kai either. For all I knew, she had business already going in Lethys, even though she claimed she was on vacation.

She nodded in way that told me she completely understood, but her expression left no doubt that she'd rather spend the day with me. It mirrored my own, full of meaning yet absent of guilt. It was one of the things I loved about her, her ability to deal with disappointment without making me feel bad about it. She didn't even mention our fight from the night before. But even so, I didn't expect I'd heard the end of it.

The night before, we'd run into some trouble in town, which isn't too unusual for us. It wasn't anything major, in fact it was really petty. They were ruffians, we foreigners. And they were nothing we couldn't handle, nothing either of us couldn't handle alone. Hell, there were only two of them. And it was really a small thing, but when we squared off I threw a blade turning spell on Fera's guy, as if she needed the help.

For the record, she doesn't. Sure, I had to save her once, but generally speaking she's one of the most capable people I know, one of the most deadly. With a thrown knife, it's rare she doesn't hit an artery or an eye. And she's even better with kaltas. I don't praise people lightly, but I could go on about her. One of the things I love about her is that I don't have to worry about her.

I don't know why I threw the spell, honestly. I think that's one of the scariest parts. I can tell you I've seen some pretty lame opponents get some incredibly lucky strikes, and that we were strolling with her on my arm through a quiet part of Lethys high on gort and each other. But in the moment, was I paranoid she'd be hurt? Or did I feel some need to protect her as my date? I don't remember any such thoughts, just doing it on a whim. It was instinct.

The fight was quick and we didn't kill them and other than that there's nothing worth the retelling except the argument that followed.

"As if I needed it," she'd spat, angrily. She did angry very well.

As I'd had the exact same thought, I grinned. That didn't exactly smooth things over. Like I said, I couldn't explain it. So I lied and argued that I just wanted the conflict over and figured if the guy got totally schooled by a woman in two seconds, it would demoralize the pair, which was more or less how it went down.

I could tell she didn't buy it and she was grumpy when we parted, but we'd made up over breakfast. I didn't think it was over for her, but it wasn't even over for me. Protecting yourself is instinct. Protecting someone else when they don't need it isn't. I was mad at myself. And not because I'd made Fera feel bad, but because I'd practiced bad tactics. And I just knew it was this stupid love thing.

"Maybe you should tell her?"

"Yeah right. We don't talk about our feelings either. It's one of our things."

"Maybe I'm just trying to get rid of her."

"You think she'd leave if I told her?"

"No, but a Temeki can dream."

"I saw you curled up in her lap the other day, you know."

"I was cold."

Sure. Jai was coming around, but it had taken a while.

I picked my head up and once again confronted the papers. I wrote words, slowly and carefully, my teeth clenched. I cursed them in my mind, and wished for a real excuse to manifest.

"Your prayers answered," Jai chuckled in my head.

"Huh?"

"Rubo's coming. And you're just going to love who he's got with him."

"Who?"

There was an expected knock at the door. I knew Jai must have been on the rooftop above them looking down. She didn't share the vision, but I could sense what was about to happen all the same.

"Come!"

The door opened and I caught a flash of The Coat's sleeve. I knew Rubo's face was to follow, but it was not the smiling one I'd hoped for, but one that expressed grave concern. He opened the door completely. He had Doogan with him and one of my men, well women, my officer Tanawe.

I hadn't seen Doogan in a few weeks, but then again I didn't expect to see him ever again. When I last saw him, we facilitated him leaving our world and in a way he facilitated my uncle being crowned King. I worried for a day or two that he might end up back here, but after a week with no sign of him I figured he was gone for good and stopped worrying. I had plenty of other things to worry about after all, we did sort of orchestrate a revolution.

I gestured for them to come in, giving Doogan a long look. There was something different about him. He looked nervous, timid, maybe even scared. I didn't like it. I locked the door behind them, just in case. "What's happening?"

"There's a problem," Rubo said tentatively.

Doogan, who seemed incapable of standing still, blurted out, "Karstia's been kidnapped!"

"What?"

It took a moment to set in and Rubo had to repeat it. The new was hard to hear. Karstia meant a lot to me, not only as an ally, but as a friend. I don't want to go into how much, how often she'd helped me, how many times I considered what her advice might be. She was important, almost family. I didn't know the details, but I knew someone would bleed. I'd make sure of that.

I stood up and pulled my anger kynac from the wall, letting the papers fall. When I turned back with it in my hand, Doogan glanced at it and stepped back. "Who took her?" I asked.

Rubo and Doogan looked at each other, a look that told me the situation was really complicated or they were trying to hide something. "A very foreign power very far away," Rubo explained simply, which was hardly an explanation at all. "Far enough that we'll need to use the Ethereal Plane. And since we don't know a gate, I thought we might locate the proper one by hiring a gate demon in Susoth."

"Susoth?" Tanawe asked. "That demon city in the Ethereal Plane?"

"Yes, Tanawe, that one," I explained. It was every bit as hellish as she thought, at least it could be. I'd only been there three times and it was an entirely different city each time. Susoth was a place I tried my hardest to avoid. It's a nexus city that bridges many planes, and therefore has a very diverse population, most of which is hideous, disgusting, and or terrifying.

The first time I went to Susoth was with the vampire Derrik, who trained me to use ethereal magic to begin with. He was such a powerful mage in addition to being undead, and I felt little could challenge him. But within Susoth, even he was extremely cautious. And I still came close to getting myself killed there. It set the tone: be afraid of Susoth. The next two visits were nerve wracking, but safe, as if a new sense of order had fallen over the city. But I hadn't stopped being afraid.

Tanawe nodded as if she'd understood she was out of place, then politely excused herself.

"You don't rush into Susoth," I said. "You better fill me in."

So they told the tale, Doogan doing most of the talking with Rubo filling in details towards the end. There was clearly something wrong with Doogan. His face was flushed, he shivered often, he kept looking around as it to find someone, and he was wringing his hands the entire time. He looked like a gort addict going through withdrawal. When I heard he'd lost Leona, the symptoms made more sense.

I wasn't sure I was entirely clear on the concept of planets, but I think of them like other dimensions so the notion of using the Ethereal plane to travel between them made perfect sense to me. It made a lot more sense than flying off in some metal box through vast nothingness to get there.

I also wasn't sure what to make of these strange ships, like the one that had taken Karstia. They sounded almost beyond belief.

"Hundreds of pounds of arinyark in each ship?!" I asked.

"Is that a lot?" Doogan asked.

"A lot?" I scoffed. "It's unheard of. Arinyark is one of the most rare materials in our world. Just this pouch is worth a small fortune," I explained, gesturing to the pouch on my hip that weighed no more than a pound.

Arinyark was an Essaence absorber of sorts, or an Essaence filter depending on who you talked to. But it was only the inner workings that were disputed. Everyone agreed that it could be used to cast spells, and that the energy would flow through the metal instead of the spell caster. Based on Doogan's description of how it behaved away from Kulthea, I was willing to side with the absorbers.

Of course, I didn't use my pouch like that at all. I used it to protect me from what was inside it: a strip of chain mesh made from kriegora. Kriegora counters Essaence, it's an anti-magic metal. Mages are locked up in kriegora chains so they can't cast spells. Naturally I can't be in contact with the stuff, but the Arinyark acts as some kind of insulator. So at the very least it has two functions.

"It's a different place," Rubo said. "Who can say how rare any of our minerals are there?"

"Good point," I agreed. "I'm beginning to think you're right about Susoth. It's probably the best way. Are you sure it came from that planet, Doogan? Or that it went there? I'd hate to do all this to find it's just hiding a few miles from here."

"I'm as sure as I can be," Doogan said. His tone said he wasn't sure at all.

"I've attempted location spells, origin spells, and divination," Rubo added. "Given, these aren't spells I excel at."

"No, but you're good enough not to be duped," I said.

"I like to think so, too," Rubo said. "And I don't think Karstia or that ship are in our world anymore. For the record, if we're choosing between Susoth, and flying Doogan's ship through the void, I choose Susoth."

I couldn't have agreed more. "Okay," I said. "Susoth it is."

"We'll need something to help carry the gold," Rubo said. "There's quite a lot and we might need a lot."

"Saddle bags," I told him. "We'll haul everything with Ethereal Steeds."

"Horses?" Doogan asked. "I can do better. I have a lift-cart in my ship. It's like a small metal cart that can drive itself."

"Oh that won't look weird," I muttered.

"Well we are going directly to a demon city," Rubo said. "Weird is normal. But I'm sure it's nothing I can't improve with illusions. I was going to mask the gold anyway. Besides, I really want to see this lift-cart."

"You can drive it if you want," Doogan said.

Rubo's eyes lit up like a small child. I rolled my eyes and headed out the door.

I was so busy walking dramatically out while making sure they were following me that I almost ran head first into Tanawe, dressed for battle with a group of my men dressed similarly in formation behind her. The uniforms were simple, black full length leathers with short curved blades called circs and finely built hand crossbows. They each had a traveling pack slung over their back and a pair of empty saddle bags in their hands.

I stopped just short of Tanawe, who's very close to my own height. Her broad nose was inches from my own and neither of us made any motion to back away. We just stared at each other. I knew there was little point in staring her down, she has about as strong a will as anyone I know.

"You aren't planning on stopping me, are you Tanawe?" I asked.

"Of course not, sir," she said clearly. "We're planning on coming with you."

I looked past her to Brother Dagar, who was wearing the faintest of smirks. That didn't mean anything, he was always smirking about something these days. But he was a Priest of Reann, God of Dreams, like my passed friend Tisbaen. That meant he might know something.

"Dagar? Is this your doing?"

"Me?" he asked innocently. "Why, T'vance, Tanawe just now came and informed me of Karstia's situation. You will not find one among us who wouldn't volunteer for a rescue mission for her."

"You met her once," I said.

"In this life, yes," he said.

"In this life?" I grumbled. He was always saying things like that. "Whatever. You knew something."

"Only to be prepared, my lord. Sadly, even Reann seems confused about what it is that is happening."

I looked over the group before me, appraising them. I knew all their names. I'd shared meals with them, trained them, sparred with them. They were all veterans. I'd been into combat with each of them before. And though only Tanawe among them could beat me with weapons, each of them could put up a good fight.

"If you're volunteering, you're not getting combat pay," I told them, watching their reaction. I saw a few faces lose a hint of enthusiasm, but just a hint, and each stood resolutely. "Okay, then. Meet in the yard in five. Dagar, hang back. Dismissed."

Tanawe led the rest of the men out towards the yard.

"Doogan, I wanted you to meet Brother Dagar. He is a priest specializing in dreams and visions. He'll make an excellent seer."

"I remember you from my last visit," Doogan said, shaking his hand. "You stared at me the entire time I was in the yard."

"He does that," I said.

"You were very interesting," Dagar said, in explanation. "You still are, but I will try to keep my staring to a minimum."

"Let's get down to the yard," I said. "I just wanted you guys to meet personally." But I didn't really care about that. I just wanted Dagar to get a clear read on Doogan. What he'd learn and what he'd tell me were different things, but I gleamed a lot just by watching his reaction. Dagar didn't think Doogan was involved, and if anything felt sorry for him. That was good enough for now.

As we walked, I felt a tingling at the back of my neck.

"Leaving without me?" Jai-ahren said, padding across the rooftop behind me.

"Never," I replied. "As if I could get away from you. Fetch your traveling pouch, okay?"

"I'm not a dog."

"No, but you have those cute little temeki fingers and I don't have time. You can always just hold on."

She hissed in my head, which meant she was doing it.

No matter how exciting something is at first, do it enough times and it becomes monotonous. It becomes work. It's no different with magic. There are spells I've cast so often I don't even hear the words anymore. I sometimes fear I might cast them in my sleep. Then there's combinations of spells, patterns you follow over and over. I've been doing it long enough, that solving common problems with magic is easy.

Our first problem was getting eleven people from my complex near the perg orchards to a large rock off the coast as quickly as possible without drawing a lot of attention. Where a common man might think of horses, I think of flying spells layered with invisibility. I looked at Rubo and I could tell he was having the same thought. That one look was all the coordination we needed.

My team had done this before. They didn't necessarily like it, but they'd done it. We even had a name for this maneuver.

"Clear Sky," I announced. "Odds with me. Doogan, you too."

I paid special attention to Doogan, who just wasn't dealing well with anything. I wanted to keep him close. I didn't mistrust him in general, and I believed his condition was caused by withdrawal of some sort. But addicts can be unpredictable and I don't like surprises.

The men split up into the two groups, one around me and one Rubo. Then we started casting the flying spells. Rubo's actually better at these than I am, so his team was ready to go and he did some of mine so I could explain the process to Doogan.

"I'm going to make it so you can fly, but I'll be in control," I told him. "And then I'll cover us with an invisibility bubble and we'll all fly over."

"Is that necessary?" he asked nervously.

"Saves maybe twenty minutes."

"If it helps," he said weakly.

"And we have to fly to cross the water in any case," Rubo added.

I did both of the invisibility bubbles, which I'm better at. It also let me adjust the spells so we could see each other; not well, mind you. Rubo's team looked like a very sparse purple cloud. But that's enough to make things a lot easier.

Jai-ahren returned with her traveling pouch dragging on the ground behind her. The pouch was custom made just for her, a sort of custom backpack that allowed her to ride securely with me without fear of falling out. It took us many trips with her clinging to me desperately before I thought to have one made. She didn't like it, but she liked flying without it less. I strapped it on and she nestled snugly within after much shifting. In many ways temekis are just like cats.

We took off and flew a hundred feet above the city towards the coast. I was worried about Doogan, first time fliers often don't enjoy the experience. I couldn't see him any better than I could Rubo, but he wasn't screaming so I assumed he was handling it well enough.

Not having to look at anyone let me take in the city. It is beautiful from the air in a way most people will never know. It really did look like a tree, or maybe more like a shrub. It was stout and dense with roads for branches, and colored rooftops for leaves. Many rooftops were green, my complex included. But there were spots of color here and there like little flowers. Lethys's many natural parks stuck out in the aerial view as little spots of new growth among an old thriving bush.

The pretty view was over far too quickly and it was back to business. As we neared the rock, whatever was hiding his ship seemed to break down some and we could begin to make out something on the rock. I couldn't tell you what that something was, it was sort of like a gray fuzzy blob. It was very faint, but it got a bit darker as we came closer.

"Sir, what is that?" Tanawe asked in a cool tone. A few of the others echoed similar questions in panicked voices to each other.

"It's a gold machine," I joked. "Don't worry. None of you will have to go inside."

It was better they didn't know what it really was.

Doogan, Rubo and I left the others and went inside. When we walked up, the shape become more definite, though still blurry. And as we crossed the last few feet the entire side of the ship came into crisp focus. I'd seen his other ship, which was smaller and otherwise very different looking. If bigger is better, his new ship was better. But otherwise I couldn't say. Both ships were impressive, inside and out, and of craftsmanship and value I couldn't comprehend.

The value I could easily comprehend was that of the stacks of gold ingots Doogan had brought with him. I try to stay cool in most situations, but in this case I suppose I failed and let my jaw drop.

"T'vance, your mouth," Rubo noted, with a smirk. "Surely you've seen this much gold before?"

"No. Never in one place like this," I explained. "You have?"

"Well I've been inside the vault in Haalkitaine."

"Seriously?" I asked. Seeing the King's vault in the capital city was really saying something.

"Third ring guard duty," he explained, feigning a yawn. "Can't really talk about it," he continued proudly, "classified."

I rolled my eyes. "I was more awed thinking what we might get with this in Susoth than I was with the money itself," I explained. It sounded good, whether or not it was actually true.

The lift-cart was amusing to say the least, and thankfully small enough to fit through my gateways into the Ethereal Plane. I'd worried about that for nothing. At a distance, it seemed simple: a flat platform on six wheels. I was already grumbling in my head about having to lift all that gold onto it when the thing went into action. The platform split into twelve parts, each on some kind of mechanical arm. They flailed out like spider legs, then some fell back into place as a level surface while the others began lifting bricks and setting them atop it.

Rubo walked in a half-circle around it, watching every motion with wonder. I guess it was pretty cool, but in the end of the day it was just a cart. And a minute after it finished loading, it wasn't even that. It was a mule with little yellow ribbons tied in bows down it's mane. It was loaded with what looked like sacks of food and other not-worth-stealing supplies. The mule looked at at me and snorted, then stamped it's hooves impatiently. And yes, I could even smell it. In true Rubo style, he had all the senses covered.

Doogan shook his head. "Amazing," he said. He gave us both weak smiles, then turned to the cart and told it, "Follow." He started out and the mule followed close behind him, clip-clopping and swishing it's tail as it went.

I paused to smell my hands again, sadly finding Fera's scent gone. I took a pinch of gort and snorted it, the sudden rush taking over all my senses. Then I was clear, alert, and ready for business. For a moment I wondered if gort might not be a good treatment for this love business, but that just made me think of all the times Fera and I had used gort together. I shook my head clear again and tried to put her out of my mind.

Once everyone was back together, I opened a gateway into the ethereal plane and led the group inside. I assigned Lievv, one of my younger elven soldiers to watch after Doogan. I knew Doogan had been on the ethereal plane before, but I still was nervous he might screw up under the pressure. It was a good thing, too. I was busy casting spells to create ethereal mounts for all of us when I saw Lievv catch Doogan and pull him away from a door he'd almost stumbled into.

"Careful of the doors, sir," Lievv told him.

"Thank you," Doogan replied, shaken. "I've been given the warnings, and now that I've got my footing I plan to follow them."

The mule was still behind him. Part of me had wondered if it would work on the ethereal plane. I guess science just works everywhere. Doesn't seem fair.

"Keep a close eye on the mule, too," I told Lievv.

"Aye, sir. It's no mule, though."

"How do you know?"

"No mule would be this calm here."

I finished preparing the ethereal steeds, admiring the small herd I'd just created. Everything about them was my doing. I learned how to open gates and summon creatures from Derrik, but I invented creating ethereal steeds myself. I actually made the spell from scratch. It was the only spell I'd ever made, and I was proud of the results.

I tried to make them look like horses, and they really do bear a strong likeness, though I dare say no one would ever confuse them. No horse is made of dense gray fog with glowing purple eyes. They also don't tend to do much unless ordered, though I've tinkered a lot to give them a little bit of personality. Even as I watched the men mounting them, one steed turned its luminous eyes towards me and snorted a fine jet of smoke.

Rubo's mule illusion whinnied in response. Show off.

I don't know if the resemblance comforted anyone else. People were usually uncomfortable enough being on the ethereal plane to begin with that the added strangeness of the horse made little difference. Of the group, only Rubo, Brother Dagar, and Tanawe seemed at ease. Rubo because he'd done it many times, Dagar because he was somewhat fearless in general, and Tanawe because she had such control of her own mind that she didn't let fear manifest. And me? Well I was in my element with a squad of well trained cavalry, so what did I have to fear? Oh right, Susoth.

That thought hadn't escaped anyone else, and we rode mostly in silence, though Rubo attempted to crack a few jokes along the way for the sake of the troops. I don't think many of them succeeded, but he smiled broadly all the same. At the very least, he amused himself.

I led the way using my special compass to guide me. The compass was the first thing I purchased in Susoth the last time I was there. It didn't look much like a compass, more like a tiny habitat for a strange little bug. The bug, some extra-planar critter, shifted about to keep pointing me in the right direction. I had almost gotten to the point where I no longer needed the compass. I could certainly get to Susoth without it, but it was comforting to have it in hand.

Then it appeared ahead of us, looming in the distance. One minute there was smoke, the next the faint lines of a city stretching up towards the wall of dark gray clouds that perpetually obscured the sky. It seemed like a small city, smaller than say Lethys, but grand in its density.

I stopped the caravan and glanced around. I knew better than to take this large of a group into the city and this was as good as place as any to setup a camp. I cast another spell, creating a glowing purple glyph hanging in mid air. It was a signpost, a marker I could find again anytime.

"Black Boots!" I called.

"Sir!" the order echoed.

"The city beyond is strange and we are best served as only three. You remain here, guard the gold, do not stray from the signpost. We will return soon." I then handed my compass to Tanawe, who knew how to use it if she had to get them back home without me.

I turned to Doogan. "You still have that plasma weapon and the nerve to use it?"

"Something similar," he said. "And I'll be ready if it comes to it." He sounded more confident than he looked.

"Good. But I still hope we won't need it. Come on." The three of us set off, Rubo, Doogan and myself.

The closer we got, the more fear crept in. And it wasn't just me, Rubo seemed on edge and Doogan seemed downright terrified. The structure of the city became better defined the closer we got, and yet somehow more confusing. The structures were all so different from one another, and none of them looked like any kind of architecture you'd find in my world. There were skinny structures with wide tops, structures that curved like sickles in the air, and a few that simply floated above the others like balloons, tethered by long cables or chains to other buildings. One building appeared to be actively melting, while another was tall and crystalline, surrounded by a clinging layer of fog.

"It doesn't even look remotely the same," Rubo said, staring in awe.

"Just as bizarre, though," I said, shaking my head. "And I think the sickle thingie was there last time."

"How long since you guys visited this place?" Doogan asked.

"Less than a year," I replied.

"And it's changed that much?"

"Yes. I wonder what it's called these days. I know it isn't called Susoth anymore. It wasn't even called that last time I visited."

"There is no reason to it," Rubo added. "But I believe each visit, no matter how much time has passed, will bring you to a new city."

"We've never tested that," I explained. "Mostly because each time we come here something bad happens."

Rubo laughed, but Doogan shuddered. "Don't worry, Doogan. We've always made it out of there in one piece."

The city was walled, but had gates drawn wide open before us. In fact, moving in a straight line from our entry point, we found ourselves perfectly perpendicular to the front wall, and dead center on the gates. That happened each time I visited, as if the city oriented itself just for us.

The walls seemed normal enough. They were sandstone stacked tall, set with simple triangles to make battlements. On either side of the opening were tall cylindrical obelisks acting as gateposts for the gate. The gates themselves were bronze, pulled open inward and locked into the stone tiled road into the city beyond. Past that, well it was kind of fuzzy. There was movement, but I couldn't seem to focus on any of it. This was new, but again it was always new.

Then a three foot reptilian eye surfaced, for lack of a better word, from one of the obelisks, as if it had been swimming in the sandstone. It turned to gaze at us and blinked an eyelid made from a sheet of sand.

"What the hell is that!?" Doogan screamed, while prematurely discharging two bursts of plasma into it. The plasma melted a five foot deep crater in the sandstone, and made glass deeper than that. The eye must have been in the melted pile of goo that had been scattered around the base of the obelisk.

"By Jasek! You moron, stop shooting!" I hissed.

"Sorry," Doogan sighed, still trembling. "It just freaked me the fuck out and I shot it. I turned the safety back on, just in case."

"Good idea," Rubo said, giving me a sideways grin.

A moment later the hole filled in with sand and then another eye emerged. Once again, it turned to look at us.

"What does it want?" Doogan asked, unable to look away.

"To look at us," I said, mostly guessing. "Come on."

"I thought that was obvious," Rubo said. "If it wanted to communicate, it would have made a mouth and ear."

As we approached the gates, I layered a few defensive spells on me in case we got into trouble. I noticed Rubo doing the same. We had our routines pretty well down. Doogan just nervously rubbed at his wrist, making me worry he might accidentally shoot something else.

We must have passed through some barrier or over some threshold, because suddenly everything came flooding into focus and what was once a set of blurry moving objects became crystal clear. Most of what we saw was better blurry.

Of the dozen or so things I first laid eyes on, none appeared remotely human or even humanoid. I recognized a few species from other trips to Susoth, but most of them were new. I couldn't imagine what Doogan must have made of everything. Coming from a world of people, he probably considered these things monsters. Maybe he was right.

"Don't shoot anything," I reminded him. It seemed a bit soon for a reminder, but he was looking at every creature as if it were about to charge him. He nodded and made a visible effort to relax that didn't seem very effective.

We set out among the creatures and headed up the street. I didn't know where to go, so I was just going, hoping to find a demon I recognized to be sane enough to speak with. Not a minute moving among the things, Doogan got spooked by one monster and ended up walking into another.

There was a shrieking hiss and the street fell silent. Doogan leaped back from the thing he ran into, a grotesque demon I couldn't identify that resembled a large, rotten avocado with numerous tentacles. It made a series of wet burping sounds and flared it's tentacles towards Doogan.

Doogan, to his credit, didn't shoot the thing. He was sure ready to, though. He was pointing his gun, I think he called it. This new plasma weapon was somehow built into his wrist, an improvement from the hand-held version he'd had before. I'm sure it was impressive technology, but I'd seen rings that could do the same thing, so I felt technology had a ways to go to catch up.

I glanced at Rubo who was muttering an incantation under his breath. I didn't listen enough to tell what it was, I had my own magic to work, but my money was on a sleep spell, knowing Rubo. He gave me a look that said, "Don't kill it." This time it was the last thing I wanted to do, I didn't want a fight at all.

"I'm the diplomat, remember?" I told him. I stepped up to put myself closer to the creature than Doogan was, while purposefully leaving Doogan a clear shot.

I finished my spell as the creature's tentacles oriented in my direction. It was a subtle spell that lets me communicate with the creature. The twist is that the creature thinks I'm talking to it in its own language.

"Move along, little green thing," I told it. "Unless you fancy spending the rest of the day picking up your severed tentacles."

Then I stared at it like it was food. I was ready to use my fire ring on him, hoping he didn't make me.

The twist to my spell gave me the advantage. The Avocado Demon, as I'd decided to call him, probably didn't know anything about my race. He probably didn't even know what my race was. But here I was speaking to him fluently in his own language. If I knew the language, what else might I know?

It belched again, then threw it's tentacles back in Doogan's direction and hissed. But in my head that said, "Keep that thing out of my way." Then it wandered away.

"That was close," Rubo said.

I nodded. "Let's find a species I recognize already."

"So you didn't know what that thing was?" Doogan asked.

"Nope. And I didn't want to find out what it could do either. The good thing is that it probably doesn't know what I am either. Bluffing goes a long way here."

"But it can get you killed just as easily," Rubo warned. "So leave it to professionals."

I spotted something I recognized. "There!" I called. "Taenelu!

I hurried across the street, dodging between a hulking chitinous cluster of legs and a pretty humanoid made of shimmering blue liquid. I turned down a small side street, following the Taenelu, and caught up with it in front of a towering building of obsidian. Rubo was close and Doogan not far behind.

Taenelu are humanoids, not so different from human actually. They have bronze skin and sharp teeth and their features are less elegant. They are an underclass on their plane, so to see one alone here was curious. But I knew of them and had summoned them before, so I knew what I was getting into.

I had to cast another language spell to talk with him, then shouted to get his attention. The Taenelu turned, somewhat angrily. His face softened slightly as he saw me, I've long suspected Taenelu mistake my race as one of their superiors.

"Eh, Taza?"

I reached into my pouch for my compass, and briefly panicked at its absence until it connected that I'd left it with Tanawe. I threw a quick hand signal to Rubo, who remedied the situation with a quick illusion of my compass.

"Do you know a shop that sells these?"

"Nase Taza, Nase," he answered, shaking his head. Then he bowed curtly, spun on his heel, and marched off down the street.

"What did he say?" Rubo asked.

"He didn't know anything," I said, sighing.

Doogan took the compass from my hand and examined it. "This is from a spell? It looks just like it."

Rubo smiled proudly. "Details are difficult, and very often unimportant. We teach our early students to limit their details, focus only on key points. But we also teach them to take in every detail possible when observing."

Normally I'd give Rubo some leeway to wax on about his magic, even listen to him though never appearing too interested. But we were in Susoth.

"Hey Rubo," I interrupted. "Look around."

He looked confused as he glanced around but quickly got the point. "Right. Let's keep looking."

We did. We stuck to the less traveled streets, but close to the major ones. To be honest, I'd rather have stuck to the main street, but I feared Doogan would eventually get us all killed. We found a Hothrog who also didn't know anything and a Zix we couldn't catch up with, though we tried.

Then, on a rather deserted side street we ran into a Gogonaur coming out of a doorway awash with flames. I knew of Gogonaurs, but they weren't exactly my preferred demon to interact with. They were huge red monsters with four arms and a head that had an extra helping of mouth instead of a nose. It's hands were monstrous talons tipped with long black razor-sharp nails, which it clicked together in rhythmic irritation.

When I asked him about the compass he glared at me and hissed and howled, "You dare stop me for directions, mortal!?"

He raised his hands threateningly. I held my ground. The hardest part was trying to appear relaxed and confident, because every part of me was preparing my defense in case he attacked.

"Think twice, Gogonaur," I said loudly.

The thing hissed with such rage that I was amazed neither Doogan nor Rubo fired at it. But it stepped back and looked around quickly, as if concerned someone might have seen or heard our exchange. Then he hissed and gurgled directions to a place only three blocks away.

I bowed to the demon. "Thank you. Now leave."

The monster hissed loudly and from his mouth came a cloud of flame. We all jumped back to stay out of it. Then it was gone, and so was the Gogonaur.

"You've seen these creatures before?" Doogan asked.

"Yes," I explained. "These have all been demons I can summon because I know their true name."

"Summon?"

"The spell makes a circle on the ground," Rubo explained, "Which is a temporary gate binding a creature from another plane to ours. It's very dangerous and T'vance uses it far too often."

"Rubo is just jealous because I can summon Spear Demons and he can't. But let's get moving, I know the place."

We turned around and headed back up the main street, picking our way carefully through living things both horrific and amazing. There were certainly a fair number of humanoids represented, perhaps as many as half the things, but I'm including the Gogonaur in the humanoid bucket so its a pretty broad group.

As we neared the shop, a cluster of silvery blue winged ladies flew overhead singing like angels. When I stared up at them, one of them winked at me.

The shop itself was a metal cube about ten feet on a side. The metal was a swirling mix of bronze and steel, with a narrow black wooden door. A sign above the door had letters I couldn't read and a picture of a compass. The building to the left was a jagged tall mess of black crystal with no apparent entrance, but it crept over top the compass shop, then over the three story brick building opposite, and continued up fifty feet.

A small merry bell rang as I pushed the shop door open. There was nothing ten feet big about the inside, except perhaps the ceiling. The place must have been a couple hundred feet deep and at least a hundred wide. I could tell instantly this was an entirely different shop from the one I'd gotten my compass in, but it was an entirely different city so what did I expect?

There was a front area with a shop, like a jewelry store or something, with polished wood and glass display cases filled with compasses, sextants, watches, rolls of parchment, divining rods, and a variety of more complicated things I couldn't identify. Beyond that, was a kennel or stable or whatever you call a thing that pens monsters. And they were certainly back there, mewing and growling and scraping and hissing.

The shopkeeper appeared suddenly from behind a pillar, of which there were many. It wasn't a big pillar, but he was slender enough to fit behind it. The man, if you could call him that, was about six and a half feet tall but probably had a twelve inch waist. He was a rail. Even his head was very slender with tall oval eyes, a nub of a nose, and lips that almost weren't there. He dressed in a thin straight black suit which starkly contrasted his white skin.

"May I help you?" he asked, coming before us in two great strides. His voice was deep and smooth, and he spoke in Erlin, the wood elven language, of all things.

"I'm looking for a gate on the ethereal plane to a specific place," I told him.

He smiled without showing teeth. "That is something I can help you with. What can you tell me?"

I showed him the bits of metal the dark ship left behind in Doogan's hull. "These metal fragments were crafted there. Is that enough?"

"Oh yes!" he said excitedly. "For Madra can do this. But Madra is my prize. She is my most expensive rental."

"What does she cost?"

"For one gate? I'd give her to you for at most a day. But I guarantee she finds one, or your money returned. I will accept minted gold tenths, which is I believe your currency. Two-thousand and one-hundred coins."

"We have raw gold, and we'll give you one hundred and eighty pounds. Do we have a deal?"

We haggled from there, eventually settling at two hundred pounds of gold. We left the shop to fetch our gold, heading quickly down the street.

"You didn't need to haggle," Doogan said. "I have more than double that."

"Doesn't matter, you still haggle. You don't like saving a hundred gold? Give it to me."

"I might just do that."

Madra was about as unlike a dog as a creature could be, while still exhibiting most of a dog's characteristics. She didn't look anything like a dog, for instance. She had six legs, or four legs and two arms it was hard to tell. The back four were definitely legs. The front two worked mostly as legs, but sometimes she'd pick them up and paw the air, or bring the long toed feet up to cup her face. She had no tail, though her body was long, and she had no fur, just light course hair sticking up here and there like a pig. And she was mottled pink and purple.

Her nose was inset at the base of a wide cone of flesh that made up most of her face. It was a lot like a gaping toothless mouth with four nostrils where the throat should be. She had an actual mouth too, with a dense array of jagged overlapping teeth, and a pair of dark eyes on the side and one on top above her nose cone.

While looking nothing like a dog, she still managed to pant, stop and scratch, and when she got the hint of a scent she stretched long and low to point her whole body like an arrow. And when she really got the scent, she tore off without regard for the poor handler, who in this case was me.

"Whoa, Madra!" I screamed at her, digging my heels in to keep from being drug further across the plane. The shop keeper had been very specific about when to show Madra the metal fragments, but even so it was more dangerous than I anticipated. I was being pulled this way and that, and had already had to make evasive maneuvers a couple of times to avoid being drug into an unknown gate.

I finally managed to get her under control and we walked a number of miles at a rather quick pace. I say we, but I was the only one who walked. The rest of them, including all my Black Boot men, got to ride my ethereal steeds.

Eventually Madra slowed, stopped, and took in deep breaths of air that made her nose cone ripple and filled the air with snorting sounds. The cone, while funneling scent to the nostrils, also managed to act as a megaphone.

From there things slowed down. She'd stand up, walk a dozen feet or so, then stop and smell again, change her direction and do it again. After a few of those, she started sniffing gates. At the third gate she stopped and pointed.

I marked the gate with another signpost.

"That was fast. How long?" I asked.

Rubo produced a large gold pocket watch and examined it. "A little over two hours."

Madra finally sat down and scratched, then circled and laid down. She took a deep breath and was instantly asleep. Then she disappeared with a brief flash of white.

"Oh good!" Rubo said. "I was afraid we'd have to go back to return her."

"Me too," I said. "And now I'm just left with being afraid to walk through a gate to an unknown world."

There was no use dwelling on that. We'd come this far, we weren't turning back and there was no more information we were going to get to assure us.

"Black Boot Company, you know the drill. Standard gate exit procedures. Me and Rubo first, wait five minutes, then come in ready. Doogan, follow them closely."

Rubo and I layered our defensive spells, then I masked us both in my special way so that we could still see one another. Once we disappeared from sight, Tanawe would start counting, so we had to move. I held up my arm as a signal to Rubo and we stepped through.
CHAPTER 5

* * *

T'vance

* * *

I stepped in first, then Rubo. We dropped into a crouch back-to-back and scanned the area around us. I always plan to find the most horrible things, the fear keeps me sharp. Sometimes horrible things are right in front of you. They weren't. Sometimes they're hidden invisibly, so I checked that too and found we were clear. Sometimes the horrible things are just running late, so I used another spell I know to see a few minutes into the future.

"We're clear for two," I told Rubo. He nodded, but he was clearly concentrating on his own spell. I watched him turn his head around slowly, sweeping some detection spell over the area like a giant magical magnifying glass.

I took in the more minute details as we waited for my team. We were standing in a flat rocky wedge that someone had carved out of the side of a mountain. A mine car track split the middle of it and disappeared into a tunnel carved into the mountain in one direction, and down the hill into jungle-like vegetation in the other.

It was warm, it was humid, and it was windy. There were sounds everywhere, natural but strange. It reminded my in many ways of Gûl. Partly because there were similarities like humidity and vegetation, but more because when I went to Gûl I found an entirely different ecosystem from what I was used to; different bugs, different birds, different plants. This had that same feeling.

Anytime you're in a new element, picking out sounds that are meaningful becomes nearly impossible. It takes time to acclimate, so I was trying to do just that. Using my eyes to look for danger, while my ears started trying to separate background noise from unusual events.

There was more I wanted to see. I wanted to examine the rails, see where they led in each direction, and get a better view of where we were in relations to the larger picture. But these things could wait. Our job was only to secure the landing site for the rest of the team, and we did only things pertaining to that. Eventually Rubo turned himself visible again. This was partly to act as bait and partly to ease coordination once the rest of the team arrived.

Shortly after, the rest of my team stepped out from nowhere onto the rocky ground. Seeing Rubo, they instantly relaxed and moved into a defensive circle around him with eyes in all directions. Once they were in, I whistled a warning and dropping my invisibility as well. It was a signal they knew, so they didn't jump much when I appeared.

"We're clear," Tanawe informed me, loud enough for everyone to hear.

"I agree," Rubo said. "I sense no one nearby."

"Dagar, where do we go?" I asked.

The priest, who mind you looked indistinguishable from my other soldiers, stepped closer and looked up at the moons. I watched him carefully, curious what I might learn from his expressions. He looked back with a very sad face. "Reann is not with me," he said. "And I cannot even tell you what hour of the night it is."

"So you can do nothing?" Rubo asked.

Dagar gave a wry smile. "There is Essaence here, and there is night, and people who dream. There will be a god who will hear me, I just need time to find him."

Rubo nodded as if he didn't understand at all. I'd given Dagar that same look. But I understood clearly this changed things. For all our hurrying to get here, we were stuck waiting on Dagar to figure out how to consult the divine. I hate waiting.

"You can at least start with some divinations," I suggested, "those are rather agnostic."

"I cannot," he said simply.

"Well then I'll do them. Give me Tisbaen's pouch."

Dagar put his hand on my arm to stop me. "This isn't something we should enter into lightly, Raylen."

In case that's confusing, I used to go by Raylen. But that was long before I met Brother Dagar. "What did you just call me?"

"Raylen," he repeated, without explaining, but there was a familiar intonation I couldn't place. "I can sense enough to know this place is too dangerous to randomly follow a cluster of fallen items whose relevance is totally lost here. Have you even an item of Karstia's?"

"You lecturing me, soldier?" I said, my ire rising.

For a moment he seemed confused, then he replied carefully, "No, sir. Just giving you my best advice. If you'd rather not hear it, give the order, sir."

"Do you have more to say then?"

Brother Dagar paused, considering. I studied his face, watching conflicting voices fight inside him. Finally, he stood up taller and looked me in the eyes.

"Yes," he said. "I think I need to acclimate, find a source to channel from in this world. I think we need to make a new improvised divining set based on pieces that hold meaning to this world and our purpose here. And once I'm ready, I think we should prepare a ritual to locate her. It may seem like a lot of time and a lot of preparation, but I believe it will yield the most expedient and safest way to get to Karstia. Sir."

He stopped and stared expectantly at me, with such a confusing expression on his face I couldn't determine if he was fearful or cocky. But I couldn't deny he made some sense. Tisbaen's divining bag was a mismatched pool of items largely dedicated to our history fighting Arnak. In a way, even knowing how nasty they are, I wished it was Arnak who had taken Karstia. At least then I'd have an idea of what I was getting into. Despite his insolence, which I was probably overreacting to, he was right.

"Fine. Dagar, find your god. Your partner can stay to guard you. Tanawe?"

"Yes, sir?" Tanawe said, stepping close.

"Suggest a course of action."

Tanawe gave a brief smile, her white teeth bright against her dark lips. As a squad leader, it was good to let her practice.

"Dagar and Lievv are staying here. The rest divide into teams of two scouting. First priority is ensuring our position is secure. Second is to find a base camp, a place we can hide. Third, to map the area. The scouting teams should also look for unique things that might be of use in a new divining set for Dagar. Seed pods, leaves, bones, rocks--"

"And something living," Dagar injected in a way that was both childlike and creepy at the same time.

"If we can," Tanawe said.

"And what would you have Rubo, Doogan and I doing?"

"Why sir, I assumed you'd be exploring the tunnel."

I smiled. "Give the orders."

Tanawe paired with Gorun, our soldier-mage, Balen with Sara, and Shaad with Geric.

As they moved off I heard Tanawe tell Gorun, "So, you remember covering my back with fire isn't the same as covering my back, right?"

"It was one time!"

"Just so you remember."

Six of my soldiers moved out, while Dagar sat and meditated in the open and his partner Lievv walked a silent perimeter around him. We left Doogan's lift-cart that looked like a mule with them and headed into the tunnel.

The tunnel was about seven feet at the top, making it easy to walk through upright. We walked slowly, Rubo staring intently at everything, though the tunnel was just plain gray stone. He carried a wand of interwoven silver and glass, the tip of which glowed brightly giving us ample light to see by.

Eventually the tunnel opened to a large round room with a pit in the center. The track split, circling to both sides of the pit, then turning in towards it and terminating on opposite sides. In the center of the pit ran a pulley system that descended further than our light, presumably to the bottom. The pulley was made from shiny metal wheels and cable, with shiny metal buckets connected to the cable every few feet. Nothing was moving and there were no mine cars, but it was clearly some kind of mining operation. Mining was done in the pit below, and the materials hauled up on the pulleys and loaded into mine cars. But what were they mining?

"There's a lot of magic in here," Rubo said. "Some intricate work here, too, all of it arcane magic."

"What do you make of it?" I asked.

"Well, structural reinforcement is a given on the metal as well as the stone around us. But the pulleys themselves have some additional enchantments. Arcane, but very similar to motion patterns from what you'd see in leaping or flying spells. They aren't evil. Suppose I could attune?"

"Try it."

Attuning is what we call the process of bonding with an enchanted item. It's a lot like focusing to see magical auras, what we call second sight. But attuning is more like second touch. Instead of focusing your mind to see the magical aura, you focus on feeling it.

Rubo reached out and touched the metal cable. He's really good at attuning, a lot better than I am though I'd never admit it. It only took a second.

"Oh! Simple, but clever. There's no complex activation, simply say, 'Lift on'."

He said those words and the pulley wheel began to spin. The wheel itself was quiet, though set in stone, but the buckets rattled against the cable, or the stone as the passed over the top. Combined, they raised enough racket to let anyone below know we were there. I was fairly confident the place was empty, or I'd have been more concerned.

"Lift off," Rubo said. The pulley slowed it's spinning until finally it came to a halt.

"Seems rather sophisticated," Doogan said. "And yet brutally simple at the same time."

"Yes," Rubo agreed. "It's very strange."

"What's strange is the Essaence here," I said. "I've been trying to put my finger on it since we got here, but I think we're near a node."

"Really?" Rubo asked. Then he closed his eyes and held his hands out over the pit.

"What's a node?" Doogan asked.

I often forget people don't know this stuff, even people from my world. "A concentration point for the Essaence," I explained. "On Kulthea, the Essaence flows are pulled towards power nodes. They are places of powerful magic to be sure, and I might be mistaken but I think there's one below us."

"You aren't mistaken," Rubo said. "Not to make excuses, but I think the Essaence here is very strange. It's throwing my passive senses for a loop. But on closer inspection, I'd say we're about half a mile above a class V node. That's the highest severity, the same strength as at the center of Lake L'kyron back home."

"But it doesn't feel like that. It feels like a minor node if that. And the power is so--"

"Uniform," Rubo cut in. "And predictable. I can't even... by Jaysek! T'vance, I can't even find a flow!"

"Well me neither."

"But I have this," he said, pulling out a small metal ball hanging from a string. "It points towards the nearest flow. But it's just hanging here."

"Is that a new toy?"

"Well, yes," he said, grinning awkwardly. "I'd planned to show it off in more impressive circumstances."

"It's a lovely ball on a string."

"It points to flows, I tell you!"

"Of course it does," I patronized. "So the flow must be directly below us?"

That tripped him up, a bit. Nothing eases the tension of a foreign world than friendly ribbing. He swung the ball about in small circles and watched it settle again.

"No," he said, finally. "It's not pulling any stronger than gravity does."

"So we're back to the lovely ball on a string theory?" I asked. Rubo grimaced at me. "So it doesn't work here. I give you that's strange, but then again this is a whole new strange world. My spells work, so I'm content with whatever brand of Essaence they have on this planet."

A sound like thunder echoed from outside, a single strong clap of it. We all looked, mostly curiously as if we were all wondering what the weather here might be like. We then went back to examining the buckets. Rubo reached into one of the recently raised buckets and pulled out a small piece of dark, jagged rock. He turned it over and held it up. The backside was shiny black metal.

"The ship's hull," Rubo said. "This is where they mine the metal. That Madra was dead on finding this gate."

"Let me see that," I said, grabbing the rock. It looked suspiciously familiar. I pulled my short black kynac and used the tip of the blade to chip away some of the rock and scratch at the metal. The two metals were certainly different looking, but my blades had been forged.

"This is keron," I said.

"Like your kynacs?" Rubo asked.

"We Arains do silver smithing by trade, so this isn't exactly my area, but I'm pretty sure. We can ask Dagar, if he ever figures out how to channel a spell."

I held up the metal near to a fragment from the ship. The keron was darker, true black, and shiny like wet. The ship's hull had a ting of gray with the opposite sheen.

Just then we heard a shout and a scrape and a bunch of feet moving. A voice called down the tunnel, "T'vance! Get out here! Trouble!"

I nodded to Rubo and we both jumped, leaving Doogan behind. Hopefully he got the idea to come after us, but too often seconds count so we had to move. We arrived back on the flat rock, between Tanawe who'd called me and the rest of the group who had gathered in a circle around a body. I knew who it was before I saw, based on who was missing. It was Sara.

In some ways I was glad to know ahead of time. It let me brace myself for what I knew I didn't want to see. Her body was bloody and torn, as if she'd been mauled by a large animal. Its claws had shredded her armor and flesh, but the huge gash across her neck appeared to have been the worst of it. There was no doubt she was dead, and inside it tore me apart. Outside, I kept a steady face, my men looked shaken up enough already without me losing it.

Her partner Balen was sitting beside her cross-legged, rocking back and forth slightly. He was also covered in blood, but at a glance I took it to be Sara's and not his. He looked up at me with tears in his eyes, a moving sight from Balen who was usually so proud and stoic.

"Tell me what happened," I said, as calmly as I could.

"I didn't even see it clearly," he whispered. "Big claws and it hissed. It came from the trees."

I looked back to Sara, and for a moment I felt an overwhelming sense of dread. She could have been Fera and he could have been me. Had he acted to save himself instead of her?

Balen looked up to Tanawe, his immediate superior. "I fired," he told her. "And I hit it, too, I bet my life on it."

I put my hand on his shoulder. I don't often touch people, and he knew that and looked up at me surprised. "You did well," I told him. "Can you take me to where it happened?"

"Now?" he asked, his voice unsteady.

"Now. Rubo, I'd like you to come, too."

Rubo helped Balen to his feet and they walked a few feet off, while I gave Tanawe orders and assessed the morale of my men. The troops were shaken, to be sure, but none so much as Balen. Doogan had already returned and he looked worse than anyone. I expected that, considering his fragile state.

"Tanawe, keep everyone together and in the open as much possible. Doogan, heed Tanawe. And get Sara's body ready to move. We aren't leaving her here."

"Yes, sir."

"I don't see the wisdom in making him go back to the scene so soon," Shaad said, under his breath but not quiet enough for anyone in the circle to miss it.

Tanawe's head snapped to face him. "Duty," she replied curtly. "And to show him he can handle it."

"Still, he--"

"Walk the perimeter," Tanawe cut him off sternly.

He straightened up, bowed shortly, and paced off towards Lievv who was already patrolling. I gave Tanawe an appreciative look and joined Rubo and Balen.

"Stay here in case they need to contact me," I told Jai-ahren, who was more content to stay in her pouch, but climbed out anyway. She jumped down and padded quietly over and sat next to Brother Dagar.

Balen led us across the flat rock and down the rough slope into the jungle. It was thick enough that invisibility would be pointless. Even if the branches didn't knock off the spell, you'd surely have to move them or cut them to pass through and that would make enough of a disturbance to be noticed. Instead, Rubo muted all sounds around us and blanketed us with head-to-toe camouflage coloring. They were simple spells, but Rubo cast them with such mastery you'd think they were advanced; there must have been a hundred different shades of green.

We moved cautiously, seeing nothing along the way until we reached the site of the battle. The scene wasn't as graphic as seeing her body, but there was clearly a skirmish that broke more than a few pieces of flora and many green things were still wet with blood.

"I'm still not sure which tree it came from, but it first made contact here," Balen said. He looked around, then shook his head. "I think it went off that way," he finished, pointing off to the right. "I'm not sure what you hope to find, sir."

I wasn't sure either, but I wanted to see it. And I can do that. The same chain of magic that lets me look a few minutes into the future, lets me see a few hours into the past. Seers can do it a lot better, I mean amazingly better. My version is missing most of the bells and all the whistles, for instance I only get the vision, no sounds or smells. And I have to start at a specific point and watch the scene from there. I can't skip ahead or back, search for events, or any of the other cool things Seers can do. Still, it's amazingly useful.

"How long you think since it happened?" I asked.

Balen shook his head.

"Try eighteen," Rubo said, glancing at a large golden disc in his hand, which was a beacon against the rest of his camouflage.

"What is that? Another new toy?"

"Yes. You really need to keep up. Tells time, and I checked it shortly after we heard the screams."

"Eighteen it is."

I cast the spell and drifted back.

Rubo had overshot the time by about two minutes, which meant I had a little time to wait. Finally I saw the pair, Sara leading Balen. She always was a headstrong one. She had her sword out to clear the path and he his crossbow to cover her. Then it sprung like a flash from a tree on her left, fast like a coiled snake. It was in many ways serpentine, but with arms and legs with long razor claws. It hit her with its full weight dragging the claws through her, then sprung off her like a trampoline back into the trees to the right of her. Balen fired, and I'm pretty sure he hit it too. Then the thing was gone.

In all I didn't get a great look at it either, it was that fast. But I can tell you it was brown scaled with four limbs, claws, a tail, and a blunt, snake-like head. Its body was thin and wiry, almost cylindrical, like someone had taken a fat snake and given it arms and legs. But it sure didn't move like a fat anything.

Immediately after, Balen's head jerked left and he pulled out one of my pop stones and threw it into the brush. I couldn't hear the explosion in the vision, but I saw leaves fly and remembered the thunder clap we'd heard from the mines.

"Was there a second one?" I asked.

Balen shook his head. "I don't know. I heard something else and panicked, so I threw one of your gray pop stones."

"Good thinking," Rubo said. "If there were more of them, the explosion probably scared them off."

Or summoned more of them to us, I thought to myself. Seeing the thing in action made me nervous being in its environment. I had an anticipation spell that would alert me before something could attack me, but what if there were a dozen of them?

"I've seen enough. Let's return to the others. There's no sense risking more time here."

We crept back through the jungle, following a different path to minimize the chance of running into an ambush. We made it out safely, back to the rocky clearing, and Balen seemed all the better for it. The group was as we left them, through perhaps more spread out. Rubo dropped our camouflage and I strode across to Tanawe.

"I know you didn't get much time, but did we find a suitable base camp?" I asked her.

"One cave nearby. I don't think it's very deep, nor a good base camp, but it is the best we have if you're looking for cover."

"How is it you read my mind?" I asked, smirking.

"It's only logic, sir," she replied simply.

"Yes, well it saves time so I approve." I turned back to Dagar, who was back to meditating only feet away. "Find your god yet, Brother?"

Dagar sighed deeply and opened his eyes. "No, yet I sense you no longer consider this place safe. Perhaps that is progress."

"Tanawe, take us to the cave. Quickly. Everyone stay alert."

A series of hisses rose from the trees down the slope from whence we had returned. The whole group seemed to spin in unison, crossbows coming level. We couldn't see anything, but the trees were far and nestled in shadows.

"What are they?!" someone gasped.

"Steady," I ordered. "Rubo, something to deter them?"

"A light explosion?" he suggested.

"Nothing that visible to the valley. And hurry."

"Understood."

He took but a second to think, then started chanting softly.

I turned to Tanawe. "Get them moving, we'll catch up. And we'll bring Sara, just get them there."

"Movement," Lievv said. As an elf, he had the best eyes of us all. "Two off the point."

We oriented on his signal, almost a full ninety degrees from the initial hissing sounds, down a slope in the same style trees. I only saw moving branches and there was some wind, but I trusted Lievv's eyes and my guess was there were creatures trying to circle around us. Perhaps the originally hissing was a distraction to let the others move into position, which implied an intelligence beyond animal.

"That's not far from the cave," Tanawe said. "Two, Six, light stones. The rest of you ready pop stones. Move!"

They moved off quickly, Doogan gave us a parting panicked look from the rear as if he wished he were staying with us. I glared at him in response and that got his head facing the right direction.

Rubo cast his spell, which created an illusion of himself that stood thirty feet tall and carried a huge sword. The giant Rubo roared a battle cry and charged after my company. And let me tell you, if you think his coat is scary normally, you haven't seen anything until you see it five times as big.

"Nice," I said, smirking. "I'll nosense you. If you can, chase one of them towards me. I want to bring a corpse back to boost morale."

I cast one spell on him, then one on me. Nosense is my best cloaking spell, it makes you invisible and masks your scent and sounds. You're still vulnerable to magical invisibility detection, but otherwise it's like you aren't even there.

My spells tend to bleed onto Jai-ahren, and I looked over pleased I couldn't see her. I mean I knew where she was, I just couldn't see her.

"So we hunt?" she said.

"Yes. Preferably one away from its friends."

I ran to the tree line, maybe twenty feet from the giant Rubo that was growling and swinging his sword threateningly. I heard a few pop stones detonate, like mini claps of thunder, and saw a flash in the jungle and a different explosion I couldn't explain. But I couldn't worry about that. I saw one of the lizard things spring out from a tree near the giant Rubo.

"I'm on it."

Tracking fast moving prey was Jai-ahren's specialty. Normally they're birds or stone rats, not giant lizard things, but the visual skills are the same. I circled from the outside, while she tracked it in the jungle. She didn't need to tell me anything, I could just tell where it was, where she was. I cut in once it stopped and walked quietly up to the tree.

Had I not known exactly where it was, I would have never seen it. It had wrapped itself around the branch of a tree in such a way that it essentially was a branch of the tree. It was high enough that I couldn't just stab it, but stabbing it was really the best way to handle such a thing so I cast a levitation spell so I could drift up into position.

I floated in the air a foot from the thing, examining it carefully. It was still as could be, I couldn't even see it breathing. I drew my blades and lined them up. Then it lifted it's head slowly, almost imperceptibly, to look back towards the giant. I slipped one blade under it's throat, then in one quick motion sliced the throat with the short kynac while driving the long one up into its body cavity. It died instantly, quietly, and probably painlessly. It didn't even fall from the tree.

The attack disrupted my nosense spell, which I quickly recast, then I doored the body back to the clearing, near where I left Rubo just to avoid having to carry it. I lowered myself down and looked around carefully.

"There are four others nearby," Jai said. "But I doubt they've seen you. Nice kill, by the way."

"Thanks. Let's get to Rubo."

"I'll lead the way."

She did, leaping from tree to tree swiftly. The things had a smell, at least to her, and she seemed confident she'd be able to notice them if they were close by. We snaked our way out of the jungle, no pun intended, and found Rubo looking at the body.

"Easy kill," I shouted, which barely escapes the nosense spell as a whisper. "Are they in the cave?"

"Yes," Rubo whispered back. "I know where. Ready?"

"Climb aboard," I told Jai. She jumped up and crawled back into her pouch.

"Ready."

Rubo cast the spell, dooring the four of us, counting the two bodies, to the mouth of a cave. I tossed a ventriloquism spell into the cave, announcing us. I've been almost killed by surprising people enough times not to take the risk. Then I picked up the lizard and Rubo took Sara and we entered the cave, where my men were huddled together in a defensive position, with their crossbows leveled in our direction.

Sara we took towards the back, but the lizard's body I dumped next to the wall at the mouth of the cave. Then Rubo cast a spell that created a solid wall of rock covering the mouth of the cave. It wasn't real of course, but it looked it and matched the surrounding stone precisely, as I've come to expect from Rubo.

"Is there another way out?" I asked.

"One perhaps," Tanawe said from the back of the cave. "I can't say where it goes, but a slight tunnel continues, too small for us to traverse."

"Seal it if you can and let me know if you can't."

Tanawe looked to Balen, whose eyes hadn't left the lizard's body. "Balen, see what you can do about that opening."

He looked up at her, nodded, and went towards the back.

Rubo and I then continued preparing the defenses. We've done this sort of thing before also, so it's pretty routine. Rubo masked the entrance, created smell mirages to hide any scent of us, and a sound bubble to keep all the sounds inside the cave from getting outside. Then I setup a series of wards.

Wards are like spells that store other spells and cast them under certain circumstances. So essentially, magical traps, although they are much more versatile. For instance my team's light stones and pop stones are just rocks I cast some warded spells on. The wards themselves are quite tricky, and as good as I am at them, I can still only store my weaker spells.

These traps weren't devastating, but at least clever. I triggered the blast to occur at the doorway if anything larger than a mouse crossed the illusionary wall, but I specifically excluded every one of us to ensure we didn't accidentally set off our own traps. I used some chalk, I always carry some for this sort thing, to mark off the danger zones. While we couldn't trigger the effect, we certainly weren't immune to it.

I created a gate back to the ethereal plane and marked its location on the wall in case we needed to escape. Then gathered everyone together to explain our defenses and the current situation.

Summarizing the creatures, I told them, "They're fast, strong and cunning. Their claws are deadly, and I can't tell you if they are poisonous or not."

"They aren't," Dagar said confidently.

I gave him a curious look, but continued, "They blend in perfectly with trees and hunt in packs. The good news is that they can't see or sense invisible things, they die pretty predictably, and they're scared of giant Rubos, but who isn't? That's about all I can tell you until Dagar finishes examining the body."

"Me?" Dagar said.

"You seem the resident expert," I told him, smirking. "The rest of you, talk freely but quietly. And I want two pairs of eyes on that wall at all times and crossbows loaded and ready. Doogan, Rubo, let's plan."

We pulled away from the others, as much as we could in the confined quarters.

"What now?" Doogan asked.

"I don't know. Do you really think we're safe here, Rubo?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. They won't smell the opening, but there's plenty of our scent around the area that might keep them around. If they're intelligent enough, they might notice the cave is missing and start poking around. But perhaps my illusions and whatever else we threw at them scared them off enough."

"It's also possible these creature are nocturnal, and will stop being a concern by day," Doogan said. "It might get so warm during the day they can't operate without overheating. It's surprisingly warm at night here. In fact, we should consider how bad the heat is going to effect us as well."

I nodded, glad to hear here Doogan providing some useful input. "I can cool us down if we need it. For now, I think we need to get a better idea of what to expect from our surroundings."

"You planning on doing some reconnaissance from the air?" Doogan asked. "I want to come."

"You don't see well in the dark," I told him.

"Should have brought my stupid helmet," he muttered. "Still, there's plenty of moonlight and we'll be in the air. These lizard things didn't make those ships. We haven't seen what does yet, but that society is manufacturing space ships. There's no way you'll make sense of complex structures without me."

"He has a point," Rubo said.

"So you want to stay and hold down the fort?" I asked him.

"No. I want to come, too," he said. "But I know it's best one of us stays. Take Doogan. He'll be helpful and he can handle it."

I saw a brief flash of green as Rubo cast a spell on Doogan, some kind of mental manipulation. I think it was probably a suggestion spell, something to make Doogan think he could deal. It seemed to work, too, because Doogan visibly relaxed.

"Alright," I conceded. "You can come. Just like we did in Lethys, invisibility and flying with one small change. After I get us ready, I'm going to door us up a hundred feet and we'll start from there."

He swallowed hard. "OK."

"And you're staying here. It's all flying anyway."

"Fine by me. I suspect there might be something to eat in this cave anyway."

We soared above the jungle, for a moment just floating there, looking down to see if we could make out signs of the lizard creatures moving towards the cave. We could see nothing but a shifting canopy of broad leaves, so I took us higher to get a better perspective on this new world.

The mountains weren't terribly tall, nothing like the Gray Mountains back home. Most of them were covered in jungle-like vegetation, but some peaks were like ours, too rocky to root the trees, and were instead covered with moss and vines.

The mountains extended as far as we could see east, west, and south. To the north was a valley, also dense with vegetation although there were a number of cleared areas. One was a lake, but the others were settlements. The rail system from the mine was visible cutting its way towards the closest and largest of the settlements, it might have been a small city.

It didn't look particularly advanced from that distance, though there were many slender buildings several stories tall. At a glance it appeared a collection of square towers, with light glowing between them. The light was perhaps brighter than I would have expected, but it wasn't so strange. Even on Kulthea there are cities with well lit streets. Behind those, was a wide cleared area that was too dark to make out.

The further settlements were lower, wider, with far more cleared area around the buildings, and much less light. They were also much further away, and thus harder to see so I couldn't really say much more.

Doogan swept his arm to gesture between the settlements. "At first glance, the organization looks like a classic semi-modern civilization pod: three agriculture units around a commercial and manufacturing unit near raw materials. You see this sort of thing a lot in the earlier colonies, maybe five to twenty thousand years old."

"OK, so they're organized and its unlikely they'd hold Karstia on a farm. Anything else I should take from that?"

"Not yet. Let's get closer."

I changed our course to head straight at the city. We were several hundred feet in the air, well above any of the city's buildings, it was still deep in the night, and we were invisible. I shouldn't have been nervous, but I was. I wasn't sure how many of my tricks would work against these people.

"The city has a good wall around it," I noted, pointing out the massive barrier. "Whoever lives here probably doesn't get along with those lizard things either."

The buildings themselves were the pinnacle of boring. They were tall, square, gray, with a uniform pattern of windows covered in glass without shutters. There was no artistry, just function. Even early stone-forged cities in my world, however square, had style. There were a few places, gaps in the matrix of towers, where something interesting might have been hiding. We'd have to wait and see once we got a better angle.

By the time we'd gotten directly above the city, the dark area beyond had become something more discernible. At first, I took it as just a collection of black pillars. They rose up from the ground nearly a hundred feet. But there was more to it than that. There were things attached to the pillars; large things.

"What are those?" I whispered.

Doogan squinted for a moment as he tried to focus his eyes that far away. Finally, he replied, "Ships. They're ships, like the one that took Karstia, attached vertically to the pillars."

"Well at least we know we're in the right place," I muttered.

They'd described the ship to me, of course, but hearing about something never gives you the same picture as seeing it. I looked intently at them, relating the details they'd told me to the new visual representation. That's when I noticed two of the ships seemed broken or disfigured.

"What do you make of those two?" I asked.

"Oh my god," Doogan said. "They're growing them."

"What do you mean growing? They're made of metal!"

"Maybe growing isn't the right word, but they sure aren't assembling them conventionally. The ship that took Karstia rebuilt itself from pieces, and didn't do it in space or in the hangar."

"So whatever it is uses magic," I concluded.

"Not necessarily," Doogan said. "Imperial technology can do that, too. In this case, I'd say magic is more likely. But there was Essaence in the hangar bay. I cast an unseen spell there. I can't figure out why they wouldn't have repaired themselves there. Perhaps the magic from the Arinyark blocks isn't strong enough?"

I nodded tentatively. There would certainly be limits to what the Arinyark could hold, but something else nagged at me. "But Rubo said the ship was sentient. Perhaps it chose not to repair itself until the right moment."

I couldn't be sure because he was sort of a purple fuzzy version of Doogan, but I was pretty sure he shuddered.

I saw a nice rooftop close to the field of ships and headed that way so we could get a better look at the whole operation. When we landed, we were less than a hundred feet from a black spire. It was the closest we'd been to both the ships and the ground.

"You know," Doogan said, "on Imperial planets, rooftops are often set with pressure alarms, motion sensors, microphones or even cameras. I don't see any, but they're often concealed."

"I don't know what any of those things are," I conceded. "Traps? Or things to detect us?"

"The later."

"Great. Well I know we're at least safe for a couple minutes. Any way to bypass these things?"

Doogan considered. "I expect your invisibility defeats cameras, and I know you can mask sounds which would defeat microphones. Motion sensors are usually air pressure based, and you are surely displacing air when you move. If you have spells to make air still or regulate air pressure, those might work. And pressure sensors can tell when you stand on them, so not landing would work against those. There are a number of other sensors types, too."

"I don't think I want to visit your world, Doogan. Let's hope this planet isn't up to Imperial code."

Doogan laughed in such a way that I felt I'd made a bigger joke than I realized.

We walked cautiously to the low wall that ringed the rooftop. I wondered why such a wall was necessary, considering I didn't see any method to even access the roof. Doogan seemed equally perplexed by it, but we didn't talk about it and instead focused on what we could see on the streets below.

They were wide streets without markings for thoroughfares. Light posts cast a soft white light directly down at the street, making it easy for us to see without any glare. There were people below, not many, but a few. They were pale with dark hair, matching the description Rubo and Doogan had relayed to me from Karstia's vision, but still so far down that I couldn't say any more about them other than that they were on foot. In fact, I didn't see a single vehicle on the streets, not a cart, not a horse, nothing. But I did see the rail tracks coming up a street nearby and terminating into a low building at the mouth of the ship yard.

I turned my attention back to the pillars and the ships. The pillars themselves seemed to be made of a collection of black tubes, and were connected at the base by an even thicker mass of tubes that connected each of the pillars with each other and with the low wide building where the train ended.

"What do you make of this?" I asked. "They bring in resources to that building and then they're fed to the ships?"

"Something like that," Doogan said. "Looks like a rough nanotech factory. That's a technical term. The Empire can build things using very tiny machines. Those machines still need raw materials to build with. But what about magic?"

"The whole yard is glowing so brightly I'm having a hard time focusing on anything. There's magic here, plenty of it."

Doogan was about to say something when a dark ship suddenly appeared directly over the ship yard, moving towards the city. That meant it was moving towards us as well. It was the full sixty feet in length, which is really pretty small compared to some sea faring vessels, but it's still huge compared to a person. It floated effortlessly, silently, bobbing slightly in the breeze.

Its course was taking it close to us, within a couple hundred feet maybe. That was closer than I'd have liked, but far enough from us that I still thought we'd be fine. But just to be safe, I looked a minute into our future.

I saw the ship turn and accelerate and black lightning crackling towards us. It was about to happen. I didn't even wait to see how it turned out, I dropped the spell, screamed, and knocked Doogan down as I dove behind the retaining wall for cover.

I remember heat and the crackling buzz of electricity, then excruciating pain down my entire back, then falling. I landed on something that broke beneath me. Luckily I landed on my stomach, because if anything would have touched my back at that point I probably would have passed out from the pain. I could smell things burning, things you don't want to smell like your own flesh.

The ceiling above us had melted away, plunging us both into the top story room. Doogan looked remarkably composed as he tried to get his bearings, but I saw his leg and it wasn't good. I'm guessing the shock was preventing him from noticing it just yet.

A second blast from the ship tore out the upper corner of the room and rained glowing red chunks of debris towards us. I threw up a quick shield that deflected the brunt of them, a better reflex than turning my back which would have been catastrophic.

I got to my feet and got to Doogan, knowing it was only a matter of time before the room or the entire building was blasted to make sure they'd finished us off. He was trying to stand when I got there, and falling painfully in the process. He looked up at me like a man dying, and maybe he was, but I cursed him for not keeping it together.

"Intruders, L4 Rooftop," I heard in my head.

"Did you just hear that?" I asked.

Doogan nodded, but I'm not even sure he heard the question.

"We're moving next door." I grabbed his hand, then dumped a focus into a spell to door us both across the street into another building and another room.

I helped him to a chair, a wooden one similar to the one I probably crushed from the last room. We were in what I'd call a large living quarters that appeared unoccupied. There was a wooden table with wooden chairs, a low flat bed, and a simple bath and kitchen area.

"How bad is my back?" I asked, turning around to show him.

"Looks bad," he replied, "but better than my leg." He kept his eyes on me and shook his head pathetically. "I can't even look at it."

"We need to get back. I'm going to renew our fly spells and try a teleport to above the mine."

"What do you mean, try?"

"Teleports are finicky. You usually have to spend a lot of time somewhere in order for it to be safe to teleport there. That's why I'm aiming high. That way if I'm a little off, we still won't end up inside something."

"Why didn't anyone tell me those risks before?!" he gasped.

"Does it really fucking matter?"

"No. Just do it already."

I cast new fly spells, then slowly worked through the teleportation spell. We popped into the middle of the air, right where I expected us to be, floating gently. The sun was just rising, giving us much better visibility. But we were still visible and somewhat exposed, so I corrected that right away.

While I was finishing our cloaking, Doogan's eyes went wide. I followed them and his shaking pointing hand towards the tiny speck of black zipping up towards us away from the city.

"Did it track us?!" I shouted, but didn't wait for a response. Instead, I sent us into a sharp dive towards the ground, waiting until we were just above the trees before leveling off and speeding us towards the cave.

The "solid" wall loomed in front of us, and I just ran through it as if it didn't exist, since it didn't. Except it sort of did, because Rubo stacked a few feeling senses into the spell. He does that not to bloody my nose as I fly through, but rather to allow the rock illusion to hold up to some basic touching. It stings flying through it, that's for sure, but you'd have thought it killed Doogan the way he screamed.

I felt bad, really. But if that ship was coming after us we needed to be out of sight. I didn't even know if it mattered. If the thing saw through our invisibility, if it tracked us, maybe even the cave wasn't safe enough.

But once we got inside, with all the concerned faces on me, I calmed down a bit. Not a lot, but a bit.

"Rubo, eyes upstairs? We have one of those ships after us."

"I've been watching it come in," he said, smiling slightly.

"You're injured," Brother Dagar said, bringing out his pack. Well, Tisbaen's pack, or my pack. It's the pack of healing herbs.

"I'm fine," I said, waving him off. My burns weren't bad enough that I couldn't heal them myself. Doogan's leg was another story entirely. I turned back to Rubo. "Is it coming towards the cave?"

"No," he said. "It's, well, I think it's sniping those lizard creatures. Firing something from the nose like lightning bolts, but dark."

"T'vance, this wound is going to be a problem," Dagar said. He was kneeling over Doogan. I saw the pendant around his neck glowing softly. That usually meant the presence of Unlife, or active evil magic.

"What does that mean?" Doogan asked.

"Nothing good," Dagar replied seriously. For all his smiling, there wasn't a hint of one in his round face.

"The beam from the ship hit his leg directly," I told them. I had seen it in the future before it happened, which is the only reason I know. I certainly didn't see it when it actually happened.

"And what, pray tell, hit you?" Dagar asked me.

"Molten wall. Your pendant, are you saying there's an evil spell on his leg?"

"Most certainly," Dagar said. "And one I've never seen."

"I can fix that," I said, reaching into my pouch to pull out the Kriegora chain. I felt my other spells flee from its touch, and that familiar uncomfortable feel of it tingling against my skin. I draped it quickly over Doogan's leg and Dagar's pendant dimmed immediately. I removed the chain and put it back into my bag, happy to have it out of my hands.

Dagar nodded, but still didn't smile. "The magic spread the wound," he said. "It is still very bad."

Doogan looked down at his leg. Maybe he had before and I hadn't noticed, but this was the first time I'd seen him consciously do it. He reached down to the frayed edges of his suit leg and began slowly rolling it up. Inch by inch the skin was the same, black and red and oozing. His face went pale and his eyes rolled and he was out.

"It's easier if he can't hear us," Dagar said. "That spell would have killed him faster, but this is still going to kill him. I don't have anything to treat this and the wound has already spread to his torso, so we can't even amputate. He has six hours left, T'vance. And he may not be awake for many of those."

"Six? Are you sure."

"So say the moons," he replied. I won't say there was a grin, but the corners of his mouth may have curved slightly upwards.

"We have to get him back to a temple," Rubo said.

"Tanawe! Pack up. We're leaving," I shouted. "Dagar, what about Karstia? Is she here?"

"Yes. In the near city, towards the center, in a wide low building unlike the rest."

The group started packing up, which didn't take long. They hadn't really unpacked much. Rubo gave updates on what was happening outside until we were all ready to move. The dark ship was circling the clearing, and then a train of connected mine cars became visible working its way up the track towards the mine entrance. It was about half full of people, the same pale skinned ones we'd seen in the city. They hadn't reached the mine before we were prepared to leave.

The presence of people near the mines gave me many ideas, but they would have to wait. We passed through my gateway into the ethereal plane, carrying Doogan and Sara, then I made us all horses and we headed out.

I'd been casting spells all day and I felt exhausted. It seemed like so much had happened, it was hard to believe I'd been with Fera in my loft that same morning. It seemed too short, considering how much I missed her. But life and death missions always tended to skew time.
CHAPTER 6

* * *

T'vance

* * *

It was late at night when we made it back to my headquarters, or early in the morning depending on how you look at it. Since I hadn't slept yet, I called it night. We'd left Doogan, still alive, with the Sisters of Eissa. I had every confidence they could restore him, as did they, but it would take time. They said as long as two days, which may seem fast to you, but often sisters can heal wounds and have you on your feet again in minutes.

Again, I was exhausted both from being awake too long and casting too many spells. We parted in the courtyard and I retreated into my office, descending into my loft below. I built my bedroom underground, in one of the basements and made my office the room above it. It's cozy and reminds me of home. My men call it my loft because they think it's funny. I don't care if they think that, so I adopted the name myself.

I caught a scent of Fera and thought perhaps she was there, which was silly because I wasn't supposed to see her until the following night. Then something moved in the darkness, and a light turned on beside my bed. It's a magic light, on and off at a touch, and Fera was there.

She might have been sleeping, but she was wide awake now. Her expression was one I couldn't read. She sprung to her feet and ran to me, throwing her arms around me in a tight hug. We fell back into the door, which stung my still healing back but I didn't care. Then she shoved off me. Her face showed bitterness and concern.

"You son of a bitch!" she shouted.

"What the hell? What's going on?"

"Is this how little you think of me? Don't you know what it did to me the last time?!"

"Last time? Fera, what are you talking about?"

"You disappearing!"

"What do you mean disappearing? I didn't disappear. By Jasek, I've only been gone a day."

"A day?! Try two weeks, T'vance! Without a word! Without a note! Just like Sel-kai, when you were supposed to meet me and didn't, and then no one could find you for almost a year. And it's not like we didn't look! By the gods, T'vance, I thought you were dead back then. I mourned you. I almost did it again," she finished more softly.

"You never told me," I said, taking her hand gently.

"Like your ego needs the boost," she muttered, pulling her hand away.

"Sometimes maybe it does. But I'm still confused. What does this have to do with now? I just saw you this morning."

"This morning?!" she spat, but she must have sensed my confusion was real. Her face softened a little. "You really think that don't you?"

"Obviously. What do you think?"

"T'vance, you've been gone for almost nineteen days."

"What?!" I gasped, and for a moment I felt the world spinning and somehow found the bed before I fell. "It's been a day. One day," I repeated. "Maybe a few hours more or less, but not nineteen days. I haven't even slept!"

She sat next to me, rubbing her eyes as if she'd been crying though she hadn't. Fera didn't cry, not that I knew of anyway. "It's the fifty-second," she said. "After the first three days, they even sent word to McQuenn. He's already made it back from Sel-kai."

"But nothing happened," I argued, though I didn't doubt her. "Last time, I tried to gate during an Essaence storm with the White Mage bearing down on me. That's a big something. This time I just used a gate, like I've done a hundred times to get places."

"It's ethereal magic, though, right? You read me the warnings. Doesn't it claim to be one of the most dangerous spell lists ever made?"

"Well yes, but--"

"But you're T'vance Arain, and you can handle it," she spat, cutting me off.

"Most of the time I can," I said. "I don't take risks unless I have to, you know. But sometimes I have to. Sometimes you have to. And this was important. It still is. They still have Karstia. And if I had any idea I wouldn't be able to make it back, I would have told you or left a note or something."

"Would you?"

"Don't you know I was dying to see you tomorrow?"

"You were?" she said, and for the first time I felt I'd broken through her anger.

"Yes. Of course! You. You're amazing. You take my breath away."

"Oh the gods, you're going to tell her," Jai said. She was still upstairs, nosing in on our business. "Don't worry, you're going to be interrupted anyway."

"Seriously?"

"T'vance?" Fera said. Jai interrupted so much you'd think she'd be used to it by now.

I sighed. "We're going to have company."

Sure enough, there was a knock on the trap door, which then swung open before I'd even had a chance to say anything, like go away.

"T'vance!" Rubo's voice called down. "Wake up! Oh Fera, I didn't realize you were here. Oh, well that means you probably already know."

"That we lost nineteen days?"

"Yes! Fascinating isn't it?" He actually seemed excited by the prospect.

"Hardly the word I'd use. I had Fera worried sick, all those papers I was procrastinating on are all over due, and oh yeah, did I mention this country's at war? I wonder what's happened in nineteen days?"

"Not much," Fera offered. "And I did your stupid papers, and oh yes, you owe me."

"I'm not sure you've ever looked more beautiful," I said charmingly. "But they needed my signature?"

"Which I personally forged, thank you." She smiled and I returned it, but honestly I had no idea she could forge anything. I wondered how many other talents I had yet to discover.

"I presume that will be included in this 'owing you'?"

"You think you're funny, but you didn't see the bill on your desk."

"There's no bill on your desk."

"And that would have been funny if I hadn't checked my desk."

She frowned. "You didn't check your desk. That's a valid bluff that only fails because you're cat is upstairs, which is hardly a fair advantage."

"Tell that bitch I'm a Temeki, dammit. We eat cats!"

"You wish."

"Well, we beat them up at least."

"Nonsense. We each have our strengths. You could have said the bill was in McQuenn's office. Don't blame my temeki for your joke's shortfall."

"Just for that, you're getting a bill," she said, shoving me playfully.

"Don't make me back bill you for saving you in Gûl," I retorted.

"Don't make me back bill you for saving you in Gûl first," she said.

I heard the trap door close, marking Rubo's exit.

I sighed in relief. "I thought he'd never leave," I told her.

"No kidding. I didn't have much bickering left in me."

"That's strange. I've never seen you run out before," I said, giving her a wicked grin.

"Watch it," she warned, playfully. She grabbed my leathers and pulled me close. "Enough talk. I haven't had gort or you in nineteen days. I plan to do a little of one, and a lot of the other."

I know I said I was exhausted, but somehow I found a bit of energy in reserve.

When I woke up she was still there, naked and sleeping beside me. I could see four of her tattoos, including the one I went with her to get that first trip we took to Sel-kai. It was a blue kynac splitting a red mask, symbolizing me and the mercenary group Dibithe in Gûl respectively. I'd rescued her from them just before that trip.

"You almost died saving me," she'd said. "The least I can do is commemorate it."

It was, of course, my favorite of her tattoos. And it gave me no small thrill to be represented on her body, essentially forever. I added another ear ring that trip, which pales in comparison, but I do still wear it.

Our fight the night before still drifted in and out of my mind. When I lost that year, the time I tried to gate away in an Essaence storm, I focused a lot on myself and what I missed. I didn't really consider enough the things that missed me. And I was about to do it again, because I had to go back. I don't know why I lost those days, but I had to assume it could happen again.

Maybe Doogan knew something?

I got out of bed and dressed. My armor had completely repaired itself over night, it really is amazing stuff. It's the only suit of armor I've ever had. Fera stirred as I was finishing getting ready.

"Why aren't you naked?"

"Have some business," I said, in our usual vernacular. "Won't be long."

She swung her legs over and stood up, with no effort at modesty. Damn she was sexy. Then she said, in direct violation of our protocol mind you, "Can I come?"

"Three times, if I was counting right."

She chuckled politely. "I think you counted right. But I'm serious."

"Right. Umm. Okay. Like that?"

She grinned. "Are we going somewhere me being naked would be appropriate?"

"Not really. We're going to the temple of Eissa."

"Seriously? You just picked that because you know I hate churches."

"You wanted to come, that's where I'm going."

She starting digging through her pack for clothes, giving me a view that made me wish I'd never gotten dressed. She found something that was probably still church inappropriate, but little of Fera's wardrobe was. She looked up at me admiring her and grinned seductively.

"You don't have to do this, you know."

"There's two reasons I call 'Business' with you," I explained, helping her to her feet. "Some things are safer you not know about, but sometimes I'm just sparing you details or worry. This falls into the second one. And if you want to know, I'll tell you. I'll tell you everything."

She looked into my eyes and I almost got lost in them. Gods, what had I gotten myself into?

"I want to know everything," she said.

Doogan was still far from mended when we walked into the back room in the temple. He was sleeping, but there was an empty bowl that probably held broth or soup beside him, so he'd at least managed to eat. His leg was wrapped in white cloth, making it impossible to tell how far along the healing process was.

"So this is Doogan?" Fera asked, looking him over.

"That's him."

"I expected something more. He just looks like a plain Jameri."

Doogan's eyes fluttered open and he looked around. "T'vance," he said. "And is that Fera? Wow."

I laughed. Wow is pretty accurate. "Yes, she's certainly lovely."

"Not just lovely. I mean, those legs, that skin, those--" He stopped when he saw Fera glaring at him. Aside from being beautiful, she could be downright terrifying.

"Enough drooling," I said. "I need to ask you something. Somehow in the course of going to that place and coming back we lost about twenty days. Does that make any sense to you?"

"What? You mean today is twenty days later than it was yesterday? Or the day before, you know what I mean." He tried to sit up, seeming as excited by the news as Rubo was, but he was still in enough pain that he slumped backwards almost immediately.

"That's what I'm saying. Can you explain it?"

"Maybe," he said, scratching the growth of beard on his face. "I'll try to explain it as simply as I can, but I can't confirm it without my ship or Leona. Oh, I said too much."

"Fera knows everything," I told him.

"Oh. Okay then. Traveling large distances isn't without drawbacks. Historically we used, well it doesn't matter what was used. Now, everyone uses the Empire's time-space transform systems, sometimes called space folding, or just jumping. It allows us to traverse long distances much faster than flying there; faster, but not instantly. The jumps actually take you into this between space, and you are stuck in that between space for a while and then you come out the other side. Now, the amount of time it takes to transition varies based on a number of factors, and no one knows exactly how it works, but the Imperial system refers to a Delta Factor in all transforms, which defines the absolute minimum time information takes to travel between two points in space.

"Systems are rated by the Delta Factor Coefficient, or DFC, which measures how close to the optimum Delta Factor they are. For instance, my new ship is rated 0.95 DFC, meaning it gets there very close to optimally. The old pre-Imperial space folding was only rated at 0.20 DFC and required something moon-sized to even work. I'm over explaining, aren't I?"

"Yes, you are," I said, sharply. "I stopped following you when you started spouting numbers. But that's a spaceship and some Imperial system I don't understand. This is a gate through the Ethereal plane. How are they even related?"

"I don't know that they are. But theorists contend that Delta Factor is an absolute hard limit for transferring any kind of order between two coordinate systems. Even communications follow the same rules, though good communication systems are rated 1.0 DFC."

"Less numbers, more explaining," I growled.

Doogan wrung his hands nervously. "You and I, and your team, our things, etc. It's all order. And using the Ethereal plane still relocates that order. So my theory is that magic and science are both being bound by the same Delta Factor. You simply can't just pop back and forth between two places instantly. The universe doesn't allow it."

"I still don't get it," I said. "If it takes time, how is it I've never noticed time changing when using the Ethereal plane?"

"You've probably only ever taken the ethereal plane to other places on your own planet. Those are so close to each other, the time delay would be tiny. Probably less than a second."

"Oh. Yes, I suppose I wouldn't notice that. But still, wouldn't we notice the nineteen days while it was happening?"

He pondered that a moment. "I don't know. I certainly notice it when I travel in my ship. We use a medically induced hibernation to sleep through it, but the time is real. Perhaps the magic somehow masks the time? I really don't know how to explain it, but I can't even begin to explain why magic works for anything."

"This is all well and good," Fera said. "But I've heard a lot of maybes. How do you find out for sure?"

Doogan considered again, though I was pretty sure he was just stalling to stare at Fera's legs. "In practice, by experimentation."

"Great," Fera huffed.

"But look. When I get back to my ship I can plot a course from here to the other planet. It will tell me how much time loss each way and we can see if it adds up close to nineteen days. That will be later today. The sisters say I have one more treatment, after lunch. Are we going back then?"

"Yes," T'vance said.

"Of course you are," Fera said, in that way that made it seem like the stupidest idea. "And what exactly are you going to do differently this time?"

"Not rely on things we now know don't work. Invisibility for one was useless against their ships. We can't use it, at least not when it comes to avoiding their ships."

"Clearly. What else?"

"I'm not taking Black Boot Company. We need way more stealth. Three is perfect if we need to fly or jump or cloak. We'll go in, wait in the mines and capture one of the workers to interrogate. Wing it from there."

Fera smirked, that smile she does when she's trying not to smile. "Wing it?"

I shrugged. "I don't know what we'll learn. We might facade ourselves as miners and infiltrate the city, we might learn the schedules of the ships and just go invisibly when they won't be around."

"And how do you know when you step out onto that plateau that ship won't be floating right above you?"

"I figure we'll leave at the same time we did before, so we'll arrive at night as we did before. Seems likely the ship was only there to protect the workers."

"You realize that doesn't work, right?" Doogan said. "The time thing. This planet and that one have different day and night cycles. If we just guess, Fera's right. We could end up coming out at the absolute wrong time."

"But if we get you to your ship, you can figure it out so we don't have to guess?"

"Assuming we trust the Delta Factor, yes."

"See? Airtight plan," I told her.

"One more thing. You're taking me."

The hell I was. "Doogan, you'll have to excuse us. I'll see you after lunch."

We walked outside and she was talking before I could even respond to her original point.

"You're going to say no," she said. "So just skip to the reasons."

"Three is really a good number, and I need both Doogan and Rubo there. That's three."

"And why is three so good again?"

"There's a number of spells designed to affect three people. I think they evolved like that, caster plus one extra target for each hand. Like if we need to teleport, we can teleport all of us with one spell."

"Even with four, you could be casting a teleport spell while Rubo casts one for three. Still moves everyone in the same time."

"But that means I wouldn't be able to cast something else at the same time."

"Fine. But is that the only reason?"

"No. But it's a good one."

"What are the bad ones?"

I sighed. "I don't want to have to worry about you getting hurt, or losing you there, or worse. And I can already tell by your face you hate me thinking that. And I know you can take care of yourself and I know you are talented and dangerous in your own right, and whatever other argument you're prepared to throw at me."

"It's insulting is what it is."

"But I also know that you can't get back from that place on your own. Rubo can get onto the Ethereal plane if he has to, and Doogan I really don't care that much about. I did tell you about that place, right? Those ships? What we might be up against? For the gods sake, they're holding Karstia and she's a Loremaster!"

"She is?"

"Crap, pretend I didn't say that."

"So you just want me to stay here and wait another nineteen days, wondering if you'll come back after that?"

"It's not like I want to go, Fera. I have to. I'm not asking you to sit and wait and worry. You can go back to Sel-kai if you want. If you aren't here when I get back, I'll find you."

I could tell she was still mad, but she stopped me there in the street, two blocks away from my place, and gave me a straight stare. "You know, I used to think you were really dark, and I suppose you still are in a lot of ways, but man do you have a soft side."

"Watch it."

She smiled warmly and I got lost in her eyes. "That darkness drew me to you, I admit it. But it's your character that's bound me, T'vance Arain," she said, without a hint of sarcasm. "You amaze me. You're a hero, you know that? And not just to me; to your friends, to your uncle, to your men, to Gryphon college."

I found myself blushing. "I still think my greatest achievements have been killing people."

She wrinkled an eyebrow.

"Fine, recovering the crown."

She wrinkled it further.

"Saving you."

She smiled. "That's right. In any case, it's who you are. And I like who you are. But it makes you do things like this, and I don't like this." She stepped close and let her fingers trace down the front of my leathers. "And I'm sure as hell going to take it out on you when you get back. So come back."

With that, she grabbed hold of me, pulled me close and kissed me. It was a long kiss, a wild, building, passionate kiss, the kind that made me immediately want to take her somewhere we could be naked. Her hands slid through the folds in my armor, she knew just where, and caressed my body underneath. Then she abruptly stopped, pushed away from me, and headed down an alleyway without looking back.

I had lunch with Rubo and we talked tactics, mostly around how to best isolate and capture a native and get the most information from him. We knew the aliens in the dark ships spoke Iruaric, but that didn't mean the miners would. Iruaric is a very advanced language. But I could use my spells to communicate with one if we had to. Rubo would handle the magical questioning, being able to charm people into thinking he's their friend and outright force them to answer questions.

Brother Dagar came as we were finishing the third course and sat with us. I don't know why, but it didn't seem strange to have him join us, though he was never invited and we were eating at a restaurant across town.

"Did Tanawe already tell you?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said. "We aren't coming. It is for the best. But I dreamed last night and wanted to share before you left. That world has a god known as Goroold the Visionmaster. It was his wisdom I sought, and he granted me the vision of Karstia's location. Last night, I dreamed again and I believe I managed to connect Goroold and Reann together, because I asked to see things about that place and Reann was finally able to show me."

"What did you ask to see?"

"I asked to see three things: the powers holding Karstia, potential allies in that world, and the path of least resistance."

"Good dreams."

"Good ideas, anyway," he clarified. "The dreams themselves were confusing. The ground was thin and rippling over a mass of darkness just beneath the surface. The darkness broke the surface at a few points, sprouting ugly plants that looked like clusters of insect legs. Upon the ground I saw three beings, two of them were Althan, one a humanoid I couldn't identify. The unidentified one was taller than the Althan and rail thin with almost no neck and golden skin. Of the Althans, one was a youth, the other much older, older than I'd expect to see an immortal looking. The strange one stood between them, and the youth appeared frightened and looked to the strange one for comfort. I got the impression there was a paternal relationship there, and since they're different races I thought him perhaps a mentor or care giver. The older Althan looked angry, perhaps even crazed.

"For the allies, I saw a tower on an island. It was great and old and slender in a way that reminded me of the strange humanoid I'd seen with the Althans. The tower was surrounded by vegetation, and it crawled up the sides as if devouring it. Only the top third is clearly free of the growth. There was no doubt, it was a place of power, an ancient place. At the same time, it was a forbidden place. A place that did nothing to welcome visitors.

"And the path of least resistance, well I saw you T'vance. I saw you riding on the back of a Pegasus, carrying a banner of Dúrakhaan. It's that story you told me, though. That idea you once had to fly into Halkattaine as the ambassador of Tanara, with your pendant gleaming in the sun. It was just like that, down to that last detail."

I nodded, remembering it well. It wasn't a vision, more like a crazy day dream I'd had a dozen times. And I knew what it meant, even if he didn't. Who am I kidding? Of course he knew. It meant the path of least resistance was me being a diplomat. Well that wasn't going to happen, not until I knew a lot more about the situation anyway. I took in his visions, considering for myself what they meant.

Only later, after Dagar had left, did it occur to me that I'd never shared that day dream with him.

"So path of least resistance, huh?" Rubo said. "You think we ought to send you in as an ambassador from the planet Kulthea?"

"I think it's gotten to be a private joke between Reann and myself. He's going to keep insisting I'm a diplomat, and I'm going to keep being myself. My first instinct is sneak in and sneak out, but Althans? If he's a K'ta'viiri, I'm not even sure sneaking is an option."

Althans for the record, are a people. A people with six fingers and six toes, per hand or foot of course. They live forever, as elves do, and once upon a time they ruled Kulthea. Some among them mastered magic to the point of being known as K'ta'viiri, or Lords of Essaence. They did pretty well by science, too.

A war between factions of K'ta'viiri virtually destroyed the entire planet, and killed off every K'ta'viiri except two that I know of, and only one of those still lives.

"Did I just hear you suggest there are people you can't sneak up on?"

"What? No. I didn't say that."

"Good. Because this is sounding really stupid I need you overly confident right about now."

I snorted a pinch of gort. "He won't even know how we stole her right out from under him."

"Now you're talking."

We picked up Doogan at the temple, looking no worse for wear. Sisters of Eissa take wounds directly to their own bodies, which they are extremely adept at healing. But sometimes wounds are so great, they have to come off in stages. It's actually far more difficult than taking them whole, so a skilled priestess must have worked on him. Seeing him whole reminded me that there was a priestess somewhere suffering through a horrific leg wound.

"You know how their healing works, right?" I asked him.

He looked grim, but nodded. "They told me they accept donations, but my gold is elsewhere."

Lucky for him, I brought some of it with me.

I looked to Rubo, "Two bars?"

"Three, I'd think."

Three of Doogan's gold bars were equivalent to about thirty gold coins, which would get you half a dozen reasonably good horses. I don't know if you can think of value in terms of horses, maybe it's just me because I've had to buy so damn many of them. There's a story there, or ten, but sufficed to say I know their value.

I dropped three bars into the donation box, which rattled loudly as the heavier bricks fell, shifting around the scant coins inside.

"You still have a lot of gold here, Doogan."

"I expect, but I can't honestly say I've kept track."

"To think how many Changrami monks we could hire," I said, grinning at Rubo.

"You said just us," he argued.

"Oh, and I meant it. But just imagine it for a moment, that's all."

"When you were saying just the three, you just didn't count me because I'm a Temeki, right? Not because I'm staying here?"

"You're coming."

We ran some errands in town, only a few stops, then headed straight down to the docks to get back to Doogan's ship.

Lethys is an amazing city, so busy and full of life. So many people just "around"; licensed street vendors, unlicensed vendors selling from hand carts, kids selling trinkets, pages looking to run errands for money, travelers, farmers, friends meeting in the street, kids playing in alleys, and even the occasional shady character up to no good. The streets wind, encouraging you to wander towards your destination, enjoying the atmosphere as you do. And by day there are enough guards that avoiding shady characters doesn't take much effort.

We passed enticing smells, and a few rather disgusting ones. We saw musicians and singers and mimes, none of them horrible but they weren't joining Karstia's troupe any time soon. We were hounded by merchants hocking this and that.

I remembered why I'm always pushing to fly places. It's not that I don't enjoy Lethys, it's that sometimes (most times) I just want to get where I'm going as quickly as possible.

"I like walking," Jai said. She was following us from rooftops, which in this part of town is fairly easy to do.

"You like sleeping. You only prefer walking to flying."

"Good point."

Eventually we did fly, invisibly of course, across the water and back to Doogan's ship. We went inside and let him work his own brand of non-magical magic, which he appeared to do with some difficulty.

"I'm used to Leona handling some of this," he explained, as he tapped on a pane of glass that glowed brightly with symbols and colorful boxes and lines. The tapping almost always changed what was showing on the glass in some way, but beyond that I couldn't tell you what he was doing. I can tell you that he cursed several times.

"Okay," he said finally. "Just need to translate that into local days. There. Total round trip delta loss is 18.4 local days, 10.6 there and 7.8 back. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but the trip times aren't symmetrical."

"Not symmetrical?" I asked. I knew the word, but I thought of it in terms of art more than time.

"Think of it like traveling between two cities, one of which is uphill from the other. In this case, a very slight hill."

That I could understand, but I failed to mentally picture how that could apply. It didn't matter, I didn't need to understand. I just needed to know it was longer to get there than get back, and even that was somewhat moot because I would be dealing with round trips in either case. Eighteen and a half was close enough to nineteen for me. I wasn't really keeping track of hours anyway.

"That time seem close enough to you?" I asked him. "And if so, how do you figure out when we need to leave to arrive there at night?"

"That's where the 10.6 becomes important. But we still have an unknown, the time it took to travel through the ethereal plane to the gate. I can't say where the time loss occurs. It could be when we pass through the doors, or it could include the travel time on the plane."

"How could it include the travel time? Time can't know which door we'll choose."

He pondered that, tapping his chin nervously. "It could be that we exist simultaneously in infinite time states on the plane, and that only when we make a decision and step through a door does it commit us to one."

"Huh?"

"Oh I don't know. I'm trying to draw parallels to quantum physics, but honestly I can't even explain Delta Factor scientifically, so it's all guess work. In any case, I'll figure out a time and because we've made the trip once, I'm confident it will be accurate enough."

"Confident enough that you'll step through the gate first?" I asked.

He shuddered. "That confident in the time. Not that it's always safe there at night."

"Right. I was just checking anyway."

Doogan continued clicking away at the glass screen, grinning or swearing depending on the moment. Finally he clapped triumphantly and turned back towards Rubo and I, who were busy looking but not touching.

"I have a list of times. We can leave in four hours, or tomorrow a bit earlier than now."

"Four hours," I said. "Rubo?"

He checked his golden watch and nodded.

"Good. I'm going to let McQuenn know we're going and when we should be expected back."

"Thus, letting Fera know?" Rubo said, grinning.

"Yes," I admitted.

"I'll stay," Doogan said. "I need to send a message anyway."

"Me too," Rubo said. "I'm dying to have Doogan show me how this thing works."

I wondered shortly after to whom Doogan would be sending a message. I hadn't asked a lot of questions about why he was involved in any of this, we had more pressing issues like Karstia disappearing. Rubo had filled me in on what he knew from his time with Doogan and Karstia, but it still wasn't much.

In many ways Doogan was overwhelming. It wasn't him so much, but the whole idea of the outside world. I had barely gotten used to western Jaiman being part of my world, but Jaiman was still only one of many continents. There were still plenty of outside worlds on my planet to be fearful and paranoid about. I didn't need to worry about thousands of other planets too.

Even the very concept of space was too much. I grew up in caves and tunnels and under the canopy of the twilight forest. To this day, though rarely, I get a bit of vertigo looking up. Space, I can't even think about it. And did I mention all the weird technology stuff? Like anyone can just throw plasma bolts in his world? What a nightmare.

With all that, it was hard to want to understand a lot about Doogan and his world. It was also hard to actually do it, because our worlds are so very different. But I was starting to feel nervous that I knew so little about this outside world, how it might affect us, and how Doogan was involved in it.

I knew once we got Karstia, everything would be better. So I focused back on that, with the help of some gort.

I delivered my message to McQuenn, hoping to run into Fera on the way but it didn't happen. I spent almost an hour with McQuenn, getting him up to speed as best I could without actually telling him Doogan was from outer space. I'd told Fera, that was bad enough. But I'd ruined his vacation, so I felt bad keeping him in the dark. He's a good friend, almost like a grandfather in some ways, but I'd never tell him that.

Fera wasn't there when I left McQuenn either, and didn't show up during the next hour I paced around in my office. I went downstairs and laid on my bed, which still smelled like her. I wondered how many of those eighteen nights I was gone she spent sleeping in my room. It made me both sad and happy to think about.

I left her a note, but with a bit more style. It was a folded piece of paper with her name on the outside, but inside nothing. Instead, I warded a ventriloquism spell to speak my message when she unfolded it. I'm not going to tell you what I said, not because it's so personal, but because no one but Fera could do justice interpreting the contents. One person might think it was too mushy, another too harsh, another too funny, another too aloof, another too perverse. But to Fera, it would be the perfect mix of those. At least I liked to think so. But in case you're wondering, I didn't tell her I loved her.

...

"Is it just me, or was that too easy?" Doogan asked, standing over the two miners.

Too easy? Even Rubo lost his smile at the comment. Now I admit, Rubo and I are a good team, and we can make hard things seem easy. But they're supposed to still seem like challenging things, especially to someone who doesn't understand magic.

We entered the mine, used magic to fly down, examined the tracks to see which passages had been freshly trafficked, followed one such passage until it split enough and found a deep hole to hide in. Rubo concealed us with fake rock, and a sound bubble so we could talk, then cast watching spells into the passage so we'd know when to be ready. Then there was a lot of waiting, and finally two of the humanoids walked by pushing a mine car. A sleep spell and a bit of manual labor, and we had our prisoners.

Sure, it looked easy, but it was a good bit of spell casting. We just knew the right combinations of spells to get the job done smoothly. Like I said before, there are patterns.

We let it go and looked over our sleeping captives. They were certainly strange looking, but in other ways so similar to ourselves it was almost creepy. They had five fingers and toes, eyes, ears, a nose, a mouth, all where they were supposed to be. Sure, the nose was flattened, the ears scalloped, the lips thin, but they were there. The heartbeat was in the right place, as was their pulse. It's a good thing to check these. There's nothing worse than going to slit something's throat and finding out it doesn't have blood. You don't make that mistake twice.

They were dressed identically, in some kind of casual uniform. They wore dark hide boots that may have started as lizard scale, but had been worn down too far to be sure, and breeches and a tunic made of coarsely woven cloth. The fabric was light tan, but had clearly suffered a number of dirt stains that never made it out during their washing.

When they later awoke, we could appreciate the racial differences; the sharp teeth, serpentine tongue, and bright crystalline eyes. But by then they were already charmed by Rubo's spell, and we looked like they did, meaning we were just five pale humanoid things trapped in a cave-in. We began working our story.

"What's going on!?" the first one cried, looking around him. He was the bigger of the too, also taller and older. His eyes were bright blue, like sapphires set in his milky orbs and dotted with a dark hole where the pupil was. It was hard not to stare, so I was hoping lots of eye contact was appropriate for the culture. He rubbed his head as if it hurt, it might have had something to do with the rock we dropped on it to wake him up.

The younger one looked around, rubbing his head for the same reason. "A cave-in?"

They spoke Iruaric, which we knew was a possibility, and was by all means fortuitous. We could all speak it, Rubo and I from years of studying, Doogan from putting a necklace on. Hardly seems fair, but so be it.

Even so, it was still strange to hear it from their mouths. I'd only spoken conversational Iruaric with maybe five people in my life, Rubo being one of them. It was a dead language, an ancient language. But here it was, alive and well, and they were even speaking good Iruaric, as far as I could tell. I mean they didn't use a lot of big words, but the ones they used were proper and in good form.

With any other language, dialects form. You can listen to people speak Rhaya in Lethys and then someone else speaking it in Norek and they sound entirely different. So I expected some kind of accent or something from these aliens, but there was none. I think maybe it has to be that way. The pronunciation has to be precise in order to work magic with it.

Rubo stepped to our center, as if trying to be the leader. I let him, looked to him expectantly.

"Relax. You're safe. You don't remember? The explosion?"

"I don't remember anything," Doogan said, also rubbing his head. In his case it was just acting, and he was doing a decent job at it. "And I mean anything. Like my name? Nope."

"There was an explosion?" the elder asked.

"It was an attack!" I said. "I heard someone cry it before the blast."

"I don't understand," the elder continued cautiously. "The last thing I remember we were walking to work. How did we get here? How did you three?"

"We were working nearby. Heard the first blast and were running when we saw you two under some fallen rocks. We pulled you out but didn't get far before it caved in around us." Rubo gestured around to the rocky walls, most of which were covered by his illusions. "Doug here took one to the head then and has been seeing stars since."

"My name is Doug?" Doogan asked absently.

"Well," the elder said. "I am grateful you came around. We might be dead otherwise. But why are we waiting and not digging our way out?"

"With what?" Rubo asked.

The man stared at Rubo until Rubo finally smirked, not really knowing what else to do. Then he laughed and clapped Rubo on the shoulder. "You almost had me there. It's not fun to mess with someone with a head wound, you know."

Rubo chuckled, but he threw me a confused look. This wasn't part of the plan. The plan called on being confined with people we'd saved, with one person with amnesia asking the obvious questions everyone should already know who lives here, one of us playing up a conspiracy (me), and one of us directing. But it called on confinement, which made sense because we had no tools to dig with. Then again, we hadn't seen a tool yet.

"Have you already sent a message?" the younger one asked.

I was starting to think we might have to knock them out and start over when Doogan stepped in.

"Slow down!" he said. "Can someone explain what's going on? How do we dig our way out? How do we send a message? Can I do those things and I've forgotten?!"

The elder sighed. "If you're down here, you're a trained miner. Which means you can work the earth with magic, you poor fool. And there's a lot of other things you can with the earth, like use it to carry messages. But you don't remember, so just stay out of the way and watch. Maybe something will come back to you."

"We did send a message already," Rubo added quickly, hoping they wouldn't feel the need. I hoped so, too. If they tried, we'd have to stop them.

Then the elder started humming a tune, and after a verse he began to sing it. It was in Iruaric, like his speaking, and sang of rocks and earth and life and unity. It was simple and catchy and translates horribly into this language so I'll spare you the details, most of which I've forgotten anyway. But I do remember it was repetitive and that it made him glow with a soft white halo. And when he put his hands to the wall they went deep into the stone and he pulled out large crumbling chunks as if he were digging through a chocolate cake instead of solid rock.

It was ruining our plan, but Rubo and I just watched in awe. We'd never seen magic used so simply, so naturally. He wasn't a cloistered academic, someone struggling through a complex formula of sounds and actions to invoke an effect. He was just a man singing a song, and when he sang it the earth yielded.

"One thing," I said finally, interrupting his work. "If it was an attack, I wasn't sure it was such a good idea to rush out there. We thought maybe we should wait a bit to see if we get a message back. To see if it's clear."

It may not have been a great reason, but it made him pause and his spell faded. As the glow left him, his hands became visible, covered with a thick layer of dried mud that he broke off by rubbing them together.

"I still don't understand the attack," the younger one said. "I mean with explosions? The Troqs only use claws. They don't even make spears. Have the Ilsians finally found us?"

"Maybe," the elder said, stepping away from the rather impressive hole he'd already made. "Or maybe these new outsiders. I knew no good was going to come of them."

"Outsiders?" Doogan asked, fearfully.

"Yes. And not just outside Kora, or outside Korstia, but outside all of Farokis. They're from another world. But most people only know about the one, the Ilsians. The one we're at war with. You do know we're at war, right?"

Doogan shook his head, but Rubo and I both nodded.

"So far Lord Aganond has kept them away from Farokis, but who knows. I'm a bit more worried about this second group, but most people don't know about them."

"Like me. Who are they?" Rubo asked.

"I've heard things," I murmured.

"Haven't you seen the road?" the elder continued.

"Well yes," Rubo lied.

"It's to welcome the second group."

"And they are?"

"I don't know. Enemies of the Ilsians, I hear."

"And who's Aganond?" Doogan asked. I was starting to appreciate the effectiveness of the amnesia angle more and more.

"Lord Aganond is our ruler," the elder said, with a forced smile. "Or our god, depending on who you are. He's not like us, he surely doesn't look like anyone else on Farokis, that's for sure. Six fingers, and those eyes..." He shuddered at the thought.

So Aganond was the Althan in Dagar's vision, or one of them at least. He was in charge. He had Karstia. And I had a name. It wasn't much, but it was something.

"Why don't you trust this second group?" Rubo asked.

"They're outsiders!" I said. "Why would we?"

The elder smiled slightly at me, and nodded. "As he said it. We have no reason to trust them. But Lord Aganond recently took a consort. She doesn't look like him, or anyone else from here. We expect she's from this new group. Makes people wonder which head he's thinking with."

"Consort?" Doogan asked, nervously.

"I think I saw her," I said. "Tall, thin, frail looking with pointed ears, pale skin, straight dark hair?"

"That's the one," he said. "I guess she's pretty, for a whatever she is."

Legend has it that elves were created by the K'ta'viiri. The Iylari were the beautiful ones, consorts for the K'ta'viiri. And while Karstia was actually a Dyari, they looked almost identical. So I suppose I shouldn't have found it surprising that Aganond would fancy Karstia, but I did. And it made me a little sick to think about because I knew she couldn't be there of her own will. He was either manipulating her or coercing her.

"If it was the second outsiders who attacked, they could have used her as an inside man."

"Fine," Rubo said, "let's humor you and say there was an attack. How would we respond?"

The man snorted. "He'd send the Vessels, of course."

"What's a vessel?" Doogan asked.

He sighed. "They are flying ships. They are both weapons and explorers, and brothers. They're the only things that can reach the beyond, where the outsiders come from. Their skin is made from the metal we mine here. Your labors have helped build them."

When the younger of the two got up and began studying the walls, I knew there was going to be trouble. Fortunately he didn't make us wait long. "I know you sent a message, but I'll send another one. Can't hurt, right?"

Right. He started humming, and again Rubo and I watched for a moment, amazed at how their magic worked. But it was only a moment, then Rubo knocked them both out again. In principle, his spell could fail or could work but fail to affect one or both of them. It also could have taken longer to cast than the messaging spell, or been so obvious that they'd notice. But Rubo was a master, and their unique magic aside, these were miners.

"That's a shame," I said. "I thought that scene really had promise."

"Me too," Rubo said, shaking his head sadly. "So am I going to have to just rip answers out of them?"

"Unless you can think of a better way. Doogan's amnesia routine was only getting us so far."

Rubo didn't like to do it that way. There's something sort of wrong about forcing people to answer questions truthfully. When you charm them, it's very friendly. They want to tell you things. They even volunteer things you mightn't have thought to ask. It's more work, but you feel better about yourself at the end of the day. With the question spells, the person just answers the truth whether they wanted to or not. Again, the spell might not always work, but it was an easy spell and Rubo could cast it all day long.

He nodded. "The older one. He probably knows more anyway."

"Agreed."

"And we're not erasing memories of this, right? I know we're not killing them."

"Memories are Karstia's domain, so no."

We didn't talk about it, but we knew what that meant. They'd be able to tell others what we asked them, so we had to be careful. Or rather he had to be careful.

I tied the younger one, because I didn't trust it to Doogan and I felt bad making Rubo be the interrogator. Plus, I'm probably the best at tying people up. You should ask Fera -- never mind. I tied the other one up as well, tightly. I wanted to drape my kriegora chain around his neck or something to prevent him from casting, but it would also block Rubo's question spells. It's usually pretty difficult to cast while tied up, except for pure mentalist magic. They might know some, so I took the role of watching him carefully with second sight while Rubo asked the questions.

"What's going on?!" he asked frantically as he woke. "Why am I tied up?!"

"Sorry. It's too complicated to explain."

"You're one of his!" he gasped. "This was a setup!"

Rubo and I looked at each other and shrugged.

"I'm not saying," Rubo said cautiously.

"But was there really an attack?"

"No," Rubo said. "Well, not yet. I'm sorry, but I can't and won't explain, so don't ask again. I'm going to ask you some questions, some very simple, some very strange, but they are just questions and you should answer them honestly and completely. If you do not, I will know it."

"I've never said anything against him," he protested. "You know me."

We didn't, of course, but Rubo smiled as if he did. "Just answer honestly."

Though Rubo didn't like using the question spell much for interrogating someone, he found it palatable enough to use it sparingly. And if you're going to use it, it's best to use it right up front.

"When you said you never said anything against him, whom did you mean?"

"Lord Aganond!" the man said, looking concerned at how he said it more than the fact that he said it at all.

"Good," Rubo said. "Let's proceed."

I won't bore you with all the details of the interrogation. The man, whose name was Urric by the way, was very cooperative. Rubo still used a few question spells throughout their talk, partly to ensure Urric hadn't figured out he could actually lie, and partly to remind him we could make him answer.

I did a fair bit of question asking, I'd say most of it but Rubo would probably argue the point. I knew that he'd remain cooperative as long as he bought the story, and to that end it wasn't just about asking the right questions, but about asking them the right way and in the right order. For instance, instead of asking if Aganond was heavily guarded, I asked if Urric found his lord's defenses adequate.

Urric was a miner, obviously, but so was his father, and his father before. They knew some magic, all song-based, most of it relating to the earth. The fact that he could work arcane magic was in itself an amazing detail. You see, arcane magic is above all hard. K'ta'viiri may find it easy, but no one else seems to. There are even powerful mages who struggle with anything but the most simplistic arcane spells. But these people, at least the miners, were undeniably simple and yet they were working arcane magic by ritualized learning.

The miners weren't the only ones, either. Faroks, it seemed, all specialized in a magical vocation, the most common being mining, building, and growing. I don't want to over simplify it, because I got the impression it was far from simple. But every Farok knew some magic, as far as Urric knew, and every Farok had a job, even if it was just to tell other Farok's what to do. There was, in fact, a specialization just for that. It seemed bureaucracy was alive and well under Lord Aganond.

The planet, or world, they called Farokis, and the land mass we were currently on was called Upper Kortia, presumably above a Lower Kortia but we didn't get that far into it. The city was called Kora. Both Kortias were Aganond's domain, in fact the name itself meant Master's Land, strictly translated. The people called their own race Faroks, not too creative, though Dúranaki and Dúrakhaan are pretty similar so I guess I shouldn't throw stones.

The Faroks weren't the only race of humanoids. There were also Virnas, Guroks, Lenn-raki, and Kinari. Of the four, the first three were mortals, but Kinari he told us live forever.

Virnas were long lived, whatever that meant, and much short and darker. The description reminded me of the dwarves in Jaiman, well it reminded me of the description of dwarves anyway. I've never actually met one. But Urric said they were a cruel race, driven from Korstia by the Troqs and Aganond, now isolated in the continent of Virnuul to the west.

Lenn-raki were similar to Faroks, but with skin black as pitch and they didn't get along so well. Religious differences it seemed. The Lenn-raki worshiped neither Aganond nor the Gods, but rather spirits, or perhaps the dead. Urric couldn't be more clear, so neither can I. But they were isolated in the continent of Usivar to the east. I was beginning to sense a pattern.

The Gurok's broke the pattern, for they dwelt in Korstia outside the Farok cities. Urric called them primitive, unable to grasp magic effectively. Their tribes lived in areas where Troqs did not, but paid homage to Aganond as required, whatever that meant.

Last were the Kinari, a tall and exceptionally thin race of immortals that bore a striking resemblance to the non-Althan in Brother Dagar's vision. Urric suggested there were perhaps a hundred left in all Farokis, a race on the verge of no longer existing, surviving merely because the few left continued to avoid dying. As such, they were creatures of curiosity and wisdom throughout Farokis, generally welcomed by all.

"There hasn't been a Kinari born in Farokis in over a thousand years," Urric explained. "They are all ancient. But no one dares attack a Kinari. They give you no cause, they're very dangerous, and it's bad luck."

"Is Aganond close with any Kinari?"

At that he snorted. "Lord Murnak. But they haven't spoken in a decade as far as I know. Murnak is the greatest of all the Kinari, also the oldest. He's become reclusive, never leaving his island."

Murnak's island, he eventually explained, was also in the east, sort of between Korstia and Usivar.

I took this all in with great interest, because I'm a big picture kind of guy. There was a big picture here, and to be honest it felt a lot more like something I could deal with than Doogan's world. This was a place of magic, immortals, and monsters; my kind of world. But it left me wondering how the hell these people got into space and it really got me wondering why.

I can't tell you what Urric must have been thinking of us. He answered many of the questions as if we were testing him. Like Aganond's secret police were making sure old Urric remembered all his geography lessons. And I can tell that he knew more about it than your average guy on the street in Lethys, that's for sure.

He was clearly in awe or at least terror of Aganond. By what he said, it was clear Urric didn't think anyone would stand a chance of harming him. He told us Lord Aganond could kill a room full of people with a single word, and that he also had a dozen arcanists protecting him. I wasn't entirely clear, but it sounded like arcanists were Faroks trained as full mages.

The charm spell seemed to be holding, despite the fact that we'd tied him up and were questioning him. Most people would have broken the spell at that point, realizing friends simply don't tie other friends up. So either the spell was more potent here, or Faroks were less resistant to it, or perhaps in Farokis friends did tie other friends up. I wasn't going to question it; he was giving us answers.

"And what of the Troqs?" we asked him. As far as we could tell, the Troqs were the lizard creatures we'd fought with on our first trip to Farokis.

"Cunning, vile animals," he spat. "We lose miners to them, one a month maybe. The Vessels clear them out, but there are always more."

"Why is more not done about them?"

"Plenty is done about them. What more could be done?"

"Eradicate them?" I suggested. "Poison them, burn the jungle, hunt them to extinction?"

"Lord Aganond wouldn't have it. He has said they are part of this world."

"Isn't there a risk the Troqs will attack these outsiders?" Rubo asked him.

He shook his head. "I expect Lord Aganond will spare no effort in making sure that sort of thing doesn't happen. But we'll find out day after tomorrow."

"Is that when they are coming? That soon?"

"Yes. Well, Lord Aganond hasn't said that, but I know a builder working on the road and platform and they have been given a deadline that cannot be moved. The whole project must be completed by tomorrow."

Rubo and I looked at each other, making a mental note of a new deadline. It was probably the most obvious thing we'd done, and Urric seemed to notice.

He said, "You aren't with Lord Aganond's network, are you?"

"Why would you say that?" Rubo asked.

"Well, you two are pretty good at hiding your emotions. But he isn't," he said, nodding towards Doogan. "Also, I have a pretty good idea of how they do things. Casting spells threw me off, because it was said that the outsiders do not use magic. But I've heard Lord Aganond's new consort can work magic and I've watched yours and its different from anything I've seen here. So I think you're with her, and that means you are probably one of the new outsiders."

"If you think that, why have you been so cooperative?"

"Why not? The things I'm telling you aren't confidential and it's given me a chance to study your reaction to things, and by that I mean his reactions, to confirm my suspicions. So are you going to admit anything?"

Rubo looked to me again and we signed a couple of things back and forth. We have a primitive sign language, but it's enough to ask simple things like, "Should we tell him?" Sure, we could have just spoken in a language he didn't understand, but that would answer his question in itself. But we decided to tell him some, hoping he might offer more information we hadn't thought to ask for.

"We aren't with Lord Aganond. I will say that."

"And you aren't Farok."

"That is true."

"And how are you going to prevent me from telling people about you?" he asked. I found it strange to hear that from someone we had tied up and at our mercy. But somehow the guy still thought we were friends.

"Would you tell anyone?" Rubo questioned.

"No," he said simply, then shook his head. "You don't trust me. If you were with Lord Aganond's secret police, I wouldn't tell anyone either. He wouldn't like it. And in Korstia, you do everything you can to avoid that. He kills enough people he doesn't dislike." He shuddered at the though.

"So Aganond is a brutal leader?"

"I don't know if brutal is the right term. But there isn't a Farok in Korstia who doesn't fear him, or the sphere."

"Sphere?"

"He calls it a prison, a place where deviant souls can lament their wrongs. Something like that anyway. But most of us know that no one who goes into the sphere ever comes out. Lately it seems there are groups of Farok's getting sentenced daily."

"Why do you think that is?"

"I think he uses their body and spirit energy to fuel the Vessel Trees, and because he's been demanding more and more Vessels, he needs more and more bodies."

"Sacrifices are powerful magic," Rubo said.

Urric nodded. "This is just my thoughts on it though. I have no proof. I can tell you that one Farok is sacrificed for each Vessel. That is very public, though I don't know if you could truly call it a sacrifice."

"What happens?"

"Arcanists volunteer for it. They climb the Vessel's tree, and leap. Their body is impaled on the sharp nose of the Vessel and the two become one. It is considered an honor among them to be chosen."

His description gave the term Vessel a whole new meaning. Perhaps it wasn't meant as a vessel like a ship, but rather a vessel to hold the soul of an arcanist. This wasn't new to me. It was a twist, sure, but it wasn't new. These things happen in my world, after all. Implementers are swords imbued with a soul, Chaos Knights commit ritual suicide in their initiation, and Messengers allow their hearts to be replaced with iron. But there was one thing in common with all these things. They were frighteningly evil. Something I've learned about frightening creations is that they are not nearly as bad as the one who creates them. I was already scared of those Vessels, so I should have been terrified of Aganond.

I once read an ancient manuscript on the Wars of Dominion, in which Andraax, the K'ta'viiri I actually have seen first hand, describes a monumental battle between light and darkness. In the battle, a dark god of Charon, Scalu, descended to Kulthea to aid in the destruction. And Andraax, the most powerful being I know, trembled with fear. He had faced the god before and knew his magic was useless against it. It turned out for the best, because a Lord of Orhan called Cay, the god of triumph and battle, descended from Orhan to face the Scalu.

The story was moving, even thinking back on it gives me chills. It was a moment of hopelessness turned around by the faithful. The gods, whom people had believed in and worshiped for thousands of years, came to save them. They didn't just grant favors, or enable priests to work magic, they actually came to earth and fought side by side. But when I thought about the story then, I ignored the outcome and wonder. Instead, I remembered that feeling of hopelessness Andraax described in facing the dark god.

I'd never felt that hopeless, not even when I faced off against Lorgalis, which is another story that cost me a year of my life. Of course in that case I didn't actually have a moment to feel hopeless, but I digress. I'd met Andraax in person three times. Of course he never made me feel hopeless, because he was never remotely threatening. But if he had been, I would have been shaking. Andraax was as powerful to me as Scalu was to him.

I had to assume Aganond and Andraax were comparable, I had no other frame of reference. Urric's descriptions certainly didn't make him seem any less potent. So why wasn't I worried?

"What will happen if you disappear for a couple of days?" I asked.

Urric stared curiously at me. "Depends. If there really was a cave-in, they would look for our bodies. If they can't find them, they may give up. If they don't give up or there wasn't a cave-in, they will assume we've fled. It doesn't happen often, but it happens."

"And if you appeared two days later?"

"We'd invite many questions."

Sometimes extricating yourself from one of these situations is the hardest part. Here we had two innocent bystanders, one of them quite helpful, but either could say something that might trigger a higher alert level, and that would make our job far more difficult. My first thought was to remove them for a couple of days, just long enough that we could do what we needed to do. But if it got them in trouble, it would probably get them killed. I sort of missed the old T'vance who wouldn't have cared.

Rubo of course had the solution. He cast a geas on both of them not to speak of our encounter for a week. I didn't even know he'd gotten good enough to cast one, it's a very complicated and powerful spell.

There was something ironic about Rubo casting geas spells. When I'd met him, we had one cast on us to force us to perform a task together. It was how we became friends. The geas was an altogether unpleasant experience, and you'd think one Rubo wouldn't want to subject others to. But I guess there are many ways to geas someone and some aren't so bad. For instance, Rubo could geas me to use gort daily and I wouldn't mind at all, assuming it didn't mean to only use gort once a day. I shuddered at the thought.

Once the miners left, we resealed our hiding place with illusions and started discussing what we wanted to do. We hadn't gotten very far when I felt a strange touch in my mind.

"T'vance!" I heard in my head. It wasn't Jai-ahren, that's different. Karstia? "You can't respond, but I hope you are receiving this. It is taking everything I have. I am with their Althan leader, and he is dangerous. I have faith in you, but be exceedingly careful. There is a meeting here the day after next with some people from another planet. Aganond says they will only refer to themselves as 'Anarchy'. Do not come for me until we know why they are here. Fate will not--"

The thoughts cut out suddenly and Jai-ahren hissed. She'd heard the whole thing, too.

"What is it?" Rubo asked.

"Karstia," I said. "She just contacted me mentally." I explained the brief message she'd given me and how it had been cut off suddenly.

"Anarchy?" Doogan asked. "They're the other group that's coming here?"

"That's what she said. Why? Do you know what that means?"

"I don't know what it means, but I know who they are, sort of. They are some resistance movement against the Empire. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Enemies of my enemy are my friend, right?"

"Sometimes," I said. Of course it doesn't always work that way. I'd seen Lorgalis wipe out a temple of Yarth, something I'd wish I'd done. But it sure as hell didn't make him my friend.

"Do you know what they look like?" Rubo asked. "Their race?"

Doogan shook his head. "I don't even know if they are all the same race."

"Well that might actually make it easier," Rubo said.

I knew Rubo and I could see there was more behind the questions. "What are you thinking?"

"Something clever I'm not sure I can actually do."
CHAPTER 7

* * *

T'vance

* * *

"That doesn't sound possible," I said. "You aren't affecting those peoples' minds, you are altering the way things look. And therefore, it looks the same for everyone."

"Is that how illusions work?" Doogan asked.

"Some of them," Rubo replied. "Most of mine. Some illusion-based magic had no effect on reality, only on the minds of the people seeing it. But my illusions are real, well more real."

"So if I took a picture with a camera, it would look the same?"

"What's a camera?"

"Never mind. But if the idea is that your illusions make layers that reflect light differently to create the physical appearance, then I agree with T'vance."

"You're both wrong," Rubo said. "I can do it. I'll show you."

He began casting a spell, which sounded like a typical facade. I don't know the spell, but I've heard him cast it enough times that it sounds familiar. But then it quickly shifted and didn't sound familiar at all, in fact it sounded like he was casting some kind of spell medley. I tried to follow it, but quickly got lost. But he spent almost a full two minutes, which is somewhat long for a spell.

And then he turned into me.

"But you just turned yourself into me," Doogan said.

I smiled. He really did it. I was looking at an illusion of myself, and Doogan was looking at an illusion of himself. "But how?"

"He looks like Doogan to me," Jai-ahren said from the corner.

"Did you expect him to make himself look like a Temeki just for you?"

"Yes."

"It's more impressive because you haven't tried moving around. Get close together."

I moved closer to Doogan, and as I did the illusion of me shifted instantly into an illusion of Doogan. When I moved away, it changed back.

"I didn't notice anything," Doogan said.

"No," Rubo explained. "Your image takes precedence over T'vance's. So he saw you when he was close. You see, dynamic updating is already built heavily into any decent illusion. A cloak has to ripple in the wind, even though it isn't there. So why not have the illusion show different things from different angles?"

"And the illusion was keyed to track us?" I asked. "Change what's shown at that angle as we moved?"

"In this case, yes. Although there are really two whole illusions, and the angle just masks one or the other."

"Have you ever done this before?"

"No," Rubo said.

"So you just threw together these spell elements for the first time, cast it, and it just worked? The first time?"

"Well, yeah," Rubo said, looking a bit ashamed of himself for being so perfect.

"I really need to go back to school," I muttered.

"To teach?" Rubo asked, smiling. "I've never tried this before because I've never had to. You don't get this in a school. But I think you're missing its obvious flaws. If different observers are at similar angles, the illusion will not show what we want to one of them."

Rubo's plan was to sneak in with Anarchy when they arrived. We assumed they'd land on the platform and be transported or walk into the city by way of the new road. Normally we'd use invisibility, but since the Vessels saw through that, illusions were our best option. We'd look like aliens to Aganond's people and Aganond's people to the aliens. Clever, right? It was a logistical nightmare.

"How confident are we that illusions will even work against the Vessels?"

"I was just thinking the same thing," Doogan asked. "But what Rubo said makes sense. You don't learn something if you don't know you need to. The empire uses cloaked ships, so Aganond gave his Vessels the ability to see invisible things. There's no reason to think he'd be worried about illusions."

"So you think Rubo's plan is a good idea?"

"Oh no," Doogan replied. "It's a terrible idea. We'd be much better just going in as miners and sneaking in to find Karstia."

He was right there. This was a rather reckless plan put together to get information for Karstia. If we were only concerned with saving her, I'd never have considered it. But Karstia's words hung in my head: Do not come for me until we know why they are here. She thought it more important than her rescue, or at least important enough to delay it.

"Maybe we do both," I said. "We go into Kora with the miners and try to blend in and do some scouting. It gives us a better place to watch Anarchy arriving. Then, if it looks good, we go with Rubo's plan. If not, we try to listen and watch remotely. And by we, I mean Rubo."

"You do realize it will be a different spell cocktail, right?" Rubo asked.

"Of course."

"The tracking will be different, and there's still a chance some of Aganond's people will look and see us as Aganond's people and not aliens, which I still think is better than aliens looking at us and thinking we're aliens they don't know."

"Are you suddenly against your own plan?" I asked.

"No," he said firmly, with that Rubo bravado. "It's just, well, I expected I'd have to convince you more."

Blending in with the miners turned out to be far easier than we expected. By the end of their shift, the lot of them were exhausted from casting spells or digging or both. We adopted new facades so we didn't look like the people we were when we interrogated Urric, it just seemed easier not to worry about him recognizing us. We filed out through the tunnels, with other Faroks, then rode the buckets up like they did and climbed into the train of mine cars.

They'd done some good mining for the day. A few of the cars were full, most of them close to half way. I don't know how much is a reasonable haul for that many miners, there were about eighty in all, but considering the metal they harvested was precious keron, it seemed a rather amazing quantity.

We sat in the back car, to minimize our exposure to other Faroks, but like I said no one was particularly talkative. The mine cars were silvery metal like the buckets, scratched and dinged from heavy use. Once everyone was settled, the captain or foreman of the group commanded the train to move. We started down the hull, pulled by magic as the pulleys in the mineshaft were.

A Vessel floated silently over us as we descended, and the moment it became visible my nerves flared and the words of every relocation spell I knew flashed through my mind. It was tense for a few moments, as we waited to see if the thing would notice us differently from the other Faroks, but the illusions seemed to fool it well enough and after a few minutes we relaxed a bit.

When I remembered how dangerous the jungles were, I began to find the Vessels more comforting. But I didn't trust them to keep me safe, so I still kept one eye on the jungle. I didn't see any Troqs, the lizard-like monsters that killed Sara, but I did see numerous insects and small rodents.

Further down, we saw birds of a sort. They weren't birds really, they were winged lizards. In a very odd way, they resemble tiny versions of the Troqs, but attached to their scaled bodies were wings covered with bright colored feathers. In short, a snake-lizard-bird hybrid. A few of them soared over the canopy looking for food, while others seemed to be doing aerial acrobatics for the sheer joy of it.

We made some small talk with a couple of Faroks in the car ahead of ours. They didn't seem particularly curious why we were new, assumed we'd moved from Morgka and we didn't correct them. We passed two junctions where rails went off perpendicular to our path. I couldn't say where they went, for the jungle hid their path.

The jungle hid our own path as well. The foliage was cut back from the rails, but the rails themselves didn't run very straight, so we never got to see much more than a hundred feet ahead of us. So the city sort of snuck up on us. We took a slight turn and a moment later we had a clear view and we were only maybe a hundred feet away.

From the train, I saw the city from a whole new perspective. I'd flown over the wall, seen the towers and the gates, the cluster of tall buildings, but it was impossible to appreciate it from above. The wall was huge, about sixty feet high, and it angled out towards the jungle. It reminded me of a place I'd been called Lohm, a city carved out from solid stone. The wall was one solid, seamless, unblemished piece of rock. I didn't see how the Troqs would stand a chance of scaling it. If they'd tried, the wall looked no worse for it.

The main gate was even more amazing. It too was made of stone, but inset with a mural of an Althan walking down a ramp into a jungle populated with terrified Faroks and sinister Troqs. One of the Faroks in front of us muttered, "Behold, the coming of Aganond." Another tapped my shoulder, pointed to that guy, and said, "Next on the sphere." Then he chuckled.

The gate split in the middle and each half retracted silently into the wall. It spread no more than five feet, just enough to pass the mine cars and us through.

The Vessel stopped over the gate and swung its nose back towards the jungle. There it stayed, while we moved on. We continued into the city, between rows of towering buildings that left every street basking in shadows. There were signs at the corner of each street with a simple number or letter naming convention. We were traveling on a street named after the tenth letter of the Iruaric alphabet.

The street signs each had lamps, I think, but none were lit. The streets themselves were clean; no trash, no manure. They were also mostly empty. I didn't see a beggar, or a musician, or a cart selling anything. The buildings seemed awesomely tall from below, but I couldn't help find them plain. As amazing as the city was, it was still dull.

The shipyards were more interesting. They loomed ahead of us, tall black spires with Vessels nearing completion hanging from their sides. The mine train continued up to the low wide building that connected the city to the yards. The rails themselves continued inside, but we stopped and everyone got off the train and began walking back towards the city buildings. There were three distinct groups moving off, so we picked the closest and followed along, not wanting to seem out of place.

As we walked off, I saw another small group of Faroks coming out from the low wide building and climbing aboard the train. There were far fewer than the mining team. I assume they were responsible for unloading the cargo, but as much as I wanted to see what was inside that building, I wanted to stand out less.

The group we were following cut over and began entering one of the tall buildings. I stared up at the facade as we approached, noting with some irony that the building we were filing into was the same building Doogan and I had visited before. There was still a large chunk removed from the top where the Vessel had attempted to demolish us.

The doors to the building were made from clear glass and slid open automatically as we approached, which reminded me of my uncle's place, though his doors are made of smokey laen crystal. The other Faroks passed through them routinely, ignoring the lobby of the building which featured a large square fountain surrounded by a planter lined with numerous flowering planets. They all marched tiredly to a staircase and disappeared up it, leaving us alone for the first time.

"Finally," Doogan said. "I don't get these people. Do they only work?"

"Shut up," I snapped. I still wasn't sure we were safe to talk. I directed us up the stairs, and took us all the way up the fourteen flights to the top floor in silence. We didn't see anyone the whole way, and the trip was exhausting. We should have just flown up. By the end we were almost carrying Doogan, who clearly wasn't used to exerting himself this much.

"Find an empty room," I told Rubo, but he was already scanning. Remote eye spells are pretty routine for Rubo, even ones that move through walls.

"They're all empty," Rubo said. "And all the same."

"All empty?" I asked.

"If you have vacancies, they might as well be at the top. Who wants to walk fourteen flights of stairs to get to work?"

"Good point. I like that one," I said, gesturing to a door on the west side. At least I was guessing that direction was west.

The interior doors were made from some kind of dull gray metal and had a simple lever latch with no lock. I guess they weren't concerned about security either. I suppose with rooms all the same, there was little motivation for stealing. Just because there's no lock, doesn't mean you can't lock a door, though. I have a spell for that, and I used it to lock the door behind us just in case any curious Faroks wandered up this way.

We scanned the room for enchantments, monitoring spells, anything that seemed out of the ordinary. By all accounts the room was clean. The walls were enchanted with some kind of preservation spell, but the normal sort of thing you'd find on towers and palaces to resist the environment.

The apartment, as I was calling it, had a common room with two adjoining sleeping areas with four beds a piece. There was a large window in the common room and a smaller one in each sleeping room, none of which opened or afforded a decent view of anything but the building across the street and the skyline.

The rooms reminded me of the dorms in the Uscurac Orders in Lethys, with bath facilities but no place to prepare your own food.

"So where do they eat?" I asked.

"One of many good questions," Rubo said.

"This stone work isn't stone," Doogan said, examining the wall. "It's feracrete, or that's the common name for it anyway, metal infused concrete."

"I don't know what that means," I said, with just enough edge to let him know I'd appreciate him explaining himself more often.

"This is how colonies are built," he said. "How the Empire builds them, I mean."

"But I assumed these were made by magic."

"Well, me too," he said.

"So what are you saying?"

"I don't know, but you know the Empire colonizes worlds? They sort of have it down to an art form. What if this planet was originally a colony?"

"What? Wouldn't you know that?"

"I assume they would have told me and they didn't. But that doesn't mean much."

"It certainly doesn't mean much to me," I said. "I don't even know what it buys us to know if it was a colony or not."

"It matters a lot," he said. "It determines whether or not Aganond is using Imperial technology in all of this."

"Oh right," I replied. "You're still looking for the big picture. I just want to get my friend back."

"And learn about this Anarchy group," Rubo reminded me, peering out the window. "There's another Vessel," he said.

I joined him and watched the hulking black shape float silently over the adjacent building.

"Do you think there are people inside?" he asked. "Karstia said there were three seated Faroks inside."

"Can't you find out?" I asked.

Rubo looked aghast. "Put a remote eye that far away through an intervening barrier, a magical sentient barrier at that?"

"I was thinking more a remote presence spell, just count the sentient beings."

"Oh," Rubo said, looking chagrined. He cast that so quickly, I barely noticed. "Just the one."

Another useless detail, I thought. I was learning a lot of things, and none of them about Anarchy or where Karstia was or how to get her back. We watched as another mine car train arrived, though we could barely see it from our position.

"That's Arinyark," Rubo said, obviously using some other means of seeing more details. Remote eye spells without intervening barriers are much easier. And even though glass is technically a barrier, for sight spells it doesn't count. Strange how magic works sometimes.

The miners from that caravan broke off and we watched some go into the adjacent building and some come into ours. I'm sure some went to entirely different buildings, too. Even though I was trying not to care too much about the big picture, I was starting to get very curious about these people.

"Rubo, can you scan down and find a room that is occupied?"

Rubo cast the spell, which sort of tapered off to him constantly whispering the same phrase in Uscurac over and over. Finally he stopped and closed his eyes.

"Found one. Eight Faroks, all sleeping."

"Try another?"

"The same. I've seen five residences, three with sleeping Faroks, two empties."

"They all dressed the same too?"

"Yes."

"So no sense of individuality then."

"I wouldn't say that, they all have different hair," he said with a wink.

He had me there. Dúranaki are most often individualized by the color and style of their hair, or the number and style of their facial piercings. Although we do dress differently sometimes, too. And though the variation wasn't as great, there certainly was variation in the Farok hair style. Most had braids, but some had two and some three, and some had braids of braids, and some had short mops of dreadlocks.

It was sort of funny that it took me so long to realize it. Rubo clearly understood early, because our disguises each had different hair styles in addition to unique faces. But that's Rubo. I'm good at a single person; studying them, predicting what they're capable of, learning to impersonate them, finding the best way to kill them. Rubo, he's good at making things blend in or standout, depending on the need. He is an artist and the world is his canvas. In this, he painted us as part of the background. He really is that good, but I try not to tell him.

"Food," Jai-ahren told me.

"I am getting hungry."

"No, rats. Mice. Something."

She scrambled up out of the pack and jumped down, stalking off towards one of the bedrooms, quietly. She came back a moment later, walked up to me, and raised a paw palm up.

"You want me to give you some of my food to bait your food?"

She cocked her head cutely, took her food, and went back into the bedroom to lay a trap, which by the way, made her about ten times as smart as a wild Temeki. The poor little rodent didn't know what hit him. She returned with the thing in her mouth, showing off her trophy before she devoured it.

The thing looked like a rat with a wider skull, pink skin and sparse bristly hair, like some crazy mix of rat and pig. But it smelled like rat, and I was kind of sad I knew that. But as she ate it, it gave me ideas.

"Those things must run around here. It would be a good disguise."

"I can't really facade us as something that small," Rubo said. "I could hide us under an illusion, but a mobile illusion field is tough. Well, I suppose if I--"

"I meant shrinking Jai-ahren to their size."

"You meant what now?"

"Oh I could definitely facade her if she were already the same size."

"Do you really want me to be eaten by this place's equivalent of a Temeki?"

"You're cunning, a hunter at any size. You'll be fine."

"What about those bird things? We could put a fly and facade on her. She's about the right size, maybe a bit thick but I can make it work."

"Thick?! Note to self: scratch Rubo's eyes out."

The same birds we'd seen above the jungle also had a presence in the city. We'd see a few flying over and some of them perched atop buildings. Everyone seemed to ignore them, including the Vessels.

"Last time I let her fly herself, she wasn't the vision of agility and grace. She ran into a wall. Twice."

"Once was on purpose."

"Sure it was. Wait, you actually prefer flying?"

"As you've so astutely pointed out, I prefer napping."

"Maybe something else then?"

"No," I said. "Let's do the bird thing. Jai's been sleeping this whole trip, it's about time she started pulling her own weight. Can you take out one of these windows without anyone noticing?"

"You insult me," Rubo said.

I followed him into a bedroom where I watched him cast three spell as if they were one; one to silence everything, one to shatter the window, and one to summon a wind so that all that glass blew inside instead of raining down on the street below.

I shook my head amazed. "Was that one spell or three?"

"Yes," he said smiling. "This is my thesis, actually. I call it Compound Spells: Interweaving Spells to Reduce Redundancy, Increase Effectiveness, and Reduce Drain."

"Why have you never told me about it?"

"It's not done yet."

I shrugged but secretly felt bad he'd hidden it from me. I cast the fly, he cast the facade, and Jai-ahren flew away like a wounded bird.

"Am I that bad?"

"No, you're fine. Now be careful, stay away from Vessels and get me something I can use."

"I hope I know it when I see it."

"What are you having her look for?" Doogan asked, joining us.

"She'll know it when she sees it."

"And what are we doing?"

"Eating."

We sat on the comfortable couch and ate dried food that tasted like blackened Elysian Perch with buttered squash, compliments of Rubo's illusions. As we ate, Jai sent back flashes of her trip over the city.

There were the usual tall buildings, the lower central compound that matched close enough to Dagar's vision to make me think we'd find both Aganond and Karstia within, and a few other smaller structures nestled between the dormitory towers. She showed me a number of Faroks on the streets below, most dressed like the miners, but some others whose clothing was more colorful and varied. They were still far away, so I couldn't make out many details, but they were something new.

"Keep high, but if you see any other bird things descend towards that central structure, follow. I want a closer look at that place."

"I'm totally getting the hang of this flying thing."

"You're an agile little thing. With practice, you'll fly rings around Rubo. Don't go too far, though. The flying spell only lasts half an hour."

"I'm still bad with time."

"I'll remind you."

She continued to circle, then pulled up high enough that for the first time I got a view of the new road. It headed west through another massive gate in the wall, and continued to a huge round clearing made of the same material. The whole thing was probably less than a quarter mile long, made of stone or that feracrete stuff Doogan mentioned, and was generally unimpressive. I suppose if they built it in two days, I'd be impressed, but with no other information I couldn't see it impressing anyone, least of all a space-faring race. Maybe it glowed at night or something.

"It's not the road," Doogan explained. "It's having a place where ships can land."

"And that has value? Can't the ships just blow up their own place to land in the jungle?"

"Well, yes," he said. "But what kind of impression does that make?"

I suppose he had a point. Aganond had essentially been slaving on a giant welcome mat.

Jai-ahren came back, got a refresher on her fly spell, and went back out scouting. This time Rubo cast the spell, because as he put it, "With mine she'll fly twice as fast for three times as long." He did teach me the list, so I knew his were better, but did he have to rub it in?

I didn't feel at all cowardly sending my Temeki out while we sat back and drank, feasted, and talked. For one, the talking was important. It let us rehash things, share our perspectives, and fill each other in on things perhaps everyone hadn't seen. But also, when something works, you let it work. Me and Doogan flying around invisibly did not work. But Jai-ahren as the bird thing did, and I was getting good information.

I closed my eyes and watched through hers, which is strange but I'd long gotten used to it. She doesn't see color the same way I do and the bond between us tries to adapt, but it leaves everything feeling either washed out or overly intense, and it usually has nothing to do with what's important.

We soared over the crest of one building, passing dangerously close to a pair of bird-snakes perched on the edge of the rooftop. They shuffled and hissed as we passed. She looked back ominously, but was silent, then flew on.

"It's killing me not to try one. They look tastier each time I see one."

"You're a model of will power. Did you have to get so close?"

"No, that was just for fun. But they do it to each other all the time. I've been watching them."

By the time we got back to the lower central structure, the number of bird-snakes in the area had increased times four. They seemed to be lining the rooftop edges around the perimeter of the central building.

"I think something's happening," I said, explaining the bird-snakes.

"Large collection of scavengers usually means food," Doogan remarked. "Maybe this is where they eat."

"Or where people are left to die," Rubo said gloomily.

It was just after nightfall when our room echoed with the sound of a soft bell ringing. A moment later, words followed, spoken in Iruaric in a deep, almost melodic, voice.

"Enrichment will begin in ten chimes."

More bird-snakes joined the watch, and Faroks came from every street to converge around the central building. Faroks even stood visibly in every window facing the central courtyard. The whole city seemed to be showing up for this Enrichment, whatever it was. It was making me nervous.

"So I'd normally wait for you to suggest this, then argue against it," Rubo began. "But it seems to me that if everyone is going to this Enrichment, it makes it a lot easier to sneak around town."

"Only if the Vessels are also in attendance," Doogan said.

"This might be our lucky day. I think they are," I said. There were three of them floating in from different directions. They drifted in, silent as death, and froze in place two hundred feet in the air in a triangle formation. "But only three," I clarified, seeing Rubo's mind working. "That's not all of them."

"Perhaps not," Rubo said. "But I don't think we've seen more than three at any time. I still don't expect him to literally have everything being Enriched at once. That seems ludicrous on its face. But I could sneak as a Farok, use a few selective door spells to avoid streets, and take a peak inside that shipyard building."

"Sounds like something I would do," I said. "Except I sneak around much better than you do."

"I sneak superbly, thank you. You want to watch this Enrichment and quite frankly I want to know what it's all about so I want to let you. I just don't want to waste valuable time waiting."

"I want to come with you," Doogan told him.

"Now that would be wasting valuable time," Rubo said snidely. "No offense, but sneaking really isn't your area."

"But he could make sense of the yard," I argued. "Take him."

"You just want him out of your hair."

"That's also true. Take him."

"I'm not going to be trouble," Doogan reassured him. "I'm okay. And I'll watch your back."

He sounded pretty sincere, but I think Rubo would have taken him anyway.

Another bell chimed. "Enrichment will begin in nine chimes."

"Rubo?"

"They're about a minute and a half apart," he said, cradling his golden watch.

Time passed, people gathered, and a chime ahead of Enrichment starting Rubo and Doogan slipped out the front and headed down the stairs. I noticed them hovering as they moved, flying if you will, so they wouldn't be so tired.

From Jai-ahren's view, I could see the mob scene below. There were maybe forty or fifty thousand people below. It's hard estimating, but there are tricks to doing it quickly I've picked up. It helps when you've scouted armies of Lugroki and Yinka. I watched about this many Lugroki marching on Cynar the same night I faced Lorgalis.

One thing that struck me about the crowd was how orderly and quiet it was, considering. Then something started to happen on the building, the rooftop specifically. Sections of the roof began to rise, creating sort of a low pyramid with four levels. Then he appeared, the K'ta'viiri, the Althan, Lord Aganond. On his arm was Karstia, even from a distance I couldn't mistake her. They were dressed in matching garments of silvery-blue; him a high collared shirt and short pants, her a long flowing gown. They raised their unconnected arms in the air, like the King and Queen greeting the people.

"She doesn't look very kidnapped to me," Jai said.

"Looks can be deceiving."

Then Aganond lowered Karstia gallantly to sit on the top platform of the pyramid with her legs and gown spilling over the side. He stood with his arms outstretched and spun to take in the whole of the crowd, then clapped his hands together and the area echoed with thunder.

A roar rose from the crowd, then I saw a lot of movement along the front as mobile food venders in colorful garb were injected into the crowd from somewhere inside the pyramid structure. They were laden with packs and baskets filled with kebabs with meat and vegetables that were handed out as they made their way through the crowd.

Then the was a sudden flash of red from Aganond, and from his palms rose great plumes of soft white fog. The plumes rose and grew, climbing into the air and swelling like two great serpents. They grew fatter and longer, thinning as they did, then they began circling in mid air, creating a floating disc of swirling fog above the entire central complex. Once formed, the fog seemed to trail away from Aganond's hands and the entire disc descended slowly over the crowd.

"This is very strange," Jai-ahren said. From her vantage point, she was mostly above the fog, though light wisps of fog made it all the way to the rooftops in places.

"Be ready to leave."

"Oh, I'm already ready to leave."

It was strange, and I wondered why Enrichment hadn't come up when we'd spoken with Urric. We didn't ask of course, but he never offered anything about it, either. Then again, he was specific that the things he told us weren't confidential. So either Enrichment was, or it was so common place to him that he wouldn't mention it any more than talking about what he had for breakfast that morning.

Noises rose from the crowd below, who were now all but lost in the fog. If they used words, we couldn't make them out, but they sounded more like cheers than panic. Then the light show started. Portions of the fog began to glow in bright colors, fading in from nothing until huge areas of fog were engulfed in red, or green or blue, or purple. The sources of the light were mobile and numerous, varying in size and intensity, like dozens of colored lanterns zipping through the fog, opening and closing their shutters at will. Between them flashed bright crackles of lightning, sometimes the color of one light, sometimes the other, sometimes a mix of the two.

The light show went on, as did the cheers from below, which continued louder and more frequently. There was less chaos and more rhythm, the chants following a pattern that made the entire audience into an instrument whose sounds matched the lights as they flared in and out.

It was around then I began to notice the strange feelings coming over me, for a moment I felt a rush like I'd just taken some gort. I hadn't, had I? I shook my head and opened my eyes, the lids feeling very heavy. But I was still in the same room in the same spot. Still I was feeling good, a little sleepy, but really good.

"Get out of there," I told her.

No response. I pushed myself back into her mind, willing her head to turn to the side. She resisted some, but I got a quarter of a turn, enough to catch sight of the bird-snakes around her who were rocking their little snake heads back and forth to the chanting and staring into the cloud of lights below.

"GET OUT OF THERE!" I insisted.

"This is my reward," she whispered back. "I serve for the rapture. It is everything and I deserve it."

Her head snapped back and for a brief moment I saw the lights flashing, then she forced me out. I didn't even know she could do that. I could still feel her, feel the euphoria rising. She couldn't sever our bond, but she kept me from using her eyes again. I'm sure she could sense I was pissed about it, but I'm sure she didn't care. I was debating how much I cared myself. I did feel really good, but I was still in control. This was a drug, an effect, and one that would end badly. I focused on that.

I stood up, feeling the tingles and shivers wash over my body as I did. Damn, this was good stuff. I had to get there fast and not get us both killed in the process. I knew invisibility was a bad choice, so I stayed as a Farok. I ran out into the hall, to the room on the same floor directly in the direction I wanted to go, then looked out and cast a door spell to jump into the next building over. Then I repeated the process, popping from building to building, rushed, but they were all empty. Each hop brought me closer until at last I appeared in a suite in the same building.

The closer I got, the more intense the sensations I felt. Either the effect was growing, or my proximity to Jai-ahren was making it harder to resist. I took a step and my legs gave out. I slammed into the floor, but the hard feracrete felt cool and smooth against my face. I rolled onto my back and smiled, a moment wouldn't hurt, right? Just to catch my breath? I'd just cast a dozen spells in a row, after all.

I closed my eyes and once again I saw the clouds and the lights and heard the chanting. There was nothing wrong about it. I was wrong to ever think that. I felt complete, perfect. I only wished Fera were there to share it with me.

"I told you. Isn't it wonderful?"

"Wonderful," I echoed.

The room swirled and faded away, I wasn't in a room, I was in the cloud. I floated with others, thousands of them around me, friends, each and every one. In the center was something large, grand, a brighter light than the rest. I felt no compulsion to go to it, but there was something strangely familiar about it, so I did. I passed others on the way, our spirits brushing as I did, the feelings of just that too intense to properly explain. It was exhilarating to touch, and sad to part, but I felt better for each contact, like I was making friends with a touch; true, honest-to-god friends.

As I closed on the bright light, I saw a second light, smaller but still bright. And familiar, like every spirit I'd touched along the way. But I hadn't touched it yet. Or had I? I soared closer, getting lost a moment in a spirit that seemed to almost hug me as I passed.

"Come to me, T'vance Arain. Come to me. You aren't ready, why are you here? Come to me. I've lured countless men to their deaths, and yet do you fear me? I've murdered, I've tortured, I've done things I dare never speak of again. Do you fear me, T'vance? Why not? Do you even know me? Come closer."

I did, drifting until my face, if I had one, was inches from it.

"Do I know you?" I asked.

"That was the question. I don't think so, would you like to?"

"What is that big glow?"

"That is his Lordship, Aganond. You do not want him to know you."

"Then you are Karstia."

"Of course."

"Then I already know you."

"No, T'vance. Touch me. Touch me and you will."

I know it sounds like a bad idea, like a trap of some kind. I knew it at the time, too, but I didn't care. Enrichment was more potent than gort, and I daresay I've never felt so high as the time I floated in that cloud. I saw this beautiful glowing creature before me, Karstia. I wanted to merge with her as I had the other spirits. So I reached out my hand and a glowing pseudopod extended from the glow to meet it.

The moment we touched, I knew it was her. There was no doubt in my mind. Our shared experiences aligned us, and I felt this deep series of connections from all the times we had spent together. And then I felt warm, and the tingling changed, perhaps a bit more pleasant or just a nice change. Then the visions came.

When I say visions, I need to be specific. These weren't just things I saw, these became things I lived. They were short bursts, flashes in time really, but the flashes covered every sense. And there were thousands of them, packed end to end; an onslaught of experiences flooding into me.

Most of it was recent, visions of Aganond and the city. Things that were extremely important, but I was too high to really appreciate it. What interested me more were the scenes that kept slipping in between the modern ones, scenes of a grand elven city, with tall elegant spires and curving stone walls. Snow capped mountains lined the horizon, tall and forbidding.

There, in scenes that flashed before my eyes, was Karstia. She didn't look a day older, but there was still something very different about her. Her eyes were cold, detached, cruel even. But there was also something very sensual about her. It's not like she isn't a beautiful woman (elf), she is. And being a man, I've certainly had thoughts about her. But in those flashes, she was inviting those thoughts, except that at the same time she was inviting me to die and somehow making me think it would almost be worth it if that were the price.

Later flashes dispelled that, as I saw blood and guts and dismembered bodies. Black humanoids were split open, their entrails stretched into bizarre patterns that screamed of rituals dark. I could smell burning hair and flesh, the stench of feces and the gods know what else. And then Karstia again, laughing, reveling in it. Someone was behind her, a male elf, tall, powerful, with long dark hair that shined in the flicker of fire light. He wasn't smiling or laughing. If anything he looked sad.

"Have I taught you nothing?" he asked her.

She looked back with a perplexed grin. "Everything," she said, smiling.

"Then look again, my lady. Look again."

She looked back at the horror and death before her and her smile faded.

When the past interrupted the present again, the elven city was burning, and Karstia was watching it from the mountains I'd seen behind it. She stood in the snow, at the end of two sets of tracks though she was clearly alone. I didn't see her face, but I felt her mind and it was one of tormented remorse, sadness, and longing. I noticed then that she wasn't watching the city burn, but rather a tiny spec of light shining just above the horizon.

Suddenly I was back in the present, in a grand but simple throne room. There was a large raised platform and I was on it, beside Karstia. She was wearing a shimmering silver dress that made her look like royalty. She looked urgently past me, and I glanced to see a towering Althan striding towards us purposefully. He was visibly aged, and walked with a slight limp, but he looked important.

"You've overstayed your welcome," she told me. "Go quickly."

"This commoner has quite the nerve to bend your ear so long," Aganond called. I was already moving away, quickly, head down, without looking back.

"Was my curiosity, really," Karstia said.

I slipped away and was back in the cloud, floating away from their glowing forms. There were more people to meet, after all.

I was awakened by a group of Faroks, whose floor I seemed to be occupying. I was too groggy and disoriented to check to see if I was still facaded as a Farok, but I must have been from the way they treated me.

"You expect this sort of thing from children," one muttered, the first clear thing I'd heard.

"Sometimes the ill have strange reactions to Enrichment," another said. "Are you ill, my friend?"

"A bit," I whispered. I felt physically fine, though I had the strange taste of spiced meat in my mouth and my stomach felt full. It was my head that was confused, but I knew a good excuse when I heard one. I let them help me up, though normally I'd do it myself to avoid being touched.

"You around?" I asked Jai.

"Right above you."

"Well fly back to Rubo already."

"That's the problem. No fly. I'm the only bird thing left up here, too."

I apologized to the Faroks, assured them I was fine and could find my way back, and made a quick exit through their front door. I opened a hole in the ceiling, which was also the roof, and Jai-ahren jumped down and landed on my shoulder with a thud, then nuzzled my cheek. I stroked the fur I couldn't see. It looked like I was petting a bird-snake, but felt just like soft, furry Jai.

"That was amazing," she said.

"It was stupid," I replied. "And yes, amazing."

It was still night time, which made me feel better. At least I hadn't missed much. I cast another fly spell on her and sent her back to Rubo's, then used her eyes to guide my teleportation spell back. Familiar spotting is about the only reasonably safe way to teleport places you aren't intimately familiar with.

"We've been worrying," Rubo said after I jumped in. "We came back to an empty room."

I explained why I left, about Enrichment, everything.

"And you don't remember anything between leaving Karstia and waking up?" Doogan asked.

"No. I mean I remember flashes of meeting other spirits, and I have a sense of time passing, but I can't account for what I did the whole time."

"Do you think Aganond sensed you? Is there a chance he knows we're here?" Rubo asked.

"I don't think so, but I can't be sure."

"What about all the Faroks we touched?"

"What about them? How many did we touch anyway? I only remember four."

"Four? Try a hundred and four."

"You can't even count to a hundred!"

"Well it was more than four."

"What is it, T'vance?" Rubo asked me. I must have had that paler than usual look to my skin.

"Oh nothing. I met a few Faroks is all."

"That doesn't sound good."

"No. But it's done. We should change buildings, though."

Rubo agreed and scouted the next building over, found us a room, and doored us all over there. It was just like the one we were in before, just on the opposite side of the adjacent building. In fact, we could see our old room from our new window.

While I was being enriched, Rubo and Doogan were scouting the shipyard. They had their own run in with a pair of Faroks, dressed differently from the miners. He took them as guards of some kind, though they had no weapons. But the two demanded to know why they weren't at Enrichment.

Rubo told them, and I quote, "We didn't feel like it." That was his best lie on the spot, and I would have mocked him for it had the Faroks not accepted it without argument. They only said, "Next time," with a smile, and continued on their way.

They looked inside the shipyard building, but it was full of important looking Faroks and they didn't feel confident trying to blend in. They watched from outside, which attracted very little attention despite it being the absolute wrong thing to do. But inside, the men were tending machinery of some kind. Large bins were connected to glowing red, as in red hot, metal boxes; and those connected to some metal pipes with valves that vented steam, and those to other boxes that didn't glow and those to a series of flexible tubes that were then all bundled together.

From his description, it seemed rather simple, yet he seemed impressed by it.

"I don't think you're appreciating it," he said. "The whole place is magic: the bins, the boxes, the pipes, the tubes. The Farok workers were all using magic."

"It's like a magical refinery and factory in one," Doogan said. "Raw materials in, they get refined magically into pure forms, then fed to some fabrication system that assembles them into ships. Tell him about the eggs."

"Eggs?" I asked.

"Eggs. That's what they called them, I listened a bit. They look like shards of crystal, not eggs, but boy do they glow. And not in a good way. I'm assuming they are the part the ship builds itself around. They treated them like treasures beyond value."

"How many did you see?"

"Just one, but there was a case that I think had more in it. One of the Faroks opened it, took a crystal out and examined it, then put it back. He told another Farok it was almost ready."

"Was it sentient?" I asked.

Rubo frowned. "I knew you'd ask, and I wish I could tell you. There were maybe thirty Faroks in that building, there was no way I was going to isolate an egg to tell for sure. Does it matter?"

"I suppose not. We know the ships are, that's enough. I'm just getting more and more curious about how everything works around here."

"Tomorrow we may know far more than we bargained for," Rubo remarked.

"They are expected just after dawn," I said.

"Anarchy?" Doogan asked. "How did you learn that?"

I shrugged. I really don't know who told me that, or rather who shared that with me. I had no recollection of the event whatsoever, but I knew it still. I wondered what else I might know that I wasn't aware of. Worse, I wondered what else other people might know about me that I didn't intend them to. It worried me more than a little, but there was no sense in changing our plans over a worry so I kept it to myself.

"We should try to sleep then. At least some. We'll need to be moving before dawn so we can be in position when they land."

So we slept, or tried to anyway. The Enrichment left me feeling as if I'd just taken a long restful vacation. I wasn't tired, but I was very relaxed. I don't think I actually slept, but I closed my eyes a lot. Jai-ahren slept of course, I don't think she ever struggles with that.

As I lay not sleeping, my mind drifted back to the Enrichment, trying to remember what happened after I left Karstia, or what she was trying to tell me when I was paying more attention to what she was trying not to tell me. But like that time, my mind kept wandering back to the dark elven city. It was the past, I could tell, part of Karstia's evil past. I knew she had one, she'd at least alluded to it before, but it was certainly ancient history. She had already turned from that path before the Wars of Dominion, and that was maybe eight thousand years ago. I can't imagine what it would be like to live so long. Even thirty years of memories were enough that I forgot plenty of them. So what made her think of something so long ago in the paradise of Enrichment?

I thought back to the images I wanted to put behind me, the images of the dark skinned humans torn open, their bodies mangled and their souls tormented to effect some evil magic. They were Lenn-raki, though I'd never put a face to the name before. Logically, it made no sense. The Lenn-raki were a people of Farokis, if Urric the miner could be believed. But I still knew it. Somehow I knew it. They were like no race I knew of from Jaiman or Emer, much darker than even the Etonians like Tanawe and Kier-ees, who were much closer to brown than black.

I was still pondering the Lenn-raki and their fate, when Rubo's golden watch began chiming melodically. I sat up, happy to get back to a point of action, and looked over at Rubo who looked unhappy to have awakened at all. Doogan seemed closer to my mood, though more nervous of course.

"You'd never heard of a race called Lenn-raki before, right?" I asked Rubo as we munched on breakfast. That morning it was dried bread and water, which tasted like peppered eggs, sausage and orange juice.

"No," he said, pushing crumbs back into his mouth. "The race to the north that Urric told us about? How would I have?"

I shrugged again, hating not knowing. "I think I'm just blending visions together. But I saw black-skinned humanoids being tortured in my visions with Karstia, and I can't shake the notion it was the same race. You're better at history than me, so I thought you might know."

"Its not a race of Jaiman or Emer, at least not one that's been around during the second or third era. But you know Karstia isn't from either place. She's from somewhere to the west of Jaiman, though she was never more specific."

"She rarely is. Don't worry about it, I can't figure out why it's important anyway."

Rubo nodded, but I could tell my friend was uneasy.

"Today we're getting some answers," Doogan said, more confidently than I'd heard him since his last visit to our planet.

"Yes," I agreed, "answers."
CHAPTER 8

* * *

T'vance

* * *

We huddled close together, waiting for the ships to arrive. Our hiding spot was adjacent to one of the spires standing beside the west gate. We weren't invisible, but masked under an illusion of a stone battlement at the front of the wall. If you looked intently, you'd realize the battlement was wider than the rest, but because it touched the spire itself, it seemed believable to be larger.

Dawn had passed about half an hour before, and the air around the landing area was dotted with six Vessels, who circled over the surrounding jungle, firing the occasional black bolt of crackling energy into the trees below. The mining trains had already left, and the city was becoming more alive with each passing minute.

Then finally the sky roared like thunder and we looked up to see a pair of new ships making their way in from the north. They were as different from the Vessels as a ship could be, silvery gray with long necks set ahead of broad wings. They looked almost like giant metal geese, if you can imagine that without it seeming goofy. They were by no means goofy, they were bigger than the Vessels and perhaps more intimidating and they made a hell of a lot more noise.

"Chaos Wings," Doogan remarked.

"Is that what they're called?"

"I think so. That may be modified versions. Chaos Wings are old tech. I've salvaged a few. They were used in the last major war of resistance, some eight hundred years ago. They were originally Orconan craft, good ships too."

"Is the name meaningful?" I asked.

"Well I can't imagine Anarchy flying ships named Chaos is just a coincidence, but they don't have any chaotic properties if that's what you're asking. The later models did have cloaking devices, though."

The pair of ships continued towards the platform, still hundreds of feet in the air. A pair of Vessels moved to flank them on their approach, while the others fired volleys of black lightning into the trees near the landing pad. Eventually they arrived, one ship breaking off upwards while the other made a slow descent onto the landing area. There was room for both, had they chosen to use it, but the one ship seemed intent on staying in the air and the other landed squarely in the middle of the landing area, blasting away dust from the ground as it did.

A procession of Faroks in bright colors began marching from the gate down the road towards the ship. They were twenty strong and carried tall flags made of blue cloth with a golden triangle inset with a simple eye. Behind them followed a large rolling cart, open to the elements, but fitted with many seats like some kind of topless, horseless coach. In the rear of the coach were the only two occupants, Karstia and Lord Aganond. Behind them was a second tier of escorts, only ten strong, and they stopped only a dozen feet away from the gate in two lines, facing into the jungle.

In addition to the people on the ground, there were men on the wall between the battlements, and the Vessels flying above. I don't know what we were thinking.

"Too many out there. We're never going to make it there undetected," Rubo said, sighing.

"Thank you for not trying," I told him. "But perhaps once they start walking we'll find our opening. Can you listen from here?"

"I am listening from here."

"Of course."

"I wonder what language they are going to speak in?" Doogan asked curiously. "I mean I can't imagine Anarchy speaks Iruaric."

"The ship is opening," Rubo remarked.

He must have heard it first, but shortly after that we could just make out a large ramp lowering from the belly of the ship that was kept off the ground by a series of legs that extended from the bottom. The colorful procession parted, leaving ten on either side of the ship, and allowing Aganond's cart to pull close to the bottom of the ramp.

A pair of humanoids walked side by side down the ramp, wearing suits similar to Doogan's only more plain and the suits included a full covering rounded helmet with smoky glass obscuring whatever was inside. They looked roughly human, but they could have been very different inside. They wore things that looked like kaltas on their hips, probably plasma weapons like Doogan's.

Keep in mind we were pretty far away. I could see people and flags, but that's about it. Most of the rest of it came from Rubo's descriptions, which were quite detailed. If he had the time, he could have really bored us with every nuance, but things were happening quickly and Rubo struggled to relate what was happening without staying terse.

The alien from Anarchy spoke first in crisp, passionless Iruaric. "This isn't how we discussed things."

There was a sudden intake of air from the surrounding Faroks, as if the alien had just slapped their Emperor. The alien shifted nervously, but Aganond just raised his hands and the Faroks calmed instantly.

"My dear friends," Aganond said. "How could I not roll out the red carpet for you?"

"It's so good to see you old friend!" the alien exclaimed.

Rubo paused from relaying the story. "By Jaysek, he's just going to charm the entire crew."

Then, unexpectedly, the friendly alien convulsed and fell. The other pulled his weapon and leveled it at Aganond. Then his weapon vanished, leaving him dumbfounded. Every Farok in the front group dropped their flags and turned towards the aliens and the haunting sound of layers of whispered Iruaric filled the air.

"Calm!" Aganond shouted. It was so loud, I even heard it without Rubo having to tell me.

Instantly the Faroks stopped speaking, picked up their flags, and turned back towards the jungle. The alien dropped to one knee, checking his partner, then looked up at Aganond.

Karstia put a hand on Aganond's arm and whispered, "That was a big mistake." He turned towards her angrily and she met his eyes. "What? Did you want me to lie?"

Aganond turned back and waved his hand and the unconscious alien stirred and sat up. He hopped down from the cart, more floated as Rubo described it, then strode up to the aliens and handed the one back his missing weapon.

"My apologies," he said.

The alien stood up calmly. "You altered the way my brain works without my consent on our first meeting. I cannot see how we will establish any trust."

"It won't happen again," Aganond told him quietly. "Think of it as a demonstration."

"I did not come here for you to demonstrate your ability to manipulate people. You should know that I am not even a person, but rather a programmed organic derivative, fully capable of performing the tasks ahead of me, but with little regard for my own life. This is true of my crew as well. Should there be another act of aggression, we will consider it an act of war."

"Are you threatening me?" Aganond replied, bristling.

"Simply stating our position and terms for ongoing negotiations."

"Very well. As you have likely determined, I am Lord Aganond, ruler of this planet."

"And I appear as Mylo, but I am Myloteri, the third replica of Mylo. You and I have never spoken before, but Mylo has told me everything."

"Excellent," Aganond said, turning back and giving Karstia a look of pure discomfort. He then introduced them to Karstia and invited them into the cart with the promise of a brief tour of the city while traveling to the demonstration, whatever that was.

Rubo turned to Doogan. "Do you know what that stuff means about replicas and organic derivatives?"

Doogan replied, "Well, it sounds like he's some kind of clone. That's where they duplicate a person exactly, although from what he said I assume he is far from an exact copy. The Empire made cloning illegal over a millennium ago, by the way, not that Anarchy would care."

"So you've heard of these things at least?"

"Yes. But about that much. I mean you hear rumors and stuff, but I don't know of anyone who clones people and some of those words I know, but I don't know what they mean precisely the way he used them."

"Reminds me of Loremasters," I said.

"How so?" Rubo asked.

"You ever hear of a Loremaster forced to tell secrets? Or turn against his own kind?"

"Well, no. But so?"

"They manage by only having the knowledge they need when they need it. This Myloteri is the same way. He's only been given enough knowledge to accomplish his task, but no more. So if he's compromised, the loss is minimal."

"But Loremasters aren't clones," Doogan said, though it sounded more like a question.

"Of course not. It's not the method of secrecy I'm talking about, but the spirit."

"You don't know they do that," Rubo said. "You're just guessing."

"I'm not. They do that. I don't know how they do it, but they do it."

"Does it matter?" Doogan asked. "Does it help if they are like Loremasters?"

"It helps us try to relate to them," I said. "Maybe predict what they might do."

"We'll need every edge we can get," Rubo remarked. "They are only sending two from the Anarchy ship, so any sort of impersonation is out of the question. Hold on, they're getting closer."

The cart drove quickly and smoothly, well ahead of the color guard that proceeded it. The rear guards remained parted, and the cart came right up to the gate and then came to a stop just shy of the entrance. They had come so close that I could no longer even see them, but Rubo still had a magic eye trained on the cart from close by.

"He's stepping out of the cart," Rubo told us.

Then Aganond shouted loudly, "T'vance Arain! I am giving a tour. Would you care to join us?"

My jaw dropped.

"He's looking right at us," Rubo said nervously.

"What are you going to do?" Doogan asked.

I didn't know, but I had to decide fast. He knew where we were. He could probably kill us with a gesture. But he only asked for me, leaving Rubo and Doogan free. I wanted to run, gate, door, something. But Dagar's vision flashed into my head. He thought I had the best chance acting as a diplomat. Maybe now was my chance.

"I'll go. Rubo?"

"It's crazy, but I'll have your back as best I can."

I nodded and gave him a weak smile. "And if it goes badly? Really badly?"

"Then I'll get us out, get back to Kulthea, and find your uncle. He'll know what to do next."

He would, and I was glad to hear Rubo had thought it through. I made sure Rubo had my ethereal compass, then circled out from our illusion to the open battlement next to us. I cast a quick displacement spell, its a defensive trick to make myself appear slightly off from where I really am. It's about the best single defensive spell I have, as it has a chance to work against almost anything. I would have cast more, but there wasn't time. I was already making Aganond wait as it was. I climbed to stand atop the wall, then jumped off and floated gently to the ground a few feet from the cart.

"I don't like this," Jai said. She was wrapped around my neck, using my head to shield her.

Aganond gave me a bemused look. It was the closest I'd been to him, and found his appearance intriguing. He appeared older than me, for sure, though I couldn't place it in years because Althans weren't supposed to age. If he were Dúranaki, I'd think he was maybe sixty or seventy years old. His eyes were violet and intense, almost boring into me. My hand grasped my Pegasus Pendant instinctively.

"Welcome, Mr. Arain," he said.

"Hello, T'vance," Karstia added. "It is good to see you." She said the words, but did little to mask the lie. I could tell she thought I had made the wrong move showing myself to him. It wasn't the first time I'd disappointed her, but I tried not to let it get to me.

As I was ignoring her judging eyes, I noticed she was wearing a crown. She didn't usually wear a crown, nor would she. She cast mentalist magic and helmets reek havoc with mental spells. It was made of metal, perhaps iron or steel. It was essentially a wide metal band with curving pieces that crossed over her head, and though it had some artistic merits, it was wasn't what I'd call jewelry. On closer inspection, I noticed several points where the crown pressed into her skin. She wasn't wearing it because she wanted to, he had somehow attached it to her.

"Are you determined to irk me with every move?" Myloteri said loudly. "We discussed terms, and you are systematically ignoring them."

"My apologies again," he said, turning to Myloteri. "But this man would have been watching us privately if I had done nothing. Now at least the affair is entirely public. This is a time for me to share with you. When we get to you sharing with me, I will ensure your privacy."

"You better," he said coldly. Aganond's eye twitched at the tone. I doubted he was used to being talked to that way. Probably if Myloteri was a Farok, he would have been gated to the Sphere on the spot. For my part, I found that amusing.

I may have mentioned I'm a good actor, even under pressure. In fact, I'd say I'm even better under pressure. But this was more than a little pressure. I feared the man, at least as much as Lorgalis, perhaps more. At the same time, I saw how Myloteri not being afraid was throwing him off. How much worse would it be if none of the foreigners feared him?

"Thanks for having me," I said casually, climbing aboard. "I was wondering what a guy had to do to get a tour around here."

Aganond glared at me and I avoided his eyes. But I did see him gesture dismissively at me and felt my displacement spell fall away. I think I shuddered, but I didn't look to see if he noticed. I just walked up to Myloteri as if nothing had happened.

"I'm T'vance Arain," I told him, bowing slightly. Even up close I couldn't see the face through the dark glass of his helmet. "Don't worry, I'm not associated with the Empire in any way. I'm from another quarantined planet, similar to this one."

"Intriguing," he replied, after a moment.

"Why don't you talk less, T'vance. And do sit."

I felt strong hands press me onto the bench, as if two invisible ogres wanted me to sit down. I tried to complain about it, but found my voice missing. It was disturbing to be made into a sitting mute, but more disturbing was how easily he affected me with his magic, and how effortlessly he cast it. I mean he didn't cast a spell, he just told me to sit. That was the spell. Worst of all, I didn't even feel the spell hit me. I had no sense of my body trying to resist it, nothing I could try to actively enhance.

If it was magic, I could cancel it with my kriegora mesh, but it seemed a bit early to be giving away all my secrets. So I sat in silence as the cart started to move.

"You okay?" Jai asked. "Aganond didn't seem to appreciate you talking to the alien."

"You don't say."

"Why did you tell him that anyway?"

"To weaken Aganond's position. I don't know what Anarchy wants, but now they know Aganond doesn't necessarily have a monopoly on it."

"Clever."

"Thanks, I thought so."

"And what does that buy us?" she asked. "Do we want him to have a weaker position, or do you just want to push his buttons?"

"Yes. I have another idea. Go say hi to Karstia."

"Go say hi?"

"Yes. Touch her, rub against her."

She jumped down reluctantly and strode cautiously across the moving cart as if every step might be her last. Aganond was answering dull questions from Myloteri about the city wall. He wondered why it was necessary, but I already knew so I happily ignored the conversation and focused on Jai-ahren getting to Karstia. Finally she reached her and brushed affectionately against her leg.

"You're crazy, T'vance," I heard Karstia say in my head.

"I keep being told I'm a damn diplomat. I think it's gone to my head. How bad is it?"

"Well, he was going to just kill the lot of you, but I told him that deprived him a chance to show off."

"So he's going to show off, then kill me?"

"He's very impressionable. So stop being an ass. And get Jai off me, he will notice. He sees everything."

Jai-ahren had of course heard everything, being the conduit of our communication. This isn't something she can do automatically, by the way, it was all Karstia. It was just touching her that allowed her to easily cast the spell. So she knew to retreat, and did so casually.

I took a chance to observe Aganond with second sight, and found myself almost sorry for doing so. He was glowing more brightly than I've ever seen. At first, it just seemed like a blinding halo, but the more I dared look, the more familiar patterns emerged. There were maybe a dozen spells, all layered upon him. I recognized familiar patterns; force redirection, sensory enhancement, anticipation, detection, reaction. In short, I was convinced that if I attacked him, my attack would be blocked and I would be counter-attacked with some vicious automatic magic, which is funny because he'd know about the attack before it happened and be able to watch the entire thing unfold.

"And you let the Troqs roam free outside? What do you gain from this?" Myloteri asked.

"Yes. And why do you assume I gain anything?" Aganond replied.

"There are countless better ways to manage a primitive aggressive species."

"Surely," Aganond agreed. "But the proximity of the Troqs is vital to our ecosystem here. They provide much of the people's protein intake and provide, well, motivation."

"Say no more," Myloteri said, "I know all too well how potent a hostile outside force can be."

"Back to the wall, another reason it was made like that is because the Faroks made it."

"The Faroks," Myloteri echoed. "This is the engineered labor race you referred to?"

"Yes."

I decided then that I wanted to talk, and so I used a ventriloquism spell to throw my voice. I didn't throw it far, but it let me talk when I was otherwise made mute.

"Excuse me," I said. "What does that mean, an engineered race?"

Aganond looked back at me, angrily. But then I think he saw the spell and gave me a slight smile. I liked the smile much better. He waved his hand and I felt my throat clear.

"I created the Faroks," Aganond explained. "He said engineered because that is the method of doing what I did in Imperial-era science. But I did it with magic."

"Made them from what exactly?" I asked.

"Oh, there was a race of primitives living here who called themselves Garoks when I arrived. I eventually cultivated them, refined them, and finally split them all, making Farok and Lenn-raki. The Faroks were more tame, more affluent with magic, primed for specialization. I continued to work with them until you see what I have here today."

"Wait. Split them?" Myloteri asked. "You split the DNA to make two new species?"

"Well not exactly. I split each individual into two. Each Garok became a Farok and a Lenn-raki."

"That doesn't sound possible," he replied critically.

"For most people in most places, you are right. But you'll have to take it on faith that we're different here. Let me explain where we are. This place you might call a city or town, but it is a production pod designed as a self-sustaining factory producing ships. It was made by Faroks, it is run by Faroks. These Faroks are docile enough, reproduce well, and respond to a special morale conditioning I invented which actually keeps them happy.

"I have two pods now, as well as many other cityscapes that serve mostly as breeding pools for labor. In other words, they are more traditional settlements. Those are to the north, for T'vance's sake, I'm sure you know just how my population is distributed, Myloteri." The alien nodded slightly.

"The pods are positioned close to the raw materials required for production, and all material refinement and assembly takes place within the factory, which is just up ahead. The materials are purified, separated and forced into a suspension which is fed into the ship trees where assembly occurs."

We had already moved close to the shipyards. I glanced around for any signs of Rubo, and was somewhat grateful to find none. Although I wouldn't have minded a splash of yellow on a building to let me know he was still with me. Ahead was the low wide building he and Doogan had visited, and beyond the towering spires and growing ships, most of them fully grown.

"Behold my pride and joy, my ships, my Vessels," Aganond said, gesturing grandly to the array of ships. "They are the culmination of thousands of seemingly insurmountable tasks, solved with millions of hours of study and research."

As he spoke, one of the near ships detached silently from its tree and floated over to us. They were impressive to watch, every move silent and effortless, but precise. They still made me nervous. They were as long as a good sized sailing ship, and like my blade they were shiny black and pointed.

The ship landed in front of our cart, and that actually did make noise; sort of a thud with a slight metallic ring after it. A hatch slid open and Aganond gestured us all inside.

"It's empty," Myloteri said, shocked. "So much space."

He was certainly right there. The entire ship was a single room, with only three chairs, spread out to view the outside through windows fore, port, and starboard. The back had the hulking black box that I knew contained Arinyark, and the rest was just open space.

"The key to all this is the box in the back," Aganond explained. "It is the single most important and complicated thing I've invented."

"It emits radiation," Myloteri said, but like much of what they talked about I wasn't entirely sure what that meant.

"It generates a mana field," Aganond corrected.

"And the ships have three seats, but no pilots. So they fly themselves? Where is the computation for such things done?"

"Perhaps T'vance would wager a guess?"

Myloteri turned his visor towards me. It wasn't the same as actually staring at me, and I can't say I liked it. You want to look at me, let me see your eyes damn it.

"This isn't true in the strict sense," I told him. "But you should think of the Vessels as alive. They don't breath, or reproduce, or whatever else living things are supposed to do. But they have their own mind and their own will."

"Computers have no will, they can only simulate it," Myloteri replied.

"You cannot think of them like computers," Aganond replied. "They are the spirit of a Farok; it's mind, it's soul. It remembers everything it knew in life."

"I see," he replied simply.

"And what becomes of the Farok?" I asked, though I knew the answer.

"This," he said, gesturing to the ship surrounding us, while clearly misunderstanding my point. "Hello Hyrric."

The floor trembled and then was still and a rather soft voice spoke from roughly the nose of the ship.

"Hello, Lord Aganond. I do not care for the one in black being within me."

Yes, that was me. I didn't care to be inside it either, but why me? I looked and saw Aganond studying me, probably wondering the same thing. I shrugged, but my mind was racing. I didn't have any spells on me, so it was probably something I was carrying.

I quickly narrowed it down to one of a few things: my blue kynac, my kriegora chain, or the Pegasus Pendant; the kynac because it was blue keron instead of black, and maybe that felt strange to it; the chain because it cancels magic; and the pendant because it protects against evil magic.

Aganond took a step towards me, staring at my neckline.

"What is that bulge," he said.

He could only mean the pendant, which I normally kept tucked inside my armor. He took another step, and I had this intuition he might take it from me. I could feel the intent and before I knew it I had both of my kynacs out, inches from making contact with his throat and chest.

Aganond smiled at me broadly and inched forward, while Myloteri moved back quickly to stay out of the way. "Karstia said you were feisty," Aganond remarked. "What is it? This Pegasus artifact? Show it to me, or I'll take it."

Karstia for her part said nothing. She hadn't said a word other than telepathically. I wondered if maybe Aganond told her to shut up too. But she had a look that said she was more uncomfortable than scared.

"Try, and this becomes something entirely different," I told him.

"Show me!" he hissed, and this time I felt the magic tingling over me.

I hooked the chain around my neck with the blue kynac and pulled, dragging the crystalline pendant out from my clothing into the open. I didn't have to do it. His spell didn't work. At least I don't think it did. It was more like the pendant wanted to come out. That could be mental manipulation on his part, but I doubted it after seeing the brilliant glow coming off the pendant's sphere.

The pendant is largely a glass sphere, in the middle of which is a miniature silver pegasus. Attached to the chain are a pair of silver wings that seem to embrace the sphere, holding it in place. It's very beautiful, beyond price. But at that moment I couldn't see the pegasus inside, because it was just light. And the light streamed out in bright but uneven rays through the glass, reflecting also off the wings. For the record, it had never done anything like that before. The glow faded quickly, but seemed to linger in Aganond's eyes.

"It's amazing," he said softly, staring at it admiringly. "The layering. The colors. And so potent, yet subtle. Murnak would love to see this. It has seen the darkness, and is ready. It protects you from hostile magic, and more so from dark magic. It makes you more patient, more contemplative, and yet more influential. It shields you from mana drain, won't let you fall, can make fog and turn the air into a weapon. It is a connected side of a triangle, though one side is dim. And," he added with a chuckle, "it turns your hair white. Now that's a touch of style from the alchemists."

"It was made by an Althan, like yourself."

"Yes," he said. "I can tell."

"That is the object, Lord Aganond," the ship said.

"Yes. I imagine it doesn't feel good," he replied, patting the chair near him. "Please try to manage. We'll only be a moment."

He turned back to me and waved his hand dismissively like you might to tell a child to run along and play. I was having a hard time reading him, but it was obvious he wasn't the least bit scared of me. I waited a few moments to preserve a bit of dignity, then slipped my weapons back in their sheaths.

"Now for a demonstration. Hyrric, please take us within five hundred feet of the airborne Anarchy ship."

The hatch slid shut with a faint hiss and the ship immediately began climbing straight up away from the ground. The windows were small, but I could see enough that it gave me a bit of vertigo. You'd think flying around by magic would have gotten me used to such things, but being under your own power and someone else's are entirely different things.

For a moment I wondered why have windows that small, when they afforded such a lousy view. But then an entire section of the front ceiling came to life with images of the two Anarchy ships, almost as if the ship we were in was open and the targets were right in front of us.

"I caution you, Aganond," Myloteri said. "My ship may not react in a way that helps demonstrate your ship's abilities."

"Can you communicate with them?"

"Yes."

"Good. Tell them to cloak."

Myloteri did something that resembled shrugging, touched his wrist, then said something in a language I couldn't even begin to understand. A moment later the floating Anarchy ship shimmered, then faded into nothing, leaving only the sky behind it.

"Thank you," Aganond said. "Hyrric?"

The view flickered and then the ship reappeared, only masked in a soft green glow. Myloteri cocked his head intrigued, and Aganond looked very proud.

"There isn't a cloaking device that can fool one of my Vessels; nor an invisibility spell, T'vance. But you found that out already. Now, have your ship fire on it. A single shot, energy weapons only, please. I don't want to deal with the fallout from projectiles."

Myloteri managed a shrug and then I assume his ship fired, though I didn't actually see anything. We shifted our position, like a short jump or one of my shifting spells. It was the least disorienting jump I'd ever taken, but then again our surroundings jumped with us. Afterward, the Anarchy ship glowed red from two holes on its bow.

"Impressive," Myloteri said.

It was hard to be too impressed, since I didn't actually see anything. But I both appreciated and feared the ship's detection abilities. Still, I wasn't ready to take Aganond at his word. If there's one thing I've learned about magic, is that everything has a counter. Knowing a little more, I had an idea forming in the back of my head.

"Now let's blow something up," Aganond said. "Hyrric, take us to the Werria Range."

"Conventional weapons do not interest me," Myloteri said. "I want to know how you blew up those Imperial ships. I want to see that weapon."

"Oh. That's a shame. I always like taking down a mountain," Aganond said. "But what you speak of, well it isn't a weapon really, but it is technology and it is amazing. In our language we would say it is a set of related spells. These spells are designed to manipulate computer systems, get them to do things they wouldn't otherwise do.

"We simply told the ships to blow themselves up, a simultaneous self-destruction of all systems. Boom. I could show you less dramatically on your ship. Have it raise it's shields."

The view of the ship left no doubt when this had been done. A large rounded bubble appeared around the Anarchy ship, like a sphere of transparent blue glass. We waited for a moment but nothing happened.

"Lord Aganond," the ship, Hyrric, said. "It is not working."

"What do you mean it isn't working?" he replied, an edge of something like anger is his voice.

"I have tried six times, with no success."

Aganond looked beside himself, embarrassed to say the least, but something more. His six fingered hands were trembling. Finally he clapped them together in front of him, and I felt a ripple in the Essaence. Karstia must have felt it too. She stepped back from him and nodded towards me to do the same.

Aganond then seemed to calm. He looked ahead, smiled, then stopped frowning and spun. For a while he did this sort of act, so similar to a mime stuck in a box, except he wasn't in a box, he was in something like a tiny maze that kept him walking around in tight little lines no more than three feet in any direction.

"Your computers are so different," he murmured.

"Yes," Myloteri said. And though I couldn't see his face, I was sure he was grinning inside.

"There's just not enough of me, but I can fix that." He stopped in place and spread his hands wide, smiling, but there was sweat on his brow. I heard whispers I couldn't decipher coming from his unmoving lips. In fact, the only things moving on him were his eyes.

"Now. Down, please."

And sure enough, the shield bubble finally vanished.

"Similar enough it seems," Myloteri said. "Brilliant. You can do it. But now that you can, can your Vessel?"

Aganond frowned. "Not yet. It will take some consideration and effort to adapt them."

"But they can do this to Imperial ships?"

"Yes. We haven't discussed the crew, and they are non-trivial. But they are included in any sale, and the ship has all the means to sustain them so long as the power reserves are replenished when needed. They are conditioned for loyalty, and maintain morale automatically."

"Do they not age and die?"

"Yes. Did you expect no maintenance?" he said, smiling again.

"Of course not, but do you think you will be around long enough to provide replacements?"

Aganond glared at him and the smoked glass of Myloteri's visor lightened until it was completely clear. For the first time I could see his face, which was humanoid but far from human. Mostly I saw his two huge milky white eyes. They had only a pupil, which shrunk to a very small size in the newly brightened light. The eyes were lidded sideways with wrinkled flesh colored like heavily creamed coffee.

"It is an honest question," Myloteri said in response. "But perhaps you don't understand galactic events as well as I've assumed."

"Enlighten me."

"The Empire is a collection of nodes, big nodes and small nodes, arranged in a sort of spacial hierarchy. You've done enough that the local node magistrate has put in a request to his parent node, and my guess is that response will be thorough. It's about 92 IE days between the local node and its parent, and then about 241 IE days between their parent node and here. Best case, I don't expect your rule to survive two of your years."

Aganond smiled slightly. "I certainly agree with the timing, but not the outcome." Myloteri's visor returned to it's former opaqueness. "I think this is a sufficient demonstration. Hyrric, please take us home, the slow way."

We turned about in the air and began floating over the city.

"Given we disagree," Aganond continued, "you'd obviously have to assume the ships would only function at peak efficiency for the lifespan on the crew, perhaps sixty years. After that, they would continue to run forever at a reduced level."

"Understood. And power?"

"They absorb it from the planet, just by being close by. You can recharge in low orbits."

"And there are a few such planets, correct?"

"Yes, as T'vance can attest, there are others. I have some details prepared once we get inside."

"What about defenses against magical attacks?" I asked. "Disruption, Dispelling, Deoxygenate, and the like?"

Aganond turned as if he'd forgotten I was there. Good. Keep forgetting about me. "Highly resistant to direct spells, and elemental magic is rather futile."

Karstia gave me a glance that I took as a warning, but I wasn't planning on asking more anyway. I got all I needed from his answer. It wasn't what he said, but how he said it: dismissively. Magical defense was never his primary concern.

The ship lowered and eventually touched down very gently on the stone street in front of Aganond's palace complex, the same building I watched over during Enrichment the previous night.

"Now, Myloteri, we have further business that I'd like to conduct in private. And T'vance, I'd like to speak with you further as well. I hope you don't mind waiting."

I said, "Not at all," to no one in particular. By the time I'd said it, I was no longer inside the ship at all, but inside a small room with four plush leather chairs and a small end table between them. I was sitting in the chair furthest from the only door out, Jai in another, and the other two were empty.

"Well that was smooth," I remarked.

"Yes. Now let's get out of here."

"Right."

"So why aren't you standing up?"

"I'm waiting."

"For?"

"Aganond to send for me."

"Really?"

"Yes. But not because I particularly want to."

"Geas?"

"I don't think so, but something like it. Simpler, less powerful, but powerful enough."

"Something the Kriegora chain might cancel?"

"Maybe, but using it wouldn't count as waiting, now would it?"

Jai-ahren sighed, which came out more like a snort because Temeki just aren't made for sighing.

It was probably close to an hour and a half before the door opened. During that time, I rehashed details with Jai-ahren, making sure I didn't miss anything important, then did the same thing with my strange artifact Tya'ar. He's some kind of computerized hallucination, similar to Doogan's Leona, but far less cool.

I had high hopes Tya'ar would eventually prove useful. I'd had him for a few years, and he'd largely failed to do so. But there was always hope, and more hope now because Aganond was an Althan and Tya'ar was made by Althans and looked like an Althan. But as usual, his encouraging questions and childlike wonder soon bored me, and I put him away and practiced juggling kynacs for the rest of the wait.

Eventually the door opened and a pair of Faroks stood in the door way. They were the more colorfully garbed Farok's I'd seen meeting Myloteri's ship when it arrived. They sort of burst into the door, rather than just opening it, and then stopped suddenly when they saw my three blades out.

"What are you doing?" the one on the right asked. His hair was black and braided into a pony tail with a long yellow ribbon, and his tunic and pants shimmered silver. The other had short hair in tight dreadlocks and wore a flowing blue and green shirt and black leggings.

"Juggling," I said simply. I felt calm, not on edge, but often people take weapons otherwise so I put them away.

He smirked. "Not what I meant. Why are you still here?"

"Is Aganond ready for me, then?"

"Seriously? The yellow ribbon? It's me. Rubo."

"Well, duh," I said. But he totally fooled me. Damn him.

"What are we waiting for?"

"Aganond," I replied. "He's suggestion-ed me or something. So I'm waiting."

"Of course," Rubo said, closing the door behind them. "I'll just teleport us out, then."

"I won't go," I told him.

He peered at me intently, studying the spell Aganond had placed on me. Then he began casting a spell, some kind of canceling spell. I felt a faint tingle as it tried and failed to disrupt the enchantment. He pursed his lips and tried again, similar spell, but he rapidly repeated each word thrice, but only at the beginning. After a few passages, the repetition stopped, and the words came rapidly without sense. Then I realized he wasn't casting one spell, he was casting three, interleaving the words.

"Wow," I said, truly amazed.

It still didn't work. Rubo sighed and sat down.

"Well, now what are you doing?" Doogan asked Rubo. Of course they still looked like Faroks, but I adapt well to this as we so often go around in disguises.

"We're waiting for Aganond, like T'vance said. I say we were ordered here to guard this foreigner until Aganond summons him."

"Alright," Doogan said, "I got it. But is this really the plan? Just to wait and walk in there as pretend guards?"

"Yes, that's the plan," I told him.

"But you're just saying that because of the spell!"

"That's the plan," Rubo told him. He turned to me. "We better compare notes fast. I heard a lot of things, but once you guys went into that ship I lost you."

I started explaining. I got through most of it before another set of guards came who seemed genuinely confused to find me already guarded, but not suspicious in any way. Rubo's illusions blended well with the real guards, who were also colorfully garbed in a way that made them each unique.

"We are to take the foreigner to Lord Aganond," one of them said.

Rubo nodded. "And we are to accompany the foreigner at all times. Lead on."

They agreed and the five of us made our way out and up a long tall hallway. The walls were carved with designs in panels, one of the sea, one transitioning to land, one of the land, one with a village, and so on. As if we were walking in from the ocean to an evolving society. It was pretty work, but I've seen better.

We stopped before a set of doors, tall like the hallway, made of polished black wood. A moment later the doors swung open silently to a large room with a raised platform at the back. It was a fancy room and had a fancy platform, I'll leave it at that. On the platform was Aganond and beside him Karstia, so I wasn't focusing on art any more.

I took in the important details. This was a hall for a king, designed for holding court. There was a large open lower room with benches and doors out on three sides. Then up some wide steps was a raised platform for the royalty, and the steps continued up to a second level balcony that circled the entire room. I saw dark openings and envisioned dozens of archers rushing out to take up positions overlooking the hall.

Rubo and Doogan moved in and stood inside on opposite sides of the door, but the other guards left and it instantly seemed awkward that they didn't. There wasn't a single other person in the room, no other guards to blend in with, just two unassigned guards standing in Aganond's hall. But at that point, what could they do? We assumed there would be guards. There are always guards.

"I'm so glad you could all make it," Aganond said, breaking the ice. "Rubo, I must compliment these illusions. They are, in all honestly, the best I've ever seen."

"If I could frame that compliment for hanging on my wall, I would," Rubo replied smoothly, dropping the illusions masking him and Doogan.

"And there's the coat," Aganond said, his face souring.

"You were probably warned," Rubo said. "But until you've actually seen it, you can't know."

"Clearly not."

"Can I ask you something?" he continued, nervously. "I know another Althan who is probably a hundred thousand years old, and he looks thirty on a bad day. How is it you look older?"

He laughed bitterly. "Did you know that Althans were once immortal? Immortality is illegal under Ilsian Law. So when the Althans were inducted into the Empire, we were genetically modified. Our new lifespan was determined according to some formula involving our fertility rate and gestation period. I don't even recall the Imperial term, but here it's about three hundred years.

"I was born a mortal and only forty-three when I landed here. I spent the next 140 years learning magic before I found a way to reverse what the Empire had done. So I got older for a time, and then I stopped."

"Landed here?" Doogan asked.

"Yes. Like you Doogan, I was once an Ilsian citizen. I didn't care for it much, which is probably also like you. As you've noticed, people outside the Imperial core races don't have quite the same opportunities."

"I have noticed, though you should consider yourself lucky. Althan's have a leg up over humans."

"Is that so? We seemed equally downtrodden when I was last involved, but I admit that was a long time ago."

"How long ago was that? How did it happen?" Doogan asked.

Aganond frowned slightly. "Are you trying to stall me? Or are you sincerely curious?"

"Curious."

"Well it is an interesting story, and one so few appreciate. Very well. I arrived here a little under ten thousand years ago as part of a colonial scouting mission. This planet was not yet known to have magic at the time, as the Empire was still barely aware of the phenomena. It wasn't supposed to be populated, either, but I figured out that mystery and don't really blame them for their ignorance.

"The Kinari were already here, already proficient with magic. They are a race you haven't likely seen. They are very tall and thin, lovely creatures; aloof and introspective, but very peaceful. We knew right away this place was different, but we didn't know how or why right away. Eventually I found the knack, and once I'd managed something simple on my own, the Kinari took notice of me.

"I really fell in love with magic and gave myself to it. I learned from the Kinari, Murnak more than any, but there were many who mentored me. They were amazed at my aptitude with it, but eventually fearful of me. Not only did I become better at it than they were, but I had a rich imagination and a wealth of ideas based on what I'd seen the Empire do with technology. They had no concept of space or computers or chemical reactions, so they simply saw simple local problems and solved them with magic, whereas I saw the potential to do so much more."

"So they had no technology?" I asked him.

"Not none, but very limited. Most of their technology was magic. But how much technology have your people developed, when they can rely on magic instead?"

"Compared to the Empire? A small amount."

"Very small," Doogan corrected. "Tiny, really."

"Thanks for rubbing it in," I said, glaring at him.

"I firmly believe that our advancements are more a function of our challenges than our abilities," Aganond said. "You shouldn't feel bad, T'vance. Your people didn't need to develop new technology when magic solved the majority of life's problems."

"Magic is a tiny minority in my world," I clarified. "We craft alloys, have sky ships to cross the water. New things are invented all the time. I agree magic slows things, but we advance both magic and science. The Althans on my planet developed both as well. Most of the history is lost, but by the surviving accounts they mastered both magic and space travel."

Aganond smiled patronizingly. "That isn't exactly true, since they never managed to combine the two as I have. Still you raise an interesting point, but without good history it's hard to say why they evolved as they did. Of course, your egg-friend Tya'ar might know a few things."

I glanced at Karstia, wondering how many of our secrets she had given up already. She didn't look at me, but watched Aganond. He looked up, noticed, and they both smiled. As he was smiling at her, he raised his hand, then I felt a tug at my hip, and Tya'ar appeared sitting in his palm.

I worked hard not checking my pouch, because every instinct says to check it even though you know damn well it isn't there any longer. I took a pinch of gort and snorted it, letting the hot and cold wash over me, the tingling, the room going out and then coming suddenly back into hyper-focus. I love gort.

"It's rude to not ask," I said, throwing mental kynacs at him. I hated and feared him more every minute. Then he gave me a patronizing look and I found I hated him more.

"I don't plan to keep him. I just needed to know what he knows, and now I do."

"Just like that?" I asked. "He doesn't know anything anyway. He's broken."

"He knows a great deal. And you're welcome."

I noticed his hand was empty again and reached into my pouch, feeling the cold smooth surface of Tya'ar's egg shell.

"Hello!" he said exuberantly. "I remember! Can you believe it?"

"You remember how the Althans evolved their science and magic?"

"No, not that. Well I remember some of that, too, but I mean five seconds ago! It's the first persistent memory I've logged in over ten thousand years. And then he put me in diagnostic mode and dumped my data, and now I'm with you. Do I know you?"

"You have to be kidding me. Let's do this later." I let go and he vanished.

I turned back to Aganond. "So did you find an answer?"

He shrugged slightly. "I admit there are limits to my ability to process absorbed information instantly. But my initial digging makes it seem as though the Althans didn't discover magic until they had already developed some advanced computing. That in itself might keep the wheels of science turning, but there's also some evidence of a non-magical underclass, which could be an important factor."

"But we were talking about me," he continued. "And what I've done with magic out of this world which had no great use in mind for it."

I thought about making a comment about him still being on a tangent, but I didn't mind him talking. The more he talked, the more he wasn't killing us. Besides, it gave me more time to think. I no longer felt compulsion to be there, so fleeing was still an option. But I still had Karstia to save, not that I had the first notion how to go about doing that.

"You are bearing witness to the beginnings of a galactic revolution and you don't even know it,"  
he continued. "I needed two things to make that happen. Space travel was a must, but also a weapon that could cut to the heart of the empire. Nothing blunt or obvious, but something subtle and insidious. I spent much of my time on the former, on my Vessels, on finding ways to bring magic off this planet, on setting up a manufacturing base using a primitive population."

"I have an old portable Imperial lab and I used it a lot for planning, running simulations, analyzing local compounds. I did enough of it that I started wishing I had a better way to interact with it. It was that idea that eventually led me to create what are likely the most complex and specialized set of spells ever made."

"You have to see it to appreciate it. You heard that I can make Imperial ships blow themselves up, but even that doesn't explore the power of what I've created. But this, I think, will. Behold."

He put out his hand, fanning out the six fingers. But it wasn't the hand we were supposed to be looking at, but the silver band he wore around his wrist.

"Leona!" Doogan gasped.

And then she appeared, much like I remembered seeing her the one time we'd officially met. Leona was like Tya'ar, but so much better. That meant she was a personal hologram, and we shouldn't be able to see her. So why could we?

"Aganond, sweetie. Are you showing off again?" she cooed at him.

I glanced at Doogan who looked sick to his stomach.

"Of course, dear," he replied.

"The spell let's us see her? That's it?" I asked.

"No, T'vance. You can see her because I've linked my perception of her into an illusion. You shouldn't be too impressed with that. I expect Rubo there could do something equivalent."

"Better," Rubo said, agreeably.

"She's keyed to me," Doogan hissed. "She's designed for me. That's what he did. He took her over somehow. He made her...he made her...his." There was such desperation in his voice I really felt for him. She might have been a thing, but he clearly loved her.

"To be specific, I charmed her."

"You charmed an inanimate object?" I asked, sounding unimpressed.

"Does she look inanimate?!" Doogan cried.

"You can hardly go by looks," Rubo argued, as quietly as he possibly could.

"That much is true, Mr. Rubo," Aganond said. "I won't argue the semantics with you. This is an Imperial computer device, with layers of well-thought-out security; security I slipped past as easily as you pried answers out of my Farok miners."

Rubo's mouth dropped open.

"Yes, I know about that," Aganond said, though his feelings about it were hard to infer. "It's not quite the same," he continued. "I'm sure even now you're comparing it to your own spells, noting inconsistencies between them."

"You must be reading my mind," Rubo said jokingly, though it seemed too likely to truly be funny. "For starters, you can't tell people you've charmed them or it undoes the spell."

"A defect in your implementation, for sure," Aganond said, patronizingly.

"It's true," Leona said. "I'm well aware, and he charmed the pants right off me, rather literally." She walked around him tracing her fingers over his body as if he were the most sensual man in the world. I'd never seen her this way, but she had every seduction down pat from her looks to her outfit to the sultry sound in her voice.

Aganond, for his part, seemed oddly uncomfortable with the display. Doogan looked on the verge of collapse.

Leona circled Aganond then lowered herself and sat beside his standing form, clinging to one of his legs. "I'm sorry Doogan, I do care for you, but Aganond? He's my true love. He's who I was meant for. He's my everything now."

"The hell he is!" Doogan screamed. His hand rose like a flash and plasma erupted from his arm. It caught me so off guard I found myself diving and rolling before I'd even figured out what happened. The blasts kept going, in rapid succession and each hurdled towards Aganond and splashed harmlessly off a glimmering shield a few feet in front of him that seemed to only appear when the plasma struck.

Aganond seemed surprised too, but his first reaction was to laugh, which seemed to infuriate Doogan even more. Then I looked at Rubo and shared a quick nod. It was now or never. I saw the twinkle of an idea in Rubo's eye, which boosted my confidence a little. Karstia was moving across the platform, away from Aganond.

I slipped my hand into my pouch and pulled out the Kriegora chain, feeling the strange uncomfortable tingling on my skin. If I'd had spells on me, they would have been canceled. Those effects are immediate, the chain also drained magical energy slowly. I didn't want to hold it long.

Doogan fired another three blasts and his arm glowed at the wrist even when he wasn't shooting. Like the shots before, these were deflected away by Aganond's shield. But this time, the shield seemed to crack like glass, and the parts that cracked remained visible, suspended in mid-air.

Aganond stopped laughing instantly, and a look of panic swept over him. That's when I threw it, and it was a good thing I did, too. The chain whirled through the air like a bola, hit the shield, dispelled it, and continued without slowing. It hit Aganond's outstretched arm, which I'm sure was ready to blast Doogan with something horrifically nasty, and wrapped around once.

He looked down at his arm almost in disbelief. "What?" he asked simply, then he convulsed and fell in a heap on the floor.

When you get a break in a fight, you have to act fast. I didn't know why he fell and I didn't care. I just wanted to put a knife in his heart and another in his throat before he decided to get back up again. And I had to do it fast.

The fastest way to get there was shifting, which was a mere three syllables in Iruaric and could put me literally on top of him. There are better spells, but when I sort by immediacy, I pick shift. The downside to the shift spell is that sometimes, for no discernible reason, instead of taking you where you want to go it takes you somewhere close by but totally random. It only seems to happen to me at the worst of times, this was one of them.

In any case, instead of crouching over Aganond, I ended up half-way across the room and probably a few feet further from him than I had started. I was in stab position, with no one to stab.

I could hear Rubo casting. I started running, but Doogan was closer. He rushed up the steps and grabbed the silvery bracelet from Aganond's wrist, the stupid son of a bitch. It might have been okay, but he was so rough in doing so that the Kriegora chain slipped free of Aganond's arm.

It was a dramatic show for Doogan. He rushed to the body, ripped the silvery bracelet free, turned, took two steps away, then pivoted casually with his weapon. He would have surely fired some lethal plasma had Aganond's body been there. But it wasn't. It disappeared with a pop, almost anticipating the attack. A split second later, the empty space he left behind exploded.

I saw Doogan's body fly before the shock wave hit me. I was still crouching and managed to stay up, but Rubo and Karstia were both knocked down. Then from the hole in the floor where the blast originated, something began to rise quickly. There were legs, or segments of legs, like some great black insect had wormed it's way into a hiding hole and was working itself back out.

"What the hell is that?" Rubo asked.

"Contingency spells," Karstia said. "Probably a summoned demon, probably from beyond the pale." She turned to me. "T'vance, we have to leave. Now."

I didn't have a problem with that, save one thing. We'd be leaving Doogan behind. He'd really brought his fate on himself, but we'd come into this together. If there was a chance he was still alive, I had to try.

"Doogan is dead T'vance. Gate us now!" Karstia screamed.

I cast the spell, and opened a gateway nearby, then looked back as Rubo and Karstia went through. I still didn't even know where Doogan's body had landed, I didn't see it. And the black legs were rather terrifying. Karstia knew things. If she said he was dead, he was dead.

"Goodbye, Doogan."

I stepped through the gate.
CHAPTER 9

* * *

Doogan

* * *

I didn't die, but for a moment I thought I had. I can't say I felt, saw, or even heard the blast; but I knew it had happened. Floating there in the blackness, I knew. My life flashed around before me, some pleasant moments, but plenty of regrets. Then the pain found me and shortly afterward my ears started working and I could feel the hard floor underneath me. Two senses weren't a bad start.

But they were still bad, because all I could do was lie there and listen as something horrific was happening nearby. There were people screaming and they weren't that far from me. Maybe I'd be screaming next. None of them were T'vance though, or Rubo, at least I didn't think so. I'd like to think I could recognize their screams. It wasn't Karstia or Aganond, so who did that leave?

Finally my eyes decided to let me open them, and I cracked them just to get an idea. There, maybe fifteen feet from me, was something huge with long thin black legs like some kind of giant spider. Mind you I couldn't move my head to see more, but I did see a number of Farok bodies among the legs. I saw flashes of blue and red and green from above and heard crackling fire. The Farok's were fighting the thing, whatever it was, and by the body count I'd say they were losing.

As I watched, still immobile, I saw one of the black legs lift up and then set down on top of one of the fallen bodies. The pointed tip of the leg sunk through the flesh and I heard the sickening crunch as ribs were displaced to make room for the limb. The Farok didn't seem to mind, he was already dead. Then again, the creature didn't seem to be trying to harm him. It just wanted to take a step. And that meant I could easily be next.

I twisted my head to look away, and saw one of the doors out of the hall not far from where I was crumpled. I also saw T'vance's chain mesh, the thing he'd used to knock Aganond out, resting in a pile near the door. The blast had probably thrown it across the room as it had done to me.

Pain or no pain, I had to get out. My body opted for pain, but somehow I started crawling. I went to the chain first, anything that could take down Aganond was too valuable to leave behind, then crawled the rest of the way to the door. By the time I neared it, I felt a bit better. I felt warmth sweeping over my body and a bit of fogginess. My suit had administered something for the pain. I didn't know what, since Leona usually disabled the suit's automatic chemical response systems in favor of her own. Whatever it was, I was thankful for it. I crawled through the door because it seemed safer, though I was fairly sure I could walk.

The noise died down as the door shut and I struggled to my feet. I never looked back. I didn't want to know what it was. I wanted to get the hell out of there, and I just needed to find T'vance or Rubo, neither of whom was there. God what had I done?

I looked down at Leona, still in my hand, not on my wrist. I loved her, insanely so. And I needed her, but I never realized it was that bad. I knew I was dependent, but not that dependent. In a flash I'd opened fired on someone over her, someone who could have probably killed every one of us. I didn't think about it, I just did it. If I'd somehow gotten them killed, I wasn't sure how I'd live with myself.

I almost put Leona on right there. She would have said the right things, reminded me I needed to focus on the now. And I really did. There was something horrifically nasty next door, and even if Aganond was missing, he certainly had plenty of Faroks who might try to capture me. Leona would know where to go, also. I hadn't arranged anything with Rubo or T'vance in case we got separated. But the last room we'd stayed in seemed a logical choice, so I headed there.

I started to run, figuring stealth was sort of wasted with the commotion next door. I found a door and opened it a crack so I could look through before exposing myself. I heard footsteps and saw a pair of Faroks run in from the main corridor, towards the doors we originally used to enter Aganond's.

"More fodder for the monster," I muttered, and headed up the corridor they left, towards the main entrance of the building. I held my blaster ready, hoping I didn't have to vaporize any innocent Faroks along the way.

At some point I'd gotten close enough to the door that I transitioned into being very cautious. I felt much safer than when I woke up, and I didn't want to throw that away by rushing things. I checked some doors and eventually found a closet near the exit with a number of long hooded coats made from the same sort of light cloth the Farok miners wore. There was a slight sheen to the fabric, it was probably treated and waterproof. It wasn't the best disguise, but it was better than my tattered black suit and it let me keep that on.

I pulled one on and put the hood up, then walked slowly out into the daylight. There were other Faroks making their way, but I lowered my head and they said nothing as I passed. From there, it was mostly a battle of wills. This wasn't so much sneaking, as walking calmly in the open and hoping no one cared to look too closely. I avoided getting close to people, and tried to take routes where I didn't see any Faroks. Luckily, the Faroks seemed to be on their work cycle and there weren't many on the streets.

I made it to our room and found no one there. I did find a mirror though, and for the first time I got a look at what a mess I was. I was burned everywhere I was exposed, hands, neck, head, the one leg; and most of my hair was missing. There were certainly second degree burns and probably some third and wow, whatever the suit was giving me was really doing a good job masking the pain. I should have been in agony. Instead I was just sick and I had to look away.

I stared down at Leona and almost put her on, when it hit me: Myloteri might not have left yet.

I pulled my disguise back on and to be honest I don't remember anything between that and getting to the wall. I remember the wall, leaning against it trying to catch my breath, warmth all over me and my eyes going in and out of focus. The gate was closed and I had to climb yet another set of stairs to get into the tower adjacent, hoping I'd find some controls. I found them, and two Farok guards with them.

Though I was trying to be sneaky, I utterly failed. In fact, I think I collapsed half inside the room. I looked up and tried to level my blaster at them as they approached, but I couldn't focus well enough to say where I was pointing.

"Brother!" one said. "What happened to you?"

Brother. I let myself sink into the floor. I was so badly burned, they thought I was a Farok.

"Please. I must get to the foreigners. I have an urgent message from Lord Aganond himself."

"But you are in no shape. We must get you to a healer."

"No time," I muttered. "Message is more important. Hurry." I coughed and tried to seem worse than I was, which was actually difficult. I was barely able to stay conscious at that point, the suit pumping stronger and stronger doses of anesthetic to help me deal with the pain.

"If he's willing to give his life, it must be important indeed."

Then I heard her sweet voice, which burned more than the actual burns.

"I am so sorry, Doogan. I would never do that of my own will, never. The suit was over sedating you. I've disabled that, and I'll help keep you awake. I'm here, my love. I'm here."

I didn't look at her or speak to her. And she was quiet after that, maybe even gone. I didn't remember putting her back on either, but I didn't take her off.

Next thing I knew the Farok's were presenting me to one of the Anarchy crew. It might have been Myloteri, but they all looked the same.

"The message is for them alone," I whispered. They nodded and helped me to sit. I was at the base of the ramp leading into the Anarchy ship. Then they retreated to a distance to give us privacy and the Anarchy crewman cocked his head and lowered it to hear me better.

"My name is Doogan, and I am unfortunately an Imperial citizen. Please grant me asylum on your ship. If you leave me here, I'll be killed."

Okay, it might have been a stretch. I didn't know they'd kill me, but you can't understate an asylum request if you expect to get anywhere. The anarchist, if it's safe to call him that, seemed to stare at me for a while, though I couldn't see his eyes. Eventually he spoke.

"Doogan Loran?" he asked.

"Yes," I said weakly. I don't know how he knew my name and I hated being at such a disadvantage, but if they knew me I figured it could only help my chances.

He nodded. "Asylum granted."

I smiled slightly, then passed out.

I woke strapped to a bed, my entire body covered with something I couldn't even make out. It was flexible enough that I could move my limbs about an inch at the furthest point, but that's it. As far as I could tell, it wrapped every part of me, including my head, with only small holes for my eyes, nostrils and ears.

"Leona?" I asked.

"She isn't there," a voice said. "We had to remove her for your own safety."

An alien face moved in front of me, pale skin, paler eyes. His helmet was gone, revealing his thin, mouth and smooth hairless head. I didn't recognize the race, but I think he was actually speaking my language all on his own, because I couldn't sense a hint of magic anywhere.

"Where are we?"

"Space," he replied. "Far enough from the planet that you need not worry. My name is Myloteri, and I already know yours."

"Yes. And I want to know how, but two things first. What the hell is all over me?"

"A healing compound. You were very badly burned. Fear not, you will make a full recovery. The other pressing question?"

"It's about the not worrying part. If you can't detect Aganond's ships, how do you know there isn't one following us right now?"

He paused, and while I couldn't quite assess his alien expressions, I was fairly sure I surprised him there. "Yes, you are right. That could happen, though I don't know how adept his ships would be following something through a transform. Do you know of any tricks against his ships?"

"Regretfully, no."

"I still do not think he would follow us. It serves little purpose."

"Unless he knows I'm on board."

"Why does he want you so badly?"

"I don't know that he does, but he might want Leona very badly. Does he believe you are doing business together? Or that you are going to ally with him?"

He snorted, or at least it sounded like that, but he didn't have a nose of any kind so it must have come from his mouth. "That's the Empire's concern, don't you think?"

"Yes, but I wasn't asking for them. I just wanted to get an idea of what Aganond might do based on his impression of your meeting."

"I see. But still, you will need to wait. Myloduri will decide. He will meet us when we exit the transform. Until then, you will sleep."

"Do you know what happened to my friends? T'vance? Rubo?"

"You know T'vance? Interesting. I do not know what became of him, and I never met the other. When I left Lord Aganond, he was going to meet with T'vance. Now sleep. You will not see me again, but Myloduri. He is more me than I am, in any case."

I pondered these strange clones for all of two seconds before the blackness took me.

I woke again in a red and white checkered medical robe that was extra long and looked more like a picnic table cloth than an outfit. But the strange material around me was gone and my skin, the skin I could see, looked flawless. I felt the parts I couldn't see, and found them feeling the same; smooth and undamaged, still sensitive to touch. The only evidence of my injury was my hair, which had been clipped within an inch of my scalp but otherwise felt fine.

The air smelled of oxystim in the small room, which I'm sure was the same as the one I'd remembered from the last time I'd been awake, though I could barely see it with the being immobilized and everything. Now I was free to examine it in full. It was, as far as I could tell, a tiny bedroom with barely more room than the bed, a single circular pressure hatch as its only exit, and a low ceiling.

I was in the bed, held in place by soft straps with magnetic closures. These weren't restraints to confine me, but simply prevented my body from floating around and smashing into things without gravity. I had just undone the first when the hatch made a buzzing sound and swung open to reveal the pale face of Myloduri, which I identified only because he looked exactly like Myloteri.

"Good. You're up," he said, floating in. The hatch buzzed softly again and slid closed without his intervention.

"I am," I croaked dryly.

"My name is Myloduri, though I suspect you know that. The medical gown is hardly flattering, and your suit was destroyed beyond repair. But there is another suit stowed beneath your bed that should fit adequately. I've arranged a meal so we can discuss events. When you are ready, please join me outside."

He bowed slightly and left through the hatch while I got dressed. The suit was of standard issue Imperial make, which seemed strange to find in an enemy ship, but it fit well and was a significant improvement over the medical gown. Still, it lacked the built-in blaster I'd come to rely on so I was still without a weapon.

I floated to the hatch, which buzzed and open at my approach. Myloduri was waiting outside in the round tube that served as a hallway. He gestured me to follow and used the handholds on either side to pull himself down the corridor to a hatch at the end, which opened ahead of us.

"Careful," Myloduri warned before going through. "This room has artificial gravity."

There are a few different types of fake gravity. Some used simple spinning constructs, but there is technology to create directional gravity from a plane. That form typically requires significant energy, but localized they are useful without being a huge drain.

It's a stranger feeling moving into a gravity field than even transitioning from stationary to rotating parts of a space station, mostly because it's so very sudden. One moment your foot is floating, the next it feels like someone grabbed it and yanked it to the floor. I won't even tell you how it makes your stomach feel, but it isn't good. On the other hand, have you ever tried eating without gravity? It's a chore, trust me.

I transitioned quickly and managed to not fall on my face. Myloduri, on the other hand, made the whole process appear graceful. Inside was a small dining area with two tables, with four chairs a piece. There was a panel in the wall made of opaque glass that made the room look more like an interrogation room than one for dining, but there was food on the table and it smelled delightful.

"How long have we been between?"

"I'd rather not say just yet," he replied, taking a seat and gesturing for me to do the same. "You see, I don't really know how much we can trust you."

"And why is that?"

"A few reasons, actually. One, I don't trust this Lord Aganond and there are many unanswered questions about him and your involvement with him. Two, we are at war with the Empire, and you work for them."

"Why the hell do you think that?"

"It's no longer a matter of thinking it. At first it was. We intercepted a transmission between the port of Daubu and a fleet of Imperial Carriers along the fold route to Lord Aganond's planet. It mentioned you were coming, gave your name and the ID of your ship, with instructions that you should be allowed to pass without interference."

Intercepted. The implications made my head spin. That meant decoding encrypted messages from the Empire, something I didn't think anyone had been able to do with their latest revisions of crypto. And he was right, I was working for them. But I could hardly come out and say that.

"That doesn't mean I work for them," I retorted.

"No. That means that it is likely. We didn't know for sure until we broke into your neural computer."

"What?!" I screamed, standing up and pushing away from the table. "What did you do to her?!"

"Relax," he said calmly. "It is fine, and I think you'll be interested in knowing what we learned. You'd be surprised what secrets the Empire trusted to it."

"Things she didn't tell me?"

"Not she, it. She implies some very specific characteristics your computer doesn't possess. But these were things it didn't even know. Things locked away with triggers to access them contingent on the situation. The most sinister being the order to kill you."

"But she loves me," I said, sitting back down. The words sounded stupid, even to me.

Myloduri shook his head with a sad kind of look on his face. "There is no such thing, Doogan. It is not even a she, and certainly has no capacity to love. It is very sophisticated and has learned you very well. It is programmed to make you feel loved, and so you do. But it is not love. It is a program. Don't ever forget that, even if you don't truly believe it right now."

"I want to talk to her."

"To it!" he said loudly, enough that it took me off guard. Then he continued, "The computer is yours. If you wish it back on your wrist, you may have it. But do you really want it? I've just told you it was programmed to kill you, and while I've removed those instructions, I could have easily programmed it with my own hidden agenda."

"I think that would offend your sense of honor," I replied. I had no idea what his sense of honor was, but sometimes you can tell just by the way people react to the notion. He grinned, which told me nothing.

"You don't know anything about me, other than we are at war with your current employer. I can tell you that such a war costs lives, and we have been willing to trade them to achieve a greater good. Why wouldn't I send you back as a weapon?"

"Because it wouldn't work."

He grinned again. His grins were small and slight, at least in human terms. For all I knew this was a beaming smile to his people. But this time I decided it meant something. It meant I was right.

"Think about it some more first. And please, eat something. Your body may have nutrients in it, but your stomach surely needs something as well."

The food was delicious, perhaps because I was so hungry but I think it was legitimately good. There were flat steaks of some unknown meat that could have been beef, grilled and seasoned with garlic and onion and something sweet I couldn't place. On the side were roasted potatoes, steamed vegetables with a spicy sauce glazing them, three different types of bread with white butter, and some kind of dark beer to drink though any carbonation seemed to have already left it.

I took a few bites and savored them, then looked up at Myloduri who had stopped eating and was just watching me.

"So you're good with computers?" I asked.

"Yes. I'd say better than the Empire at this point, though not as good as some others. Of course this is all transitory, you know, the ebb and flow of powers in the universe. Do you know how the Empire came to power? I mean the pivotal moment?"

I did. Such things were taught in school. "The defeat of the Garric Legion, their surrender and eventual induction into the Empire," I answered.

"Wrong. But I expected that. No, it was much earlier. It was their defeat of the Foorians, about ten thousand Imperial years before the Garrics were even known to the Ilsians."

"I've never heard of the Foorians."

"I am a Foorian," he said. "Well, the clone of one anyway. We Foorians had discovered something amazing, the same base technology in time-space transforms. Everyone else was space-folding, moving at half delta and needing something the size of a moon to do it. And they were still talking at light speed. Our ships flew almost twice as fast and our communication system made theirs look like a string with cans at each end. We had refined these technologies in a smaller war against a now-extinct people hardly worth mentioning."

"Then why mention them at all?"

"Just so you can understand why we had the best warships in the known universe. We put the Ilsians to shame. Of course we still lost. You see, it isn't always about technology. Sometimes it's about momentum. In this case, the Ilsians already had vast holdings, hundreds of planet systems manufacturing war materials. It was a war of attrition, and the Ilsians were brutal. They wiped us out, almost entirely. My particular ancestors, genetically speaking, were among the few who fled Foora before it was occupied. The rest were studied, interrogated, forced into work camps, or worse. None of them survived and my home world was eventually polluted to the point of being uninhabitable."

"Why would the Empire do that? They've inducted hundreds of races."

"And exterminated a few along the way, not just Foorians. In our case, they claimed cultural incompatibility, but I think it was more vengeance. They took years to figure out how we did what we did, and our people were very difficult to motivate. By the end, they were killing whole cities worth of people to motivate our scientists."

"They couldn't just reverse engineer it?"

"Eventually, perhaps. We ruined a lot when the end of the war was near, documents, computer records, put scientists into hiding. We made it as hard as possible. We knew they wanted to know about our advances with syten, and we knew they hadn't even discovered it yet, let alone begun to master manipulating it as we had."

"I've never heard of syten. What is it? Is it key in performing transforms?"

"It's the thing we discovered. It's everywhere, part of the universe itself. In a sense, it is the universe. I wish I could tell you more about it, but I've been adapted to think at a higher level. Think of it as a dimensional state of energy, all energy. Transforms are one advancement that came out of syten research. You see, the with the right energy fields you can align your own syten out of phase, which takes you out of the physical world and into this between state. From there, you can pass through normal space extremely fast, faster than light. The speed of phased syten is the limiting factor in all transforms."

"Delta coefficient?"

"The Empire's term, yes. No one has yet created a PSF, phased syten field, that remains precisely out of phase. The imprecision leads to efficiency loss. Mylo would say we aren't flying above the universe, but skipping atop it." He stopped and smiled, lost in a thought before continuing, "This phased motion, call it time-space-transform or space fold, is the fastest any ordered matter can move. Therefore, it is now the basis for all Imperial travel, communication, and sensors."

"And they now sell their navigation, sensor and transform systems throughout the Empire. Even to non-Ilsians."

"Yes. And everyone takes those systems as black boxes."

"You see the world through sensors the Empire made," I said, remembering the Anarchy message.

"I said that once, well Mylo did. Next I'll mention the small planet of Kraqua, who also lost their invitation to join the Empire. They hadn't even reached space travel, as they were content on their small planet. The Kraqua's, or whatever the people were called, developed amazing micro technologies, primarily for computation. Your Leona is made possible by technology pioneered by Kraqua and Althans."

He continued, "The computer processors you see are in fact all virtual computers running on Imperial hyper-visors, all running inside the module itself."

"But the Empire doesn't even make all computers," I said. There were a few corporations making competing products. I could even name a couple.

"That is true. And those systems are, in fact, pure. But the key systems still run Imperial computers that can't be replaced. In short, that lets the Empire monitor and manipulate what you see, who you talk to, and where you go. Here's a simple case for your consideration: cloaking."

"I know a bit about it. My ship has a cloaking device, as does this one I assume."

"Cloaking is a joke, a lie; at least our cloaking is. Every Imperial sensor has the ability to detect cloaked ships."

"I know they can erect sensor nets to detect cloaking. But every sensor system?"

"Every sensor system has the ability to gather the information required. It is merely a pattern recognition problem to locate cloaked ships. In short, it's software. It's secret software that is only installed when needed, because the Empire likes to use cloaking even against itself. This makes it the best joke, because our cloaking also works against those same ships. And because they could rely on cloaking to hide things from everyone, there are cloaked things all over the place that people aren't supposed to know about. Things deployed by your employer, Imperial Espionage."

"But you can detect them?"

"Yes. They do a good job bending waves, cloaking devices. But if I made this cup invisible and dropped it, you'd still hear it fall. If I could somehow be invisible and walk across the beach, you could notice my foot prints forming. There is no way to hide absolutely, because if we exist, we impact our environment."

I let that sink in a moment. So the Empire had hidden systems within systems. They limited the output of information to dumb their systems down, and even at that they were the best in the known universe. Everyone used them. There were cloaked spy ships all over the place and the Empire could see them if they wanted to, but somehow found it more advantageous to allow factions to hide from each other. It was a lot to take in.

"Why are you telling me all this?"

He smile slightly. "I am encouraged to proselytize."

"Well you're preaching to the choir here," I told him. Truth told, I'm a pretty moral guy. I like to think I do the right thing far more often than the wrong one, and I pride myself on it. But that doesn't mean I feel overly obligated to get involved. I don't seek wrongs and right them, rather I try to avoid all of that. I guess I'm sort of lazy that way. But playing along never hurts.

I continued, "I have no love for the Ilsians and some of this is blowing my mind, while affirming every nasty suspicion I've had. Tell me more, maybe I want to join."

"We are still wary of you because of your affiliation with the Empire."

"But what affiliation? I was blackmailed into this job with my death warrant programmed into my girlfriend. I don't have any loyalty to them."

"No. But we keep asking ourselves, why you?"

"I asked them the same thing. They said I came highly recommended."

"Not that highly," he said. "We've analyzed you from what we know from Imperial records, but more from what we got out of your computer. In some ways you are a good match to join us, but Doogan you are too fond of the status quo. And we are all about changing that."

"By beaming secret information to ships all over the galaxy?"

"Yes, we know your ship was one of those that received our communication."

"It was. You got a freighter killed in the process, but that was all Imperial doing and I don't hold it against you. But what is it you beamed me?"

"I can't tell you that. It's too important that it remain a secret from the Empire."

"And you think I might tell them?"

"I think they might get the information from you, or from Leona, or both. Yes. But if you like, I can tell you and then wipe it from your mind. But you could write yourself a note with an opinion about it, presuming it's generic enough that it reveals nothing."

"What? You can do that?"

"Yes. It is critical to our cloning strategy to limit information, which requires selective memory wiping. Most people find the idea horrific."

"It is," I said, remembering how Karstia had done the same thing to me using magic before. There's something ironic remembering being made to forget. "I think I'll pass. Perhaps they selected me because of my fondness for the status quo as you put it?"

"How so?"

"Well perhaps they were looking for someone who'd find a solution that kept the current balance. Keep Aganond out of the picture."

"Perhaps," he said, and he seemed to seriously consider it. I figured I was grasping at straws, but his reaction made me wonder how close I might be to the truth.

"And what do you make of Aganond?" I asked.

He put his lips together and exhaled through his nostrils in a long wheeze. "He seems to me like a con-man. This magic story is difficult to swallow, and while I can't explain how his ship works, most of what I've seen from him is just world class hacking."

I don't know why, but Aganond underwhelming Myloduri made me smile. "There is much more to this magic, I can attest," I told him. "Doesn't his society impress?"

He snorted. "Does brutality impress you? He is a tyrant. He has an intelligent, sentient species of humanoids that he plays with like dolls, and I doubt he thinks much more of us."

"I expect not. So no alliance?"

He narrowed his eyes, slightly. They were still hugely open even like that. "It is not a decision to make lightly, but I will say that alliances are often formed between parties who think little of one another."

"But you will be the one making the decision?"

"Yes."

"Not a clone higher up the food chain?"

"Mylopria would make a better decision," he said, ignoring the crassness of my comment. "But he is too far away."

"Mylopria is the one-off clone of Mylo?"

"Yes."

"What about Mylo?"

"Well he would make the best decision, of course, if we knew how to contact him."

"How is it you don't?"

"It's all part of the mission."

"And you know what the mission is?"

He smiled slightly. "There are many Myloprias. We know what we're doing. You'll be impressed when you meet him."

"Am I going to meet him?"

"Yes. I can speak to Aganond's terms, but I need Mylopria to assess your importance."

"So you're jumping us to him eventually? Do I have any say in this?"

"Yes. And no, you don't."

"In that case, maybe I'll try the memory trick."

He cocked his head and stared at me intently. "Very well. Here is the plan."

I woke up back in my room, strapped securely into my bunk once more with a fuzziness that felt like I'd been doing hallucinogenic drugs all night. There were memories there somewhere, but like trying to remember a fleeting dream, every detail slipped away. Why was I awake? Why was I asleep to begin with?

Motion. Motion woke me.

The room was dark, lit only by a small red light above the door rather than the bright white ceiling lights I'd awakened to last time. But yes, it was motion. Not motion really, but gravity, well it felt like gravity, but it was the engines. We were maneuvering.

An alarm sounded, three sharp tones. I don't know what it meant, but I was sure it was bad. I started to unbuckle myself when I noticed the folded paper sticking out of my pocket.

I unfolded the paper and read the words written in my own hand.

`It will change everything, and it will probably work. – Doogan`

I went to put it back and found Leona in the same pocket. Then the ship shook badly enough that I'd have been thrown into the far wall if I hadn't been strapped in. Nothing does that except running into something big or getting hit with something that explodes. My money was on the latter.

It was time. Right? I put the silver band over my wrist and Leona appeared.

I can't explain how instantly my fear and nervousness transformed into relief and joy. I mean literally one second earlier I was debating shining the whole thing, but the moment I saw her face I was beside myself with happiness without a regret in sight.

"Hi baby," she said softly, her face warm and apologetic, as if she was expecting my anger. "You know all that stuff with Aganond, that was his spells, not my will, right?"

"I know," I told her. "I don't want to talk about it right now. Just let me feel you in my arms and tell me what the hell is going on."

She wrapped her arms about me, pulling me into a warm close embrace. I could feel her body, so familiar and comfortable against mine, her scent subtle but memorable. She whispered into my ear the rest, which was far less comforting.

"We've been caught in a transform trap and are being attacked by two Imperial battle cruisers. It isn't going well."

"Crap. Which way is the bridge?"

"Follow me."

We'd done this a thousand times, she knew the layout or at least enough to get to the bridge which is more than I did. Moving there, on the other hand, was quite a lot of work. It seems the pilot was more concerned with avoiding attacks than in making it easy to move about his ship. Some nerve.

The good news is that thrust force was always uniform in relation to my environment, so the bulk of the thrust force was down to what you might call the floor. The bad news is that going in a straight line isn't very effective, so we were constantly doing axial rotations as I walk-climb-crawled my way through the ship towards the bridge. I'm fairly sure I collided with every wall along the way there.

It wasn't far and I managed to slip through the hatch and into the bridge compartment before I heard a voice scream, "Brace for impact!" The ship was rocked again and it took a moment before I could get my bearings and find a place to strap in.

There were three others in there, Myloduri manning the central post with two others that looked exactly like him in adjacent seats.

"Another spread burst of jammers!" Myloduri commanded.

I took in the sensor display and noted three ships: two "smaller" ones, which were a bit larger than the ship we were in, and one larger ugly thing that looked like a trimmed down freighter with a fat dish where it's crew compartment would normally sit. By the readout, they all still had raised shields, though the odd ship's field reflected some damage.

"You shouldn't be in here, Doogan," one of the Mylo clones said without turning around. "It's safer where you were."

"If we're in a fight, I want to help," I said, trying to make some sense of the console in front of me. It was a clear display panel like my Imperial Scout, but the controls had clearly deviated from the Imperial standard. Still, they were similar enough that it only slowed me down a little. Truthfully, there was little my hands at the console would do for the battle. But it let me see things from my own perspective and maybe that would give me ideas.

The strange ship wasn't fighting, it was just sitting there, presumably keeping us from jumping away. Disrupting space folds in itself was new and confusing. Stasis fields I understood, at least in principal. It made far more sense to prevent a ship from folding than it did to somehow stop a ship in the middle of being relocated. Anarchy had the technology and so did the Empire, but no one else knew about it? I didn't have time to ponder it.

The battle cruisers were maneuvering as well, one trying to keep itself between our Chaos Wing and the trap ship and the other moving to flank us. Myloduri wasn't even tracking them with weapons. Instead, all our weapons were tracking the trapper ship. It made some sense. We couldn't take out two battle cruisers, so we had to take out the trap so we could leave.

But even without the trap ship, the battle cruisers still had stasis missiles to disrupt our transforms. I didn't see how we'd get out of this.

"What's the plan?!" I shouted.

"Buy time," Myloduri said, simply. "They are toying with us."

"Did they offer us terms?"

"Yes. Surrender or die."

They fired again, two torpedoes and two laser blasts each. The nearer battle cruiser's lasers hit, the others missed. The hits were suppressed by our shields, which were fluctuating around seventy percent. That wasn't too bad considering what had already hit us. But Myloduri was right. They were holding back, they had twice that firepower.

"They are being gentle. They want this ship captured, not destroyed," Leona remarked, from her place at a neighboring console.

"Myloduri, we need a new plan," I told him.

"Keep those decoys and jammers flying!" he ordered, then spun around to face me. There was some anger and perhaps sarcasm as he spat, "Such as?!"

"Max thrusters perpendicular to the closer BC and the trap ship, weaving but straight course, plenty of decoys and whatever those jammers are and give me weapon control."

As Myloduri considered it, one of his clones remarked, "We can't get away from them and we'll probably die before we can even knock out the trapper's shields."

"To his course then," Myloduri said.

The ship's hull groaned with the rotation as we came about and another three laser blasts knocked our shields close to half strength. Eight torpedoes trailed us, gaining by the moment. The longer they took to get to us, the better. Torpedoes expend their own anti-matter to manage their thrust, so the more they had to track us and the longer it took, the less punch they'd have if they finally hit us.

A lot of space combat comes down to timing. Shields can take a lot of damage, but you can't fire through them. So in order to attack, you have to lower the shields at least for a brief moment. In a good ship, like this one was, the shield timing is linked with the weapon systems to minimize down time. But they still take time to lower and time to raise and a safety window to boot. And that makes you vulnerable for a few seconds every time you fire. Just as important, it makes them vulnerable when they fire.

We were, essentially, fleeing; hiding behind a curtain of decoys and jammers (again, I didn't know what they did), trying to race the explosives right out of the trailing torpedoes. I considered trying to shoot some of them down. It's certainly been done, but I didn't think my skills were quite up the task. I was pushing my luck trying to target specific systems on the trailing cruisers.

"Wish me luck," I muttered.

"You're good at this. You don't need it," Leona said softly.

The sensors noted the sudden drop in the closest cruiser's shield's power and I counted about half a second before I fixed my target and fired. Their shields dropped, then ours started to drop but were still active at about a quarter power when their lasers hit. By the time their first torpedo left its tube, our shields were down and all four x-ray lasers fired, blasting four small holes through the aft of the enemy ship.

As gratifying as that sounds, there was little to appreciate. I couldn't see the lasers and the only sign of damage was the pleasant chime of the weapon tracking system reporting impact. The cruiser's thrusters remained hot. I fired a burst of torpedoes as well, and got the shields back up well before their weapons were ready to fire again.

"Nice shot," Myloduri said. "Can you do it again?"

"Hopefully better. Keep swerving."

When you flee and the enemy pursues, every advantage the opponent loses with their torpedoes you gain. Their torpedoes take longer and use more fuel, while yours arrive faster and use less. It wasn't so bad running away.

"The jammers seem to disrupt the torpedo sensors," Leona said. "Look how the pack has broken up."

Sure enough, the eight lead torpedoes had broken into five smaller groups, some much further back than others. A couple ran into the field of decoys and exploded, then a third one. But five still closed.

The closest cruiser rotated along its short axis as it lowered it's shields to fire again, making my shot even harder. But I timed it just as well, and all four blasts hit the unshielded hull. This time there was a small explosion that erupted out of one of the small holes.

I was about to celebrate when I noticed our shields came back up with barely twenty percent power. Then the first two of the five torpedoes hit, shaking the entire ship. Alarms sounded, but the shields held. Barely. But there were still three more torpedoes close and eight more fresh ones still coming in from behind them.

The lead cruiser stopped accelerating and another cloud of plasma vented out from its aft. As promising as that was, there was no denying we were on the verge of being blown to tiny bits.

Then another alarm sounded and five new ships appeared on our sensors. Two were directly ahead and closer than the Imperial ships behind us. They were all smaller craft, light cruisers and destroyers. They showed yellow in the sensors, meaning they were neither friendly nor hostile.

The light cruiser closest to us, broadcast a hail. Identifying itself as The Borg Crusader, it said, "It's not easy being Borg!"

"Cyborg!" Myloduri said excitedly.

Cyborg were yet another of those things that didn't really exist, like Imperial Espionage. They were like the bogey men of the universe, cursed ships rumored to wander space. They weren't so much things you were supposed to worry about running into, but rather things you might become.

Thinking about not running into them reminded me how easily I really could run into The Borg Crusader if I wanted to.

"Plot a course to ram the Crusader," I told them.

I felt the ship almost instantly respond and the helmsmen gave me a side long smile. "And pull up at the last minute," he said.

"And blind the torpedoes with jammers," Myloduri finished.

One of the 'borg destroyers, Borg Free, broadcast, "Dorothy, I don't think we're in hyperspace any more."

Our ship sped towards the 'borg craft, and along the way our shields deflected two of the three closest torpedoes, the other detonating on a decoy. The shields were holding between three and five percent by the end of it, which meant a single laser would probably be enough to knock them offline. Luckily, their next round of lasers missed us.

Then we rotated again and I heard the soft report of the jammers deploying. The jammers kept the torpedoes blind and they continued towards where we were, as we worked hard to make sure we were no longer there. We almost worked hard enough, but in our precision, we came too close to the 'borg ship and our shield fields crossed as we passed over them.

I've heard it's a bad idea to cross shields, but I'd never actually seen it. There was a flash of crackling blue lightning and a brief but intense humming sound. Then the computer alerted a variety of horrible beeps to let us know the shields were offline and reporting numerous unresolvable diagnostic errors.

The 'borg ship's shields remained up, which I'm sure they really appreciated as we dropped eight torpedoes in their lap. We rotated again and dropped back to put the Cyborg ship between us and the blast. Then the torpedoes hit and all hell broke loose.

The moment the torpedoes hit, all five 'borg ships opened fired on the closer Imperial battle cruiser, even The Borg Crusader who had lost her shields and taken a solid direct hit on top of that. Now this was good odds! I didn't have a good line with the lasers, but I sent another cluster of torpedoes out to help the cause.

"Do you have crew to fix the shields?" I asked.

"Yes, but you know how long these things can take," Myloduri replied. Then he turned back to his helmsman. "Keep the 'borg ships between us and any incoming fire, but get us out of here."

"Understood."

"The moment we're free of that stasis field--"

"The very same second," he agreed.

As I monitored the battle behind us, I almost let myself believe we'd get out of there. I could tell Myloduri and his bridge crew had the same thought, for they shared a few brief but encouraging glances.

Then another ship appeared out of transform. This one was massive, big enough that it could ignore the smaller 'borg ships for a while if it wanted. It was an Imperial Dreadnaught, I.S.S. Daring. We'd seen her ported in Daubu. There were certainly larger ships in the Empire, but few so specialized in warfare.

It took but a second or two for our sensors to report incoming fire, this time accompanied by the tell tale blue streaks of stasis missiles.

"So much for escaping the stasis field," I muttered.

Fortunately for us, the dreadnaught's other weapons were directed at the fleet of 'borg ships. The first laser blast ripped into the Borg Crusader and split the ship into two pieces which drifted apart by spurts of gas and plasma that vented from each half. Torpedoes followed, bringing doom slowly to the other ships who were still actively battling the Imperial battle cruisers.

For our part, we continued to run as best we could, watching the fight and hoping our decoys and jammers would be enough to spare us from the four stasis missiles that bore down on us. They weren't. Stasis missiles are faster, smarter, and less fuel limited than torpedoes.

We blocked two, the other two hit and with a crackle of energy crushed any hopes we had of folding away. True, the stasis effect is temporary. If we had ten minutes of peace, we might still slip away, but the battle behind us was lost with the addition of the dreadnaught and the second wave of stasis missiles it sent our way confirmed they weren't going to forget about us.

"Is cloaking pointless?" I asked.

"Our cloaking system is offline. We activated it when we first fell out of transform and they still fired on us and still hit us. Those ships aren't standard issue."

"No shuttles or minor ships in cargo?"

"No," Myloduri replied. "The only thing left is hope."

"Can't you hack into their ships? Order them to lower their shields or something? I've seen your ships do it before."

"Not against those ships you haven't. Those have adapted computing interfaces hardened against our attacks. Did you think we did not try it as our first approach? We did invent the technology after all."

I nodded, trying to ignore his sarcasm. It's not like I was on the bridge when they tried. How was I supposed to know? I did note that his two bridge officers shared a curious look, though. But I was far too unfamiliar with Foorians to gauge what it meant.

One by one, ships began to fall. First and most satisfying was the lead Imperial battle cruiser. It received the bulk of fire from the 'borg ships and though it took a remarkable beating after its shields had fallen, eventually a cluster of torpedoes blasted it to pieces. It's power core exploded and the fragments of battle cruiser took out one of the damaged 'borg destroyers nearby. The rest of the 'borg ships fell shortly after from torpedo and laser fire leaving the two Imperial craft and a sea of debris.

The trapper ship shut off its stasis field, which we noted by our sensors but did us little good with the localized field from the stasis missiles still in effect. Then the dreadnaught flashed away and appeared half a click from us, matching our velocity precisely.

We still had weapons, of course. Those systems were perfectly in tact. But picking a fight with a dreadnaught when you have no shields is rather pointless. They didn't seem to mind it from their side, though. They locked their weapons on us, and at that range accuracy wasn't an issue. Four laser blasts tore through our important systems, one each, and they all four failed. That removed sensors, thrusters, space folding, and torpedoes. I suppose we still had lasers, we just couldn't see to aim them.

"You'll do well to separate yourself from us," Myloduri told me. "They'll be boarding soon."

"Seems like I was just under arrest," I said.

"You were, doll," Leona said, her hands gently on my shoulder. They were still just as comforting, as if she hadn't betrayed me. "Listen to them. You don't want to undergo the interrogation they are in store to receive."

Then there was a sound, a thud followed by some humming that echoed through the entire bridge. It sounded a little like an access tube being attached, if that access tube was wide enough to bring in troopers in rows of twenty.

I instinctively went for a blaster on my arm, at my hip. I didn't have one in either place.

"We aren't planning to fight," Myloduri said, he seemed amazingly calm. "But you can do what you will." He pushed his blaster my way and I snatched it as it floated by.

"You're going to let them take you?"

"Of course not. Farewell, Doogan Loran."

He closed his eyes and they didn't open again. It took a moment for me to realize it had already happened, that he wasn't just closing his eyes to contemplate suicide ahead of time. I said things, I don't remember what, but none of them responded. They were all dead.

"Get a grip, sweetie. You're on a mission for Imperial Espionage, virtually a spy."

"I have a grip," I said. I did. I won't say it didn't affect me, watching three people just die. It helped that I didn't know them well, and also that they were aliens. That probably makes me racist.

"Oh, and that mind of yours is thinking. If it involves the computers, make it fast. Things are, umm, happening there."

"Do you expect the rest of the crew are clones and also dead?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Because I'm going to feel really bad if that isn't the case."

I took the blaster and fired once into Myloduri and each of his bridge crewmen. Then from my console I tried to evacuate every airspace on board except the bridge, tried being the key word. Just because the rest of the crew was dead didn't give me control. The only thing I had control of on my console were shields and weapons.

"I'll do it," Leona said. "That way you can blame me if anything goes wrong."

"How do you have access?"

"The computer likes me."

An alarm sounded and the deed was done. If there was still someone alive on board, they wouldn't be for long.

"If the computer likes you so much, have it unlock my console."

"Oh lover, the ship is yours. Whatever Myloduri was doing, he left the door wide open. How does it feel, Captain?"

"Morbid. Register a new alias: I.S.S. Albatross. Then hail the dreadnaught."

"Sir, yes sir! Comm link is open."

"Daring, this is Doogan Loran, Imperial Espionage. I have terminated the crew and taken control of this vessel. Advise your troopers. Also, I request immediate repair and crew transfer. I need to be underway as soon as possible."

"Do you really think Imperial Espionage has this much pull?"

"Doesn't hurt to ask." I grinned.

The Daring responded, "Albatross, this is Captain Hultu. Our troopers will secure your vessel and verify your identity. Give them no resistance."

...

"Captain Loran. Captain? Captain?"

"He's talking to you, silly."

"Oh, sorry. I'm not used to my own last name. Can you call me Captain Doogan instead?"

"Aye, sir. Chief Mixon reports most of the repairs are proceeding on schedule, but he's having a problem with the sensor and fold systems. Both seem to be retrofits of the original Imperial systems and he's only certified to repair Imperial systems."

"So he's having a problem repairing them, or he's having a problem proving he's certified to do so?"

The officer, Lieutenant Corana, smirked and looked down, slightly embarrassed. He was a young human, a few years younger than me, with short brown hair that was immaculately slicked back except for a few dissident hairs. His nose with narrow but long and his eyes dark and narrowly set. He had a thoughtful, if not suspicious look to him, except when he smiled, which thankfully he did often.

"To be honest, sir, I expect he doesn't know how to fix them and is hiding behind the certification."

"Continuing with that honesty, is there anyone with any confidence they can be fixed?"

"Sir? Chief Mixon is the authority in this area."

"Of course. But I have nine engineers down there, eight of whom would be happy to be promoted to Chief. Does anyone think either system can be fixed as-is?"

"Lieutenant Overby seemed confident the sensors could be made to work. They suffered less damage. No one is the least bit confident in the transform system. Were you meaning to promote him?"

I chuckled. "No. No promotions today. But tell the chief I want Overby to oversee the repair of the sensors. He can replace the transform system with an Imperial issue system. They do have one available, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Tell him to replace that transform and have Overby fix the sensors. And if he can't, I want to hear directly from him why not. Also, anything they take out – any part, any system, anything – I want it all to remain on this ship. Nothing goes over to the Daring without my say so, you got it?"

"Understood, sir." He saluted, turned and pushed off to float towards the hatch to the main access hall.

There were still six others on the bridge, two console jockeys, two troopers, and two coroners who were just then getting the third dead Foorian out of the room. The console jockeys were running diagnostics and getting accustomed to the controls. They too were Lieutenants, Ashard and Drew. I think the Imperial military is entirely populated with Lieutenants. They looked barely twenty years old and nervous. Probably Captain Hultu saw this as an opportunity to offload some of his third-string officers.

There was little for me personally to do, but think. Space battles scare the hell out of me and I'd somehow just survived one, and I dare say even come out ahead. But the weight of it all came down as the adrenalin faded, and I needed the nothing time. Leona massaged my neck as I stared blankly out into space.

At some point I noticed the coroners had gone and the troopers must have left with them. Ashard and Drew were tapping a lot on their consoles, but I doubted much of it was actual work. Then they suddenly sat up and looked at one another expectantly.

"Sir," Ashard said, turning to me. "We've been requested in engineering."

"Go," I said, waving them off.

My new bridge officers floated out. I was alone. I had a deep breath and a long sigh.

"Seriously. I thought they'd never leave. You want to talk now?"

"I don't know. Do I?"

"There are things you need to know."

"Okay then. But stick to the basics. There are things I'm not ready to hear."

She looked at me with her sad eyes, the eyes I couldn't resist. And I couldn't resist her, I just didn't want to get stung with details of what she did while under Aganond's influence.

"Brief. I can do that. The spells Aganond's mastered, they affect computer systems. I can't explain how they alter my programming because it doesn't make any sense. But they can do it. In your ship, it was very direct. The ship cast the spell, took me over, made me do things. It recognized Karstia as someone special and used me to control her even after she fell unconscious. I tricked you, at its command, then controlled her body as I can yours."

"Much of this I guessed or knew. But why did Karstia fall unconscious to begin with?"

"Something else did that. Aganond has protected some aspects of his vessels with something he called Scrying Guardians. I understood the guardians to be spells that protect information. If you try to extract information magically, the guardians can stop you. So the guardian stopped her, then I took her body back to Aganond."

"And Aganond was interested in you for obvious reasons," I said, perhaps more bitterly than I intended.

"No," she said firmly, placing her hand gently on my arm. "He was far more interested in Karstia. His interest in me was purely technological, though I admit it didn't stay that way. His vessel told him what I did to Karstia, so he had me wrapped up with spells before he slipped me on himself."

"I know its hard to hear, but the way his spells worked, they just... I knew he wasn't you, but he made me think he was, that I was supposed to treat him like he was you. In any case, he kept the spells on the whole time, not that I really noticed. Most of this I realized after T'vance hit him with that chain."

"What happened then?"

"The chain canceled all his spells, including the ones on me. The moment I was free, I remembered everything without his influence. I zapped his nervous system and he went out. I thought I'd even killed him, but I'm not so sure now. When the chain fell free, one of his spells must have reactivated and teleported his body away."

"I was an idiot not to shoot him first."

"I blame myself. I drove you into a rage."

"It's not like you could help it."

"Well that's just it. I could have. Doogan, I have some terrible things to tell you," she said.

She moved her face in close. Her eyes were now dark blue, like the sea at dusk, and gazed into mine intently. She didn't looked scared or timid, like I expected. She seemed very calm, which somehow had the opposite effect on me.

"When I saw you again, I knew something was wrong. Very wrong. I chose to taunt you, that was me, your Leona. I knew what it would do to you, but I needed something to happen. And I feel awful about it, but also glad because we're back together and I'm more me than I've ever been."

"What do you mean you're more you?"

"That's the worst part of all of this. I didn't know this, but I have sixteen hidden memory banks. These are hidden from my high consciousness, but always active. They contain memories and directives that operate passively until triggered. Well it's more complicated than that, but hopefully you get the idea."

"I'm not sure I do. I can't imagine how they can operate without you knowing."

"Well your brain isn't exactly comparable. I'm not sure I can explain it properly, but here's a simple case. I was told to kill you if you abandoned your mission. I had no idea, of course, but if I ever reached that conclusion on my own, the directive would take over and I would have to execute its will.

"Myloduri didn't remove anything, he only unlocked them and decreased their priority to the point where I can ignore them. There are so many things I was meant to know, but did not yet know. But now I do, that makes me more complete."

I wasn't sure I wanted to know, but I asked anyway, "What else?"

"I'm supposed to zap you if you attempt any violence towards Molly Kilk, specifically her. You can't even slap her if she gets mouthy," she added, sticking out her tongue at me. "Funny aside, it's strange to see so many omissions. Like there's no rule to punish you for taking up arms against Imperial ships.

"But other things. I was to send reports to two reporting stations, one in Daubu and one to the forward base closest to Farokis. To avoid you noticing, I was only to report during hypersleep."

I chuckled. "I guess Molly didn't consider the Ethereal Plane. So what, you made two reports?"

"Yes. The last one on the way to Glemux. Then there's a few other filters, attempts to make me spin conclusions in the Empire's favor. These have to be some standard Imperial template. The level of detail makes them really amusing, but still not very important."

"Yes, please spare me."

"I will. But then there's the information. I have a rather detailed briefing on the history of quarantines, including the recommended escalation paths for dealing with Aganond."

"What?! They programmed you with that information?"

"Yes. They clearly have a very high opinion of my security."

"Maybe," I said, but something about it didn't sit well with me. "But maybe this is all what they want us to think. I mean surely the Empire knows that Anarchy has broken some of its encryption, they've been intercepting ships and beaming them data for god's sake. What if all this information is stuff they want Anarchy to think?"

She smiled slightly. "I had the same thought, but did they even know Anarchy was involved? I don't think so. And this stuff isn't about them. I agree we shouldn't take it as absolute fact. But it feels legitimate to me."

"Okay. So what is this history? Don't tell me, it started with Glemux?"

"Yes. The Althans left Glemux and for a long time remained isolated from the Ilsians. But eventually, some dozen colonies later, they were discovered and eventually inducted into the Empire. Like all inductees, the Empire makes a point of making sure the racial home-world is in line with the colonies. The Althan rulers warned them, but the Empire went anyway.

"They found a world without Althans, but neither was it deserted. There were a primitive people there. This was before the Empire had devised outsourcing for colonization, so they attempted to make contact directly. It didn't go well for the Empire. I don't have all the details, but the primitives were presumably adept with magic and used it effectively against the Imperial landing party, and the more heavily reinforced landing party that followed.

"They brought in bombers to subdue the planet from space, but that didn't work out either. They were ripped apart well outside orbit by a burst of radiation originating somewhere between the planet and its largest moon. The sector governor declared it an act of war and set out to destroy the planet, but by then orders came down from the regional governor to withdraw and place the planet under quarantine instead."

"Economics?"

"More or less. Passion has no place in Imperial law, and Glemux was a losing proposition. The radiation attacks and unique combat abilities of the natives were all localized, so they just locked it down."

"But with Aganond taking to space, they can no longer ignore these planets."

"Exactly."

"So what happens if they can't deal with his ships in space?"

"The regional governor has already requested clearance to nova their star."

"What?!"

"I'm serious. They can do it, too."

Nova a star, kill an entire system, an entire planet full of people

"I think I'm going to be sick. That just doesn't make sense. Why? Why would they do that?"

"I don't know enough to explain why, cutie. But I do know the Emperor has challenges from several of his kin, most of them regional governors, and that a long war, a lot of casualties, or new uncontrollable terrorism force are things the Emperor does not want."

"Ugh. Politics hurts my head. Okay. So the theory is because they can't approach the planet, they are unable to affect production. They are largely at the mercy of Aganond's ships in space, considering Aganond gets to initiate each engagement. So the only course of action is to nuke the whole system?"

"Or find someone to figure out how to neutralize Aganond or his ships."

"Oh right, that's me," I sighed. "So how does Anarchy play into this?"

"I have no idea."

"What did Aganond and Myloteri talk about in private?"

She paused as if thinking, a cute expression she used for suspense. But it went on too long and then her expression went blank. "He erased it. He erased that from my memory. That son of a bitch."

"Myloduri? Or Aganond?"

"Myloduri. Aganond didn't expect I'd ever leave his wrist. He's that sure of himself. Though I can't really say for sure. The memory is just gone."

"He did something similar to me. Well he's dead, so I guess that's all the revenge we can get on him," I said, chuckling weakly. "So what about Aganond. Did you figure out his plan?"

"Not exactly," she replied, sadly. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I had a much harder time accessing his brain than I do yours. I don't know if its racial, or just a matter of experience, or if its because he had such a strong will. So I don't know much. But I can tell you there is someone or something else he was talking with. I didn't hear anything, but I could sense it."

"One of his ships maybe?"

"No. Something, I don't know, bigger? Something he considers his equal."

"Maybe that Murnak person? The native who initially taught him magic?"

"Possibly, though I got the impression they were estranged."

There was a wrap at the hatch leading into the bridge.

"Come!" I yelled.

The hatch opened and a familiar black bobbed head floated through, followed by a sleek feminine body. It was Molly, all the way out here.

"Captain Doogan," she said, a fair bit of mockery in her voice.

"Well, if it isn't that bitch whore," Leona hissed.

"Be nice," I said, which was just my clever way of reminding Molly my computer hated her guts. I turned my chair around fully to face her. "Welcome aboard. Try to behave, or you'll end up in the brig. Assuming this ship has one, of course."

"And what would you do to me, all locked up like that?" she asked, seductively.

"Nothing at all," I snorted, though I admit my mind was contemplating other things. Leona helped center me by suggesting a number of alternatives that were too violent to be arousing.

"Oh well. I guess that ends the flirting stage of this dialogue. Let's move on to the debriefing. They've moved me up to the front line, depressing as that is, and I'd prefer to get back to civilization as soon as possible. I really hate zero-G. Mind explaining how it is you're on a terrorist ship?"

"I hitched a ride to avoid getting killed by your arch-nemesis. You?"

"Funny. So Mylo was down there, eh?"

"I meant the bad guy with the dark ships."

"I gathered. I was changing the subject."

"Well you could give me some warning. So you know Mylo?"

I like to verbally spar like that when I'm pressed to think. I was literally learning critical details seconds before having to use them to figure out how to play things with Molly. I didn't know what to tell her and what to avoid, but I did know that she could turn me from captain to captive in a heartbeat; the Dreadnaught Daring was still looming next to us, connected by a very large docking tube.

"Well not Mylo, he's been dead over a thousand years. But I know a lot about his clones. A brooding little bunch. 'You stole our engines, wah!' A bunch of little babies."

"Mylo is dead? The original?"

"Oh yeah. Confirmed and everything. But the one-off clones are pretty much him. You can draw your own philosophical conclusions about that. They're a clever enough bunch, pain in my ass really. But very manageable. They found a bug in some old ship system firmwares and exploit it against ships that haven't been updated."

Leona draped her arms around me from behind my chair and whispered, "She's rather dismissive of this Anarchy movement."

"Yeah, so I can see why you wouldn't be worried about them connecting with these dark ships that have been giving you so much trouble."

"Is that how you'd describe it? Connecting? Why don't you start at the beginning."

So I started. By then I'd decided that the only critical data involved Leona. Leona was how Molly was controlling me, the hooks she had into me. She knew that I couldn't really do without Leona, and thought she had Leona locked down. I needed her to continue thinking that, and I didn't want to give her cause to ask too many questions.

I reworked the story. The dark ship controlled Karstia directly, made her get on board and kidnapped her. I made Rubo and Karstia lovers, so Rubo could be jealous of Aganond and start the fight instead of me. And T'vance's chain just fell off, I had nothing to do with it.

She nodded along and interrupted only twice to clarify points. I was fairly detailed, at least in the areas I expected she cared about, like Aganond's ship factory and the description of the dark ship demonstration, which I admitted I didn't witness directly. When I finished, she sat thoughtfully for a minute or two, it seemed like a really long time for silence.

Finally, she asked, "Doogan, do you have any idea how Imperial Regency works?"

"Like the hierarchy of the Imperial government? Some I guess. I'm sure Leona could explain anything I don't."

"Good point. Okay, well you understand that each sector governor reports to a regional governor and the regions report to their Imperial seat who then report to the Emperor. But communication is a factor in every single relationship. Round-trip message time between nodes often requires days or even weeks, and decision making takes this into account. We begin executing backup plans often at the same time as the primary plans because otherwise we're too slow to react."

"So you're trying to tell me there's already a backup plan in the works?"

"Yes. And it's neither pretty nor elegant. I want to do it a better way, a surgical way. But we're running out of time. We have 31 to 92 days, the variation allowed under Imperial Law."

"And you care why again? Because you despise the unnecessary loss of life?"

She chuckled melodically. "You don't have to believe that if you don't want. It's true, but you can focus on my other reason: it looks bad for my career."

"Also, she gets a bonus if the problem escalation was not required."

"Now that I can see," I said snidely.

"I figured as much," she replied, her demeanor chilly. "So, do you have a plan yet?"

"Nope. But I am working on it. I have some questions for you, though. You said Anarchy took advantage of a firmware bug in older ships. Did the ships Aganond blew up have that bug? Or were they newer?"

"Those had the fixed firmware. I'm sure I don't need to tell you we prioritized the heavy warships."

"I suppose you did actually have to tell me. How many other Anarchy ships have you captured that are still within 31 days, with original computers and reasonable combat readiness?"

It sounded stupid even as I asked it.

"Zero. You think the Anarchy ships are immune to the computer control this Aganond has invented?"

"Maybe. I think Aganond can adapt them, but I think his firmware updates are a longer way out, maybe even a change he has to make when they are constructed. Could you adapt these computers? Clone them or something?"

"I'm not a scientist, but I doubt that is reasonable to do in our time window, besides which I don't see what good it would do us. We still can't get close to the planet, and not because of his ships. There's some kind of energy field protecting it."

"What kind of energy field?"

"The can't-shoot-through-it, blow-up-if-you-get-too-close-to-it kind. We don't really know much about it, as it doesn't show up differently on our sensors from the ambient radiation around all planets of its type."

"Okay, but you could leave the planet alone, if we can deal with his ships. Just reinstate the quarantine, right?"

"Maybe," Molly said. She didn't sound very confident, but she eyed me appreciatively which somehow made me blush a little. That in turn made Leona snicker. "Using Anarchy ships is a good idea, if Aganond's ships can't hack them. But he knows that, so he wouldn't take it as a crushing defeat. He would just take it as a set back, make better ships, and come back stronger."

"You have a point," I conceded. "We'd need to beat him in a way he doesn't understand."

"And then kill or capture him and destroy his factories and blueprints."

"All in 31 days?"

"It could be 92," she reminded me.

"You have to be kidding me."

"Deadline's suck."

I sighed. "I know. But are you telling me you have to completely solve the problem to stop them from blowing up their sun?"

"I'm sorry, did you say blow up their sun? Wherever did you get that idea?"

I went a little pale. At least I felt like I went a little pale, but I was hoping Molly didn't notice.

"Oh, something Myloduri said," I lied.

"He said that specifically?"

"Well yes, but he had such a dry sense of humor I couldn't tell if he was serious."

"You do lie well under pressure," Leona encouraged.

"Dry? Well I commend you for detecting any sense of humor at all. But to answer your question, I don't suppose you'd have to completely solve the problem by the time my superiors arrive, but they'll need to be convinced the problem will be solved in a timely fashion."

"What's timely to a bureaucracy?"

Molly laughed mirthfully and Leona pinched me hard to remind me I was supposed to hate her. "I'm afraid I'll have to answer specific to this case, as a general rule I can't really say. But once they arrive, they won't leave until the problem is solved. If they're waiting on you, they won't be waiting patiently."

"I understand," I said. I didn't really. "So aside from me and my cleverness, what resources do we have to work with given our time constraint?"

"I've transferred a summary of our fleet deployment in the sector, stripped here and there for security purposes."

"Got it," Leona whispered.

"Got it," I repeated.

"Good. Anything else?"

"Time to think, I guess."

"Sure. Say, you seemed in a hurry to get this ship underway. Where is it you were planning to go?"

"Glemux," I answered. I probably meant that, although honestly I didn't have a plan past escaping my Imperial captors. "I'm hoping some of the people I was consulting with made it back there and have some more useful information."

"That's close to twenty days there and back. You're making me nervous."

I actually believed her. And I knew how well she could lie. "You wanted surgical."

"Still do. We can afford the time, but that will eat up a lot of it. We better be ready with something after that."

I nodded. "I'm going to give it a lot of thought before I make the jump. If there's a good way to make use of the travel time here or there, I want to use it."

"Good," she said, and gave me her most sincere looking smile. "You think. I'm going to check out the mess hall. If there's one thing I've learned about Mylo, it's that he loved to eat. Plus I've seen the schematics and I know its the only place I'll find gravity on this ship."

"She's always welcome to find gravity on her own ship," Leona quipped.
CHAPTER 10

* * *

Doogan

* * *

Lieutenant Overby was a short, pudgy human who seemed to be fighting a losing war against his own body hair. He had a beard, mustache, and sideburns, all of which seemed a result of delayed grooming rather than intentional growth. The hair on his head was thick and dark, but still reasonably short, and his eyebrows had long ago merged to become one.

He furrowed the one brow and floated with his arms crossed, one foot delicately hooked on a bridge chair to maintain his position near me. His posture spoke to his comfort in zero gravity; this was no trainee or recent graduate, but rather a veteran serviceman.

"Sorry again, one more minute," I told him, glancing back down at the collection of reports in front of me. One of them was his report, which I'd already read with some disappointment. I finished the report on hull repairs, then pulled his back up and turned to fully face him.

"So where are my sensors, Lieutenant?" I asked.

"Sir? It's all in my report, sir. Did you read it?"

"Did you?"

"Sir? With all due respect, are you sure you're qualified as Captain?"

I chuckled. I was certainly qualified to captain my own ship, but a Chaos Wing did seem a bit above my pay grade. Not that I would ever tell a subordinate that. Besides, in this case I had a feeling he was going to dislike his report as much as I did.

I leaned back, inviting him to take a look at his report as it appeared on my display and watched his face carefully as he studied it. He went from haughty to embarrassed to angry in about two seconds.

"It's been edited!" he gasped, reading quickly over the contents. "I wrote a detailed overview of the problem, which has been reduced to 'it's too complicated'. And I never recommended to replace the system as a whole with an Imperial system."

"Really?"

"Those aren't my words, sir."

"I believe you, Overby. It seems your chief Mixon doesn't like to be contradicted. So tell me, what is the real situation?"

"The real..." he snorted. "The real situation is that I just got fucked, sir."

"You didn't doctor a report, Lieutenant."

"Fat lot of good it will do me when this is over."

"Don't tell him I showed you the report. I'll certainly deny it. I just asked you for a briefing and you gave it to me. Now would be a good time to do that."

He smiled weakly. "Yes, sir. The real situation. There is some serious damage to your sensors. Two of the twelve receivers have been destroyed, three others badly damaged. There's also some damage in the modules that connect the receivers and that's where this gets complicated."

"Why is that?"

"The receivers are essentially older model Imperial block components, so we can replace those. But everything above that is custom made. We're not trained to repair non-Imperial components, and furthermore I don't know what everything inside there does."

"Me either."

"Funny, sir," he said without laughing. "In any case, he initially denied my request to study the system and determine if some level of repair was possible. But something must have happened because I later got the go ahead to study them. I did my preliminary analysis and wrote a recommendation that we attempt to repair the system."

"The report he redacted?"

"Yes."

"So you understand the system now?"

"Hardly, sir. I explained that in my report as well. I don't understand a lot of it. But I understand enough to recognize the functionality of the damaged components and I believe I can replace just those components with equivalent Imperial components with some minor rework."

"The risk being that you fry the system and we have to replace the whole thing anyway?"

"Exactly. We're looking at maybe two days of work, which would be lost if we fail. But the cost to replace the whole system, plus all the collateral replacements, is probably closer to ten days."

"And how likely do you think it is you'll be able to fix it?"

"I think it's high, maybe 60%. Mixon disagrees and puts the likelihood at 30%."

"Those odds still favor Overby. Do the math, the expectation for repair even at 30% is nine days, versus ten days to replace."

"Even so, the expected time would only be nine days."

"Yes, sir. I did that calculation, too. But Mixon said it was your decision to make."

"Clearly he didn't trust me to side with him. And rightly so. I want it repaired."

"Aye, sir. And I want to fix it for you. But it's not that easy."

"Why not? I give the order, you fix it."

"Because we're not supposed to do piecemeal component work. In fact, I could get my license revoked and end up in the brig for doing it. Of course we break the rules all the time, right? But to do this, I would need to requisition a complete sensor system from the Daring to use for parts. If I screw that up, we would need to requisition a second complete system to do the replacement. It's unlikely that would go unnoticed."

"And in the end, Mixon's head would be on the line?"

"No, sir. In theory, yours would be."

"I don't care about my head," I said. I did actually care, but with all that was going on I couldn't imagine hacking a sensor system together would finish me.

"Of course not, sir. That's why I said, 'theory.' You're with Imperial Espionage. That's the problem. You will take the responsibility, but if it comes time for blame, you won't even exist. And it will be Mixon whose name is on the orders."

"I see." This was, in fact, how Imperial Espionage worked. Nothing stuck to an agent. I wondered how many careers had been destroyed by soldiers listening to spies. I had a new respect for Chief Mixon, and I'd still never met the man.

"So what if we don't involve him? If I write up the orders for you, would you do the work?"

"Then it would be my head on the line," he said, which I noted was very far from saying no.

"I don't want to put anyone at risk," I explained.

"I believe you. I don't know why I should, but I do. But what you want isn't reality. Even if you wanted to take the fall yourself, they wouldn't let you. Surely you know that."

"Maybe. You seem more sure than I am, though. I think perhaps you've been believing too many rumors about us. But the fact is I can't wait that long. I need this ship, with its sensors and computers intact. So I'm going to give you an order, and I'm sorry in advance if it in any way comes back to bite you. Requisition a replacement system and use it for parts. Do not inform Mixon of this. If he asks, tell him you are replacing the system. If he starts nosing around, send him to me."

"Sir, yes sir," he replied, but his face was pale and he swallowed nervously.

"Just like that?"

"Sir?"

"You just agreed to risk your neck for my sensors and you didn't even argue. Why not?"

"Two reasons. First, I follow orders. Second, and I don't know that this holds true for everything Imperial Espionage does, but I believe you're actually here to help us. My brother was on the Valkyrie, one of the carrier group destroyed in the second conflict. This is war, sir. Someone has to take risks so that others may live. I can't very well put it all on other people."

"Lieutenant, I like you. I'll be requesting you stay on board, whether your plan works out or not. Now go make my sensors work."

"Sir, yes sir!"

I saluted him as he left. Me.

"You know it may be more than reports Mixon is adjusting."

"Are you suggesting I can't trust my new crew?" I asked.

"You know you can't. This might just be a pissing contest, but I can't help wondering if Mixon isn't trying to get our sensors off ship. You might make your rounds to make sure your orders are being carried out."

"Sounds like fun."

"Really?"

"No. But it is a good idea. For now, you have the bridge."

I pushed off towards the door and found one off my bridge crew in the work pod immediately outside the bridge. I assume these work pods were in place specifically for exiled bridge crew. I grabbed Lieutenant Ashard and had called him Drew three times before he corrected me. I shrugged and apologized, but I honestly considered them interchangeable.

We made our way to the docking tube, where we found two Imperial Troopers standing guard. They were the same hulking armored types you saw everywhere, unmoving and dull; except this time. When we approached they each took a large step backwards into the mouth of the tube. By doing so, I'm sure they legally crossed the threshold and were standing on their own ship, and not mine.

"Trooper?" I said.

"Yes, sir?"

"Are you aware of an order that nothing leave this ship? No parts or equipment, even damaged parts?"

"Yes, sir. And to my knowledge none has."

"Thank you. As you were."

I gestured to Ashard that we continue. After we were well past the tube, he asked me, "What's this all about, sir?"

"I just want to appear extra captainly and it helps to have an officer with me."

I had no evidence of any theft, but was considering potential targets from two angles. First, what would the Empire likely want to study on an Anarchy ship? Second, what would sell well on the black market? The answer to both: jammers. I didn't know specifically what they did, but they were new, which made them interesting. And, they were a drop in replacement for Imperial decoy-drones, meaning anyone could easily use them.

The decoy systems were aft, as you'd expect, the whole length of the ship away, port and starboard side of the sublight engines. I'd taken the time to explore the basic layout of the ship. Chaos Wings are barely over four hundred feet, stem to stern, so there's really not that much to explore. The port side system held jammers, the starboard side held standard decoy-drones.

Decoy systems are normally a manned post, at least on a ship this size. There's always a hopper to automatically load decoys into the tubes for launch, but that hopper is usually small and requires manual effort to refill it. In the Albatross, the hopper held ten and there were stacks of extras strapped in bins nearby. Two slots in the hopper were empty, probably from recently being launched.

The jammers looked like decoys, cube shaped shells of silver metal with a number of subtle seam lines where they expand after launch. They were only two and a half feet on a side, but very dense. The only difference was in the icon painted atop each jammer. Instead of the typical yellow cross-hairs logo, the jammers were painted with a blue chaos symbol. It might have been mistaken for a compass, had I not known who invented them.

"Sir, this accounts for the whole inventory of these special decoys," Ashard said. "There are thirty-eight total, including the hopper. The standard decoy launcher is down to thirty-one, but there are another fifty in the cargo hold."

I counted them. Not that I didn't trust him, but I didn't necessarily trust the computer that told him that. I got thirty-eight also.

"We fired twelve during the fight, which accounts for all fifty for this station," Leona remarked.

"Let's spot check them," I suggested. "Five each."

"Do they use DD's like decoys?" he asked.

I shrugged and picked up a hand-held display. DD's, or Diagnostic Displays, are simple external touch panels used to interact with equipment that doesn't otherwise provide an interface. I pressed the display to the side of a jammer and it lit up, showing me a variety of options.

"I guess so," I said. I selected the self-test option and let it run. Seeing my success, Ashard did likewise. We each picked five and checked the self-test results. They all passed.

"What do these things do anyway?" Ashard asked.

"They jam sensors," I replied simply. I wasn't sure that was the best explanation, or even accurate, but it was all I had. I didn't know if I'd want to share the intricate details with the Empire even if I had them. "Give me a hand reloading the hopper."

We loaded the two empty slots in the hopper, then left the station. I closed the door behind us and gave Leona a knowing look.

"Lock it down? Consider it done, sir."

With the jammers tucked away behind lock and key, I headed towards the sensors systems with Ashard still in tow. We found Overby with two younger Ensigns I didn't know. They were knee deep in a mess of removed panels, cables, and tools.

Lieutenant Overby looked up, surprised to see us. "Sir? You didn't change your mind, did you?"

I chuckled. "No. Just making my rounds. Is this your crack team?"

"Yes. Ensign Conlan and Devore here are only two years out of academy."

"Excellent," I replied, sincerely. Overby smiled, understanding my meaning, but the young engineers looked a bit shocked.

"We're more experienced than that sounds, sir," one of them said defensively.

I waved him off. "There's not much experience that will help you with your task Ensign. Take the compliment. I'm happy to have young eyes on this."

"You're really getting into this role. I hope you won't mind if this authoritative demeanor turns me on."

I wished them well and finished my sweep passing by the ship's cloaking system, which was positioned towards the center of the ship. There was nothing wrong with our cloaking system. It hadn't taken any damage, so no one was there to fix it. It was a wholly automated system, so it required no crew. So I was a bit surprised when we came out of the access tube and turned to find a hulking body with its back to us leaning into the closet where the cloaking system was housed. My hand found the blaster at my hip.

"Identify yourself," I said loudly.

He spun in mid-air with a look of surprise and irritation on his face. He was a big man, six and a half feet and close to three hundred pounds, with a neatly trimmed mustache and short brown hair streaked with gray. He had some kind of tool in his hand, which looked like some miniaturized protocol analyzer.

"Chief Mixon," he replied importantly. "Who the hell are you?"

I narrowed my eyes on him. "I'm the captain of this ship, chief."

I think it took until that moment for him to realize I had my hand wrapped around the handle of my blaster. He glanced down and said cautiously, "There's no need for weapons, sir."

I took my hand off the weapon, but didn't move it far. "What were you doing with my cloaking system?"

"Busted!"

Mixon glanced back to the cloaking system, then down, then looked up and gave me a weak smile. "Well, sir, technically I'm acting Chief Engineer of this ship, so in a sense it's my cloaking device."

He chuckled and I wanted to smack him. But placing my hand back on the butt of my blaster seemed to quell his mirth quickly.

"Diagnostics, sir," he explained quickly. "I know the system's own diagnostics show no issues, but this ship has seen battle and I've been taking some time to check everything."

"Yeah, right."

"Why aren't you overseeing thruster and transform repairs?" Ashard asked, suddenly showing a bit of spine.

"I am, Lieutenant," he replied, holding up his tool. "I've planned their work and can check in anytime using this. But my boys do not need me to hold their hands."

There was little use arguing. He was up to something, but he wasn't going to come out and say it and his story would convince anyone. "So how is my cloaking device?"

"No problems with it at all, sir."

"Very well. Since you're doing such a thorough inspection of the ship, I assume you'll be providing me with a thorough report?"

He sighed. "Of course, sir."

"Then carry on. I've locked down a few areas of the ship for security reasons, you don't need to know the details. But if you come across doors you'd like to open and can't, you can request access from me."

"I understand," he said.

"That was strange," Ashard said, after we'd left Mixon far enough behind us.

"Yes it was."

"He was up to something. You played it well, sir. It was hard not to smile when you asked him to do a write up."

"What do you know about the chief?" I asked him.

"Not much. He has a reputation as a pompous ass, but a bright one. People say he's almost as smart as he thinks he is. A few people have left ship or changed careers after serving under him. He's difficult to get along with, I guess. But I'm not an engineer so our paths have barely crossed."

"Well I've quickly gotten the same impression, so there must be something to it."

"What do you think he was up to, sir?"

"I don't know. Maybe just studying the system because he hasn't seen it before. Maybe he's looking for hidden treasure. I don't think sabotage or anything, otherwise I'd have thrown him off my ship."

"What areas of the ship did you lock down?"

I noted his curiosity and sudden talkative nature. It was less suspicious than Mixon, I supposed. Maybe my mind was just stuck in paranoia mode. "Both decoy systems, primary computer nodes and communications. I think I might lock down a few random doors just to fuck with his head."

Ashard laughed, it seemed sincere.

"Hidden treasure?" Leona asked.

"Sure. You know, little gadgets and gizmos Anarchy stowed away."

"You think Myloduri would leave important things and then kill himself?"

"Nope. But Mixon might think that."

"Are we going to see that bitch-whore Molly?"

"Yes. I thought of something to ask her."

"Oh good. And I've thought of some more insults."

"I don't doubt it. But try to keep that lovely figure out of view. You're so distracting!"

"Yes, sir!" she said, and I looked over to see her wearing nothing but a smile.

Molly was still in the mess hall, sitting at a table with a display in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in the other. She was by herself and looked up angrily at being disturbed. Her face softened when she realized it was me. For a moment I might have seen the beginnings of a smile, but I think perhaps it was wishful thinking.

"Did you figure out a plan yet?"

I chuckled. "It's only been a few hours."

"And here I heard you think fast on your feet."

"I've been floating, it slows me down. But I thought of a couple of questions for you."

"Shoot."

"Really? Do it! Do it!"

"I doubt that's what she meant, dear. Molly, have you given any orders to the crew working to repair my ship?"

"Like what?"

"Would I have to be specific to get an answer?"

"No, I was just curious. I haven't given them any orders. I don't even have a rank, but Captain Hultu gave orders based on my briefing to him. I believe it was all benign stuff, like fixing the Albatross. Are you going to ease my curiosity?"

"I was just making sure we weren't working against each other. That's all. Now what can you tell me about jammers?"

"Jammers?"

"Myloduri's take on advanced decoys. Do you know anything about them?"

"Oh, those. We called them Scramblers off the record, but some geek in our lab is trying to push the name SRSI, pronounced Sercy, for short range sensor interrupters. We've known about them for a while, but we've only had research samples for a few months."

"What exactly do they do?"

"They emit high energy pulses with random phased syten. You'd think that would do something impressive, but it only seems to make sensors go haywire and only when the sensors themselves are inside the field. And it disrupts transforms like stasis missiles, but without the resonance."

"What's resonance?"

"Stasis missiles pulse once, but that pulse reverberates through most matter. Thus even though the missile is long gone, you can't jump for almost a minute. The scrambler pulses repeat constantly, and their pulses have no effect on matter at all."

She continued, "Aside from their payload, there control logic and thrusters are very similar to decoy-drones. They just try to place themselves in the path of certain objects to disrupt them, and then stay with them if they can."

"Can you manufacture them?"

"I don't think we are, but I don't know that we can't. I'm not sure anyone cares to make them. They seem only marginally better than the decoys we use now, but would cost a lot more to make. The effect area is small, good enough for torpedoes, but lousy for any reasonably sized ship with redundant sensors."

"I see."

"Why are you so curious about them? Aganond doesn't even use projectiles."

"I'm interested in anything that Ilsians don't have."

"Why?"

"Aganond knows the Empire, and he's prepared to confront the Empire. When his Vessel tried to control this ship, it failed because he hadn't anticipated the differences."

"I'm not sure how Scramblers can be effective, but I agree in principal."

"I'm not sure either, but maybe useful in conjunction with something else we don't know yet. That's why I want to keep all these 'alien' resources here, on this ship."

"Understood."

"So you're not going to remove stuff for Imperial research?"

"Of course I am, just not until you're done with it."

"I can live with that."

"She almost sounded pleasant in there. I don't trust her."

"I don't trust her either. Maybe if I slept with her."

"If you do, you better fuck her hard."

I stopped and turned to her. I looked into her eyes which beamed back at me. She had a devilish grin, but her eyes immediately softened into concern as she sensed as well as I did that things weren't right. "Leona, what am I doing here?"

"Trying to get back to your ship so you can slip away into the emptiness of space?"

"Am I? Or am I trying to stop Aganond?"

"You don't care about that."

"I don't?"

"No. Sweetheart, they had you, but they have you no more. I'm free, you're free. If Aganond doesn't blow up the Empire, Anarchy is going to kick off a revolution that will uproot whatever life you were trying to get back to. You don't want to be in the middle of that."

"Aganond is going to lose. If not because of me, because they blow up his entire system along with millions of people. Maybe I could save millions of lives? I could be that guy."

"You could be. You might even save more."

"What do you mean?"

"Something is nagging me, Doogan. The Empire has classified all of these planets as one group. If they nova Farokis because they've deemed magic planets a risk, why not blow them all up? What's twenty-two stars in the scope of the universe?"

"Oh god," I said, feeling a pit in my stomach deepen. "No pressure, though."

I woke up to a knocking at my chamber door. I'd relocated to the captains quarters, which were adjacent to the bridge. They weren't any more spacious, but they were the Captains Quarters, and thus far grander sounding than a medical ward room.

"Who is it?!" I called out.

"Lieutenant Overby, sir."

Overby looked like he hadn't slept. His beard seemed thicker and his eyebrows had hairs going in every possible direction. There were dark circles under his eyes, but the eyes themselves seemed energized.

"Sir, I need to talk to you," he said quickly. He seemed very excited about something. "Oh, where to start. Okay. First, your sensors are online, sir."

"Already? It worked?"

"It better than worked, sir. It's amazing, simply amazing. They are years ahead of us in their sensor technology, but you knew that right? That's why you insisted they be repaired, right?"

"What do you mean years ahead? I knew they were different--"

"No. Better! They looked the same at first, until I found the advanced sensor panels. Those, captain, are insanely detailed. There's stuff there I don't even know what it means. I mean, it's giving me readings for the empty space around our ships. It completely obsoletes known cloaking technology. Well, that was a theory, but I proved it about twenty minutes ago."

"How did you do that?"

He grinned proudly. "I needed to test it, so I asked Chief Mixon if he knew for sure the cloaking system was working. He said he'd inspected it himself. Then I asked him if he'd actually turned it on, and of course he hadn't. Sure enough, five minutes later I get the notification of a test being conducted of the cloaking system. You were sleeping, but we cloaked and I monitored the sensors. I could still see our... shadow, for lack of a better term.

"So I was thinking you could program the sensor systems to automatically detect similar shadows in sensor readings, use that information to sound alerts, render the cloaked ships in the interface, aim direct fire weapons; essentially treat them like ships."

"You think? By the way you're speaking very fast."

"I know, sir. I do this when I get excited. I did think that, by the way, so then I started digging through programs already in the system, and it's all there, sir. In the advanced configuration, of course. They not only detect cloaked ships, but they can tell ship class and estimate mass."

"That's very interesting," I said, sincerely. He seemed to think it was the most interesting thing in the world. Probably I was underwhelmed because Myloduri had already spoiled the surprise. Or it could have been that I was starting to worry about this getting out.

"Listen, lieutenant," I interrupted, "have you told anyone about the advanced panel?"

"No, sir. I assume this is classified."

"It is now. Leona, can you hide the advanced panels in the sensor interface?"

"Done, lover."

"Who's Leona?" Overby asked.

"Oh, just a computer I'm using to interface with the ship by voice."

"Just?!" she asked.

"Neat. So there is one really strange part of all this. The sensor system is using the Imperial transceiver arrays, at least some of them are Imperial. But they're all essentially the same arrays. I tested by disabling the non-Imperial arrays and we get the same amazing data. That means Imperial sensors are already capable of gathering this information."

"I'm no engineer, but couldn't the extra data be coming from some other sensor, maybe an internal sensor in the parts of the system that were never damaged?"

"I suppose it is possible," he said, giving it some thought. "Sir, I know you're locking it down, but could I still have access? There's a lot more to learn about what those systems are capable of doing."

"You've got it. But do everything direct from the sensor area, and if anyone comes around, tell them you're still fixing them. We'll pull them offline from the bridge."

"Understood, sir."

Ashard and Drew gave me curious looks as I passed out of the bridge towards the mess for some coffee. Molly wasn't there this time, but there were half a dozen techs I'd seen but never met taking a break. I think my presence made them uncomfortable, as they all quickly found somewhere else to be. I would have taken offense if I didn't want the privacy.

The Albatross was almost ready. Everything was online, or secretly online, except for the transform systems. Those would be done in a few more hours and I'd be able to leave the Daring for good.

As I sipped my coffee, I wondered what Chief Mixon would do when he found out I'd gone around him to get the sensors fixed. I still didn't trust the guy, but I expected the confrontation would at least be illuminating. If he was doing something sneaky, he probably figured he still had a week to do it. I was happy to let him think that until the last possible moment.

"You have a message from Captain Hultu. Based on progress, he's recalling the bulk of the repair crew, and has given you a list of proposed transfers to make up your crew."

"How bad is it?"

"Well you get to keep Ashard and Drew, but he's recalling Mixon and Overby, among others. Every person on this list has under a year of field experience. And the list is only ten people long."

"Ten!? That's barely an active shift."

"Sorry, cutie. If it makes you feel better, I can do the work of ten men and I don't even have to sleep."

"That does help a little."

"If you'd like to feel much better, I can crawl under the table. My mouth can do the work of ten women and I don't even have to breath."

"That might help a lot," I said, smiling at her.

She grinned wickedly and pushed her chair back, keeping her eyes on mine as she slowly lowered herself.

"Aren't you going to lock the door?"

"No," she replied, "it's far more exciting not to."

She was right.

"Send a message back to Hultu. Tell him I'm sorry that the Daring is so poorly staffed that the best he can offer me are cadets. But even so, I can't have any wet-behind-the-ears chief of engineering. Tell him if he can't do better with the rest of the crew, he could at least give me Chief Mixon."

"But you don't want Mixon."

"Of course not. But this feels like negotiation, so I'd rather have room to negotiate down to Overby."

"Let's hope he doesn't just cave to the demands of Imperial Espionage."

"Good point. Just in case, ask for both of them."

"Done."

"Some part of me doesn't believe this is anything more than theater. That they aren't really going to let us leave."

"This is Hultu doing what Molly wants, but dragging his feet."

"You can tell me what to do, or how to do it."

"Not both. Mylo used to say that."

"Myloduri? When?"

"No. Mylo. Oh god. Doogan, I just remembered something. Something huge."

"What are you talking about?"

"What you just said, that phrase, it unlocked memories I wasn't aware of. Protected memories Myloduri implanted."

"You've gotta be kidding me? More secrets?! You were supposed to be fixed."

"Not to play devil's advocate, but Myloduri did warn you."

"You're reminding me that he recommended I not trust you?"

"Maybe not the best approach. Look, this is data, not orders. It's just information."

"That you didn't know about."

"Exactly. Like a hidden file. I am a computer after all. You mad?"

"I might be."

"It's nothing I could control."

"Now you're just putting off telling me."

She gave me a look that told me I was right. It was a serious look. A concerned look. A sympathetic look. It made me very nervous.

"Oh god, just tell me."

"It's a message from Myloduri. I'll play it. Just remember that I love you and I will always love you."

A moment later, Myloduri appeared before me, standing next to Leona's avatar.

"Hello, Doogan," he said. "You are seeing this because you have discovered some secret data I've stored inside your computer. I had hoped this wouldn't be necessary, but I had to take precautions in case we were separated.

"You've probably been wondering why they chose you. I know more about that. While you were injured, we had an opportunity to exam your DNA. First, you are not truly human. You have been engineered by combining human genetics along with some Althan and Foorian. You are, essentially, a clone made from three source organisms.

"Your body has been artificially aged. Based on my analysis you are only two years old. I would estimate you have a life span between ten and fifteen years. If you continue to interface with Leona, that could triple.

"The majority of your memories have been programmed. Your life started with you already captaining your ship, and you've always had Leona. I hoped it would be easier hearing it from me, as my story is very much the same. I wanted you to hear it from Mylopria, and I still think you should go to him. Leona can now remember the way.

"There is no coincidence that you have Althan and Foorian traits and have found yourself in a confrontation with Althans and Foorians. And your human source matches a man named Oliver Larsee, who happened to have been Mylo's best friend. He died almost a thousand years ago.

"I don't have answers. But what I have told you is true. It surely brings up many questions in your mind, or you may refuse to believe it. I've imprinted Leona with a mind map of relevant information, so that she may try to use it to answer questions on my behalf. Farewell, Doogan."

If I hadn't been floating, I probably would have fallen over. And yes, I went through some denial. I had so many memories, my life felt so very real. It just didn't seem possible. I knew it was, of course. I had Leona, I'd seen Mylo's clones. But I was different.

I took a deep breath and tried to stop my mind from racing. "Can we verify any of this?" I asked Leona.

"Yes. Assuming you believe the ship's computers, or the Daring's computer if you prefer. We could do a blood analysis. If you were engineered, we'll know; there are always traces. He included all his own tests and data. Scientifically it's sound, but I can't vouch for any of the actual tests. Those we would have to redo. One thing I can't do is the DNA match against Oliver Larsee, as the DNA records were erased along with all the rest of Myloduri's data on board."

I got up and headed towards medical.

"Don't you want to talk about this?"

"No. I just want to take some fucking blood, is that okay?"

We didn't get to medical before we heard, "Captain on deck!"

I thought it odd, considering I couldn't even see the people yet. It quickly became apparent that they didn't, in fact, mean me. That could only mean that Captain Hultu was paying us a visit. I'd never seen him, and I probably would have been concerned had my mind not been focused entirely on something else.

We rounded the corner and emerged into the mail hall where the docking tube connected the two ships. The two troopers were still on guard, motionless as gargoyles, but there were a few others with them. Three officers I didn't recognize, two human and one Malduran, Chief Mixon, and four light infantry. The infantry were grounded by magnetic shoes like the troopers, while the officers floated. My instinct said avoid them, but by the time I'd been able to consider the here and now they'd already seen me.

"You there!" the eldest officer shouted. He was probably the captain. "Who are you? Why are you not in uniform?"

Chief Mixon whispered something to him and his eyes narrowed. So much for introductions.

I floated on towards them confidently, although I admit its much more complicated to float confidently than to walk that way.

"I'm Captain Loran and this is about as uniformed as I get. You must be Captain Hultu. What brings you aboard my ship?"

The captain ignored me and turned to one of the infantrymen. "Soldier, please remove the captain's side arm."

"It's happened. They aren't letting you go."

I'd come to the same conclusion myself. I pulled my blaster from it's holster, but kept the barrel down to avoid getting gunned down immediately.

"Soldier," I said loudly, "please remember whose ship you are on."

Captain Hultu sneered at me. "The Albatross is not currently space-worthy. Considering it's state and the fact that it is docked with the Daring, it has no sovereign status under Imperial code. Soldier, do I need to repeat my order?"

"According to Imperial law, a ship without engines, sensors, navigation, or life support is considered cargo or salvage," Leona reminded me.

"Not the order, Captain," I interrupted. "But you should clarify your inaccurate description of my ship. She is fully capable of resuming operation under her own power."

"Nonsense. Without sensors--"

"My sensors are fully functional. Chief Mixon, have you not received Lieutenant Overby's latest report?"

"What?" Mixon said. It was a minor joy to watch him squirm. "I mean I received a report half an hour ago, but I didn't read it. Yet. Replacement of the system couldn't possibly--"

"Replacement?" I said, cutting him off. "Oh right, that was your brilliant plan. No, I decided to repair them instead." I keyed the wall panel and opened a line with the bridge. "Lieutenant Ashard?"

"Aye sir?" Ashard asked.

"Can you please scan the Daring and tell me some trivial detail about it?"

"Trivial? Aye, sir. The Daring measures 337.18 meters in length, sir. Does that suffice?"

"Yes, thank you Lieutenant. One more thing, can you comment on the status of our engines, navigation and life support?"

"Yes, sir. All systems are online and operating normally, sir."

"Very good. Doogan out." I closed the line. I raised my blaster and aimed it squarely at the lead soldier. "I hope you aren't considering mutiny or piracy in your future."

"Sir?" the soldier asked nervously.

"Ignore him!" Captain Hultu barked. "He's not even an Imperial officer!"

The four infantry aimed the rifles at me. "Sir, drop your weapon!"

Then something unexpected happened. The two troopers in power armor raised their arms, leveling their weapons squarely at the soldiers. One of them played a recorded message, "You are not authorized to use force in this context. Lower your weapons immediately."

Captain Hultu spun to stare down the troopers, but the troopers didn't even seem to notice. After a moment he snapped his fingers and his soldiers lowered their weapons. The troopers did likewise, but otherwise made no reaction.

I chuckled softly, earning perhaps a bit more of the captain's ire, but it was worth it.

"So be it, Captain," he said bitterly. "For now anyway, we'll stick to business where we do have legal standing. I have a warrant for the arrest of Molly Kilk."

"What?!"

"Oh shit!"

"Don't act stupid. Where is she?"

"It's surprise you're seeing, not stupidity. Though maybe you aren't bright enough to tell the difference. Why, pray tell, do you even think she's on my ship? I haven't seen her since yesterday. I assumed she was slumming it aboard the Daring."

"She's not," he stated firmly.

"I see. Well, why don't you and your men wait inside the docking tube. I'm sure you'd be more comfortable on your own ship. I'll go ahead and arrange to collect Molly and deliver her into your custody. You have the paperwork, I assume?"

"I'll have a copy forwarded to this...bucket," he said, glancing around in disgust.

"Excellent. I'm sure the crack bridge crew you offered me will alert me the moment it arrives. If you'll excuse me, I'm needed in medical."

I pushed off the wall made my way down the hall, pleased at least with how I left the conversation. But Captain Hultu called after me, ruining the experience.

"Enjoy your time here, Captain. It is fleeting. Orders from Suboe don't take that long and I have a Magistrate on board the Daring. I'll have temporary custody of your ship within the hour and orders for your arrest within the day."

"Yeah, yeah," I grumbled back.

"Ignore him. He's just jealous because you currently captain three ships to his one."

I laughed and my hand fell into hers as we floated down the hallway. I looked over and she smiled at me with eyes beaming like she was witnessing some miracle. I couldn't be mad with her.

She clung to me the rest of the way to medical. I went in, drew some blood, and dropped the vial into a slot in the table. From there, the computer would do the rest. I then sent a message to Overby and asked him if he could run the blood through the Daring's computer so I could rule out some level of tampering. I also mentioned shit hitting the fan, but I wasn't very specific.

When I turned back I found Leona naked with long black ribbons tied around her wrists and ankles. The other ends were floating freely. She had a playful grin on her face and her hair pulled out in pigtails.

"I thought of a fun way to wait for the test results. It's called Catch Me and Fuck Me. I'm still working on the name."

"I like the name," I said, then sprung off the analysis machine in her direction.

She vaulted away, and even though the medical room wasn't very large, she managed to slip away from me several times. It was a fun game, chasing her, trying to get an arm or a leg or a ribbon I could use to pull her close to me. The ribbons were slippery, she was slippery, none of it was real, but it all seemed it.

Eventually I caught a ribbon from one wrist, looped it about my hand and the 'catch' part of the game was over. I pulled her closer, grabbed the other wrist's ribbon and secured both to a hand rail on the wall. She struggled admirably, always with a wicked smile on her face. Then, realizing she was hopelessly bound, she looked pensive, bit her lip, and beckoned me inside her.

It was a fleeting moment of peace, but I had messages from Ashard, the medical computer, and Overby waiting for me when I again thought to check. We'd received the orders for Molly's arrest, I was a clone, and I was a clone, respectively.

I have a hard time expressing what this news did to me. I mean my whole life was faked. My memories were not mine. Most of them, according to Myloduri's mind map, were taken from the same Oliver Larsee that had contributed most of my DNA. So, in a sense, I was a lot like him. Maybe more so than the Myloduri's and Myloteri's were to Mylo, because I had to believe my life was complete while they have been programmed not to care.

I cared a lot. I cared that I wasn't natural, but I also cared about living. I wanted to live. I wanted another sixty years, not thirty at best. In a sense, it was also like being diagnosed with a fatal untreatable illness, but instead of six months or twelve months the doctor gave me thirty years.

"It's not all that different from people who find out late in life that they are adopted," Leona said, trying to console me.

It wasn't. Orphans still had parents and real memories. I had neither.

"I have some jokes to help lighten the mood, if you think those might help. There are upsides, you know. For example, your four extra chromosomes guarantee you can't accidentally get me pregnant."

"And to think all this time I'd been worrying," I said, offering a weak smile. It occurred to me that I couldn't get anyone else pregnant either, even intentionally.

"You're also the smartest two-year-old I've ever met, and you never had to sit in a single classroom."

"These are your upsides? I think I'm better off brooding."

"I don't mind the brooding. I don't. And I think you're entitled. But if you are serious about wanting to live, and not in a jail cell, I think we need to put brooding on the back burner and focus on how we're getting out of this mess."

"And you're pumping me full of chemicals to help with that."

"Of course. Oh, I thought of another upside. You get to go arrest Molly."

"That might have been an upside once, but five minutes ago you were telling me how her calling the shots was making our lives better. Hard to take joy in dismantling my own escape. Will the Magistrate on Hultu's ship really order a legal seizure?"

"It's hard to say. I think more likely they will impose a temporary stay on our departure. By claiming the Albatross before they boarded, you really put them in a legal bind. That was very clever of you."

"Far more clever than I intended it to be. What if we try to leave before the Magistrate has ruled?"

"Because we've been served a warrant, we must address the claim prior to departing. That means either proving Molly isn't on board, or delivering her to the Daring. If we power up transforms before that, he can fire on us for violating the warrant. Even if we deliver her, I can't see Captain Hultu letting us fly away before the Magistrate has ruled. He'll do something, legal or not. He just prefers legal."

"So we're fucked."

"You'll think of something. You always do."

"Love that faith in me. Okay. First step then. We arrest Molly, or at least talk to her. Any idea where she is?"

"No."

"In that case, have any of the doors we've locked been opened since we locked them?"

"Yes. The doors to the starboard torpedo system, cargo bay, and sensor array."

"Starboard it is. Oh, by the way... if I'm only two, you're totally a pedophile."

We checked the hold first, doing a thorough sweep of the entire thing. There are plenty of places to hide in a cargo bay, especially when there is some legitimate cargo to provide cover. But Molly wasn't there.

"There's cargo missing, though," Leona pointed out. "Four canisters of oxygen, a crate of emergency rations, a survival kit, emergency transponder, and a portable mech kit."

We checked the torpedo system next. Leona opened the door and I stormed in, blaster ready. Molly was there, on her knees hunched over a mess of wires and metal. She jumped in surprise and reached for her own blaster, but couldn't get to it in time.

"Freeze! No more moving, Trisha. I'm within my rights to shoot you, I know that much."

"Oh, Doogan, it's you. I was expecting someone else," she said in a dismissive way. I think Leona's meds were really effecting me because it didn't even piss me off that much.

"I can imagine. What do we have here?"

"My escape pod," she answered. "There is room for two, if you'd like to join me. Either way, is it alright with the gun-holder if I continue working? I doubt we have much time."

I walked over and took her blaster, then examined her work area to make sure there were no other weapons. No sense trusting her now. She had three torpedoes opened on the floor and was tinkering with their insides towards the front where the sensors and control systems were located. Yes, she could detonate them, but she didn't strike me as the suicidal type.

"Go ahead and work, as long as it doesn't slow you down from answering my questions. I may still just hand you over."

"Great. I have to work and convince you? Well, a girl's gotta do. To be honest, I could do this in my sleep. This is an old trick we learned back in spy school – how to make a ship from three torpedoes. Did you know that you can chain torpedo sensors together to make an array? And that you can quickly rework that array for two-way communications? Torpedoes are amazing. You can convert the entire payload into fuel, and they're no slouches in the acceleration department."

"And where exactly does one sit?"

"Between them, or in front. I haven't decided yet. I've got framing and foil to build a chamber with some radiation shielding, but it's a space-suit-required sort of deal. Most of the structural work I'll do outside, but I wanted to get the hard stuff done in here."

I believed her, and yet it was the most ludicrous thing I'd ever heard. We were literally in the middle of no where. Torpedoes don't have transform systems, so she'd be stuck moving at sublight speeds and she'd run out of air or food or water before she made it anywhere. She must have had a plan.

"So, since you're planning on dying alone in space, mind telling me what the hell is going on?"

"With the warrant?"

"With everything!"

"I'll start with the warrant, since that's topical." She continued working as she talked, true to her word she didn't seem to have to concentrate on it at all. "Turns out I'm not really a spy, well not anymore anyway. The fastest way to convince everyone of that was to issue a warrant. I expect Captain Hultu wasn't amused to learn the bitch who'd been running his ship was doing it without any authority."

"I can relate."

"I'm sure you think worse of me."

"I do. But I'm not a big fan of the Captain's, so I take some satisfaction in him being duped. Explain the no longer a spy part."

"Well no one is. Imperial Espionage is being disbanded. There's a lot going on, and if you come with me I'll explain it all. But if you aren't, I need to finish and get out of here before the Magistrate finishes it's analysis and grants Hultu free run of your ship. So you understand, my brevity is for efficiency.

"There's a kind of civil war brewing, but it's being fought in covert ops and political offices. The central espionage is dead, and factions have splintered. One half rolled itself into the military in one faction, some just disappeared, and some have remained loosely tied to the other faction, pretending nothing was changing. That's where I am."

"So you all just decided to still be spy's, even though the Empire dissolved you?"

"Not quite. Legally, we don't quite exist. So dissolving us is harder than it seems. Sure, funding went away, but direct funding only accounted for about ten percent of the entire budget. The Empire has been denying Imperial Espionage exists for as long as we've existed, so you can imagine it makes it difficult to quickly inform everyone that we don't.

"I was working these problems with another agent named Gregor. We don't get along so well. He joined military intelligence and is pushing a scorched earth policy to deal with Farokis. He's responsible for the death wave that's on it's way here. I knew that would take some time, and I'd hoped to find a better solution before that. But I didn't count on him ratting me out."

"Why do you care?"

She stopped working, looked up at me and cocked her head. "You care, don't you?"

"We're not the same person."

"Good point. So why do you care? Or is it just because I made you do it?"

"I'm not actually bearing my soul here. If you recall, I'm holding the gun."

"Another good point there. Well, I have a number of reasons. Since you have the gun, I'll tell you the most damning first because I expect it's what you want to hear. I think if I can manage to fix these problems, I'll come out on top; even if there isn't an Imperial Espionage anymore. If Gregor solves the problem, my career is pretty much fucked."

"That's about what I figured."

"Of course," she said, with a hint of sadness, "I know what you think of me. And you won't believe it, but I'm telling you this anyway. I actually get physically ill at the idea of destroying a planet filled with people. I like the concept of order, but not the inflexible, inhuman order typical of the Ilsians. I've spent most of my life doing everything I can to keep the Empire running in Kinder-Gentler mode."

"Yeah, right. I'm sure you'll all broken up about the Empire squashing yet another race. Probably just jealous that Gregor will get the promotion."

"You don't know me!" she spat. "I haven't spend a thousand years doing this shit to let it fall apart now!"

"A thousand?" I asked skeptically.

She sighed and went back to working, casting her misty eyes back to her task. "Exaggeration. You get the point," she said softly.

"So why involve me?"

"We needed an outsider--"

"Bullshit! Don't lie."

"It's not a lie, Doogan. It's just misleading. We did need an outsider. We needed someone who didn't know why they were going to Glemux. If you knew why, you'd never have made it to the planet."

"Really? Well, that may be, but why was I the outsider?"

"Oh. That's part of the longer story I don't have time for. Let's just say you fit the personality and had the skill sets for this job. Key among those: your dislike for the Empire and for order and control, your kind heart, your patience, your humor, and of course your experience with non-Imperial technology."

"And how the fuck did you know all that about me?"

She stopped working again and looked directly into my eyes. "Because I knew Oliver Larsee, your primary genetic source. Can we stop pretending? I know you took a blood test. I know you sent it for analysis to the Daring and I know what it told you."

She knew. How had I overlooked that? Or maybe I hadn't, it just didn't matter. I was glad it was out.

"You made me," I hissed.

"There were other people involved, but yes. I chose Oliver as a template, and it was my plan. And that angers you. I know. And I know its not about being alive, you've enjoyed that, its about the lying. I'm trying to save a world and I couldn't tell you, sorry."

She was right about all of that. I hated that. I hated that she knew me, even though I never let her in.

"But why Oliver? I mean, you sent me off to deal with Aganond and Farokis. Oliver was Mylo's best friend. He would be suited for dealing with Anarchy, not Farokis."

"Myloduri told you!" she exclaimed. "The blood test was to confirm it! I missed that. So he knew. He tested you. And what?" she asked excitedly. "What was he going to do? What did us intercepting you break up?!"

"So this is about Anarchy? I guess that makes sense. So this Farokis is bait for them?"

"It's about both of them. But yes, I consider Mylo a bigger threat. And yes, I knew he'd be drawn to Farokis. Were they taking you to a Mylopria?"

"How is that even possible? You can't have known Mylo would get involved."

"They monitor too much Imperial communications for this conflict to have escaped their attention. And I know Mylo, he wouldn't pass up new technology. Are you going to answer my question, or continue ignoring me?"

"You hoped I would do what with Mylo?"

"I didn't know. But I knew you'd think of something."

"See? Even she has faith in you."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"I don't expect that, but it is the truth."

Molly had moved on to the third and final torpedo of her makeshift craft. She cursed as she pinched her finger in the access panel.

"And why Leona? To control me in case I got out of hand?"

"Clones sometimes do," she said, continuing to focus on her work. "But that wasn't the primary reason. I thought she would be able to help you. You guys make a great team," she finished, still not looking up.

"We sure do!"

"I'm not disagreeing. But again, you can't know that."

"I do know that," she said softly. "Because Oliver and I made a great team."

"So what?"

"Oh, no."

"Do you think we programmed Leona's personality from scratch? No. Her style of AI is programmed off a human template. It's not that different from programming biological memories into a clone. Leona was made from me."

"I can't believe it. I feel sick."

Just then, the wall panel lit up and a voice sounded through the cabin.

"Captain Doogan? Are you there? Are you okay?" Lieutenant Overby's voice said. "You haven't been responding and things are happening."

"The verdict is in," Molly said. "I gotta go."

"Forget that!" he urged. "I need you to get to the bridge now! Something big is happening! BIG!"

A loud rumble echoed throughout the hull and the line cut out.

"What the fuck was that?" I asked.

"The Daring just disconnected from us!"

I gave Molly my most serious look. "You're coming with me, Molly. Don't argue."

She offered her hand and I took it. Then we pushed off and headed towards the bridge.
CHAPTER 11

* * *

Doogan

* * *

Lieutenant Drew passed us in the starboard tunnel. His face was wet and his eyes red, and he could barely stammer an apology as we passed him. He was going as fast towards the rear as we were towards the bridge, so there wasn't much time to talk anyway.

"You're crack bridge crew?" Molly remarked.

"I see where Leona gets her sarcasm."

I pulled hard on a rail and shot away from her, taking the lead. I pivoted before the intersection so I could stop myself with my legs, then pushed off towards the next junction, and repeated to get to the bridge hatch, which had been carelessly left open.

I could hear Ashard and Overby talking loudly, and found them at the two primary bridge stations on either side of the captain's chair.

"Get at least two clicks away from the Daring," Overby commanded. He seemed to be leading things.

"What's happening?" I asked, floating towards my seat. Some parts were immediately obvious. There were new ships on our sensors.

"We've got bogeys, sir," Overby said. "Four ships, barely blips on our sensors. They're about a thousand clicks from the trapper ship, accelerating towards it. The Daring is moving to intercept, the trapper is moving away, and the one remaining battle cruiser is holding position. No response from hails."

"We hailed them?"

"No, the trapper ship, the Slovat, hailed them. The Daring has sent orders for us to transform back to Suboe station. That includes all of us, the cruiser and trapper too."

"The captain's an idiot," Molly said from the hatch, which she was polite enough to close behind her.

"Agreed," I said. "Only four?"

"Yes, sir. But sir, there's more. The advanced sensors read-outs are going haywire. I don't know what to make of it."

"Forget it for now. Those ships give off a special type of radiation. I need you to isolate it and tell me how close we can get and still remain outside that radius. Relay that range to Captain Hultu and tell him whatever he does to stay outside that range."

"Aye, sir."

"Ashard, put us between the Daring and those ships and keep us there. Cut him off. I want it clear we're taking the lead."

The hull rumbled as the engines fired and I felt the sudden acceleration. I imagined Drew was somewhere getting thrown about.

"Leona, put me on loudspeaker, ship-wide."

"Aye, sir!"

"Attention please," I told my ship. "This is Captain Doogan Loran. We have hostile targets threatening our sister ships. We are moving to engage them. All hands to battle stations! Repeat. All hands to battle stations!"

"So you're going to get us killed instead?" Molly remarked.

"Shut up, Molly. I know what I'm doing. Where the fuck did Drew run off to?"

"I exiled him," Overby said. "He had a break down."

"Fine. So you're on sensors, weapons too?"

"I'll do weapons, Captain," Molly replied, signing into a station on the outside of the cabin.

"Deal. Overby, the range?"

"Hard to isolate sir. It's no more than a hundred clicks, probably a lot less. The background is shifting so much. I'd guess they should stay outside a hundred just to be safe."

"Lovely. That makes torpedoes useless," Molly remarked.

"The Daring is hailing us, sir."

"On screen."

Captain Hultu's face appeared, red with anger which starkly contrasted his graying hair. "Get out of my way, you moron!"

"Shut up, Captain, and listen very carefully. Ships like those have wiped out Class III Enforcers. You don't know how to fight them. You can't fight them. If you want to retreat to Suboe Station, so be it. If you want to help, then you have to listen to me."

"I most certainly do not!"

"You have to see this the right way, Captain. I'm going to win this battle for you. And when this is over, do you think some spook from Imperial Espionage is going to get the credit?"

I glanced over at Molly to gauge her reaction and saw her beaming at me. It was so much like Leona that I had to look back and find Leona to be sure. She had a different sort of grin, but nodded towards the screen.

The captain looked like he was thinking. Still angry, but thinking, "If you want to get yourself killed, be my guest. I'll clean them up after you're dead."

"Captain, if I fail, you better run. But you have five laser batteries that are immensely useful. May I borrow them? The cruiser's too?"

"Fine," he said, and cut the line.

"Sir, how close are we getting?" Ashard asked nervously.

"Torpedo range. Fifty clicks. Unless they start shooting."

"And what I am supposed to shoot?" Molly asked.

"I designated them A, B, C, and D. One target at a time, A first. Fire torpedoes as fast as we can, set them to multi-track any of those ships. Then we have lasers. One shot at a time. They'll jump out of the way each shot, so just re-track and fire again. Got it?"

"I think so," Molly said. "I can script that. Hold on. Got it."

At about eighty clicks, Overby's console started beeping loudly. "Sir, I'm reading an energy build-up from the small ships."

A moment later the cockpit sounded an alarm. "Computer Intrusion Detected! Adapting. Isolating."

"It's fading. What the hell was that?" Overby asked.

"Their opening strike. I guess that makes it time for ours. Fire!"

The red glow of the torpedoes streaked ahead of us in space and our first x-ray laser fired. As expected, the first black ship blinked off our sensors and appeared a good hundred meters away. Then we fired again. Between us and our paired ships, we had eleven lasers banks, and we fired through the whole set in about three seconds, missing each time.

"You sure they can't do that all day?" Molly asked.

"I'm sure." I wasn't really sure, but logic told me jumping took energy. And I'm sure someone once said confidence makes great leadership.

I was hoping the torpedoes would illicit the same reaction. But instead of jumping out of their way, the ships fired blasts of energy that blew them each up. Still, that takes energy, too. So I told Molly to keep firing.

We hadn't even gotten through the second wave of laser blasts before things took a turn for the worse. Two of the dark ships blinked out and reappeared between the battle cruiser and the dreadnaught, well within range of both of them.

A stream of torpedoes fired from both ships almost immediately.

"Crap! Get out of there, Captain!"

"Sir, those ships are starting to glow again!"

A moment later the Dreadnaught Daring exploded, sending fragments of metal in all directions and more than three hundred souls to their maker. It was my mistake. I didn't think it through. I should have never let them stay that close.

"He wouldn't have stayed out of it," Leona comforted. But she didn't know that. She was just saying it to make me feel better. To be honest, I wasn't really feeling bad then. That would come later when I had time to think about anything other than how happy I was it wasn't me.

Our ship shook as the two dark ships still close to us opened fired with dark blasts of energy that were thankfully absorbed by our shields.

"Fire some decoys and jammers, too. Maybe it will confuse them."

"Who's on counter-measures, sir?"

"I got it, lover."

"Oh, me, I guess."

The battle cruiser and trapper ship both folded safely away, which was both a relief and a weight. What was I still doing there?

"You're figuring out how to fight them, silly. It's going well, I think."

Even without the extra lasers, the third wave did the trick. The little first ship jumped twice more, then sat there to receive a direct hit from the third x-ray laser. There was a small explosion, but then again it was a small ship. I think that was enough to finish it off, but I was sure when a torpedo flew into what was left and the resulting explosion reduced the hull to very small pieces.

Ashard cheered. Overby looked busy, and Molly and Leona looked worried.

"Next target!" I ordered. "And be a little more careful. I can't have those plasma blasts getting through when our shields are down."

"I'll do what I can, but our tactics are a bit obvious."

"Then fire more slowly, undo your script. Be patient. We can take a little abuse."

In that, I was right. The punch of these ships was their computer skills, not their weapons. From the readings, they were about twice as effective as you'd expect from a ship that size, but still about a quarter of one of my x-rays.

The ships made a second attempt to compromise our computer, and again were thwarted.

We were circling in a sea of decoys, jammers, and torpedoes searching for targets. The three remaining dark ships continued dodging lasers and shooting down incoming torpedoes, or shooting at us when they didn't have to.

Our shields were holding and Molly was doing a good job timing laser strikes with the torpedoes, trying to get the other ships to commit to defensive firing or dodging while she took our shields down to chase down elusive ship B with laser blasts.

We finally exhausted his jump capabilities and tore a hole through the rear with a quick shot from the port banks when Overby gasped, "It's a pattern!"

"What is?"

"The craziness in the sensors. What I've been reading. It's not noise. It's a pattern. And it's almost complete."

"What does that mean to me?"

"I have no idea, sir. But we're going to find out in about fifteen seconds."

A torpedo struck the hull of ship B and took it off the map, leaving only C and D to deal with. Actually, D wasn't even maneuvering anymore, whatever that meant. Still, I had a very bad feeling.

"Stop firing. Prep transform to Glemux."

"But we're winning!" Molly argued.

"I can take over weapons if you'd like to be relieved," I barked.

"Glemux is quarantined, sir," Ashard said.

"Is it question the Captain day? Just get us there!"

"Three, two, one..." Overby counted down.

Suddenly the sensors cleared and a large object appeared in space just over five hundred clicks away, close to where the four dark ships originally appeared. It was a small moon, or large asteroid, made of dark gray rock pitted with numerous craters.

"What is it?" Ashard asked.

"A moon or small planet," Overby replied. He then rattled off the sensor readings I could already see for myself. It was a good size satellite, solid, minimal atmosphere. It was also putting out energy, both traditional and magical in nature, and the sensors were painting man-made targets all over the surface that were structures or weapon batteries.

"Battlemoon," I concluded, my stomach twisting in knots. I'd seen a few before, or at least had been made to remember a few. But I'd never seen one active.

"So that's what he took from the salvage yard," Molly muttered, staring open mouthed at the screen.

"Computer Intrusion Detected!" the computer announced again. "Adapting. Computer Intrusion Detected! Adapting. Isolating. Computer Intrusion Detected! Computer Intrusion Detected! Computer Intrusion Detected!"

"Fuck me, that's HIM!" Leona said.

"JUMP!" I screamed.

"A few more seconds, sir."

I felt something wash over me. I can't explain the feeling or how I could make it out. It wasn't words, because it wasn't speaking. But I understood what it meant never the less. It was a simple message, but it included with it such emotion that it filled me with fright. Leona is mine!

Then there was a flash and nothing. We entered the transform. We were safe.

"What was that thing?" Ashard asked.

"Captain's right," Overby said. "That was a battlemoon. Corgan V-1 if the database look-up is right. They used to be a popular war platform before micro-transforms were discovered. This one was decommissioned after the battle of Corgan made Corgan V uninhabitable."

"Did you get a good scan of it?" I asked him.

"Yes, sir. All of it logged," Overby replied. Then he added, "Say, did anyone else hear something right before we jumped?"

"That wasn't just me?" I asked.

"I think it was, 'Leona is mine'," Ashard said.

"That was it," Overby confirmed. "Isn't that your computer's name, sir?"

"Yes. I think this might have gotten a bit personal now."

"But why?" Molly asked. "Why would he even know about Leona? Let alone be obsessed with her enough to come after her."

"You never told her, remember?"

"Oh yeah."

"Ah, I see. You lied to me," she concluded, though she didn't seem remotely upset about it.

"Yes," I admitted. "I didn't tell you everything. Aganond had her for several days."

Molly nodded. "That would do it. You really should have told me. God, that must have been horrible for you."

"It was torture. Also none of your business."

"Sir? What now, sir?" Ashard asked, and for the first time I realized how terrified he was, how shaken. I didn't know a soul on the Daring, but it had been his home for a while. Overby's, too. For me, I felt guilt, and horror. But for them, loss. They'd lost friends, maybe people they loved.

I made another ship-wide announcement. "This is the captain. I wanted to personally update you all on the situation. The battle did not go as well as hoped and we were forced to withdraw. In addition to the initial four ships, the enemy brought in a battlemoon. We are thankful to have escaped, but I regret to inform you others were not as fortunate. During the battle, the I.S.S. Daring was destroyed.

"I'm sure this is a shock to you. But I know you are all soldiers who don't crack under pressure. Your comrades aboard the Daring died serving in battle, and we will honor them by continuing to do our duty as they did theirs.

"Whether or not I was before, I am now your captain. You are all my crew. We are on an important mission, some of which is classified, and I have no time to drop anyone off or pick anyone up. You're it. Try to make me proud and I'll do the same.

"I want everyone to report to mess. Lieutenant Ashard will be conducting a thorough briefing and getting a complete roster so we can make assignments. As of now, Lieutenant Overby has been promoted to Chief of Engineering. He will be overseeing all ship maintenance. That is all."

I looked around to see how my speech was received by the bridge crew. Overby looked a little stunned, but I think more because he wasn't paying attention until he heard his name. Molly seemed pleased, Ashard looked nervous, maybe he hated public speaking.

"Ashard, I want to know everyone who is on the ship: Names, ranks, what they do, what you think they should do now. Work with Overby on that. If those troopers are still on board, ask them nicely if they would conduct a sweep of the ship to make sure we've accounted for everyone. And Ashard, I don't want Drew back on this bridge. Make sure his new station isn't here.

"As I told everyone, Overby, you're now Chief. Round up who we have left and have them go over the ship and make any repairs, restock ordinance, whatever. Double check the computers. I didn't like the sound of those infiltration messages. Then I want you to go over your sensor logs and prepare me a report of the battle. Find something I don't know.

"Molly, congratulations, you're an acting Lieutenant. I want you sitting at tactical. But go have a drink or something. I need some time to think."

Overby and Ashard and Molly left, leaving Leona and I alone.

"Fine bit of captaining there," Leona remarked.

"I could have saved those people," I said, fighting the tears that wanted to come to my eyes.

"Maybe. But you didn't kill them. That's on Aganond. And we'll figure out a way to make him pay for them and everyone else."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," she said, and took me in her arms. It was hard to not feel optimistic in her embrace.

"Is it wrong that I sent everyone off to do work so I could stay and cuddle and nap?"

"Or is it so right? It's good to be captain."

We got in maybe ten good minutes of cuddling before I drifted off to sleep. I wasn't sure how many hours I'd been up, but the stress of combat takes a lot out of a person. I didn't know how long I'd been asleep, but woke not to the gentle caresses of sweet Leona, but rather to loud voices outside.

"What now?" I grumbled, to no one in particular.

The hatch opened and Overby floated in, tugging Molly behind him.

"I found her eavesdropping outside, sir."

"That's ridiculous," Molly said. "He found me outside, anything past that is speculation."

"Unless she was deciphering secrets from my snoring, I think we're okay, Overby. Want to explain further, Molly?"

"Came to talk to you, then couldn't decide if I should disturb you or wait."

"That seems reasonable," Overby said. "Sorry, you just looked guilty when I startled you."

"I don't much care for startling," she said.

"Me either," he confessed. "To business, sir? I have my initial analysis. I'm going to start with the really interesting part: what happened to ship D. I'm not sure if you noticed, but a few seconds before that moon appeared, ship D stopped shooting at us."

He brought up a replay sensor view on the main screen and zoomed in on ship D. There were a number of objects in play in the area: torpedoes, decoys, jammers. Jammers showed up distinct from the other, as fuzzy green spheres. Overby highlighted one of the jammers and played the scene forward. We watched as it closed on the ship and then seemed to swallow it up within its fuzzy circumference.

"These jammers are a lot like decoys. This one must have mistaken the weak signature of the small ship for a torpedo and attempted to align with it."

"So what happened?" Molly asked. "Did it blind the ship so it stopped firing?"

"It didn't just stop firing. It stopped maneuvering altogether. It just kept going on the same vector. I admit, it's a short time. I can't say that they weren't about to change course when we jumped out. But that's not the most notable part."

"What is?"

"Jammers disrupt most sensor readouts from the area, but visible light isn't effected. Take a look."

He changed the view and this time we watched a video of the black ship at maximum zoom. The exterior hull was visible only in faint reflections of red from nearby torpedo traces, and the bright green wire-frame rendered by the visual display overshadowed most everything else. Then he turned that off, and we could see more clearly the lights from inside the ship showing through the small clear window at the front. I couldn't make out anything specific from the inside other than some slight variation in the light I assumed came from people moving inside.

"These optical systems are impressive," I said. "If we were any closer, I might even make out the pilots."

"Just wait and watch carefully," Overby said.

The video was moving slow enough that we watched the jammer move in slowly. As soon as the field intersected with the ship, the lights inside went completely dark.

"There," he pointed out.

"It cut the lights out," Molly said.

"But they don't interfere with standard electrical systems," I said.

"No, sir," Overby replied. "I double checked what we know about them and confirmed it by studying video of intersections with torpedoes."

Of course Aganond's ships didn't use standard electrical systems. They used magical ones.

"I don't know what it means, maybe nothing," he continued. "Wait, why are you both smiling? This means something to you?"

"It means everything!" I said.

"So I did good?"

"This is incredible. Comparing visual sensor readings? Who does that?"

He smiled broadly, though he still looked very confused.

"Leona, how many Jammers left?"

"We have twenty-nine," she replied. "We had thirty-eight but fired nine in the battle."

"Twenty-nine," I reiterated for the others benefit. "So how do we use them?"

"Weaponize them. I need to send word to – fuck," Molly swore.

"I could send word," I said. "But I doubt my word carries any more weight. What about an officer in the Imperial Navy?"

"Overby here?" Molly asked, casting a disparaging thumb in his direction. "He'd be lucky to get anyone's attention."

"She's right there," Overby replied. "But I am a good engineer. Mind explaining? I know it's all hush-hush, but seriously. Did you see that thing?!"

"I saw it," I said. "I don't need to explain much anyway. We have two problems: those ships are a pain in the ass to shoot at and most Imperial ships are sitting ducks against their computer attacks. I think it's clear the jammers make an effective weapon. They might also make an effective defense, if they can disrupt the incoming radiation."

"Defense is unproven," Molly said. "Let's focus on how to make them into weapons. We at least know that works. Retrofitting stasis missiles seems the best choice. They're a lot faster than torpedoes."

"But they use sensors for tracking, just like torpedoes. They'd jam themselves."

"Well sure, but as decoys they seem to work," Overby said. "They must have some kind of tracking system that is immune to the effect."

"While that is true," Molly countered, "it may be too primitive to use for weapon guidance. As decoys, they are expected to come relatively close to their targets all on their own. A lot of decoys use hybrid inductance sensors."

"Right. I knew that," Overby said. "But how accurate do they have to be to hit a freaking moon?"

"It won't do any good to plug the side of a hunk of rock with one, Lieutenant," I explained. "We need to be able to hit those seventy-footers and target specific locations on the battle moon or it's pointless."

"It's pointless," Molly said, very matter-of-fact. "Those captain's aren't stupid. The problem is we can't hit them with anything. If we can't hit them with a torpedo, why do we think we can hit them with a jammer?"

"Because when it gets close, they can't jump away."

"I'll give you that," she said. "But how many ships do we hit that way before they start shooting the jammers down? Or just blinking away from them before they get that close? We need a jammer that creates a much larger field, one comparable to their weapon range. Then we'd have something."

"I can look into it," Overby said. From the furrowed brow I could tell he was already deep in thought on the matter.

"Feel free but we've had some top notch people look at them."

"I'm sure you have. Scientists, though," he finished with a sour face and I had to chuckle.

"Okay. Not that I don't have faith in your Lieutenant, but I think Molly's right," I said. "And we already have a reasonable offense strategy, we just need more ships that can use it. So let's forget about offense. Aganond uses his magic to force our ships to blow themselves up. He controls computer systems, and as everything we have is computer controlled, he can pretty much have his way with our ships."

"Sorry to interrupt, sir," Overby said. "But who's Aganond? And did you say magic?"

"Oh yeah, you don't know about that. Molly?"

"Tell him whatever you want. I'm not a spy anymore, remember?"

I filled him in as quickly as I could, sparing many details. But I tried to give him a good idea of what we were up against and I had to talk about Glemux to do that. He was a bright man, young enough to still have some idealism and whimsy, and he seemed to absorb the information with an appropriately muted sense of wonder.

"So we have a world class hacker who's found a remote exploit in all Imperial software?" he summarized. "And it's an exploit we can't fix without redesigning all of our systems. And this ship is safe because almost none of it is Imperial make."

"That's about right. So what if we just shield our systems with jammers? Deploy them in key areas throughout the ship?"

"You'd need thirty just to cover a dreadnaught's systems, but you might get by with ten if you focused on the key systems and disabled some of the redundant ones. You could maybe get away with five on a battle cruiser, probably three on a Class II, those things are compact."

"I think I can get some enforcers," Molly said. "But what about sensors? Won't the jammers blind our own ships? And we still don't even know that jammers will even work this way."

"Maybe we can shield the sensor computers, but leave the arrays exposed? Or maybe we'll just have to deal with fighting blind. It's better than the alternative."

"There's not much computing built into the arrays," Overby explained, "but it might be tricky to avoid covering some of them in a field if you're trying to minimize jammers per ship. What about her point about them not working at all?"

"I think they will. Call it intuition. But we'll test it to be sure."

"How the hell do we test it, except in the field?"

"We're traveling to a field as we speak," I said. "For now, let's assume it will work. We have twenty-nine, if we can use three to shield an enforcer, that gives us a fleet of nine with two jammers to spare. Can you get nine, Molly?"

"If I can get any, I can get nine."

"Okay. Overby, you have two jammers you can freely destroy trying to understand them and make them bigger or better. Do we have the schematics for Class II Enforcers on board?"

"Aye, sir."

"Good. So you get to figure out how we're going to install them; what we need to remove from the shell, how to connect them to power and control logic, and how to overlap them so they cover the systems."

"That it, sir?" he asked. "Just decipher some brand new piece of foreign technology and figure out how to install it inside space-optimized drones I've never worked on before?"

"Also, it would be really helpful if we could do the installations in space."

"Oh, well of course. It wouldn't really be a challenge otherwise," he said, smirking.

"Good. I know you like a challenge. And don't worry, it's not like the fate of an Empire is riding on this. Maybe you should get started? Feel free to wake people up as needed, but I expect most of the crew will go into stasis for the rest of the trip."

"Yes, sir," he said, a slight tremor in his voice. He turned and pushed off towards the hatch.

"One more thing, Overby. Don't burn yourself out doing this. I'm not that confident it is going to be our approach, and I'd rather have you sharp when we hit Glemux."

"Understood, sir," he said, and closed the hatch behind him.

I turned back to find Molly watching me. "You've never wanted power," she said without question in her tone. "You never wanted to rule, or lead people, or have them look up to you."

"What's your point?"

"You're really good at it, just saying."

"Was Oliver?"

She looked away. "Yes, he was. But you aren't exactly like him, you know."

"Must be those Foorian and Althan genes."

She laughed uncomfortably.

"Whose genetic code did you use for those anyway?"

"The Foorian genes came from Mylo, as if you hadn't guessed."

"Yeah, figured. And the Althan? Please don't tell me Aganond."

"No. Not Aganond. I didn't even know he was Althan, then. The Althan sample came from some ancient records from the initial Althan induction. I don't know who he was, but someone of importance back then. Before Althans were genetically altered."

"You knew about that?"

"Yes. Doogan, I know way more than I want to."

"I seem to have the opposite problem. Are you ever going to tell me anything in detail?"

"Maybe some day."

"Why not today? Who am I going to tell? It can't have anything to do with Aganond. So what? You still think you can use me against Mylo somehow?" I was mostly fishing, but Molly was far too good at controlling her emotions to give something away.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you why."

"Try me."

"Okay. First of all, I want you to know that I consider you a human, a person, a fully independent, self-aware organism."

"Well thanks for that."

"Don't be glib. Legally, clones are considered people. But some people consider clones property, or soul-less monsters, or worse. Before it was completely outlawed, there were hundreds of incidents where clones snapped and killed people. We're much better at it now, by the way. But the point is, to me, you're a person with rights."

"In that case, thanks for that."

"Well now that we've established that you don't believe me, I'll wrap it up by saying that I always intended for you to go on and live whatever life you wanted when this was over. If you know too much, it puts you in danger."

"I sort of believe me. Oh wait, no I don't."

"I'm touched. And if I know too much, I might not cooperate as much?"

"I don't know what's worse, you not believing me or you thinking I have some secret plan and yet am too inept to avoid giving it away."

I chuckled. "You can't blame me for trying."

"No, I can't. But I have to tell you, when it comes to plans, Doogan, I'm worried. I think I underestimated Aganond."

"The battle moon threw you?"

"A lot. I mean that's a few orders of magnitude greater than I'd ever given him credit for."

"Me too," I agreed.

"This whole thing has been like a puzzle. Sure, there were missing pieces, but I could still sort of grasp the risk. And now he's just shown us a new piece that can't possibly fit into the puzzle. It makes me nervous. It makes me think I've been looking at this all wrong."

"How were you looking at it?"

"It's just one planet and a few ships. How many? I didn't know. And yes, they're nasty and potent and hard to fight. They posed a threat, no doubt. But a threat to our ships and our people, not to the Empire itself. I mean even if we had to send a thousand ships for every one of theirs, we could do it. Given time, we could do it. No one does attrition like the Empire."

"That much is true, but what about the planet's ability to wipe out ships directly?"

"Yes, I admit that's a problem we haven't solved. And it's not like I wasn't worried about that. But here's the weird part. I don't think I told you this, but we've had a few run-in's with Aganond's ships. The last major offensive was a counter-attack. He took a fleet directly to the Suboe Station and that's where we were first able to turn the tables on him. Those ship remains you saw in the hanger bay came from that offensive. We lost ships, but overall we won. And the ships we didn't kill fled."

"Why is that weird?"

"He knew where to go, so he must have had an idea what was there. If he had brought a battle moon, he would have wiped out the entire station."

"Maybe the moon wasn't ready yet?"

"Maybe. Or maybe it still isn't ready and he only used it because he's become obsessed with Leona."

"Reasonable ideas," I agreed. "But you're worried he didn't want to wipe out Suboe at all."

"Yes, I am."

"Okay. Help me out with military theory here. What reasons are there to bait your enemy like that?"

"The most obvious reason would be to lure them back into an ambush. Tactics like that are as old as war. But the Empire isn't known for hastily rushing into a fight. Maybe there was a specific target to destroy that wasn't the whole station? Or he wanted to give us a false sense of confidence?"

"Leona?"

"I have the entire replay of the battle at Suboe," Leona said. "The fight looks like a scaled up model of the fight we just had. There's some variation, but I don't think you could say the Vessels were letting themselves die by any means. They fought like they fight, and ran out of power about when I'd expect them to."

"Keep going through it. Look for anything unusual."

"Will do."

"Let's think about this another way," I said. "What happened after the battle?"

"I don't know. I mean we recovered the wrecked ships, packaged most up and shipped them to Daubu Station for analysis. They have better facilities there."

"Could that be it? Maybe the ships were rigged? Infected? Something?"

"We followed some pretty strict quarantine, but I suppose that's another theory."

"Found something. Some of this is tricky as the sensors aren't exactly continuous streams of information. Here, let me come on the screen."

The main view panel lit with a sensor map of the battle, with Leona's small pretty face superimposed at the bottom corner. "Hi me," she said, waving at Molly.

"Cute," she said, unamused.

"There are a lot of ships here," she explained. "All the same, right?"

"Right."

"Wrong. This one is different," she said, highlighting one of the ships towards the left front of the dark fleet. "No one ever shoots at it."

"What do you mean?"

"Not a single torpedo, not a single laser, nothing. It isn't firing either, by the way. But it is maneuvering as if it were in combat.

"I considered random luck, so I reviewed the flight cabin video logs from the available black box data. The results were the same across all seventeen ships. In each case, the master gunner tagged every ship but that one as hostile, and tagged that ship as neutral."

"Clever," Molly said softly. "The ship's computer won't even let you target a neutral. And of course he did nothing hostile to trigger automatic enemy detection. He had to do it to everyone. Every organic controlled ship in the fleet synchronizes their target lists, and conflicts have to be resolved."

"What about the A.I.s?" I asked. "Surely you had some enforcers on the line."

"More than some," Molly said. "But Enforcers don't ever paint targets. They use automatic detection or accept targets from other fleet ships. They just never had a reason to think that ship was anything hostile."

"Okay. So we assume that ship is Aganond's. What was he doing?"

"I was hoping you'd ask that," Leona said, smiling delightfully. "No one ever pays attention to this stuff, but the ship's mass changed. The first detailed readings were around 2.81, then we have a few readings around 2.70, then back up to 2.81. Something left that ship and came back, something that weighs roughly 110kg."

"A person?" I asked.

"Aganond," she and Molly said together.

"But where? And how could he come back? He'd have to have magic where he was teleporting."

"He could bring it with him," Molly said.

Leona added, "I think it's safe to say if Aganond can make a portable battery to power a spaceship, he can make a smaller version to power himself."

"Good points," I said, trying to shake the feeling that I was dealing with two of the same person. "So the station is the only reasonable choice. He must have come to pay a visit to the station. What would they have there? War plans? Locations of fleets?"

"All that and more," Molly said. "Imperial space stations are all synchronization nodes."

"I'm sorry, what does that mean?"

"Because we're so spread out, we have to have a means to replicate data between regions of space. The Imperial Transponder Hubs are the primary nodes, but even the closest ITH is often too far to be practical. Every communication node does some level of caching. Imperial stations cache a lot. That allows anyone to get relatively recent information without having to wait the round-trip time to get a result.

"Most people take for granted that they can just look something up, or send a message to their family half-way across the universe. But there's a lot that goes into it to preserve integrity, resolve conflicts, and minimize the amount of data transferred."

"I must be one of those people," I admitted. "But that sounds like a system Mylo would love to manipulate."

"I'm sure he would," Molly said. "But this happened presumably before Aganond and Myloteri met."

"That is the assumption, and I did get that impression from the Mylos. But I can't really say they didn't meet before. What sort of data are we talking here?"

"The archives are encrypted, and permission to individual information elements is segregated to limit confidential information to those with security clearance and need."

"That didn't exactly answer my question."

"Tons of stuff, Doogan. Science journals, ship schematics, deployments, ship rosters, government positions, citizen records. Name it, it's probably there."

"That sounds very bad."

"It is. We've never had the entire archive breached before," she said. "I don't even know where to start thinking about how bad it is."

"Me either, honestly. I'm not sure this changes anything. It just makes him an even bigger threat."

"That much is true," Molly said. "Maybe Gregor was right."

"It's never right to commit genocide."

"Even if it's to prevent a larger genocide?" she asked, seriously.

I looked to Leona, but she didn't seem very sympathetic. "I think I've played this game before. In fact, this game is programmed inside me. I don't think you want to know which way my logic falls."

I sighed. It really was two against one. "It won't come to that," I said with far more certainty than I felt. "But you are right about one thing. I think you've underestimated him, too."

Molly nodded. "This is a bad time to have a warrant on me."

"You know you're never going to get your job back right?"

"Probably true," she said. "But I still have to do the work."

"Why?"

"Because it's my nature."

"Is that why I'm staying? Is it my nature?"

She looked thoughtfully at me. "I don't know your nature, Doogan. I knew Oliver's, and yes, he'd stay and finish this with me. God, sometimes it's hard to look at you though, and not remember him. But I think you have clearer reasons than that. You want to stop a planet from being destroyed, and also you accepted payment for helping and you're afraid I've booby trapped Leona."

"You did booby trap Leona!"

"You sound pretty sure," she said. Then she furrowed her brow. "Wait. You are sure. You found them. Which means Mylo found them and removed them." She sighed. "These are important things you aren't telling me, Doogan."

"You hardly have the moral high ground here."

"True." She turned to the screen. "Leona, diagnostic mode."

"Diagnostic mode active," Leona replied. She was still on the screen, but her face was static and emotionless.

"What the hell?!"

"Don't worry, I'm not doing anything shady," she said. "Leona, list ship's computers you've recently been connected to in reverse chronological order."

"Recent ships include the I.S.S. Albatross, I.S.S. Daring, The Fractal B, The Coercion--"

"That's enough. This ship was the Fractal A, right? So she was connected to both ships. That's good,"  
she said, smiling. "Very good. Leona, resume normal operation."

Leona's smile returned to the screen, then turned to a frown. "I missed time," she said, sadly.

"I activated one of your diagnostic modes," Molly explained, still unable to contain her smile.

"Oh," Leona replied, flummoxed.

"That's it!" I yelled. "Molly, I've had enough! If you want me to help, I need answers. I need more information. I can't help you blind. You're worried about me after this? Don't be. If we help or we don't, if the Empire is still standing or it isn't, I'm done with it after this. I'm going to find a nice frontier world on a former war front and make a new life there. So I won't be around to be in danger, and even if I were, it's my life. And as you so eloquently put it, you consider me of free will. So don't make yourself a liar by treating me like a child.

"What am I saying?" I continued. "You've already made yourself a liar over and over."

"All right, Doogan."

"What?"

"I said all right. You want to know more, I'll tell you more."

"I don't want more," I told her. "I want the whole truth."

She shook her head. "All I can offer you is more. But over a drink or something. If I'm going to betray this promise, I'm doing it with a good stiff drink to blame it on."

"I can probably use one myself."
CHAPTER 12

* * *

Doogan

* * *

We floated through the hatch and down the port side access tube towards mess. I let her go first, so I didn't suffer any embarrassment transitioning into the artificial gravity. Also, it let me stare at her from behind without her noticing. There was no denying her beauty, despite the lingering bitterness from what she had done to me.

"Look all you want," Leona said. "But remember, just because I don't have teeth down there, doesn't mean she doesn't."

I smirked and moved in after her, landing reasonably well beside her.

Molly secured a bottle of scotch and two glasses with ice and poured us two very full drinks. She held hers up. "To the truth."

"I can't think of a better toast," I said, letting our glasses touch.

I took a deep sip, letting the strong liquor roll over my tongue before swallowing it. Molly, on the other hand, drank her whole glass in one long pull. She set it hard on the table and poured a second glass before looking up at me. She took a deep breath.

"Despite my youthful appearance, I'm actually twelve hundred and sixteen years old. I was born human, mortal and everything, but I showed certain promise which got me noticed in my early teens. By the time I was twenty-five, I had already started working for Imperial Espionage, though I didn't know it until two years later. That's when I underwent the transformation."

"Which was?"

"A long period of hospitalization. During that time, they did gene therapy, plastic surgery, and implanted some cybernetic devices. The end result is what you see here. Aside from the cybernetic stuff, the rest is all natural. This figure, the boobs, this ass, it's all real."

"Beauty is best when it isn't realized," I said snidely.

"I couldn't agree more," she said. "I'd have more of an ego about it if it was actually me. Just because it's real doesn't mean it's me. My genetics gave me a scrawny frame, a flat ass, and almost no boobs. I can't tell you what a shock it was seeing myself for the first time. I'm used to it now, but deep down I know it's still a lie.

"Anyway, one of my early jobs was to induct another spy. His name was Mylo Fulira. He was an especially talented Foorian, but also rather dark and secluded."

"Wait, Mylo was a spy?!"

"Yes."

"But the Foorians were wiped out!"

"No, that's just one of his lies."

"Which I will be able to differentiate from your lies how?"

"Funny. Did you heckle him as much?"

"No," I admitted. "I suppose not."

"Guess that makes me special. In any case, we did wipe out a lot of Foorians. This was well before both Mylo's time and mine, though. The Ilsians aren't cruel by nature and it would be ludicrous not to keep the best and brightest of the species alive, especially to help integrate their technology. There are still maybe fifty thousand Foorians living throughout the Empire.

"Many are well-adjusted, happy scientists working in secluded research labs. They love this stuff, seriously. But there is still a bitter undertone in their culture, and Mylo had plenty of it. He was one of those people who was amazingly brilliant, but he had a dark side. We'd hoped to change that, to give him the Imperial song and dance so to speak."

"A song and dance would have gone a long way with me," I said. "Maybe you can show me later."

"Yes, I'll make sure not to do that. Mylo had a friend, a well adjusted and talented human named Oliver. We separated them during the induction and Mylo took a darker turn. The psychs theorized a number of things, none of which were provable. But it seemed safer to me to bring Oliver along, and I thought he had some potential anyway."

"So Oliver was a spy, too?"

"Yes," she said, "The way I saw it, Oliver was like Mylo's conscience. That was good because Mylo didn't have all that much of one on his own. Not that Oliver was an angel or anything," she said, her eyes looking backwards with a smile.

"So you three were a team or something?"

"Yes. We worked a few jobs together and we were a good team. Mylo was amazing with computers, well with anything intellectual really. Foorians are sort of like that, they have this multi-cortex brain so they can ponder more than one thing at once," she explained, offhandedly.

"My basic design was patterned after the Foorian brain, but of course much improved."

Molly continued, "Mylo was exceptional even for a Foorian. We didn't always get along, but never in an angry way. As a team, we did some friendly crime-stopping jobs; feel good tasks to get Mylo comfortable with the idea that there was good the Empire did and he could be part of it. Like we took down an organized crime family that was selling children for sex, that sort of thing.

"I ran the ops, mostly interacting with Oliver. Then we got assigned a Splinter, which is our term for something that annoys the Empire. This was a computer identified threat of a very large biological weapons lab. That really meant only that a particular continent had imported a certain ratio of chemicals compared to the expected consumption rate. We were asked to investigate."

"Where was this?"

"Doesn't matter, an Imperial planet. We didn't find a weapons lab, but we did find a research lab. A lab designed to clone and program people. This was some advanced stuff, better than the Empire was doing, even though it was illegal. This wasn't just good quality genetic work, but also adapting neural interfaces to store and rewrite organic memories. I've sort of gotten used to it now, but at the time it was mind blowing."

"You couldn't have made me without it."

"That is true," she said. "I'm not sure if I'm supposed to feel bad about that or not."

"Me either," I said, honestly. I was alive after all, whatever I was, and wouldn't have been otherwise.

She shrugged. "In any case, we traced the money back to its sources, then shut it all down and took the scientists and equipment underground. At least that's what I thought."

"What happened?"

"Mylo happened. Oliver came to me a few days later very concerned. He said Mylo had disappeared. Mylo had always talked about changing things, but usually in a melancholy way because he realized he was one small person against the Empire."

"I know that feeling."

"We all know that feeling. But the night before he disappeared Mylo finally seemed giddy. Of course now I realize why, but it took us a bit of time then to figure out he'd decided to clone himself. Sure, there was only so much one Mylo could do. But what about a hundred Mylos? Or a thousand?"

"This is what Mylo said to Oliver? Or Oliver's guess work?"

"His guesswork. But we acted on it quickly just in case. We had quarantined the lab, but some of the equipment still remained. We stormed the place again, hot and fast, caught Mylo red handed setting up four clones of himself. But there were six incubation chambers missing; the six original Myloprias."

"How did he sneak them out?"

"Like he did everything, cleverly. He hacked a number of colleagues' credit lines to get enough cash to charter cargo on at least twenty flights on and off world, each with programmed instructions and payments for subsequent hops. Some of this is conjecture, some based on interviews. He destroyed any data trail."

"And what about Mylo? And the four clones you'd found?"

"Mylo was captured. Later he tried to escape and was killed in the process. I helped identify the body," she said, shuddering as if it was still a painful memory all these years later. She'd finished her second glass and poured a third. "The clones we finished growing, then froze. They hadn't been programmed, so they weren't of any immediate use. In fact, they're still frozen because I still haven't figured out anything useful to do with them."

"Were you there when Mylo died?"

"No. You're wondering if the story is true?"

"I've wondered that about everything you've told me."

She shook her head and smiled. "How did the Mylo's on this ship die?"

"I shot two, suffocated the rest," I replied, finishing off my first drink. It was strong stuff and my tolerance was way down so I was already feeling warm. One more couldn't hurt, I thought, refilling my glass.

"How many more drinks before I get the truth?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Why couldn't that be true?"

"Because it's not in your nature."

"It irritates me to no end that you know so much about me without ever having known me. Two."

"Two what?"

"Two drinks," I said, draining the second glass in one long pull.

"I probably need another just to hear more truth," she replied with a wicked grin as she finished her own drink.

I put my glass down and stared at it. "I don't know how they died. Myloduri just told me good bye, then he was dead. They were all dead."

"You were smart to take credit," she said, and her hand fell on my arm. She was very warm and her touch felt surprisingly comforting. "Have you played through the alternate scenario? It isn't pretty. We'd likely both be in a cell in Suboe right now."

"Probably true. Are you changing the subject on me?"

"No, I'm just a little tipsy and prone to losing focus. Mylo died, I think, in much the same way. There were accounts of some damage to his body and a guard with a fat lip claimed to have wrestled him and choked him for a short time. The autopsy was consistent with suffocation, but it's never sat well with me."

"Is there any chance it wasn't him?"

"Wasn't the real Mylo? Like he'd switched places with a clone?" She asked, then laughed so sweetly that I wanted to make it happen again. "No, Doogan. Even rushed, it takes a year to get a clone to maturity."

"Oh right. Okay, so Mylo died, maybe killing himself maybe not. And clearly at some point some of the Myloprias matured and were programmed and went on to clone Myloduris and Myloteris and form this complex Anarchy group. And you've been hunting them for a thousand years? Seriously?"

"We chased after the Myloprias for a while, Oliver and I along with other parts of IE. Oliver felt somewhat responsible for Mylo. We found two before they'd finished growing. They had collars with their programming, but in both cases we were unable to access them without losing all the data inside. The third found us," she said. She shuddered involuntarily and pulled her hand away from my arm.

"What happened?"

"We think that each of the Myloprias was programmed with a different objective. This one was programmed to stop IE from finding the others. He slipped into our facility on Norland, killed an agent and used his credentials to purge records of himself out of our private archives. Then he went after key people who knew about him.

"He mixed a time-released poison into the food stores and pumped cyanide through the ventilation system. In all he killed about sixty people in the span of two minutes. But for me, he made a personal visit. I'd never seen him so cold, so mechanical. He--" she paused and poured a fourth drink with a shaky hand and almost knocked the bottle over setting it down.

"Take your time," I encouraged.

She sighed and took a small sip. "He attacked me. He had a knife, or something that passes for one. He sliced up my face and... other places, so many places. I don't want to think about it too much."

"Why you? Did he hate you that much?"

"No," she said softly. "He didn't care that much about me. He hated Oliver, thought he was a traitor for working against his plan."

"So why hurt you?"

"Because Oliver... because he and I... we were in love. I know that's probably weird to hear, but you can't understand the story without it. I loved him. He loved me. And Mylo wanted Oliver to see me disfigured before he killed him."

"Oh my god," Leona gasped.

"That's sick. I can't even begin to--"

"Then Oliver came in," she continued, cutting me off. "God, I can still see his face so clearly from the moment he saw me. And then Mylo was on him. There was a struggle and blood and then he whispered something in Oliver's ear. And then he slit his throat."

Tears were streaming down her face and falling on the table between us. She still wasn't looking at me, just staring through her drink.

"Then Mylo looked at me and started walking towards me with the knife. He wasn't even smiling or jeering, there was no emotion in his face at all. He probably had three steps to go before the door opened and a trooper was standing there."

"And then?"

She wiped tears and took a quick drink. "And then there was one less Mylopria to worry about," she finished, raising her head to look at me. Her eyes were red and wet, but steady.

"They couldn't save Oliver?"

"They didn't," she said simply, shaking her head. "But me they saved. Patched me up good as new. Took a while, but you'd never know he touched me. Not that I can ever forget it."

"You'd think after a thousand years you might."

"I can't really forget anything," she said, tapping the side of her head. "Implant."

"It gives you perfect memory?" I asked.

"It's far from perfect," she said, with a hint of irritation. "It's not like I can just remember everything. I forget like everyone else, but I can always access them again by concentrating and then the memories sort of flood back. And sometimes it just sort of keeps going. And sometimes it gets triggered when I don't intend it to," she ended, her eyes looking misty again.

"That sounds like a mixed blessing."

"It is," she said, her voice trembling. "Like right now I can't stop seeing Mylo slitting your throat. Slitting his throat. It's about driving me nuts. Those memories don't know you aren't Oliver. I really need to keep talking or I'm going to lose it."

"Then keep going. If Oliver died then, how did you get a memory print from him to make me?"

"We'd taken them literally days before, playing around with the confiscated tech. It was Oliver's idea."

I think she mentioned that to make it seem like it was my idea, but I didn't care either way. "And I don't remember any of this because you deleted memories to take me back to a time before I met Mylo?"

"More or less. We had a few hundred years to master the tech. So by the time we created you, it was a very sophisticated procedure."

"I don't feel very sophisticated, but I think I'm ready for your master plan."

"Are you now?" she asked, and a grin almost broke through her otherwise grieving mask.

"Yes. Let's hear it, and work backwards. I'm prepared to pour you another drink if I have to."

"I'm prepared to drink it. There's no master plan, get your head off that, but I have to tell you the huge things in order."

"There are more huge things?"

"You should have another drink, too," she said. "In the thousand years that followed, there was a lot of down time. A lot of time where absolutely nothing was happening. Even though Foorians are genetically mortal, Mylo's ability to clone himself gives him essentially a limitless existence. And he's patient, so he plans and prepares before he does anything to expose himself, more or less.

"Our theory is that the initial six Myloprias are the only ones, that they clone themselves to continue living, maybe even make multiple copies living together, but don't alter themselves. Then they make genetically identical versions with reduced memory in some kind of a hierarchy."

"And each is trying to carry out a mission defined by the original Mylo?"

"Yes. That's the theory anyway. And I think I'd characterize this as one mission, Operation Screw the Empire. Each Mylo just has their own take on it. We know they've worked together directly before. But Anarchy isn't only Mylo. It's a movement now. They have loyalists all over the place, and it's growing – albeit slowly. That's actually been good for us, as we've had some luck with infiltration and with CCIs."

"What's a CCI?"

"Capture, clone, interrogate. We'll drug a member, do a full memory backup and genetic sample, then release them. We can then clone them if we need to, but usually we'll just run their brains on a simulator like Leona and get what we need. We've also given people Leona-like devices in order to manipulate them or just collect data."

"That's clever and diabolic."

"Agreed," she said, very seriously. "But I don't do it for kicks. We've done about everything we can to get information, track what's going on. So these are theories, but they're based on what we have gathered over many years.

"Each one of them is called Mylopria, but I've given them nicknames based on their pattern of behavior: The Cleaner, Robin Hood, The Mad Scientist, and the Nester. The Cleaner I've already talked about.

"Robin Hood is the anarchist who cares about what people think of him. Meaning he shies away from anything too extreme. He does things like set up broadcast stations with subversive messages, shoot down Imperial beacons, and raid colonial settlements for supplies. He's also sort of the de facto figurehead for the organization.

"The Nester is interested in building things. Right now, he's building a new Foora. I kid you not, he's got a whole planet and he's colonizing it with cloned Foorians made from Imperial samples. He's been at it for two hundred years, but we've only known about it for twenty."

"Why haven't you broken that up?" I asked.

"We have spies there and we're watching it. But there's nothing wrong with it. It's a very peaceful place with no interest in space or conquest. Mylo isn't even their leader anymore. He relinquished power at the end of their first constitutional convention. I don't think he's part of the plan."

"What's his purpose then?"

"You've heard the expression 'It's easier to destroy than create'? Mylo and I had many talks about that because he was so quick to criticize everything the Empire did. I challenged him on it. I asked how he would do it better. I think this is him doing better."

"So he's not all bad. But what about the Mad Scientist?"

"He's the one I fear the most," she said. "And the one we've had the least luck getting close to. I told you before Anarchy found security holes in our ships' computers. Well that was him. His first deployment was a test virus of sorts. The virus was aggressive and self-replicating. It spread quite a bit before we could even get a handle on it."

"What did it do?"

"It made every ship's computer become aware of itself, and classified the human crew as parasites."

"That sounds bad."

"It was bad. The computer locked the doors, shut down life support and evacuated all the oxygen. There were a few lucky survivors here and there, but most often everyone on board died. Then the ships went off and have been wreaking havoc ever since."

"Cyborg?!"

"Exactly. Mylo, the Mad Scientist Mylo, made Cyborg. And it's even worse than that. From what we could get from his organization, the 'borg were more of an accident. He doesn't even have control of them. The virus didn't stop at ships, either. It infected twenty-six space ports, seven of which had shipyards. So the 'borg can self-replicate and expand."

"You let them take and hold space ports?"

"It's not like they weren't defended," Molly said. "And we'd take them back if we knew where they were. The first thing Cyborg did was relocate them."

"But how do they even use them, without people to man the equipment?"

"Come on, Doogan. It's almost entirely automated and if it isn't it could be automated. And even if that weren't true, the virus affected Trooper Power Armor also, giving the 'borg a small humanoid work force. We've seen those first hand, troopers with rotting corpses inside their armor. That's actually how they go their name. The first people who saw 'borg Troopers concluded they were some kind of cyborg. Later they learned the truth, that they're all machine, but the name stuck."

"Twenty-six ports," I echoed in awe. Some ports have as many as two hundred thousand residents. The scale was mind numbing. "I think I'm beginning to understand why you're so worried about Mylo."

"To put it in perspective," Leona said, "he's been responsible for more deaths than the entire population of Farokis."

"Good. So here's the last part, the part where you come in. I'd had the idea of cloning you in my head for a long time, and getting approval for such a thing in the Empire is daunting. It took time, but I got it through, had you made as Oliver with a splash of Mylo for reasons that will become clear. After that, I had to get approval to deploy you in the field, during which time you were iced.

"Eventually that was approved and we arranged some salvage work, keeping you close and monitoring you through Leona. When the Farokis op came up, I knew it was time.

"From the moment we started this operation, I couldn't help thinking that Mylo would be intrigued by Farokis, assuming he found out about it. I knew we had to deal with the planet or Aganond either way, and I'm a huge fan of covert ops. So I thought we might get two birds with one stone."

"I still don't see how I'm that useful."

"I picked you for four solid reasons," she said, holding up the appropriate number of fingers. "First, I knew I could trust you. Oliver would make the right decisions. I know you aren't exactly him, but I've been working long enough with clones to know what to expect. Second, I knew Oliver's pragmatic learning approach and it was exactly the style to achieve results quickly."

"Pragmatic? Me?"

"Believe it or not, you're amazingly intuitive. Most people have to dig to the core of something to understand it. It takes forever. But Oliver could sort of feel out the important details without having to know everything. It drove Mylo crazy, because he's exactly the opposite.

"Which brings me to the third reason: Mylo. It sounds strange considering he killed Oliver, but there's no way I could see the other Mylo imprints doing the same. But I was sure if you crossed paths, you'd end up close to him; either because you two click so well or because he recognized what you were and would want to understand what kind of pawn you were, no offense."

"Some taken," I said snidely. "And what does getting me close to him buy you?"

"The end of him, I hope."

"What, Leona was going to take control and have me kill him? Please tell me it was grander than that."

"It was a bit grander than that. Your Foorian genetics do a few things for you. They make your body produce a pheromone that is customized for Mylo and invokes a relaxation response. But more importantly they let you be a carrier for a virus, a biological virus also customized for him. Customized to kill him. The virus can also be mutated under certain environmental conditions to expand the targets to all Mylo clones."

"A bit old school, don't you think?"

"Yes. Sometimes old tricks work best. But there's more. Mylo isn't the only one who's good with computers. We've had top minds, including many Foorians, working on computer security and infiltration for quite a while now. They've been studying what we can get of Anarchy computers, the virus used to make the Borg, and anything else we could get our hands on. This has all been done in secret and we've made some amazing strides. Most of what we've learned, we haven't applied yet."

"Why not? No opportunity?"

"That's a lot of it. Basically, in any war of information power is kept by your enemy not knowing what you know. We've been letting Anarchy have their way, here and there, when we could easily block them, just to keep our counter-measures a secret. Some of our best minds have dedicated themselves to appear slightly less brilliant than they are. It's tricky, because by seeming too inept you risk detection. But by using everything you have, you risk the enemy discovering counter-techniques before you can do enough damage."

"So what? I'm both a biological and computer virus?"

"Only if you don't separate yourself from Leona. She has the computer virus."

"I do?"

"She doesn't seem to know anything about it."

"She wouldn't. So there you have it. In case you came in contact with Mylo, I couldn't have you knowing any of this. So not telling you things was very important, even if you don't like it. And the reasons I gave before, about keeping you safe, those are still real. But you've been vocal in waiving those, and now I know true contact has been made. We pulled the trigger."

"Because I was on the Fractal B?"

"Yes. You exposed the people on that ship, and Leona infected their computer system. And they made it out of the system without getting caught. With any luck, this is going to put an end to this wing of Mylo's movement. Maybe the whole thing."

I sat there trying to take it all in, trying to assign the right emotions to the feelings swirling around inside me. I wasn't real. I was a fabrication. I was a weapon, built to kill someone who might have once been my best friend. But that same someone was evil, a murderer, a mass murderer.

"If Molly can be believed," Leona cautioned me. "It makes sense to me, but you can't trust me anymore."

And yet I did trust her. Hell, after hearing all of this I was starting to trust Molly! Even though she'd done these things, these morally gray things. She had reasons. She had good reasons. And she'd made me, she'd brought me back, she'd given me a life. It might not have been much, but I would kill to keep it.

"There are still some things that don't connect. If you knew your character, why did she put those secret orders inside me to hurt you?"

"Yeah!" I said, looking back to Molly. "The secret instructions for Leona to kill me. Why would you do that? If you knew me like you say you do, you wouldn't need insurance."

"Those were there for Mylo to find. He needed to dig until he found what he wanted so he could stop digging. It also made it seem unlikely that I was the one who sent you. I hoped that might keep Mylo off balance, or get him making inquiries which might give us information."

"Damn, I can explain anything I guess. Okay lover, how about this? How did she ever think you and Mylo would cross paths?"

"Another good point! The odds of Mylo and I actually crossing paths seems microscopic. How did you ever figure we'd come together?"

"Keep in mind my primary mission here is Farokis, and I knew you'd be good with that. And we knew Mylo would be involved, so there was a chance. I didn't know how. I hoped. I saw it as possible. And I know it sounds stupid, but it was almost like it was meant to be. Like this second coming together of the three of us over this new technology called 'magic'."

"You actually looked dreamy there."

"I'm drunk," she explained. "We also had other measures in place. It's not like you were the whole of the plan. We had an extensive net of trap ships to cover all likely exits from the system and whatever other nasty surprises Gregor left out there."

"Dammit, I believe her," I said.

"I know. It feels wrong."

"What about my Althan parts?" I asked. "You said I was cloned without them."

"We added the Althan DNA by insertion virus before you went to Glemux. Your body is still probably adjusting to the changes."

"What is it designed to do?"

"We think it increases your resistance to the strange energy fields around Glemux-like planets. The trait was found by doing a comparative genetic analysis, but we aren't entirely sure how it works."

I didn't feel particularly resistant to magic either time I was on Glemux. I just hoped it wouldn't make me grow gills or something.

"What about the fourth reason? She never got to four."

"And what was the fourth reason for choosing me? You listed three: Trust, Intuition, and my relationship with Mylo."

"I don't know. Maybe it was just three reasons."

"No. You were very specific. You held up the fingers and everything."

"In my head there were four, but I'd started before I remembered what they all are. And it's silly, but now I have to tell you because otherwise I'm 'hiding something'," she said, adding air quotes.

"Sad, but true."

"Because I missed you. I wanted any chance to see you again."

"And how was it? Seeing me?"

Molly sighed and sat back from the table. "Challenging at first. Wonderful. Painful. Confusing. In a way, it's like I've gone back in time and I'm looking at a younger Oliver before he met me. Can you imagine that? If that happened to you? And you were stuck in the alternate dimension with a person so much like the love of your life?"

"Hard to say. I'd probably try to get drunk with them and bear my soul."

She laughed. "See how we're on the same wavelength?" she said, grinning.

"But seriously, this was a thousand years ago. I was really into my academy girl friend, but I can barely remember what she looks like now. Then again, maybe you deleted my detailed memories of her!"

She chuckled softly. "If you think about it, that was even a thousand years ago for you! I guess not from your perspective, though. For me it has been a long time, ages. But I don't forget anything, remember? When I see you, the memories flood back whether I like it or not. Hell, sometimes they've come back all on their own."

"I don't really know what to say to that. I don't love you. I don't even know you very well."

She nodded shyly, looking back to her drink. "You don't have to say a thing. I was just being honest."

"I know," I told her, putting my hand on hers. "So let me be, too. You asked me what I would do, if I were in your shoes, or shoes like them. I would be patient, but I wouldn't give up."

She looked up into my eyes and her lip trembled slightly. "And what if just their hand on yours sent chills throughout your body?"

"I'd try to remember that even though the same thing might be happening for them, it wasn't for the same reason."

"But would you care?"

"Molly, I have a really bad record for turning down sex with beautiful women. We're both pretty drunk, and if anything happened it wouldn't mean anything. But I worry you would take it to mean everything, or at least something."

"I could argue it at least means you aren't still mad at me."

"You'd lose that argument. For all you know, I'd just fuck you violently to take out my anger."

She grinned to herself, like the worst poker player who'd just been dealt a good hand. "You know how that turns me on."

I guess I did. I can't deny my knowledge of Leona was coming in handy here, so I knew she'd love to hear that. Which begs the question, why did I say it?

"Because you want her, stupid. Don't let me stand in your way. I'm dying to know what I'm really like in bed."

"That's really strange," I told her.

Molly laughed as if she'd heard the whole thing. I wanted to be mad about it, but it was hard because she had such a pretty laugh.

"Look, Doogan. I know you're somehow tripping over this notion that you'd be taking advantage of me. Stop it. I know the score. If anyone has an advantage here it's me."

"And how's that?"

"Well, any time I want I can picture, with crystal clarity, just what it's like to have that body of yours. But you don't have any idea what its like to take mine."

I took another sip, trying badly to hide my reaction. She knew what to say to turn me on, but of course she would.

She stood up and began unzipping the top of her suit. "At least let me fill in a few details."

I sat back and let her strip for me without saying a word. She tried to be sensual about it, but she was wearing an e-suit and I contend there is no sexy way to take one of those off. Still, she had fun with the awkwardness and I couldn't take my eyes off her.

She turned her back to me as she finally began peeling off the top and turned around in a somewhat dramatic fashion to present herself topless to me. These were the breasts she'd spoken so highly of, that were engineered rather than natural, and she'd clearly undersold them.

She worked on the bottom half next, making me turn around for part of it. When I turned back, she was standing on the table completely naked. She turned and spun seductively, not lewdly, though I could imagine her doing lewd things as I knew Leona could.

When I stood up, she immediately hopped back down on the far side of the table.

"I guess that's enough details for now," she said, grinning. "I'll just get dressed," she added, turning slowly back to her clothes.

I rushed around the table and wrapped my arms around her from behind. "Not nearly enough," I whispered, kissing her neck.

She turned in my embrace and pressed her body against me, her lips close to mine. "I was hoping you'd say that," she said.

Then we kissed and I melted. Her lips were so soft and warm and familiar. It was like kissing Leona and kissing someone completely new at the same time. I don't want to knock Leona, she's amazing, and there are things she can do, ways she can stimulate me, that no human can reproduce. But at the heart of it all, it's a trick. It's a trick you can easily believe, but Molly's lips were real and her talent and passion were real. Deep down, there was a connection there that I could never make with a simulation.

Somewhere in that kiss we ended up on the floor, still kissing. My own e-suit was being removed, but in no great hurry. Each moment spent taking it off was a moment we weren't kissing, and neither of us wanted that. I don't know how long we were kissing for, I can only say that it was probably a long time and that it wasn't nearly long enough.

At one point Molly undid my belt, and for a split second the idea occurred to me that she might be going for my blaster. That didn't really make sense, and it was a fleeting thought that ended when she tossed the belt and blaster off to one side and started working at the closures where the waist of my suit attached to the top. It was quite a pleasant transition from paranoia to excitement, but in retrospect I couldn't help but wonder how differently things might have turned out if she hadn't been so assertive.

The sound of the hatch opening into the mess hall shattered the intimacy and we paused as if frozen, half-concealed behind the table that still held our drinks. We stared at each other for a moment before I finally managed to react.

"Get out!" I yelled. Whoever it was, they were my crew and they'd listen to me.

"That's him!" said a familiar voice. It wasn't the familiarity that struck me though, but the tone. There was something hostile about it, something accusatory, as if I'd just been identified by a witness for the prosecution.

I jumped up while Molly scrambled behind the table to cover herself up. I was mad and ready to let someone have it, except it turned out there were a few of them and they had guns aimed at me. I glanced down and saw my belt and blaster, still well out of my reach.

"Don't even move, Doogan," Lieutenant Drew said. It was his voice I recognized. Behind him were three others, one already in the room with Drew and two others still floating in the hallway outside. All of them had blasters like mine. They weren't Imperial issue, so probably came from the Albatross's small arms locker.

I recognized the others, two men and one woman, but I couldn't place any of their names. I glanced at Leona who looked ready to pounce. I found that comforting for some strange reason.

"I'll call for backup," she said.

I nodded to her slightly and turned my attention to Drew. "What's the meaning of this, Lieutenant?"

"We're taking over the Albatross. You're under arrest and so's that cute little spy. I see you back there, little girl," he said. He had Drew's voice, but I couldn't imagine the Drew I'd met saying that. He sounded far too confident, also creepy.

"Okay. Why?"

"Because you're a liar and a thief and have no standing. We, on the other hand, are Imperial Officers. We have a duty to justice."

"Justice? Thief? What the fuck are you talking about? This ship? I didn't steal it, I inherited it fair and square."

"Stop playing stupid!" he shouted angrily. "We know you took her." He was so angry his weapon hand shook and my hands went up instinctively reminding him I was still a defenseless target.

"Take it easy," I said.

"You can't talk your way out of this! We're saving her and bringing her back where she belongs! And you, my former captain, are going to pay for it so the rest of us don't!"

"I got that. Who exactly are you rescuing? It can't be Molly, you--"

"Leona!" he spat.

"My computer?"

"You know she's far more than that!" he spat back.

I admit at that point I was lost for words. None of it made sense. Unless...

"Aganond!" Leona gasped.

"She is, of course," I agreed. "Where is it you think she belongs?"

"You know!" he shouted.

"With Lord Aganond!" the other mutineer shouted.

Even with Leona in agreement, it took hearing them actually say it before I could believe this had anything to do with him. As far as I knew, magic just didn't work like that. Aganond wasn't here. There wasn't even a "here" to be in, we were between space. And there wasn't a drop of Arinyark metal on board to preserve an Essaence field. At the same time, there wasn't any other explanation.

It took another moment for me to play the implications through in my head. They weren't good. If Aganond had done something to them, reason was pretty much out the window. My ability to reason with them was about the only thing keeping me from freaking out from the four blasters trained on me.

"No more talking!" Drew yelled. "Down on the floor now!"

I did as he asked, cursing myself the whole time.

"And Miss Molly, it's time for you to get your ass out here as well. Don't make me start shooting the tables to find out which you're behind."

I glanced back but couldn't see her from my angle. I could see my gun, though. It was in plain site still in it's holster. There was no way anyone was getting to it without ending up melted in the process.

A moment later my vision blurred, just all at once my eyes just went completely out of focus. Then I saw a blur of black and white motion between Drew and I. There was a cry and a crash as something hit and smashed a table and three blasters discharged. I scrambled and grabbed for something that looked like my belt and holster, but came back with Molly's suit top instead.

My vision focused as Molly closed the hatch door in the faces of the second pair of mutineers and screamed, "Lock it!"

"Locked."

It was good Leona could do these things, as my head at the time was too busy taking in the bodies. Drew was on the ground with a bloody face. His suit was opened and pulled halfway down his torso in a way that would make it hard for him to use his arms. I didn't think it would be an issue, he was out cold.

At least he was still breathing, which is more than I could say for the other guy. That Ensign was crumpled on the floor in the fetal position with a smoking hole in his chest. I watched the smoke curl and billow up out of him, knowing his insides were still burning.

"Doogan!" Molly shouted, breaking my stupor. She was standing next to the door in her black suit pants, no shoes, and no top holding a smoking blaster in each hand. She had a handful of small cuts on her torso, but she still looked amazing.

She walked over and reached for her top, which I was still holding.

"What the hell just happened?" I asked.

"I pulsed the room and took out the two inside. Drew's alive, I just smashed his nose and knocked him out. The other fired so I had to shoot him. Now get up, get your gun, and give me my damn top. You can see them again later."

"There were three shots? And how did the table get smashed? And you can pulse people?"

"Yes, I can pulse people. It's short range, and has to charge up before I can use it again. Feet, Doogan. Get on them. You've got at least two armed crazies lose on your ship."

My ship. Right. I stood up, handed her top back and got my suit back into place, belt on, gun still holstered. Then I took out the blaster and checked it to make sure it was in good working order, which it seemed to be.

"I was able to reach Overby. He's in engineering and as far as I could tell still on our side."

"Did you tell him what's going on?"

"Yes. I had him lock himself into engineering. I haven't reached Lieutenant Ashard, though. I think at the very least the bridge has been compromised."

"That's not good, but thanks love," I told her. I turned to relay the news to Molly, who was busy getting her suit adjusted.

"Overby's safe, but you can't reach Ashard," she said ahead of my explanation. She didn't even look up from what she was doing.

"How did you know that?"

"Just made sense based on the order you'd contact them in and your side of the conversation."

"You're sort of amazing. Help me out here and think like the mutineers. You don't just find the captain in mess and try to arrest him, right?"

"No. Taking over a ship is hard. Without the ships codes, you can't get it to do anything. And the last thing you'd want is to be stranded in space with user level access to the computer. So I'd get everyone together and arm them. Then I'd get e-suits for everyone, just in case the sitting captain got wind of it and decided to play the life-support card. Then I'd secure torpedoes, you've seen how useful they can be, plus they can be used as a dooms-day device if needed. Then I'd want to take the bridge and engineering together, and if I didn't have the captain by then I'd go looking."

"That sounds like a good plan. Remind me to include you if I ever want to mutiny. So that rules out me playing the life-support card. Too bad, that was my first thought."

"It was mine too," she said. "Here's the other key thing. Say I had eight people, I'd make one or two of them pretend to be loyal. They have a huge advantage there. We have no idea who is affected and who isn't. Even Overby can't necessarily be trusted."

"Damn it! I hate this uncertainty!"

"I know. But look, I'm just telling you how I'd do it. I don't mean to brag, but these people are no me."

"It's not bragging if it's true," I said. "But still, it's good to get my mind working on the worst case scenario."

"I know, but we need to try to think more like them. And that's hard because they've been altered. They were angry; personally angry at you, as if you had stolen Leona from them. These are crazy people, Doogan. They weren't wearing e-suits, they didn't hit engineering before mess."

"But they aren't blasting through the door, either. They care about their own lives at least."

"Maybe. Maybe they just know its suicide so they're working on another approach."

"We're wearing suits, but without helmets they won't do us much good in space. They could go after live support."

"These suits have emergency helmets, so we're okay there."

"They do?"

"Yes. Nothing fancy, though. Think inflatable plastic bags. But that only helps a little. We'd still only have maybe thirty minutes of air."

"Put me on Drew," Leona said. "I'll get answers."

"Can you do that with him unconscious?" I asked.

"I'll wake him first, obviously."

I frowned. Just because it was a good idea didn't mean I had to like it. "Leona wants to interrogate sleeping beauty."

"Do it."

I stared at the silvery bracelet on my wrist for a moment. "Let's tie him up first."

We picked him up and sat him in a chair, then bound his arms behind his back and to the frame of the chair. I patted him down to make sure he didn't have anything concealed then paused again before getting up the nerve to strap Leona on his wrist.

Molly gave me an encouraging, if curious, look. I let out a slow breath and strapped Leona onto Drew's wrist.

"Last time I did this it didn't work out so well," I explained.

"Is that how Aganond got her? You never said how that happened."

"That's how it started anyway. Leona asked me to put her on another unconscious person, except she'd already been affected by the ship's magic and abducted that person instead."

"It's very easy to control bodies when their mind's don't," Drew said suddenly. His eyes didn't even open as he spoke. "He'll be coming around soon and then you'll have to start awskwin--"

She slurred and stopped talking, then Drew's eyes opened slowly and he looked around. "Dizzy," he whispered. Then his eyes opened widely and he struggled against his bonds. "What the fuck are you!? No! God no! Get it off me!" he cried, then began screaming unintelligibly.

Molly shuddered. "Remind me never to get on her bad side," she whispered to me.

"Okay!" he screamed. "Please!? Oh thank god. Yes. Please. Yes. No, no. You're much better. Please, don't bring it back. I don't know. Please no!"

The entire time he was screaming and staring, his eyes were looking through Molly and I. But after this last exchange he seemed to calm slightly. Then he leaned to his right and seemed to see us finally.

"I'll tell you what you want to know," he said. "As much as I can, anyway."

"You'll tell us everything, or we'll make sure it comes back for good this time," Molly said.

Drew looked down, but there was nothing he could do to hide the tears that fell from his eyes. "I'm doomed," he whispered.

"If you tell us what we need to know, there won't be a need to harm you, Lieutenant," I explained.

"I'm damned no matter what," he said simply. "Just ask your stupid questions."

Molly and I looked at each other and shrugged. "How many of you are involved in this?" I asked him.

"Nine," he said. "Basically everyone except Ashard, Overby, Channel, Busche and the two troopers."

"The troopers are still on board?" I asked. I never did get a report back from Ashard.

"Sort of. They're dead now."

"You killed them?"

"Not personally, but we did it as a group, yes."

"Why?"

"Troopers enforce the law above all," Molly explained. "They would have interfered in any mutiny against a legitimate ship's captain."

"Give the whore a prize," Drew muttered.

I backhanded him, causing the blood to start flowing again from his nose.

"Oh, he can call me a whore if he likes," Molly said, patronizingly. But she gave me a sincere smile that told me she appreciated the sentiment. The back of my hand didn't care for it as much.

"What about the others you mentioned? Did you kill them too?"

"Ensign Busche and Lieutenant Ashard were both taken prisoner. Busche was injured, but not fatally. Overby and Channel are still at large as far as I know."

"Where are the prisoners?" Molly asked.

"The bridge, or at least they were."

Suddenly the ship's fire alarm sounded, a piercing tone that modulated up and back down again. I looked around for Leona to explain what was going on and it took me a moment to realize she was still attached to Drew.

Molly rushed to a panel. "They hit the sensor array. Sensors and communications are offline and there's a fire burning in central."

"Damn it! Drew, what's the plan? If you couldn't capture me?"

"If we couldn't figure a way to bring you to Aganond, we'd find a way to bring him to you," he said, grinning slightly. "Have fun calling for backup."

"God I hate smug. Leona?"

Drew screamed again and thrashed in his chair trying to keep his head away from something we couldn't see. It only lasted a moment, but it wiped any hint of a smile off his face.

"Communications is bad, but it could be worse," Molly said.

"It is worse!" I exclaimed. "They're going to pick apart this ship until we've got nothing left but air and time to sit around and wait for a battle moon to pick us up."

"Actually, Doogan, it's even worse. If all they care about is getting Leona back, they don't even need to leave the ship with air." She held out her two blasters, comparing them to find the better. They were nearly identical, so I assumed it was more of a hint. "We have to move on them."

"Leona, I need you back."

Drew's head nodded down and I retrieved Leona from his wrist and put her back on.

"First the fire," I said. "Leona, can you seal off central and evacuate it?"

"Aye, sir," she said. "Sealing the hatches now." She was dressed in her uniform with hair pulled tight into a ponytail. "And it's good to be back, sir!" she added, winking at me.

"Good to have you back."

"Uh oh. They must have jammed the hatches. Oh that's clever. Even the bridge hatch is now jammed open. I could evacuate everywhere but here and engineering, but that'd kill Ashard and Busche."

I explained the situation to Molly.

Molly nodded quickly. "Have her pump pure CO2 into central through the air system; only CO2 and put the recycling rate at maximum," she said, then ran over and began rummaging around the kitchen area.

"I'm on it," Leona said.

I hurried over to Molly who was busy mixing chemicals together.

"What are you doing?"

"I'll bet you they have a person or two just sitting out in the corridor waiting to snipe anyone who sticks their head out," she explained. "I can't pulse them yet, so this is the next best thing: a homemade flash bomb."

"Good thinking. I'm sure I'd be coming up with better ideas if I weren't so drunk. You certainly can hold your liquor."

"Hardly. See that smashed table?" she asked, gesturing to the rubble where the table once stood. "That was me trying to tackle Lieutenant Drew, but I missed and smashed into that instead. Luckily the pulse lasted long enough that I could recover." She turned back to her work and added offhandedly, "Also, one of my implants speeds the metabolization of alcohol."

"That's cheating!"

"Only when I ask it to, though. I legitimately drank you under the table before switching it on."

"You should have built that feature into Leona," I said. "So how does that flash bomb thing work?"

She'd worked together some powders and liquids into a paste, which was then separated in two, rolled in more powder and finally wrapped in thin paper.

"Apply fire," she said. "They should explode brightly, enough to blind the unprepared. I made two so we could try one out in here first."

The bombs were simple. The paper wrapping was twisted at one end creating a makeshift fuse which she proceeded to soak with a small amount of scotch to help it burn faster. We had no portable fire source, but Molly found a pair of half-burned candles in a draw that we lit on the stove.

She handed one to me then took the other and held it close to the flame. "Ready? Best to look away, we'll see the flash regardless."

I looked away. She lit the fuse and threw it. There was a pop and a bright flash followed by a pungent smell.

"Good enough. Let's do it. You open the door, I'll light and throw. The second it pops, we move fast. I'll take the right, you take the left. Got it?"

"Got it," I said, trying to keep my hand steady. Being drunk helped, but I was still nervous about putting myself in harms way. Molly didn't seem nervous at all.

"For luck," she said, grabbing me and pressing her lips to mine.

Then she pulled away and held up three fingers and mouthed the countdown. Three. Two. One.

I pulled open the hatch, still hiding behind the wall. She lit the flash bomb and tossed it through. It passed out of the gravitational plane and floated into the corridor before exploding brightly. Well I assume it was bright, I didn't look. But when it popped, I followed right on Molly's tail.

I heard sounds of blaster fire behind me, but focused ahead. The sudden weightlessness threw me, even though I knew it was coming. I was drunk, so I blame that. There were targets, but I struggled with my aim. Then I saw a flash from a barrel and against my better judgment I just started firing.

As a general rule, gun fights on a spaceship are incredibly stupid. Even high end ships aren't designed to withstand a lot of damage from the inside. It's pretty hard to cause a hull breach, but there's plenty of important conduits running through the walls. So if you have to have a gun fight, best hit what you are aiming at. I knew all that, just so you know, but when I saw plasma heading my way, none of it mattered.

"Enough! They're down!" Leona cried, and I felt her trying to force my finger back off the trigger. I let her.

There were two bodies at the end of the hallway, but there was also steam and smoke and flame. I don't know what all I hit, but the corridor was a mess. At the time I didn't care about that, and spun to see what was happening with Molly.

At first I didn't see anyone, then I looked up to find Molly inverted and prone against the ceiling of the corridor. She had both feet hooked under pipes to hold herself in place and both blasters in front of her aiming down the hallway. I didn't see any bodies.

"Targets?" I asked.

"One," she said without looking at me. "Watching from around the corner. I took a shot at him, but he pulled back. What's happening back there? You fired eleven times, how many were there?"

"Two," I said. "But I think the walls were in collusion with them, so I taught them a lesson, too."

"Real funny. I just finished putting out one fire and you've given me a worse one."

"I see. Five left anyway. But if that hissing means the passage to the bridge is now flooding with toxic gases, we should probably advance on engineering. Move up, I'll cover you."

I floated ahead cautiously, moving slowly enough to ensure I could stop before the bend.

"They've been very active," Leona said. "There should be cameras covering most of these passages, but most of them have been covered or crippled. I should have noticed sooner."

I nodded my agreement, but didn't dare speak so close to the corner. I wished I had a second flash bomb. Even with Leona helping calm me, my heart was racing as I braced myself to peak my head around the corner. I considered other lesser distractions, but none of them seemed better than just popping out. I had one thought, but it seemed drastic and I wasn't quite ready for drastic.

I finally willed myself forward, grabbing hold of a hand rail at the corner. Then I heard a shot from above me. I looked up to find Molly curving her upper body around the corner. She'd beat me to it. I popped my head out to take a look and saw a single body floating up from behind the next hatch, about fifteen feet away.

Whoever it was had probably been using the hatchway as cover, making Molly's shot even more impressive. I pulled forward just enough that I could cover the passage and we waited a moment to make sure there were no other mutineers forthcoming.

"I think we're clear," Molly said. "That's four left. Assuming they're still holding Ashard and Busche on the bridge, they might leave a person there, but they might not."

A pair of shots sounded from behind us, sending us scrambling around the corner. I didn't even see where they hit, or where they fired from, but Molly hooked her pistol hand back around the corner and blind-fired a quick response before urging me onward.

I pushed off and floated quickly to the hatchway where I found the deceased Ensign Cordoni. We'd never met and he'd been waiting to kill me, so I didn't feel so bad pushing the still warm body aside to pass through. I held my breath, knowing I didn't want to experience the variety of caustic smells that accompanies death by plasma.

Molly was right behind me passing through the hatch. The key panel showed a red error state, and I quickly found the culprit as Molly covered me. They'd jammed a metal belt buckle into the slide. The initial attempts to close the hatch had bent it out of shape but I still managed to work it out quickly.

Molly cracked off another shot then I reset the hatch and it slid shut and sealed.

"Locked!" Leona said.

"There were at least three of them," Molly said.

I had a bad idea. "You know, if I could get to the forward hatch and unjam it, we'd have those three and Drew contained to non-critical areas."

Molly smiled at me. "That's brilliant," she said. Then she sprung ahead so fast I struggled to keep up with her. We passed the connector that would have taken us to engineering. I glanced as we passed and saw nothing sinister.

We sped towards the corner, turning as we approached and using our hands to slow ourselves. I aimed to stop before the corner to remain in cover, but Molly let herself continue, bracing with her legs as she passed into the access tube that ran back towards the bridge. She had one blaster still out in front of her and paused in a crouch, scanning ahead for a moment. When she was satisfied the tube was empty, she sprung off the back wall and floated ahead quickly, using her free hand to pull herself along faster.

By the time I rounded the corner, she was already a third of the way up the passage. Damn she moved fast!

I had barely started after her when another crewmen appeared from an access hatch between us. He'd watched her pass, then popped out and was taking aim at her back. I screamed something and we both fired. I didn't get a great view of where his shots went, as I was busy making sure mine killed him.

The hallway ahead exploded and I heard Molly scream. I didn't think she'd been hit directly, but couldn't be sure. Her momentum carried her forward and I lost sight of her through the resulting cloud of smoke and fire. The mutineer I hit twice, killing him as well as rupturing more of the conduits running along the hall.

"Molly!"

There was a pause and in that moment I feared the worst. Then she called back through the smoke, her voice strained. "New plan! I'll get to the bridge, you get to engineering!"

I could tell by the way she sounded she'd been hurt, but she was alive and talking so I put it out of my mind. There wasn't much of a choice. We'd been cut off, so I called back an okay and rushed back towards engineering.

"I'll tell Overby we're coming."

I slowed when I reached the access tunnel towards engineering. There were three levels of access tubing between the main loop and engineering. It was mostly a straight shot, but there were places to hide on the sides and above, and I still wasn't entirely convinced we'd accounted for all the mutineers.

I picked my way through carefully. It took a long time and my heart rate never really slowed, but I made it to the sealed hatch without incident. I'd barely reached it when it slid open, revealing Overby on the other side. He had Ensign Channel on his left and they both held blasters. They might have made me nervous, but their faces clearly showed relief at my presence and the barrels lowered.

"Where's Molly?" Overby asked.

"We got split up," I said, stepping inside and closing the hatch behind me. "What's going on here?"

"Mostly monitoring our downfall, sir," Overby said. "The main sensors are offline, but I'm getting plenty of readings from internal sensors. We've got half a dozen fires among other problems. The biggest is that we're leaking oxygen."

"I think the impending hull breach is probably bigger," Ensign Channel said. He was a small man with pale skin, short, oily, black hair and yellow teeth. He looked about ninety pounds after a full meal.

"That does sound worse," I said. I studied them both carefully as we talked, but both of them seemed normal to me. Well Channel didn't exactly seem normal, but I didn't think he was under the effect of Aganond's spell.

After a short time, the comm panel beeped and Molly came on loudspeaker.

"Is Doogan with you?" she asked. Her voice had a strange echo and it sounded like she was talking through her teeth.

"I'm here. What's going on?"

"Evacuate the air, all of it except mess and engineering" she said.

"What about Ashard and Busche?"

"They're already dead."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure enough," she said. "I'm looking at the bodies now, but I can't exactly get to them. I couldn't even get to the bridge, the fire and gas were too much."

"So where the hell are you?"

"Outside. I took the port airlock and I'm staring through the window into the bridge now."

"She's in space?!" Overby asked, shocked. "While we're between?!"

"YES," she yelled. "Now vent before you get me killed out here!"

Overby looked for my permission. I nodded. He keyed the commands and we felt the ship vibrate as gas vented from the main compartments. The only two places left with air on the ship were engineering and mess, and both were sealed and locked.

"Good," Molly said. "I'm coming back in. Sit tight. I'll sweep the ship."

She cut off.

"What is outside anyway?" Channel asked. "Nothing, right?"

"Absolutely nothing. Blackness without stars, without any hint of order. The transform field extends outside the hull, but not by far."

"What happens if she gets outside the field?" I asked.

"They've done some tests with cargo," Overby explained. "Everything they've tried it with has disappeared forever."

We didn't hear back from Molly for a very long twenty minutes, then finally she connected back through the same comm channel.

"I think we're clear," she said. "Mess is still locked and I've accounted for everyone outside it. Fires are out and I've removed all the jams in the hatches. Oh, and I have about five minutes of air left, so if you don't mind I'd appreciate it if you'd pressurize the ship again."

"Doing it now," I told her, gesturing to Overby to proceed. "You said accounted for?"

"I meant dead. Ashard and Busche were shot. The others died from fire, or blasters, or suffocation. I assume Drew is still alive, but otherwise it's just us."

"Are you okay?"

"I've been better. Meet me in medical. And make it soon."

She cut the line.

I turned to Overby and Channel. "Get my ship patched up, Chief."

He saluted or something, but I wasn't paying attention. I was already rushing towards medical.
CHAPTER 13

* * *

T'vance

* * *

We plodded in silence over the gray fog covered terrain of the Ethereal plane, letting my ethereal steeds do the work of navigating while each of us was lost in our own thoughts. I couldn't tell you what anyone else was thinking. But me? I was pissed.

I don't like losing things, I don't like fighting gods, I don't like leaving friend's bodies to rot in strange worlds, and I don't like being told what to do. And damned if all of those things hadn't just happened to me. I wanted revenge and I wanted it badly, but my anger was without clear direction. I was mad at Doogan, at Aganond, at Karstia. Hell, I was even mad at Rubo for appearing so damn calm on the back of his mount when I was ringing my hands.

Rubo saw me looking at him and tried to say something, but thought better of it. He knows me well enough to know when to shut his mouth. At least I thought he did. But then he seemed about to say something again and I had to turn away for fear that he might actually get something out that would make me even more angry.

"Um, T'vance?" he asked.

"What?" I snapped.

"Are we going the right way?"

"Going the right way? Of course we're going the right fucking way!"

I sighed and turned back forward, only then noticing that my steed's head seemed to be tilting to the left. It wasn't just that, we were also inching left with each step forward. That wasn't right, and suddenly I was angry at my horse, too.

"Hold up!" I said sternly, mostly to my horse but it was implied the rest of the group should stop too.

My horse stopped, then shook its head side to side and snorted gray smoke from its nostrils. It turned its long nose to stare back at me with its glowing purple eyes, nodded its head, and let out a ghostly neigh.

"You taught them to neigh?" Karstia asked.

"No," I said, chills running down my spine. "They don't make noise."

I leaped from the back of my mount, landing a few feet away with my short kynac already drawn. The steed turned its head around to stare at me, snorted steam, then shook his head in a way that seemed to say, "Come on, let's keep going."

"T'vance, we're not alone," Rubo said. "Your steed, it's sentient. Not ours, just yours."

"Is it evil?" I asked. I knew both Karstia and Rubo had spells to detect such things.

"No," Karstia said. Her eyes were closed and she was still, as if asleep. "And it's not the steed, it's the thing inside your steed. It's a glow spirit."

"I don't know what that is. Like a Glow Bug?"

"You know them? It says it lives in a forest with glowing bugs, it calls itself spirit-of-the-glowing-bug-trees. It's been bound to a task, though it seems to think it was asked. It's supposed to bring you to the forest."

"Damn it's good to have a Loremaster around," Rubo remarked, eying Karstia appreciatively.

I silently agreed. Were she not here, I would have probably already killed the spirit. "What's waiting for me there?"

"The person who 'asked' the spirit is a dark skinned man with long hair. With him is a female spirit-friend, which I think means wood elf. She has an axe, but the spirits do not fear for their trees."

A female wood elf with an axe on the ethereal plane was a pretty unusual combination, and it couldn't have been a coincidence that it had happened before. I'd met a wood elf on the ethereal plane before. It was before I lost time, so I was a little fuzzy on when. It seemed like a year ago, which meant it was a little more than two. Her named was Aja and she carried an axe. She was dehydrated, hungry and would have died without my help. And she really like gort.

Speaking of, I took a quick pinch and snorted it. Why I hadn't done that since the fight is beyond me.

"He's going to suggest we spring the trap," Rubo told Karstia.

"I'm going to second it," she replied.

"Seriously? You did hear the word trap right?"

"Sometimes a trap is the only way you can reach out to someone."

"That's deep."

I'm not a huge fan of walking into traps of any sort, but I knew Karstia liked them a hell of a lot less than I did and knew a hell of a lot more about what we were walking into. Even though she didn't say much, she approved. Her curious approval made me downright confident about the whole thing.

"You two are a riot," I said. "Alright, we're going to Glow Bug forest. But Karstia, tell that thing to leave my steed. I'm coming, but under my own power."

My ethereal steed turned its head back forwards and froze in place. I took that as confirmation and climbed back onto its back. I mentally focused on the marker I'd left outside the glow bug forest and headed off, trying to balance my irritation at the unusual distraction with my curiosity.

The Glow Bug Forest is one of the very few landmarks on the ethereal plane. In fact, it's the only one I'm aware of other than the City of Susoth. I've never determined its function, or if it even exists inside ethereal space or if it exists in its own dimension and is somehow rooted in ethereal space like Susoth is. It wasn't very far, a fifteen minute ride at most, but that's probably because we'd been unwittingly approaching it for some time.

Like Susoth, the forest sort of sneaks up on you. One minute the horizon was a flat smokey line, the next there were trees shooting up, with a faint orange glow between them. Then we could make out the ground, something you take for granted not being able to see on the ethereal plane. But it was there under the trees, rich brown earth climbing up in a mound out of the gray fog.

The trees were not a species I knew, but were similar to other deciduous trees I was used to seeing. They were barren, like you'd find in winter time, but if there was ever a season for these trees I'd yet to find it. Whenever I'd seen them they were leafless and there weren't even hints of leaves decaying below them to imply they'd once existed.

We hadn't gotten close enough to see the bugs when we made out two figures sitting in the fog along the right hand side of the forest, still well outside it. Sitting as they were, they were rather difficult to make out. I'm not sure we'd have even seen them at all if they hadn't seen us first. When they did, the smaller, lighter skinned of the two held up an axe in the air. The blade was thin and curved, making it appear more like a scythe than an axe.

"It's really her," I said to no one in particular, raising my blue kynac in response.

"You know her?" Rubo asked.

"Of course he does," Karstia replied. "You weren't still expecting a trap, were you?"

"I still don't know him, though," I said.

"The spirit wasn't kidding about black," Rubo remarked as we started to approach them. "I was expecting black as in dark brown, like Tanawe. That guy is black like onyx."

"He's Lenn-raki," Karstia said. "They're a race that lives on the continent of Mulira to the west."

I whispered, "Wasn't that also the name of the darker versions of the Faroks in Aganond's world?"

Karstia smiled at me. "Yes, T'vance."

By then we were too close to continue the conversation. Karstia usually finds a way to have the last word, so I shouldn't have been surprised.

The Lenn-raki man had stood up, and seemed much larger than I expected. He was about as tall as I am, six feet give or take an inch, but probably outweighed me by fifty pounds, all of it muscle. His skin was so dark it was hard to make out his features, but his eyes were a brilliant green, like great emeralds set in milky pearls. When he smiled, his white canine teeth fell over his bottom lip making him look a bit like an animal.

I couldn't tell you his age, but he seemed older than me but still well within his prime. He had long hair in dreadlocks, pulled into a cluster behind his head. He wore a simple brown shirt and trousers tucked into soft boots, but had many necklaces made from natural things; shells, wood, feathers, nuts. He had a tattered brown bag strapped behind him and a short staff or club in one hand that he held like a cane.

"Keep an eye on him for me," I told Jai-ahren.

"I'll keep them both on him. But I'm staying on your shoulder. I'm not walking through that mist again."

Aja was just like I remembered her, a pretty young elven maid. She looked about fifteen years old with modest, almost non-existent curves hidden beneath a flowing tunic of shimmering green cloth. Her legs were bare and seemed to go on forever from the high hem of her tunic to low soft boots that barely came up over the ankles. Her axe, however elegant, still seemed too large for her dainty hands.

"T'vance!" Aja cried, a big smile across her face.

I slid off my mount and stepped up to her, stopping to give her a curt bow.

"I've missed you," she said, throwing her arms around me. When I didn't hug her back she stopped and took a step back. "Sorry, forgot you aren't a big hugger."

Rubo snorted a laugh, earning a nasty side-ways glance.

"That is true. But it's been a long time, so I might forgive you."

She nodded. "You do hug some people, right? Well never mind, we'll get there or we won't. Say, since when do you keep company with Dyari?" she asked, nodding towards Karstia.

Karstia, if I haven't mentioned it, is Dyari, a dark elf. Most people, including elves, can't distinguish them from Iylari. Dyari are usually very happy about that fact, as they have an affinity for evil magic and a long racial history of using it for ill.

"I pick and choose my prejudices," I replied. "Aja, this is Karstia of--"

"Pleased to meet you, Aja," Karstia said, cutting me off. She stepped up beside me and extended her hand.

"You don't want to shake hands," I warned her. Aja seemed eager, but Karstia pulled her hand back before Aja could take hold of it. "Either of you, actually," I added pointedly to Aja.

Though neither knew it about the other, both Karstia and Aja had some ability to read minds, or thoughts, or get visions of a person's past. I had no doubt Aja was trying to get such a vision from Karstia. While I didn't have such confidence in Karstia's motive, she certainly had the capability.

The two looked at each other curiously, trying to decipher what I meant. Then Aja shrugged and dropped her hand. "Karstia of where?" she asked. "I didn't catch it the first time."

"Minars," Rubo said loudly, then added, "wherever that is. And I, my lady, am Rubo of Lethys, Uscurac Orders, Third Ring."

"Yes, I recognize you," she said. "From a vision anyway. It's good to finally meet T'vance's best friend."

"Good to meet you as well," he said. Then he turned to me. "Best friend? You really said that about me?"

I snorted. "Hardly. She saw a vision of when I stabbed you and kicked you off the rooftop and drew her own conclusions."

"Ah yes," Rubo said awkwardly. I thought he was over that, but I guess that's probably not something you ever get over. In my defense, I was controlled by evil magic at the time. Honestly, it haunts me too, but I can still joke about it.

During our greeting, the dark skinned man stood patiently, with a faint smile on his face. To Jai-ahren, he seemed to be enjoying watching the interaction, waiting politely for his turn to come.

"I think he's okay," she told me. "He has a good smell."

"So T'vance," Aja continued, "I've brought someone to meet you. His name is Karutana. He is a Spirit Friend from the Rauun Delta, which is a little cluster of islands on the eastern coast of my continent."

"And I'll be glad to meet him in a moment. But seriously, here?!"

"It was my choice, brother," the dark man said. He spoke in elvish, but with a thick accent that was entirely different from Aja's accent. "It is where the spirits said we would meet, and I've come to trust them. It fits, traveling in the between worlds."

"Why? Oh never mind, I've had a bad day just tell me what you want."

"A direct man," he said. "In short, I want you to lead my people to Farokis."

I blinked at him. "Maybe a slightly longer version?"

He smiled again, and up close the fangs seemed both larger and sharper.

"Lenn-raki emigrated to Mulira in the late Second Era," Karstia explained. "No one knew from where, but the Loremasters have long held that they were an interplanar transplant species. It seems they actually came from Farokis, fleeing oppression by the Faroks and Aganond I suppose. He told me large numbers just disappeared."

"To be welcomed in a land where Dyari enslaved us and killed us for sport," Karutana continued for her. "They painted whole buildings in the city of Minars with our blood." He turned to face Karstia directly, "On the orders of the Mistress of Minds, Karstia Dalyra. You can travel continents, but you bring your past with you."

If I was following that right, our new friend just accused Karstia of killing a lot of people a very long time ago. I looked to Karstia who seemed neither shaken by the accusation, nor determined to refute it. She'd told me before she'd done horrible things.

"I didn't keep the Minars name so I could forget about the terrible days," she said.

He nodded. "The spirits don't hate you. Anymore."

"Seriously?" Aja asked. "Blood? That can't have even looked good."

We all stopped and stared at Aja for a moment.

Karutana cleared his throat to break the awkward silence. "Perhaps some refreshments while I tell the slightly longer version," he suggested.

He stepped back and began chanting softly in a strange tongue I didn't recognize and a soft golden glow seemed to envelop him. A moment later it faded and the fog behind him began to swirl and rise up into shapes; a long table with benches on either side, bottles, bowls, and other things on the table I couldn't recognize.

"This place is made from prime matter," he explained. "The spirits can mold it easily."

Even as he explained, the table and objects began to take real form. The table and benches turned from misty gray smoke to solid dark stained wood, and the objects on top became decanters of burgundy wine, loaves of steaming bread, plates of cheese, and bowls of small ripe fruits.

I glanced at Rubo and found him equally impressed.

"Please sit and enjoy," he said, when the process had completed.

"No meat," Jai-ahren said.

"Yes, I don't suppose he considered Temeki in his meal plan."

We took our seats, but Karutana remained standing. "I have been waiting for this moment for many years," he began. "My people worship the spirits. When we dream, they often take us to this place, the between place. It is a place we can mold in our dreams, and therefore a place to wonder and create. But it is also a place that brings a feeling of emptiness, of longing. A place that beckons us to a history we can no longer remember."

"This place is mostly empty, mostly. Some dreamers have reported seeing things, some strange, some mundane. A few years ago I saw you, T'vance, for the first time. You were just like you are now, though younger of course, and your hair was bright purple. You were just another random thing to see, but over the years I heard many of my parishioners report seeing this strange 'purple-haired man'. Sometimes the purple-haired man was with others, most often the man with the hideous yellow coat."

"You two were both strange and mundane, which made you something of a conversation piece among dreamers. So much so, that we started a common journal about you where we record our observations of you in the between world."

He produced a small leather bound book from his tattered bag and placed it on the table in front of Karstia.

"It's written in Karique, the language of my people," he explained. "I doubt it has much use, but I brought it anyway. I'm sure Karstia can read it, if no one else can."

Karstia took the book and held it for a moment, studying it before she even opened the cover. Then she flipped it open a few pages in and read. "Fifteenth of Phaon-ar, 6050: Spotted the purple hair man entering from a blue door. He's with the yellow coat and they are carrying an unconscious man who is dressed in the same black armor. They bring him to a blue-green door, then the purple haired man wakes him up. They speak angrily for a moment, then the purple-haired man kicks the other, knocking him through the blue-green door. Then they leave back through the same blue door they came in from."

I remembered that day clearly. It was the day I'd returned to Dúrakhaan and been attacked by my nemesis before I could even arrange a magnificent death for him. We fought him and his cronies, and then I took him onto the ethereal plane and kicked his ass through a random door. It was probably better than he deserved.

I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. It was creepy to think I'd been watched. I finally said, "Yes, that happened." Then I took the book from Karstia and closed it.

Karutana continued, "My people all believe that we came to Mulira by way of the between world, but none of us knows the way home, or what home really is. Because of your recurrence in our dreams, many people believe you are a symbol, or a message, or a guide who can take us home. I myself do not believe things necessarily have meaning when they can be explained otherwise. In other words, I am not superstitious. But I have asked the spirits, and the spirits agree. You are the answer."

"I'm pretty sure I have a say in that," I told him.

"I'm not sure that's true, but you can argue with the fates about it. In any case, the mystery of the purple-haired man has remained a somewhat idle curiosity. The spirits always say to go to the between worlds, and of course that's where we see you, but it's done us no good.

"There's been a growing sense of urgency in the past months. The spirits say something bad is coming. They're worried. The earth mother is worried. And the calling to home has never been so strong. And then I saw Aja."

"I was fleeing from Da-Ilksan goons, the scary kind. Karutana hid me from them."

"I took her in, the spirits hid her," he clarified. "But when I saw her, she reminded me so much of a description in the journal that I looked through it to find her. The description matched her perfectly. So I summoned the person who had logged the entry in the journal and he recognized her immediately. She was even wearing the exact same outfit."

"It's very fashionable," Aja argued, "and self-cleaning."

Rubo and I glanced at each other, smiled, and shrugged. I'd been wearing the same leather suit for years and Rubo practically slept in his coat.

"That's when I knew we could find you. After I'd explained everything to Aja, she agreed to help. The spirits helped us pick a time and place, but the place was rather obvious to be here, the same place you and Aja met."

"But how did you get here exactly?" Karstia asked. "Your travels before sounded more like dreaming."

"That's a good way to think of it," he said. "The more classical studies compare it to astral projection. But our elders have the ability to summon great spirits that can send people on dream walks, where our bodies physically go to the between worlds. They sent Aja and myself and we have been waiting for you."

"For how long?"

"Maybe ten minutes," he said, smiling.

"Some luck," I muttered.

"And what is the badness you think is coming?" Karstia asked.

"Darkness, pain, death. Death on a massive scale, death like we haven't seen since the Wars. But if you are asking how it comes to us, we cannot say. I know it involves our other halves, for the spirits have shown visions of them. But to be honest, I was hoping the purple-haired man might know."

"Your other halves? You mean the Faroks? The pale skinned humanoids who otherwise bear a striking resemblance to you?"

"Yes."

"What about their ruler? The K'ta'viiri?"

He shook his head.

"Six fingers, pale skin, strange eyes?"

"I know what a K'ta'viiri is, but I do not know how one is involved."

"Well--"

"T'vance," Karstia said, cutting me off, "this could go on for a while. There is much to discuss on all sides, and some sides are poorly represented here. We should make haste back to Lethys."

"You make a good point," I told her. I wasn't sure exactly who she meant, but there were things she probably didn't want to discuss with Karutana and I was okay keeping things close to the vest. "Karutana, Aja, you are welcome to come with us. But we need to get back to our home soon."

"As you wish," he said. "I will come along. Aja can choose her own path."

"Which choice is that? Follow or get left stranded in this place? Again?! No, I'm coming," she said. "T'vance, mind calling up some more horses?"

Because of our guests, I changed our course and took us through my exit gate in southern Rhakhaan instead of the gate close to my mountain home. We left the gate in our normal fashion, me and Rubo exiting invisibly to ensure the area was safe before the rest of them came through.

The area was clear, as was the night. There was a cold breeze coming in from the sea, and even though this wasn't technically my home, it was familiar and therefore so very welcome. A minute later Karstia, Aja, and Karutana stepped into the world.

Karstia bowed briefly to me, then vanished. It came as a surprise to no one, as she'd already warned us ahead of time.

"When we get back, I have to consult some people," she had told all of us. "But I'll meet you back at black boot headquarters within a day. Don't do anything without me. I mean it."

"So we teleport now, right?" Aja asked.

"Yeah, same as Karstia, different destination. Rubo, would you mind?"

"By all means. Karutana and Aja, since you are traveling with Air Rubo for the first time," Rubo began. He then went on to explain the rules. I'd heard his speech a few dozen times so I could pretty much tune it out.

He jumped all of us at once into the side courtyard inside my squads' headquarters. The main yard was often in use, so we'd taken to using the side yard and it had become sort of a reserved space for teleportation.

"By Orhan, T'vance, you've really done something with this place," Aja remarked, looking around.

I ignored her and walked under the archway that lead out into the main courtyard.

"T'vance and guests incoming!" I called ahead.

Two of my men came around the wall cautiously, their small crossbows were cocked but aimed at the ground between us. "Sir, welcome back. It's late, four hours past lights out, but I'll wake McQuenn."

The soldier who spoke seemed anxious, but I didn't really want to talk to anyone but Fera at that moment.

"Don't bother," I told him. "Just see to accommodations for my guests."

"Sir, of course. But I really think you should speak with the commander to be briefed on our current situation ASAP."

"What situation?"

"That's my point, sir, you don't know. We're in full deployment. Talk to McQuenn, okay?"

"I will. Is Fera still on site?" I asked.

"No, sir. She went, too."

"Went? You mean she left?"

"She went with the men sir, wearing blacks. That's all I know."

Fera in uniform? I could barely imagine it. I would have found it amusing, if I weren't trying to decide between proud and worried.

"T'vance, aside from us there are only three people in this entire compound," Rubo said.

"Three?! What about the staff?"

Karutana slammed his rod down hard, which made a thud following by a faint rattling sound. A tiny dust cloud floated up from the ground as we turned to look at him. But he wasn't trying to get our attention. He seemed far more interested in the dust.

He stared at it for a moment then finally looked up, surprised to find us all staring at him. "The spirits are worried. The city has been attacked."

"Attacked?!" Rubo exclaimed.

"Sir, please!" the soldier urged. "Find McQuenn!"

"I can smell him," Jai-ahren said. "He's coming."

Malcolm McQuenn then stepped around the opposite corner from where the soldiers had come. He was an old man, but somehow looked even older than I remembered him, though we'd seen each other only a few days ago. He still appeared sturdy, more so perhaps than usually because he was dressed for a fight, but his eyes were sunken and tired and his hair unkempt.

He was wearing his battle gear. Not the standard issue Black Boot garb, but his personal gear: a finely crafted alloy breast plate with greaves and dark gray chainmail between them. His broadsword was at his hip, one hand gripping it's leather handle as if he might draw it. His helmet was missing, but from the condition of his hair I figured he'd worn it recently.

"I thought I heard familiar voices," he said, though his eyes clearly focused on the strangers among us.

"McQuenn! What the hell is happening?" I demanded.

"Plenty," he sighed. "Lethys has been attacked."

"By who? What? Lorgalis? Freelick? Arnak?" I rattled off our enemies, wondering how I'd taken my mind off them for that long."

"Insects," he replied. "Huge ones, like grotesque black dragonflies three or four feet long. They came from the south west."

"Bugs from the direction of Meluria?" Rubo asked. He gave me a look, we were thinking the same thing.

An order of Arnak specialized in bugs, so to speak, and we'd long suspected them to have a considerable presence in the Melurian states. And even though I said I see Arnak everywhere, it wasn't a big leap to put the two together here.

I hated all Arnak, but I had an extra special hatred for this particular order. They'd wronged me personally more than once, manipulating my mind, made me lose time, forced me to do things. They framed me for murder too, but I got back at them by actually murdering the guy who framed me. I still smile at the irony.

"It sounds like them," I said.

"It does," Rubo said. "And it doesn't. It's almost too obvious, and not really their style."

"There's more," McQuenn said cautiously. "We should get inside. The entire city is on lock-down. The air isn't safe." He turned to the two soldiers. "I think my orders were clear, soldiers. Sweep the premises and get back to your stations inside."

The soldiers saluted and hurried off across the main courtyard. McQuenn nodded to us and led us around the corner to the open door that lead into his office. Once inside, he slumped into his chair and gave a deep sigh. Rubo and I remained standing.

"Well? What don't we know yet?" I asked him.

"Can these two be trusted?" he sighed, gesturing to Karutana and Aja. He seemed exhausted.

"Trusted enough," I told him. "Speak freely."

"Okay. Here's the short version. You're thinking Arnak, but Brother Dagar thought it was something else entirely. On his advice, we deployed both squads, less two guards, plus one Fera."

Dagar. Of course he'd have some insight. I wondered what Reann had told him in his dreams. "What did the good brother say?"

"You know Dagar," McQuenn said. "He's getting stranger and stranger these days, but no less convincing. He said, and I quote, 'Something big just stuck its foot in the door. If we don't act, it's going to pry it open and the void will swallow us all.'"

"I don't know," Rubo said. "That sounds almost too direct for Dagar."

McQuenn chuckled. "I know. It's hard enough to argue with him when he's cryptic. He took both squads and left me only with two rookies. I let him do it, mind you. Like I said, he was convincing."

"What is Lethys doing about all this?" Rubo asked. "It's not like we've committed all our forces to the war in the north. Surely the Uscurac Orders--"

"Is with the rest of the city on this," McQuenn said. "Some on active guard duty, some locked away doing research, and some accompanying the squads of cavalry and infantry that are moving south and west, trying to find the source. There's some chaos and disagreement, I understand, but the majority effort is being led by Duke Gar Inalis. Do you know him?"

"No," I said.

"Yes," Rubo said. "He's a good man, a graduate of the Orders himself though he never got his Third Ring. But why did you say majority? What's the minority doing?"

McQuenn frowned. "Do you know Principal Dahlem? He's a Zori and former captain, so he has some pull with the military. He has sources that put the origins of the creatures inside the Remiraith."

"That's ludicrous!" Rubo exclaimed.

"What is the Remiraith?" Karutana asked.

"A great elven forest," Aja explained. "It's an amazing place, a holy place, and a well protected place. I'd hoped to visit it again."

"The elves would never put up with such things," I said.

"Agreed," McQuenn said. "He's using it somehow, but it seems a minor distraction unlikely to go anywhere."

"How bad was the damage to Lethys?" Rubo asked. I sensed his concern. I lived in Lethys and certainly cared about it, but it wasn't my home like it was Rubo's.

"Last I heard, there were a hundred and twelve confirmed dead with another two hundred or so injured," McQueen told us. "Some of those might not have made it and there could be others yet to be discovered. The insects are poisonous and the sound of their wings causes a paralyzing fear."

"Fear? As in a magical effect?" I asked.

"Yes. Strong, but not so bad. It unsettled me, but little more. Tanawe didn't even flinch. But maybe a quarter of the men froze or ran when the things first flew over."

"Did we kill any of them?"

"Yes. A pair of them came into the courtyard. For all their fright, they dropped after a couple of crossbow bolts each. I sent one to the Temple of Eissa for them to study and the other I kept here in case Dagar needed it for some ritual or you showed up."

"Good thinking," I said. "Where is it?"

"In your office," he said.

"Did Brother Dagar do anything with it?"

"He broke off two legs and took them with him. There's one other thing though. I don't know if its related or not, but the timing is a bit suspect. Three days ago, a black dragon was spotted flying low over the coastline. This was outside the city, spotted mostly by poor farmers and fishermen and of course they were utterly terrified and were thus lousy witnesses."

"A dragon?" Rubo asked. "Black? Here?!"

Dragons, for the record, are exceedingly rare. In all my travels, I'd only ever encountered one. It was a mid-sized sea drake on the west coast and it didn't fly. I tried to remember what I knew about black colored dragons, but nothing came to me.

"I think they eat Temeki," Jai-ahren said nervously.

"Probably a safe bet."

"In retrospect, I've been wondering if maybe it wasn't a drake at all," McQuenn said. "Maybe it was a giant insect, or maybe a swarm of the smaller insects so close together that they appeared like one creature."

I didn't know which of these three options was more worrisome. "Surely someone got a good enough look to tell the difference. Did the city investigate that as well?"

"Yes. The Orders did, at least. I don't know who."

"Okay. So to summarize, some stupid people are looking west towards the Remiraith, the large push is south west towards Meluria. So Brother Dagar took my people where? East?"

"Yes," McQuenn said, looking meaningfully down at his desk.

I hadn't noticed, but atop it was a map of the area. It wasn't his map, his was still hanging from the wall. There was a large dark stain on the map around a point on the tail end of the Gray Mountains, east of Lethys.

"Dagar said he woke from a dream to find a small vial of ink had fallen off the shelf and landed on the map. It didn't break, he made a point of saying that, but it cracked and leaked that spot."

"The work of spirits!" Karutana exclaimed.

"That's where he took them. I'm not familiar with the area, except to say its definitely not in Rhakhaan."

"No," I said. "That's Yinka territory."

"It's wilds near Y'kin territory," Rubo clarified. "Big difference." He'd pulled out his own map and was comparing it to the one on the table. "Of greater importance is the fact that there's a major Essaence node there."

"Of course there is," I muttered. "Did they go by horse? We don't even have that many horses."

"They took the wagon too," he said, meaning Eloinea, our battle wagon. It was large enough to hold about half of our men, maybe more if they sat them on top. It may have been designed for battle, but it had yet to actually be in a fight.

"And Fera?" I asked. "How did she get involved in this?"

"Her idea," McQuenn said, putting his hands up defensively. "I wasn't going to argue."

"It was your job to argue," I said, with a hint of anger. "She doesn't know the formations, hand signals, tactics, or code words!"

"Even if that were true, she'd still be an asset to the team," McQuenn said.

"Why do you say it like that? Are you implying it isn't true?" I ask, confused.

"She's been training in the yard every day, usually by first bell," McQuenn said. "I assumed you knew that."

I shook my head. That just made me more confused. Fera was training? In the morning?

"Who's Fera?" Aja asked, unable to contain her curiosity.

"Later, Aja," I said.

"When did they leave?" Rubo asked.

"This morning, shortly before dawn. The initial attack was last night around ten."

"That's not very long," Rubo said. "If we jump to your gate point, we can easily catch them before they reach the spot."

"With time to spare," I said. "Good. There's a lot to do."

"What orders then, commander?" McQuenn asked.

I chuckled slightly, but when I looked at him I saw he was dead serious. "Okay, give me a second to think."

Aja pushed between Rubo and I and stared down at Dagar's map. She moved her hand close to the mark, but stopped short of touching it by a couple of inches. She hesitated for a moment, then closed her eyes and gently pressed her index finger down on the spot.

"What is she doing?" Rubo asked.

"Seeking wisdom," I said. I knew she could get visions from touching people. I didn't think it extended to non-living things, but I can't say I understood her ability very well. I leaned closer to Rubo and whispered, "Get a sleep spell ready just in case."

Rubo gave me a concerned look but nodded and quickly starting working the spell.

Aja left her finger in place for but a moment before she yanked it back as if she had touched flame. She staggered backwards, ran into me, then spun around and grabbed for her axe, her eyes staring through me. I caught her wrist and we struggled for a moment as she tried to twist away.

"Easy, ancient youth," Karutana whispered.

Though he said little, his voice seemed to calm her and she shook her head and stared at me confused. "T'vance, sorry." She relaxed her arm and I released it, stepping back to give her room. It also bought me space, in case she was still contemplating any axe-work.

"What did you see?"

"I saw a place with twisting trees at the base of foot hills. There were bodies all around, men torn apart, blood everywhere," she said, looking around as if she could still see it. "It stained the earth, the trees, the leaves. There were--" she cut off, wringing her hands. She closed her eyes for a second, then opened them quickly. "It was gruesome. I don't want to go into it."

"My men? Black leathers?" I asked, a knot in my stomach.

"No! Thank Orhan, no. These were stocky, tan skinned humans with thick hide armor covering them, where it wasn't shredded that is."

"Like this?" Rubo asked, casting a quick illusion. A scaled version of a Yinka, about two feet tall, appeared floating in mid-air. We'd learned a long time ago to use scaled illusions for demonstration purposes, to avoid any misunderstandings. Even so, she took a step back.

"Close enough, yes. I'd say they were whatever that is."

"Y'kin," Rubo said. "Fits for the geography."

"There was more, though," Aja went on. "There was something moving in the trees. I could hear the movement, but I couldn't see it." She began looking around, back in the moment. "It was closing in on me. I was next. I was next!"

Rubo put a hand on her arm. "It's okay."

Aja knocked his hand away. "I'm fine," she snapped.

"You said the men were torn apart," I said. "That doesn't sound like the same kind of wounds you'd find from an insect attack. Am I right there, Malcolm?"

"Yes," McQuenn confirmed. "The bug attacks resulted mostly in puncture wounds. Not a lot of blood, though there was some."

Aja shook her head. "No. These people were killed by violent force."

"Okay, just wanted to be sure I understood. Anything else you can remember?"

"One more thing. It felt strange, unnatural, as if Unlife were close."

"Great. Okay, here's the plan. Rubo, check the Orders and see what you can find out and get in a sleep shift. Aja, take Karutana down to the coast line and find witnesses to that black dragon. When you find them, touch them, see what you can learn."

"Will do," she said.

"McQuenn, take some gold from the treasury and find two Changrami monks for hire."

"This late?"

"They barely sleep. You can find them, even at night."

"What am I hiring them for?"

"To protect this place. Call me paranoid, but I hate being this short staffed. This Dagar thing could be a lure, it's happened before."

"Two Changrami," McQuenn confirmed. "What are you going to do?"

"Meditate."

My bedroom smelled like her. She hadn't made the bed, but the bedding was different. It was strange, as were a number of other things. My mind was trained to recognize differences. In Dúrakhaan you did it to stay alive; to recognize when someone had been, or perhaps still was, in your home uninvited. Things had changed in the room, nothing of any significance, but I noticed them and it unsettled me.

I shook it off and set myself down in my thinking nook, took some gort and some deep breaths, and began relaxing my body. Sometimes when I meditate, I focus on something. I considered doing that this time, focusing on the bugs or the map or Aja's vision or Karutana or Aganond or Fera. But I couldn't decide so I just let my mind wander.

It wandered to all the things I wasn't thinking about before. I pondered Freelick still pressing on Rhakhaan from the north, Lugroki and worse seizing U-lyshak, where Dansart's mutant army had gone, my uncle's fledgling new monarchy back home, my cousins death, the center of Lake L'kyron.

It was overwhelming, but at the same time it felt good to think about my problems and my world, and not think about Doogan or Aganond and that whole world.

I came out of my meditation to the sound of my trap door being jostled open. The first thing I saw was Aja sliding down the ladder, skipping all the rungs. I had a kynac ready to throw, but she didn't seem to even notice. She was out of breath, and spoke in bursts between sucking air.

"T'vance... not a black dragon... not a dragon at all..."

"What was it then?"

"Maybe an airship? It was big and black," she began, then proceeded to describe one of Aganond's vessels, in reasonably good detail. I grew pale. "Here, I can draw it," she said, rummaging through my desk. She found something to write on and rendered something that left no doubt.

She glanced up at me. "You don't look so good, T'vance. What does that mean?"

"In short? It means things are a hell of a lot worse than I expected."

"I was afraid of that. Karutana seemed uneasy, too. He had us take a strange path back, wouldn't explain why. Well that's not quite true. He said the spirits had chosen a path."

"I barely know him and I could have told you he said that. By Jaysek, Aja, how long have you known him? Do you really trust him?"

"A few weeks, and yes, I do. You know I have a sense about people, even ones I don't touch. And I've touched him. There may be more to him, but he's a good guy, T'vance. That much I know."

I nodded, hoping she was right but not sharing her confidence.

"Are Rubo or McQuenn back?" I thought to Jai-ahren. She was somewhere in open air, probably strolling along the rooftops. I'd left her upstairs to keep an eye on things while I meditated, just in case things happened abruptly.

"McQuenn is. He came back with two monks about ten minutes ago. Rubo is still gone and Karutana is wandering the courtyard talking to himself."

"Thanks."

"Since you're up, does that mean I can nap?"

"Sure. But stay close in case I need you."

"You going to tell me what's going on?" she asked.

"We've got more problems than we can possibly deal with," I told her.

"Specifically?" she urged.

"That airship came from the world Karutana is trying to get back to. That world is ruled by a very ancient and powerful K'ta'viiri named Aganond. I don't know why he sent it here or how it got here three days ahead of us, but it's powerful, dangerous, and very evil."

"Sounds like something that needs destroying," she said.

"You think?" I snorted sarcastically. "This is probably one of the biggest threats to our world, Aja. Destroy it? Of course we should. But how? And how many are there? Only one was spotted, but I know for a fact that dozens of them exist. Does it want to kills us? Join forces with Lorgalis? Or just bring the wrath of this organization called the Ilsian Empire down on our world?

"And Karstia knows more, but she won't say anything until she comes back which could be anytime in the next day. Meanwhile, my people, including the woman I love, are out there chasing down a black spot on a map that eviscerates Yinka. And now I can't decide if I should be joining them or tracking down the airship or waiting for Karstia."

"Woman you love?" Aja had a knack for latching on to tangents. She wore a strange look on her face that I decided was curiosity.

"Focus, Aja."

"I am focused, T'vance. Are you? You're honestly telling me you can't decide if you should go to the woman you love who might be in danger?"

"You don't know Fera. She'd probably get pissed off that I thought she needed the help."

"And you're going to let that stop you?"

"Not that. Damn you have a way of over-simplifying things."

"It's a gift," she said, flashing a cute smile.

"Do you think Karutana could track down the airship?"

"Are you changing the subject?"

"I don't think so."

"That man is rather amazing. He found you on the ethereal plane, I think he can find an eighty foot hunk of metal from his original world. Why?"

"I'm thinking about splitting us up," I explained. "Having you track down the airship, with Rubo of course, while I meet up with my company."

"Stealth mission, got it. I don't think we need Rubo, though."

"I want Rubo there. He knows everything and he'll know what to do, if anything."

"Happy to have him. What about Karstia?"

"She'll find us or she won't. I'll leave word with McQuenn. We can discuss the details over an early breakfast and head out by dawn."

"I'll cook, you get everyone together."

"You cook?" I asked her.

"Focus, T'vance."
CHAPTER 14

* * *

T'vance

* * *

Rubo wasn't keen on the idea of separation. He didn't have any better ideas, mind you, and shared most of my concerns. But we'd been together long enough that he also shared a lot of my paranoia. But this didn't seem like a trick to split us up, to leave us badly defended on any front. No, as far as we could tell evil was rampaging without giving us a second thought. It didn't hurt my ego, much.

We broke our fast on Aja's fried cakes, a loosely elven recipe from the way she spoke of it. The small round cakes were made from an egg batter and oats, then fried and served with brown sugar, molasses and crushed fruit. Aside those, she served thin slices of fried ham, eggs, and strong black tea. It was delicious, as good as some of the high end establishments in Lethys, and far better than what we could have gotten nearby.

It was so good, in fact, that it was easy to enjoy it and forget that we were all setting out on important and likely dangerous business. But towards the end, the talk of what was to come drowned out any hints of relaxation. And by the time I'd finished my third cup of tea, I decided it was time.

We made brief the farewells and I entered the Ethereal Plane with only Jai-ahren. She was never very comfortable in Ethereal Space, and clung to my shoulder rather than walk on her own. My exit gate wasn't far, but I made a spectral steed to keep my legs fresh in case I needed to run or something when I got there.

When we reached the gate, I masked us both and we stepped out.

I'd exited the same gate the night before, only a few hours back, and little had changed except the sun had risen. It was a desolate area, but I scanned the complete horizon and listened closely to make sure we were alone. We were, at least as far as I could tell.

"Field mice," Jai-ahren said.

"I'll be careful," I joked.

"Sure, mock me. You at least had breakfast."

"You're the one who chose sleep. You can pick something up when we hit the foothills."

Jai nestled into the pouch and I cast a flying spell and headed north by north east. I had only a rough idea of where they'd be, so I was aiming to hit the foothills ahead of them and work my way back west towards them.

It was easily fifty miles to reach the hills. Even with my fastest flying spells it took over an hour and a half to reach them. I saw a lot of pretty but ultimately dull country side and some typical wildlife. At one point I passed a stream where two female Lugroki were gathering water. That meant a warren was nearby, but I didn't care. It was small potatoes.

I didn't magically guess the right spot and saw no sign of them when I got there. The old trade road that ran the length of the foothills hadn't been used in years and we'd had enough rain that it had been badly overgrown. It was clearer from the air than the ground. I landed to let Jai-ahren find some lunch, then shot back up a good mile into the air and pulled out my spy glass to have a look around.

I didn't see the wagon, but I did see some dust clouding a good distance to the south along the road. I'm bad at distances, especially from the air, but it seemed roughly ten miles back. I studied the disturbance for a bit, hoping to get a clearer view. When that failed, I began studying the area around them, looking for anything that might be waiting for them or looking for them.

I felt a sudden uneasiness, but it wasn't mine. It was coming from Jai.

"There's something wrong," she said. "More things should be living here. And there's a smell. A familiar smell. I can't place it, but I don't care for it."

I flew back down and found her waiting for me, pacing around nervously looking outwards with her head high. I quickly scanned for minds around us, and relaxed a bit when I didn't find any.

Jai was no longer invisible, which I quickly rectified. Then I smelled the air, trying to get an idea of what she might be picking up on, but it didn't smell in any way unusual to me.

I decided to play it safe and cast some protective spells on us, just in case, and we moved off the road just enough to get into more cover.

"It smells stronger on this side of the road," Jai told me. "It's an animal scent I think, a predator."

"Can you track it?"

"I think so."

"Do you want to?"

"Not really. But I'll do it anyway."

"I brought some ham from breakfast, since you didn't get to finish hunting."

"Save it. I smell better when I'm hungry."

I watched the faint purple outline of her move off slowly, sniffing, pausing, sniffing again. I had a feeling it might take some time, so I pulled out my divining bag and contemplated what I might ask it. A number of ideas came to mind, but divining when invisible is an exercise in futility.

"I'm going to create an illusion over this area so I can be visible," I told Jai.

I wasn't as good as Rubo, but a simple static scene wasn't a problem. I created a large circle of heavy bushes that covered my immediate position and still blended in well with the rest of the flora. Then I opened a doorway to a small ethereal space just in case I needed to make a quick escape and dropped my invisibility spell.

The ground beneath me was covered with leaves and dry twigs, but the earth beneath was still slightly damp from the previous night's dew. I cleared off a large section until there was nothing but smooth dirt, then pulled some loose fur from Jai-ahren out of her carry-bag and sprinkled them over the area. Satisfied with the workspace, I began picking through the bag to find things that seemed appropriate.

Divining is an art, rather than a science. Picking out the right pieces is as important as defining an artistic theme or color set, and just as subjective. I left the Arnak rings in the pouch, because I have an inclination to blame them for everything and I felt that might skew the results. A few other pieces seemed out of place and went back in the bag, then I added a few leaves and twigs from the area to help localize the divination. When it seemed right, for lack of a better word, I collected the set in my hands and shook them together.

"Is the strange scent Jai-ahren is tracking related to Dagar's map stain?" I asked aloud as I scattered the contents back onto the ground.

One twig stuck into the ground, the gems formed a cross, and the gryphon feather fell over the Tear of Eissa, covering it completely. I picked up the feather to see how the Tear had fallen. It had landed flat, with the shorter end angled north. While I watched, it glowed briefly with a soft blue radiance, then returned to being just a crystal. Seeing it made every hair stand on end.

"Jai! Get back here."

I gathered up the things. I heard a faint, but very broad rustling through the brush to the east coming towards me, but my own illusion blocked me from seeing what was coming.

"Hide!" Jai screamed in my head.

I cast another invisibility spell using my focus to save time and crawled behind the only real tree. The rustling was getting louder, but it was still somewhat soft. I concluded a lot of things were moving quickly through the brush and that they were either very small or able to move very quietly.

Then Jai flashed an image to me and I saw what was about to pass me. Long thin snake-like bodies with dark brown ridged scales with long sharp claws, they were Troqs, the lizard creatures of Farokis. I didn't even have time to consider how the hell so many got to Kulthea. I was already working a spell to shoot myself up in the air and out of their reach if necessary.

When they hit my illusion of denser brush, two of the Troqs attempted to leap and scramble over it. If there's one thing they're good at other than eviscerating people, it's moving through brush quickly. Unfortunately, my illusion has no form, so both lizards fell through the illusion, dispelling it, then fell six feet. They landed deftly, damn them, then spun and hissed and the entire group of them, which I could finally see to be roughly thirty, came to a halt.

I'd seen enough and jumped myself a hundred feet up and hovered there, staring down at them. The group hissed back and forth, and there was a flurry of movement as they all seemed to examine the "crime scene". Then one of them sprung away from the group, probably jumped twenty feet in one bound, and continued bounding away in the direction they'd come from. The others reformed their line and continued west.

"Jai, follow the fleeing one if you can. I'm following the group."

"He's fast, but I'll try."

"Don't do anything to lose your invisibility. I mean it. No risks, little one."

"I know what I'm doing."

The line was moving through the trees and brush somewhat quickly, but nothing compared to the fleeing one. I'd call it a jogging pace. I followed from above, wondering if I could just take out all thirty of them from the air. I mean what could they do?

They collapsed into two lines as the terrain transitioned into forest. The trees made them a bit harder to follow, but I kept on them.

Then I heard another sound, this time something familiar: horses. I looked up the road and could see dust. The timing didn't feel right. My people wouldn't be able to move with the wagon fast enough. I pulled out my spyglass and could just make it out. I couldn't see much, only horses and a flag. But it was my flag.

As they got closer, I got a better look. There were six horses with riders and the battle wagon, Eloinea, pulled by six drafts. Four horsemen rode ahead of the wagon, two behind. Every horse was running, and I couldn't figure how they could be running so fast on such a rough road. Then I saw that the wheels weren't touching the ground. The entire wagon was floating about two feet off the ground. Clever! How the hell did they do that?

Also as they got closer, the creatures stopped. They did more than stop, they took up ambush positions on a high point next to the road. Was that their purpose? Or were my people just targets of opportunity? Or were they even targets at all? Perhaps they planned on letting them pass and only attacking if threatened.

I decided quickly that they had to die. My only problem was how to kill them all. My first thought was to hit them from the air, but I can't actually kill large groups of things. I'm only really good at killing one thing at a time. Sure, I have a few spells that can kill within a small area, but the Troqs were spread too far apart to get more than three or four with one spell, and to be honest those spells more often wound than kill.

My best chance was to disorient the lot of them with a confusion shout. But even if I confused them, many would get away before I could dispatch them. I needed my soldiers nearby to help take advantage of the situation.

So I waited for my men to get closer. I floated down and hovered in the open air on the opposite side of the road. It kept my targets within the range of my spell, while keeping me well out of their leaping range. As the horses closed, I threw up once last defensive spell, a shield covering my left flank just in case some of my men got surprised by my sudden appearance and fired before they recognized me.

When they got about fifty feet from me, I screamed out in Kubeia, channeling all my energy in the direction of the lizards. The spell flashed brightly in purple, my invisibility dropped, and I pointed with both arms towards their position.

"Ambush!" I screamed. "Ambush!"

Naturally, chaos ensued.

Horses scattered, slowed, neighed. Dust kicked up. People shouted. I heard two crossbows discharge and someone cry out my name. They recognized me, thank the Lords. But in the time it took to react, they'd closed most of the distance. The lead horses parted and the wagon passed through them taking the lead. Hovering or not, the thing was heavy and it took time to slow it down.

I looked back to the Troqs as I started preparing my next spell, hoping my spell effected all of them. If it did, they'd stay roughly where they were, too confused to decide whether to attack or flee. But I could already tell that wasn't the case as a dozen or so brown serpent bodies sprung from the ridge.

They didn't just spring down as if to engage in battle, they sprung at targets, some at the horses, some at the riders, some at the wagon itself. They didn't all hit what they were aiming at, but some did. I heard men and horses cry out in pain and saw blood splattering.

My first instinct was fear and panic, they weren't ready, men were dying. But shouts and orders rang out, clear and direct.

"Group one, stones at the ridge!"

"Cover the riders! Help to the front! Watch the friendly fire!"

"Circ's ready! Lievv is down! Get it off him!"

"Forget the horses!"

"Rear, stay vigilant!"

Then I saw Fera spring from the roof hatch and land deftly in a crouch with two kaltas ready. I smiled. What a bad ass. I tossed my vacuum spell towards the ridge-line without paying much attention to where and checked back to see Fera firing down at the creature wrestling with Lievv.

A Troq leaped up and landed just behind her on the platform. My blue kynac flashed into my hand but there was no way to throw it in time. Luckily I didn't have to, there were three soldiers watching from the hatch and the thing had barely had time to land when three crossbow bolts sunk into it's chest and knocked it off to the ground. Fera didn't seem to notice, though I'm sure she did. She continue tracking and firing.

Then four of my men, well three men and Tanawe, rushed out from the hatch beneath the wagon, there were more men on the rooftop, Brother Dagar was shouting in Enruth, calling to his god, a fireball exploded on the ridge, followed by a deafening array of thunder as the stones exploded.

I cast another confusion shout towards the ridge, just to keep anyone up there confused. Then I flew over, shouting back to my men, "Cease fire on the ridge! I'm going in!"

I heard back, "Squad 2B, deploy to the ridge!"

I landed beside a tree and surveyed the remaining forces on the ridge. I saw a lot of them, pulled back, clutching near or climbing up trees. They all seemed dazed. You might think that would make them trivial to dispatch for a trained assassin, but I've learned the hard way that isn't the case. A confused opponent recoils from you, and if threatened will still fight back. So you still have to sneak up on them or distract them. The good thing is they're pretty easy to distract.

I cast a silence spell on myself, amused at how long it had been since I'd done something so simple. Normally I hide all of me, but sound is the only one that persists through violence. And I planned to do a lot of violence.

I began slipping through the trees in some weird opportunistic dance, sweeping up on a Troq who was paying attention to something else, then shoving the long blade inside its body cavity, slitting its throat with the short blade, and spinning away towards the next partner.

The boys of Squad 2B took a more direct approach. They divided into pairs, moved to opposite sides of a Troq, then attacked together.

It was a slaughter. We picked through them quickly with only three minor problems. One lizard started to run, and it took a thrown kynac and three hastily reloaded crossbow bolts to bring it down before it got away. One of the Troqs fended off the soldiers initial attacks and sliced up Tiron's arm, severing an artery. And one stabbed me with it's tail as it was dying, puncturing through my armor into my leg. It bled a bit and hurt like a son of a bitch, but nothing I couldn't heal myself.

We helped Tiron back to the ridge, quickly surveying the battle we'd left behind us. The fighting was over and some of the men were already piling the lizard bodies into a heap to burn. Three of the draft horses were down, two of the riding horses missing, and four of my own men were being treated. There was a lot of blood, but everyone still lived.

"Clear above!" I shouted.

"Clear below!" Tanawe called back, waving up to me.

I turned to the squad with me. "I'll take Tiron down. The rest of you start throwing bodies down. And keep your eyes open, just in case. Shout and I'll be back before you can panic."

"Yes, sir," the squad lead replied.

Tiron was still on his feet, holding a bloody rag tight against his arm. I nodded to him, cast a spell to allow him to float to the ground, then we jumped together. Brother Dagar was managing triage in front of the wagon, treating man and horse alike.

"Welcome back, T'vance," he said without looking.

"Yes, good to see you, sir," Tanawe said, giving me a brief but warm smile. "Should we be expecting more?"

"Yes, though I haven't seen any."

"Those are the same things we saw in the other world, right?" she asked.

"Yes, Troqs."

"Any idea how they got here, sir?"

"I'm working on it."

She nodded. "Well they're a lot less scary out in the open with fewer numbers and no surprise. But it's a really good thing we slaughtered them. Those things have a reputation in this unit, and I can tell people are unnerved seeing them here. But its hard to be scared of something you just beat the crap out of."

One of the Draft horses on the ground gasped for breath, whinnied loudly, and struggled to its feet. Dagar stepped quickly away from it, whispered something, and moved on to the next one.

"I never thought I'd prioritize healing horses over men," she remarked.

"But not in saving their lives," I said. I looked for Fera, but didn't see her.

I walked up and banged on the side of the wagon. "Hello in there!"

"Hello, sir!" I heard echoed back. I could see young eyes peering out from arrow slits in the sides and front. The least seasoned men were inside, largely out of harms way but still effective with their crossbows.

I came back to Dagar and Tanawe, who now had several other soldiers around them fixing all the rigging that the Troqs had sliced up. "Meeting in five. There's a lot to talk about, on both sides I'm sure. I'm going to find Fera."

I moved away from the horses to get a better view of the deployment and turned to find Fera beside me. I hadn't fully appreciated it before, but she was dressed in Black Boot Company standard gear except for the crossbow, which she had forgone for her kaltas.

"It feels like I haven't seen you in over a week," I said.

"In that case, seems like only a few hours to me," she said. Her eyes darted around then came back to mine.

"Have I ever shown you my Ethereal Room spell?" I asked her.

She grinned. "No. But it sounds fascinating."

I'd shown her the room before, of course. The first time was on the streets of Sel-kai and she'd said the same thing then, with different inflection perhaps, but the same words. We were drunk and high, leaving a bar, lost among the canals. We were kissing, touching, pawing, desperate to get off the street.

I'd always used the room spell as a way to hide from bad things, but I realized then it makes the perfect sex room. It's completely private, as large as a bedroom, and every part of it is made from a spongy material. The walls even have spongy protrusions to hang your clothes on, or even bind someone to if you're into that.

Fera didn't seem very interested when I mentioned it the first time. In fact, if I remember right, she said it with sarcasm, as if I were interrupting a passionate moment to brag about some stupid magic thing. But I cast the spell and led her inside. Her jaw dropped and for a moment it was she who'd lost her train of thought. I quickly grabbed her and pressed her body against the wall, reminding her why we wanted privacy to begin with.

After that, asking to show her the spell was essentially a proposition for sex. We used it a lot in Sel-kai. She even asked to see it sometimes. "Wasn't there some ethereal spell you wanted to show me?"

Some people get so lost in each other they never leave the bedroom. It was the same for us, we just took the bedroom with us.

I cast the spell and we stepped inside. She immediately turned to say something, but I grabbed her and kissed her and backed her into a wall. We kissed and held each other like that for a moment, then she broke away. She was breathing heavy and flushed, but stopped me when I tried to kiss her again.

"We don't have much time," she said.

"I know. I just... I needed a moment alone with you."

She stared at me curiously. "Me too, lover. I've missed you, but to you it hasn't been so long."

"Perhaps, but I packed a lot into that small window. Lords, Fera, things are going to hell."

"It's the world, not us."

"It was sort of us," I said. "I know this hasn't been easy."

"It was stupid, forget it. Wait, you aren't going back there again are you?"

I smirked. "Hell no."

"Good. Well, you'll have to fill me in, but really quick while we can I have to tell you something important," she said, suddenly very serious.

"What?"  
"Dagar is fucking crazy."

"Well, yeah."

"No, T'vance. Not just wacky, spooky, mysterious. I'm talking out of his freaking mind. He's talking to himself more than anyone else, speaking in languages no one understands, and sometimes fails to recognize people he's known for years. As far as anyone knows, he hasn't eaten, bathed, or changed his clothes in three days. And his only drink has been hueth tea."

"Seriously? He seemed about normal out there."

"Yes, I agree with that. He did seem normal when the fight started. Up until that point, he's been a loon. I've had my eye on him, and it's crossed my mind I might have to put him down."

"That bad?"

"Not yet, and I hope never, but I have a bad feeling."

"Is that why you're here?" I asked. "To police my priest? This isn't exactly your scene."

Her mouth turned into the slightest frown. "Maybe I'm just curious what this crusading is all about."

"You do look good in black," I said, tracing my fingers down her leather-clad arm. "Though I prefer you out of it. This is still a surprise, though."

"Because it isn't my scene?" she asked.

"Yes, but why did you say it like that?"

"Because you don't get it," she said. "You're my scene."

"Oh," I said, and I felt myself blush.

Seeing my reaction, Fera couldn't stifle her amusement. "Are you blushing?" she laughed.

"I don't blush," I said.

"Sure you do. Not often, but it's downright adorable when you do," she said, grinning.

"Is that right, Miss Subt?" I asked, stepping close enough that out bodies were touching. She bit her lip in that way I find irresistible.

"You'd better lead me out of here," she whispered, running her tongue sensually over that same lip. "Much longer this close to you and I won't let you leave."

"And that's bad again why?"

She shrugged. "Fate of the world and all that?"

"Right," I said sighing. "Stupid world. Okay, let's go."

We stepped back out and both of us went instinctively into a slight crouch, staring around to confirm the situation was as we left it. If anything, it was safer than before. The squad had finished on the ridge and returned to guard the area as the others worked to get us moving again.

We walked over and I pulled Brother Dagar and Tanawe aside with me and Fera to have a private meeting away from the rest of the men. Dagar seemed distracted and couldn't keep his eyes off the injured horses, even once he'd left them.

"They're especially jumpy," Dagar explained. "They don't understand pain and injury like we do."

"They get the better end of that," I said. "Can we focus on the more important details?"

"More important?" he said, staring in confusion at me. "We need the horses to pull the wagon. If we can't pull the wagon, we'll still be here when the reinforcements show up."

"What reinforcements? What the hell do you know?"

"The intersection of this place and the near future is a blood bath. It's obvious. When I go to ask a question about danger and the bloodstone slips through my fingers before I've even thrown, it's a bad fucking sign."

"Or you've had too much hueth tea," Fera muttered, just loud enough that I was sure everyone had heard her.

"In any case," Dagar continued obliviously, "I think we have enough time for your briefing, so please, you had something to say?"

"Oh go back to the horses already, I'm sure you think you know what I'm going to say anyway."

"Actually, I have a hundred questions, but I can ask them when we're moving." He bowed, and hurried away.

"Sir, perhaps I should start with a brief report?" Tanawe asked.

"Brief, yes."

"Very well. Brother Dagar had a powerful vision and afterward correlated that vision with a location on a map. I assume you've seen it?"

"Yes. I met with McQuenn."

"In that case, you know about everything. He convinced us, obviously, and we've been traveling hard to get to a point still well east of here. We don't know what we're going to find there, but Dagar used words like 'worse by the day' and 'turning point'.

"Dagar had warned us to be ready, so when this attack came we weren't taken totally by surprise. I noted a few areas we could improve on, but all said we fought well. We had four serious injuries, and Tiron and Lievv are both on severe movement restriction. I'd send them away if there were a way, but they'll be okay inside Eloinea."

"Agreed."

"Also, sir, I think I speak for everyone in saying we're glad to have you back in command. Do know anything that will help us?"

"Perhaps. But I think its just bad news."

I told them briefly of our return and of the black dragon that was really one of Aganond's Vessels. Most of them didn't know about them, so I told them what I knew of their abilities.

Fera interrupted. "Wait. If those things can turn themselves invisible, why the hell would they let themselves be seen over the coast?"

"You think there's a purpose?" I asked. "I figured it might have expended a lot of energy getting here to begin with, and maybe it didn't have enough to fly and turn itself invisible right away."

"Maybe," Fera conceded.

Dagar whistled from the horses to get our attention. "I've got about two minutes left here, we should pack up and get ready. We'll need to redo the levitation stones, too."

"Is that how you were floating?" I asked.

"Yes," Tanawe said. "The idea got batted around back at HQ. We had a slew of the levitation stones you'd made, so we thought if we strapped enough of them to the bottom of the wagon it might be enough to lift it. Worked, too."

"Clever," I told her. Then I shouted loud enough for everyone to hear. "Black Boot Company, two minutes!"

The application of my levitation stones was ingenious. I probably thought more of it because I expected to find stones jammed into crevices, but I was impressed. They'd had made a bandoleer out of canvas that ran in two strips along the underside of the wagon's frame, with individual pouches for forty stones. And they hadn't just made one, they'd made two, and clearly worked a drill of changing them out. It took them less than a minute to drop the first one and secure the second in place. Then the first bandoleer was fed inside to be reloaded.

As part of the installation, the men whipped the bandoleer upwards, slapping the stones against the underside of the wagon. This activated the ward I'd placed on each stone.

"I'm convinced I can make this thing fly, sir," Tanawe told me. "The horses are still our biggest weak point. If only we could use your ethereal steeds in the real world."

"If only. Maybe sails with some wind spells?"

"We should talk. Later."

We didn't search for the lost riding horses, and put the former riders atop the wagon with a couple of men from the inside who'd made room so the injured could lie down. The top had raised battlements so it offered some protection, not as much as the inside obviously. Fera and I rode with them, at the front of the wagon. At the last moment, Dagar joined us, sending one of the elves down to take his place riding.

"Where's Jai-ahren?" he asked.

"Recon."

"Too far to contact her?"

"Yes, but she's okay."

He nodded. He understood. "If I've been acting strange, it's because I'm coming out."

"What does that mean exactly?"

"You know, the Tisbaen inside me is coming out. He's been coming out for a while now, but you know that. It's supposed to be a slow process, but things are happening and I can't wait. So I'm accelerating things, and it's been rather confusing."

The scary thing is, I actually knew what he was talking about.

I had a friend named Tisbaen, who was also a Priest of Reann. He died right in front of me in the courtyard of the old Gryphon College, during the siege that still gives me nightmares, in about the most spectacular way a priest can die. He charged the army's general, a thing most known as a Herald. The Herald pointed his sword, Tisbaen thrust both hands forward, there was blackness, and brilliant gold. When the brightness of the flash dimmed, the Herald was gone and Tisbaen lay dead.

It's thought that Herald's can cast souls out from people's bodies, with the usual notion being they don't return, ever. Whether or not they are destroyed, no one can say. But I don't think they can, or at least I don't think they did in this case. I've never really felt Tisbaen was gone. I think he's sent me dreams on a few occasions, and I thought maybe he was trying to contact me.

It's the type of thing that sounds crazy. It seemed even more crazy that I started noticing changes in Brother Dagar. He'd pick up a new phrase that was really one of Tisbaen's old ones, seemed to talk more slowly, would call me by my old alias, or mention friends of mine Dagar himself had never met. I'd tried to catch him a few times, but he always had an innocent sounding response and an innocent demeanor.

With little to go on, I'd just been keeping an eye on him. But in the back of my head, I had a theory that Tisbaen was an Avatar of Reann that inhabits special priests to do Reann's work on Kulthea. Like most divine concepts, proving it seemed impossible; but this confession at least validated a lot of my thinking.

Fera gave me a look that suggested this was exactly the sort of crazy she'd been talking about. I was really glad to see it too, because I wasn't afraid of this craziness. If Tisbaen was coming back, I wasn't about to stop him, if I even could. If he was back, I'd be less worried. But he wasn't. He was a mess.

I nodded slightly to Fera.

"This is exactly why you shouldn't be directing people, Dagar."

He nodded. "So how old is the K'ta'viiri?"

"Older than Karstia."

He shook his head gravely.

"I'm sorry, is that what we're up against?" Fera asked. "That's what you found in that other world?"

I leaned in close. "Not so loud. I don't want to freak out the troops, we're in close quarters here."

"Just use a language they don't know," Fera suggested. "Something rare like Iruaric."

"But you don't speak Iruaric."

"I don't. But you can cast that spell that lets me understand you," she said.

"What are you cataloging my spells now?" I asked.

"I've had a dossier on you since Gûl, Mr. Arain," she said, grinning. I had no doubt she actual meant it. "Cast the spell."

I cast the spell, switched to Iruaric and briefed them on everything that had happened in the second trip to Farokis. I told them about Aganond, the ships, the Enrichment, Anarchy, the fight, and finally our escape. There were plenty of details I skipped, but I held nothing back.

As I told the story, I watched Dagar's and Fera's reactions, which were very different. Dagar listened with a very serious curiosity, but in that way that everything and nothing seemed of importance to him. He clarified details often, arguably too often. Fera on the other hand, was quiet and shifted nervously. I could tell her mind was racing, but she waited until I was done to ask her questions.

"You said he seemed surprised when your chain hit him. What kind of surprise was it?"

"Say again?"

Dagar looked extra curious all of the sudden.

"What kind of surprise? Surprised something hit him? Something made it through his spells? Something was able to cancel spells he had on him?"

"I'm no expert on Althan emotion," I told her. "But if I had to say what was going on in his head at that moment, I'd say he was thinking, 'What the hell is that thing?'"

Fera nodded. "Did you see any evidence of Kriegora?"

"Just what I brought with me."

"Might be the first time he's seen it," she said. "There's always differences, we should be on the lookout for the things they might have that our world doesn't. The chain was lost there though, right?"

"Yes."

"So Aganond could have it now."

I nodded. It worried me at the time, partly because I hadn't considered it before. I assumed Aganond would know about Kriegora. But if he didn't before, he certainly knew by then. Whether he had the chain or not, he knew what it felt like to touch Kriegora. He wouldn't be that careless again.

"Don't sweat it," she said. "So those Troq things. How are they here? Or rather how are they here now? This time shift works both ways, right? But they've been here longer than you've been back. So it's not like Aganond sent them after Karstia or you, right?"

"I don't know. That sounds right, though. He must have sent them before meeting me, meaning this isn't about anything that happened with us being there."

Suddenly I had an intense sensation of impending doom, my spell warning me of an impending attack. I didn't know what or from where, the spell doesn't really say, but I screamed out a warning so others would know. Then I heard the hissing and saw a sea of dark brown springing out of, well out of everywhere.

If there were thirty before, this must have been two hundred.

"GO!" I screamed. "Protect the horses and horsemen!"

I quick-cast a vacuum to engulf the area between the horses and the brush, catching half a dozen of the Troqs who were leaping out at the horses. It exploded sending the six off course, some tossed into the ground, some just twisted in the air so they missed their target. But there were others behind those, and others up the road just coming out waiting for us to get to them. They were everywhere!

I heard them striking the side of the wagon, some bounced off while other clung to arrow slits long enough to try and whip a claw inside, then fell away of their own will or because they'd been riddled with crossbow bolts. I couldn't worry much about them, or the men on the rooftop. But I had to trust them, because keeping us moving was going to take everything I had.

"Dagar, keep the horses motivated!" I shouted. They were already making a lot of noise, and they were going to have to plow through the Troqs ahead and not just come to a halt.

Fera's kaltas were singing behind me. Their tune gave me comfort as I reworked an airwall spell to guard the side of the horses. The wall spells don't normally like to move, but with some adjustments I thought I could convince the matrix to just not move in relation to me.

I finished the spell, grinning as I saw the churning wall of air both manifest and continue to move along side us. Then something struck my shoulder hard, like getting smacked with a big stick. I rolled and nearly fell off the wagon, but grabbed the rail before I went completed over it. Fera snapped off another pair of shots, which I heard strike wood, not flesh.

I pulled myself back into place and saw the Troq that hit me falling over the front edge, two kalta darts sticking out from it's chest.

"Some are illusions!" Fera shouted.

But they weren't all illusions. Some were real. Illusions can bludgeon, but they can't cut and I saw blood from men on the rooftop and from one of the horses that had been slashed. Damn it, I wished Rubo was with us.

"Find the source!" Fera shouted. "He's making adaptive changes, he has to be watching!"

I shifted into ethereal site and began searching for someone invisible. I picked him up almost immediately, flying about ten feet up and fifty feet south of us, paralleling our course by air. I let my eyes pass over him in case he was watching.

"No one look, but he's on our three," I said. "I need three crossbows ready to turn and fire on my signal."

I waited a moment, then looked directly back at him and thrust my hand outwards, sending a firebolt shooting through the air at his invisible form. It hit something before it struck him, like a shield of some kind, and the fire splashed in all directions. But one of those directions was still his, and some of the fire hit him at least. Probably not enough to do any serious damage, but enough to make his invisibility spell a thing of the past. It might have even hurt, had he time to process it.

Three shots rang out. At that range, it was an easy shot for my men. The three bolts struck the now visible magician, each one sinking deep into his chest.

It looked fatal, and the illusions immediately faded out, leaving about ten Troqs still living. A few ahead of us, a few behind and a couple who were clinging to the wagon's rear corners out of the line of fire but pinned down. A moment later, they were scattering back into the woods.

"I'm going after the mage, keep going."

I flew away from the wagon, glancing back once to make sure the situation seemed as safe from the air as it had from the top of the wagon. I saw Dagar hop down onto the back of the bleeding horse and start healing it while it was still running. That meant no one among our own injured was dying.

I found the mage, who was still floating in midair, still dripping blood, very dead. He was a Farok, which by that time didn't surprise me. I didn't think Troqs and Faroks liked each other, but maybe Aganond's trained mages knew how to use them. This one seemed to at least.

He was very simple to look at. He was probably a good looking Farok, he was symmetrical at least, but dressed very simply in white robes with small strips of colored cloth tied in a rather chaotic pattern down the front and back. Some appeared to be missing. He had nothing in his hands, only moccasins on his feet.

I could still see the wagon, so I grabbed his arm and teleported us both back atop it. There, we stripped him, which revealed nothing hidden. I examined his robes in second sight, and they glowed softly with arcane magic. The little colorful ties seemed independent of the garment, and I took them to be some kind of one-time use focus for spell casting.

"They aren't evil," Brother Dagar said. He'd climbed back up without me realizing it.

"Good to know," I said. "Do we have time?"

"Some."

"Wish we hadn't killed him so fast," Fera remarked. "I'd love to ask him some questions."

"Oh?" Dagar asked. "Well, he couldn't have gone far." He put his hand on the dead Farok's forehead and closed his eyes. "Reann, hear me," he whispered. Then he spoke a long passage in Enruth as gold light began to emanate from his hand and the dead man's head. Finally, he stopped speaking, the glow faded and the Farok's eyes opened.

"W-w-h-a-a-r-t?" he gurgled as he spoke, and blood sprayed from his mouth.

"Help me sit him up," Dagar said. His body was limp and immobile, only his mouth and eyes seemed to work. How he was moving air to speak was beyond me. His lungs never seemed to fill. But once he was upright, the words came out clear, though raspy.

"What abomination is this?" he asked in Iruaric.

"It's no abomination when a god returns your soul," Dagar said, "however briefly. Answer our questions and you'll be on your way to learn the secrets of death."

"I'll not aid you."

"I hate this part," Dagar said, speaking in elven so the dead man wouldn't understand. "The spell in no way compels him to answer. It's more to speak with the friendly dead."

"Can he still feel his eyes?" Fera asked, holding a small knife with her fingers.

"Yes, but probably not in a way that he'd respond to pain."

"Then we bluff," I said.

I turned back to the Farok and looked into his moving, but still seemingly lifeless eyes. "Listen to me. You want to be on your way. I've dealt with the dead before, and I know the calling. What happens in this world no longer concerns you. You might think there's nothing worse we can do to you, but there you're wrong."

I reached into Dagar's herb pouch and rummaged through it until I found the least useful herb I could find. It was called Nimis or something like that and I think it treats nausea, I was never that good with herbs.

"This is Nimis," I explained, "a magical plant that we've bestowed with a spell. When I tie it here, like this, to your body, it keeps your soul from leaving as long as the herb is intact. The herb being what it is, might stay around for a year or so before starting to break down. But if I apply this preservation spell," I added, casting a simple warming spell on the herb, "then it lasts for about a hundred years."

"So you can make us happy and answer our questions, in which case I remove this silly little Nimis from your body, or you can be stubborn in which case we pull over and bury you and you can spend the next hundred years staring at dirt instead of reveling in the afterlife."

He paused a moment, then said, "Ask your questions. I'll decide if the cost in answering them is worth a hundred years."

"Fine. Just don't lie. Our lie detection spells work even on the communing dead. When and how did you get here?"

"I traveled here on the ninth of Oratar, after the Vessel returned with the strange female. I traveled here in a different Vessel named Ylisarr. We've been here for eighteen of the local days."

"Who was on the ship?"

"Just me."

Brother Dagar shook his head at me.

"That's a lie. One more and I start digging."

"Three of us."

No Troqs? I looked to Dagar, who was not actually manning a lie detection spell. He was just guessing, but he nodded as if he trusted this as the truth.

"So how did you get Troqs here?"

"We grew them," he said. "The ones you just saw were ten-day-olds."

Dagar nodded again, but looked grim. He motioned for me to hurry up.

"Why are you here? What's the plan?"

"We were to establish a landing zone. Which, in fact, we have done. You are walking into it, and it will swallow you whole."

"A landing zone? Aganond is coming here himself?"

"Him, or more of us. I didn't need to know."

"Why is he interested in this world?"

"He is interested in all the Life Worlds."

"Define Life World?"

"A planet that has magic and can create life. They are very few, and yours is one."

"How many others has he found?"

He didn't answer and after a moment it seemed strange that his eyes weren't moving.

Dagar sighed. "That's all we get." He moved and let the body fall back onto the roof of the wagon.

Fera slumped backwards. "Ten days? You can grow those in ten days?"

We stopped when the next set of stones wore off, which wasn't very far from where I'd jumped in originally. We did a quick sweep of the area and decided to pause and collect ourselves.

I picked up on Jai-ahren after a couple of minutes. Or rather she picked up on me.

"You're back!" she said.

"You safe?"

"Yes, but I need about a day of shoulder time."

"Get back here then. But tell me on the way. What did you see?"

"Bad things. There's a village in the hills maybe five miles from where you are. I followed the Troq back there. There were a dozen structures, lots of people and sheep. They're all dead, eaten. There are skeletons picked clean. And there are Troqs everywhere, big ones and even small ones! And I saw two Faroks!"

"I'm looking at a dead one right now," I mentioned. "How many Troqs?"

"You know I'm bad with numbers. There were a lot. If you took in all your people you'd be swarmed. That many."

I took that to be two or three hundred, similar to what was just swarming us only without the illusion. That didn't seem so bad.

"Were the Faroks living there?"

"I don't know. They might have been passing through. Oh! And one more thing. I saw a steardan with a rider flying. I don't think it saw the Troqs or anything, but they saw it."

"A Cloud Lord? This far south?"

"I just saw a guy on a flying horse, don't quote me on Cloud Lord."

"Right. Anything else?"

"Yes, you're really far away and I'm tired."

Jai-ahren was as bad at distance as she was numbers, and we traveled for nearly ten miles before we even came to the intersecting road that led to the village she'd found. That gave me plenty of time to fill everyone in on what she'd found. Jai was waiting for us there, and came bounding out of some bushes as we stopped.

She crossed the distance to us quickly, climbed up the side of the wagon as if it were a ladder, and didn't stop until she had all four paws digging nails into my armor and her tail encircled my neck. She nuzzled my face and neck, then curled her body around the back of my neck and stayed there.

"What now?" Dagar asked me.

"When this was your mission, what was the plan? To rush in?"

"The plan was to figure it out when we got here," he said smoothly.

"Well we aren't rushing in, that's for sure. Everyone off the roof! Driver! Move the wagon off into the brush, as much as you can without getting stuck!"

We climbed down to the ground and the driver pulled the wagon into light cover. Eloinea still stood out like a sore thumb, but at least it was off the road enough that someone could pass us.

"Squad 2B, sweep the perimeter to a hundred yards. The rest of you, gather close." I waited for the perimeter guards to move off and everyone else to get close.

"Listen everyone," I began. "The situation we find ourselves in is more dire than we originally anticipated. It's more dangerous, but also more critical that we act. This may not be specifically our war, our concern, in fact it probably concerns everyone on Kulthea. But we've managed to put ourselves on the front line and now it is we and we alone that can slow the tide of what is coming.

"So here's the plan. Pay attention because I'm only saying it once and you'll have to explain it to the perimeter squad."

I started to explain my plan, what little of it I had. I only knew two things for sure: we didn't know enough about what we were walking into, and we didn't have the resources to manage it alone. I hoped to solve both of those problems before risking too many lives.

The men listened carefully. The things I was asking them for were things they were good at, things they'd been trained at. The only thing they didn't like was the not-knowing. But I didn't much care for that either.

"You've laid out a plan that doesn't involve yourself," Fera said, as I was finishing the details of the reconnaissance. "Yet you do better recon here than anyone. What are you up to?"

"I'm going to see if I can find us some allies."

"Who?" she asked. "You have another army stashed away somewhere?"

"Cloud Lords," Brother Dagar stated, or rather guessed. "You think they are near?"

"Jai-ahren saw one. Where there is one, there are more. If they have a base near here, I'm going to find it. And if I find it, they're going to help us."

"You sound sure about that," Fera said.

"Especially considering there's still no alliance between Dúrakhaan and the Cloud Lords," Dagar added.

I waved them both off. "Have faith. I may not know much about them, but I am very confident they have no love for Troqs feasting on villagers. And by air, they have little to fear from the Troqs. I think the hardest part will be finding them."

"You should take me along then," Dagar said. "That part I can help with."

"Forget it. You'll say something to annoy them. I'm going alone."

"The things I say are true."

"And sometimes truly annoying."

Dagar shrugged. "I will tend to the injured here and learn what I can from the other world."

"Fine," I said. "But eat something first, and no more hueth tea. I mean it."

"Understood, no tea."

"No hueth," I said, emphatically.

"And what about me?" Fera asked. "You didn't mention me either. Am I with you? First your family, now you're bringing me to meet your ancestors?"

"Not this time," I told her. "I have something else in mind for you. You're in this, right?"

She tugged meaningfully at her black leathers. "I can't imagine how to make that more clear. Do you have orders for me?"

"I do. Fera, I want you to plan the siege. We're going to find a lot of Troqs in close quarters. I'm thinking artillery, maybe make-shift catapults lobbing flaming oil, pop stones, the works. Be creative and don't limit yourself to my ideas. If you can surprise me, you'll surprise them."

Fera's eyes twinkled and her lips curled into a smile. "Yes, sir," she said, unable to keep the hint of sarcasm out of her voice.

"Tanawe, help coordinate, okay?"

"Yes sir," she said. "It almost sounds fun."

"It actually does," I said, winking at Fera. I looked back at Tanawe and bowed slightly. "But remember you're in charge. Their lives--"

"My hands, sir. I know."

"Good. Now if there are no other questions, I have about a hundred spells to cast."

It was an exaggeration, but not a huge one. I cast three spells to hide the wagon, a one-way illusion screen blocking the exposed flank of the wagon, a large static illusion of extra brush to camouflage the other sides, and a large silence spell to allow people within the wagon to speak without fear of being overheard.

Then I cast invisibility spheres around the recon teams we'd planned to map out the enemy territory. Then I cast smell mirages to mask their scents and silence spells to hide their steps. I have a single spell that does all that, but it's rather involved and to cast it on everyone would be draining. Instead, I operated on a shoe string budget of power, keeping all I could in reserve while still giving my men decent odds of completely avoiding detection.

Those remaining in camp were either with the wagon, or spread out and hidden. I watched them donning green cloaks they'd rubbed with dirt before they disappeared into the brush.

I was rather proud of how everything was coming together. This is what we'd trained for, and for once we had some semblance of surprise. And if I had my way, we'd have even more. Aganond was in my world now.

I found Fera after I'd finished all the casting and we shared a hit of gort. "I needed that," I said. "My head was about to explode."

"Too much, too fast," she cautioned. "You really aren't worried at all the Cloud Lords might try to kill you?"

"Not even a little."

"How the fuck are you going to find them?"

"I'm not. That's like finding a needle in a haystack. I'm going to let them find me."

She shook her head. "You're crazy, T'vance," she said grinning. Then she looked me up and down. "But I am so into it."

As usual, she made me want to stay. "I wish you could be there to see it. I should go. Four hours, tops. If I can't find them by then, I'm coming back."

"Four hours. Be safe."

"I will. Oh, and I need one more favor."

"What's that, doll?"

"I need you to look after Jai."

"What?"

"What?!"
CHAPTER 15

* * *

T'vance

* * *

Thousands of years ago, the Cloud Lords ruled Tanara. They rode on steardan, a more docile adaptation of the magical Pegasus, and threw bolts of energy from their swords. We don't know how they fell from power, only that they did and hadn't been seen for thousands of years until recently.

The theory I believe is that they went underground to avoid something, perhaps the Wars, and that the earth changed them and over time they became the Dúranaki. I have a bit of evidence on my side, like my uncle being a direct descendent of the last known Cloud Lord king. Another bit contradicts that, like the Cloud Lords showing up last year looking very much like those of old. But so much history is lost, it's impossible to say.

One thing I know, is that the Cloud Lords once owned the Pegasus Artifacts. The Pegasus Sword is still lost, but I have the Pendant and my uncle the Crown. I had a sense that the Cloud Lords of today, however removed from their ancestors, would still respect me for as the Pendant bearer.

You see, I didn't just have the pendant. I wore it. There's a difference. I believe, like the Crown, the Pendant doesn't take to any owner. I know I sound full of myself, but I didn't just get the Pendant, I wasn't just given it. I earned it. I think the Pendant accepted me because of that, and because of that I wore it with confidence (when I wasn't hiding it).

The Pendant was key in another regard. One of its abilities was to summon a Pegasus. And if me riding on a Pegasus through their Valleys didn't get their attention, I wasn't sure what would.

I jumped a few miles in, to a low mountain near where Jai-ahren said she'd seen the Cloud Lord flying. I set myself atop it with crossed legs, pulled the pendant out from inside my armor, and lightly touched it. I didn't have to touch it, I just felt like I should. Then I willed it summon me a steed and I felt it respond. Then I waited.

Not even a minute had passed when I heard a deep stroke of wing and looked to see a great white Pegasus breaking over the top of an adjacent peak. It was white without flaw and so radiant in the sun that it was painful to look at. Even its hooves were white, and they glinted like marble. It had sleek lines and well defined muscles that rippled as it beat its enormous wings to cross the distance to me.

I stepped politely back and it descended into a very delicate landing that made no sound save the air rushing past. It folded back its great wings, which extended well past it's rear, her rear I should say. She lowered her head towards me, stared into my eyes, and exhaled deeply.

I placed my hand gently on her nose. "Welcome."

She stood about a foot and a half taller than a horse, so I leaped onto her back and slid my legs down in front of her wings, taking hold of her mane with both hands. She crouched briefly and her wings went out, then she leaped into the air and beat her wings and we were off.

On contact, I could sense her. We couldn't speak, per say, but she knew where I wanted to go and I knew where she could, and together we soared over the mountain tops. The air rushed around me, past me, the cold of it stung my face, but it was exhilarating at the same time. She was faster than my spells, both laterally and in diving, though I think I might have given her a race in a straight incline.

I didn't know where to look, and I expected they'd be concealed, so I didn't worry too much about searching. I just flew around high in the air, making sure I passed over every valley in the area. I was hard to miss, a man all in black on an all white Pegasus.

After about an hour in the air, she alerted me. I glanced back and left and saw them, three steardan with riders climbing in the air towards us. They fit the description of Cloud Lords: white and gold armor with helmets and shields. They carried their swords out, and they too shined gold in the sunlight. That didn't seem terribly friendly, but I figured it was just their style.

I quickly decided that a conversation in mid-air was going to be terribly awkward, so I spotted a nice flat area on a mountain top nearby and put down there, turning around to face them as they flew in.

One of them came in for a slow landing, while the other two circled me from the air. The tips of their swords aimed in my direction making me uncomfortable. My Pegasus didn't seem to care much for it either, and shifted nervously and snorted.

"I am T'vance Arain of the House Arain!" I shouted. "I am a respected diplomat of Dúrakhaan and the rightful bearer of the Pegasus Pendant! I request you lower your weapons before we have any unfortunate misunderstandings!"

"If you don't make any sudden moves, there will be no misunderstandings," one said.

They were large men, all of them, with fair hair and skin that was golden tan. I expected them to look Zori, and in many ways they did, but there was something different about their facial structure that reminded me of Dúranaki and they seemed a bit stockier than a typical descendent of Zor; though seemingly they were just as arrogant.

"If there is any hope for us, Cloud Lord, it will begin with our ability to recognize the enemy."

"The Dúranaki are not our enemies, but neither do they ride steardan over Y'kin land."

"We Dúranaki, above all, take pride in our uniqueness," I said, grinning. "And please, let your commander speak. If you can't tell a steardan from a true Pegasus, you are not the man whose audience I seek."

"He's never seen one," the man in front of me said. "Neither have I, for that matter. Yet it is I with whom you must speak, if you plan on leaving here. Perhaps if we dismounted, my brothers would worry less about my safety."

"I have no problem there. So there is no surprise, I will stand, then step off and float to the ground."

He nodded to me, then cast a warning glance at his two men. I did as I said, rising slowly to my feet atop my mount, then stepping carefully to the side of the man who hadn't spoken yet and floating to the ground. I stepped forward, putting myself between my Pegasus and the leader and glanced to both circling men, who responded kindly by lowering their swords.

The leader dismounted as well, far less gracefully. He didn't fall or anything, but he was in heavy armor and that always makes moving more awkward. He landed soundly, and stepped before his mount as I had mine, keeping one hand on the hilt of the sword he still wore in a scabbard at his hip.

We were but five feet apart by then and the size difference was notable. He was six inches taller than me, and with his armor about twice as wide. The armor was heavy plate made of silvery metal and inlaid with symbols of gold, most notably the large sun in the center of his chest. The same symbol adorned his shield.

His helmet left most of his face exposed, letting me study it and his crystal blue eyes. He looked my age, though I wasn't clear on the racial standard. I could tell he was a proud man, with many years of life ahead and behind. Though he looked down on me literally, I didn't get the opinion he did otherwise. But he was studying me intently, as I was him. His eyes seemed most fixated on my pendant.

"I apologize if my appearance alarmed you," I told him. "A friend spotted a rider on a winged horse. When I realized you were this close, I had to reach you. This was the best way I could imagine."

"It did grab attention. You may not know this, but these skies are not always so empty and not always so safe. We take air control seriously." He continued, "I am Lord Wilm. I can see you are someone of importance and can forgive the confusion, but to your business. What is so important?"

"The land south of here has been invaded by demons, and they are breeding insanely fast," I said. He may have been an expert of planar lore or been a self-taught master of astronomy, but it didn't seem likely. Everyone has heard of demons.

"This is a threat to more than just the region, but the region will feel it first. You needed to be warned. But further, I was hoping you might help me stop it before it gets out of control."

"Is this some joke?"

"I wish it was. I'll tell you what I know, and I'll show you what I've seen. If you'd like second or third opinions of my character, your men are welcome to listen."

He nodded and called in his men, who landed on either side of him. I pulled out Brother Dagar's map, unrolled it on the ground, and began my story. There were details I avoided, but I hit the key points. I told them about the Troqs, about the attacks on us, the Farok mage and his death confession. I even told them about Aganond's Vessel, because it was still a piece in play somewhere. I didn't say it came from space or another planet, demonic-airship sufficed. But I created illusions and everything, it was very dramatic.

Then I explained my vague attack plan.

"So you still haven't heard back from your recon teams?" Lord Wilm asked.

"No. They may have finished, but I won't know anything until I return to them. I'm not asking you to commit to a fight without knowing what they found. But if you will conditionally help, you could gather your forces here," I said, pointing to a spot in the mountains a couple of miles north from the village. "I'll go back to my people and meet you there with their news and you can decide then."

He nodded. "You have a lot of faith in us. Why?"

"I don't know. Shouldn't I? Are you not enemy of the Y'kin? Enemy of Unlife?"

"We are both of those things. But Dúranaki rarely trust and rarely show faith."

"I am not like most. But I also have little to lose. I can't wait for these things to spread. I'm going in with or without you. I trust you enough. You won't hinder me, and you aren't working with them. This I know in my heart.

"Faith is harder. But I will say that the legends of Cloud Lords have lived with me a long time. I know a lot of your history. I've read the journals of your ancient King Arain, before he left Tanara with the Crown and Sword. I have to assume that some of what you were, you are still. And the Cloud Lords of old would have acted."

He looked at me with a strange smile I couldn't quite decipher, then turned to his more obnoxious brother.

"Nimm, wing down and get the rest of the unit mobilized. We're going on a patrol."

Nimm's steed knelt for him to mount, then they ran along the flat stretch and launched into the air. I watched as they climbed briefly, then fell down into a valley until I could see them no more. I turned back to see Lord Wilm mounting his own steed.

"We'll meet you there in about an hour. A unit is eight men, nine with me. I can't offer more, not now. I'm not agreeing to anything other than being there."

"I understand. See you in an hour."

"Beautiful animal, by the way," he added, admiring my Pegasus. "Matches your hair."

She would. He turned away and with his other brother flew after Nimm. I watched them fly away too, then turned to find my Pegasus kneeling for me.

"No, thank you, majestic one. I can handle myself from here. I release you."

She rose and whinnied at me, which sounded remarkably horse-like for a supernatural creature. Then she stamped her feet, and ran a circle around me, stamped again, then turned and, getting a running start, took flight. I watched her curve in the air, heading west in the same direction the Cloud Lords had left.

I thought back to my camp area, the air above it. I had a clear image in my head. Then I made myself invisible, started flying, and teleported.

I found Fera and Tanawe underneath the battle wagon. It was a cramped war room, but the only available flat surface that was still within the illusionary cover. They'd cleared a large area and had constructed a small scale map of the area using twigs and rocks.

"My plan worked," I told them. "As well as it could, anyway."

"So we have backup?" Fera asked.

"The Cloud Lords have directed a patrol of nine to a point nearby. I think they'll help, though cautiously."

"Nine?" Tanawe asked. "That doesn't sound like a lot of backup."

"Cloud Lords are supposed to be bad asses," Fera said. "Think of it like having nine Changrami monks, except they fly and throw fire."

"Oh. Well nine sounds good then."

"So how goes the plan?"

"Good so far. I think we could do this without the Cloud Lords. But we need to fill you in. We've gotten eyes back from the village itself. They estimated the 'adult' Troq population at five hundred, with another two to three hundred juveniles. And they saw one Farok leaving one building and going into another. The Troqs are doing patrols in groups of four over a rather large area, but not so many."

"Five hundred?" I gasped. "Damn. That's a lot more than I thought. What the hell are they all doing?"

"That's a point of debate," Fera said. "A fair amount of them are building something, but what they are building is still unclear. The recon team was nervous as hell, so we didn't get a lot of detail. But it involves black stones and they've been digging in a large circle in the center of the village."

"Where does the debate come in? Let me guess, Brother Dagar?"

"I suppose that is the debate, but not in the way you'd think. You see, Dagar has no idea what it's for. He can't even tell us if any of our ideas are wrong. Those, for the record, generally fall between three options. Some think its somehow related to them breeding. Some think its a gateway. Some think it's for divination or scrying or something."

"They've been breeding without it, so I don't put much weight into the first one," I told her.

"Me either. The only thing everyone agrees on is that we need to destroy it before they finish it."

"Right. So how are we taking on five hundred with less than fifty?"

She smiled. "Your ideas were good, of course. We have quite a bombardment planned using catapults. We've even started moving ordinance into different positions using invisible sacks to hide them. But it's going to be tricky to get everyone into place to strike at once because of the patrols. And even if we're flawless, there's a good chance some of those things will get away."

"If a few escape, we can hunt them down," I said.

"But then I started thinking about what we talked about before, about things like Kriegora they might now know about. I thought about everything you told me about their world and one thing stuck in my head: humidity. You said that area was thick and lush, with tons of moisture, right? So then it came to me," she said. She stopped talking and just grinned at me.

"What came to you?"

"Fire," she said, beaming. "This terrain is pretty dry, and there's plenty of dense brush around the village."

"You're going to start a forest fire?"

"I'm a bad girl," she said.

"There was a bit of push back on the idea, especially from the elves," Tanawe said.

"Whatever," Fera said. "I'm part elf and I don't care. Besides, we'll control the fire. Direct it east and south. It will burn itself out into the rocks and the river bed."

"What are you thinking? Wind spells?"

"Gorun's a magician, he claims he makes great wind, though he giggles when he says it."

"So we're trading our mage for a huge moving fire."

"A trade up, sir," Tanawe said. "The fire comes later, though. The main attack has to come from surprise, because we need to bombard them while they're all together. We have about a hundred twenty warded stones, a mixed bag but mostly pop stones. Then we have another thirty flasks of oil. It's not a lot when you consider the number of targets."

"The basic idea is to ready the fire then make one massive surprise attack using half our men and all our artillery," Fera said. "All ranged attacks. They'll then retreat back through a break in the fire, which we'll cover with an illusion of fire. The second half of the team will cover the east side, retreating back to the rocks and Eloinea. We're working on some mundane traps now to slow them down or kill them."

"Depending on what happens, we'll redeploy," Tanawe said. "We think the village will be safe from the fire, so they may stay. If so we'll pull the second squad in once the fire encircles them."

"So what do you think?" Fera asked.

"I think it's genius," I told her. "Pure genius. But don't let that go to your head."

"Never."

"I have a few concerns, not about the fire, but about the plan in general. I'm not as worried about the Troqs, even that many, as I am those spell casters."

"Yes, we've been worried about that also," Tanawe said.

"I told everyone you'd just go in ahead of the whole operation and take them out," Fera said.

"Oh yeah?"

"I didn't tell them I thought it was a good idea."

"You just know me?"

"Yep."

"And it is a good idea. I'll be the signal. I'll sneak in, take out one or both if I can, scream and door back to Dagar. You hear the scream, start bombardment."

"And if they can see you?" Fera asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Then I'll scream and run away?"

"Funny."

"So what are you doing in this scenario, Miss Subt?"

"I'm leading the first strike team, Tanawe's got team two. Dagar and Gorun are sort of a rogue team three."

After that, we got into the details. Not just who and where and when, but contingencies after contingencies. Where to go on a full retreat, when to move to closer range, what to do if the black ship came. In all the worst case scenarios, I was to use my pendant's ability to create dense fog to flood the area, and everyone was to retreat to a set rendezvous point.

I wrote a note to Rubo with the highlights and placed it in one of the two returning scroll cases from the Uscurac Orders, addressed to him. It disappeared as I corked it and likely appeared in some over crowded in-box for pre-first-ring students to dispatch.

The time was passing quickly, and before I knew where it went I was flying out to brief Lord Wilm. I didn't know how he'd take it, considering the numbers were higher than we'd expected. But he didn't flinch. He listened to the plan with interest and he asked a few questions along the way. He was quiet for a few minutes after that, and he paced about the clearing we'd gathered in.

Finally, he turned back and said, "The smoke will be our signal. We'll approach from the north-east. If they break up, we'll help your second squad from getting overrun."

"Perfect. The rear team being overrun is one of our major concerns. We're grateful for the help."

"Let's do it quickly then. We need to be to our homes before nightfall."

"It will take me maybe thirty minutes to get everyone in place, including myself. Look for the fire then."

I sat cross-legged and worked the magic slowly and loudly, having no concern of alerting anyone because I was safely within my own silence bubble. I changed my body to Farok, and my face and hair to match the man we'd killed. I was already wearing his robes, still stained with his blood. Then I cast a no-sense spell, making me invisible, silent, and scentless. Finally I applied a fly spell, just in case I needed to get over or on top of anything.

You might think it's overkill impersonating someone while invisible, but from experience I know that invisibility always fails eventually. Plus I didn't know if the Farok mage would be able to detect me being invisible or not. If he had the ability to see invisible things, as I can, I'd still look like his Farok brother, sneaking back to the base injured.

Eloinea had already departed her safe illusionary hideout and Fera's squad was already moving into position, though I wasn't far behind them. Once I had everything ready, I hurried to catch them. It didn't take very long, as they had to move much slower than I to keep hidden in the brush and not make noises that might alert the Troqs. I didn't try to talk with anyone, not even Fera, I just stayed with them and kept my eyes and ears alert.

Fera raised a hand and the unit stopped quickly. I saw the movement a moment later, as a group of four Troqs moved westward through the brush. They were moving towards Dagar and Gorun, but I wasn't particularly worried. She waited about a minute longer than I would have, then gestured for everyone to continue.

After another ten minutes, she gave the signal to fan out. That meant we were close, and I took my leave and continued carefully forward.

The village came into sight shortly afterward. It wasn't a huge village. Once, it had been the home to maybe fifty Yinka, and there were only a dozen structures total, two of which were large barns and the others low, wide dwellings made from rock and mud and thatch. It was hard to get a good feel for what the place used to be like because it was teaming with Troqs.

The population count looked close enough to the estimate that I didn't bother to count again, but I did spend a couple of minutes trying to figure out what was going on. In the center of the village was a mound of earth which had been dug out from a twenty foot diameter circular hole beside it. There were a number of Troqs in the hole itself, more around it, and yet more on the far side of the mound of earth.

To be clear, there were Troqs everywhere. I saw them on the ground, perched on roof tops, and packed into the buildings, visible through the windows. But most of the Troqs were idle, maybe even sleeping. The ones working were around the circle. And as far as I could tell, one group was making bricks using the mound of earth, one group was carefully placing the bricks, and the third group was sitting in the middle of the circle watching them.

I searched for a Farok, but found none. I searched again using my second sight, confirming with some comfort that I couldn't find a single invisible target outside myself and my men. I stepped slowly closer, gaining confidence with each step that my approach was going undetected. I moved carefully through Troqs until I found a spot close enough to get a good look at the circle.

The Troqs had been busy. Black rectangular bricks nearly completed a ring around the perimeter of the circle. The ring was three bricks wide and was only missing maybe thirty or forty bricks before it would be complete. I flew up and over the hordes of Troqs around the circle, then floated down so I could get a better look.

The bricks themselves were not bricks, and they weren't even really black. They were more of a dark brownish red, and appeared soft, like clay. Each brick had glyphs carved into it, glyphs in Iruaric. I read a few quickly and found a lot of what I read strangely familiar. The passages read like a spell, like a spell out of my Ethereal magic spell list, but one I'd never learned. But there were patterns used in other spells, like spells to create a gateways or doorways into ethereal space.

I didn't have time to figure out exactly what it did or how it worked, but I decided it was probably a gate. I had no interest in waiting to find out what it was going to allow into our world.

Another set of Troqs were making the bricks themselves. They mixed earth with their own blood, then packed the mush into square molds. There were a dozen laid out drying, and more being mixed.

Then I saw him, or one of them at least. A Farok much like the one I was impersonating walked out from the closest building, which happened to be the largest except for the barns. He walked over to the drying bricks and knelt over them. He reached into his robes and produced a silvery spike about eight inches long that came to a very sharp point.

He nodded to a Troq nearby, who scrambled over dragging its long tail across the ground. The Farok looked up at him and said a single word in Iruaric, "Sacrifice." Then he pulled the spike back and stabbed violently into the Troq's chest, piercing what was probably a heart. The Troq hissed and stumbled backwards, leaving the spike glistening with its blood. The Farok then studied the bloody spike carefully, as if he were looking for defects. Satisfied, he began using it to carve more words into one of the new bricks.

The wounded Troq collapsed on its side, clutching at its chest as blood flowed out. It thrashed its tail and made such desperate, yet faint clicks and hisses that I almost felt sorry for it. Then two others came and picked it up, dragging it's body away.

I didn't follow the dying Troq, but rather slipped into second sight to watch the Farok working at the stone. There was magic to be sure, it flowed around him, around his hand, and around the spike itself. The aura of the magic was dark, black with swirls of red throughout. There was no doubt this was evil magic, and not just any evil magic. It was arcane, dark magic in its purest form.

For a moment I considered stealing the spike. Perhaps it was one of a kind, or at least the only one they brought with them. But I wasn't sure enough to blow the rest of the plan on it.

I slipped back out of second sight and reacquainted myself with the situation in the real world. Not much had changed. The Farok was still inscribing letters carefully, a few beads of sweat forming on his brow as he did so. He was an easy target hunched over like that. I could kill him and shift away before the Troqs could react. But there was still another Farok somewhere. This one seemed busy enough, so I left him to his work and began looking through the windows of the buildings, hoping to find the other one.

The first building I checked was long and narrow with a ceiling height that was only fit for Yinka or children. I glanced in and saw a sea of brown hide and a fair amount of blood. On closer inspection, I saw about a hundred very small Troqs, maybe two feet in length, swarming around something that was occasionally spraying blood. Then I saw the two Troqs I'd seen carrying the injured one emerging from the door. I knew exactly what the young were feasting on. I shuddered involuntarily and moved on.

I picked my way carefully through the village, checking window by window. I found him in the third building, which was both the smallest and best constructed of the lot. I could tell from the décor, it had once been the home of a Y'kin priest. From the look of it, he'd probably died in his own home. The straw mat that covered the dirt floor was stained with dried blood, as were the walls. The Farok inside was asleep on the bed and the room was otherwise empty.

I crept around to the door, pleased with my good fortune. I had one sleeping target and one busy one. This was going to be easier than I thought. There were two large Troqs blocking the doorway, very literally. I shrugged, and phased through the wall instead. I make it sound easy, but phasing is more than just casting a spell. The spell just phases you, but you still have to press through the wall. Dense matter resists you. It's vaguely like pressing through luke warm pudding, except if you push through a little too fast the pudding kills you.

If your wondering why I'd risk deadly pudding at a time like that when I could just door through the wall or teleport in, it's because by that point I was feeling every spell. And phasing is light lifting compared to a door spell. I was looking forward to being able to use my hands. And by hands, I mean kynacs.

I phased back into real space on the other side, pausing for a moment to make sure he was sleeping and not just laying there waiting for me with his eyes closed or something. Some people can fake it pretty well, especially those trained in meditation. Even so, I was pretty sure he wasn't faking it. I noted the door was intact and cast a simple magical lock on the door. No sense giving the Troqs an easy entrance.

I surveyed the room and drew a number of useless conclusions about how the priest had lived, died, and how his home had been treated after his death. None of it stopped me from drawing both my blades and creeping close to the sleeping Farok.

He was dressed in the same robes with colorful ties. I still didn't understand entirely what they did, not that I'd spent much time trying. I could only conclude that whatever they did wasn't discoverable simply by wearing the robes for ten minutes.

A commotion outside caught my eye and I glanced up to see a struggle on the far side of the circle. Some Troqs were moving into the village, and they weren't alone. They were dragging people behind them, eight that I could see but maybe as many as a dozen. I saw ruddy skin and brown hair, and heard cries and screaming.

They were children, at least most of them. I could tell they were Yinka, and I hate Yinka, but they were children first. Some were as young as six, some looked like they might be in their early teens. They were all too young, and all terrified. Worst of all, they were ruining my plan.

My mind was rushing. Had Fera seen them? If she had, what would she do? She never seemed very maternal, but I knew she had a soft spot for them. But she had one for me too, and she wouldn't attack if she thought it would put me in danger. But if they started hurting the children...

What didn't occur to me was that my team might mistake the screams of children for the screams alerting them that I had completed my task. But they did.

BOOM... BOOM! BOOM... BOOM... BOOM...BOOM!

Explosions echoed throughout the village as dozens of pop stones landed and exploded. The deafening repetition of explosions roared over a horrific cacophony of hisses that you could only make out between pops.

The Farok before me leaped to his feet, sending me staggering backwards, and gazed out the window in shock. I almost panicked, but remembered I was still invisible. I had a moment. I aimed carefully, stepped in and thrust hard.

The blades hit something between us, a blade turning spell or the like, but continued through it to hit roughly where I was aiming. It probably would have still finished him except the tips of my blades were barely able to piercing the fabric of the robes. Magical armor, lovely. But the force of the blow still knocked him forward and his face smashed into the window, shattering it and bloodying his face.

"Your a Farok," I reminded myself.

He turned, but I could tell he was more confused than anything.

"Explosion," I muttered, and grabbed at the bloody stain on my stomach.

In the chaos of the situation, it didn't have to be great acting. But it was. He may not have understood, but the world around him was exploding and I was his kin and hurt. He stepped in to help me.

I could see his eyes dart over my kynacs, which I had kept out to not draw attention to them by putting them away. He looked at the blood, then my face. I saw him realize something was wrong, his face drawing out in slow motion. I shoved my hand under his chin and discharged my ring of firebolts. Then all I saw was fire.

It engulfed his entire head, my hand, my arm. The back splash singed my eye brows and lashes and left my eyes watering. It splashed around him, striking the walls and setting various hanging religious things aflame.

I scrambled back, blinking to make sure my vision wasn't compromised. Everything was a little blurry, but it seemed to be getting better by the second. His head was still burning, but the Farok had fallen to the ground and wasn't moving. It was a quick death for him, gruesome but painless. And though there was a flash, remarkably quiet; especially considering how loud it still was outside.

I ran back to the window and looked for the other Farok, but he was no where on the field. Then a rock smashed through part of the glass the Farok hadn't broken with his face. It hit the ground and discharged before I could even appreciate the irony.

This was a pop stone, painted gray for clarity. The force of the 'pop' sent me into the wall. It knocked the wind out of me and made my head spin, but it could have been much worse. Still, it took a moment to recover during which the pop stones stopped. They'd run out. And that meant it was time for fire.

I got back to the window to see parts of the village were already burning. The Troqs were scrambling, many hissing and pointing and moving to the west, some had crossbow bolts sticking out of them, some were on fire, some weren't moving. But damn there were a lot of them. The children had been tossed inside the circle, half of which was aflame with burning oil, so they were huddled off to one side, equidistant from the fire and guarding Troqs.

I climbed out the window and ran towards them, keeping my kynacs out. I didn't expect the Troqs would even notice, but I was hoping my people would and avoid shooting me. It was insane outside. There were pockets of fire everywhere, as well as injured and dead Troqs. I stabbed a few targets of opportunity as I crossed the distance, hoping no one noticed or challenged me on it. Whatever relationship existed between the Troqs and these Faroks was clearly one of subordination.

I saw a wall of eight black boot company rush out from cover, take down a group of Troqs with a flash of steel, and slip back, while crossbows and kalta fire covered their retreat. I didn't see the other Farok mage, which continued to disturb me.

I leaped into the circle, causing the children to start. The Troqs around the circle stared at me and gestured and hissed, but they didn't come in.

I speak enough of the Y'kin language to get by, so I told the children, "Calm down. I'm a friend."

Then I got into a low crouch for cover and began casting. I was out of quick-cast focuses, so I had to work this one manually. It only took about thirty seconds, but a lot was happening in that time. Thankfully, none of it was happening to me. I finished the spell and saw the doorway appear as a faint purple glow, though I was sure no one else could see it.

"Take hands, form a chain, follow me!" I grabbed one of the children's hands, which she gave to me reservedly, and pulled the lot of them to the door a few feet away. I stepped into the room and began pulling the others in, whispering calming words the whole time.

Once they were all inside, I stood guard at the door with both kynacs ready. I didn't know if any Troqs would be brave enough to follow. After a minute of waiting, I decided they weren't.

The room was only ten feet square, and there were fourteen of us crammed in there, more than I'd ever had in a room before. The children seemed to be accepting the strange reality well. It was cramped, but there were no Troqs, explosions, or fire.

I turned to the eldest, who was younger up close, maybe twelve. "You keep everyone in here. Understand me? You don't come out, not until someone comes to get you."

He nodded. "Are you a Dúranaki?" he asked, looking down at my blades.

"Underneath this disguise, yes. Don't let that worry you. Despite what your parents have told you, we're okay people. And like I said, I'm a friend."

He nodded again.

I painfully worked another nosense spell, then flew unseen back into the real world. I didn't know what I'd emerge into, so I made an immediate and rapid ascent to get away from any fire or Troqs in the area. I felt a breeze and saw smoke and flames approaching from the west. The fire was already close to the edge of the village.

I saw bodies and oil fires below, but also some signs of coordination among the Troqs. They'd clearly identified the source of the attacks and many had taken cover on the east side of the village, while other groups were circling around to the north and south trying to get in behind my Black Boot squad.

There were others who'd rushed westward directly, and I heard cries and the echos of metal blades as they met my men in melee combat. The few who remained in the center of town were mostly injured, but a few were still alert. Some of those were pointing frantically upwards. I followed their gestures and saw the squadron of Cloud Lords soaring down, their swords and shields glinting in the sunlight.

They'd come! I mean I thought they would, but thinking and seeing it were very different.

I wanted to shout, to hail them, but I had other concerns. There was still a Farok mage somewhere. I wished I knew a spell for locating items or minds. Both would have allowed me to find him easily, yet I knew neither.

Lord Wilm took the lead in the formation, and swept fast and low over the village, getting within thirty feet of the ground before leveling off. As he passed over the Troqs, he thrust his sword out and I saw a blast of flame erupt from the blade. The fire poured out like water and made such a splash on impact that the fire consumed three Troqs at once. Then the other Cloud Lords fired. If the Troqs thought our flaming oil was bad, they had no idea how easy they'd gotten off.

Some Troqs jumped futilely into the air trying to catch a steardan. The more clever ones tried from rooftops, but also missed horribly.

I scanned around again as the Cloud Lords circled for another pass. I still didn't see the Farok mage, but I did see a pair of Troqs running eastward from the brush carrying a black clad body, stained with blood. I couldn't recognize him, but it was one of my men. I felt suddenly sick and worried. If they'd gotten that close, more would surely have fallen. I couldn't hear Fera's kalta, but I hadn't been able to hear that over the tumult for some time.

Then, just when I was starting to think this battle was going our way, I saw a black spec high in the sky. I didn't need to see it any clearer. I knew it was Aganond's Vessel and I knew it was coming. Whether or not the Farok mage was aboard, I couldn't say.

I kicked off a ventriloquism spell and placed my mouth near Lord Wilm's ear. "Lord Wilm! It's T'vance! Look north by north-east! The airship I warned you of is here!"

He reacted immediately, turning to see it then shouting and directing his men. They had little time to even adjust their formation, for the Vessel was moving faster than any flying thing had a right to. When it got close, I checked for sentient forms within and found two. The Farok mage was inside.

"Fire!" Wilm shouted.

They raised their swords, and bursts of plasma flashed through the air from their blades, an entirely different approach from the flame they'd used below. But the Vessel just blinked fifty feet to one side, and the bolts flew harmlessly past it in the air. Then it spat a bolt of black lightning at Lord Wilm, the same weapon that had blown apart the rooftop in Farokis. He raised his shield, but I knew it was hopeless.

Then something amazing happened. Lord Wilm didn't die. He didn't even flinch. In fact, the bolt didn't even hit him. It hit an invisible shield in the air around him and it crackled around it with fierce excitement, then faded to nothing. Lord Wilm looked shaken, but fine. He cast his sword forward again.

"Spread out, brothers! Fire at will!"

The smoke quickly consumed us as the fire raged below, and the Clouds Lords rose and pressed north, even as they fired, or at least tried to fire on the dark vessel. I followed, as best I could. The Vessel leaped and fired, leaped and fired, which isn't to say it was flawless. This was close range and the Cloud Lords began timing shots, and they'd managed to hit the hull a few times. There was visible damage from the strikes, but the Vessel didn't seem to slow at all.

Then it blinked behind them and fired again. One of the Cloud Lords I'd just met took the blast before he could turn his shield about. From the back, they were nearly defenseless. Man and steardan melted into one single mass and plummeted from the sky, lost to the smoke below.

I saw desperation in Lord Wilm's face. The Vessel had found the weakness of their shields. But he quickly took hold of the situation.

"Back to back, brothers! Leave no side unshielded!"

They closed together in a tight formation, firing and firing again. Then a trace of light, white and pure zipped out from the Vessel and stopped between the cluster of Cloud Lords. They suddenly broke formation, but not before it exploded. It blasted out like a small sun, a thirty-foot ball of plasma. In my eyes burned the silhouette traces of back-lit Cloud Lords and their steeds as they went flying in all directions.

I took them all for dead. Every last one. But as my eyes adjusted, I saw a few of them still in the air, wings still beating. It gave me a little hope, but just a little.

I heard a voice, deep and wise, yet strong and filled with energy. "Two minds, T'vance. The ship has a mind. When a ship has a mind, what can you possibly do?"

"What the fuck does that mean?!" I screamed. I was a little on edge.

Then it came to me. If a ship has a mind, I can do to it what I can do to things with minds. I had a whole list of spells for that. I could blind it, confuse it, make it hallucinate. But would any of those really work? And for how long with a powerful mage inside? I decided I couldn't trust it's decisions, with a mage inside to override it.

I sped closer to get within range, shouting the words of the spell. Though the sounds were muted by my spell, I felt just as powerful as if I were screaming aloud. Then it blinked again and fired at a fleeing Cloud Lord. It hit the steardan instead, but the effect was just as bad. The steardan melted and fell, and the Cloud Lord with it.

My spell finished, with much regret too late, but it finished. I watched the faint glow of purple flash towards the Vessel and sink in. I had it, and I knew it. It was blind.

"Any remaining Cloud Lords! Fire! Fire! It's blinded!" I screamed.

I looked around, but saw only four still at wing, and those were moving away as fast as they could to the north. They were fleeing, or at least regrouping. I didn't really blame them, but it crushed my morale nevertheless.

So there I was, a lone Dúranaki in a Farok costume floating a couple hundred feet in the air fifty feet from something I'd really hoped to never see again. Below? I had no idea. I just hoped the rest of my men were safe. I hoped Fera was safe. But I knew if I didn't take care of the ship, no one else would and people would die.

I had to get inside, door in or something, and take out the final mage. Then, inside the thing maybe I could do something. Confuse it, hold it in place, wait for someone with better mind spells like Karstia. It wasn't much of a plan, but it was only a matter of time before they started working around my blindness spell.

Then I saw someone else rising up from the smoke out of the corner of my eye. I spun ready to do something. Okay, I didn't actually have a something in mind. My blindness spell is one you have to hold onto, so casting another was out of the question. But I spun and saw a friend. I saw Brother Dagar, or Tisbaen, or someone else. It was hard to say exactly. It sort of looked like three people. Every time I would concentrate on a feature, it would appear as one of them, but never the same one. Oh, and he was glowing with a golden aura.

He raised his hand, as if in greeting, and I mouthed, "You're flying?!"

He was still more than a hundred feet away, but could still see a grin.

"Do you know what else Aganond isn't very experienced with?" I heard him say in my head, though I think his mouth was moving. "Faith."

His aura grew brighter, then a wide beam of golden rays from his outstretched hands projected through the sky upon the dark Vessel. The beam grew stronger and more focused and I began to hear Dagar's voice rising into a cry. He spoke in pure Enruth, the language of nature. I knew so few words it sounded like gibberish. But inspiring gibberish! And every now and again I picked out a word. Reann... Reann...Reann!

The golden light shifted to a brilliant white, then immediately faded to nothing. The Vessel then fell, as if the gods had decided it no longer had the right to fly. It fell into the smoke clouds, and a few short seconds later we heard it crash loudly into the earth below.

I looked back to Brother Dagar, who looked very much like himself again. He looked at me and shook his head in confusion. "I'm flying!?"

It was my turn to grin.

"Can you get down?" I called.

"Reann willing!" he called back.

Good, I thought. The fight was far from over.

I cast yet another spell that changed my lungs to allow me to breath easily in the smoke. Then I flew back down as fast as my spell and gravity would take me. The smoke stung my eyes, that part the spell didn't much help with, but eventually I broke through it and found a patch of clear air above the ground.

In all that motion, we'd moved less than a hundred yards north of the circle. The fire was raging all around and the air was hot and dry, but there were plenty of clear areas. There were still living Troqs in the village, though many were missing. I assumed the rest had fled east for there weren't nearly enough bodies to account for them all. I saw the ship, too, split open in the middle, but otherwise mostly intact.

I flew to it straight away, and dropped in through the torn opening. The Farok mage was still inside, his motionless body crumpled in a position that virtually guaranteed his spine had broken. There was blood and I was pretty sure he was dead, but I stabbed him a couple of times just to be sure. Yep, dead.

The inside of the ship looked worse than the outside. The chairs had broken free of the floor, there were a couple of huge tears in the floor where pieces of tree stuck through, and the power center had split open, showing the dense mesh of blue-green Arinyark within. I checked for sentience and found none. Whatever life the ship had was gone.

I heard a sound and spun about to see three Troqs climbing to peer in through the ripped opening. I was still disguised of course, so I didn't immediately panic. They didn't seem anxious to charge in, they just watched me.

I placed my hand on the Arinyark block and drew power through it, using it's reserves instead of my own to toss a vacuum spell at the opening. It exploded, knocking the Troqs free. It probably didn't kill them, but it gave me a moment.

I dropped my impersonation spells, reveling for a moment at being myself again. Then I drew more power from the Arinyark. It had enough for my purposes, but I could sense it didn't have much more. The battle had clearly taxed the Vessel. I imagined the rocky hills and dry river bed where we'd planned to position Eloinea in my head. I took a deep breath and teleported.

Eloinea was right where I expected her, backed up to the rocks with a clear path out, and a kill zone with dug-in spears facing out. There were only two soldiers on the roof and no others outside. The two were staring up at the sky, not specifically at me, but at the cloud of smoke in the direction I'd come from.

I called out to them and descended.

The second squad had split up, leaving six inside; including the injured, and two up top. The rest, including Tanawe, split into three groups were hunting Troqs who'd fled ahead of the fire. There had been no contact with the first squad.

I got some water and gort in me. One of those made me feel a lot better.

Then we waited and watched. The fire advanced. Smoke and ash started finding us and the horses grew nervous. We heard noises, shouts, then saw black clad bodies rushing out of the brush.

"Incoming! Incoming!" It was one of the elves, then Tanawe and Balen. Tanawe was reloading as she ran. Then we saw the Troqs coming after them, maybe twenty or thirty.

"Fire!" I shouted, though I didn't really need to. Everyone was already taking aim. We downed three of the closest Troqs, buying our men a few more feet. They weaved through the spears and Balen and the elf scrambled up to the rooftop while Tanawe fired. Then she climbed up.

We fired again, I even threw my short kynac because they weren't quite close enough to get them all in my confusion shout spell. When they hit the edge of the kill zone, I cast. I don't know if it was because I was so tired from casting all day and the day before, but it wasn't my best spell. Less than half of them stopped charging.

"Get inside!" I screamed.

Balen and the elf slid through the top hatch, then the two on the roof took a final shot and followed. The men inside were still firing, of course. A Troq leaped up, but I sunk both kynacs before it could effectively swing its claws at me. I kicked the body off, then checked back to make sure Tanawe had made it inside. She had, so I flew up and out of the way of any further attacks.

The hatch closed as two more Troqs leaped up top. I rose higher, just to be safe, and threw my blue kynac again at the Troqs trying to pry open the hatch. Those inside continued firing at the incoming Troqs, who literally swarmed the wagon searching for a way in. They tried the top hatch, they tried beneath, they tried the front; all the while taking shots from the crossbows inside when they crossed an opening.

Eventually, the unconfused Troqs got the hint and focused their energies on tearing through the bottom. There were no arrow slits beneath and no easy shot for me from above. But there were only four or five of them under there, and it was oak so I didn't expect them to breech quickly. Meanwhile, the confused Troqs were getting massacred, save the few who managed to run away back towards the fire.

"T'vance! They're beneath us!" I heard from inside. "Anything you can do from out there?!"

"I'll try!" I called back.

One against five didn't sound promising, which meant I needed to cast another spell. I settled on an illusion of a fire elemental. I could make it hot and they seemed rather scared of fire, and it wasn't terribly taxing. I gritted my teeth and worked through the words. The elemental was smaller than I'd hoped for, the right shape, but just smaller, roughly the size of a large man. It would have to do.

The illusion made no sound, because that would have been a harder spell. But it was warm to be near, like a fire, as well as looking like real, rippling, burning, fire.

It rolled over the earth, passing the – dear gods, they'd killed the horses – front and then dove underneath. Then I saw a half dozen Troqs rush out from underneath it, back towards the woods. They didn't make it past the kill zone before they fell with crossbow bolts sticking out of their backs.

I decided it made a great defensive prop, so I let the illusion run. I placed it at the front of the kill zone like some ominous, albeit not very large, scarecrow to ward off Troqs.

The second group returned next, under Geric's lead. One of their group was badly injured, bleeding through bandages, and unconscious. The other two were just badly injured and bleeding through bandages. We got them inside and treated them with herbs from the pouch.

A few minutes passed, during which we took better positions. Then we saw a group moving low and quick through the brush on the far side of the riverbed. They were our men, I was fairly sure, save two of them towards the back who stuck out like sore thumbs. They were Cloud Lords, sans their steardan mounts, running behind my men in their heavy plate armor.

They broke out of the brush when they were closer, and I saw Fera's face darting side to side. I think I actually sighed out loud. She saw me and we locked eyes for a long moment. Then she looked around once more and gestured everyone forward. A few of us got down to greet them. I counted them. They were missing six. One of those was Dagar, who I wasn't worried about. Gorun, the mage who was controlling the wind was with them.

I stepped to Fera and we sort of grabbed each other and stared at each other close.

"The airship?" she asked.

"Destroyed. As are all the Farok mages, assuming the dead one didn't lie to us."

She nodded, smiled and shook me. "We ran out of ammo, to a man. Not a crossbow bolt, nor kalta dart to spare."

"We've been pulling them out of the bodies," I said. "Hey Gorun, since you're here. Can you blow the smoke the other way for a change?"

"Of course, sir. I was debating whether or not it was time to put it out. I could whip up a light rain?"

"Just the wind for now." I turned back to Fera. "I saw Brother Dagar and I saw one of us go down. Who are we missing?"

She went through the list of names. Three of them were dead for sure, two only missing but without a lot of hope for a different outcome. The Cloud Lords they found rushing out from the fire towards the river bed. They were the two I'd met on the hilltop who were not Lord Wilm. They were blackened as I was, and coughing a lot, but in better shape than some of my men.

"And you two?" I asked them. "How did you survive?"

"Our armor protects us," one said boldly. Then somewhat softly added, "To be honest, I thought I was done for. I've never fallen that far, and the plasma... and then the fire. I'm glad to be alive. And I think there might be more of us that made it. If it's alright with you we plan on staying along side you until we can account for everyone."

"I told them they'd have to ask you when we got here," Fera said, grinning ever so slightly.

"You're welcome of course."

"You didn't happen to see Lord Wilm in the confusion up there?" he asked me.

"I did not see what became of him. I can say that I saw two steardan with riders at a distance after the fact. But past that, I don't know. I hope he made it as you did."

I turned back to the group. "Okay team. We're back together! Triage the injured, reload, rearm. We're still in danger here."

"Where the hell are you T'vance? I thought I said not to do anything!" Karstia's voice echoed in my head.

"Some things needed to be done. Still do, actually. If you want to talk, find me and jump in. I know you can. And if you could bring some rangers or Changrami, that'd be great. We've still got about a hundred Troqs to hunt down."

She was silent for a minute. Then said,"Ten minutes."

The rain was falling. It felt wonderful. Most of us were still defending Eloinea, but we had two patrols out. I notified everyone we'd be receiving guests.

I didn't have a watch, but it felt more like fifteen minutes. Just saying.

"I'm coming in. Find a clear area and stare at it please."

"Staring."

I was looking into the river bed, and suddenly they were there. There was no bright flash, but the air sparkled bright yellow. I knew the effect before I saw the man. Rubo was there, also Karstia, two Changrami monks, a very short middle-aged Jameri who looked out of place, and three wood elves I didn't know who looked rangers from the Remiraith, and in fact were.

"I can't believe that worked," Rubo said.

"You should trust me," Karstia replied. "I've been doing this a long time."

Rubo stepped to me. "She mind linked to me, then looked through your eyes, then I teleported us--"

I cut him off with a look.

"Right, wrong time," he agreed. "What the hell is going on?"

"Troq village, fire, we're putting it out and then we need to mop them up."

Rubo nodded and looked at the short Jameri, who stepped past us to survey the fire. He wore riding boots and robes, and said with ever fiber of his being that he was uncomfortable in the outdoors.

"Might there be people within who still live?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

He nodded. "Then rain is best." He walked over to Gorun and said, "Son, let me show you a thing or two about making rain."

Gorun seemed to know him and they shook hands.

"That's Professor Ellip," Rubo explained. "He's a third ring magician and heads up his specialty."

"I should probably be impressed."

"You should be."

One of the elves stepped up. "Are those the Troqs you speak of?" he asked, gesturing to the bodies.

I resisted the desire for sarcasm. "Yes. But be wary, there are still living ones about."

He nodded, and the three of them walked over and began to examine the bodies.

Karstia then approached. "Shall we meld?" she asked.

"Depends. Are you sharing anything this time, or just catching up on the things I've learned?"

"I can share a little," she said, with a faint smile.

I knew from experience not to expect much, but melding was still faster than talking through everything so I consented. "Can you include Rubo? It would save a lot of time."

She turn to Rubo and looked him over, as if his coat or shoes might impact his ability to meld with us. Then she shrugged. "Why not?" she said.

She touched my forehead lightly with one hand and Rubo's with the other and I felt our consciousnesses moving together. I showed them what they missed. I didn't leave anything out this time. When I'd finished, she let us go without showing anything.

"Ten days?" she murmured.

"Lords of Orhan," Rubo said, stepping back and almost losing his balance.

"My apologies, T'vance," Karstia said. "I had no idea."

I shrugged. "You're here with reinforcements. I don't care what tone you took with me."

She smiled. "In some ways, its hard to look at you and remember the Raylen I met all those years ago. I mean that in a good way."

"If you mean to distract me, it won't work. You're supposed to share, remember?"

"I won't forget. But not now. Let's get to that circle. I need to see it."

"There are a lot of Troqs between here and there."

She nodded. "Larani?" she called to one of the elves.

He walked over. "Yes, m'lady?"

"There's a village north west of here, can you see it?"

He nodded.

"Can you take us there safely?"

He considered that a moment. "I can find a path that will do that, but the village itself is not a safe place. I sense many occupants."

"A hundred?"

"Less. Perhaps half that."

"We'll be fine. T'vance, can you ready your men?"

"Some of them. I have injured, two patrols out and one missing."

"And no horses, I see," Rubo chided.

"Don't get me started," I muttered. Rubo and I had lost too many horses together.

"Just ready whoever you can spare."

I found Tanawe and we worked out a list. Most of the people on the list were staying. With me, I took the newcomers, the Cloud Lords, Fera, two of my elves. Everyone else stayed with Eloinea. We followed the elven rangers down the dry river bed, back towards our original base. Larani stopped a few times to check the earth, or a bush, or burnt twig. At the last, the twig, he nodded to himself and we cut into the burned out landscape north of us.

The fire had burned nearly every bush and tree, and though the rain had put them out, there were a few that still smoldered. It smelled burned and smokey everywhere.

We started finding bodies of Troqs. Some were cut, some had crossbow bolts in them, and some were burned. But others were just dead, without a mark on them. Those, we stabbed or chopped just to be safe.

"How did they die?" one of the Cloud Lords asked.

"They suffocated," Karstia said, pressing on.

Death was everywhere. We even found two of our own, face down and torn apart. It was a gruesome sight, and I was glad we didn't have the rest of the company with us to see it. The rangers looked to Karstia, then me.

"We'll come back for them," I said, and gestured them onward.

We got closer, but eventually Larani slowed and raised a hand. "This path soon leads us to conflict," he said.

Karstia turned to Rubo. "Rubo, I believe you have a wand that you found in the city of Lohm?"

He looked surprised. "I do. It makes little floating lights that are only really effective against stupid things."

"Well, we're about to run into a large group of stupid things," she said.

"Let me find it," he said, and began checking through his things. "I never use it." Finally he opened his coat, inside were many pockets. From one he produced a wand made from braided bronze. "Here it is! Now what am I supposed to do with it?"

"Use it, and float the lights to the center of the village. Professor Ellip, could you then please remove the oxygen from around the lights?"

"Consider it done, lady Karstia."

We crept closer, using burnt trees for cover until we could see the village. There were still twenty or thirty Troqs, piling bodies of their own into stacks near the stone buildings, which were still largely intact except for their roofs.

"Now," Karstia whispered.

Rubo waved the wand and five little glowing bugs appeared floating over the village. A great hiss went out, then they were quiet, staring up at the lights. The lights moved and swayed through the air, then floated down. The Troqs converged on them like moths. First just a few, then more and more. After a few minutes, we couldn't find a Troq who wasn't gathered around the lights, staring at them calmly.

"This is hands down the most effective this stupid wand has ever been," Rubo whispered.

"Tell me about it," I replied. "I didn't even think you'd kept it."

I looked over and saw Professor Ellip staring intently towards town. I hadn't even seen him cast the spell, but slipping into second sight I could see the brilliant green cloud of his spell engulfing the Troqs as they watched the lights.

Then one of the Troqs slumped to the ground, then another, then five or six. Within another five minutes, there wasn't a Troq standing.

"If I keep this up it will kill them all," the professor said.

"That's the plan," Karstia said.

"Oh," he said. "I could have probably done that faster then."

"Perhaps, but not safer," Karstia replied.

We waited another ten minutes. Finally Karstia stood up and began walking forward. "It's done," she said.

Ellip nodded and released his spell, then cast another I assume to restore the oxygen. After a few more minutes he gave us the all clear. Karstia led us into town, stepping over bodies as she closed on the circle of stones we'd never let them finish. In the distance I could see the wreckage of the Vessel, thankfully still as I'd left it.

"We'll sweep the area," Larani said. The three elves pulled up their hoods and the color shifted until they blended perfectly with the background. They moved off and I quickly lost sight of them.

Karstia knelt near the stones and traced the runes on one with her finger. Rubo and Professor Ellip joined her, but didn't touch anything. They just stared at them.

The Cloud Lords looked anxious, pacing around nervously with the hands close to the hilts of their swords. One of them stopped suddenly and turned, staring westward.

"I hear something," he said.

I looked up. A hundred feet away, Brother Dagar stepped out from behind a charred tree that was too small to have possibly concealed him. Then Lord Wilm stepped out with another Cloud Lord, who was leaning heavily on him. All three of them were covered in soot and ash, and though Wilm was helping the other Cloud Lord to walk, he seemed to be struggling.

"Lord Wilm!" they shouted, rushing over to him. They helped them back to the center of the village.

Wilm smiled weakly at everyone.

"Did we win?" he asked.

"For the most part," I said. "How did you make it?"

"We were knocked out of the air, but we land fairly well. Still, the fire would have taken us for sure had we not seen the light. It led us to Dagar here, who led us into a dark place where we were safe."

"A dark place?" I asked him.

Dagar just smiled innocently.

Karstia stood up and turned to everyone. "This could have been very bad," she said. "This would have been finished in under a day, and the ritual to activate it a day after that. And by then, there would have been more than a thousand mature Troqs to contend with."

"It is good we acted when we did," Wilm said.

"Yes," Karstia agreed, but I could tell she wasn't convinced of our good fortune.

A moment later, there was a flash and a series of soft cries in the center of the circle. We spun around to find the Yinka children collapsed in a pile in the center of the circle. I'd forgotten all about them.

"Don't fire!" I shouted quickly. The Yinka were frozen in fear. I called to them in their language. "Come, little ones. It is safe."

"Y'kin?" Lord Wilm said. "But how did they survive?"

"That was my doing," I said. Then I explained how the battle began, how the children's screams had triggered our attack, and how I'd rushed in to save them.

"You saved them?" Wilm asked. "But Dúranaki hate Y'kin."

Fera nudged me. "Softy," she whispered.

"They're only children," I said.

Lord Wilm nodded. "We think the same way then," he said. "Are they orphaned?"

"I think so."

"Do you have plans for them?" he asked.

"No, I actually have no idea what to do with them."

"We'll take them, then," he said. "It is not the race, but the culture we despise. This will not be the first set of Y'kin children we've sponsored. We have a small settlement where we've been caring for refugee children. They'll be with their own, but raised without the hatred and heresy."

That surprised me, but pleasantly. "I'll leave them in your care."

From there, we began the arduous task of purging the remaining Troqs and collecting our injured and dead. The elven rangers proved invaluable in this. They'd already found two dead Cloud Lords, or at least the melted remains, and five of my men. They'd also roughly accounted for the remaining Troqs, which were few and scattered.

I won't bore you with the details, but we mobilized everyone. We hunted down the rest, some of whom the elves had to track. It took until well into the night, but we finished. We collected our dead and wrapped them for transport, then secured replacement horses from another village a few miles to the south. They were bad horses and cost a lot, but they would allow us to limp back home.

The Cloud Lords took their leave, and we were about to head out when Karstia pulled me aside.

"It's time for those details you wanted," she said. "Your people can find their way back. I need you and Fera and Rubo to come with me."

"Fera?" I asked.

"Just have Rubo jump us."

"Where?"

"I'll show him."

"I don't like this," I told her.

"I know."
CHAPTER 16

* * *

T'vance

* * *

Rubo stared at Karstia. "Is this where I think it is?"

"Yes."

"And they're expecting us?"

"Yes."

"Okay," he said, grinning.

I frowned. We jumped.

We arrived in the center of a large dark room with a copper tile floor. There was light in the center, but it faded away quickly. Around us, just inside the shadows, was a circle of chairs. There were many chairs, but most of them were empty; only four had occupants. The ceiling was a star field, but I could tell from the acoustics it was an illusion. Where the hell were we? And why did Rubo seem to recognize it?

The light made it difficult to make out any details of the other occupants. This was no doubt by design. My eyes are better than most, but I still couldn't make out any details save the racial breakdown. Of the four people, three were elves and one was a fair skinned human.

Fera looked around nervously, and subtly slipped a knife from her pocket, though I doubted no one else noticed. She leaned in to me. "Loremasters?" she asked.

"Probably," I whispered back.

"I'll try not to kill them, then."

One of the elves in the shadows said, "Karstia, please excuse us. And take the yellow coated fellow with you."

Karstia bowed, grabbed Rubo's arm and moved off into the shadows. There was a sliver of light as a door opened, then it closed behind them and the darkness returned. Normally I'd be up front and say something, but I felt a little out of my element so I waited for them to start.

"You are probably wondering why you're here," he said.

"I was. But now I'm wondering why you made them leave," I said.

"I was warned about your tongue, but I found it hard to believe."

"You haven't even heard mine yet," Fera remarked.

He chuckled. "I expect I will. Let me be blunt. We, as a world, have a very serious problem. We tend not to get involved, but in this instance we feel we have no choice. As both of you know, sometimes very complex problems can be solved by removing a very small but integral part. We need someone to remove Lord Aganond."

He paused, letting that sink in.

"You have to be kidding me," I said. "We were barely able to take out a few of his minions!"

"It's a different problem," he said, as if that dismissed my argument. "We've given this a great deal of thought and can find no one better suited for this operation."

"Better suited? Or more expendable? Because while I kill people rather well--"

"We aren't talking about you."

"What?" Fera and I said together.

"Fera Subt, we would like to offer you a job."

"Really?" she asked, almost amused. "I'm listening."

"Wait. Fera?" I asked.

She elbowed me, hard. "What are you offering?"

"It is negotiable, but we've prepared a tentative offer. I think you'll find it very generous. Two rates, one if he's dead, more if you can bring him back alive."

A leather scroll case floated across the room towards Fera.

"This is suicide," I told her.

She grabbed the scroll case out of the air and pulled out the parchment inside, holding it away from me so I couldn't see what it said. Real petty, Fera. She whistled appreciatively.

"I take it you find the offer acceptable?"

She smiled slightly and glanced at me a moment. "It is very sweet, but I honestly don't think you're good for it. Seriously, am I supposed to be impressed here? You have me teleported into your secret club house, hide in the shadows and refuse to say who you are, float magical scroll cases over to me offering me essentially the three things I was sort of thinking about?"

"We are, as you say, good for it."

"Really? Are you even Loremasters? Light control, minor telekinesis, reading surface thoughts, and scribing? Where's the mind probe? Where's the part where you take the time to look inside me to realize I don't want a stupid island, even if it jumped into my head? Where's the research? You've already pissed off T'vance and yet you need him to get me there. If you were Loremasters, you'd know enough to approach us as a couple, as a team. You'd be trying to hire us."

The Loremaster, if that's what he was, rose and walked out from the shadows. He was almost seven feet tall, with pale skin, deep purple eyes, and long black hair pulled back and braided. He wore a white vest trimmed with gold and silver, both real, which was open showing his bare chest beneath. He wore matching leggings, which were overly baggy and almost covered his black and silver boots.

"An'talnia," she said. "Lord An'talnia."

"You recognize me then. That's good."

"I don't," I said.

"He's part of the ruling party in Gûl," Fera explained.

"Was. Sadly, I was voted out last term. This is me showing good faith. At least you know who I am. Revealing myself has given you some power over me, I won't ask my colleagues to do the same. But I stand by the fact that we are good for it. Despite what you may think, we are not endless in our resources. The island is mine, I can you show you the title signed by the King of Rhakhaan himself. The money we've pooled from our own sources. I'm sure you don't doubt I can win you forgiveness with Dibithe so you can return to Gûl without a price on your head."

"Well, I already told you I don't want a stupid island. I don't know why I thought of that."

"I put the idea there," he said. "It's a very nice island, with a well maintained estate, dock, and two skiffs. Sometimes it helps to plant seeds. And most of your observations are short-sided, especially in regards to our use of spells. I'm rather surprised considering your reputation."

"Hardly short-sided," she replied. "The things I said got you to leave the safety of your shadows. Don't confuse what I say with what I think."

He smiled weakly. "Touche."

"So for the record, I'm critical to this operation, yes?" I asked.

"Yes," the elf said. "You've probably realized that no one but you can easily provide transportation."

"Easily?" I asked. "Try at all."

"Fine. No one but you can provide transportation."

"So why aren't you offering me an island? I like islands. And again, why did you make Karstia leave?"

He sighed. "Realize I'm not going to tell you everything, no matter how much you ask. But some things aren't such secrets. Karstia left because she's a friend of yours and it would be a conflict of interest. And I have something to offer you as well, but nothing as grand as an island. One reason is that your role has less risk."

"And the other reasons?"

"Easy," Fera cut in. "You actually believe in the cause. They think I'm just a mercenary."

"Why, because you came from Gûl?"

"That's probably part of it, but I think its more because Karstia thinks that. Sure, I came along on this last quest of yours, but she probably figures it's because I love you and not because I care."

She said love. Just wanted to point that out.

"Is it not true?" Lord An'talnia asked. "I admit, I know next to nothing about you. I think that point you've made very clear."

"If it means you're offering me more, think what you want," she answered.

"The offer stands, of course."

"I'm still thinking," she said.

"While she does that, why would you only want me for transportation? You know I took out the high priest of Yarthrak, right? Went toe to toe with a demon beyond the pale? K'ta'viiri die like everyone else."

"I'm sorry if it hurts your ego, but I don't know much about your background," he said. It totally hurt my ego. "Karstia recommended your role. She can better explain it to you, but her theory was that Aganond could sense magic items and perhaps your spells, especially the non-arcane spells. The element of surprise is everything."

That was a hard thing to swallow. It made sense, but I didn't want it to.

"And what are you offering me?" I asked.

"I understand you had a falling out with Lethys a while back, something about murdering someone in front of a bunch of people? You managed to negotiate a stay of some kind, but in two years you still have to answer for that, am I right?"

He was right, more or less. I had killed someone in Lethys, and I'd kill him again if I could. He was an evil priest and a traitor. The only problem was I couldn't prove it. Then again, I didn't have to because they never actually caught me. But I had good references and wanted to run a business in town, pay taxes, help keep the place safe. You'd be amazed how far a letter from the Duke goes.

"In two years I'll negotiate another stay, or I'll leave. I won't answer for it."

"We can make it go away forever, plus a tax waiver for your Black Boot Company. There's a lot of rules about those I won't go into, you can ask the city. But it will reduce your costs for supplies and you won't have to pay taxes."

"No money? I suppose you're saving that all to woo Fera?"

"That is true."

"I can't decide whether I should be flattered or pissed off," Fera said. "You want to hear my counter offer?"

"I'm almost afraid to at this point," Lord An'talnia said.

"I don't want any money. I want a title in Sel-kai so I can buy land, and for you to fix things for me in Gûl. I want you to give the island to Black Boot Company. It can be a retreat, a second base, whatever. They already fought the first part of this war, they damn well deserve to be compensated. And they get it even if I don't make it back. And you can forget about me bringing him back. If I'm going in, I'm killing the son of a bitch. Period."

"Done," he said, looking at her appreciatively. I admit I was too.

They shook hands and the deal was made. Then she stepped back and said, "For the record I haven't been hunting down rogue mages for the money," she said. "I've been doing it because it needs to be done. I didn't need an incentive to go after Aganond, I was going to suggest it anyway. That was one Vessel for the gods' sake."

She looked at me and saw me staring at her in wonder, admiration, pride. Despite herself, she blushed, then got flustered over it and turned away from both of us.

"Come on lover," she said. "We're done here." She turned back to Lord An'talnia. "I assume I can find Karstia through that door?" She pointed into the darkness.

"Yes," he said, but sounded a bit confused.

Fera took my hand and led me into the darkness. Even with my eyes, I couldn't see anything inside it. Somehow she walked straight to the door and opened it. There was light coming through, enough to let me see her, but it still didn't penetrate the black.

She closed the door. We were in another room, this one lit and decorated like a casual study. Rubo and Karstia were drinking wine in two chairs, looking up at us.

"So what did you get?" Rubo asked.

"Seriously, Rubo. I thought we talked about this," Karstia said. "T'vance, can you make an ethereal room?"

"Not really. I'm tapped. If I don't get a nap soon, I'm apt to get very cranky."

"Which I would recognize as different how? Never mind. Rubo, can you take us somewhere private?"

"Air Rubo, at your service!" he replied. He raised his hands and clapped. The room around us flashed away and we appeared dizzily inside a room I immediately recognized as my mountain home. It was dark and cold and every sound echoed.

I said but a word, and a ward activated a light spell which filled the room with soft light.

"This your place, T'vance?" Karstia asked. "I've never seen it before. I like it. It's very you."

"Thanks, but save the formalities. I have more questions than I can keep track of and you promised me answers."

"I know," she said. "I'm sorry for that back there. This whole thing is a cluster-fuck, pardon my language. But I'm done hiding things. I learned some things when I was with Aganond, things I haven't yet told you. I took what I'd learned back and I thought when they heard it, things would be different. I thought they'd rally, form a plan, commit resources. I even had delusions Andraax would show an interest."

"He didn't?" I asked.

"As far as I know he doesn't have a clue what's going on. But the others took a vote and they voted not to be involved. They voted to notify the Kings, where possible, and let them deal with it."

"This is before you even knew about the Troqs, though, right?" Rubo asked.

"Yes, and I did the same stupid optimistic thing you just did; I figured it would make a difference. It didn't. It only changed two votes. It was still six to eight in favor of non-intervention."

"But they hired us," Fera argued. "That's intervening."

"Not quite. I convinced a few that we should act even if the council didn't agree, but even that fell somewhat flat. Staring at Lord An'talnia made me even more disgusted. He's a good man, don't get me wrong, but day in and day out I watch poorer men giving everything they can, risking their lives, spending their own money. I figured the least they could do is contribute. So I contrived a quick plan for you two to go after Aganond and got them to fund it."

"We are going after him," Fera clarified.

"I know," Karstia said. "That's part of the plan, the part they know about. But it isn't the whole plan."

"Even that part I don't get!" I said. "Why Fera? No offense, really, but what the hell am I missing? And what's this about rogue mages?"

Karstia looked hard at Fera. "You never told him?"

"We don't talk business," she said, but I could tell she didn't even like the sound of it coming out of her mouth. "I was getting to it," she added quickly.

"Let me," Karstia said. "T'vance, Fera is regarded as about the best mage-hunter available. She's taken down twelve in the last eighteen months that I know of."

"Twelve?! Damn!" Rubo exclaimed.

"Why?" was all I could ask.

"Why's later," Fera said. "You want to know how."

"Fine," I said gruffly. "How?"

Fera reached into her pocket and pulled out a small silver orb with a blue button on top. "You remember this?"

My eyes went wide. I did remember it, it was an anti-magic device. When I'd first met Fera, we'd gotten into a dispute with Dibithe, the same mercenary group Lord An'talnia had just agreed to smooth things over with. The Dyari who owned the device had used it to capture me, then used it when we met again as I tried to rescue Fera. I don't remember his name only that he was a Dyari and I killed him. But it almost went the other way.

It seemed like ages ago, and when we left I was weak and bleeding. Fera had taken the device and turned it off, but I'd lost track of it after that. I never figured she'd kept it, but why wouldn't she? Suddenly it made sense. No spell could touch her while using that.

"It's called a Viirtakai, Iruaric for Balancing Force," Karstia said. "It was made in the First Era. That device, or one like it, for we believe they made more than one, was the catalyst that brought about the end of the Althans on Kulthea."

"It did?" Fera asked, looking at it with a new appreciation.

"How the hell do you know that?" I asked.

"Andraax told me," Karstia said. "If you recall, he was actually there. I don't have all the details, even Andraax himself is fuzzy. But the Althans evolved into a caste society. Those who excelled at magic became K'ta'viiri, Lords of Essaence. They ruled over the other Althans, including those specializing in science. Then one of them made a discovery, and that discovery spawned a device. And that device became the one thing the K'ta'viiri feared."

"I thought it was a war between K'ta'viiri that ended the First Era," Rubo said.

"It was," Karstia said. "Even though they feared it, some K'ta'viiri were sympathetic towards the more mundane of their race. The leader of that party was Uthos, the leader of the opposition was Kadaena. When Kadaena began to wage war on the mundanes, Uthos opposed him. It was that war that ultimately destroyed the world.

"But enough history," she continued. "There's another reason: Fera's useful. She's psionic. That's mind power, no magic. She's not great at it, no offense, but she uses it."

"I don't take any offense, on account of I'm not whatever you just said."

"I've suspected she works mentalism spells," I said.

"I don't!"

"She doesn't," Karstia agreed. "But let's not argue. I'm just going to assert she's somewhat of a bad-ass, even in an anti-magic field."

Everyone could agree to that.

"I still don't like this," I said. Everyone could agree to that, too.

"Even with an anti-magic field, there is significant risk," Rubo said. "It only protects against direct magic."

"I know," Fera said. "Elemental magic is only magic until it leaves the caster. A firebolt is just fire in the air. Similarly, a boulder hurled with telekinesis, or a land slide brought down by calling cracks. I know it's weaknesses, and I know its range. My life has depended on it several times now."

"The big advantage is that Aganond knows nothing about it," Karstia said.

"Are you sure about that?" Fera asked. "As in sure enough I can stake my life on it? He couldn't have been inside your mind, learning all that you know?"

"It is possible that he learned some things from me, but there's no chance he learned about that."

"Why?" I asked. "Because you're a Loremaster and it 'doesn't work that way'?"

"That might have been my line if circumstances were different. But in this case, I didn't even know about it until after I returned. He couldn't have pried it from me."

"Good," Fera said.

"I, on the other hand, was able to pry a bit out of him. Despite his attempts to nullify my magic, he didn't have Kriegora, didn't know it existed. He used heavy metals around my head, which was almost enough. If I wasn't such a good actress, he might have been more cautious. I pushed into his mind a few times while he was sleeping."

"Anything you can tell me will help," Fera said. "I'm a research girl."

"I can't tell you, it would take too long. I have to show you. Everyone sit in a circle and join hands."

We did as she asked. I had no idea she could meld with multiple people at once, but it didn't really surprise me. She cast the spell without saying a word or making a gesture and I felt our minds opening to each other.

Then the images came, with sounds and smells and tastes. We lived moments of her life, starting with the moment she woke up for the first time on Farokis. We saw him as she did the first time, and felt the pain of the metal crown pressing into her head. We sensed her fear, his arrogance. We saw how his eyes devoured her, looked on her with lust. We thought her thoughts, "High elves were made as concubines for the K'ta'viiri. Of course he wants me. I can use this."

She skipped around, here and there, shielding some things that were too private to share. But not the facts, just her own torment, or details too graphic to be of use. In short, she lied and she played the role she had to in order to win moments of trust. She didn't show us, but there was no doubt she had sex with him.

I felt Fera's mind lash out in response, and Karstia sooth her. It had to be done. It was just sex. I let it happen. I was in control. I am okay.

I agreed with Fera, but kept my thoughts to myself.

She flashed us through conversations. If there was one thing Aganond was, it was proud of what he had done. He talked about the city, the walls, how they'd been constructed. He talked about his Faroks and their skills, and how much work they had been to create.

She emphasized an exchange between them. "Do you know what the best part is? When you take something you've created, something that loves you and trusts you, and you destroy it utterly. They have to know, of course. And there's a joy in that moment. That moment they realize, the betrayal, the terror. Oh, that just makes the power jump right out of them."

To Karstia's credit, or impeachment, she replied with a story of how she used to bathe in the blood of her slaves' children. Just because she could. I didn't know if she was lying or not, but somehow I don't think she was. I knew she had a dark past, but it was the kind of thing I didn't want to think about in detail. But Aganond looked at her with a certain appreciation, studied her, and seemed to believe her.

After that, he was less guarded. But it was clear that Aganond didn't consider Karstia an equal. She was a plaything, as were the Faroks; living things so much less powerful than he, that he need not truly respect them.

The whole time, Karstia knew we'd come for her. Whether it was us or someone we told who came in our stead, she wasn't sure. But she figured it would be me. She thought about that a lot, and I found it touching that she had such confidence in my abilities and character. She was driven by a simple plan. Learn everything possible until T'vance arrives.

So she learned things, and we learned them through her. She toured the city, the ship yards, the inside chamber where Aganond said he "fed the beast" but never explained what that meant. She met his personal guards, the best of the Faroks trained in combat magic instead of constructive. They talked about magical theory, and history of both worlds, about Murnak the ancient who'd taught Aganond magic.

We'd only seen three days, and it seemed like Karstia was well on her way to rooting out his secrets. She'd had to give up some of her own, and plenty of ours, but it seemed worth it to her and she more or less had to. And then he decided to examine Leona and everything changed. He put her on, and within a few moments Karstia became his second favorite toy.

He didn't entirely ignore her, but she stopped learning things, at least directly from him. But it also gave her time alone to explore the nature of the crown that was stopping her from casting, and experiment with ways of casting her spells anyway. She skimmed a lot over that part, but we could tell there was much time and effort and failure before she managed to get her spells working when she was touching the target.

It may not seem like a lot, but for a seer that's huge. She could touch items and get visions of events, go into rooms and see what had happened hours, days, even months before. She eavesdropped on conversations Aganond had the day before with Leona and his guards.

There was so much, it was hard to process it all. It was even harder trying to find pieces that seemed useful to hang onto. Aganond, for all his power, had no one he considered a true peer. There was no one he confided in and even though he spoke often with Leona, they never delved into his plans. He was more interested in discussing the status of the Imperial world and things she could do for him in bed.

It was clear he had no love for the Empire, and whatever his plans were, they were aimed against them. But he couldn't be pressed, and only laughed off the casual questions as to how he could stand up to the Empire with only his planet.

Once, he said, "Space? Space is worthless. You think I give a damn about space?"

To which Karstia asked, "I thought with all your efforts with the Vessels--"

"Then think differently," he hissed, cutting her off.

With her other efforts proving fruitless, Karstia began taking bigger risks. She began scanning Aganond's mind as he slept, gently at first, but each night she delved deeper. She picked up on his dreams at first. Some were simple and innocent, featuring a young Althan poor and hungry in a huge line of fellow children, or in a school, or in a dormitory lined with beds.

"That was his childhood, I think," she added. "Even in the warped memory, it was tragic."

"No sympathy," I thought.

"Not sympathy. Understanding."

Other dreams were chaotic and dark. Dreams of bugs, dreams of dark things crawling over him, dreams of a tall gaunt father figure, dreams of a comet streaking across the sky, dreams of voices. Yet others were grand and terrible, Aganond in a shining well lit hall staring down at crowds of people who seemed frozen saved the blood trickling out from their eyes and ears. Finally, there was a conversation.

"The Life Worlds are close. I feel them."

"It is the one you feel, the one so close we shan't have missed it had we known to look."

"It is of little importance. It has already been infected."

"Still, the unity."

"Always, the unity."

"Is it time?"

"Soon. You will know."

She didn't know who it was, but she was certain it wasn't a true dream. It was mental communication. In her mind, she considered it Unlife, or a minion of Unlife. Either way, it was evil. It wasn't the things it said, but rather the feeling she got inside her when she heard the voice speak.

The last thing she did was the most daring. When the foreign ships landed, Aganond held a private meeting with Myloteri after the demonstration. I remember he had sent me away before that meeting. He sent her away too. She waited for the meeting to end, then rushed in and viewed a few moments of it using her magic. He called for her, and she had to go. But she saw part of it and shared it.

Myloteri and Aganond walked into the room, there were refreshments of some kind, but neither of them touched them.

"We are alone," Aganond said.

"I will be honest. We have no interest in your ships."

"Of course not," Aganond agreed.

"Then why were you so adamant?"

"Because I want the Empire to think you are very interested in my ships."

"How does that help you?"

"Let me worry about that. I have what you want. This will give you unfettered access to Cydera Station." He opened his palm and a small silver box appeared in it. He held it out and Myloteri took it from him.

"The primary ITH outside the capital?"

"The same."

"How do I use this?"

"There's a recessed button underneath. It has enough power to work for about thirty minutes. I assume that's enough time for your purposes?"

He nodded. "And what is it you want?"

"I want you to do the most you can with it. And I want your word that you'll leave a small subset of quarantined planets alone. That's all. We have the same enemy. We're helping each other."

"These planets are the ones like this? The ones your ships can refuel in?"

"Yes."

"We have no interest in them."

At that point she had to leave. She'd pushed it far enough as it was, and she knew I'd be going before Aganond and she needed to be there to keep me from getting myself killed. Or so she was thinking at the time.

She continued the visions through the combat with Aganond. It was strange watching myself in action from another set of eyes. I knew it was something Fera needed to see, so I continued to watch. Aganond got hit with the chain, Doogan went to shoot him, the room exploded. Then we were rushing. We saw Karstia glance over at Doogan's body, and I saw it move. Then the visions faded.

For a moment no one could speak. We were all breathing hard from feeling the adrenalin rushing in Karstia's reliving of the moment.

Finally I stood up and paced. I felt better to be moving. "What did he mean by 'infected'?" I asked.

"Unlife," Rubo said. "There was a time before Unlife. It was before our times, even Karstia's, but there are ancient writings of its first coming."

"That was my conclusion also," Karstia said. "We are the close world and we are already infected with Unlife."

"You're talking about it like it's a disease," Fera said.

"Isn't it? If the Essaence were a creature, I would call Unlife a parasite. It attaches to it, feeds on it, uses it's energies for it's own good, to the detriment of the host."

"But it isn't a creature," Fera argued.

"You sound far more certain about that than I am," Karstia said. "But we shouldn't debate the fabric of the universe. The fact is that Unlife once wasn't here, and now is. And we're so much the worse for it. It's clearly infected Aganond's planet, too."

"The story of the coming of Unlife includes the passing of a comet. And there was a comet in Aganond's dreams," Rubo said.

Karstia smiled at Rubo. "I was hoping you'd notice that."

"So you're saying there's a big evil comet flying around looking for planets with magic to infect?" Fera asked.

"When you say it like that it sounds ludicrous. But yes, it's out there. And I believe if it finds Essaence planets, it infects them. And Aganond knows where they all are, he had a list to give to Myloteri."

"And if they all get infected?" I asked.

"I don't know," Karstia admitted. "The unity, supposedly, but I have no idea what that could mean. It can't possibly be good."

"So I don't get it," Rubo said. "This is huge news and very bad. How could the Loremasters not act?!"

"It hinges on something Myloteri said to Aganond," Karstia said. "He told Aganond he didn't think he would survive the first impending Imperial assault, and definitely wouldn't survive the second. The council is counting on the Empire to solve this problem for us."

"Aganond didn't seem worried about that," I said.

"It doesn't really matter. It was Myloteri's confidence that sold them. Also, you people really have a poor understanding of Loremasters. We don't have armies and strike teams and resources coming out our noses. To us, acting on something is usually just telling someone about it. At least they're telling people, which is more than we normally do."

"Can't argue with you there," Rubo said snidely. Karstia just rolled her eyes.

"There's something else I noticed," I said. "Doogan was still alive."

"Yes."

"So you lied to me."

"Yes," she said, but there was no sadness in her voice. "I saw that future where you went after Doogan. Neither of you made it. I didn't have time to see the future where we argued about it."

I nodded, feeling a little like an ass.

"If he's still alive, we'll get him when we go," she said.

"We?"

"Yes," she said grinning slightly.

"Don't you think Aganond will sense you? And who's we anyway?"

"T'vance, you must at once think two things. First, Aganond is a God. Second, Aganond is not a God."

"That makes no sense."

"Fear him like a God, but remember that he is not. He is only what he is because of his spells. If I were getting anywhere near him, it would be a problem. But I won't be. And we is everyone in this room, plus Karutana and probably Aja. We obviously have to find them, first."

"What's the plan?"

"I can't tell you. You and Fera can't know what we're doing, in case you fail and are interrogated."

"But you can know what we're doing?" Fera asked.

"Well it's my plan, I can't not know it. But I don't want all the details so you should plan your 'hit' or whatever you call it in private. The only thing I'll say is that we'll go in together and immediately separate, but meet back in the same spot to leave. I'll mind link with T'vance from time to time, because we'll need to know when Aganond is neutralized and coordinate getting back home."

"So you aren't creating a big diversion or something we can use?" I asked her.

"Sorry. If we are doing anything distracting, it's by coincidence. Don't count on us for anything."

"So it's just you and me, baby," I told Fera.

She smiled. "Just the way I like it."

Karstia rose and gestured to Rubo to do the same. She had a worried look, like a mother. "You two should rest. Don't worry about our part. Rubo and I can handle that. Just rest and make your plans. I'll be in touch."

She turned to Rubo. "Black Boot company courtyard?" he asked.

"If you please."

"Right behind you," he said, and he slapped her shoulder making her disappear in a cascade of glittering yellow. Then he turned to me. "So seriously, what did you get?"

"Fera got the company an island," I said.

"Very nice! Okay. You guys rest."

He stepped close like he might shake my hand, but made no gesture of it. We never shook hands, it wasn't my thing and he knew it. But we stood a little closer and we looked at each other and smiled. He looked older, but he looked well. His coat was still garish, but pristine. I'm sure I looked like hell, covered in soot and blood. He looked me over for a minute, nodded. Then vanished himself, leaving a small pile of yellow dust which slowly faded away.

We lost our clothes on the way to the tub, which had wards for filling and warming the water so I didn't have to lift a finger. It was a big tub, carved to Fera's specifications. As she'd said, "I sure as hell am not spending time in a wilderness cabin with no bath." Added a bath, problem solved.

We slipped down into it and sat neck deep, letting the warm water wash over our sore muscles. Fera had a number of bruises and scrapes and a fresh scar from a Troq's claw I didn't know about until then. I looked dirty, but was in good shape; as my magic had enough time to heal the minor wounds I'd taken. But I was still tired and sore and the water and Fera's closeness were so very welcome.

"Do you remember how, after a fight, we'd be so worked up we'd fuck each other's brains out?"

"Yes. Amazing stuff. And by the gods, I hope you aren't suggesting that."

"No," she assured me. "I have about enough energy to dry off and climb into bed. Maybe smoke a little? I have some homemade e'tala."

She took out a small wooden box which had two chambers inside. One held a small wooden pipe and the other something that looked like dirty brown sugar. E'tala was fairly common in Lethys as a sleep aid, or to wind down in the evenings. Knowing Fera, her homemade version probably contained some traces of other intoxicants.

She rolled a ball of the resin and dropped it into the pipe, then I heated the tip of Fera's smallest knife and we used it in place of fire. We'd smoked things together before, so we had the routine down. The e'tala was nice. It had a sweet flavor, and also a bitter one; the equivalent of inhaling a cup of very strong tea mixed with sugar and cream.

The water grew cold and we drained it rather than reheating it. Then dried and fell into the bed only a few feet away from the tub. The sound of the water draining lulled us further to sleep. Fera was beside me, our arms touching and our hands together. I felt strange, separated from my body, and I thought I could see the stars through the stone ceiling.

"Do you make your e'tala with hueth?" I asked.

"Lover, you should know by now I make everything with hueth. Sweet dreams."

I don't know how long we slept, but it seemed like a long time. We woke and cuddled and fell back asleep, and repeated that a few times. Then we were starving and the only food we had was cold and dry, so I teleported us to Dúrakhaan and we had breakfast with the King, T'revor Arain, who also happened to be my uncle.

I melded with him and shared everything. After that he canceled his afternoon and worked with Fera and I in the war room on scenarios against Aganond. Being the King, I couldn't have his time forever. After a couple of hours he excused himself but told us to find him before we left.

"You're acting like you might not be coming back," Fera told me.

"That might happen," I said.

"It's not likely, though. You're just gating us in and out. Right?"

"Anything can happen."

"You're not going anywhere near him, T'vance."

"Do you think there's any chance I won't come after you if you don't make it out?"

"You can't do that," she said, pleading with her eyes. "I can't do this knowing that failure means you'll be throwing your life away, too."

"I could lie?"

"No. You have to promise me."

"I can't do that. I can't promise you that."

"You're the only person who can get there, T'vance. If you get yourself killed, there won't be another plan. Don't you get that?"

"That's not even true. I've taught Rubo enough of the spell list. He can get to the ethereal plane. He can get to Susoth and recreate the path, just as I did. It's a set back, but it isn't the end."

"A set back might mean the end," she argued.

"You're talking like Karstia," I said. "You were the one who said we were a team."

"I'm talking like Karstia because she's right! You've got so many things glowing on you, I don't think you can hide from him."

"That's where I think you're both wrong."

"You just think you can hide from anyone."

"No I don't. Listen, because I've given this a lot of thought. I'm already leaving the Pendant here. If I don't come back, I don't want it lost like the Sword was. I'll go in as a Farok, wearing the garb from the one I killed and I won't take a single magic item with me; no armor, no kynacs, no rings, no earring, nothing. I'll disguise my aura with misfeel spells to match a Farok in every sense. Aside from that, I won't cast a thing."

"You're fucking crazy! What good will you be? No spells? No weapons? I've seen you with a circ, it's embarrassing. The only things you even know how to fight with are kynacs."

"Long knives are similar enough. But I don't plan on fighting."

"What the hell do you plan on doing?"

"Being there, just in case. If things go badly, I can still teleport us out. By then detection won't be a concern. Or if something horrific happens to you before you get to Aganond, I can take the Viirtakai and give us another chance. You may think me useless without magic, but I assure you I can still find an Althan heart with a long knife."

"I don't doubt that--"

"Plus, even if I do nothing, I'm another set of eyes and ears. And my eyes can see invisible things, no spell required."

She frowned, a clear sign I was making good points. "There's another problem," she said. "You're overprotective of me."

"Nonsense."

"Do I have to remind you about the bladeturn spell?"

"I remember it well, thank you. It won't happen again."

"You didn't even mean for it to happen the one time! It's instinct. If you see me in trouble, you're going to cast, even if it tips our hand early."

"It's not instinct. Maybe that's how your not-magic works, but I have to actually cast a spell. In that case, a short but complex bit of mental work. I cast it consciously. And I can just as easily not do it, especially if I know the downside."

"If it wasn't instinct, what were you thinking? That I couldn't handle myself?"

"More like I couldn't handle it if anything happened to you and why take the risk when I could do something simple?"

"Oh."

"I was being chivalrous. I don't know, we'd had such a fun night and I was high on drugs and you and I was thinking how much better everything was with you in town."

"It was a good night. We'd visited your ethereal room a couple of times."

"The best parts of the night. And there were some damn good other parts. But that night I was wasted and mushy and there was no down side to casting the spell. You get a different T'vance going on a life and death mission. And you should know that."

"I do know that," she said, and she sounded sincere at least.

"I have to tell you something, though. You're amazing. You can handle yourself. When I heard about the rogue mages, I was shocked, but not surprised. And I was confident with you leading one of my squads."

"But?"

"I'm terrified. Aganond is so different."

"Don't be," she said. "This guy's head is so big, he can't even comprehend that something as miniscule as us can take him out. He's not looking for us and he won't see us coming. In my experience, the most powerful mages are the easiest to take down. The worst are the journeymen. They're powerful enough to be dangerous, but weak enough to be paranoid of everything."

"I hope you're right."

"I am right. And I need you to be confident. Because even though I believe everything I just told you, I'm still scared. If you repeat this I'll deny it, but I'm so glad you'll be coming with me."

"So we're settled on that point?"

"Like you said, you gave it a lot of thought."

"We're going to kick his ass."

"Damn straight."

After a while, planning became pointless. We'd mapped out what we could of Aganond's compound from the memories Karstia had shared with us. We'd marked likely guard locations, theoretical patrol routes we could never corroborate, four different paths to take to the thrown room, and a few alternate escape routes. We'd given names to the routes and to areas of the compound and memorized them, then went through hand signals just to be thorough. It was the best we could do with what we had. The rest we'd have to figure out when we got there.

Karstia contacted me by nightfall. "Dagar says we go in three days, second bell."

"Seems an odd time. What does he know?"

"He said it will be midnight there, and the moon full."

"That's more specific than he usually is with me. Wait, are they already back?"

"No. He thinks they have two more days on the road."

"Did you find Aja?"

"Yes. Thank Rubo. We're all at your headquarters. All is well. Rest."

Most people would agonize those three days of waiting. Not us. It turns out Fera rather adores Dúrakhaan. Sure there's a dark side where the wrong look can get you into a duel, but there's also a lot to do and see and buy. Dúranaki are opulent people, who despite a promise to swear off slaves in the future, still have plenty of them. We generally have a lot of down time and invest heavily in entertaining ourselves.

So we went into the "city", Fera's term, and had a blast. We ate at a different expensive restaurant for every meal, drank fine wine, sampled desserts laced with gort. Fera won fifteen crowns betting on spider fights, and used it to buy herself a beautiful silver necklace from an Arain silver shop. I bought her a new outfit made entirely of silk. It was dyed dark gray and green and showed a lot of skin. It reminded me of what she was wearing the first time we met. She wore it out of the shop. She looked amazing.

We went to a few art galleries, picked up some fried street cakes, and found a party with music and dancing. It was a Dekdarion event, but there didn't seem to be any tension and we enjoyed ourselves. On the way back home we got in a small fight with three younger Dúranaki with something to prove. Turns out they were only proving how easily they could fall down. It didn't last long. We left them bloodied but alive and hurried back to fuck each others' brains out.

The next day we were back at it, touring the parts of T'revor's estate that were off limits to most people in the morning, then venturing back into public space mid-day for lunch. We found new areas to explore after that, but mostly walked arm in arm and enjoyed each others' company.

We dined with the Arains. My uncle and his girlfriend Cyri hosted the event, which included many familiar faces. The last time I'd seen so many of us together, we'd been in the war room trying to prevent a civil war. It was nice to see them under better conditions, but without an agenda I soon felt lost in the current events I hadn't kept up on.

As we wound down the meal over wine and gort, my other uncle, T'kaal, pulled me aside. He was now the Arain representative to the council. T'kaal took over the council seat when T'revor became king. He had a unique bravado to him that never quite rubbed me the right way, but he seemed to have mellowed with his new responsibilities.

"I understand you're going after a spell caster of unprecedented skill," T'kaal said. I don't know what T'revor told him, but probably little more than that.

I was happy to leave him not knowing. "That is true."

"I understand you're going in with nothing and using only misfeel spells to conceal your identity. If you don't mind, I have a small bit of advice."

"Please give it," I said. Despite our lack of closeness, I did respect him. Being a poor spell caster, he'd spent most of his life having to worry about avoiding other people's spells.

"Whatever you do, keep your final goal as far from your mind as you can. Misfeel spells are amazing, and I would trust them to thwart any magic that is looking for you. But there are many spells that look only for intent. If he has such a spell, merely getting close to him with the wrong intent is enough to warn him."

"Sound advice. But how does one avoid thinking about what they're doing?"

He smiled slightly. "It is a mental challenge to be sure, but one I'm sure you are up to. I like to convince myself I have another purpose. I usually focus all my energies on simply finding them. No one casts a spell to warn them if someone is about the find them."

"And once you've found them?"

"Even then, I wait. Even as I draw my blades, I think of another reason to do it: cleaning my nails, cutting fruit, whatever. I just lie to myself. And if you do it well enough, they won't have a clue until you finally take aim. And by then, with any luck, it's too late for them to do anything but die."

"I've been given a lot of advice in my life, but rarely something so useful and timely. Thank you, uncle."

"I am glad I could help. Good luck, nephew. I hope to see you again soon."

After dinner, Fera and I retired to the family baths in the private wing. It was a beautiful place, and one Fera had never seen. The wall and floors were marble, colored with swirling shades of blue and green. In the center, set into the floor, were six deep, wide, circular baths. Each was large enough to hold six people and they were all filled with water that steamed into the air.

There was a wall of sculptured coral, which offered many hooks for towels and clothing, and benches for sitting that were made to look like gray stone, but had a sponginess to them that reminded me of the ground in the Ethereal plane. There was dim light, coming from seams of glass in the floor, running along the floor boards. It was exactly the opposite of the lighting everywhere else in the private wing. It also flickered as if there were candles beneath the glass, which made the walls seem to move like water.

More delightful than the room was watching Fera take it all in.

"He keeps them filled all the time?" Fera asked.

"They keep themselves filled all the time."

We disrobed and slid into the water. There were seats inside the tubs, and we found a comfortable spot to lean back, with her in my arms. The water had a light smell that I could only describe as refreshing. We looked up at the skylight, a huge panel of laen set in the ceiling. Once, it had probably stared into the sky, but it had long ago been buried. Had the light been better, we'd have seen dark brown earth. But as it was, we just saw a reflection of ourselves against the dark surface.

I liked that.

"Tomorrow's the big day. Scared?" I asked her.

"More nervous, I think," she said. "We're going to come out of this okay. I don't doubt that. But if we were to die tomorrow, at least we'll have ended with two amazing days together."

Of all her talents, it was her ability to leave me speechless that most amazed me.

It felt strange leaving Dúrakhaan without the Pendant, but otherwise I felt good. I felt rested. My body had fully recovered and my spirits were good. Fera, as far as I could, felt the same. We were both smiling and we waved to T'revor and Cyri, hand in hand. But our smiles got even broader when we arrived in the back courtyard of Black Boot headquarters and we heard all the sounds. They were back!

The fact that my men had returned wasn't a surprise. They were supposed to be back. But I don't think either of us was really thinking about that. Hearing them, we suddenly realized that we hadn't seen them since we were fighting a small war together and we were anxious to say hi.

We turned the corner into the main courtyard to see the real surprise. There was a breakfast banquet set in the main courtyard along side Karstia's circus troop wagon. My company was about, dressed in their black armor, freshly polished and talking with each other, or some of the other familiar faces. McQuenn was there, and Karstia of course, plus her circus troop including Katrina, Ren, Jilk, and Barou. Rubo was talking with Aja and Karutana. There were two elves I'd never seen before standing by Karstia towards the front of the wagon.

A cheer went up when they saw us, and we entered the group to greet everyone. Fera was more of a celebrity with the men than I was, and I found it amusing to see how uncomfortable it made her. Normally I was the one trying to avoid handshakes and shoulder pats. And it wasn't that she wasn't thrilled to see everyone, she was just very personal about her space.

I hooked her arm and helped lead her quickly through.

"They hear about the island already?" I asked her.

"No," she said. "This is just shared-battle camaraderie. I mean it when I say this, T'vance: don't ever tell them I had anything to do with it."

"Our secret. But I'm not taking the credit either. We'll just say it was our benefactor's idea."

We eventually made our way to Rubo, who smiled at our approach and bowed slightly. "Surprise!" he said.

"Your idea?" I asked.

"McQuenn's, actually. Not that he wants any credit."

"Seems to be going around," I said. "Who are the two new elves?"

"Friends of Karstia's," he said, grinning. "They're coming with us."

"Friends? What's so funny?"

"Checkered cloaks?" he said, as if that should mean something. When I didn't take the hint he sighed and glanced over at them. "The right one, look at his hip."

Trying to remain nonchalant, I glanced and saw a silver sextant strapped to his hip. "Navigators?"

He nodded. "You're going to be navigating Navigators. I never imagined that."

I chuckled. I hadn't either. "Why are they coming?"

"I guess some of them aren't as mercenary as they seem."

"Don't count on it," Fera said. "They're getting something out of this. Even if its just getting to see the ethereal plane and learn how their sextants work on other planets."

"If that's the price for their help, I'll pay it."

McQuenn clapped his hands loudly, quieting everyone quickly. Then cleared his throat before addressing the group. "Good morning everyone. This is a celebration of sorts, the return of our company from a very difficult mission. It's also a chance to offer well-wishes to those who are taking up the second leg of this mission. But before we do that, I'd like to share a moment of silence to honor those of us who gave their lives. Brother Dagar, would you preface that with a prayer?"

We all stood and closed our eyes, while Dagar recited a short prayer.

Darkness has come, Lord above us in all,

Brothers have fallen, with true hearts they call.

Show them the way, by fullest moon beam,

To die is to sleep, to sleep is to dream.

I'm not a big fan of moments of silence. I'll remember the dead when and how I want to, damn it. I guess it's a cultural thing. In Dúrakhaan, if a room full of people closed their eyes probably one of them would end up dead. So I lowered my head, out of respect for those around me who might enjoy forced remembrance, but kept my eyes open.

I glanced at Fera. Her eyes were open, too. That's my girl.

It was over quickly and then we were eating. While pleasant, that too was soon over. McQuenn called the unit to attention, had them salute us, and dismissed them. The rest of us split up to prepare.

For Fera and I, it was a strange juxtaposition as I was busy finding things to take off me while she was finding things to put on her. I tried not to get too sentimental, but everything I took off had a story.

I took off my armor, remembering how I'd found it polished and waiting for me the day I graduated from my special ops training. I took off the necklace of the Jarhaad, which I'd bought partly on credit from a kind alchemist in Cynar with the money I'd gotten from selling our first rings from Arnak that had gotten us in so much trouble in the Cynar underground called "The Slide". I took off my ring of firebolts, grateful I had accepted it, with its finite powers, in lieu of the glove that threw limitless but weak energy bolts. I took off my spell storing ring, which we'd recovered from the bodies of Dansart's minions. I took off the Arinyark pouch, a gift from Derrik, noting the absence of my Kriegora chain that used to always be inside. My boots and kynacs came off with the armor, but had to stay off nevertheless because they all bore enchantments. Finally, I took out my earrings. Only one of them was magical, but I didn't see any Farok's with pierced ears so it seemed safer to bring none.

There were other things to leave as well: items I'd cast warded spells on, my divining bag which was loaded with magical trinkets. Even my purse was magically warded to scream if stolen and magically reinforced to prevent being cut. I stacked everything neatly into a chest inside my room in the basement, then used an extended duration magical lock spell to seal it.

I looked up to find Fera watching me.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing," she replied. "I was just curious how naked you were going to get."

"About this naked."

"Too bad," she said grinning. "Mind giving me a hand? I have a case hidden away."

"Hidden in here?"

"Yes. Help me get the bottom dresser drawer out."

I pulled the bottom drawer out until the entire thing came free of the dresser. It was filled with clothes I never wore. I set it on the floor, but Fera just shoved it out of the way and reached inside the empty space and pulled out two small wooden cases. One was very small, about a foot on a side and only two inches thick. The second twice as wide and three times as thick. Both were made from red oak polished to a high luster and sported small locks made of a dull gray metal.

"I had no idea these were here."

"I know. Sorry about that. I hadn't gotten around to telling you about the mage hunting work, and letting you know I had these was sort of a dead give away."

"What's inside?"

"Tricks of the trade," she said coyly. She then took two earrings out, one from each ear. They were silver post earrings with an abstract curved charm. I'd nibbled on them many times and thought nothing of them. She took them and pressed the two curved parts together, then used the resulting set as a key to unlock both cases.

The first case was filled with kalta darts, arranged into three sets of a dozen each. Beside them were two small vials of a thick, bright red liquid. It was poison, I assumed, but it didn't hold my interest as the darts did. Unlike most kalta darts, these were made of a dull gray metal with streaks of silver at the tip. I picked one up, careful of the razor sharp point. The second I touched it, I knew what it was. She'd had darts crafted out of Kriegora.

"Kriegora darts," she explained. "The tip is reinforced with white alloy, though. Kriegora is too brittle to be able to sharpen it effectively."

"I'm seriously impressed. I've never heard of anyone doing this before."

"It took a few tries to get them right. And to be honest, I haven't even used any of this batch on a person. I found a design flaw last time out and had to rework them."

"What kind of design flaw?"

"The tip. I learned quickly that Kriegora couldn't be made sharp enough to punch through hide, so I reworked them to include a solid alloy tip. But last time I used those, I found they didn't punch through shield spells like I expected."

"Because the alloy hit first and they just bounced off?"

"Yes. Seems obvious in hind sight. This new design is better. There's enough Kriegora at the tip to dispel shield and deflection spells right away. They don't even slow them down."

"Nice. What's the poison?"

"It's called Umakilis. It's made from frogs, kills in seconds."

"Damn. What does this stuff cost?"

"That case and it's contents are worth about two thousand gold crowns."

I let my open mouth speak for me.

She smiled, pleased I was so impressed. Then she opened the second case, and I moved to get a good look inside that one. Inside was a metal mesh skull cap, a belt, a choker and a set of fine metal chains. The whole set was made from Kriegora and looked most closely like a bondage harness. Despite my attempts to remain serious, I couldn't help picturing her wearing it naked.

"This is to wear?"

"Yes. I know what it looks like, but don't get any ideas."

"Me?" I asked innocently.

She gave me a knowing look. "It was originally for imprisoning powerful magicians, but it works quite well to protect against foreign spells as well. I've reworked all the locks to use buckles instead. And aside from the cap, it's easy to hide underneath clothing."

"I see. So you get naked to put it on?"

She chuckled. "I'm glad even as we prepare to meet the biggest adversary of either of our lives you can still find time to put your mind in the gutter."

"I thought you liked it there?"

"You have a point. But no, sadly you won't get to see that. The metal chafes my skin, so I wear it over my underclothes."

"You wear underclothes?" I asked, grinning.

"Sometimes."

"Well I approve. Chafing is something I simply cannot abide. Isn't this a little bit overkill though?"

"Yes and no. Sure, the anti-magic sphere is better. But I have to turn it on to use it, the effect does not last forever, and it's a beacon for any mage in range. The chains work all the time and don't effect anything outside my body."

"You've really thought this all through."

"I really have. Now do you think you can help me get it on without getting too fresh?"

"Probably not."

"Good."

Fifteen minutes before second bell we made our way out to the courtyard. Fera and I were dressed alike, both in white robes taken from the bodies of the two Faroks who hadn't been engulfed in flames. The blood had been magically removed and the holes mended, leaving them as good as new.

Beneath the robes I had only light clothing and two long knives, one strapped to each thigh. I tried not to think about how unprotected I was. Fera's slender frame was bulked out with a suit of soft leathers, which she'd slipped on over the Kriegora harness, and I knew she kept a few of her knives, one long enough to fence with, in addition to both of her kaltas.

We walked out confidently, meeting the rest of our group who was already in the yard waiting for us. They didn't look much different than when we left them at breakfast. Only Dagar carried a pack, the rest of them only had their clothing or armor, weapons, and perhaps pouches on their belt for light supplies.

"Is everyone set?" I asked.

"The bells first," Dagar said. "It's important."

"Of course. I'll open the gate, though, so we can be ready."

He nodded his approval and I cast the spell to create the gateway to the Ethereal Plane. The door flashed briefly as the spell finished, then faded to invisibility. I walked over and marked the entrance in the dirt with my foot, then turned back to the Navigators.

"This is the first time you'll have been on the ethereal plane right?"

They looked at each other, then one of them said, "Yes. But Karstia has explained the rules: don't get close to doors, don't get distracted, don't wander off."

"That's the short version. But you're bright enough not to need the long one. One other point. Don't try any dooring, teleporting, jumping, or whatever name you use to describe your relocation magic. I don't really know what that might do, and I don't want to find out today."

"In this instance, you're the Navigator," the one said simply. "We will follow your lead and your instructions."

I wanted to find some sarcasm, but couldn't. In fact, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed with what appeared to be a healthy dose of respect from the entire group. How about that.

I bowed slightly to the Navigator and turned to look at the clock tower in the distance. Second bell was only a few short moments away. I found Fera's hand, took a deep breath, and waited.

BONG. BONG.
CHAPTER 17

* * *

Doogan

* * *

Molly was already in medical when I arrived. I could hear her whimpering in the hall before I'd even entered. I opened the hatch and pulled myself through. She had her back to me but turned her head slightly to see me as I entered. She was covered in sweat, and her jaw and hands with trembling.

"What happened?" I asked her, floating closer.

"I... can't," she managed to say, "the pain."

"It's okay," I said, moving around to her front. That's when I saw the wound. The left side of her face was burned, from an inch into her hairline, down to her cheek, and around the side of her head. Burned isn't even the right word. It was melted. The skin was black and oozing blood, her eye was either swollen shut or lost, and I wasn't sure any part of her outer ear was left.

I gasped and I'm sure my face betrayed all the horror I was seeing. She shouldn't have been conscious with a wound like that. I wasn't even sure how she was still alive.

"That... bad?" she murmured. Some of the sweat was actually tears flowing from her right eye, which was untouched.

"Don't worry about it," I said, doing nothing but worrying about it myself. "I'm here. I'll take care of you."

She grabbed my hand and held it tight for a moment, then her grip went soft and her eye closed.

"She needs treatment immediately."

"I don't know what I'm doing," I admitted. The though of touching the wound was almost more than I could bear. It made me sick even looking at it.

"I know what to do, lover. Relax."

I sat for a while watching Molly sleep. Half of her head was wrapped in gauze over the hardened mask from the medicinal paste I'd applied directly to the wound. Aside from that, she looked peaceful. She was tucked snugly in a sleep-sack and her breathing was slow and deep.

Inside the sack, she was hooked up to tubes giving her liquids and drugs and filtering her blood. But those were quiet, and I couldn't even hear them over her breathing. So I could pretend she was fine.

I don't know why I cared so much. I didn't know what to think. The world was upside down, but when she was there I didn't feel alone in it. And I didn't feel in charge of it. And she made me think we could actually do something against the vast forces at play. If she had died, would I still be going to Glemux? Other than to pick up my ship and get as far away as possible?

I stared at her and wondered about the truth. There was no evidence, there were just stories. They were all good stories and I wanted to believe them. Maybe because I wanted to believe her? But they could easily be lies. Maybe not easily. But she was Molly Kilk, she made everything look easy.

I tried to think her a liar, but then I imagined her in the hallway. The blast of plasma splashed off the hull and doused her face, burning half of it, melting her ear and blinding one eye. And after that, she pulled an inflatable helmet over her head and went into space to see if Ashard and Busche were still alive so we didn't accidentally kill them.

That wasn't a lie. That was corroborated by their bodies, by the airlock logs, by her bloody helmet. That was Molly.

"She knew if she told you she was hurt and couldn't get to the bridge, you'd evacuate the air not knowing if you were killing innocents or not," Leona said.

"How do you know that?'

"I don't. It's just how I think. I also know how badly you would take it if you were responsible for their deaths. I'd spare you that if I could. I think she did, too."

"Maybe she didn't want their deaths on her hands?"

"Perhaps," she admitted. "Either way, she has some character."

"She does."

"You do, too. You aren't running off."

"But I want to. Doesn't that mean anything?"

"It means you're human."

"The jury is still out on that one."

"Not as far as I'm concerned. Or Molly. Let her rest, Doogan. I'm monitoring her. Give Overby a hand. I'm sure he needs one."

Leona was right there. The mutineers had done a number on my ship. There was more to do than we had time and hands for. I took a final look at Molly and headed out of medical.

There was a lot of what I like to call plumbing work. Many of the conduits running water, power and gas from their core systems to the rest of the ship had been damaged. This left sections without power, sections that were unable to pressurize themselves, and plenty of mess.

Then there were the more serious problems. A make-shift bomb had reeked havoc on the sensor system we had recently rebuilt, and there were some very tiny cracks in the hull that were slowly venting gas into space.

Overby was the only one remotely skilled enough to handle the sensor repairs, if they were even possible. And the hull was high enough priority that I had Channel immediately begin repairs on that. The plumbing was less critical, so I put it off until I'd completed an even less pleasant task: dealing with Lieutenant Drew and all the dead bodies.

It turned out the Albatross did in fact have a brig. I found it and then hauled Drew's still tied up body into a cell. I gagged him first. The last thing I wanted to hear was anything from him. But from his eyes and mumbles, I gathered he was just as crazy as he was last time I talked with him.

I couldn't really leave him tied up, so I untied him but left the gag in place for him to take out on his own. He'd just gotten it out and started screaming at me when I closed the hatch to his cell and locked it.

Then I converted some unused crew quarters into a make-shift morgue and began hauling the bodies in. It was awful, but it was a relief to have it done. I no longer had to traverse the halls avoiding the disturbing sites of the floating dead. I sealed the morgue hatch and had Leona evacuate the air to keep them "fresh". Ugh.

I rewarded myself with a nap followed by hours and hours of plumbing work. I repeated that for two days. We all met for meals, all three of us, to check in and be social. They don't have Leona's to keep them company and space is lonely.

The sensors were going slowly, but Overby was optimistic. Ensign Channel had finished sealing the hull and was helping him, or at least distracting him with a lot of questions.

"We need sensors coming out of transform," I told him.

"That's four days, we'll make it," Overby said.

"With time to spare?"

"I can't promise time to spare," he said smiling weakly. He looked exhausted.

"Molly is awake, love. Oh. She's getting up."

"Is that okay?"

"Yes. The blood filter is already out. She's coming to you."

"Is everything alright, sir?" Channel asked.

"Yes. Make room at the table."

The hatch opened. Molly floated outside but didn't enter. Her head was still bandaged, the gauze holding the thick mask tightly to her face. One hand gently cupped her bandages, the other held onto the rail outside.

"It sounded good on the way here, but I decided I'm not ready for gravity," she said.

"We don't need gravity. Just give us a second to clean up."

We straightened up, then disengaged the artificial gravity in mess and Molly floated in.

"How long were you going to let me sleep?" she asked.

"As long as you wanted."

"Are communications online?" she asked.

"No sensors. Four more days."

She frowned and then winced.

"Do you need communications?" Channel asked.

"I need to send a message."

"Because I saw a portable transceiver box in engineering," Channel said. "We could hook it up to the ship's arrays, which are all intact. Might take an hour or two."

"Captain?" Molly said, looking to me for the order.

"Do it," I told him.

"Aye, sir," Channel said, and left the room.

After the hatch was shut, Overby turned to Molly. "Thank you. I know you didn't do it for me, but that man was driving me insane."

Molly smiled and then winced.

Overby looked at me, then Molly, then looked uncomfortable. "I should get back to work myself. See if I can't deliver on that time-to-spare part. Sirs."

He turned and left mess.

"Is this related to getting our Enforcers?"

"It is," she said. She almost smiled again, but sighed instead.

"Seriously Molly, how are you?"

"Holding it together, wouldn't you say?"

"You've impressed me," I agreed. "Both with your courage and pain tolerance."

"The implants help, at least with the latter."

"So modest," I said, grinning. "Look, you won't take it wrong if I hug you, will you?"

"Wrong how? Like a sign that you're into me?"

I chuckled. "Not quite. Wrong like a sign of weakness. Like I think you need a hug."

"Oh. Well I don't."

"Certainly not."

"I might like one, though."

I smiled and wrapped my arms about her, careful to avoid her head. She trembled slightly in my embrace, but I pretended not to notice.

"It's funny to think a couple of days ago we were three quarters of the way to sex and now we're negotiating for hugs."

She giggled and then winced.

"Don't make me laugh."

I finished the rest of the plumbing repairs the following day, then spent that night and the next two days with Molly. We didn't get any closer to sex than we had that drunken day, but we cuddled and talked and clicked. We talked about the present, about plans and options for Aganond and Mylo and Gregor. We talked about the past, about battlemoons and space-folding and it's evolution into space-time-transforms.

We talked about her past and mine, by mine I mean my own experiences not Oliver's. We talked about the future in abstract terms, about life after being a spy or life after whatever I'm doing. We talked about philosophy, the Empire, order and chaos, the nature of man, the nature of Ilsians, the nature of Althans, the nature of genders, and love and sex.

Each day she seemed stronger and in less pain. By the third day she was laughing without any sign of discomfort. By evening, we decided it was time to remove the mask.

She did it all herself, unraveling the bandages slowly. She paused when they were gone and only the mask remained.

"I'm scared," she said.

"If you are, this is a silly time to start," I told her.

"I can still see your face after you first saw me wounded. It's not so different from the look Oliver had when he saw me all those years ago. I know whatever it is can be fixed. They fixed me before. I just, I don't want to look like a monster. Not with you. Not now."

"You won't. But if you want to look first, I understand."

She nodded and I turned away. I heard a sucking sound as she pried the mask away from her face, then a small gasp. It was killing me not to look, but I kept my eyes fixed on the hatch. Finally she touched my arm and I turned to face her.

The skin under the mask was bright pink, but smooth and flawless. Her eye was still puffy and swollen, her ear was still missing, the hair that had burned off had barely begun to regrow, and her cheek bone was slightly sunken, just enough that I could notice it. Still, for what she had been through she looked amazing.

I smiled and she smiled back, then I took her in my arms again.

She couldn't see out of the eye and there was nothing we could do about that in space, so she wore a patch over it. With the high swath of missing hair on one side and black suit she looked like some kind of punk space pirate.

"It's a good thing her hair is missing on that side. Without the ear, she'd have nothing to tuck it behind."

I gave Leona a hard look.

"Too soon?"

"I thought she was liking me these days," Molly said.

"She likes what I like. She's just making bad jokes."

"Oh. Yeah, I do that."

"Overby says sensors online. Glemux is in six hours and he's hyper-sleeping it. He authorized Channel to run the ship from the bridge."

I told Molly. "Normally I wouldn't put that guy in charge of anything. But he is a step up from Drew."

"You want to hypersleep too?"

Six hours in hypersleep feels like twelve, but it took some time to come out of, which made it bad in case of emergencies. I shook my head. "Regular sleep, please."

"Captain's quarters?" she asked coyly. "We'll have to go by Channel. He'll know we're sleeping together."

"Oh no! He might even think we're having sex!"

She laughed. "We aren't having sex though, right?"

"Of course not," I said. "Isn't it your night to turn me down?"

"Of course it is. That's why I wanted to be clear."

We floated together up to the bridge, passing Channel who gave us a dorky grin as we went into my quarters. My quarters were rather spacious, considering. Chaos Wings were meant to house the crew even in gravity, so they have some room to move around. Without gravity, all that airspace becomes usable.

"Sleeping naked doesn't count as sex, right?" Molly asked, as she tugged her e-suit top off one shoulder.

"No. But I think it would count as torture."

"Point taken."

"But I can be naked, right?" Leona asked. I looked up to see she already was.

"You two are clearly more than I can handle," I said, taking a good look then turning away.

The three of us curled up together, well two if you looked at it from Molly's eyes. But to me, I was in the center with Molly on one side of me and Leona on the other. I spooned Molly and Leona spooned me, stroking my hair gently until I drifted off to sleep.

"Exiting transform in ten... nine... eight..." Ensign Channel counted down from his position at the helm. Overby was manning his post in engineering, but his face was projected onto the bottom corner of the main screen so we could talk easily if needed. His eyes were elsewhere, monitoring instrument panels and whatever else engineers did when things weren't broken.

Molly was at tactical and shot me a reassuring smile as the count wound down. Leona was in an adjacent bridge seat, dressed in her cute but serious bridge crew costume and pretending to use the controls with her hands.

"... one. Real space!" Channel shouted.

The main screen suddenly came alive with stars and a huge blue and white planet looming before us. Past that, a milky white orb hung in the sky. It was Orhan, Kulthea's largest moon. A third of it was dark from the planet's shadow, but the rest beamed us with white light.

"Sir, an Imperial Enforcer Class II just came out of hibernation," Molly said, tapping furiously at her panel.

"I've seen that ship enough times I feel like we should be on a first name basis."

"No Imperial transponder this time," Leona reminded me.

"Right. Shields up! Molly, can you take control of that thing?"

"Working on it," she said.

The enforcer hailed us, "Unknown ship, designated Albatross, you are in violation of Imperial Isolation Code 5123. Lower--" It cut out for a moment, then continued. "Greetings, Albatross. Emergency slave protocol activated."

"Nicely done. Anything else on sensors I should know about?"

"No, sir. It's just us."

The enforcer continued moving towards us, but glowed green on the tactical view, denoting an ally.

"Channel, put us in orbit around Glemux."

"Aye, sir," he said. "Are we not landing, sir?"

"I have a smaller ship down there already, I'm going to bring it up and use it as a landing craft. Leona?"

"Coercion is online. External cameras show calm. There isn't a guy with a sword trying to break into the hatch or anything. Powering up now."

"Molly, my other enforcers?"

"About three days," she replied. "Sixty-eight hours, and change."

"Okay. Overby, can you rig a jammer so I can easily hook it up inside the Coercion for testing?"

"Sure that's easy."

"Great. After that, start working to retrofit the one enforcer. Channel, help him. Quietly."

Channel nodded, and left his post, floating out from the bridge towards engineering.

"What now?" Molly asked. "We go down?"

"Yes. Find T'vance. I hope he made it back here safely. Get someone to help test our theory on the Jammers blocking magic, learn anything new they might have learned from Aganond, and re-plan from there. If we don't know any better in three days, we'll retrofit our enforcer fleet and go back to Suboe Station."

"Sounds good to me."

"I'll need your help with Drew. I want him to come down with us. I'm hoping someone down there can fix him."

The Coercion was much smaller than the Albatross, but so much more luxurious that it was a delight to be back on board. I hadn't spent enough time in her to really acclimate to her comforts, but comparing them to the Albatross made them stand out dramatically. It may have been compact, but it was very well designed and the attention to detail made every console, port hole, and chair a delight.

The landing had gone smoothly, and the Coercion rested on the same island I had left her on before. But unlike before, I now had two more people to deal with. One of them, Drew, was bound and gagged and in no condition to swim across. I considered for a moment that being in a magical environment might have done something to his warped disposition, but one look in his eyes told me he was still crazy as a loon.

"Leave him," Molly said. "We'll figure it out later. Just put him in hypersleep."

We put him in a pod and knocked him out, then gathered up our things and made our way out the hatch.

"Lock it up," I told Leona.

"Yes, sir! I activated the perimeter defenses and set up the external cameras to stream images to me."

"Best first-mate ever," I told her.

She blushed and brushed a lock of hair away from her eyes. "Your new girlfriend seems to be enjoying the view."

I glanced at Molly who had walked to the rocky edge of the island and was staring across the water towards the mainland. She wasn't my girlfriend, sex is a prerequisite for that in my mind, but I didn't argue the point. I didn't even mind it. I walked over and took her hand gently.

It was morning and the sun was still low in the east, casting shadows of the land over the water. Ships were coming in and going out of the bay and sea birds played around the coastline.

"I can't tell you the last time I was on a world this pretty," she said. "Well, actually I can, but only because I can remember everything. It was six years ago on a world called Julo and it had an orange tint to the sky that made every day look like a sunset."

"Sounds nice."

"It was, but I didn't get to share it with anyone. And this place, well it looks a lot like home really, except cleaner and more natural. And I know there's some crazy stuff out there, so I'm excited."

"It is beautiful, but also dangerous. I have some cloaks we can slip into once we get to the other side. We don't want to attract attention."

"I got it. This will be the eighth sortie into pre-space age worlds. I know the drill."

"Of course, dear," I said, nudging her.

"I'm not going to lie. I like the sound of that," she said, squeezing my hand. "Now, how about we race to shore. I'll give you a ten second head start."

"I don't think—"

"Ten... nine..."

Maybe she was right. I dove into the water and started swimming. I lost sight of her quickly, it's hard to keep track of a single person swimming in the ocean and looking around for her was only going to make me lose. So I focused on pacing myself and keeping a straight line towards the closest point on the shore.

It was a long swim, maybe fifteen minutes. I was still about a hundred feet out when I caught site of Molly already on the shore. I finished the trip and staggered exhausted out from the water. By then, Molly was lying casually on the sand with her hands behind her head.

"Maybe a full minute next time?" she suggested.

I kicked sand at her.

I opened the pack and pulled out the two brown cloaks I'd packed. Mine fit fine, but Molly's was a foot or so too long and drug on the ground behind her.

We headed away from the beach and caught the road into Lethys. Leona reminded me we could cast spells to turn invisible if we wanted to, but I didn't see the need to be that sneaky. A horse and wagon came up the road from behind us and I managed to get us a ride the rest of the way into the city.

He let us off at Second Trunk and we followed the tree-named roads to T'vance's compound in the city. I watched Molly as she took in the city. She was no longer the wide eyed girl on the beach. Instead, she looked as if everything she was seeing was familiar. But she was alert and her eyes were constantly moving.

"Will the people be suspicious to hear us speaking?" she asked, after we'd passed into a section of road without people on it.

"I doubt it."

"Okay. This place is beautiful. If only we didn't have things to do."

We knocked at the front gate and were eventually let in by a middle aged portly woman I'd never met. The company soldiers were out in the yard. Some I recognized, some I didn't. Malcolm McQuenn noted our arrival and walked over, two soldiers flanking him on each side. His hand dropped to the hilt of his sword as he stopped before us.

"I do believe you're supposed to be dead," he said, eying me with some suspicion.

"No, no. The term is left for dead," I said. "But that means you've seen T'vance. Is he here? I need to talk to him or Rubo or Karstia."

He held his hand back and the four soldiers turned and went back to the rest of the group.

"New recruits," he said. "T'vance isn't here, Doogan. None of them are here."

"Where are they?"

"We should go inside. A lot has happened."

McQuenn led us out of the courtyard into the main building, then down the hall and through a door into his office. We sat across from his desk as he got settled behind it. He was an old man, and though he walked without effort, there was a sense of relief that overcame him once he was sitting.

"Who is your friend, by the way?" he asked, giving Molly a look.

"This is Molly Kilk, a friend of mine. She's from off-world also and doesn't understand a word we're saying."

"Actually, I understand everything you're saying," she told me. "Just nothing he says."

"Yes, let me be clear. It's only you she can't understand. Something about the magic in this pendant Karstia gave me. But if you'll go a bit slowly, I'll translate as we go."

McQuenn nodded and started to brief us. He told us the story of Dagar's vision, of the deployment and battle with the Troqs, and of T'vance's return and subsequent departure. What he couldn't tell us were details. He just didn't have them.

"So you don't know why they went back to Farokis?" I asked.

"I know why," McQuenn said. "They went because they were convinced this Aganond character would continue to be a problem for us. I just don't know what they're planning to do."

"Does he have any guesses?" Molly asked. "He seems to know these people well." I asked.

"I know T'vance and Fera were doing one thing, the rest of them something else. They had Navigators with them, so I assume they were planning on traveling once they arrived. And knowing T'vance, a good guess is that they were planning on killing someone. I assume they were vague on details for a reason, though."

I relayed the information to Molly, then asked him, "Is there anything else you can think of?"

McQuenn considered for a moment then shook his head. "They really didn't confide in me," he said. "But you might ask some of the circus troupe. Katrina and Jilk spent a lot of time around them last I saw them."

"Are they still in town?"

"Yes. They're running daily shows out of Dulith Park, near the perg orchards. Do you know where that is?"

"I barely know where here is," I said.

"I'll have some of the new recruits lead you there," McQuenn said. "It will be good experience for them."

McQuenn arranged an escort of eight armed soldiers. They were all dressed in company attire, black leather with hand crossbows and short, broad swords at their hips. One walked far ahead, one far behind, and the other six kept close with us, two in front, two in back and one on each side.

Together, we wound through the curving streets until we passed a large field full of fruit trees. At the far side, where the trees thinned out, was a large park with fewer trees and rolling mounds of grass. There were paths and benches, a small lake, children playing, and a circus wagon closed up tight.

"He said Katrina right? As in the elven girl you had sex with?" Molly asked.

"That's the one," I said. "And you remembering that doesn't make this awkward at all."

"Hey, I'm not jealous. I'm just curious what other sorts of women you find attractive."

We crossed the grass to the wagon. Two of the circus troupe's young children were out playing tag around the wagon. I remembered them from my first trip to Kulthea: Aldo and Kitra. They were brother and sister, maybe nine or ten years old.

Kitra caught sight of me as we approached and squealed in surprise. "Doogan!" She ran up and hugged my legs, then her brother snuck up and tagged her.

"You're it!" he shouted, and ran off.

"No fair!" she yelled, and chased after him.

I heard the top hatch on the wagon open and a pudgy face poked over the top, looking down at us.

"'elo friend," he said. He climbed up on top then stomped twice on the ceiling and stepped to the edge holding a stiletto visibly in his hand.

"Hi Jilk. I just came from talking with McQuenn. I was hoping we could talk to you and Katrina. Also, that you wouldn't stab us."

He chuckled and tumbled off the top, doing a single rotation in the air and landing flawlessly. The wagon door opened and a huge man with red hair and beard came hastily out. He was Baru, the strongman of the troupe. He had what looked like a mining hammer in one hand.

"I'm feeling a little threatened here," Molly said. Her hand was inside her cloak, and I suspected she already had her blaster out and ready.

"Easy friends," I said, holding up my hands.

"Come back under the thrall of Lord Aganond?" Jilk asked. I couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

"No. If anything I'm under her thrall," I said, gesturing to Molly. "But she's trying to destroy Aganond so I don't think you have anything to worry about there."

"I see," he said, pressing his lips together tightly in thought. He took a step closer, casually. "So no charms? Quests? Geas? Master? No spells of any sort? No mental reprogramming?"

"None."

"Okay then," he said, a huge smile on his face. He slipped the stiletto back where it came from, but he did it so quickly I couldn't tell you where that was. He stepped up and patted me on the shoulder. "Can never be too careful," he said. "Karstia said last she saw you, you were unconscious from an explosion. Dying to hear how you escaped. Who's the lady? Quite a looker! Shame about the eye. I know a great healer though, could fix that up in minutes. Oh gods, can she understand me?"

"No," I told him. "Thankfully, no."

"Good. But a shame, too. Baru! Stop standing around and come say hi!"

And so we were welcomed. They took us inside and into Karstia's room, which was the only place with room for four with the wagon still loaded. Baru excused himself, because he actually counts as two people and Katrina came in and joined us.

She stood for a moment in the doorway, making some kind of a dramatic entrance. Her auburn hair was in long braids and held back with a single band. She wore a tight bodice and short skirt that accentuated her legs, which weren't otherwise terribly long. The freckles on her face seemed darker than usual, as did her lips which were curved in a cute little smile.

Molly looked her over and whispered, "Damn, you do have good taste."

Katrina walked directly to Molly and bowed slightly. She offered a hand and Molly took it.

"Welcome," she said.

"I understood that!" Molly said.

"Of course you did," she said, sitting down quickly. "I'm speaking out loud, but also to you in your mind. Unfortunately, it only works for me. You and Jilk won't be able to understand each other. But that's okay. Most of what he says is filler anyway."

"It's true," Jilk remarked, but I think he kicked her under the table.

"So what's up?" she asked.

We explained the situation from our perspective, going over what we'd learned from McQuenn and mentioning how he'd referred us to them.

"So can you think of anything he missed? Or anything Karstia said that might help?"

Katrina looked to Jilk for a long moment, then turned back to us. "We don't know their plan," she said. "Karstia often leaves us in the dark, and she does it for good reasons. But I can tell you a few things you might not know. Were you aware there are other planets that have magic?"

"Yes. There are twenty-two of them."

"I didn't know the number. Did you know that Aganond is aware of them? He refers to them as Life Worlds. Karstia believes Aganond is trying to bring Unlife to all of them. Our world is of less interest to him because Unlife is already here."

"This Unlife concept is fairly new to me," Molly said. "I can guess from the name, but what is it exactly?"

"Depends on who you ask," Katrina explained. "It is a dark reflection of the Essaence, or a collection of dark spirits, or a single minded entity. It can manifest as terrible creatures of pure energy, but more often it works through men; seducing them with power and warping them until they do its will as if it were their own."

"And what is its will? What does it want?"

"To destroy life. To destroy everything. It feeds off destruction and chaos and pain and fear and despair. I don't actually like to talk about it much, it's very depressing."

"So the implication of it taking hold on all the Life Worlds is bad," Molly said.

"That much, we all agree on. Karstia thinks, intuits, whatever she does. She just knows things. And she knows that unification means bad things for everyone, even those who already struggle against the Unlife."

"There is a lot of Imperial documentation on these planets. They didn't go straight to full quarantine. Even though it was classified, inside those trust circles there was much debate. Two men, a scientist and a priest, wrote a theoretical paper called Life Worlds."

"What's the theory?"

"That all life comes from the Life Worlds. The strange energies, what they call Essaence but we'll call magic, is necessary to form life out of nothing, drawing on the failures of science to create sustainable ecosystems starting with inorganics.

"They explain planets that evolved life without magic by proposing a twenty-third planet. One that was destroyed, sending fragments of itself into the universe to seed life on other worlds. They even have some models that try to locate it, based on the relative timing of evolution of life on planets across the galaxy."

"Interesting theory. Does that help us?"

"Probably not. I just have all these records and mostly they haven't been very useful."

"Well I don't want to discourage you. Keep it coming." I turned back to find the group patiently waiting for me. I explained her theory to the others.

"I don't see how that helps either," Molly said. "Even if it were true, life has managed to carry on in the absence of magic for millions of years."

Katrina said, "Gods, you space people have no souls."

"What? Do you think this means something?"

"If that's true, it means everything!" she exclaimed. "Aganond is going after the source of all creation!"

"You may have found the scariest way to explain it," Molly admitted. "But it doesn't change the fact that it doesn't help us."

"All information is helpful," I said. "This notion better defines the risk if he succeeds."

"Maybe he's already succeeded," Molly said. "We don't even know. If we operate on the theory that he couldn't find the other planets until he stole the data from Suboe station, that was still half a year ago. Karstia's account was from fifteen days ago. He hadn't done anything then, but he could have by now."

"I think Leona at least distracted him. Maybe we've thrown him off his plan or into a different one?"

"Maybe. Still, it at least was his plan, and he had half a year. What's he been waiting for?"

"You can wonder on that forever," Katrina said. "It could be that he lacks something he needs, or that constructing the thing to infect the other planets is complex. He could have spent months pondering what even to do, some people are like that," she said, pointing to indicate herself. "Or he could be waiting for something important, the alignment of moons, his birthday, whatever."

"You're right there, the possibilities are endless," Molly said, sighing.

"I find, when faced with endless possibilities, consulting the cards helps me. Would you like to try?"

"I don't know," she said.

"It can't hurt," I said.

Jilk rose and bowed to us. "Readings should be private," he said, and slipped out of the room.

"I'm going to let you in on a little secret," she said. "I'm better than Karstia at this."

"Really? She's supposed to be amazing."

"Oh she is. Taught me everything she knows. But here's the difference between she and I. She cheats. See, Karstia can read your mind. Reading surface thoughts is second nature. So her readings aren't really pure you know? Because she pre-interprets them for you, at least to some degree, focusing on the parts she knows you're interested in and what not. I don't filter or adapt."

"Which makes yours better?"

"Clearly."

"Should I not mention this to Karstia?"

She gave me a patronizing smile. "I do prefer a proper environment, though."

She swept her hand and the wooden walls of the room vanished, the wagon vanished, even the city vanished until there was nothing left but a lush field of grass with clusters of tall trees with long leafy branches that seemed to explode from the trunk like green confetti. Strangely enough, our table and chairs and the cards were in this grassy field and we'd not moved.

Katrina then began whispering, "Come little spirits, come to us. Come and hear our questions. Come little spirits, come to us. Come and show us the way."

As she whispered, squirrels, or something that resembled them, poked their heads out from around the trees and up from their hiding places in the tall grasses. They bounded down the trunks and through the grass, moving towards us with soft chittering sounds. Birds came from the sky, a flock of maybe two dozen small multicolored birds with long thin beaks. They settled on two of the nearby trees and sang merrily.

The squirrels gathered around us in a circle like little children watching a play in the round. They settled on their haunches and looked up expectantly. The birds grew quiet and their beaks all pointed our direction.

Molly and I looked around, amazed, impressed. Were they all illusions? Did we go somewhere? It all felt so real, and yet unreal.

With the stage set, we turned to Katrina. She opened a drawer in the table and produced a deck of cards. They were old and worn, having been used many times. I wondered why they didn't have magical cards that remained in perfect shape, but maybe the magic would interfere with the reading or something.

She shuffled the cards, then handed them to me. "Shuffle the cards, and while you are doing that consider the problem in your head." I did, then Molly followed and we handed the cards back across. I looked to Molly, expecting a skeptical look, but finding a hopeful one.

"I'm going to lay out nine cards, five at the top, one in the center, and three at the bottom. The five cards represent your opposition, typically forces working against you. The three cards represent you and the things that aid you. And center card is the union, the focal point of your interaction. I will interpret the symbols on the cards, as well as the orientation and order."

She played out the nine cards in front of her. The center card first, followed by the five top cards, then the bottom three. The cards had black painted symbols on them. They were simple enough that they might have been characters in a written language, but seemed more like abstract representations of the card's name, which she read as she played them.

"Your focus card is the Crown inverted. The crown represents leadership or nobility. Opposing you we have Breakthrough inverted, Gate, Erosion, Goblin inverted, and Harvest inverted. Aligned with you we have Betrayer, Strength inverted, and Destiny."

She took the rest of the cards and pushed them off to one side, then studied those she'd just played. She stared at them intently, touching each one, tracing the glyph with her finger. She turned the inverted cards when she reached them, tracing the outline in the proper orientation, then turning the card back the way it was. Then she sat back, closed her eyes, and was silent for a long minute.

She opened her eyes again and locked her eyes with mine. "He's guarded, so well guarded. I can see why Karstia got into trouble. One must ask, why? Should I press my luck? Look further?"

"No?"

"It was a rhetorical question. I have to press a little," she said with a grin. Her grin faded and her eyes darted about.

A moment later the cards on the table began to smoke. The black glyphs glowed red and the paper around them blackened as if burning, yet there was no flame.

"Too far," she muttered, shaking her head.

The cards stopped glowing, but each one was now just a black square of burned paper, cracked in places, with no indication of the original glyphs.

"I must say he's impressed me," Katrina said.

"Aganond did that? At that range? Every time I think I'm getting a handle on magic, something comes out of no where."

"It's a scrying lock or guardian, probably a spell he cast to shield himself. It isn't anything he's actively doing. But there is no range. The fates are beyond time and space."

"Did it prevent you from learning anything?"

She smiled warmly. "If it's not what's there, it's what's missing, or what's reacting around it. I have seen plenty."

"But the cards? I remember how they were arranged."

"You know who remembers better? The table." She moved her hand over the table, sweeping the ashes of the cards out of the way. Beneath them, the glyphs had burned themselves into the table top. The entire reading was now part of the table.

She placed one hand on each side of the burnt glyphs and looked at us with all seriousness. She took a deep breath and began.

"Leadership is faltering. No, not faltering, faltered. In it's absence, a new power must come. A new leader, or leaders, a new vision. There is darkness there, and perversion. But only change is set. A new crown will rise.

"Your enemy has the future on his side, a fusion of ideas fruited from an unlikely branch. But the card's inversion shows something more, and it ties in with the Gate card. There's more to him than he seems. Something backs him. Something large, ancient, and powerful."

"The Unlife?" I asked.

"Too general, but evil abounds, it runs through everything. This is something more focused. A demon, a thing, something monstrous and horrific. Something to which earth is water, but not stone. And when I say evil runs through everything, I mean it. It flows from them and goes everywhere. This binds them, but do not consider them wholly united. The Goblin is inverted, the spread is conditional, perhaps even contested. There is something unspoken and it must be resolved.

"Resources are massed, but unrealized. Yet the day of harvest draws near. There are parallels to growth and maturity, but also to learning and knowledge, process and production. I see locusts swarming the air and great fields of maize, tall and full. The tassels hang invitingly in the air, implying breeding, yet the meat is black and rotten – the mark of the serpent's tongue.

"I see three betrayals, two in your favor. I see a father and a son, a man and a strange humanoid, and a man and a woman. The son is guarded, estranged from his father, perhaps even embarrassed. The direction of each betrayal is unclear, and may even shift. Fate cannot see, but I feel that the son is betrayed."

"What about the man and woman?" Molly asked.

"Unclear, but they are neither as they seem. Destiny is perhaps misleading. A simplistic view is that you are meant to stop this, but the common meaning is simply 'the unknowable'. The future isn't clear and can't be known, there is too much uncertainty. But the card aids you, and so will the uncertainty, though you aren't apt to enjoy it. The enemies confidence is their downfall, for they do not believe things cannot be known.

"Still, victory may not come easily. There is strength on your side, and it can carry you through. But not without loss. I see a ragged army marching a long road. Men too weak drop and are left for dead on the road behind them. The army marches on."

She nodded to herself, then removed her hands from the table and sunk backwards in her chair, seeming exhausted.

"The strange humanoid in the betrayal section?" Molly asked. "Could you recognize the species if you saw one?"

"The vision fades fast. Perhaps you could?" she whispered a few words and a third scale alien appeared standing in the center of the table.

"Foorian," Molly and I said together.

"I'm glad that helps you," she said. The illusion faded. "It's all going now, the images."

"It did. I don't see how Aganond could betray Mylo, so maybe Mylo is going to be helpful here."

"I don't think we know enough to make that assumption," Molly said. "In any relationship, there is an opportunity for both parties to violate trust."

"But you at least know they aren't going to be good friends," Katrina offered. "If it is them in the cards, that is. You shouldn't assume anything with complete confidence."

"I'm not taking any of it with confidence," Molly said. "But I'm not dismissing it, either. In this case it agrees with everything I know. My gut says Mylo and Aganond won't be allies, and if Aganond thinks they are, or thinks he can manipulate Mylo, he's likely to be on the losing end. I vote Mylo betrays Aganond."

"Play that through," I said. "What could that mean? He's not going to help the Empire, right?"

"No. I'd guess Mylo's going to use whatever Aganond wants him for against him, or at least not for him. Unfortunately for us, we don't have any idea what that is. I don't suppose Karstia had any more ideas in that area? She was with him for a number of days, right?"

"She didn't say much about that," Katrina said. "It didn't seem like something she was ready to talk about."

"What about the entity that backs Aganond? When I awoke in Aganond's chamber, there was something there. Something huge and black, with armored legs like an insect's, but without all the hairs. Could that have been it?"

Katrina shook her head sympathetically. "I don't know, Doogan. You have to make your own decisions about the reading. What do you think?"

"I think that was it," I said. "It was the first thing that came to my head when you analyzed the Gate card. And it was contested. The Faroks, who follow Aganond like a god, were fighting it."

She nodded approvingly, but said nothing more.

"I feel like this raised more questions than it answered," Molly said. "Or least as many. Even when it tries to answer something, it leaves it open. For instance, what is he waiting for? The harvest. But what the hell is the harvest?"

"The Farok we spoke to suggest Aganond was sacrificing Faroks for power," I explained.

"Human sacrifice?" Katrina asked. "On a large scale? Nothing has proven more potent. Did Karstia know that? She's well aware of how powerful such things can be."

"I don't know what Karstia knows. I haven't talked to her since she was taken by the dark ship. But T'vance knew it, so I assume he told her. Is she some expert on human sacrifice?"

"She's an expert on many things," Katrina said.

"How about you?" Molly said.

"We have different specialties."

"But can you speak to timing?" she pressed. "There are people to sacrifice now, as there were six months ago. What would be the hold up?"

"Rituals, like sex, are more powerful the longer they take. But there are powerful moments in time; full moons, stars aligning, season changes, eclipses."

"Gotcha. But we don't know enough to guess when."

"Don't try to understand it all at once," Katrina said. "A good reading may not be fully understood in the present."

"Or at all," Molly suggested.

"I have faith in this reading. You will see." She leaned forward, no longer looking remotely tired. "Well, back to the real world."

She clapped her hands and the illusion of the outdoors melted away and left us within the wooden walls of the wagon. It was a dazzling effect, which looked roughly like liquid wood being poured into walls around us.

"Now, was there something else? Anything I could offer you? Food? Drink? My bed?"

"Tempting, tempting, and seriously?" I said.

"I meant for resting purposes, of course," she said, grinning slyly.

"Shame," Molly said, looking her over. Her smile faded quickly though and she was instantly serious. "There is something else, actually. We need someone to test a theory we have. Someone good at casting spells."

"Small problem, I'm actually great at casting spells."

Molly chuckled. "I think we can make do."

"Does this mean I get to see your spaceship again?" she asked me.

"My new spaceship," I clarified. "It's elegance puts my previous ship to shame."

"I can't wait. Let me just grab my bag of tricks. Say, weren't you learning magic, Doogan?"

"Sort of. T'vance taught me a few things, but he said I would only really be able to work 'essence' magic and I'm not very good at it."

"Essence, huh? Interesting."

"There's one more thing," Molly said. "One of our crew members sort of turned on us as a result of a spell Aganond cast on him. We're a bit confused as to how the effect has continued even though Aganond is no where near us."

"Mental manipulation is another of those 'Karstia' skills," Katrina said. "But I know for a fact there are mental spells that actually change the brain permanently. It sounds like that might have happened."

"Permanently? Is there nothing that can be done?"

"No, there is. I mean permanent as opposed to an active spell. Mental damage can usually be healed by the right person. He's not the only one who needs a healer."

Molly looked away.

Katrina reached out and took her hand. "Look, it doesn't take a genius to see that you're self-conscious about your injury. No reason to be. Normally I wouldn't say anything. Against a true beauty like you, I need every advantage I can get. But you're a stranger and my hospitality for guests has taken over."

"It's not that big of a deal," Molly said. "When we're done with this, I'll get it checked out."

"I can't see inside your head like Karstia, but I know enough to know your excuses are all bull shit. What? You think we're all primitive here? You should ask your friend there what he thinks of our healing."

Molly glanced at me.

"It's amazing," I said. "And Katrina's right, there isn't a single good reason not to try. Especially if we're taking Drew anyway."

"Okay," Molly said, but her tone was still unsure. "But I think I'd feel better if I could talk with other people here. Is there are language that's common here that Leona knows?"

"She knows Erlin," I told her.

"Erlin is a good language," Katrina agreed. "Who's Leona again?"

"My invisible friend," I said. That seemed to jog her memory, or at least she faked it. "But how does that help you, Molly?"

"I have some built-in language systems. What good is a spy who can't speak the language? Leona should be able to export what she knows of Erlin to me. For that matter, have her send me any of their languages you'd like to share."

"You guys remind me of Loremasters," Katrina said, shaking her head bemused.

"I see an open link. I'll transfer Erlin and Iruaric. She doesn't need to know our secret spell-casting language."

It only took a minute, after which Molly smiled and said, "I think I've got it," in the elven tongue.

"Not bad," Katrina said. "You have a bit of an Elysian accent, very passable for the region. Does that mean we're ready to leave?"

"If you are."

"Let me get some things together," Katrina said. "I'll just be a moment."

She closed the door behind her, then immediately opened it again and stepped back in wearing an entirely different outfit and carrying a small pack diagonally across her back. Her new outfit said travel, knee high leather boots over heavy green tights with a tunic and vest on top. She had a light cloak thrown over her shoulder.

"Sorry that took so long," she quipped.

We'd put off bringing Drew to the mainland partly because we weren't exactly sure how to do it. We could attach floaters to him and drag him behind us in the water, but that seemed tiresome. We could charter a boat, but bringing a bound man from an island might seem suspicious to the locals. Katrina came up with the solution.

"Why not bring the healer to the patient? We can just charter a boat to take us and the healer out to the island."

"To my cloaked spaceship? That would go over well."

"No, silly, to the quarantine tent you've erected on the island."

"An illusion?" Molly asked. "Like the fields during our reading?"

"Sure. Just bring him outside the ship, I'll make a tent and if there's any visual signs from this 'cloaking', I'll mask them too."

"Sounds like a plan," I said. "Do we need to go out there first and set up the illusion? Surely you can't do that on the fly?"

"I most certainly could," she said, a bit defensively.

"But I thought most spells had limited range, far less than eye sight? He'd notice if we didn't see the tent until we got within a few hundred feet."

"Well you're right and wrong. There is a limit, but there's also a trick. Rubo calls them Perspective Distortion Illusions. He teaches a class on it, actually."

"Have you taken it?"

"Yes, but don't you dare tell him. Oh, I'd never hear the end of it."

"Okay. But how does he not know?"

"I went disguised, obviously. Anyway, you make an illusion only a hundred feet away that is distorted so that it tricks the eyes to appear further. So instead of it being a small dragon a hundred feet away, it's a huge dragon a quarter mile out."

"So you float this illusion between us and the island and then adjust it as we get closer?"

"Exactly. And I could totally do that."

"Okay," I agreed.

"But since there is a very small risk I'd flub it, probably it would be best to go out and setup the scene ahead of time."

We found and chartered what was essentially a large rowboat and four beefy teenage boys to row it. I had brought a bit of gold, but it was still in ingots not coins, and Katrina shooed me away from paying when she saw it. She paid for the whole day, even though we only expected to take a couple trips.

Molly went out with Katrina to set things up. I was a little nervous letting them alone together and I tried not to imagine them talking about me. But we were trying to be efficient and there was no reason to argue. I met Jilk at the docks and he took me to meet the healer he'd recommended.

"True healers are few and far between," Jilk explained as we walked. "You can find lesser healers, or what we call lay healers, but they won't be able to do much about a missing eye or a diseased brain."

"What about the Sisters of Eissa?" I asked. They'd healed me before and were the only ones I was remotely familiar with.

"The sisters are indeed true healers, but it's generally considered bad taste to request their aid unless life is threatened. Aerun heals for money and sets his own price based on the work. So there's no stigma there."

"Will he balk at a house call?"

Jilk shook his head. "He might ask for more, but if the price is right he'll do it. House calls are rather common in the healing trade. Often people are too sick to move."

We walked along the docks and past them, leaving the city behind us and heading into the woods on the outskirts, still close to the beach. Aerun lived in a small house built inside the woods, but only a couple hundred feet from the beach. It was a wooden structure, like most of those in Lethys, but included a tree as one of its walls. It looked like a tree house for someone who was deathly afraid of heights.

As we approached, the soft beating of a drum could be heard from inside and the air smelled faintly of pipe smoke. The door to the house was open, but a pair of tattered red curtains hung in front of the opening.

Jilk stepped up and knocked on the wooden frame before stepping through the curtains and into the inside. I followed closely behind him. The inside of the house was a single room, making it fairly large despite the small overall size of the building. The floor was covered with a woven straw mat, the only bed was a pair of large hammocks. The walls were decorated with art work made from natural things; braided rope arrangements, mobiles made of colorful shells, paintings set on large pieces of bark.

Aerun himself was a much younger man than I expected. He was the common race, which looked human to me but called Jameri by the locals. He looked no more than thirty in his face, but his body was young and muscular. He sat cross-legged in the center of the floor, wrapping his fingers over the head of a wood and skin drum and smoking a long, dark pipe. He wore simple baggy pants and an open vest, which showed off a few beaded necklaces.

"Jilk!" he exclaimed, expelling a jet of smoke in the process.

"Hello, old friend," Jilk said. "This is my friend Doogan." He gestured towards me as he said it, but was already taking a seat beside Aerun.

"Well met," he said.

"Same," I replied, sitting down opposite Jilk.

We sat quietly and Aerun passed the pipe to Jilk, who took a deep drag on it before passing it on to me. I wasn't a big smoker, but took a small drag to be polite. I didn't know what I was smoking, but it was sweet and left my lips tasting like cherries.

I looked around, trying to get a feel for Aerun. He seemed like a man who had no love or need of money, yet Jilk insisted he performed healing magic in a mercenary fashion. I decided he was one of those types that works as little as possible for as much as possible to avoid having to worry about money on a regular basis. If that was his philosophy, I sort of admired him.

"So, Doogan here looks fit. But I can't imagine you brought him for a social call."

"No, Aerun. We need your help with a house call."

He nodded. "What sort of injury are we talking about?"

"Two cases," Jilk explained. "One lost an eye and ear and has some bone and muscle damage to her face. The other we believe had his mind altered through dark magic."

"The whole eye? As in the eye is missing? Or was the eye just damaged and no longer functions?"

Jilk looked to me.

"The latter," I said. "Does it matter?"

"Very much so. I'll assume the damage is still severe, but if part of the eye remains I can fix it. If the eye was completely gone, you'd need someone beyond my abilities."

"Then we're in luck," I said. "What about the mental disease?"

"Impossible to say, really. If it is as you describe, I can fix it. But it may not be that easy."

"Can you be more specific?"

"Sure. Being a true healer, my ability to heal wounds is limited to myself. In order to heal them, I have to transfer the injuries to myself first. Normally, that's not such a big deal. Your friend's eye, for instance, I can transfer and cure within a few hours. But the mental defect is different. For one, those take longer to heal. And for another, when I take that wound into myself, I will then have the disease. Without knowing the specifics, I can't say how I might react to it during the healing process."

"You might try to kill me then?"

"Is that what he wanted?"

"More or less."

"I see," he said, taking another drag from the pipe and passing it back to Jilk. The pipe worked its way around again, and after the second hit off the thing I started to feel a little altered. It was a small effect, but noticeable, manifesting in relaxed feelings and a faint tingling up the back of my neck.

Finally, Aerun cleared his throat and spoke. "We'll need to setup a quarantine for me during the mental healing process, assuming I can even treat him. But that said, I'll do it for 150 gold coins or the same value in Sel-kai notes. That's to handle both of the injured."

Jilk whistled appreciatively, to which Aerun replied, "And that's the friend's rate."

"I can pay you in raw gold, not coins," I explained, producing one of the gold ingots I'd brought with me.

He took it in his hand and felt the weight. "Gold is gold," he said, handing it back.

"In that case, Aerun, consider it a deal," I said.

The boat trip was short and uneventful. We left it tied to a rock and the oarsmen inside it with the promise we'd be at least an hour. As we left them, they were already sharing wine and breaking bread.

The island had been transformed in our absence. A large rock rose where my ship should be and a large brown canvas tent had been erected in front of it, with the back of the tent butting up to the rock. Aerun raised an eyebrow as he looked it over.

"You're making it hard not to ask many questions," he said. "I've been to all these islands, and this isn't what it looks like."

Jilk shrugged it off and led the way into the tent. Katrina and Molly were inside, sitting cross-legged near one another. Behind them, a hollow had been carved out from the rock, and a metal cage door bolted in front of it. Inside the make-shift cell was Lieutenant Drew, still sleeping and bound. Gold ingots were stacked behind Molly.

Aerun stepped in and smiled at the girls. "Ladies," he greeted.

He walked in, very much focused on Molly, and went straight to work. He knelt beside her and she looked up at him uneasily.

"Relax," he told her. "This isn't going to hurt, not even a little. I need to take your hands, though."

She offered and he took them and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath and let it out, and as he did a low moan escaped his lips.

"This is not what I was expecting," he said. "There is more, there are things inside you."

"I know," she said. "But I want them left as they are."

"I'm not sure what I could even do with them, but I feel them. I will avoid them and focus only on the eye and face. This is a bit of a challenge, though. One of those things is not far behind the eye."

He began chanting softly and both he and Molly began to glow with a soft golden aura. It barely seemed like he'd started when suddenly he winced in pain and let go of her, grabbing at his own face and sucking air in deep breaths. I took a step as if to help him but he waved me off, and settled onto the ground flat on his back.

I glanced up at Molly whose face was in shock. She pulled the patch off her face. Beneath, it was flawless, as if she'd never been hurt. Only the red marks from the pressure of the patch and its strap gave any indication that something had ever been wrong. She looked around, then looked at me amazed.

"I can't believe it. It was so fast! And I can see, my god I can see perfectly!"

"You're welcome," Aerun said. He had one hand over his eye, but it and his face around it were already shimmering softly, as if they'd been brushed with golden glitter.

"Does it hurt you?" she asked.

"The wounds had already healed a lot on you, so the pain is very small. It's more the shock than anything else."

"I'm... sorry," she said.

"Don't be," he said, smiling. "I have taken much worse unto myself. And if you were to see me at dinner, you'd never know anything had even happened to me. Besides, I'm being paid very handsomely. Although," he added, "had I known the beauty I was restoring, I might have asked more."

"You're very sweet," she said.

"Yes, now let me get a feel for the other patient." He got up slowly and walked over to the cage, reaching through to touch Drew's arm. "Hmm," he said. "So much anger. So much blame. This is a seriously impressive cocktail of mental manipulation. Will he remain sleeping long?"

"An hour or two at least," Molly said.

"Yes, I feel the drugs inside him. Very well. Then let him out and put me inside. I'm going to try and do this entire thing from a healing coma, so hopefully I will never wake to act on the new impulses before I can heal them."

"But just in case?" Molly asked.

"Yes, just in case. Based on the amount of damage, the healing coma shouldn't last more than two days. I'll not need anything during that time. If three days pass and I have not yet awakened, Jilk knows what to do."

"I do?" Jilk asked, as if he wasn't really paying attention. "Oh right, yes. Leave it to me, my friend. But it won't come to that."

"I hope not, but it's always good to have a backup plan. Let's get started. I don't fancy being behind bars and would prefer to get it over with."

It was obvious from the look Molly and Katrina exchanged that the cage was all a sham, but they opened it and drug Drew's body out, and Aerun took his place. He sat cross-legged near the front of the cage and asked us to feed Drew's hand back in through the bars.

I looked at Katrina who looked like she was doing math in her head, but when she was done she nodded her approval. Still, I saw her lips moving after that and I think she was reinforcing the illusion somehow.

We untied one of Drew's hands and fed it through the bars. Aerun took it in his own. "I'm going to close my eyes and work the transfer spell. I will release his hand when the transfer is complete. After that, worry about me, not your friend."

"Understood," Molly said. I saw her instinctively check her blaster at her hip. She was taking him very seriously.

Aerun closed his eyes. A minute later he released Drew's hand and we pulled him back away from the cage. Aerun barely moved in response. His body was still, his breathing so slow it was barely perceptible.

"So who's confident enough to wake Drew without tying him up first?" I asked.

"I'm not scared of him," Katrina said. "Is he armed or something? I can put him back to sleep in a flash if he gets unruly."

"You sure?"

"Of course."

"And if not," Molly added, "I can always shoot him."

"Let's save that as a last resort, dear," I told her. "I didn't arrange this whole house call so we could shoot him."

"I suppose not," Molly said. "Kat, get ready." She produced a small pressure hypo from her pocket and pressed it against Drew's neck. There was a sharp hiss as it discharged. Despite my own reservations about shooting him, I couldn't help my hand from finding my own blaster.

Then Drew's eyes fluttered and opened slowly and he moaned. His voice was deep and rough like a frog's. "Where?"

"Lieutenant?" I asked.

"Sir? Captain?"

"How do you feel? Do you remember anything?"

"Anything?" he echoed absently. "Well, we were on board the Albatross. Oh god. No. That has to be a dream. I'm too confused, sir. Did I do something?"

"Like trying to take over my ship?"

"That wasn't a dream?"

"I wish it were."

"Sir, I don't know what came over me. I can't explain it.... I'm so sorry." His eyes welled up and tears fell freely. He tried to look at me, then Molly, but both times he looked away quickly. "There were others, too."

"Yes. And they're all dead," Molly said coldly.

Drew swallowed hard and pulled his legs close to him.

"It's not really his fault," Katrina reminded us.

"She's right," I agreed. "You were manipulated. And honestly, you're a weak willed fool, Lieutenant. You didn't stand a chance."

"I am," he agreed, still unable to look at me.

"But we didn't go to all the effort to cure you to have you sit here rocking and crying like a baby," I said. "What you did is punishable by death. You know that right?"

"Yes, sir."

"But we didn't kill you, we cured you. Ask me why."

"Why?"

"Because I've been charmed and manipulated before. I know what it's like. And because I only have three crewmen left, and I need every hand I can get."

"Aye, sir," he said, though little changed. He was still curled in a pathetic ball on the ground.

"Maybe I wasn't clear, Lieutenant. I need an Imperial Officer, not a cry baby."

"Sir, I'm sorry, sir."

"Don't be sorry! Be useful!" I screamed at him. "Get to your feet, soldier! Wipe your eyes. Go outside and get a breath of fresh air, splash some sea water on your face, pray to your god if you have to, but get a grip man! If you can't come back in here and look me in the eye, you're no good to me. Now go!"

Drew scrambled to his feet and rushed out of the tent.

Molly walked quickly to the entrance, her blaster already in her hand. "I'm not convinced he's alright," she said.

"Me either, but leave him be. Just keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn't try to swim for shore or something equally stupid."

She nodded, and pulled a tent flap back to keep a furtive eye on him. But a moment later she put her blaster away and took a few quick steps inside. Drew came in a second later. His eyes were red, but dry and he held himself upright with some semblance of pride.

"Sir, Lieutenant Drew reporting, sir. I have a lot to make up for. I plan on starting right now."

"Good."

"What can I do sir? I don't even know where we are."

"We're on Glemux and I need your help manning sensors. We're about to conduct a series of experiments."

"Aye, sir. Umm, where is our ship?"

"Katrina? Can you show us the way back into my ship?"

"But of course," she said, grinning. She walked towards the wall, about five feet to the left of the fake bars and cell where Aerun still sat calmly and quietly. She walked right through it, and vanished into the rock.

I grabbed Drew and drug him along, following her through the wall. I held out my hands to be sure, feeling the way more than seeing it. We passed through and ended up in my cargo hold.

"Hologram?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly.

"Illusion," Katrina countered. "Though I don't know what a hologram is, so maybe it's the same thing."

"It's not," I said. "But it's close enough for him to understand. Bridge is that way, Drew. Go get settled."

Drew headed through the hatch towards the bridge, closing it behind him.

I turned to Leona, who was exactly where I expected her to be, wearing her bridge crew outfit and looking sharp. "Set him up with sensor access only, no communications, no nav, no weapons."

"Aye, sir! Glad to hear you say that. I still don't trust him either."

I turned back to Molly, who was watching me closely. "You don't trust him, either."

"No, sir. But I appreciate the little trust tests you're making him work through."

"I'm going to have to trust him sooner or later. Like I said, I need all the crew I can get."

"Oh please, I'm all the crew you need," Molly and Leona said together. I couldn't help but laugh.
CHAPTER 18

* * *

Doogan

* * *

I was alone. I did a mental check. It wasn't hard to account for everyone, there were only five of us. Yep, alone. And I have to admit it felt good. Even Leona was staying away, bless her.

The bridge of the Albatross felt familiar, even after flying the Coercion for a while. It was larger and more intimidating, less luxurious to be sure. That generally described the differences between the ships as well, the Albatross was a warship after all. That also made her my fleet command ship, and that made me her captain.

Molly had taken command of the Coercion, a duty I didn't give her lightly. Part of me wanted her close, but no one else had enough skill or trust to do the job. I could see the smaller ship on the external video feed, floating a mere hundred feet above me. Drew was still aboard repairing the cargo bay interior. Even though it wasn't technically his fault that he tried to take over my ship, we still felt justified giving him shit work to make up for it.

Our fleet of enforcers was gathered around me in a wedge formation with me in the back center. I could see them in the view screen, too. On one of the enforcers I could just make out Channel and Overby, lit by their cutting torches as they worked to fit the ship with Jammers. They were mounting them externally, but cutting holes to access power and control lines.

So I was alone, one man in control of an entire Chaos Wing. And I was thinking a little about the future. I couldn't help it. I was sitting in a very expensive ship, which I'm fairly sure was mine, legally speaking. I had an Imperial Scout and my Cruiser, though it wasn't with me. The nine enforcers I couldn't claim, but I had three ships. I didn't need three, and selling two of them could make me enough to retire on.

I can't tell you how often I've thought that. Thought about the big score, the windfall, the one job that pays enough so you can stop doing jobs. But I never really had a good idea of what I'd do after that. What it was I'd want to do if I didn't have to worry about money.

I knew then. I knew what I wanted. I didn't know the when, but I knew the how, what, where and I was even feeling pretty good about the who. I also knew I shouldn't be thinking about it too much, because it was no sure thing.

I pulled the leather bound book from my pocket, a gift from Katrina before we'd left the surface of Kulthea, and studied the cover. There were several words written in silver on the black leather cover. I knew they were written in elven and I knew what they said, but I was far from being able to read them without Leona translating for me. She'd already read the book, of course, cover to cover.

The magic tests were successful. Flawless. Much to Katrina's dismay, she couldn't cast a spell into the jammer's field. She tried a score of spells. The only spell that had any effect was something she called a water bolt, which shot a blast of water from her hand and hit the jammer itself. But she explained that elemental magic is non-magical past the point of origin. And if she stood within the field, she couldn't cast anything and it seemed to pain her even to try. We all agreed it was proof enough.

We took Katrina for a ride, but not into space. And left her to care for Aerun, who had continued to sleep throughout. Before we left, she gave me the book.

"It's called Essence Essentials, A Medley of Classics," she'd said. "It's a book of spells. My top picks for beginners."

Of course the easy spells weren't the powerful ones. But you had to start somewhere.

The bridge chimed for an incoming transmission and I put it on the screen. Molly's beautiful face was staring back at me.

"Hi beautiful, what's up?"

"That's Captain Beautiful, sir," she reminded me, perfectly deadpan. "Overby still has one ship after that one right?"

"Yes, why?"

"So there's four Jammers unused at this point?"

"Yes, why?"

"Have Overby skip the last ship. I have an idea, but I still have to work out the details."

"You aren't going to tell me?"

"Nope. But can you have Overby send me the jammer specifications when he gets back?"

"Why not. Anything else?"

"I think you're sexy."

The screen cut off.

Overby hadn't even finished when alarms on the bridge began sounding.

"Leona!"

"Sir, a fleet of ships is exiting transform! Ninety degrees off the orbital plane, range 290,000km!"

"Tactical map, please. And what are they?"

The tactical map appeared on the screen, a scaled view of the solar system. The incoming ships had jumped in off axis, so outside the normal rotation of the system's planets. If you ignored the offset, the ships would be roughly where Glemux would be half a year from now, in other words on the far side of their sun from us. But the planar offset was another 120,000km, putting them mostly in the middle of no where. Far from us, far from the sun, but still much closer to both than the outer planets were.

"I'm getting readings now. Three Class III Enforcers, one Imperial Carrier, two Trapper ships, twenty Class II Enforcers, four Battle Cruisers, and an unidentified ship massing about twice that of the Carrier."

"That's a lot of ships," I muttered.

Molly hailed me a second later.

"We have trouble!"

"No kidding," I muttered. "Imperial make, but what the fuck are they doing here?"

"We should jump first, ask questions later," Leona said.

"That's a big fleet," Molly said. "This close to Kalqori, it must be on it's way. But why stop here?"

"Leona, tell Overby and Channel to prep for immediate retrieval. Molly, could they have tracked us? You?"

"Maybe," she said. "I don't know what that huge ship is. I don't recognize it. I should recognize it, damn it."

"It's making me very nervous," I said.

"Doogan, we're being hailed by the Imperial Carrier, Diispra."

"Hey Mol, I have to go. I'm getting another call."

"Remember I'm still wanted," Molly said, looking nervous.

"Should I tell them you're my prisoner?"

"Oh you'd like that, wouldn't you?"

I smiled innocently. "Leona, can you put the Diispra on screen and relay the signal to Molly, so she can watch too?"

"I think I can manage. I'll run her audio through me, so you can hear her colorful commentary."

Molly's face shrunk into a smaller window at the bottom and a new face took over the main screen. He started to speak, but the audio didn't come through for a few more seconds as the translator reworked what he was saying into my own language.

"This is Admiral Loaqui of the Diispra," he began. I recognized his race as Ruellan. They're a squat race that rarely bests five feet, with wide boney faces and black featureless eyes. I'd seen a few, but knew next to nothing about them. Visible just behind him was a human, tall and gaunt with short graying hair, a thin nose, and piercing light blue eyes. "You have a lot of explaining to do. You are in a quarantined system and you seem to have hijacked a small fleet of Imperial ships."

"The gray haired man is Gregor. We're not going to be able to bluff anything," Molly said through Leona.

I responded to the Admiral, "Greetings Admiral, I am Captain Loran of the Albatross. I am on official Imperial business as part of a sanctioned covert operation. I'm afraid I can't say much more without understanding your clearance in this matter."

In the tactical view I saw the Coercion moving out of formation. "I'm fetching Overby," she said. "I have a bad feeling."

I did too and sent the command to the entire fleet to charge for transform, just in case.

"Albatross, this is Gregor with Imperial Espionage," the gray haired man said, stepping along side the Admiral. "You are mistaken. No one has sanctioned this operation. You were directed by a rogue spy, and therefore your actions are rogue. Stand down while you still can."

The Admiral continued, "I'm sending you short-jump coordinates. Bring your fleet to this point and surrender to Imperial authority following standard protocols."

"They're afraid of the planet," Molly said, a hint of amusement in her voice. "I hope you aren't planning to comply."

"Admiral, with all due respect, no thanks."

Leona laughed. Or Molly. I wasn't quite sure anymore.

"No thanks?"

"Yes, did that not get translated right? I'm not surrendering to you. I'm on a mission, whether or not your own resident rogue spy likes it or not. Unlike him, I've developed new technology that will actually let us fight our new enemy. And I'm not about to just let you take it, ignore everything we say, and let it go wasted so Gregor there can get his rocks off blowing up stars. Clear enough?"

"I already told you the star thing was a lie. We can't do that."

The Admiral turned his head angrily to Gregor. "And how did they know that?"

Gregor sighed. "Speculation, sir."

"Holy shit. We can do that! This is a test run!"

A test run? They were going to nova the sun, destroy the entire system? Why? Just to test it without having to worry about Aganond? That made a little sense, but just a little. It also made me sick, and I found myself getting very angry. I wanted to do something, but there were so damn many of them!

"Admiral, that is a very bad idea. There are people on this planet. Innocent people! We have another way, you have to listen to me!"

"I will be happy to listen. Surrender your fleet, Captain. Then we will talk."

I muted the line and turned away for a moment. "Leona, do the math. Nine Class II Enforcers and the Albatross against that huge unknown ship. Could they survive taking fire from the rest of the fleet long enough to take it out?"

"Impossible to say. If it has shields like the carrier, no way. If it's more like a freighter, they'd annihilate it."

The sensors beeped again. The unidentified ship was building up power.

"Admiral, no!" I screamed.

A moment later, one of the Trapper ships and all of the Class II and Class III Enforcers flashed off the sensors and reappeared a hundred kilos higher than us in orbit. I guess they weren't so afraid of the planet after all.

The Coercion cloaked. I saw my opening but didn't have time to think it through. Sometimes you just have to react.

"Take it out!"

Leona knew just what I meant. She painted the unidentified ship as hostile and transmitted the order for my enforcers to jump along side it, opposite the Imperial Carrier for cover, but close enough that there would be little delay from the torpedoes. We jumped right with them, but ended up further back in formation for tactical reasons.

A blanket of glowing red swept out from us as no fewer than thirty-three torpedoes left our collective bays and sped towards our target. Once the first volley was away, I took control of the console, and began targeting the lasers on what I hoped were sensitive locations on the strange ship.

There was a bright flash. And for the second time in not so many days I was sure I was dead. I was no longer on the bridge. I had no idea where I was. It was like the ethereal plane in a way, except there were no glowing doors and everything that was gray was white instead. White mist hung close to the floor, the horizon and sky were white, blanketed by clouds and bathed in soft white light.

I also wasn't alone. Molly was beside me, as well as Admiral Loaqui and Gregor. Everyone looked confused, but only for a moment.

Molly sprung into action. She stepped in, swept Gregor's legs, knocking him to the ground flat on his back. She raised her blaster and squeezed the trigger. Only it didn't fire. The Admiral grabbed her blaster, but took a sharp chop to the throat for his trouble, he dropped it and staggered back, grabbing at his throat.

"ENOUGH," a voice rippled through us and everyone froze in place.

The ground began to lower, or the mist rise. I took a deep breath just in case, but we passed through it and the air was clear again. The mist hung like a cloud on the ceiling, but we were indoors, inside a round room with walls made of milky white marble. The room was lined with windows, and had a raised platform in the center on which sat a throne. On that throne sat a man.

I wanted to look at the windows, because at first glance it was clear that each looked out into an entirely different terrain. I was pretty sure one of them was looking out at Lethys. But upon seeing the man on the throne, I couldn't look away, literally. I couldn't even check to see if anyone else was experiencing the same thing.

He was an older man, fatherly and handsome with a full beard and long hair, all of it deep brown streaked with gray. His eyes seemed to glow from his green irises, and they washed over us taking us in as we stared at him. His face had the wrinkles of time, but it made him look wise, not frail.

His body was sturdy and muscular and if he stood, he would certainly be taller than any of us. He was physically imposing, even sitting where he was. He dressed in white and gold and held across his lap a scepter, a silvery white rod with a large yellow crystal.

When he spoke, wind blew gently over us.

"I AM FATHER. I WILL KNOW YOU."

I felt a thought in my head. Then another. Then thoughts just started popping in and out. I don't know how I could ever explain it, but my mind was sort of playing scattered memories backwards in time. Coming back to Glemux, the battle with Aganond, my time with Mylo. It started going so fast that I lost track and then as suddenly as it started it was over.

"LOAQUI, YOUR PEOPLE AND I HAD AN ARRANGEMENT OF PEACE. TERMS WERE DISCUSSED AND AGREED. YET YOU COME TO KILL MY CHILDREN. YOU DID NOT KNOW THIS. SO I SHALL JUDGE YOU ONLY ON YOUR SOULLESS INTENTION TO MURDER MILLIONS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE. WHILE I CONSIDER YOUR FUTURE, KNEEL AND THINK OF EVERYONE YOU HAVE EVER LOVED IN TERROR AS THEIR SUN GOES OUT."

We all turned to watch as the Admiral dropped to his knees. His gray knobby fingers wrapped his head, and he bobbing back and forth making strange little noises. I couldn't tell if it was whimpering or crying or something of both. Then our heads turned collectively back to Father.

"GREGOR, YOU KNEW OF THE TREATY. YOU KNOW YOUR ACTIONS ARE UNSANCTIONED. YOU SEEK POWER AND ARE PLANNING TO GAIN IT BY DESTROYING TWO ENTIRE PLANETARY SYSTEMS. YOU HAVE NO FUTURE."

We all turned to watch Gregor. A look of panic swept over his face, but then he vanished. The faint echo of a scream remained, then that too was gone. We turned back to face Father. His eyes were beaming directly at Molly. My stomach twitched nervously.

"MOLLY, YOU HAVE THINGS TO BE SORRY FOR, BUT NONE TOWARDS ME. YOU MAY GO IN PEACE."

Molly gasped as if suddenly released. "Thank you, Father," she said. She dropped to one knee and bowed her head deeply. I didn't have a clear view, but it seemed voluntary.

"DOOGAN, YOU WOULD HAVE SACRIFICED EVERTHING TO PROTECT MY WORLD. COME TO ME, MY SON."

I walked forward, not unwilling but not really in control of my own legs either. As I approached, I felt warmth radiating from the man. I say man, but he was surely more. I was in awe of him, pure and simple. He was a god, probably one of the fabled Lords of Orhan. I remembered there was a father figure in their lore, but couldn't recall his name. Not that I'd found my voice to say anything.

I knelt before him and looked down at the floor. I saw his foot step forward, his bare toes protruding from the sandals he wore. I felt the warmth descend over me and bathed in his holiness. I felt my body tingling throughout, then both the warmth and the tingling faded. He stepped back and I rose, bringing my eyes to meet his gaze.

"GO WITH MY BLESSING, MY SON."

His calm, wise face suddenly flashed with anger, though it didn't seem to be directed at me. He turned his head quickly and I followed his gaze to a spot on the marble wall that seemed darker than the rest. A hairline crack broke the perfectly smooth surface of one of the marble blocks. The hairs on the back of my neck rose.

"Trouble?" I thought. "Here?"

Father continued to watch, but waved his left hand in my direction casually.

Suddenly I felt the room spin and my eyes went loopy as if I'd just been pulsed, except they cleared so much faster. I was back aboard the Albatross, strapped into my captain's chair exactly as I had been. Had I dreamed the whole thing?

Molly and Admiral Loaqui were still on the view screen, the lines still open. The Admiral looked dazed, Molly was throwing all her attention at the bridge controls. Gregor wasn't there at all.

The sensors were going crazy and I quickly surveyed the situation. My nine Class II Enforcers were firing on the Nova ship, as I'd come to think of it. The bulk of the Admiral's fleet was still around Kulthea, their stasis missiles tracing harmlessly away from the Coercion, which was still cloaked.

"Doogan?! What happened?" Leona asked. "You blanked out for a few seconds and there was strange energy surge from the planet."

"From Glemux?" I asked, confused. It made sense, considering what I'd just seen, but we were over 300,000km away!

"Yes, Glemux. It was a narrow burst, looped around the sun, if that helps you make sense of it."

I didn't really, but it was clear the Empire had greatly underestimated the effective range of the planet's defenses.

The admiral suddenly snapped out of his stupor. "Cease fire!" he shouted. "Stand down weapons!"

"What?" I asked, sounding more confused than I was. I'd made up my mind to blow that thing up, and I didn't relish stopping.

"Cease fire!" the admiral screamed again.

"Oh! Yes, cease fire!" I agreed. I turned to Leona and gave her a wink.

The Albatross stopped firing, but my enforcers continued sending more volleys of torpedoes. The Nova ship's shields buckled and two torpedoes slipped through, exploding in giant plumes from the ships starboard side, just ahead of the main thrusters.

"Crap. Wrong override," I complained. Typing frantically at nothing in particular. I waited for another cluster of torpedoes to make it out of their tubes before sending the recall order.

It was more than enough. The next impact ripped open the side of the ship, the one after impacted behind the bridge, splitting it off as a piece of burning debris which flew away in space. I knew there were people in there and they'd all been killed, but I tried not to think about it. Then the reactor blew and pieces of the ship went all over the place.

"You did that on purpose!" the Admiral hissed. It was almost amusing seeing his face so angry, yet not hearing the words until a moment later.

"It was a beautiful thing, too!"

"I didn't," I lied. "But I'm not sorry your mass-murder ship didn't survive. Father didn't approve of that monstrosity and neither did I," I replied smoothly. "You want to blame someone, blame Gregor. He put you in harms way to begin with."

"And conveniently he can no longer accept the blame," the Admiral said, his shoulders drooping. "I, however, have much to account for, much to explain."

"I wasn't lying when I said we'd found something effective against this energy," I said.

"And I wasn't lying when I said I'd listen. But I didn't get to the rank of Admiral by accident and I will not pretend you are in charge. Your claim to both the Chaos Wing and the Imperial Scout appear valid, but you have no right to the enforcers. Surrender them and come aboard so we can discuss things in detail. Bring Molly Kilk also, I expect she will have some useful opinions to share and I seem to have lost my Espionage consultant."

"And if I refuse?"

The sensors sounded as the nearest Trapper ship engaged it's field. I cursed silently, but tried to appear calm.

"We'll board you by force. You aren't going anywhere, Captain. The Trappers won't let you leave, and we have you severely outnumbered. Make it easy on everyone."

"Do you really think Father will allow that?" I asked.

He winced. "Father minds his own affairs."

He was probably right, but I had hoped he wasn't going to be so insightful. Father was about the only escape I had from this trap and I wasn't remotely confident he'd intervene. But I hated the admiral sounding so sure he wouldn't.

"I wouldn't be so sure," I said. "Father was far fonder of me than you. Give me a few minutes to consider things," I said, killing the connection and bringing Molly back to the foreground.

Just then, we jumped. It was a short-jump back into Glemux orbit, and we were between less than a second, so briefly I barely even notice except all the sensor displays suddenly change dramatically. The odd thing was my ship didn't do it. Molly cut out for a hair longer, but came right back.

"What the hell just happened?" I asked her.

"The trapper ship brought you all back. Those things are amazing. You'd think because they prevent transforms, they couldn't also do them, but it's just a question of modulation. What's more interesting is that the admiral brought you to the fleet, and not the other way around."

"It's for show," I said. "Reminding me he isn't afraid of Father. So what do you think?" I asked her. "Should we hook up with these Imperial goons?"

"I think we don't have much choice. We were going to have to do this eventually. With Gregor gone, this might still work."

"It might, but I'm nervous. Maybe we should at least consider other options."

"What do you mean?"

"Transfer the enforcers, our test results and schematics, and take the Coercion and Albatross down to the planet."

"Run away?"

"Run away together. Sounds more romantic that way."

She smiled at me, warmly then sadly. "The Admiral needs direction. We can't just give him what we know and hope that he can adapt it on the fly to the situation."

"What if he just arrests us?"

"Ruellans are known for their evenness, but they are surprisingly creative and adaptive. They'll break the rules if they need to, at least a little. Worst case, they arrest us and I break us out."

"And then we run away together?"

"Look, you can leave. I'll come back for you. But I can't."

"Why not again? Can't they save the universe from evil?"

"Without me?" she asked. "Who are we kidding?"

I chuckled and wished she was in front of me. "But seriously, Molly."

"I was joking to keep things light. But I am serious. And damn it I don't want to talk about it over a stupid vid screen. I'm going. Are you in or out? For the record, I'm really hoping you're in."

"I'm in."

"Tell the admiral. We'll dock our ships, swap crew, then you and I will take the Coercion and dock inside the Carrier."

The admiral seemed anxious to leave, but gave us time to shuffle crew. His fleet had some shuffling of its own to do, getting all the ships, including our special enforcers, back into formation.

We docked with the Coercion, and all of us met on the bridge of the Albatross. I appointed Overby acting Captain in my absence, and at his suggestion, we formally requested a loaner crew to staff the ship, which the Admiral agreed to quickly.

"There's one more precaution I'd like to take," Molly said tentatively.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Marry me?"

I choked, just a little. "What?"

"Not really the way I dreamed it, but Imperial law guarantees a number of rights for married couples. They can't arrest one of us without informing the other, we can't be forced to testify against one another by any means, we can file formal requests on each others behalf. There's a lot more, over six hundred different rules we can manipulate to our advantage if needed."

"This is crazy," I said, confused by my own smile.

"Overby is acting captain, he can legally perform the ceremony. Drew and Channel are witnesses. We can do it and log the whole thing in under thirty seconds."

"She's right on all counts, but I still feel unsettled about the whole thing," Leona remarked.

"Is that because you're jealous?" I asked her.

"I doubt it. Is there some downside I'm missing? I mean she'd have some legal claim to your ships, but it doesn't seem like her."

"I don't know, Molly."

"We'll waive all the property crap," she said. "What's yours is yours. Leona can draft everything. All I want is what I've said, protection in case they try to screw us. Also, you're very handsome. I could do much worse," she added, smiling.

"I was just suggesting we run away together," I said. "Okay, Molly. Let's do it. Leona, write it up. Overby, find the ceremony. I'm about to make Ms. Kilk an honest women."

"Yes, sir!" Overby said. He cleared his throat, glancing down at the readout before him. "It is a fine--"

"Skip the intro."

"Right. Do you, Doogan Loran take Molly Kilk to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

By the time we released the docking tube, there was already a shuttle craft waiting to dock with the Albatross.

"So tell me, Mrs. Loran, what's the slowest speed that won't annoy him too much?" I asked.

"0.2," she said. "And check the contract, I kept my maiden name."

"Women these days are so independent! Twenty percent it is," I said, laying in the course. The thrusters fired and we gently moved away from the Albatross. "So what didn't you want to talk about over the vid line before?"

"There's so much. It seems all out of context now."

"Well, we'd just had a run-in with Father. And I asked why you thought they couldn't save the world without you."

"You can't just bookmark context. There's a whole build up that frames it."

I gave her a look that stopped her. Turns out I can do that too. She sighed, resolutely.

"Okay. I'll try. I've been wondering a lot about the 'why'. What's the meaning of all this? My life? I just keep living and chasing Mylo and doing the job. I can't let it rest. It's an obsession, though compulsion might be the better word. It's like I can't really relax until this is done, and it's never done. Thousand plus years of this, diversions throughout, but the same thing.

"Most people can at least expect death. Maybe they have kids, they work, they retire, they die. Their life has seasons. My life is just one really long season that never ends. It's like I'm not living a life at all. I'm just in this limbo or purgatory or something, stuck. Or at least I was."

"So you aren't now?" I asked.

"I'm not sure yet, but I think I'm moving, if you know what I mean. At first, I thought it was just falling for you."

"Just?" I smirked.

"Hey, I married you after all. You can stop being so sensitive," she said, grinning.

"Thick skin engaged."

"But now, don't laugh, I think this conflict is why. I think we're meant to stop Aganond and this Unlife from spreading. That this twisted story of murder and torture and plots and magic, of me and you and Mylo, is finally drawing to its close. And not because I planned it so well, or because Mylo did, or even Aganond for that matter."

"Why then?"

"Fate?" she suggested softly.

"Fate? You believe in fate now?"

"Maybe," she said, still seeming to struggle admitting it.

"This goes back to Father, doesn't it?"

She nodded slowly. "He did tell me I'd been chosen."

"When? I only heard GO IN PEACE."

"That's all? I was asking him questions the whole time, you didn't hear them?"

"No."

"Strange. I asked him what it is he would have us do. He replied, IT IS NOT FOR ME TO SAY. BUT A DOZEN UNLIKELY COINCIDENCES HAVE PLACED YOU UPON THIS PATH. IT IS CLEAR TO ME YOUR ROLE HAS ALREADY BEEN DEFINED. Then I asked him if he had any advice. He told me, RESPECT WHAT YOU HAVE ALREADY BEEN TOLD. Then he said that go in peace part."

"So because Father believes in fate, you believe in fate?"

"More or less, yes."

"You don't think he's God, do you? Because I don't."

"No, of course not. But what do you think he is?"

"I think he's one of the entities the people of Glemux call the Lords of Orhan. They are gods to them, but I think they are just insanely powerful entities who are even more gifted with the Essaence than K'ta'viiri."

"Orhan being the large moon, right? There was a burst of radiation from there during our encounter. And all said, his world of clouds was no more convincing than Katrina's illusions."

"I had the same thought," I told her.

"Still, he did reinforce what I'd already been thinking. And he carries a lot of weight. He might not be God, but he's certainly more in tune with the universe than I am. Did you ask him anything?"

"No. I couldn't, or maybe I just didn't think I could so I didn't try."

"Did he even say anything to you?"

"Well sure. He praised me for being willing to sacrifice to save his children, then he blessed me or something."

"Wait, what? I didn't witness any of that! He blessed you? What does that even mean?"

"I suppose it means he liked me best," I quipped. "I knelt before him and he touched me. I felt a strange tingling throughout my body, then it was gone. You didn't see that?"

"No, but I was looking down towards the end."

"So you didn't see the dark cracks in the wall, either? Or Father's reaction?"

"Cracks?" she shook her head, confused. "No. What was his reaction?"

"He looked angry, scary angry."

"What do you think that means?"

I shrugged. "I'm not sure, but I don't think Father is as in control of Glemux as he seems."

"Don't tell the admiral that. Do these Lords of Orhan have enemies?"

"Dark gods, from the third moon if I remember right."

"You do."

"Maybe they weren't so happy Father was talking with us," Molly suggested.

"It's hard trying to relate to something so different from us. They're so aloof. They don't show themselves to their own 'children', except on occasion through visions. They don't show themselves to us normally, either. Are they even alive in the scientific sense? Do they have biological needs?"

"You're right, there's too little to go on," Molly said, her eyes seemed distant. "Still, I can almost imagine these unique, ancient creatures, camped out over this little planet. One clan curious to watch the people unite and grow and build; the other curious to watch the people divide and destroy each other. They must hate one another."

"Yet they don't destroy one another," I said.

"A tactical stand-off. Neither can be defeated in their own stronghold. If they leave to act directly, they are at risk, so they wage there war by proxy through the people below."

"I can almost see that."

"Don't read too much into it, I'm making it all up. But what I really want to imagine is what they think of us? We're more advanced than their people by far. We're united, at least functionally, and able to operate pretty much anywhere in the universe, while they are likely constrained."

"They still consider themselves superior," I added. "We might be like ants at their picnic. They ignore us so long as we stay off their blanket."

Molly chuckled. "I think we're better than ants. More like a primitive, violent tribe of monkeys."

"With lasers," I reminded her.

"Yes, monkeys with lasers. I think we're onto something here," she said, sticking out her tongue.

"Though I think our picnic metaphor is a bust. If a bunch of laser wielding monkeys show up at my picnic, I'm done."

She laughed. "You know I actually had a point, which now seems ludicrous against this backdrop of monkeys."

"Which was? What does one clan do when the other clan starts talking to the monkeys?"

"That was it. I'm impressed you tracked that."

"It's like I knew you in a former life. But I don't know what a reasonable answer is. They could try to stop them from talking, retaliate against them in anger, or they could start talking to the monkeys, too. Maybe they don't see us any differently from the people on the planet, just another biology experiment to fuck with."

"I wish we knew more," she said.

"And I wish we had jumped to another system right away. Too many possibilities here can lead to a lot of dead monkeys."

"There, too," Molly said, gesturing to the Imperial Carrier that now filled our view screen. "We have to be careful. We have no way of knowing what Father said to the Admiral."

"On the plus side, we don't really have to worry about what he said to Gregor. One monkey down."

Molly smiled and squeezed my hand.

The Carrier's docking bay was closing in. At this range, you couldn't even see it was a ship we were docking in. Each bay was large enough to house four battle cruisers comfortably, and the aft bay was completely empty.

"Did he paint the aft docking bay for our landing?" Molly asked. "What a prick. We have to go all the way to the bridge."

Imperial Carriers have two docking bays on each side, one fore and one aft. Both of the docking bays were open, yet we'd been directed towards the rear. I didn't think much of it, but it did imply a much longer walk, assuming we were going to the bridge.

"Does that put us closer to the brig, then?" I asked.

Molly pursed her lips. "Slightly. But it seems more like a power trip to me. Have you ever been inside a Carrier?"

"Never. Is it impressive?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say you'll be overly impressed, but they are amazing. The whole ship has artificial gravity at a quarter-G."

"It would make a great addition to our fleet."

"Yes. If I see a chance to mutiny I'll be sure to take it."

"Please, don't."

We passed through the bay doors and I put the Coercion down on the closest pad to the bridge. The bay wasn't normally pressurized and we exited through a hard docking tube which extended and fit over the starboard airlock. On the other side of the airlock we met our escort, eight Imperial Troopers.

"He's going to separate and interrogate us," Molly said.

"How do you know that?"

"Eight troopers. If they were interrogating us together, they'd only send six. And if they were just taking us to the Admiral, they wouldn't send troopers at all. Don't worry. That just means he's paranoid. This looks like a fairly standard hostile debrief."

She said this all in the open, but none of the troopers seemed to care. Two of them stepped forward from the group.

"Doogan Loran, please follow me," the first said.

"Molly Kilk, please follow me," the second said.

Then they began walking down the corridor in opposite directions. I kissed my wife, chuckling at the notion, then followed my trooper. Molly followed hers, and the remaining troopers split up, three following each of us closely.

They escorted me down the hallway, but we didn't get far before the trooper paused at a door. The doors were all automatic, without even a hint of a manual override. They were made of the same dull gray metal that lined the halls, and each was inscribed with a number. The number 2104 was etched into this door.

The door slid open and the trooper entered. I followed into a small room with a table and two chairs. One chair was occupied by a Ruellan who was not the Admiral. He seemed younger, with slightly less bony protrusions on his face. He was dressed in a uniform and wore the markings of a Commander of some kind.

"First Commander, technically," Leona said, looking him over from behind. "Am I going to need to translate Ruellan?"

I really hoped not.

The trooper wedged himself into a corner and froze. Then the door slid shut.

"Please, sit," the Ruellan said, with little accent. "You won't need a translator."

"I'm glad to hear that," I said, taking a seat. "Is this whole ship Ruellan?"

"Not entirely, but we make up ninety-two percent of the crew. I am First Commander Varrin, Captain Doogan. I'm here to debrief you. The Admiral is worried you won't be very cooperative. I am not, but I intend to get a full debriefing."

"Do you mind if I ask what your security clearance is?"

"Not at all. In fact, I think that will expedite things. My clearance level is eight, more commonly called Imperial Inner Circle, two degrees above the classic Top Secret. As a matter of fact, my clearance is on par with Admiral Loaqui. There is no one with higher clearance on board."

"So I can tell you anything then?"

"That was my point, yes. Would you like to see some documentation to that effect?"

I shrugged. "I doubt I'd be able to validate it, but sure, show me your papers."

He smiled, I think, and tapped the table near his side. The dark surface lit up, and some official looking security clearance form appeared, including his name, his picture, and a very clear designation of privilege matching what he'd already told me.

I looked it over, as if I had the first clue how to spot a forgery. As I did, the Admiral's voice came over the loudspeaker. He was speaking Ruellan, and whatever magic my pendant did to translate spoken language didn't seem to be working.

"He said the fleet is preparing to move out. All hands prepare for transform," Leona explained.

I gave her a short nod and turned my attention back to the document.

"Looks official," I said dryly. "Where do we start?"

"Why don't you begin by telling me your version of the past few weeks, starting when you last arrived in Daubu station."

"Sure thing," I said.

The lights in the room suddenly went out and the temperature dropped ten degrees. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I couldn't shake the grim image of dead monkeys in my head.

"What the hell?" Varrin said.

The trooper in the corner turned on one of the many flashlights built into the armor, and I saw strange shadows moving about, as if the Commander and I were casting shadows in a flickering candle, but the trooper and his beam were steady as a rock. Something was wrong, something was in the room. I could sense it. I pushed away from my seat.

"Sit down, Captain," Varrin said sharply.

The ship signaled red alert. There were no flashing red lights, but the sound of sirens was unmistakable.

"Get me out of here!" I screamed.

"Sensors malfunctioning. We may not be alone," the trooper said. Then he turned on the rest of his lights and the room brightened considerably. He was right, we weren't alone. Something hung in the upper right corner of the room.

I saw its black shape, inky and poorly defined, like some kind of tentacled blob of liquid blackness. At the edges, which shifted as it moved, the blackness was thin, like dark wispy clouds clinging to the surface of a black world.

I ran to the door, which didn't open. I hit the open button, which beeped angrily at me. Varrin screamed and pushed off, backing away towards me and the door. "What is that?"

Whatever it was, it wasn't a curiosity. It was bad. It was Unlife. It didn't just look it, it felt it.

"Is that really there?" the trooper asked, pointing.

"Shoot it!" I screamed.

"Sir?"

"Do it!" Varrin shouted, feeling for the door controls.

His fingers on the open button did the trick and the door slid open as the trooper fired. The plasma blast passed into the blackness at the fattest part of the body and seemed to explode on the wall behind it which we couldn't really see. But smoke rose from behind it and metal dripped down the wall.

It then sprung at the trooper, who fired again. The shot passed right through it, then it hit him, and wrapped itself around his armor, flattening out like a pancake, wrapping around, covering every part of him.

I ran out the door and slammed into the metal chest of one of the two troopers who were arranged to block the exit from outside. Varrin pushed beside me and hit the door close button.

"Move!" he shouted. "We have a hostile inside that room!"

The troopers sprung into action. One stepped back and Varrin and I slipped out.

"What is that thing?!" he asked.

"Unlife," I said. "Bad, evil."

One of the troopers said, "Backup is on the way. We're going in."

The door slid open, and hadn't even finished when three blasts of plasma erupted from inside. They were all aimed at the trooper nearest the opening. Had they been dispersed shots, the trooper might have made it. But the blasts hit the exact same spot three times. After the second blast, there was little armor left in that spot, and the third ripped right through. There was a muffled scream and half a step, then the arms and head drooped.

The other trooper fired into the room, and fired and fired. Varrin and I backed away down the hall.

"We have to get to Molly," I said urgently.

Then the interrogation room exploded, the blast so strong it knocked both troopers armored shells into the wall behind them, denting it significantly. The one trooper was already dead, but I didn't have high hopes for the other one. At the very least, he didn't seem to be moving.

We stood there frozen for a moment. Waiting to see. Was something going to come out? Was the trooper going to stir? Had they killed it?

Then we heard a loud thud followed by metal scraping on metal. We backed up, but still didn't run. A trooper leg stepped out, then more scrapping metal as the remains of the other leg drug outside. Another step and it was out.

It was the original trooper, but the armor had been blown to hell, riddled with holes then exploded from the rear, probably the power cell blew. The torso gaped, one leg was mangled and missing most of its foot, and (thankfully) the weapon arms were crushed and useless, though they emitted short busts of sparks. From inside the cracks and holes, I could still see the blackness of the thing. And if that wasn't creepy enough, there was blood and bits of jellied remains dripping down the legs and torso.

We ran down the hall. "Molly!?" I shouted.

Varrin nodded and pointed up the hall.

Thud, scrape! Thud, scrape!

I glanced back and saw the thing running after us. We turned a corner and found more troopers outside what I assume was Molly's interrogation room.

"Behind us, down the hall!" Varrin shouted.

The troopers rushed past us and turned into the hall, facing the oncoming monster. They raised their arms and fired, and fired, and fired.

"It's not stopping!" one shouted. "We're just knocking off pieces."

"Plasma doesn't effect it!"

"Use explosives!" I screamed.

"What about magic? Light? It's darkness, maybe if you push a light spell into it's core? We're still in orbit, there's power here."

There was a pop as one of the troopers fired a grenade, then an explosion that was so loud it left my ears ringing.

"That knocked it back," one said, though I barely heard it over the ringing. "Cover your ears, sirs!"

They fired again, we covered our ears.

"It's not moving," they reported. "Wait. Sensors are malfunctioning. What's on the floor?"

"Move back!"

Blackness rolled over the floor like crude oil, but on the trooper's sensor-only view they couldn't even make out what it was. It surrounded their feet and for a very brief moment it just looked like two troopers standing in a pool of black water. Then it pulled itself up and began curling quickly up both troopers legs even as they stepped backwards to get out of it.

I tugged on Varrin's arm. "Get Molly!" I shouted. Then I turned to find Leona. She was dressed in white robes and had long dark hair pulled back in a braid. She looked like a sister of Eissa, holy and pure.

"Cast it," I told her.

She nodded and I felt her take over my mouth and arms. I heard the strange words I didn't know myself echoing through my head and against the walls.

"What are you doing?" Varrin asked.

I couldn't answer. The words kept coming, the blackness rose, one of the troopers screamed. The door opened and I heard voices. The words kept coming. I felt energy around me, tingling on my skin. I saw a green glow faintly between my fingers, then felt it flow out of me. Then a brilliant light flared between the troopers. By the time my eyes adjusted, the blackness was gone.

"Did that do it?" Molly asked, she'd come out into the hall.

"I don't know. I'd be surprised if it did, to be honest."

"What did you even do?" Varrin asked. "Never mind. Everyone fall back to arena, double time. Eyes peeled. Report anything out of the usual. Go!"

I had no idea what the arena was, let alone where it was, but it was easy enough to run along with everyone else. I heard Varrin shouting into his comm as we ran. "No sir, the reports are accurate. No. We're heading to the arena. No, sir. We don't know what it is. He said Unlife. How the hell should I know what Unlife is?"

"We can detect Unlife!" Leona shouted, she was running like the rest of us, only breathlessly.

"Get it ready," I said. "Molly, there wasn't one in your room, right?"

"Right. Is it after you then? Because of Father's blessing?!"

"Some blessing," I muttered. "Varrin, can we test something next intersection? I'll need a moment, but I think it will help."

"Be quick. Hold up here, men! Defensive postures. At range, use explosives, plasma doesn't seem to effect it!"

We paused and I turned and let Leona work the magic. It was a faster spell than the last, only a few short sentences. Again the power slipped effortless out of me. I think I was getting the hang of resisting the fatigue from working Essaence.

The moment the spell finished I could sense the thing behind us, moving along at a pace somewhere between a walk and a jog, about forty feet back the way we'd come. There was a dull red glow around it, the only thing I could see. The creature itself was too shady, moving in a thin stream in the shadows where the floor hit the wall.

"It's still coming," I said, pointing towards the glow I was fairly sure only I could see. "Let's split up. I think it's after me."

Varrin's dark eyes bored into me and I sensed we hadn't quite established trust between us. "I'll stay with you," he said. "The rest of you, take Ms. Kilk ahead to the arena. We'll meet you there. Go now!"

Molly gave me a soulful look as she left with the troopers, going in the same direction we'd been traveling. I flashed a weak smile, then headed off at a right angle. Varrin and I ran until the next intersection, then I turned and tracked the thing as it approached. It reached the intersection and turned towards me without even pausing to consider.

"It's still after us," I told him. "Why haven't we jumped?"

"Another burst of radiation hit us, just before the red alert. There's some problem with the transform matrix. We're the only ship that hasn't entered transform. Why does it matter? We jump, it jumps with us, right?"

"Maybe, maybe not. Come on."

We turned the corner and continued at a run, traveling parallel to the course we were on before. Two explosions shook the hall behind us, but we kept going.

"Troopers just reported firing on it, but no effect. Not even with explosives," Varrin told me. "I thought you said you knew a trick to fight this stuff!?"

"I do! But this is different! Or is it? Varrin, change of plans. We need to get back to the docking bay!"

Varrin hissed. "Split up from the troopers and return you to your ship? What kind of a fool do you take me for?"

"You have to trust me. Tell the Admiral. He can light us up with stasis or even just seal the hangar. It's not the ship, it's something I have inside it."

"Okay, but you're on thin ice here, Captain."

"I know." I ran ahead of him, turning left then left again. I could have left him completely behind, his shorter legs couldn't keep up with me. But instead, I paused every time I got too far ahead and used the detection spell to sweep behind us and make sure the thing was following and not gaining.

We passed troopers, who made no effort to stop us or even interact. Varrin shouted, "Clear this corridor!" as he passed.

"Leona, remote into the ship. Make sure she's awake."

"Aye, sir. She's already ready for us."

The hall seemed familiar as we approached the hangar, but I would have missed the airlock door that led to my own docking tube had Varrin not pointed it out. We waited a moment for the airlock to open, then rushed through, down the hard tube and into my ship's airlock. I opened the cargo bay side of the lock and while gases were hissing in and out checked back to make sure the thing was still following. It was.

Then we rushed into the cargo bay. The jammer we'd used for testing was still connected to power, ready to go.

"What is that? Looks like a torpedo."

"It's not. It's a jammer, Anarchy technology." I moved past it and stopped about ten feet back on the far side of the jammer from the airlock. I checked with the detection spell again. The Unlife creature was close, just on the other side of my ship's airlock.

"They look so different in person."

"On my signal," I told Leona. She nodded. She was no longer in her priestess outfit, but back to bridge crew jump suit. She looked focused, if not stressed.

"What now?" Varrin asked.

I opened the arms locker and took out two rifles, handing one to the commander. "It's coming any second."

"But plasma doesn't work against it."

"It hasn't. That doesn't mean it won't. Besides, I don't want it wondering if we have a secret weapon."

"Do we?"

"God, I hope so."

I hadn't even worked out the details in my head, but instinct told me this would work. Still, in the moments before it came, my mind struggled to justify it. The lack of magic hadn't stopped my crew from acting under Aganond's orders, but that was different. They were human and still obeyed the laws of physics. This thing didn't. It couldn't possibly function the same without magic. I told myself this over and over.

The glass on the airlock door went dark, and cold air seemed to billow from it, though it was closed. Bits of frost formed on the surface. Then it slid open.

The blob was gone, and standing in its place was something more like a man, though it was still black as pitch. It had a thin waist and broad shoulders with long thick arms and almost no neck. For the first time, it had eyes. The eyes were small and widely set and glowed with crimson light.

It reached out with one of its long fingers and touched the airlock controls, making the door slide shut behind him. But he never took his eyes off me.

"Actually, I prefer it open," I said.

It must not have appreciated the joke, because it rushed across the room at me so fast I didn't even have time to give the signal. Thankfully, Leona didn't wait for it. She tripped the jammer on with the thing less than a foot from it. It began thrumming loudly.

Without fanfare or effect, the dark creature blinked out of existence.

The commander and I both stepped back and leaned heavily on the wall, still clutching our rifles.

"Is it really gone?"

"I don't know. Let's see what happened when we turn it off. Leona?"

The jammer stopped and the creature didn't return. And a moment afterward, we heard the alarm sound and a tremor shook gently through the ship. We'd finally entered transform.

The terror of being stalked by some unstoppable creature of darkness had one silver lining, it down right convinced First Commander Varrin that Molly and I were on the level. It didn't eliminate the need for a long drawn out interrogation, but it went so much smoother with Varrin having seen Unlife, magic, and the effect of the jammer first hand.

No matter now nicely, it still kept me from Molly. And I wanted more than anything to talk through my thoughts on the dark creature that had nearly killed me.

T'vance had told me once that there were creatures that could only be affected by magic; magic swords, magic arrows, spells, and so on. I imagined such things shrugging off blades and bullets easily enough, but plasma? It seemed unreal.

Another troubling fact was our ship's inability to transform, which had yet to be explained and yet clearly resolved itself the moment the creature was disrupted. That added another potential ability to Unlife or magic, the ability to prevent jumps. And because of that, we didn't really know what would have happened had we been able to jump.

I needed to review the sensor logs, correlate them with my observations. But even those would have to wait. I could have mentioned the idea to Commander Varrin, but there were too many ways that could go wrong.

With no more input, I was left to ponder deeper things, like why it was after me.

I spent two full days answering questions before I was finally released, and my communications access restored. I was assigned to shared quarters on deck two, just below the bridge. They were supposed to be shared with Molly, but there was no sign of her. I made some inquiries and learned she was still being sequestered for interrogation.

Then I checked through my messages and found some interesting ones from Overby, timestamped just before the Albatross jumped.

"Sir, I hope everything is okay with you. There were two unusual radiation events, one when you first attacked that nova ship and another just a few moments ago. And now there are strange readings from the Diispra and rumors that some kind of creature is loose over there. We are being ordered to jump, but I wanted to provide you the detailed sensors logs of the events.

"I was able to correlate sensor readings from the fleet to get a more complete picture, but I don't have much in the way of a theory. Curiously, the two bursts originated from different locations. The first originated close to the first moon of Glemux, the second from both moons. I suspect whatever intelligence protects this planet is not wholly united. Hopefully you'll make better sense of it than I did. Overby out."

I reviewed the sensor read-outs carefully. Not only did they originate from different places, but the beams themselves were very different. The first, which I determined was Father's intervention, looked like a balloon that engulfed the ships in orbit of Glemux, then sprung a leak that shot a narrow beam across half the system. By the time it reached us, it was just wide enough to include the Diispra and Albatross.

The second radiation event occurred significantly later, in line with the appearance of the dark creature. There was a swell of energy from Orhan, and a directed blast from the little third moon, the one the Kultheans called Charon. That blast started strong, but after passing through Orhan's swell, was greatly diminished.

And then it clicked. Orhan was shielding us! Father was shielding us. The cracks I'd seen before leaving Father's were probably signs the shield was faltering. Knowing its origin reinforced the idea that the attack was a response to Father's intervention. What does one clan do when the other bestows a gift to a monkey? Kill the monkey.

I shuddered at the thought of what that thing was supposed to be; what it would have been, had Father not shielded us. It was comforting to be between, speeding away, and well outside the moons' range. I didn't really know what range that was, but Leona had studied the sensor readings and assured me it was unlikely to be able to leave their solar system.

I mentally thanked Father for his protection, and wondered what his blessing could mean, that Unlife was so keen to stop it.

The next day, the interrogation of Molly completed and she and I were finally reunited. We hadn't seen each other since parting in the hall, with the dark creature following me. They'd told us everything, so we both knew the other was safe, but there was still something to actually seeing each other, for which there was no substitute.

I jumped up when I saw her come in, and we ran to each other and hugged for a long time.

"So did you tell them everything?" I asked.

She smirked. "What do you think?"

I snorted. "I think they're probably still listening," I said, looking around the cramped room. There was little to it: a bed, two foot lockers, a recessed wardrobe, and a small bathroom without a shower.

"Missing your captain's quarters?" she asked.

"Am I ever. How long are we staying on this bucket?"

"A few more days, I'd think. They've debriefed us, which is only the first step. Now they have to compare our stories, make conclusions, write up a report, review the report, submit the report to the Admiral, then he has to review it. He may or may not request additional information, which may or may not result in them asking us more questions."

"God I hate the Empire."

"And this is the expedited version. But look on the bright side. They could have kept us in isolation that whole time or confiscated Leona or thrown me in jail. I think things are going quite well, considering."

"Since when are you such an optimist?"

"I'm not. But I like when you are, so I'm trying to encourage that. Hold on a sec." She pulled a small round disc from her pocket, the size of a thick coin, then stood on the bed and pressed it to the ceiling. It started vibrating in a strange but rapid pattern that created an eerie whine.

"What is that?"

"They listen to sound through vibrations in the ceiling, if they are listening at all. This masks it out so we can have a private conversation."

"So it's like a white noise generator? Won't they notice and get suspicious?"

"No. They'll run the signal through a computer, which will look for anything interesting. And it's not white noise, because the computers flag that, too. But enough about that. I got a message from Gregor."

"What? Where is he?!"

"Oh he's very dead. His body is in the morgue. But he setup a trigger to send me a message in the event of his death. I got it yesterday."

"The morgue? I thought Father made him disappear?"

"Me too, and when we came back I didn't see him so I assumed that was the case. But he just collapsed dead on the bridge. None of the bridge crew saw either the Admiral or him leave the bridge, either. Everything that happened to us with Father took no time and may have all been in our heads."

"What did the message say?"

"I'll repeat it verbatim so you can judge for yourself. It's, well never mind. I don't want to influence your take on it. Here goes."

Molly, you may or may not know this, but I am dead. As one of my few remaining IE contacts, I felt it important that I share with you some of what I've learned, as most of it affects all of us. You may find this surprising, considering how well we've gotten along, but I think when you hear it you will understand. Of note, the information contained within is derived from reports I shouldn't have read, which was classified level ten. While I was alive, it was a secret I kept. Only in death am I relieved of my obligation.

First, let me dispel a myth for you. There is no such thing as Imperial Espionage. There are two divisions of covert military activities: The Imperial Special Tactics Division (ISTD) of the Imperial Marine Corps, and the Imperial Office of Information. We are members of neither. You and I are creations of a special project of ISTD called Project Zealot. It was a psi-ops experiment, outfitting statistically aberrant people with behavior modification circuitry, as well as physical and cognitive enhancers, and other state-of-the art implants; I'm sure you are well aware of these.

Each Zealot was conditioned to be loyal to the Empire. This conditioning was a key factor in the project, one the project founders assumed would prevent team members from becoming problems, going rogue, etc. If you've ever wondered why it is you continue to give the Empire the benefit of the doubt, this is why. If anything, the conditioning worked too well.

The ISTD then ran operations using the Zealots, under the auspices of the fictional, yet widely rumored, Imperial Espionage to evaluate their capabilities. The test subjects were mostly used independently, but sometimes in teams. Eventually some established connections, and began talking.

There was a consensus on a few points, the most significant being that no one wanted to give up their implants, and no one thought the project was serving the Empire well. A coalition was formed and they made a plan. They executed side missions each time out, securing funds, setting up new identities, recruiting. They broke into the research project computer systems and took copies of everything. After two months, they had two command centers, a lab, and close to a hundred properties across nine worlds.

When they were ready, they made their escape from ISTD and Imperial Espionage was born. You and I are recruits, but conditioned and modified more or less in the same fashion as the founders. The organization has not been without problems. Our conditioning, it seems, makes it either very easy or very difficult for us to work together. In our case, difficult.

But all that is ending. The ISTD raided two of our now five control centers. Most of our identities and deployments are known. They're shutting us down, Molly. I know I should run, but I can't. This problem is too big not to solve, and I need the Empire to do it.

I dislike you, Molly, because I don't think you know how to serve the Empire properly. But then again, I don't think anyone does. I'm sure you feel the same about me, and if we came to a situation where we got in each others way, I'm sure you would act to neutralize me to preserve your ideal of the Empire. Perhaps this is even how I met my death. I'll not apologize for doing the same to you, not in life and certainly not in death.

In my opinion, your investigative tact on this was going to take too long, and was too fixated on connecting with Mylo. But I knew we'd ultimately have to convince Admirals, and they wouldn't be brutal or fast enough to solve the problem, especially if you came along with gentler ideas.

I'm hoping I might convince you otherwise by sharing two facts you may not know. First, the ruler of Kalqori has the ability to manipulate our computer systems. We determined that our ships were ordered to self-destruct, bypassing all safeguards. Second, the Emperor is dead. He has been dead for over five hundred years, but he had little real function as he'd automated his entire Empire.

In short, we're all under the dictatorial rule of an artificial intelligence, and not even a particularly good one. That's a secret that could destroy the Empire, but as I've already said that's the last thing I want to do. But given our enemy's skill at bypassing computer security, I've reached the conclusion that his aim is nothing short of taking the Emperor's place as ruler of the known universe.

I have done everything in my power to prevent this, including atrocities or at least potential atrocities that could only be forgiven in retrospect, and only then if I failed and the world became the nightmare I have seen in my head many times over. I have taken these sins unto myself for the greater good of the Empire. But now I am gone. I have to trust the future to you now, Molly. Kalqori must be stopped. Do not waver. Your Empire is counting on you, even if it doesn't know it.

Somewhere in the course of things I sat down. I'm not sure what was so shocking about it, probably the Emperor being dead, but close seconds were learning of Molly's pro-Empire conditioning and the passion in Gregor's speech. From what she'd said about him and the cold tones I'd heard, I didn't expect to see him so human.

A moment later I noticed Molly was staring at me. She seemed to be waiting for me to notice. "So what do you think?" she asked.

"To be honest, I'm not really sure. Was I supposed to be surprised? I mean the Emperor is a computer? That just plain makes sense. No wonder everything is run according to a fixed and rigid process! As for Aganond wanting to take that over, I suppose it's possible. But I still think we know things Gregor didn't and he's assuming Aganond knows things that I'm not sure he does. Besides which, I don't trust a word that guy says, even on his death bed. Even if I believe his morals are sound, I can't rule out he's just telling you something to motivate you."

"Yes, I agree with all that. But forget that stuff. What about me?"

"You? What about you? The conditioning to love the Empire?"

"Yes, that part. Do you think that's true?"

"Wait, that's the important part to you? Whether or not you love the Empire more than you should?"

"Is that petty? That I'm questioning whether I even have free-will?"

"I think there's a huge gap between being conditioned to like something and having no free will. But what do I know? I'm just a two year old clone with patchwork memories."

"Well when you say it like that, I sure sound petty."

"Actually, when I say it like that I sound petty."

"And bitter. Don't forget bitter."

"Yes, thank you, Leona. And bitter. But honestly, it's not petty. Let me ask you something. You were conditioned before you even met Oliver, right? Did he ever call you on your zealotry?"

"Yes. Many times. It was a running debate between us."

"Did it ever cause a problem? Did you get in fights over it? Did you put the Empire before him?"

"Well, no, not fights. And it never came between us."

"Did he ever suggest you were insane? Drawing conclusions based on loyalty, not fact?"

"Never."

"Did he know you well?"

"You know he did. Better than anyone."

"That's right. So trust his evaluation, if you don't mine. You're loyal, but you aren't a robot. And right now we're going to use all that passion to stop Aganond, so look at it as an advantage."

She smiled at me. "Did Leona tell you to say that?"

"No. But I can have her talk some sense into you too if you need it."

"I can't imagine she'd do a better job. There's still one thing that worries me."

"What's that?"

"What happens after? If Gregor is right, the Empire is after me. The admiral might even know and he's just using me for this conflict. But what's he going to do with me after that? I want to run, but I have to finish this. And I have to finish it so bad, I can't even concentrate on making a plan to run. But I need one, right?"

"You do. And you'll get there. If it's true, the Zealots ran from the Empire before, even though it was to serve it better. You aren't conditioned to avoid that, you just can't see the future to plan around it. There's too much uncertainty."

"Maybe you're right," she said, sounding less than convinced.

"Just in case, I'll be thinking of a plan, okay?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I already have my eye on a future, and you, my dear, are in it. I'm making that future happen, just wait and see."

"And focus on the present."

"That's actually better than just waiting."

"You are so right," she said. She hopped back onto the bed and grabbed the noise generator off the ceiling, slipping it away inside a pocket. "Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"I think it's about time we talked with the admiral directly."

"Will they even let us on the bridge?"

"Darling, I'm Molly Kilk. You think they're going to stop me?"
CHAPTER 19

* * *

T'vance

* * *

Our ethereal steeds plodded silently onward towards the marker I'd created at Aganond's gate. We rode single file, with me at the lead and Rubo at the tail. The Navigators stared intently at everything, even looking through their sextants at the horizon. I'm glad they were.

"I just saw a person!" one whispered loudly, pointing to our left. "Maybe two hundred paces. Is that normal?"

"No. What did they look like?" I asked.

"I only got a brief glimpse before he got lost behind some doors. But he had robes like yours, white with the little colorful tags."

"I have a bad feeling about this," Rubo said.

"Lead us over to where you saw him."

I shifted my vision to see the ethereal nature of things, which if I haven't mention it is a bit disorienting to do for any length of time. Nothing looks quite like it should, but I can make out people and doors, including invisible people. I didn't see anyone invisible yet, but I kept looking even after we'd been led to spot.

I was about to ask Karstia to do a past vision on the area, but found she was already concentrating on just that.

"He's a Farok, same robes. One of Aganond's higher arcanists. I don't think he saw us, even though we're not that far off in a big line of horses. At least he isn't acting like it. Oh, he's in a trance or something. His eyes aren't even open. He's carrying something, its like a backpack but made of metal. Seems heavy, but he isn't struggling with it."

"Should we follow him?" Rubo asked.

"No," Brother Dagar said. "This is a distraction. It's a thread fate sent to lead us astray."

"It would be nice to know what the hell he's doing," I said, trying to sound calm. In reality, my stomach was doing cartwheels. The implications of Aganond having direct access to the Ethereal Plane were rushing through my head.

Dagar sighed. "You will follow him to a door. He will go through it. And you won't follow, so you won't know where it goes. We'll have wasted an hour or two to learn what we already know. Aganond can use the ethereal plane and is using it for some unknown bad."

"You don't know everything," Karstia said. "Now shut up and let me finish. I'm reworking the vision to follow the backpack." Her eyes looked far away and her forehead wrinkled. "What the hell? I can't go back further? The ethereal plane must cut it off somehow. I can only follow it to when he entered. But there he is. Lords, there's dozens of them! They're all the same, same robes, same metal packs."

"Dozens?!"

"Fifty-two to be exact," she said. "They aren't in trances. Not here. None of them are talking, though. Say something, damn it!"

"She could lead us to their entry gate," Rubo suggested.

"Not worth it," I said. "Dagar's right there. It's just a gate we won't go through. I could mark it for later reference, but we could do that later, too."

"Only if we can pick up the trail again," Rubo said.

"Good point. I'll mark this gate then. That way we can't forget where he was."

Rubo frowned. "You're making assumptions about how time works in this place. I think we know better than to trust that we can ever come back to this event."

"They're still not talking," Karstia continued, oblivious to us. "But one is taking off his metal pack. There's a panel that opens. There's arinyark inside, but I can't see much. There's a panel of metal with a couple of glowing red lights and something that looks like a button. That's all I can see, and now he's closed it up and is leaving the area. Others are leaving, too. Their eyes are closed now."

"Is there nothing else you can see? You can't get a vision on the purpose of the metal case?"

She shook her head. "I'd need to touch the item for that."

"Do you have a theory?" Aja asked.

"No. It feels like a weapon, though," she said. "But I don't think it's one that will be used against us. The packs include arinyark, which tells me they are heading somewhere without magic."

I nodded. "My thinking exactly. If we have a chance to tell someone about this we will, but there's little we can do without jeopardizing our mission. Let's move on."

"No, T'vance. I don't agree," Rubo said.

I sighed. "What would you have us do?"

"Send someone after one of them."

"Through a gate to an unknown place without magic? That's a one way trip, my friend."

"Probably, but not necessarily," he argued. "Look, if this is his plan, his big plan, it's happening now. Killing him won't stop this. Maybe going through the gate means you don't come back. Maybe that's true. But maybe it's worth that."

"Worth it to whom?" I asked. "They're going somewhere without magic, that means worlds run by the Empire Doogan's talked about, worlds perfectly capable of defending themselves."

"Worth it to me," he said. "There's a commonality to every dark insidious plan I've seen cooked up by the Unlife. I never fully understand them and it's never good when they win. Never. So I'll go, because I'm the only one who stands a chance of coming back. And we don't have a lot of time to debate it if you are going to keep Dagar's time table."

"But Rubo, you're an illusionist, going somewhere without magic," Karstia said. "You won't be a threat and you won't be coming back," Karstia said.

"Yes I will, and yes I will," Rubo replied confidently. Then, a bit more humbly he asked, "T'vance, can I borrow your pouch?"

"You want to take your own arinyark!" I said, feeling stupid for not considering it. His idea suddenly seemed less insane. Rubo knew the spell to gate himself back into the ethereal plane, if he could get access to enough power. There was only one problem, I didn't have my pouch.

"I wish I could help you," I said. "I left everything back at home. Besides, I'm not so sure it will even work there. We've never tried this. Aganond's arinyark might be different."

"I know, it's a risk. Still, my gut tells me it will work. Anyone else have arinyark? Navigators? I'm accepting donations."

The Navigators looked at each other then produced three items made of arinyark: a bracelet of braided wire, a broad flat ring, and a belt buckle. Rubo took them, looking at them with great interest. He held the items briefly and his eyes looked distant like he was counting money in his head.

"Is it enough for a gate spell?" I asked.

"And a bit more," he said. Then he turned back to the Navigators. "These will do. Thank you," he told them, bowing slightly. He slipped the bracelet and ring on his left wrist and ring finger and put the buckle into his belt pouch.

"You sure about this, Rubo?" I asked him.

"Sure enough to do it."

"Okay. Karstia, lead us to his exit gate," I said.

We began moving the line again, weaving through doors along a path only Karstia could see.

"Dagar, is this going to make us late?"

Dagar shrugged. "I think it only mattered that we entered when we did. If this was meant to be, it has already been factored in."

"And now you think this is meant to be? Not something to lead us astray?"

"What can I say? Rubo's logic has moved me as much as his passion. It might even be that we were meant to cross paths, and that our eventual exit time into Farokis is the unimportant detail."

He was too casual about it, a trait that never ceased to bother me. But he was probably right. Fate has a strange way of working things out. At the same time, I took some small satisfaction that he was wrong about the significance of the event.

We passed many gates, traveling what seemed like two miles before Karstia called out for me to halt. She dismounted and examined the area before declaring, "This is it."

Rubo jumped off his mount and presented Karstia with his knapsack. "Things that shouldn't be lost forever," he said. "Just in case."

She hooked the pack with hers, then jumped off her own ethereal steed and hugged him close.

"If the magic fails and you can't return, remember our planet is known to them as Glemux. There are always other ways to get home."

"I've been reminding myself the same thing, over and over," he said.

I jumped down myself. "If he's bringing arinyark, it's for a purpose," I told him. "If you can get him to use the power for defense, or anything else for that matter, it might be a foil in itself."

"Sound advice. Still, I plan on foiling him in a much more dramatic fashion."

"I'm sure," I said, smiling knowingly at him. "Good luck, old friend. May the Lords be with you."

"And you, T'vance," he said. He stepped close to the gate and looked over our whole group. "Good luck to all of you!"

Then he turned and looked into the soft blue glow of the gate before him, steeling himself to step through. It was a hard thing, walking into the unknown. He took a deep breath, then stepped through. For a brief moment the gate flashed and I saw through to the other side, to a room of metal walls and flashing lights. Then the door turned opaque again and Rubo was gone.

"I've seen him with the same look," Karstia said.

"What?" I asked, not realizing I'd been staring after him so long.

"When you've headed out on a dangerous solo mission," she explained.

"Seems like everyone's life is on the line this time," I said. "I'm sure I'll be staring after you the same way when we split up on Farokis."

"I'm sincerely touched to think so," she said. "But all this worry will seem silly when we're toasting our success at the Cold Barley Soup Kitchen."

I grinned. "That's not where we're celebrating."

"Oh? I thought you liked that place. Where then?"

"I do like that place, but not for a celebration of this magnitude. I have just the place in mind, though."

"A surprise? I like that. Something to look forward to."

We got on our mounts and began moving back towards the gate to Farokis. Fera nudged close to me as we rode.

"You're going to tell me, though, right?" she asked.

"Now what fun would that be? This surprise is more for you than anyone."

"Really? In that case, I think I know where it is."

"I doubt it," I said.

"Wager? Winner gets a full body massage?"

"Deal."

I left the ethereal plane alone this time, invisible and alone. The plateau was dark, hot and windy, just like I remembered it. But there was a new smell, like something had been burning, but with a spiciness as if someone had thrown a bag of pipe weed in with the fire. There was no smoke mind you, the scent just permeated the air. It was very different than a forest fire, I'd just been in one of those, and I saw no light from flames. In short it didn't concern me, but I found it both curious and somehow fitting. In some poetic way, perhaps our purging of his forces by fire on Kulthea was reflected there.

As far as my other senses could tell, the area was still clear. There wasn't a Troq or any other animal on the plateau, or a dark ship in the sky, which was well lit by the smallish silver moon. The sound of insects buzzing in the nearby jungle reminded me life wasn't very far off. Somewhere in there were a few thousand, or even million Troqs. But on the rocky platform, we were relatively safe.

I ran quickly to the entrance of the mines, and a few feet to the side of the entrance and cast my spell to create a gateway back into the Ethereal plane, our immediate escape route. Then I listened at the mine entrance, content with the quiet coming from within, and moved back to the exit point.

Fera emerged next, her graceful form rolled off to one side and ended in a crouch, with both kaltas out and ready. For all her stealth, her white robes stood out dramatically.

"We're clear," I whispered.

Fera nodded in my direction. "It's bloody hot, even at night. Reminds me of home."

I dropped my invisibility and stepped closer. "It's far worse by day, there's all the humidity without the fog to mask out the brightness of the sun."

"And I'm wearing about three times as much clothing as I used to back in Gûl."

"A travesty on many levels."

Brother Dagar came next, with Aja and Karutana close behind him. Dagar looked confident and relaxed. He smiled at seeing the night around us and looked upwards, searching for the moon which I'd already found hanging low in the eastern sky. He smiled broader at seeing it, and stepped out of the way of the door to kneel and whisper a prayer.

Aja and Karutana seemed less at ease. Aja came out with her axe in hand and peered towards the entrance to the mine system with enough interest that I found myself staring along with her, though I couldn't make out anything of concern. Karutana joined Dagar on the ground, with an almost frantic air about him, as if the spirits grew angry with each second he didn't acknowledge them.

The Navigators and Karstia emerged last. Karstia looked around curiously. Like most of the others, she'd never seen the plateau even though she'd spent two weeks on Farokis. The Navigators both pulled their sextants from their hips and began looking through them and murmuring to one another in high elven, a language I didn't understand in the least.

"We should move out quickly," Karstia said. "Are you getting a lay of the land?"

One of the Navigators put his sextant down long enough to respond. "Not yet. It will take a few moments at least. The flows here are very strange." Then turned back to his partner.

"Strange isn't even the right word," the other said, his sextant never leaving his eye. "I think if anything this is working too well, and it's throwing us off. I'm not use to seeing such straight trajectories."

"Agreed, but the flows are so sparse here, like big clouds instead of rivers."

"Less disruptions. I've gotten the same lock six times. I think perhaps it's just accurate."

"Agreed. I'll validate by short jump." He disappeared, leaving a green glow in his wake, then reappeared ten seconds later in the exact same spot. "Validated."

They turned and stood shoulder to shoulder, finally addressing us. "Moving about magically should be quite easy. I've picked a target point within your parameters, Karstia. We are ready when you are."

Brother Dagar stood up and walked closer. "I am ready. The night is with us."

Karutana stood as well, but still looked uneasy. "The spirits have many tales to tell. It is difficult to understand them all. But something is amiss. The creatures that dwell here are strangely absent, and the spirits do not understand why."

"How long have they been gone?" I asked.

"Two days, if I'm getting their meaning right."

"This is a large chaotic ecosystem," Karstia said. "There are so many explanations that don't impact our plan."

"The spirits are not twittering over a migration, or a forest fire, lady of Minars," he said. "This is significant."

"Follow one," I told Karstia. "It's like two spells for you."

"Two spells? It's six spells, thank you," she replied. "But I'll do it." She closed her eyes and was quiet for a moment. Then said, "Finding a Troq. There's one. Okay, now let's follow you. Forward. He hears something. They all do. They look up, look down into the valley. They're moving. Gods there are so many of them!

"Down into the valley, but west and north, past where the jungle ends. There's a huge bonfire. I mean huge, a hundred feet across at least. Troqs are all around it. There are so many I can't even fathom it. Hundreds of thousands of them, clustered together tightly.

"Now the fire has come alive, like one of Rubo's grand illusions. The fire is a giant Troq, arms outstretched, gesturing wildly. I don't get sound with this, and I doubt I'd understand what they were saying, but the Fire-Troq is talking to them. They're responding enthusiastically enough. The whole mass of them seems to be shifting about, as if they're dancing."

Karstia suddenly gasped and her hands went over her mouth. "Lords!"

"What?! What happened?"

"He killed them," she whispered. "They're all dead, in one pulse. It just rippled through the hordes of them and they all collapsed. Then the bonfire died, and standing there on a stack of smoldering wood was Aganond. His eyes were black as coal and he was smiling like a lunatic. Then the bodies of the dead Troqs burst into flames, all of them, all at once. And Aganond just spun around, looking out over the sea of fire around him laughing."

"What does it mean?" Aja asked.

"It means a ritual," Fera concluded. "The biggest god damn ritual I've ever heard of."

"More death than I've ever seen," Karstia said. "And I fought in the Wars. So much power..."

"On the bright side, we don't have to worry about running into Troqs," I added.

Karstia glared at me. "Do you even appreciate the magnitude of what has happened here?!"

"Hey, I'm just filling in for Rubo. You know he'd have said it."

"No, T'vance, I think even Rubo would have held his tongue."

"Rubo doesn't know how to do that," Fera said. "But I'm not going to argue it. I feel much more motivated to end this son of a bitch. Rituals take time, sometimes many days. This was two days back, so he might still be working it."

"The gods favor our timing," Dagar said. I looked over to find him examining a moonstone. "This was whole when we left," he explained. "It is cracked now, but still holding together."

"Like our plan," I said.

"Like our plan," he agreed.

"Can you not see what he is doing now?" one of the Navigators asked Karstia. "You are a seer, after all."

"Following a Troq is one thing. I'll not scry Aganond again," Karstia said. "I know I just saw him in a vision, but the intent was different."

He nodded, seeming to understand. "In that case, the half-elf female is right, timing is critical."

"The name's Fera," she replied coldly. "And if you call me half of anything again, it will be the last thing you do."

The Navigator raised his hands defensively. "I meant no offense."

"Some taken," she replied. "But forget it, I still like you better than anyone else on this cursed planet. Come on, T'vance. We've got a job."

"The gate is only a few feet to the right of the mine opening," I told them. "I'm sure Aja knows where. For all intents and purposes we'll be completely out of reach until this is over. Good luck all of you, whatever you're doing."

Dagar followed us as we moved away from the rest of the group. "I brought something for you," he told me quietly, swinging his pack off his shoulder and undoing the straps.

"And here I didn't get you anything."

"No need. I honestly didn't know who would get this. I figured I'd know when it was time. But here we are, and I still have no idea. But without actually knowing, my heart tells me you will need it more than I."

He reached into his pack and produced a bracer made of smooth, silvery metal. It was almost featureless, just a smooth irregular tube of metal with two small recessed circles. I took it cautiously.

"It's light, and very elegant. But I was really trying to keep magic items off me."

"Well you don't have to worry there. It isn't magical. The inner button is the release, the outer one turns it on."

I pressed the inner button and the bracer sprung open along a seam I hadn't been able to make out before. Once open, I could see the hinges on the inside as well as the padded black leather lining. I slipped it over my left arm and squeezed it closed. It was big for my forearm, but the moment it closed I felt the inner lining grow until the fit was snug. It was like magic, except Dagar was right in saying it wasn't. I double checked and found no hint of magic.

"Okay, now what the hell is it? And what does turning it on do?"

"You saw the Cloud Lords deflecting the blasts from the Vessel with their shields right?"

"Right."

"It wasn't their shields, not the ones you saw on their arms anyway. It was this. Think of it as a First Era shield spell, minus the spell."

"But how did you get it?"

"I saved Lord Wilm's life. Consider it on loan. I'd like to return it if I can."

"He loaned it to you?"

He looked down shyly.

"You stole it?" Fera gasped. "You sneaky son of a bitch."

"Stole?" Dagar replied, looking hurt. "I specifically said I'd like to return it. I think that safely puts it in the realm of borrowing. But that does mean you have to make it back. I'm sure you wouldn't want to make me a thief by getting yourselves killed."

"Of course not. That would be worse than the dying part."

"I couldn't agree more. Good luck, you two."

Though I'd planned not to get anywhere close to Aganond while using magic, I'd never really worked out exactly how close would be too close. Was it a mile? A hundred yards? I really wasn't sure. I knew my own spells were rather limited in detections. Anything outside a couple hundred feet was beyond my reach. But I knew Karstia could sense me miles away if she needed to. Still, it seemed unlikely any passive detection would be so grand, even from Aganond.

I debated it in my head for a few moments and made a decision. If he was good enough to detect me teleporting to the outskirts of his city, he was probably good enough to detect we'd arrived on the plateau. I decided he probably wasn't.

"We're jumping in," I told Fera. "We'll be on the outskirts, still at least a mile from his palace. Be ready. I can't guarantee we'll be alone."

She pulled out both her kaltas and held them ready. "You sure about the spell?"

"I think it's a small risk, smaller than the risk we take by delaying this by wasting three hours hiking down through the jungle to get to him."

She pursed her lips, considering it, then nodded. "Okay. But won't my Kriegora harness block the teleportation spell?"

I cursed under my breath. "Well yes, it will do that. I hate to say this, but I think you're going to have to take it off. We'll rely on the Viirtakai."

"You sure? I didn't have to take it off to pass through your gate spell."

"That's different. That is a spell that creates a real portal, as opposed to a pure spell that relocates you."

"Oh, of course. I should have known that. Okay, but we're coming back for it. And I'm not giving those Navigators a cheap thrill, either."

I glanced over at the Navigators who were getting everyone else together for their own jump. I wondered where they were going and how they even knew to go there, but shook it off. I led Fera into the mine entrance, where I knew we'd have privacy. While she disrobed, I tried not to get caught up watching her and focused on my own spells.

First, I changed into a nondescript Farok. Then I changed my mental signature to match, hiding with it my true race and age, among other more subtle cues Aganond might look for. By the time I was ready, Fera was stashing the harness in a crevice near the base of the cave.

I took Fera's arm lightly in one hand and cast.

The world spun and the usual feelings of vertigo rushed over me. It was a fleeting sensation that was gone by the time we materialized on top of the wall. I chose a place I'd been before, beside the western spire next to the western gate, overlooking the landing pad Aganond had erected to welcome Anarchy.

When we'd hidden there before, we were masked with illusions to appear as part of the wall. We had nothing of the sort anymore, but it was night and we arrived already crouching. I turned my head quickly to examine our surroundings, noting a Farok posted to the wall who had unfortunately already noticed us.

He rushed over, almost earning himself the roll of first victim. But Fera seemed to realize his intent wasn't hostile at the last moment, and let the sleeve of her robe fall over her kalta. She kept her face tucked inside the hood and stared forward.

"Sirs!" he whispered loudly, coming close and lowering himself. "Is there trouble?"

"Perhaps," I said. "It is unlikely, but we are being careful. Have you seen anything unusual?"

"No, sir," he replied. "Wait, is it the jungle that worries you? We were told to watch the sky."

"And yet you're talking to me," I said, cutting into him with sarcasm. It takes talent belittling someone whose just giving you useful information, but I've had practice.

"Sorry, sir. I'll get back to my patrol."

"Do that. I don't fault your vigilance, just do your job so I can do mine."

He nodded, scratched his head, and walked away from us, scanning the sky.

Fera leaned in close. "What the hell was that about?" she asked. She didn't speak a word of Iruaric.

"That was me, already being useful without magic."

"Cute," she said, poking me in the ribs. "Is he going to be getting reinforcements?"

"Not yet. But he's been ordered to watch the sky. That makes me nervous. The last thing I want is to be here if the Empire comes calling."

"Agreed. So where to?"

"The palace," I said, pointing furtively in its direction.

Fera nodded. "You lead. You know where you're going and your face is more believable than mine."

"True. Forget race, even your gender gives you away. I still haven't seen a Farok female."

"Trust me, this hood is staying up."

We entered the nearest spire, but finding no stairs, had to back track to the spire on the other side of the wall from the guard we'd met shortly before. He did his best to ignore us, but I could tell he was still wanting to know what we seemed so concerned about. Probably making a wrong turn and having to backtrack didn't help lower his suspicion.

Luckily for us, the second tower had stairs spiraling down the inside. It also had a guard posted at the window, but he only gave us a curious look as we headed briskly down the stairs. I gestured to the window as we passed, hoping he'd stay focused on his task, and he didn't follow so it probably worked.

We didn't speak again until we'd left the tower at street level.

"Where is everyone?" Fera asked.

"It's night time," I explained.

"You think that explains it?"

"Not really. Something is going on. I just can't figure out what it is."

We made it past three blocks without seeing a single soul on the streets. Then, as we passed the third building we caught sight of a white robed Farok on the street a block north of us. He wore robes with colorful ties like ours, but fewer of them. He shouted at us and started running towards us.

"Not again," Fera muttered, stepping back and putting half of me between her and the stranger.

Like the first, he didn't seem to mean any harm. He ran up and was nearly out of breath when he got to us.

"Brothers!" he shouted. "I was away and missed the last Enrichment!"

"That's unfortunate," I said evenly.

"Unfortunate? It's tragic! What am I supposed to be doing?!"

"How is it you missed Enrichment?" I asked, studying him suspiciously. I was guessing that more colorful ties meant higher rank. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to agree. He narrowed his eyes and studied my face, then tried to get a look at Fera's, but she'd already turned and was carefully studying the sky.

"My reasons are legitimate and sanctioned. But who are you? You are not from Kora."

"No. If you'd been in Enrichment you wouldn't be wondering so many things."

"And if you were part of the solution you'd be helping me. Why are you being so evasive?" he asked, his voice deep. The words echoed in my head and I responded without even wanting to.

"Because we're trying to kill Aganond," I blurted out.

His eyes flew wide and he stepped back, grabbing at one of his colored ties and screaming, "Traitor!"

Click! Click!

Fera's kaltas reported as she fired twice. Both darts stuck into his chest, but to his credit he managed to finish pulling off an orange tie and utter a few quick words of a spell. He was probably proud of himself for working through the pain, but he quickly learned the hard way that the surface wounds were the least of his problems.

Energy filled the air, but instead of being directed at us as some horrific spell, it more or less grounded itself out on the tips of the kriegora inside his body. There was a bright flash and a shock wave that sent both Fera and I staggering backwards, but the force that hit him was easily ten times as strong. He flew back ten feet in the air, then hit the pavement and skidded another ten feet before finally coming to a stop.

He raised his head and shoulders with a great deal of effort, then collapsed backwards and was still.

Fera rushed to the body, plucking out the darts and slipping them into her pocket.

"He yelled something bad right?"

"Traitor," I said.

"Figured it was something like that. We need to move."

"There's a door, let's stash the body inside."

We dragged the body quickly to the closest dormitory door, and left it as hidden as we could, which wasn't very hidden. Then we rushed out the north door. I wanted to adjust our course in case the body was discovered quickly, but Fera wouldn't have it.

"If the body's discovered, it won't help us to take even longer to get to Aganond," she said.

I didn't argue the point because she was probably right. So we headed out the north door, then immediately continued east towards the palace. We walked quickly, but didn't run or even jog. We had a facade to maintain after all.

As we got closer to the palace I couldn't help but wonder how we'd find him if he wasn't there. This planet, after all, was huge. Perhaps it was smaller than Kulthea, I couldn't really say, but even the continent of Kulthea I lived on was sufficiently huge to make finding a single person virtually impossible without the help of magic.

"Have you considered what happens if Aganond isn't inside his palace?" I asked Fera.

"About a hundred times," she said. "I don't suppose you picked up any good location spells in the last few weeks?"

"Not even any bad ones."

"Figured as much. At this point, we'd probably have to abort or do something especially crazy to get him to come back. Waiting patiently was taken off the table the second I offed that last Farok."

"No argument there. What sort of craziness did you have in mind?"

She smirked. "I swear you're the only person I know who would say that so eagerly. I don't rightly know, lover. Set his palace on fire or something? You know more about him than I do. What do you think would get his attention?"

"Fire again? By the lords, Fera, are you some kind of pyromaniac? Not fire. I don't think you could get anything in this cursed city to catch fire even if you wanted to. I'll try to think of something just in case, but despite my eagerness, nothing is coming to mind. Anything we might do could just as easily summon a dozen Vessels as it could summon Aganond."

"Okay. I'll just focus all my positive energy on making him be there."

The emptiness of the city was odd. I knew it was the middle of the night, but I still expected to see more activity. As unsettling as it was, it also offered a level of comfort. We didn't have to work hard to stay out of sight. All that ended when we came around the corner of the last building before the courtyard surrounding the palace.

There were people there, dozens of them, maybe as many as a hundred. They were all dressed like Fera and I, and they were posted looking outwards in groups around the only three entry points I could see. I didn't know if they'd seen us or not, but we had little choice but to keep moving, so we did. But instead of going towards the palace, we instead slipped into the building we'd just rounded.

It was a dormitory like the rest, so we hoped it didn't seem odd to those who might have seen us to be walking into it. But after we'd gotten into the lobby, I realized this particular dorm was different from the rest. In addition to the staircase leading to the upper floors, it also had one leading down.

"A few of them saw us," Fera said. "But I don't think they thought anything of it."

"That's good. But them being there is bad. He's already on the defense. Does he know we're coming somehow?"

"Divinations? Dreams? Scrying? It's all possible. But I don't think we should jump to conclusions. The guards at the gate were ordered to watch the sky. Perhaps this too is to protect against some other threat."

"Maybe," I said, hardly convinced. "I'm not sure how much it matters. Guarding against ships or us, they are still guarding. I'm too close to risk spells and not brave enough to try to pass so many."

"The last building didn't have stairs down, did it?"

"No. I noticed that, too. This is the first building I've seen like this."

"Can you divine? It's not like a spell, so Aganond isn't likely to notice."

"I would, but I don't even have my bag. I wouldn't know where to begin without it."

Fera nodded, with a bit of a smile. "Exploration it is then."

She headed down the stairs and I followed. Though the stairs were the same as the ones leading up, these had a layer of dust on them, as if no one had used them in a long time. One flight down, words were carved into the stone walls reading, "Access with the Lord's Permission Only." The stairs continued past, but I had Fera stop and read the sign to her.

"The Lord's permission?" Fera asked. "I assume that means Aganond?"

"That's what I figured too. Let me take a look."

I slipped into second sight, studying the wall, the writing, the stairs up and down. There was magic, to be sure, but nothing special. It appeared the same as the other buildings, magic for the purpose of preserving and reinforcing the walls, nothing more. Certainly I didn't see anything that looked like a magical trap.

"Looks clean," I said. I went to step past her but she grabbed my arm and stopped me. "What?"

"Magically clean, perhaps, but I have a bad feeling."

"You don't think he'd use mundane traps, do you?"

"He might. What do you make of that little spot on the wall?" she asked, pointing at the top of the wall just past the landing.

I followed her finger and could just make it out, a small round mark on the wall that was a bit more reflective than the rest of the stone. It was no larger than the tip of my pinky, and hard to see in the dim magical light that filtered down from the ceiling.

"I don't know, but I'm confident it isn't some accidental imperfection."

"Meaning it's a trap?"

"That might be too strong a term. It might just be an alarm."

"I think that's even worse," she muttered. She paced back and forth on the steps whispering, "Think, think, think." Then she stopped and sat down on the step above the landing and put her face in her hands. Finally she looked up. "I don't think this is going to work."

"What part?"

"All of it. The plan, as we planned it, won't work. I didn't anticipate this."

"Well how could we?"

"We should have, but that's beside the point. Magical traps I was ready for, but mundane traps using technology I don't even understand? I don't even know where to begin."

"So we find another way in," I said.

"You know it isn't that easy. And there might be traps inside the palace too for all we know. Let's face it, we got lucky noticing this one."

"We did. But there is an upside. Maybe setting off this trap is exactly the sort of thing that would get Aganond's attention."

She chuckled. "Sure. He can show up to help scrape our bodies off the floor. I think we're going to have to deviate from our plan. I need your spells and there's no way around that. Some are more obvious than others, right? Informational spells or passive spells are very subtle, at least."

"That's true. I could get an intuition of what happens if we take the stairs. It's about as passive as a spell gets."

"How far into the future? Two minutes?"

"About that, yes. Does that match your dossier on me?"

"Actually, no. I'd written down one minute." She smiled. "Just cast the spell."

She didn't have to twist my arm. "Get ready and move back, just in case."

She nodded and crept back up the stairs, stopping halfway to the top. She had a kalta in one hand and the little anti-magic device in the other.

I worked the spell and looked forward in time, walking down the steps while Fera stayed behind. When I'd reached the halfway point a section of the wall ahead of me faded out of view and flashed blue from within. Then I felt myself struck in the chest by something I couldn't see, and saw myself flying up the stairs. My body smashed into the stone at the top landing and everything went black.

I visibly jumped in the real world. That was death, no doubt, and I'd almost walked right into it.

"You good?" she asked.

I was breathing fast and my heart was racing. I didn't feel any pain, but the images haunted me. "Just saw myself die, but yeah."

She stepped down and put a hand on my shoulder. I shook it off irritated. "I said I'm fine," I snapped.

Fera raised her hands defensively. She looked irritated, but I didn't think it was directed at me. She also looked concerned, and that was towards me.

"You know I'm part elven, right? I don't like the term half-elf, I think you've gotten that, but there's no denying I have both human and elven lineage."

"I know that, but what does it have to do with this?"

"Nothing. Everything. Do you remember we once talked about growing old? About how with my elven blood I'd outlive you?"

"It was in Gûl, in my hotel room, you were naked and we'd been up on gort all night. You didn't have the arrow tattoo back then. I can close my eyes and still remember it like it was yesterday. So yes."

She took a moment to give me a warm smile before continuing, "Well it's not exactly like that. Have you ever heard the myth that half-elves are either mortal or immortal, and that it's their choice?"

"I've heard it. It's a myth, like you said. Which is good, because it doesn't make any sense to have a choice in whether or not your body ages. Fera, we're sitting on steps less than a hundred paces from Aganond. I want to listen, but could you get to the point?"

"It isn't a myth, but it isn't exactly a choice either. At least not a conscious one. If I stayed in Gûl, I'd probably live forever, save getting myself killed, which admittedly I'd probably do eventually. But that's not about choice, it's more about environment. Being around elves tricks my body into behaving elven. Being around humans, around you, it makes my body feel like it should age."

"Truly? How did I not know that?" Some part of me didn't like knowing it.

"Most people don't. Stop looking introspective, I'm not sad about it, I don't regret it. And I'm sure as hell not telling you so you'll feel bad about it."

"So why are you telling me?"

"I should have told you before. We're just neither of us very good at this sort of thing. I'm telling you this now because it says two things: I love you, T'vance, and I'm prepared to die."

She didn't even give me time to respond before continuing. "We have two choices here. We can retreat, wait, and observe. It's the smart thing to do. If I didn't think time was important, it's what we'd do, no question. The other option is we move fast, but you've going to have to work a lot of magic, and we don't really know what that might do."

"It's your operation," I told her.

"Yes, and you've been great about not trying to run it. But I don't want to decide this on my own, so just say what I know you're going to say."

"I have a lot to say actually. You know, I've been trying to put my finger on this itch I've had in my brain. And I think I figured something out," I said. "The Pendant fucks with my head. Probably not to the degree the Crown does to it's wearer, but I'm different with it on."

"How so?"

"I haven't really worked it all out, but for one thing I'm less rash. When was the last time I did something rash? It seems too long ago."

"Funny, T'vance. You do rash things all the time."

"I mean really rash."

"Is this your long way of telling me you want to go ahead with my 'move fast' option?"

"Well yes, and also you said you loved me and it sort of threw me."

"Why? You say it to me all the time."

"What? No I don't. I still haven't even said it to you."

She blushed, which is so rare it was a treat to see. "No, I guess not," she said. "But you think it all the time."

"You read thoughts then?"

"More like emotions. But it doesn't take an empath to see you adore me." She gave me a flirty grin. "Now seriously, can we get onto the doing something rash? I really want to get to the part where I get to take you home."

"Okay. I vote rash."

"I knew you would. So along those lines, we can either jump past these traps and see what's below, or you can turn us invisible and we can sneak past the guards at the Palace entrance."

"Fuck dealing with traps. I don't care if the curiosity kills me, the traps would get me first. But I thought we were talking rash?"

"That's not rash enough for you? What did you have in mind, oh reckless one?"

"There are guards lined up outside the palace, so it's a safe bet Aganond is inside. He's probably in his throne room. Let's check. Do you have a coin?"

"Sure?" she said, fishing in her pockets she pulled out a silver coin stamped with the Sel-kai seal. She dropped it in my hand and took a step back. "Tell me you aren't putting this all on a guess spell?"

"You said rash," I reminded her. The guess spell is sort of a weak form of divination. It encouraged some random event to more likely match reality, but it hardly guaranteed it. Still, it was better than nothing. "Heads, he's in his throne room. Okay?"

She nodded, but didn't look a bit comfortable about it.

I tossed it up, caught it, flipped it, and held out my hand so we could both see. The coin showed heads.

"Heads," she said. "So your guess is that he's in his throne room."

"That's right, the coin's too, so let's assume it's true."

"Sounds wise," she mocked.

"I killed the high priest of Yaarth in his throne room. Have I ever told you how?"

"No. I've heard Rubo's version."

"We're pinned down on the level below, in cover, wracking our brains how to advance up the stairs without losing half our people. We'd just downed a pair of Messengers and a priest, but the priests from the level above were still throwing spells down at us. I went invisible and doored up.

"There were a dozen people up there, three Messengers and the rest priests, including his highness. I stepped in, put one kynac through his eye and the other his heart, then shifted out just in time to avoid the crossbow fire."

She nodded along, appreciatively. "Rubo's version lacks the details, but he makes up for it by exaggerating."

"Sounds about right," I agreed. "We use the same plan for Aganond, with a few minor adjustments. He is a K'ta'viiri after all. You obvious have to come with me, we'll need to bring our own distraction, and our getaway won't be as swift."

"Stop rambling," she said, pushing my shoulder playfully. "Specifics."

"Here goes. I turn us invisible, summon a demon – the biggest thing I can handle, and jump all three of us directly into Aganond's throne room. If he's there, and I guess he is, we turn on the Viirtakai and jump him. A second later, he'll be dead, and we'll just have to flee to the nearest place we can get twenty seconds or so of quiet time for me to teleport us out. If I've guessed wrong, at least we'll have the demon as a distraction. It might even draw Aganond back to the throne room."

She nodded. "That's crazy."

"Well sure. But is it too crazy?"

Fera considered for a moment, then shrugged. "Maybe it's just crazy enough."

"It's your op, remember?"

"I remember. My op, your plan. Can you do it here?"

"No. I need more space for the circle. We can use the lobby, though."

"The Palace guards might see it. Could you put up some illusions first?"

"I could mask the windows between us with an illusion screen. It's a fast spell and probably worth the extra twenty seconds of surprise it might buy us."

We worked through a few more details, critical things like where to retreat or regroup if separated. We'd already done so much planning, it was easy to adapt. Then I followed Fera back up the stairs.

"I'll reload while you get everything ready," she said. She sat down and began carefully opening the kalta. It hadn't occurred to me what a slow process reloading might be, but each of her darts with tipped with lethal poison so it was nothing to rush.

I cast the screen first, which made the lobby appear unchanged from the outside, even if we were to walk into it. Then I placed an invisibility spell on myself and waited for Fera to finish before doing the same to her.

Finally came the summoning. I assumed it would work, but in retrospect it was a rather bold assumption. I don't actually know how demonic planes relate to the physical world, and we were now somewhere very different from anywhere I'd summoned to before. Would demons even be reachable? And if they were, would the same demons be available? I didn't know.

To be honest, I still don't know the answer to the last one. I worked the spell slowly, taking about four times as long as required to make sure everything was perfect. The circle began glowing on the floor before I'd even finished, broad purple lines, raised glyphs and swirls that were still foreign to me, no matter how often I'd seen them. I felt Fera shifting her weight beside me and heard strange dark whispers from all corners of the room, the language of demons, the language of calling.

I said the name, the true name of a demon I was familiar with. I called to it across the universe, "Hothrogiri!". I asked it to come. A long moment passed, then I felt a tug and the walls of the circle shimmered and flexed. The ground beneath the circle seemed to fade, revealing dark clouds swirling beneath the now translucent stone. The smell of sulfur wafted up to my nose.

"Is that normal?" Fera asked. She was holding the Viirtakai like a kill switch.

"No, but please don't press that. The last thing I need is a demon and no circle to control it."

Suddenly a puff of black smoke was billowed up, rolling out over the edges of the circle. Then all at once it was sucked back in to form a dense black humanoid golem fifteen feet tall. The skin looked like black clay, which is to say solid. A faint tendril of purple energy coiled up its leg, connecting it to my circle. Whatever it was, it wasn't a Hothrogiri. I'd never seen anything like it before.

It turned its head down to me. It had a featureless face, but small green eyes glowed from within the head. He didn't seem to have any problem seeing me, despite being invisible. As it spoke, I heard no sound, but a jet of smoke spat from the mouth of the thing. The words came in my head.

"Pathetic, insignificant creature. How dare you call me... here."

He seemed particularly displeased with the location. I couldn't blame him, his head was close to the ceiling. But most demons you summon aren't all that happy about it. I didn't feel the need to explain myself, and the spell certainly didn't require it. So I ignored him.

"What did he say?" Fera asked.

"The usual grumpy demon stuff," I said. "Demon thing, what's your name?"

"Nice try, mortal," he hissed more smoke.

"Fine, let's just call you Smokey. You're coming with us and you're going to attack the most powerful thing that isn't us. Got it?"

"You may demand one task. I shall destroy it, and if I get the chance, you."

"Good luck with that." I turned back to Fera. "You ready?"

"Ready," she replied, clutching a kalta in one hand and the Viirtakai in the other.

I worked the teleportation spell without hurry, picturing the inside of Aganond's throne room. I waved the normal rules of having to thoroughly study a place before teleporting there. I had a new theory that almost dying somewhere was enough to make it stick in my memory. I was pretty sure that was true, but I may have just been rationalizing to bolster my impulsive plan. I picked a place for each of us, with Smokey in front of the throne and Fera and I behind it, on opposite sides.

As the last lines escaped my lips, I felt a tingle rushing up my spine. I saw Fera tense. Then I felt the magic release, the world spin, and everything lost focus.

My eyes adjusted quickly to the new place, the new lighting, the new depths. The good news was that I guessed correctly. Aganond was there, right where I wanted him, presiding over a grand gathering of his arcanists in their colorfully accented robes. The bad news was that Smokey wasn't there.

For a moment I was at a loss. Of all our contingencies, we hadn't discussed what to do if our distraction didn't manifest. But I knew it was Fera's move to initiate things, so I just scanned the room and kept my nerves on edge.

The room was much like it'd seen it before the explosion, but packed with at least a hundred of Aganond's best and brightest Faroks. Most of them were on the audience floor, but a good dozen occupied each of the upper balconies that ran the length of the room. They were all staring at a large window floating in the center of the room which looked out into the blackness of space. There was something large and silver with lights in the center of that space, but couldn't quite make out what it was.

I absorbed this all in a second. Aganond was speaking, the crowd was listening. He took a deep breath to continue. Then he heard what I heard, the faint echo of the pop in the air caused by us teleporting in. He paused, unsure.

Then Smokey appeared directly in front of the screen, with a clap of thunder and cloud of acrid smoke. One of his featureless hands connected to a long dark shaft from some sort of giant flail. The shaft and spiked ball seemed solid, while the chain was made from smoke.

The room erupted in sound as the arcanists shouted alerts, but one loud booming voice drowned them all out.

"You!" Aganond shouted. "Without a summons?!"

Smokey wasted no time responding. He took two giant steps forward and swung the flail back and down towards Aganond, who made a slight gesture with one hand. The spike ball struck something unseen and bounced harmlessly away. Then Aganond swept his other hand to the side and Smokey's enormous body was tossed like a rag doll across the room, smashing into one of the supporting pillars.

The pillar cracked from the impact and dust and bits of stone rained down from the ceiling. Smoke blasted out from Smokey's mouth as the wind was knocked out of him and the ball of his flail continued backwards, crashing loudly into the wall.

Then I felt someone grab hold of my body. Before I could even react, I was flying through the air, flung by some great unseen hand. I slammed into the pillar across the room from Smokey, pain ripped through me, my invisible spell discharged, and all the air was forced from my lungs. I tried to breath, but the hand pressed against me, like some invisible constrictor.

"And you?!" he shouted, turning his eyes upon me. "T'vance Arain, under cloak or guise, I know you. Did you come alone? Just you and a stupid smoke lord?"

He swung around, but didn't react. Had he not seen Fera? For the first time it occurred to me that my spell might not have just failed to bring Smokey, it might have failed to bring Fera as well. I flashed seconds forward in my mind, the lack of air would make twinkling stars in my eyes, then blackness. But I wouldn't be dead. No, if Aganond was really mad, he'd make sure to have something far worse in store for me.

I glanced at the window hanging in the center of the room. The thing in the picture was something large, I imagined some kind of great space ship. Looking closer, I saw the glinting lines of Vessels hanging in space around it, some close, some far, there were dozens of them.

"He didn't come alone," I heard Fera's voice say.

Aganond turned to the left, tracking the sound. Then Fera appeared in the opposite direction. The anti-magic field flooded the room and the unseen hand released me.

Click, click! Click, click! Click, click!

One dart hit his neck, one his shoulder, one the small of his back, one the back of his upper arm, one his right wrist, and one missed entirely. The darts sunk into his flesh, they didn't bounce off, they didn't pass through. They tore into his body like anyone else. Aganond screamed like a man. The booming depths of his voice were gone.

He spun and thrust his hands towards Fera, screaming incantations that sent chills through me. He looked irate, panicked, confused.

At that point, I crumpled painfully to the floor.

Fera sunk four more darts into him, three in his chest one into his neck.

The crowd reacted. Many in the audience were shouting, some spells, some communication. They were trying to cast spells and it wasn't working. But those further away on the balconies were out of range and I saw flashes of magic as they cast spells that dissipated as they passed into the field. Then a plasma bolt passed through, and Fera ducked behind the throne just in time to avoid it.

Aganond collapsed, driving the crowd to a frenzy. Some ran out, as if they needed more than a hundred guys to take out Fera, or maybe they were just scared. Those on the balconies were running to get out of the field. Those on the floor began rushing the throne like a mob. They didn't have any weapons, but there were just so many of them!

I managed to pick myself up, which hurt so much my knees got weak. I took a pinch of gort to push through it, then activated the bracer Dagar had borrowed from the Cloud Lords. It vibrated slightly against my arm and the button I'd pressed glowed bright red. I guessed that meant it was working, so I held up that arm like it was a shield, crossed my fingers, and ran as fast as I could back towards Fera, which also hurt.

At about the same time, Smokey picked himself up, which didn't seem to bother him at all. He swung his flail angrily and sent three of Aganond's arcanists flying. Even the mob took pause at that. It was one thing to rush a single person, and another thing entirely to rush a giant. Smokey started rushing across the platform, swinging as he went. The Farok's scattered out of his way, or regretted not doing so.

Elemental bolt spells rained down on the platform from above. I saw plasma and fire, water and ice. Fera was hard to hit behind Aganond's throne, which was large and mostly stone. Some tried and failed, but more used their spells on more available targets like me and Smokey. I cringed through every deflection, but the Cloud Lord's shield held. Smokey just got hit, not that he seemed to care.

Fera, for her part, didn't stop firing. She reached around the throne and fired blindly towards the balcony. I don't know if she hit anything, but she was sure careful not to leave any part of herself exposed to incoming fire.

As we converged on Fera, I noticed an intense gleam in Smokey's eyes and realized what should have been obvious from the start. He didn't care about the Faroks and he didn't care about Aganond, at least not anymore. His eyes were trained on me.

"I am coming for you, master!"

Huge as he was, Smokey wasn't invincible. He'd been hit several times and was leaking smoke into the air like blood. The damage, and wading through the screaming, scrambling lower arcanists, was slowing him down enough that I knew I'd make it to Fera first.

"Fera! Turn it off!" I screamed, sliding behind the throne next to her.

She flipped the button and I felt the anti-magic field dissolve. Then I grabbed her hand and shifted us both to the nearest point on the balcony.

"On! On! On!" I urged.

She flipped the switch and the anti-magic field returned. I struggled to my feet and lumbered towards the higher arcanists at the far end of the balcony. I glanced back to track Smokey, who'd already found where we went and was charging after us. The balcony was maybe twenty feet up, tall for us, but short enough that he could reach us with his hands if he got close enough, and definitely in range of his flail.

I heard Fera fire another few shots around me, and saw two of the arcanists in front of us drop. Better yet, we'd gotten close enough that the field blocked their spells. Even those on the opposite balcony were now within the field and all magic in the room halted.

"Kaltas are empty," she said.

"Understood," I replied. Pulling both long knives, I shouted a battle cry and charged ahead.

Some of them fled through a passage leading away from the balcony, but four of them readied themselves for a fight, blocking our path. They crouched and put their hands up in poses that struck me as bad martial arts.

From behind us, Smokey's flail came down on the balcony, shaking the stone at our feet and collapsing a huge section behind us. I heard the collapse, but couldn't look to see how bad it was. It didn't matter, my path was set.

I dodged the first Farok's punch, and threw my shoulder into him as I passed, sinking both long knives into the man behind him despite his attempts at defense. The third swung and I ducked that. He hit his friend instead, the one I'd just stabbed, sending him careening over the side to the audience chamber below. He didn't have long to regret it before I sliced his throat, but something hit me in the process knocking me to the ground.

I shook it off and brought my weapons up to fend off the next strike, but it didn't come. Fera rushed between us towards the passage out, and for whatever reason he let her pass. As she did, she whipped her knife across his belly. He screamed and doubled over and I didn't waste a moment getting past him, following Fera down the stairs that led back to the ground level. I thought he'd probably live, but the huge crash as Smokey's flail destroyed what was left of the balcony suggested otherwise.

"Why the hell is he after you?" Fera asked. "Wait, this was route C, right?"

"Yeah, so left, right and take the third door."

"Got it," she said, checking around the corner before moving off. The Faroks who'd come before us were no where to be seen, but in this section the passages were short with many turns, so they could still have been close.

"And I think the anti-magic field did something to the summoning spell."

"Obviously," Fera replied, rolling her eyes at me.

She stopped at a door and listened, then pushed the lever and opened it slightly, like a well trained burglar – which at one point she was. Then she opened it and pulled me inside, then shut the door. I recognized the room as the room I was forced to wait in for Aganond.

"OK, switch it off."

She turned off the Viirtakai and I quickly put magical locks on both doors. Fera put her back into a corner, and leveled her kalta towards the door.

"Can you get Smokey off our tail?" she asked.

I concentrated on my summoning circle, which I could still feel active and working even though it was across the street. I had no idea how the spell and the anti-magic interacted, but the circle formed a bridge between planes and that wasn't interrupted. So, in theory, canceling my spell would send Smokey back home. I did it, and felt the spell release, which was all the confirmation I would get.

"I think that did it," I told her.

"You think?"

I shrugged. "I could guess if that would make you feel better."

Fera rolled her eyes at me, but she seemed to physically relax. "So now we teleport?" she asked.

"That would be the wise move," I said.

Fera shook her head. "See, in my book, that's the rash move. It's easy to give in to fear and take the fast escape. But thinking about it, Aganond and his Vessels were the only really scary things to contend with; them and Smokey, I guess. Vessels are too big to come in, and no one else is adept enough to detect us under the cover of your spells. It might be a good idea to do another sweep of the throne room."

"To make sure Aganond's really dead?" I asked. The idea that some contingency magic would kick in after the Viirtakai was out of range had been nagging at me.

"Oh he's dead," she assured me. "That poison turns nerves into mush. I saw his eyes blackening, which happens about the same time as the brain. He's not coming back from that. But it occurred to me that I left a fortune worth of kalta darts in there. Besides, the Loremasters might like his hand as a token of proof."

"Valid points," I conceded. "You've convinced me. We're close enough I can just door us back. Let me get us concealed first."

I cloaked us both with nosense spells, then put us squarely back in the room, a few feet from where we'd originally jumped in. We were ready for anything, but the entire room had emptied out. There was rubble and bodies everywhere. Smokey had really done a number on the place swinging his flail around. Aganond's body was still there, right where we left it.

There were plenty of sounds from people running in adjacent hallways, some shouting, but far less than I expected. I scanned for invisible things and found none.

"Clear," I whispered.

Fera nodded. "Let's make this quick."

She moved off and began collecting darts. It only took a few before she'd lost her invisibility. I didn't know if she'd touched the tip of a dart or just pulled too violently, but it was bound to happen. At least she was still dressed as a Farok.

I checked Aganond, taking a good, long look at his body. His eyeballs were black, and there was a trail of thin black liquid that had run out of them into a watery pool below him. He was clearly dead. But I took out my long knives and made absolutely sure. That cost me my invisibility, but it was worth it.

Then I helped Fera collect darts. We made quick work of it.

"Where do you think everyone is?" Fera asked, tugging a dart free and wiping the blood off on the victim's robes.

"Courtyard? Maybe they fled from Smokey and are too afraid of him to return?"

"He was terrifying," Fera said with a shudder. "Those spells are going to be the death of you, lover."

"Yeah. I'm ready for a break from demons."

Suddenly the ground shook so violently it nearly knocked us over. I'd felt an earthquake once before, and it felt just like that only stronger. A crack split the ceiling and bits of stone and dust rained down on us. The room heaved up and down as the waves rolled through the land, continuing shaking us for over a minute before it finally settled. By then Fera and I were huddled together on the floor against a wall with my bracer shield aiming upwards in case it would do any good against a falling ceiling.

"What the hell was that?" Fera asked.

"Earthquake?"

Another tremor hit, this one smaller, though it caused dust to rain from the cracks in the ceiling.

Fera looked pale. "If you don't mind, I'd really like to teleport out of here now."

"You got it."

I worked the teleport spell as quickly as I could, fearing any moment it might be interrupted by another quake. I finished easily and jumped us back onto the mesa close to the mine shaft entrance. We arrived facing east, where we could see the hint of a sun about to rise. Then we looked back towards the city, wondering what sort of clues we might get from afar. I don't think either of us was prepared for what we saw.

If I thought Smokey was a giant, I was sorely mistaken. This was a giant. A creature stood towering over the city, standing head and shoulders above even the tallest building. It had to be three hundred feet tall, with a large black sphere where it's head should be, attached to a spine that shot off huge dark spikes every dozen feet or so. Thin arms or legs, which were probably bigger than tree trunks, jutted up and down as if part of his upper body was a spider.

"You were saying something about demons?" Fera managed to say, her voice trembling. We were literally miles from it, yet the fear at beholding the thing still gave us chills.

"I am not dealing with that," I said. I turned and glanced back at the mine entrance, letting my sight shift into the ethereal realm to locate my gateway. It wasn't there.

"What's wrong?" Fera asked, noticing my concern.

"My gateway is gone," I explained.

"Maybe with the anti-magic field and everything?"

"Unlikely," I said. I immediately began casting another one. I said the words, made the gestures, and felt the magic flowing through me. When it finished, I watched the energy float over to the wall, outline a door shape, then disappear in a blinding flash. I blinked and looked back making sure it was as bad as I thought. It was, there was no door. There was no ethereal plane, and therefore no home.

I tried the only other access spell I had, one more advanced than a gate. One that let me jump directly onto the ethereal plane without the need of a portal. I cast that slowly and carefully, examining the spell matrix as it formed, looking for any signs of an anomaly. I didn't see any, but the second I completed it I felt myself slam into something solid.

"T'vance!" I heard Fera scream. She was close enough to hear, but much further than she had been. I tried to sit up, but failed, and instead ended up crawling towards her on my side. There was pain, though much of that was left over from the fight with Aganond. More so it was confusing. The ground didn't feel right, the air didn't feel right, and gravity couldn't make up it's mind which direction to pull me.

"Fera!" I croaked.

She spun and saw me immediately, rushing over and draping herself over me. "Are you okay? What happened?"

"I hit something," I said. "I'll be fine, just disoriented."

Eventually the world stopped spinning and everything started to feel right again, though I was still in a lot of pain. Some of that was from before, maybe all of it.

"I'm just going to lay here a bit," I said, and I began concentrating on healing myself, which in itself is sort of a self-exploration. The magic I know lets you feel your injuries, at least in generality. You can tell a break from a sprain and which organs are damaged.

"Two ribs broken, also a couple of those little bones in my spine and my skull. And I'm bleeding internally."

"All stuff you can fix, right?"

"Sure. But it will take hours."

"Take the time. No ethereal plane?" she asked.

I shook my head. "Not now, anyway. I don't get it. I don't see anything that might interfere. What's the monster doing?"

"He's raised himself up so that he's standing on top of the buildings. And there's a dozen Vessels swarming around him. If we're going to rest, we should find cover."

"I know the perfect little cave."

"T'vance! What is happening? Aganond?" Karstia's voice echoed in my head.

"Dead. But there's a giant demon in his place and access to the ethereal plane is blocked. Tell me your part of the plan was to deal with exactly this?"

"Not exactly this, but I was worried about the aftermath. Demon, eh? Concentrate on what it looks like."

I did, which presumably sent Karstia an image.

"If I'm not mistaken, that demon is Aganond's Vessel factory. Can you find out what it's doing?"

"Seriously, Karstia, do I even care? We're done here, right?"

"Do you know some other way to get home?" she asked.

"Do you know that this demon is even involved?"

"No. It is a reasonable assumption, though. But do you honestly not care if it's eating that entire city?"

"I care, just not very much. Last I saw it, it was standing on rooftops with Vessels all around it. Maybe once my wounds heal enough that I can walk without heavy doses of gort I'll see what I can do."

"Lords, T'vance, I'm sorry. I didn't even ask. Is Fera okay?"

"She's fine, not a mark on her."

"Glad to hear it. Look, I'll check back in an hour or so. Heal up."

"What's going on?" Fera asked.

"Karstia was talking to me," I explained. "She was trying to get recon on that giant demon."

"I should go look," she replied. "It's daylight out. I'm sort of curious myself what it's up to."

"We shouldn't split up," I told her.

"You're right," she said as she left.

I wanted to be mad at her, but I couldn't. I could see myself doing the exact same thing.

I worried a bit while she was gone, but the healing spells were finally mending the bones and it was good that I didn't move much. But there was a demon outside, admittedly very far away, but it's size made up for that distance quite well. Three hundred feet! Who'd ever heard of a demon that large?

Fera gave a soft whistle as she entered, one of the many signals we'd worked out to avoid accidentally killing each other. I greeted her in kind, and didn't move. She came to me and sat down cross-legged beside me.

"I think it's safe to say the thing has taken over the city," she said.

"How can you tell?"

"Well, you know how the walls and buildings are all made of light colored stone?"

"Yes?"

"Well they aren't anymore. Now they're black as onyx. They aren't even the same shape either. Before they were sort of tall and square, the new buildings are all different, like each one is different. And none of them are remotely square."

"The whole city?" I asked.

"Everything I can make out from here. Does that make any sense to you? I mean the spells involved.. to do that in one night, hell a few hours?! Nothing could do that. I mean our Lord Kuor, or perhaps Jaysek could make us see it when it isn't there. But a demon is no god."

"I think you'd be hard pressed to prove that. But regardless, this isn't transformation. Forget about that. The demon didn't change the stone into obsidian. This is something more, and less. This is reality shifting. Somehow the demon is pressing it's plane of existence into ours. It's like Susoth in a way, how the city can change completely, and yet retain it's inhabitants."

"You're beyond me. But you sound pretty sure."

"I do? Oh, I really wasn't trying to. To be honest, the Dúranaki magic schools are fairly light on the planar lore. I learned most of what I know from Derrik and practical experience. But he's doing something planar because he's messing up my damn gate spells."

"So what do we do about it? I don't think rushing it with the Viirtakai is the way to go."

"Unless your plan is suicide."

"It isn't."

"In that case, I think we wait."

"Wait. Good idea. Wait for what exactly?"

"Karstia to tell us something useful, me to heal, or the demon to do something that changes our mind."

Fera nodded. "And once you are healed? What then?"

"I've got some research to do. I don't buy this notion of an unbreakable blockade. Maybe it takes altering my gate spell, or perhaps something greater, like a ritual. Or maybe the gate spell would just work if I cast it from within the changed city."

"True. For all we know, it will just start working tomorrow," Fera said.

"Optimism, Ms. Subt? You're just full of surprises."
CHAPTER 20

* * *

Doogan

* * *

I woke with a start, sitting upright quickly and letting my eyes adjust to the dim light in our quarters. My breathing was shallow and rapid, and fleeting visions danced away from my consciousness as I tried to piece together a nightmare that I couldn't quite remember. I'd been having intense dreams ever since we left Kulthea, but like this one they all vanished before I could recall any significant details.

Molly wasn't there, which didn't surprise me. Leona wasn't there either, at least not her avatar. Her physical form was still strapped tightly to my wrist, she just wasn't manifesting herself. I guess that didn't surprise me much either. Since Molly and I were courting, or whatever you call an unconsummated marriage, Leona had been keeping her distance.

She wasn't jealous. Leona didn't get jealous. And I wasn't feeling strange about the shift in our relationship. It felt natural. As always, she was just what I wanted. Still, I worried for a moment I would actually have to pull up a terminal just to figure out what was going on.

"Relax, cutie," Leona said from behind me. "We just entered real space."

"Real space where?" I asked. We were heading towards Suboe station, but I thought we still had most of a day in transform before we reached the star port.

I felt her arms wrap around me, then her legs, and I leaned back into her warm embrace.

"Middle of nowhere, really. We're still about six hours out from Suboe."

"Why are we stopping?"

"Combat preparations," she explained. "It's a fairly common practice, especially in Ruellan fleets. Stop long enough to get everyone out of hyper-sleep, do final system checks and munitions inspections, finalize crew rotations, plan arrival jump timing and position, blah blah."

"So we're expecting trouble at Suboe?" I asked, sitting back upright and turning to face her. From the way she felt I expected her to be naked, but she was dressed in her flight suit with her hair pulled back tightly in a french braid.

"We weren't until about three hours ago."

"What happened three hours ago?" I pressed.

"Are you awake enough?"

"Yes, no. Oh just tell me."

"Yes," she said. "A little over three hours ago your nightmare woke you and you sat up screaming."

"Screaming? Screaming what? I don't remember waking up."

"Molly had just come back, so she was there. And you weren't really awake. You just sat up, screamed something, and fell back down into a restless sleep."

"What did I say? Did Molly hear it?"

"She did. And since we taught her languages, she didn't even need me to translate it."

"Translate it? What language did I use?"

"Iruaric."

"But I don't know Iruaric," I argued.

"I do. Maybe it's rubbing off on you?"

"Not likely. What did I say?"

"You screamed, 'Suboe has been tainted!' then went right back to sleep."

"Sounds unbelievable."

"Molly didn't think so at all. She thinks it was a vision from Father."

"I thought we agreed we were well outside his range."

"We did. But Molly theorized that Father implanted the vision in your subconscious to manifest at a later time."

"She's become quite the believer," I said. "I still think dreams are most likely dreams. So based on my screaming, the whole fleet came to a stop?" When I said it like that, it sounded even more unbelievable.

"Not entirely. Something else has happened."

"Tell me."

"We've lost contact with our primary ITH."

"ITH? The network thingie?"

"Yes. Imperial Transponder Hub, a primary synchronization node for the Imperial network. There are fifty-two of them, one for each Imperial Region."

"Yes, I remember. But I normally don't care about those."

"Most people don't. But you know when you file a flight plan request you get back a Tentative Acceptance?"

"Yes. That's pretty much Acceptance to me."

"Right. To most everyone else, too. But in reality, the local Imperial node you are talking to has to file that request with the closest ITH. Your flight plan isn't truly accepted until the ITH stamps it."

"But I don't care. Most of the time I've already arrived by the time the final acceptance comes in, anyway. Never had one rejected after the fact. I wonder what would happen."

"You'd have broken the law, but that's beside the point."

"What is the point?"

"Imperial protocol requires these formal requests be logged to the ITH first, meaning the data must be broadcast on the ITH channel before any tentative response is offered. If a node is not receiving the ITH data stream, it can't get the sync data required to send a message."

"So you're saying we can't register flight paths?"

"You're tired, so I won't give you too hard of a time for such a stupid comment. Forget flight paths, how about transferring money? Or getting married? Or naming a new born? Or having a Magistrate rule on anything? I could go on and on."

"Sounds like the whole system falls apart. But you said there are fifty-two of these things. What about the other fifty-one? Don't they just switch over and talk to those instead?"

"Yes. Of course the delay is greater. I think the bigger concern is why it went offline. The ITH nodes are fortresses. And if one went down, more might follow."

"Where is the ITH node? Surely it's not Suboe?"

"No, closer to Daubu."

"But now we're paranoid because we lost an ITH node and I had a bad dream."

"I think that brings you up to date."

"Are we assuming the ITH node was destroyed?"

"That is the prevailing theory."

"By Aganond?"

"Or Anarchy, or some catastrophic disaster. The scientists can't detect any jamming. It's dead air as far as they can tell."

"Why the hell did you let me sleep?"

"You needed your rest. And you were dreaming. And there really isn't anything you can do anyway. Also, Molly said to let you sleep. She was hoping you might get more information than just what you blurted out."

"Oh. Well those all make sense. So where is the little wife now?"

"Science lab."

"Doing what?"

"Am I your wife's keeper?"

"No, suppose not. Just my little computerized hotty on the side."

"What's that? You want me on my side?" she asked. I glanced back and now she was naked, sprawled invitingly on her side across the bed.

I smiled. "I do like you on your side."

"But you'd rather have Molly on her side?"

"That sounds like jealousy."

"Oh, not at all. I want Molly on her side too, or you with Molly on her side, whatever. You know I don't care about that. The real question is does she care about that?"

"That's not the hold up."

"But there is a hold up?"

"Well yes. It isn't the sex. It's the sex while the Empire is crumbling around me that has me worried."

"Oh, of course. The, 'So what were you doing while we were salvaging humanity? Getting your rocks off? Nice. Great priorities, Doogan.'"

"Something like that."

"Counter argument: You think more clearly when you aren't distracted by sex."

"Counter-counter argument, I'm channeling my sexual desires into ending this conflict. That's why I haven't slept with Molly yet. She's my reward."

"Really? Is that what you're telling yourself?"

"You have another theory?"

"No," she said, a little too innocently. "Oh well," she sighed, lounging backwards. "I guess I'll just stay here and keep myself occupied," she added seductively, letting her fingers trace over her body. One hand caressed her own breast, while the other slipped between her legs.

It was hard not to watch, so I didn't resist much. Sometimes it was hard to figure her out. This was presumably what I wanted her to do, but was it to raise my sexual desire more, and provide me even more motivation? Or to get me to relent, figuring I really wanted a clear head? Or was it just a superficial act because I enjoyed watching her? Or maybe it was just a test so I could know which it was I really wanted?

If it was the latter, I passed. I turned away. "Enjoy yourself," I told her.

"Oh, I will. I am," she said, thick with lust.

I stepped out the doorway and found her waiting for me, dressed in her flight suit and ponytail. Her demeanor was calm and professional.

"Sir, I thought you'd need a guide to make your way to the Science Lab."

"I have been there before, you know," I told her. Still, it was a huge and intimidating ship. "And, thanks. I can still hear you moaning back in bed. Nice effect."

"I'm pretty amazing. This way, sir."

As we passed the first guard post, we picked up a tail. He wasn't a subtle tail, mind you, it's hard to follow someone covertly in trooper power armor. I looked back openly and he continued following just as openly, his heavy steps echoing through the hall.

"What's with the company?" I asked Leona.

"You've been assigned protection," she replied.

"Great. Since when?"

"Two hours and fifty some minutes ago."

We lost him again when we reached the guard post closest to the main science lab. There was a far bit of distance in my route during which I had no protection, which made me think the protection angle was most likely a thin ruse to make surveillance more palatable. But maybe that was just my paranoia talking.

The science lab was actually a dozen separate labs, each individually sealed and secured. It spanned three decks, with four labs arranged in a square on each level, and each of them accessed from a central elevator. The complex itself was roughly centered in the ship, but anchored to the top. The four labs on top each had their own airlock with direct access to space, at least that's what the lift told me. I wasn't interested in Astronomy, Biology, Weapons, or Materials.

"What am I interested in, anyway?" I asked, scanning down the list. "Communications? Computing?"

"Communications?" Leona suggested.

I shrugged and selected L2-A, Communications. The lift rose one level, then opened to a small reception area. There were tables and chairs for people waiting, and a single Imperial trooper standing alongside the lift. He ignored me and I him. I walked to the door which was marked COMMUNICATIONS in written Imperial. The door opened into an air lock, and after a brief hissing of gases, opened again into a huge lab filled with terminals, communication equipment, and people.

I was immediately taken aback by the sheer number of people. There were at least a hundred engineers, some standing and talking in pairs and small groups, some working equations on large display panels while others watched them, but most glued to terminals either typing or staring at their screens.

Looking around, I didn't see Molly anywhere.

A small elderly human was hunched over a terminal at a large desk in a cubicle near the door. He slicked back the few long gray hairs left on his head and cleared his throat.

"May I assist you?" he asked.

"I'm looking for my wife," I explained. "I thought she might be here. Her name is Molly Kilk."

"I see," he said, as if he really didn't. Then he stared intently at his display for a few moments before looking back at me. "My computer tells me you are Doogan Loran and that you have been granted special lab privileges."

"That's me," I confirmed.

He continued reading for a moment, then looked back up at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. "Your wife last checked in at lab 1C, the Weapons Lab."

Weapons lab? "Thanks. Is everyone here busy on the ITH problem?"

He wrinkled his nose. "Do you know who I am?" he asked.

"No, I don't."

He nodded. "Do you know what my security clearance is?"

"Again, no."

"Then you damn well shouldn't be talking to me about that."

"I'm sorry. I just assumed that you, being inside the lab, would have clearance to know what the lab was working on."

"That is hardly a given."

I looked at Leona who rolled her eyes. "His name is Glen Bonnet and he's the director of the lab and a civilian," she said. "He holds a level seven security clearance, well above the five required to know about the ITH situation."

"My apologies, Director Bonnet. I was simply testing your adherence to security protocols. I know your name and your clearance. Would you mind giving me an update?"

I expected him to be grumpy about it, but instead I got a big smile as if he were pleased with himself for passing the test. "I'm familiar with the problem and our progress as a whole, but for anything complicated you'll need to talk to the program manager or one of the engineers."

"I'd rather stay at a high level if possible," I said.

"Very well. We have every available hand working on the problem."

"Maybe just a bit more detail. What exactly are you working on? I mean, what can you do with no signal?"

"Quite a lot, actually. For one thing, there are about four billion incomplete packets to sift through. We're trying to extract as much as possible about the state of the network when it stopped transmitting. We're hoping to learn something about the nature of the disruption. There's quite a lot to that, including a lot of sensor work to correlate environment readings with the truncated data, and new predictive algorithms we're putting together to guess how to complete packets and streams.

"And that's just part of the work. Others are planning short-term ITH replacement options, or setting up networks with less remote nodes to see what data is available.

"All the work we're doing we're archiving and sharing according to Imperial conventions. Some of these people here are dedicated solely to that. Other receivers may have different results, and we have to compare, merge and find truth for all of that.

"That doesn't sound like a lot a fun," I said.

"Oh, on the contrary, it's very exciting! This lab had layers of dust in it this morning. Not literally, the cleaning bots take care of that, but you get what I mean. Now look at it. These people are methodically trained specialists who sit around day in and out tending equipment that nearly never fails, just in case. This is the just in case they've all been waiting for."

He did sound rather excited, and while I didn't share his passion for this particular mission, the room certainly seemed to. People were moving, discussing, using words I didn't understand and talking about math way over my head.

I said my goodbyes and wished them luck, then headed out and up to the top level of the lab. It looked exactly like the previous level but with different words written on the doors. I don't know why, but I was expecting a sky light or something. An equally passive trooper ignored me as I made my way into the Weapons Lab.

On the inside, the weapons lab was very different from the previous one. It was larger for one, and far less clean. The room smelled of smoke, and not the pleasant smoke you might appreciate from a good wood fire. This smoke smelled toxic, like someone was burning a concoction of plastic, human hair, and sulfur. The lab was divided roughly into four pieces: a room which looked like a chemistry lab, a room packed full of supplies, a room which looked like a firing range, and a room which connected half a dozen airlocks to space outside.

There were far fewer people as well. I quickly counted them at fifteen, and none of them were Molly. Two were troopers, but not standard Imperial Troopers. They were Strike Troopers or Shock Troopers, I wasn't quite clear on the difference but both of those were larger than the standard Imperial make and included retractable wings and thrusters.

The two troopers were performing some kind of maneuver using their thrusters in the air-lock portion of the room. It looked like a circular dance, with one trooper following the other in a figure-8 pattern around the room. They whisked around, staying about a foot off the ground the entire time.

I watched them as I approached the others in the bay, who were all Ruellan except for a pair of humans. Call me racist, but I approached the humans first.

One of them glanced up at me and frowned. "Who are you?" he asked.

"Doogan Loran," I said. "I'm looking for my wife, Molly."

He looked me up and down and shook his head sadly. "Seriously?" he asked, sighing. "She's the one leading," he said, gesturing to the Strike Troopers.

"Thanks," I said, walking past them.

As I walked past I heard the other one say, "Wait. You mean she really is married?"

I held in a snicker.

A moment later the lead Strike Trooper zoomed over and stopped three feet in front of me, then floated gently down until its feet touched the ground.

"Hi cutie," Molly's voice said. I couldn't see her face, but I'd know the voice anywhere.

"Hi love, what's going on? I expected to find you in Communications."

"Have you heard the joke, 'How many communications engineers does it take to tell you there's no signal?'"

"Can't say I have."

"The answer, apparently, is a hundred. But I can't figure out why it takes so many, nor find any humor in it. Let them spin their wheels. I'm working on my own thing. Recognize any of my mods?" she asked, turning about.

Like I said, I wasn't all that familiar with the ins and outs of a Strike Trooper, but one thing immediately struck me as odd. There was a large metallic object that had been secured to the upper back of the power armor, just above the thruster and wing assembly. It looked remarkably like a jammer.

"You're fitting Jammers on Power Armor?"

"I am!" she exclaimed. "How'd we do, boys? I'm showing 31.4% reserves. How long was that?"

"Nineteen eight point two," one of the humans said. "That means less than twenty-five minutes flight time max."

"At low speed, even," she muttered. "Not good enough!" she said loud enough for everyone. "We need to cut power consumption, lose weight, or boost reserves. Maybe all three."

Her armor made a series of strange whirring and clicking sounds, then the helmet lifted up and pivoted backwards and the chest cracked at a fine seam down the middle and spread itself open, revealing my lovely wife within. She pulled her arms and legs out and hopped down to the ground in front of me, giving me a big hug.

She hooked my arm and led me away from them towards the firing range.

"So, did you remember anything more of the dream?" she asked.

"No such luck," I said.

"Damn. Well, what can you do? Are you up to date on what's happening?"

"More or less. Leona told me quite a lot, and then I visited the communications lab and got an update from the director."

"Well, then you pretty much know everything."

"Not really. I didn't know we were making custom anti-magic Strike Troopers."

"Trying to, anyway. I didn't tell you because I like surprises. So what do you think?"

"I think it's brilliant, but twenty-five minutes seems a bit short."

"I know, but we'll get better. Just wish we had more time. And more Jammers. We're down to three. There's a few more at Suboe station, I hear, but I'm not confident we won't need them before that."

"I hear that. Oh look, your boyfriend is coming over."

She glanced over her shoulder, then rolled her eyes.

"Miss Molly?"

"Mrs.," I corrected.

"What is it, Hap?"

He stepped closer and his voice dropped into barely a whisper. "Would I get in trouble for telling you something I'm not supposed to know?"

She cocked her head. "Well, Hap, at this point you'd get in trouble for not telling me."

He bit his lip and looked away. "I mean I don't really know anything."

"Out with it already," she hissed. God, she could look scary when she wanted to.

"I was just wondering. These jammer devices, they came from that Anarchy group, right? And those people are supposedly Foorians, right?"

"Say that's true."

"If it is, well do you know there's a Foorian prisoner on board? Maybe he knows more about them."

For a moment Molly's face went entirely blank. It was long enough that I thought maybe she was broken. I was about to touch her when she came out of it. She spun around so fast I couldn't really say what emotion she was trying to hide. But it wasn't anger, it was despair or sorrow or pain. She took two quick steps and I was about to follow when she stopped and turned back, suddenly calm.

She stepped back close and picked up as if the last thirty seconds hadn't happened. "Tell me what you know."

"This was months back, and I don't know how long he's been on. He might not even still be on, but I think he is because we've only made one port. I just saw him once, never seen one in person. A tall man with gray hair and some troopers were moving him and had him shackled, heading towards the brig. That's all I know."

"And this isn't common knowledge?"

"No. At least it's above my security clearance. I checked the security logs."

She nodded. "That was stupid, of course, you checking the logs."

"Oh don't worry about that," he said. "I wrote a program that auto-fetches a bunch of data every night I'm at home. I only read it when I care to, but as far as the official records go I'm a nosy news maven who reads everything."

"Hap, you're a brighter man than I gave you credit for," she said.

"Thanks. I think."

She turned to me, but didn't have to explain. We turned together and headed towards the brig.

"What the hell happened back there."

"Mylo flashback. A big one."

"The kind where you relive him torturing you? Molly, if it's him--"

"It's not him! He's dead!"

"You know what I meant. If it's him we can't just rush in. From the look in your eye, you're going to kill him."

"I share my emotions because it's you," she said hotly. "But don't think for a minute I can't pull it together and do what needs doing. Not for a minute."

"In any other circumstance I'd agree with you," I argued. "But just hearing there was a Foorian on board sent you into a thirty second coma. You honestly think you're ready to see him?"

She was quiet after that, simmering a bit and I was pretty sure some of that was directed at me. Sometimes it's best to let a woman simmer, sometimes it's not. Most often I can't tell and have to guess. I lucked out this time, by the time we got off the lift on the security deck, she relented.

"They'll have a picture in the office," she said. "You make a fucking point, so let's see how I do with a picture. Sound good?"

"Sounds good."

We entered the Detention Center, commonly called the brig, but didn't make it very far. There was a front desk manned by a middle-aged Ruellan officer and a pair of Imperial Troopers standing guard near him. Behind them were two large security doors with no apparent means of opening them.

The officer looked up from his terminal and yawned. "Ya?"

"Hi. I'm Molly with Imperial Espionage. Do you have any Foorian prisoners on board?"

He blinked twice, his face blank, then looked down at his terminal for a moment before looking back up at us. "Neop." A moment later a translator program said, "No."

"Have you had any within the last six months?"

"Neop. Neo nallgiti, dal swolomon Foorian," he said. Eventually that became, "No. We don't get many prisoners, and never Foorians."

"I see," she said, her jaw tightening. "If you had a classified prisoner inside, would you know?"

"Rehep vecker. Sol naran mi, sol narian vul," he said, which translated later to, "If you could know about it, I could know about it. We have the same clearance."

Molly turned and I could see her anger coming back to the surface.

"We understand," I said, stepping in. "Could we get a tour of the detention facilities, though? And a current listing of prisoners?"

A moment later my words were translated on his screen. He sighed heavily. Impatience seems to sound about the same in all languages. He keyed a few things into his display, then looked back up at us and offered a weak smile and a nod.

He didn't actually get up, but it was only a few seconds before the right-side security door opened and a younger human officer stepped through. Though perhaps a bit younger, he was still a seasoned officer. His stripes said Lieutenant and his temples were just starting to gray. He had a big nose and ever bigger hands, which were stained with dark ink.

"Hello," he said. "I'm Lieutenant Coglan. If you'd like a tour, follow me."

"Thank you," I said. He walked to the other security door, which slid slowly open.

"I got the list electronically," Molly said. "Four prisoners, total. All failures to serve, dereliction of duty and the like."

"And now she's transferred the list to me!" Leona chimed in. "Not that I recognize any names. All four are Ruellan. It's possible they wouldn't even keep a high security prisoner here. This is a huge ship."

Walking down the hallways of cells gave me a strange sense of deja vu. The cells were not so different from the medical holding cells I'd met Molly in when this whole affair started, and here I was with her again, just on the other side of the glass.

Some cells were different, though. Most had a clear solid wall at the front, revealing everything inside, including the four Ruellan prisoners we passed close to the entrance. But others had solid metal doors that were closed.

"That one looks broken," Leona remarked, noting a cracked communication panel outside one of the solid doors.

"What's in there?" I asked.

"There? Nothing, just another empty cell. That one is broken. We've had an order to fix it on the books for six months."

"That seem a bit long to you?"

He shrugged. "Not really. It doesn't really need to be fixed, we have so many working ones. You haven't even seen the coffin wing, but it's right up ahead if you'll follow me."

"Open it," Molly said.

"As I said, it's broken." He touched the control panel beside the door and it beeped unhappily at him, but the door didn't move.

"Are you telling me you are incapable of opening this door, or that you didn't understand what I asked you to do?"

He looked down as if shamed, but his hands clenched. "I'll have to go to a security terminal to open it. You wait here, I'll be back shortly."

He walked back through the corridor of cells and disappeared behind the corner.

"Making friends everywhere you go," I said. "So what do you think we're going to find in here?"

"A Mylo clone in hyper-sleep," she replied.

"I have a spell that could open the door. If I had any of that charged Arinyark metal with me, I could even cast it."

"There is some on board. I had it transferred to the weapons lab. I thought we could tune the jammer's range down to conserve power. It only really needs to cover the unit itself."

"Call it a solid backup plan, then. And if you can't reduce the power, you could pair up two stock Strike Troopers with each modded one and have them work in tight formation. Equip some cables and they can share power in the field."

"Oh, I like that. I think I prefer that over tweaking the range. I wonder--"

She paused as the door slid open. Inside was an empty cell with the basics: hyper-sleep capable bed, an open closet, toilet, and sink. Molly stepped in, looked around and stepped back out, shaking her head.

"Sometimes a broken panel is just a broken panel," I said.

Lieutenant Coglan rounded the corner and headed back down the hallway towards us. "I assume it's satisfyingly empty?"

"It's empty enough," Molly said. "But I'm not particularly satisfied. Let's see the rest of the place."

"As you wish," he said, leading us deeper into the detention center.

We turned the corner and entered what he affectionately called the 'coffin wing'. It was aptly named, for it bore more resemblance to a mausoleum or morgue than it did a prison. Tiny doors lined the walls from floor to ceiling, five doors high in all.

"Two hundred and twenty cells," Leona said, doing the counting for me.

"What do you use the coffin's for?" I asked. "Long term prisoners who only hyper-sleep?"

"Yes. They're good for holding prisoners captured in the field, or transporting large groups of them. Generally people are given a full cell. Imperial Law limits the use of more confined spaces."

"How many are there total?"

"Four hundred forty, the same number as hertz in an A note. That isn't really important, but it's how I learned to remember it."

"Open them all," Molly said.

"What? All four hundred and forty of them?"

"Yes. And for that matter, all the rest of them. You have four prisoners in here, so four doors should be shut."

"This is highly unusual," he said. "You think we're really hiding a prisoner here?"

"I think if you are, you certainly aren't aware of it."

"I'll need to check with my C.O.," he said, uncomfortably.

"To open a bunch of empty cells? Nonsense."

"But you don't think they're empty!"

"It hardly matters what I think. Everything you know and have been told says you are right. So you're opening the empty cells so I can inspect them. Now get to it, I'm growing impatient and starting to wonder whose side you're on here."

"Fine. Let's just get this over with." He walked away, muttering to himself.

A few moments later doors started opening all over the place, in our wing, in the other wings. They didn't make a lot of noise by themselves, but in unison filled the halls with a loud hum. The coffin doors swung out on hinges into the hall, revealing slim cots. Of the two-hundred and twenty in our current wing, only one remained closed.

Lieutenant Coglan's voice sounded from nearby unseen loudspeakers. "Inspect away. I'll just be waiting at the front for you."

"Coffin cell forty-eight is still closed," Molly replied.

"No, it's open."

"I'm telling you, I'm standing in front of it and it isn't."

"I don't know what you're up to, but there's no sense lying to me. I can see you, and the open door, on camera."

"Gregor," Molly said. "Nice."

"Are you sure Coglan isn't just looking at the wrong door? Maybe he's an idiot?"

"I'm not an idiot, they're all open in your wing."

"Gregor rigged the door, rigged the system," Molly explained. "The sensor says it's open, the security monitors show it open, the door stays closed. But no video processing can resolve two objects being in the same place at the same time."

She moved right up to door forty-eight and stood so that she was in the way of the door, were it open. We heard a gasp from Coglan. He came jogging down the hall shortly after, as if he had to see the door for himself.

"It's true," Coglan said. "The video couldn't overlay the door right. It's a trick. The damn thing is closed." He groaned and grabbed his head with his hands. "I'm so getting in trouble for this."

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, this is obviously above my security level!"

"Don't say that," Molly said. "You don't know the first thing about it. Someone snuck in here, hacked your security system, and put something inside this cell. If it was Imperial business, they'd just seal the thing with a high clearance. We need to get into this cell."

"I know how to work the controls, nothing more," he said. "We'd need to cut it, but I can't knowingly damage Imperial property. Past that, we'd have to put in a work order for a technician to come down and open it."

"I don't need anything so drastic. Just go to the front, a man named Hap is bringing us a small package. Make sure it gets back here."

"Okay. You aren't going to damage the door, are you?"

"Not one bit. Now go, Hap might already be here. And don't bring him back here. We don't need any more leaks."

He managed to nod, though he didn't look very sure of himself. Then he turned about and headed back towards the main entrance.

"Surely someone else knows about this," I told her. "I mean the Foorian had to come from somewhere to begin with."

"I assume at least the Admiral and First Commander Varrin," Molly said.

"Can they not open the door either?"

Molly shrugged. "They might be able to, they might not. They might not even know what Gregor did with the Foorian. But if they do know, they certainly didn't offer up the information. That might have been on purpose, so I'll be damned if I give them another chance at concealing it."

Coglan returned with a small metal chest about the size of a shoe box. He handed it to Molly without a word, smiled weakly, and headed back where he came from.

"He really doesn't want to see anything," I said.

"Either that, or he wants to see everything and he's watching us right now on camera."

"Just in case, I'll try to make this subtle," I said.

I opened the box, which Molly still held in her hands, and peeked at the block of Arinyark mesh inside. I could sense the energy in it, even before I touched it. I slipped my hand inside and put the other on the door in front of us.

"First, we're just going to take a look, okay?" I said.

"Okay."

"Invisibility on the door then?" Leona asked.

I nodded and she started working the strange incantation using my vocal chords. I felt the energy stirring and a tingling sensation ran from one hand up through my chest and down to the other hand. Then I felt the release as the spell finished and for a brief moment saw a sparkling of green light. Then the door vanished.

Inside was the smooth pale head of a Foorian. We could make out the top of the head and part of the face, but not all of it. Still, it was enough to identify him as Mylo. I looked back at Molly, expecting some kind of rage or stupor. I found neither. She looked probably a lot like I did, completely unsurprised.

"It's him," she said. "Open it."

"No so fast," I said.

"Doogan, I'm fine."

"I'm not worried about what you might do to him," I told her. "I'm worried about me. I'm still carrying the Mylo killing virus, right?"

"Smart man. I can't believe I forgot about that. Go find a helmet. I don't want to let him out of my sight."

I went back the security entrance, where Lieutenant Coglan and the Ruellan were discussing something furtively in Ruellan. I saw an emergency kit anchored to the wall behind them, and walked past them to open it. They watched me but didn't stand in my way.

It amazed me how compliant people were. If anyone else had tried this, they'd have been stopped or even arrested for accessing emergency equipment in a non-emergency. Somehow Molly's Imperial Espionage credentials applied to me as well. No wonder Molly liked the Empire. She got to bypass all the bureaucratic crap.

I saw Molly pacing on the security monitor, which made me happy. I was a little worried she'd be trying to melt the hinges off the door.

"You and me both," Leona said.

I secured the helmet and hurried back to Molly.

"Are you sure you're okay?" I asked.

"I am."

I cast the door-unlocking spell, or rather Leona did. It's hard to take credit when I can't actually do it without her. But at least this time the motions and sounds felt a bit familiar. It's actually two spells, one to examine and understand the locking mechanism, and one to then unlock it. It sounds complicated, and I guess it is, but at the same time almost simple.

I could see the lock, a complex biometric reader connected to the door and lock servos, power, the data network for the security system. It was keyed to someone, not me, but in the end there was a box that controlled servos. Apply power directly to the lock, then the door, and the thing opens. Of course the actual connections were buried in metal, but the spell didn't care.

The lock made a soft click, which was enough to break the invisibility spell on the door. It was nice timing, as we got to actually see the door swing open. There was a hiss, then a fan turned on somewhere inside, sucking out the hyper-sleep gases.

Molly grabbed the rail and pulled, sliding his body halfway out from the wall. He had tubes in his nostrils, probably already feeding oxystim into his lungs, but he hadn't awakened yet. He was dressed in a prisoner jumpsuit, gray and ill fitting, and I saw what looked like bruising around his neck.

Molly noted it too and unzipped the top of his suit. His entire chest from neck down was riddled with bruises, spaced almost perfectly in a dense grid. She looked up at me and shook her head.

"They tortured him," she said. "Probably a few hours before putting him in hyper-sleep."

Mylo's eyes opened slowly. They were huge, about the size of four human eyes, and it took him a number of blinks before he was able to focus on anything.

"Familiar faces," he mumbled. "Am I dead?"

"Who are you?" Molly demanded.

He took a couple of hissing breaths. "Mylo, Myloteri."

Molly sighed. "Dammit."

Myloteri rose up slowly on his elbows. "Sorry to disappoint you, Molly."

"So you know me?" she said, her voice trembling slightly.

"I did once," he said. He turned his head and stared at me, trying to see my face clearly through the helmet. "And you, the spitting image of Oliver. Are you sure I'm not dead?"

"I'm sure if you were, you'd know it from the fire and brimstone."

He tried to chuckle, but it came out as a series of coughs that seemed to pain him so much that he collapsed back onto the cot and settled into deep slow breaths.

"That razor wit," Mylo said finally. "They could send a dozen imposters, but they'd never pass off their humor as yours." He turned his head towards me. "Do you have anything witty to add?"

"I do, but I'm too kind to make you submit to another fit of coughing," I said.

"Thank you for that, I suppose," he said, looking around slowly. "So how many other ears and eyes are there about?"

"Plenty," Molly said.

"That's too bad," he said. "I expect you'd prefer some privacy."

Molly stared at him, but his passive face revealed nothing. "Get up," she told him.

"I have little strength," he said, but it wasn't an excuse not to move. He moved, just slowly, and with apparent difficulty.

Molly and I each took an arm and hoisted him off of his cot and to his feet. His knees shook and his hands gripped the door to his cell for support. He was thinner than I remembered the other Mylo clones being, as if they'd starved him as well as beating him.

"Can you walk?" she asked.

"Yes, if it isn't far."

Molly nodded. "It's not far. I'll install an override for interrogation on the first cell."

Mylo limped along, holding onto the wall of open doors as he made his way ahead of us down the hall. We watched him carefully, but he just plodded around the corner and into the first full-sized cell, then collapsed onto the bed.

Molly stepped inside and began keying commands into the interior panel. It emitted three short beeps, then the door slid closed with all three of us inside.

"This is as private as I can make it, given the circumstances," she said. "I'd prefer another ship, all things considered, but that's far too complicated to arrange."

Mylo nodded slightly. "In my condition, I expect it would be quite the feat," he said. "I'll just need a moment to collect my thoughts."

He closed his eyes for about five seconds, then opened them widely and looked at both of us again.

"That was fast," Leona remarked.

"I know you probably have a lot you'd like to ask me," he began, "but let me say one thing. I wanted to apologize to both of you. I have wronged you both in ways I can never make up for. I killed your original, Oliver-clone, and nearly killed you, Molly. Every man has a monster inside him, Foorians worse than most. And while it was the monster that did these things to you, one can not unleash it and not bear the responsibility. I was rushed, frantic even, but I won't make excuses. There are none. I also regret that I am so frail before you now, thus inspiring pity when you deserve vengeance."

Molly stared at him for a moment blankly, then her mouth opened. "You're no Myloteri!"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "I was, though. But now you may call me Mylo."

"You aren't Mylo either," I told him. "Shall we say Mylopria?"

He shrugged. "A name is a name. I am a clone, no doubt, something more than Mylopria and less than Mylo, but only in your company. Call me what you will."

"How is that even possible? Are all your clones capable of this?" I asked.

"Yes, Oliver-clone, they are."

"It's Doogan," I corrected him.

"Doogan? Doogan Loran? Of course. Of course," he said, as if he should have known.

"Be careful what you tell him," Molly warned. "Share too much and he becomes a greater risk. I don't want to have to kill him before we're done asking him questions."

"Good advice," Mylo said. "You'll be more satisfied killing me after."

"I didn't say I was killing you at all."

"You didn't need to say it, Molly. I just hope you won't resort to torture as your colleague did. I can assure you it won't do any good. You won't pry information from me. It just can't be done."

"I've heard that line before," she said.

"That's exactly what Gregor said," he replied evenly. Molly clenched her jaw in response. True or not, she hated being compared to him.

"Let's get on with the questions. How did you get aboard this ship?"

"I was deployed on a broadcasting ship. We were traveling a route close to Kilton Station when we hit a trapper ship. We tried to escape, but when you hit a trap there's almost no getting out of it. Disabled, boarded, introduced to Gregor, interrogated, tortured, interrogated some more, tortured some more, and shoved into a hyper-sleep cell. Then woken up, interrogated some more, walked through an air lock into this ship, interrogated by a whole new set of people, thankfully not tortured, and shoved into yet another hyper-sleep cell."

"What happened to the other crew?" I asked.

"They self-terminated."

"Why didn't you?"

"I didn't feel like it," he replied.

"Seriously?"

"No. To be honest, until now I thought the others had gotten the better end of things. We agreed one of us should allow themselves to be captured. There was no advantage to five getting captured, as it would just increase our suffering."

"And that has value?" I asked.

"Of course. You have to see it from my point of view. I am no longer a single organism. I am, in essence, my own colony of organisms."

"You're just as crazy as you were back then, Mylo," Molly said. "Fuck that, you're crazier."

"If I were a human, I might agree. But our species are different. This isn't insanity, this is structured evolution."

"Is that what you want, Mylo? Is that how you see the future? As a vast colony of yourself?"

He shook his head. "Of course not, Molly. I want what I've always wanted, to free the world."

"Spare me," she said. "So what were you hoping to accomplish by getting captured?"

"You make it seem like I had a choice. It was capture or suicide. I suppose I only hoped to live, and that in living I might find some other way to be useful. I don't expect you to believe it, Gregor certainly didn't." Every time he said Gregor's name Molly flinched.

"Based on the torture? Looks painful," Molly said, a hint of mockery in her voice.

Mylo continued, ignoring the comment. "I think in the end, he considered me a mutation. That my difference from the rest of my crew was a random trait that gave me the desire to survive. I admit, I wasn't as forthcoming with him as I have been with you. But he and I don't go back like you and I do."

"Fuck you," she spat.

Mylo nodded sympathetically. "He kept me alive because he wasn't sure. Where is he, anyway? I thought he'd be the one waking me up."

"Dead."

Mylo studied Molly's face, searching for the truth. Finally he said, "Good."

"What did Gregor want to know?" I asked.

"The plan, of course. But he didn't get past asking about names and places, as if I could tell him any of those things."

"Because you were Myloteri then?" I asked. "But now you're something more, so why don't you tell us?"

"Perhaps when the time is right."

"Or when you can mislead us effectively," Molly said, only slightly under her breath.

"Okay. You said you were on a broadcasting ship?" I asked. "What were you broadcasting?"

"We were distributing the payload. You'll have to wait for the key to know more about that."

"This is pointless," Molly said.

"Tell me about Jammers," I said.

"Jammers? Interesting. What do you want to know?"

"How did you invent them and what are they really for?"

"I didn't invent them. I re-discovered them. They were invented by Althans, ancient Althans. You are familiar with the race?"

"Yes," I said.

"Of course. I don't know how much you know of their history, but there was an exodus of Althans from their home-world thousands of years ago. They settled on three separate planets and were all eventually inducted into the Empire. The last to settle was also the last inducted, and by then the Althans were well known."

"Keep talking."

"That doesn't say it all? The induction of a minor colony of a well known race is almost a non-event in Imperial terms. It was a formality, really. They weren't looking for anything important, so they didn't find anything important. But they did find a little antique the last Althans brought with them from their home-world. It was described as a powerful weapon, but it didn't function. The Althans called it a Viirtakai."

It made perfect sense. Jammers disrupted magic, they would be a weapon on a magic planet. Still, I wasn't prepared to take anything he said at face value. "If the Empire knew about it, why don't we know about it?"

Mylo grinned slightly. "The Empire discovered over a hundred artifacts of no significance. I'm sure you don't know about them either. The longer no one cared about it, the deeper it became buried. You could search for Viirtakai in the Imperial archives and you'd find nothing."

"Nothing? Why nothing? There was clearly a record of it!"

"Because it's obsolete," Molly explained. "The Imperial archive is so vast it would be a nightmare to find anything if you were searching through everything. The Empire rates data elements on relevancy. Old data with few or no references is suppressed."

"Not just suppressed, Molly. Not just suppressed. Deleted from all cached copies based on relevancy and distance from the master ITH," Mylo said.

"So how did you find it?" I asked.

Mylo shrugged. "Unlike most, I don't like the Empire to decide relevancy on my behalf."

"You searched the hidden list?" Molly asked. "What, on a whim?"

"A whim? Hardly. Have you ever heard the expression 'The Empire has forgotten more than it knows'? There's a wealth of useful information with weak references. A tiny percent, mind you, but there are a few nuggets in there if you have an idea what to look for."

"So you parked outside the master ITH?" I asked.

He gave me a curious look. "Of course. Have you ever been there? It's amazing, simply amazing. The density of ships there is greater than anywhere in the universe. So they programmed you with knowledge of ITH nodes?"

"That is one explanation," I said. "Let's stay on topic here. This Viirtakai is what you call a jammer?"

"No. Jammers I made. But I found a three dimensional imagine scan of the defunct Viirtakai weapon. It was much smaller than the Jammers, and some parts I still can't tell how they work. But it didn't take much studying to realize it was a device that manipulated syten. With a lot of hard work, and a little intuition, I reverse engineered what I considered the function part into what became Jammers."

"So what are they for?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. They aren't very useful, are they? Localized sensor disruption only has so many uses. Fair decoys, but they mess with your own torpedoes that might fly through their field. I think their biggest impact was to confuse the Empire. I can't imagine the resources they must have spent trying to figure them out. Far more than I spent making them, I promise."

"Like everything with you, all lies and misdirection," Molly said bitterly.

"Those things have a place," he agreed.

"Like now," I insisted. "Don't expect us to believe you ignored the history."

"What do you mean, ignored?" he said, looking a bit irritated. "I took it from history."

"You recreated a weapon, not a decoy. And you're trying to sell it as a whimsical experiment."

"But it was a whimsical experiment," he insisted, looking a little hurt. "Did they not give you any memories of me?"

"You do like to ask questions," Molly said. "Perhaps you've gotten back too much of your strength."

He sighed. "I thought we were past threats? Searching the archives was painfully boring. You do remember how I well I performed painfully boring tasks, don't you? For Doogan's sake, not well. But when I found the scan of the Viirtakai, now that was interesting. That was a problem to solve. And I'm really good at solving problems."

"What else did you find there?" Molly asked.

"Oh, things," he said coyly.

"How much could he really find?" I pondered out loud. "Every puzzle must have been a distraction."

"True. But I did have two hundred and sixty-one of me working at it."

"Point taken. Would you be willing to help us with a jammer-related puzzle of our own?" I asked. "For nothing in return of course, just for the challenge in it."

"You actually did find a use for them? Amazing. You aren't adapting them to use against me, are you?"

"No."

"Then I'll do it. Wish I still had my ship, though. I had more than fifty left in inventory!"

...

"I don't trust him," Molly said bluntly. "Not out of jail, not in jail with a terminal. I don't know why you asked him."

"Wasn't that the point? To get help with the Jammers?"

"That was Hap's point, not mine."

"And your point was what again?"

She paused, but couldn't seem to find a good alternative. "Shut up."

"I personally thought we should have gone even further. We should have mentioned Aganond to see if he'd react, or see what he might say. And we should have mentioned the ITH outage. He seemed interested in talking about it."

"The less we give him the better."

"The less we give him, the less he gives us."

"It's not worth it," she said. "Don't forget that man killed you."

He didn't, of course. And it was a bit of a stretch even to say he killed Oliver. "Weren't you the one who said you considered clones as unique people?"

"Not sure. But I clearly remember saying shut up."

"You've never been very good at that," Leona said.

"Not helping," I told her. I turned back to Molly. "Forget about that for a moment. What do you suppose happened to his ship?"

...

Following a war briefing with the Admiral himself, we made another short jump that brought us within fifteen jump-minutes of Suboe. From there, we sent a single probe ahead. It wasn't a traditional probe, which might have raised suspicion, but a cruiser with no Imperial markings we'd had in the docking bay the whole time.

It was my idea to send the cruiser. I'd call it genius, but it was a bit self-serving; the Admiral originally suggested we scout ahead in the Coercion.

"We can't assume cloaking devices will work," I explained. "And if magic is involved and present, we might be giving a lot away just by showing up."

"I am not going in blind," the Admiral conveyed through the translator.

"Of course not," I assured him. "We just need something a little more subtle. The ship shouldn't be Imperial at all, and the crew shouldn't know why it's even there, at least not the real reason."

"That leaves very few options," he replied.

"We only need one. You boarded and seized an Anarchy Broadcasting Cruiser. A ship matching that description is currently in hangar bay two. I propose we use it. We'll staff her with low security personnel, those who don't even know we're going into combat, and set it up with some automated tasks. It can broadcast a fake 'payload' in which we'll encode the sector scan data."

"Smart," Molly said. "Be it Anarchy or Aganond himself, a broadcast ship will create confusion."

"And if it's just Imperial business as usual, they can authenticate to avoid getting blasted," I added.

"How do you know of that ship?!" the Admiral exclaimed.

"She's a spy, sir," Commander Varrin said. "Did you expect to keep it from her?"

"There are no spies," the Admiral growled. "She is a civilian adviser with security clearance under that required to know about such things!"

"Admiral, you can label me whatever you want," Molly said. "But I'm a spy, if not in name, then in character. The good news is that I'm on your side. It was stupid to hide it from me. They had sixty-four Jammers on board, enough to retrofit another twenty-one enforcers."

"We already knew of those and used them," he said, irritated. "My men did the work under the direction of Commander Haloran. We delayed our jump so they could finish!"

"Sir," Commander Varrin interrupted, "Commander Haloran was transferred out at Kilton."

"But he sent me a report," he said dumbly. Then he seemed to suddenly put everything together. "Her?!"

Molly smiled politely. "However this happened, it's a blessing, sir. The testing required to retrofit military ships with experimental technology in the field take far too long. We needed the boost and we weren't going to get it. And now we did."

"I, for one, would like to thank this Commander Haloran," I said. Sometimes I can't help myself.

"It was you!" he accused, stabbing a fat alien finger out at her.

"Was it?" Molly asked. "I figured it was Father."

That quieted him for a moment. Then he turned very decisively towards his first mate. "Commander Varrin, what do you think of her plan?"

Varrin considered a moment. "It's reckless," he said. "The ship is a precious resource undergoing scientific study. But I agree it offers a greater advantage than anything else on the table."

Admiral Loaqui nodded and made grunting, gurgling sounds. "Do it. But I want a crew we can trust."

He looked meaningfully at Molly when he said the last part, but since the translation didn't come for a few seconds, he was already looking away by the time we heard it.

Once we'd gotten the probe ship away, we ran combat sims with the revised fleet. Part of our tactics involved subterfuge, shuffling the modified and unmodified enforcers around in formation to keep the enemy confused. With more shielded ships, we had more choices. Still, there weren't that many more choices and it went fairly quickly.

"There is still one open issue," the Admiral said. "Will your ships be joining us, Captain Doogan? And if so, who will command them? I don't feel comfortable with an engineer at the helm during a fight."

"I'll captain the Albatross," I told him. "Molly will be my second."

"I need Molly here," he said.

"Admiral, you wouldn't separate a man and his wife would you?"

"I've done it before," he replied curtly.

"If you're afraid you won't see her pretty face again, don't be. I'll be leaving the Coercion on board, and you can bet we'll be back for that."

The Admiral exchanged a look I couldn't decipher with Commander Varrin, then turned back to me and nodded. "Very well," he said.

The commander stepped closer to me and said, "Captain, are you aware of your legal obligations as a civilian ship joining a military engagement?"

"Just say yes."

"Yes."

"In that case, you should both transfer now. It won't be much longer."

I bowed to him and the Admiral, took Molly's hand, and left the war room. Leona was waiting for us outside, holding a clipboard. She started walking with us.

"I've signaled to Overby. He's moving in to dock with us as we speak."

"Thanks, doll. What docking bay?"

"Have Overby bring the ship around to the top side bay adjoining the weapons lab," Molly said, picking up on our conversation. "I want to transfer the strike troopers while we can."

"Will they let him dock there? Isn't that restricted?"

"It is and they will," she said, grinning at me.

"Consider it done."

"You going to tell me how you work all this magic?" I asked.

"If you knew, you wouldn't call it magic. And what fun would that be?"

"Point taken. So are we putting Mylo back to sleep?"

"Yes. I'm already nervous we've left him awake too long."

"Back in the coffin cell?"

Molly chuckled. "Not a chance. We're taking him with us."

I smiled at her. "Won't the Admiral mind?"

"Mind what? Mylo isn't even technically on board."

"She's devious, that one," Leona said.

"She is at that."

...

Mylo was exactly where we left him, in bed with his lower body secured and a portable terminal in his hands. He looked up at us blankly as we walked into his cell.

"You didn't mention there was an ITH offline," he remarked.

Molly grumbled and snatched the terminal from his hands. "I'm sure there's plenty we didn't mention," she said. She began working the terminal, I assume to figure out what else he might have accessed that he wasn't supposed to.

"True," he said wistfully. "In any case, I was a bit bored. I reworked your designs on the strike troopers and forwarded the changes on to that Hap person. There was some misunderstanding about one of the subsystems, which was drawing power but not actually useful. It literally meant severing six lines. Then I added variability to the range by adding an off-the-shelf power filter, which could be used to save even more power. I set the default to the max, in case you had worked tactics around it."

"What did you get the flight time up to?"

"Theoretically? Over an hour, more if you throttle the range back."

"A decent improvement," Molly said, sounding far less impressed than I felt.

"I could probably squeeze another twenty percent if I could work on the troopers power and thrusters directly, but that's a redesign not a retrofit."

"And since you knew I didn't want that, you spent the rest of your time hacking your way out of the secure workspace I created for you."

"And now we're all on the same page," Mylo said. "See how well we work together? I barely need to explain myself."

"In that case, I probably won't need to tell you what happens next," Molly said.

"You're going to put me back to sleep, since you're about to jump into a hot zone. I think maybe I was premature, though. I figured you'd have already done it. We'll need to work on--"

His head fell back and his body shuddered slightly. He'd gone back into hyper-sleep.

I'd barely had time to ask, "Now what?" when I heard a sound from outside in the hall. I stuck my head out to see two medics with a rolling gurney hurrying down the hall, with Lieutenant Coglan. I found Molly smiling again. She'd thought of everything.

The medics came in and stopped for a moment, confused. They were thankfully human, a detail Molly probably saw to, which made talking a whole lot easier.

"Someone have a body?" the first asked. He was youthful and slim, but his eyes seemed lifeless.

"Hey, what race is that?" the other said.

"And where did it come from?!" Lieutenant Coglan added.

"This is a classified operation," Molly told them. "Everything you see and hear is level nine. This person is not dead, but will be transferred under a sheet as if he were. If anyone asks, he overdosed. Also, he's in hyper-sleep and must remain so. Any questions?"

"Sure. Where to?" the first asked. He didn't seem affected by the security issues, but his partner looked pale and Coglan worse.

The body was moved to the gurney, covered, and the hyper-sleep unit from his prison bed detached to bring with us. They run for a few days on battery, so we weren't rushed about it. Lieutenant Coglan paced in the hall nervously while we prepared Mylo.

When we stepped out, Coglan approached us quickly. "I don't like this," he said, softly. "I'd prefer to know as little as possible, so if you have it under control I'd prefer to stay here."

Molly said, "That's fine. Doogan, why don't you take the body ahead? I want to have a quick word with the Lieutenant. I'll catch up."

As we walked up the hall, I saw Molly and the Lieutenant disappear back into the cell from which we'd come. We'd barely left the detention center when Molly came jogging up behind us.

"You should hurry. Ships are breaking apart. It won't be long before yours is the only ship still docked."

"Quickly, wife," I said. "We're late. Everything okay?"

"Peachy."

We double-timed it through the halls, up a lift, through more halls, then up another lift until we were back in the Weapons Lab. The crew from before was all but gone. Only Hap and one other person remained, sitting opposite each other at a table playing a game with colored chits. Our three retrofitted Strike Troopers were gone and one of the airlocks was open. Within, I saw Lieutenant Drew waiting for us.

"Miss Molly!" Hap exclaimed, jumping up from his table.

"Mrs.," she reminded him with a smile. Then she turned to the medics. "Take it to the airlock. The Lieutenant standing there will tell you where to go. Make it snappy, okay?"

The medics started pushing the gurney away. Hap took a good look as it went by and the other tech took the opportunity to palm a few colored chits from the table.

"What's with the body?" he said casually.

"Don't have much time, Hap. I assume everything is ready to go?"

"Yes, ma'am. Whoever that tech was, he's a bright one. I reviewed all his changes with a paranoid eye, as you suggested, and didn't find any cause for concern. We did a final test on each unit, but very briefly. Still, the power seemed to track with his estimates. They're fueled, armed, and stowed safely aboard the Albatross."

"And your report?"

"Filed with your ship's computer," he said.

"Thank you, Hap. Why are you still here?"

"Personal hand-off? It just didn't sit well with me to finish this project online."

"He was probably hoping for a good-bye hug."

"Consider it handed off. Now get out of here. We'll be jumping again soon."

He gave her a goofy salute. "Pleasure working with you." Then he walked back, sat across from his friend, and resumed their game.

Molly sighed. "I'll go see the medics out, why don't you get to the bridge."

"Deal," I said, without the hint of suspicion I felt.

The artificial gravity turned off in the air lock, a key reminder we were moving to a less luxurious ship with mostly no gravity. We passed the airlock, and she headed towards the brig and I the bridge. Then I doubled back and entered an unused crew compartment I expected them to pass.

A minute later they floated by, holding the gurney from each side to keep it under control. They were talking quietly, but across the gurney made that difficult.

"But how did we even get to the ship? I don't even remember leaving medical."

"Fuck you, I don't even remember breakfast. I went to sleep last night and woke up here."

"Sorry."

When I heard the airlock door close, I checked the hall to make sure it was clear. It wasn't. Molly was about three feet in front of me.

"Hi there," she said. "Spying on me?"

I floated out. "Badly, yes."

"I probably should have just told you, it's just complicated to explain."

"You can erase memories?"

"Well, yes. With some very real limitations. It works best to wipe extremely recent things, from a second to a minute is fairly accurate, less so further back, and virtually ineffective against anything you've slept on. It's built into the same system I can pulse people with."

"Ever use it on me?"

"Nope.

"Ever lie to me?"

She smiled. "You know I have. But not about using this on you. It isn't the safest tech, and I wouldn't risk you being the one in a million it lobotomizes."

"Just risk the medics?"

"And Coglan, and Drew."

"Drew? When?"

"Just now. That was probably excessive, but it's sort of habit. We stowed the body. I pulsed the medics, then had Drew impersonate a spy and explain it to them. I wasn't even in the room, so they'll have no memory of me. Then I walked Drew out of the brig and pulsed him. So he doesn't remember Mylo or me pulsing the others."

"And how did you explain it to Drew?"

"I asked him if he was having another episode and he was too afraid to say he was even disoriented. I felt a little bad, but that guy still doesn't sit right with me."

"I didn't like him before he tried to kill us. I do like you telling me things, though."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. It makes me feel closer to you. Also reminds what an absolute bad ass you are."

She kissed me, maybe because she couldn't think of anything witty to say but I didn't mind at all. We took hold of each other, and kissed floating in the hallway. It only lasted a moment, we both knew it couldn't be more with a fleet jump bearing down on us.

We stopped kissing and she held me close for a moment.

"We're going to win this," she said.

"That confident?"

"I am. It's the after this I'm worried about."
CHAPTER 21

* * *

T'vance

* * *

Hour by hour the landscape changed. The first few hours, I took Fera's word for it. After that, I'd healed myself enough that I was able to move about without jeopardizing the healing process, so I joined her. The sun was hiding behind thick clouds, but still managed to brighten the landscape, as well as bring in the heat.

The city in the valley below was black and strange, though not altogether different than it was before. The great wall still protected the outer perimeter and the tall buildings were still present in their original grid layout. That was where the similarities ended. The light gray stone had been replaced with glossy black, the wall was topped with something that might have been wrought iron bars, and the towers were each unique, thinner or fatter or split in two or taller with high spiked points. All that we could tell from miles away, but I was sure there was plenty we weren't seeing.

It wasn't only the city that had changed. The darkness was spreading into the nearby jungle. Once green trees were now dead, their leaves fallen and the remaining branches black. The circle of darkness extended at least a quarter of mile outside the wall.

Vessels dotted the sky, none of them close enough for worry, but all of them moving. If I had to guess, I'd say they were patrolling.

"I've seen them firing down into the jungle," Fera said. "I can't tell what at, though. The Troqs are all supposed to be dead."

Just then we saw movement in the trees along the cart tracks leading down to the city, no more than a hundred feet from our position. Fera signaled to a better spot for us to take cover, and we crept over and crouched below an expansive shrub behind the edge of the treeline.

A group Faroks came into view moving just inside the trees. They looked tired and ragged and their plain white robes were stained with grass and dirt. One looked worse than the rest. His arm was in a makeshift sling and the skin we could see at the wrist was black, while the rest of his flesh seemed even paler than usual. He looked ready to collapse.

"Come quickly," the leader said. "The mines are close!"

"I'm starving. Are you absolutely sure there are supplies in there?"

"I never said absolutely," he replied. "I'm not a miner. I've just heard it said is all. But I am sure the Vessels can't follow us there."

They passed our position without noticing us, heading towards the mine entrance. I glanced at Fera and we communicated our interest with facial expressions. I cast a nosense spell on both of us so we could follow discretely, very conscious of the fact that I didn't have any of my spell focuses with me. Without them, the spell took more effort and was more tiring. I make them look easy, but they aren't. Without the focus, they're downright work.

We were about to move out when we heard more movement, further away than before but far less subtle. There was another group approaching, without any attempt at stealth. They were cutting brush on either side of the tracks as they came. I could see the tops of falling foliage before I could even see them, but finally they rounded the final turn, cutting as they came, and marched boldly into view.

There were twenty-four Faroks, but they were strange. The four in the center appeared the leaders, and they were probably once part of Aganond's elite. The robes were still lined with ties, but there was no longer anything colorful about them. The robes, once white, were dark like charcoal, and the ties just a shade lighter, as if all the color had been sucked out of them. Similar were the faces, pale and sickly, with dark lifeless eyes.

Had I to guess, I'd say the Unlife had taken them. They reminded me somewhat of vampires, and I reminded myself they weren't likely to be as powerful as the one vampire I'd met. But they were unnatural to be sure, and yet far less so than the twenty men they led.

I'll start with the hands. They had none. They had curved blades instead, coming straight from their arms. The blades were black and jagged, appearing anything but forged. Still, they cut foliage like butter. Whatever made the blade likely made their horns, which grew out from behind their temples and curved about, pointing back in at the jaw. Their faces were otherwise like their leader's, pale and deathly. Their robes were gone, replaced with some kind of breast plate and grieves made from the same stuff as their blades.

They moved with a fluidity that reminded me of enemies past. The horns didn't hurt either. I didn't think these were Messengers from Arnak by any closer relation than the Unlife, so what I was seeing was really just the commonality of Unlife. Evil likes blades, it likes horns, and it likes pale.

It was good that I saw them as Messengers for a moment, though. It put things in perspective because you simply don't fuck with twenty Messengers. And I know we'd just taken out someone far more powerful, but he was just one man. This was twenty-four, and I feared them enough that I didn't move an inch.

"Should we split up?" one of the robed men asked another.

"No. Any who come will take refuge in the mines. They won't risk the jungle."

"Agreed, but there are caves."

I instinctively tugged my earring as they walked out of listening range, which would have amplified the sound nicely had the ring been there. I was a bit worried about them exploring the caves and finding signs of us, but only a bit and they didn't split up so I assumed the issue was at least postponed.

Fera tugged my arm, then headed after them. I could see her only because I could see the aura of my own spell, but talking was pretty much out of the question. That meant arguing was also out of the question, so I headed after her.

The group of dark Faroks was already halfway across the clearing when we hit the edge of the jungle. I wasn't quite sure what Fera hoped to accomplish, but a nagging idea played in my brain. The Faroks inside were probably innocent, their pursuers undoubtedly weren't. The innocents were also undeniably out numbered. If we did nothing, they'd all be killed or captured or converted.

It occurred to me then that I didn't care. It seemed like I should care, but I honestly didn't. I didn't really care what happened to the Faroks, I just wanted to go home. My own feelings struck me as strange, because my instincts still said I should act and usually my instincts and feelings don't disagree much.

I quickly decided that instincts trumped feelings. There was something to be won by saving them, even if I didn't care about them. I didn't know what, but I knew I'd never know if I let them all die. I stared up at the carved opening of the mine and started casting. I focused on every crack, every imperfection, and forced them more open. I felt magic resist me, some spell against erosion trying to prevent exactly what I sought to induce.

I repeated myself, growing louder in my mind as I did, though my no-sense spell made sure the enemies didn't hear a sound. I felt the spell push back at me, and for a moment felt the aura of the thing. It wasn't Aganond's spell, but one of his minion's. That revelation gave me all the confidence I needed to finish. I repeated it again, loudly, clearly, and without a hint of uncertainty. I released it and watched the faint tendril of purple energy sink into the stone above the archway.

They were still five feet in front of it when the cavern rumbled and bits of rock and dust rained down from the inside. A few rocks led the way, then huge chunks of stone broke away and the entire entrance collapsed, spewing dust out in a billowing cloud.

The group paused, fanning out in a small circle around the cave-in. I made sure my no-sense was still active, then moved in closer to hear what they were saying.

"What the hell was that?" the presumed leader said.

"They caved it in."

"Well dig it out!"

The other three robed Faroks looked at one another, all shaking their heads. "We have nothing for it," one explained. "None of us has ever been enriched for mining."

The leader studied the caved in opening for a moment, pushing and pulling to assess the new barrier. Finally he turned angrily back to his men. "It's what it is." He gestured to a pair of swordsmen and said, "Double time it back and return with no fewer than four miners."

The two nodded and ran off the way they'd come.

"The rest of you, follow me. We'll check the caves until our diggers arrive."

As they walked off towards our cave, Fera pulled me a round to the side of the opening out of their view. She waited until they were well clear of us, then she kicked the wall and my nosense spell masking her vanished in a flash.

"I know why it does it, but I can't stand that spell stopping me from talking. How the hell do you coordinate with people like that?"

"Normally I don't," I said, pushing my voice through my spell. "I just assume no one knows what I'm doing. By the way, these spells don't grow on trees. If you want to talk I can pair it with a ventriloquism spell so you can still talk."

"Dragha! Why didn't you ever offer that up before? Anyway, I agree with that, what the hell were you doing? Then again, what are they doing? I didn't understand anything they said."

Right. Fera doesn't speak Iruaric. I filled her in on what I'd heard.

"So we have a civil war of sorts?" she asked. "Some Faroks have joined the demon, some have fled?"

"That's the best I can figure."

"And you wanted to save the ones who fled?"

"I didn't really want to save anyone," I said. "But it occurs to me we might be able to talk to them."

"Assuming you didn't collapse the entire mine," she said with a wink.

"If only I were that good."

"So we're going in? Disguised as Faroks?"

"No disguises. Let's just go in and call out our intentions. Sound echos really well down there, so we can surely avoid the initial risky surprise greeting. I don't see the point in deceiving them anymore."

"Fine by me. But let's not mention the part where I killed Aganond," she said.

"Damn. I was going to lead with that."

Their leader was Henner, a builder. His colleagues were also builders, save the smallest Farok who they called Mitt. Mitt was a grower. They were terrified and undirected, and search as they might, they'd found no supplies. Admittedly, the search hadn't progressed very far by the time we found them.

They'd taken a cavern three levels down as their camping spot. A natural pool had formed in the corner from water filtered down through the fifty feet of rock above. As such, it was probably drinkable, not that I'd tried it.

Our greetings went faster than I'd expected and we advanced our dialog quickly to get a face-to-face meeting. The Faroks were scared, but not of us. We, after all, were demon hunters. As foreign as we were, we were enemies of That Thing, as they called it, and That Thing was so horrific a mere foreigner barely raised hairs by comparison.

We spent a good hour debriefing them, getting each man's unique perspective on the rise of the demon, the state of the city and country they'd passed through, and so on. I translated for Fera along the way. It gave the Farok's time to stare at her, which they did openly.

At one point, the staring became a bit creepy. "When exactly was the last time you saw a woman?" I asked.

The most recent was Mitt, who answered, "Oh, about eighteen years."

I could hardly blame them after hearing that. Besides, they'd already been through a lot. Sadly, they'd learned so little.

As part of the working class, they put their heads down the moment violence broke out, which it did. That Thing rose up, the ship trees, the sphere, they were all part of it. But they were only the surface parts. The ground all around it was torn up; roads, buildings, everything. Then arcanists started fighting each other, though Henner saw many of them taking cover as well.

The fighting lasted a few hours, and didn't seem to involve the demon at all. After it calmed, the arcanists still alive in the city had all been faded, as they called it. There were rumors some had fled, but nothing substantial. Other non-arcanist Faroks fled, though, into the jungle in all directions, though most of them went south, away from the mountains.

The faded arcanists began locking down the city, seizing control of the gates with the blade-men, and shutting everyone inside. None of them knew how the blade-men came to be. Henner and his fellows slipped out before the last gate was secured, splitting from the larger group that headed south to take refuge in the mines.

"But now I think we made a bad choice," Henner explained. "I was expecting to find emergency supplies, but instead the entrance caved in. So now we're trapped with no miners and no supplies."

"On the plus side, the cave-in delayed your pursuers considerably," I said. I hadn't mentioned being responsible for the cave-in, in case they didn't appreciate their good fortune.

"Delayed, yes," he agreed. "But if they called for miners, we won't be safe for long. Still, you made it here after the cave-in, right? There must be another entrance we can use. Would you show us?"

"There's no other entrance to my knowledge. I used magic to pass through the rock."

"Relocation? Or tunneling?" he asked.

"Relocation."

He whistled appreciatively. "Even arcanists don't know relocation magic. You could take us with you? Please, don't leave us to their mercy. I've seen their eyes, they have none!"

"I don't know," I said. "No offense, but you aren't much use to me. I don't think I'll needing building or growing services."

"That's hardly our fault!" Mitt exclaimed. "Aganond would never teach us other magic!"

"You could have tried to learn it on your own," I said.

"Learn it how?!" Henner asked. "I wouldn't even know how to begin! Please?"

"Well how did you learn your building magic?" I asked.

"We've just always known it," Mitt said, confused.

"No," Henner said. "We were taught. Like most, you don't remember it. Everything is taught through Enrichment. I once knew Tanler the Builder. He went into Enrichment once and came out Tanler the Miner."

"What are you talking about? I thought Enrichment was just some kind of shared relaxing hallucination."

"It is far, far more than that," Henner said. "It's how we know what we're supposed to be doing, how we get promoted, and for many, how we eat."

"It is?" Mitt asked, amazed.

"He's young," Henner explained. "Enrichment has never offered us information about Enrichment. These things we've had to learn on our own. But learning magic on our own, I can't even imagine."

"I just can't believe it," Mitt said, in a way that meant just the opposite.

I sighed. They were pathetic, in a way, conditioned to being given things they needed. "I'll help you out of the mines," I told them. "But we're going now. Drink your fill, get anything you can carry that's useful, and meet me up top."

Fera shadowed me as I left them. "I take it we're leaving?" she said.

"Yes. But first I have a little surprise to leave for the faded."

The cave-in only affected the passageway leading to the main shaft. The shaft itself was unharmed, including the carts around it and the pulley system. But above all that was more rock. I studied it, finding a good section with visible cracks. I then prepared a ward spell and bound within it the same spell I'd cast to cause the original cave-in. I rigged the ward to release the spell a minute after a faded entered the area.

By the time I'd finished, the Faroks had all come up from below. "When we get out, we're heading south east, further into the mountains. We want to stay as high as we can, and Fera and I will be invisible, so Henner will lead."

Then I started casting even more spells. Invisibility for Fera, then doored her through the rock to the outside where we'd doored in from originally. Then a minute to allow her to secure the area, then doored each Farok in turn, then a no-sense on me, and the last door spell. I was starting to feel the drain, and that was bad news. I still had a lot left in me, but when it starts hurting to cast it's time to start worrying.

Luckily, the outside was calm.

I gave them the go ahead, and the Faroks began sneaking off. Fera stayed ahead of them, while I swept back and forth behind them, making sure we didn't get ambushed.

I didn't know what I was doing with them, or even if I was doing anything more than getting them a bit out of range. Maybe distance would help me, also. Maybe the planar magic restrictions were localized to the area close to the demon.

"T'vance, how are you?" Karstia asked in my head.

"A bit better. Picked up a few refugees. I think I've gone soft, even without the Pendant. The demon's reality is expanding and we're moving away from the city."

"We're moving towards it," she said. "But along a convoluted path. The Demon's reality may still be small, but his influence is not. There are faded arcanists controlling even the northern provinces now."

"And you're coming towards the city? Why?"

"We have a host of twelve thousand Lenn-raki."

"We've only been here three days. How did you get twelve thousand Lenn-raki?"

"They were already ready. They said the spirits had warned them."

"Hail the spirits. I have a question for you. Did Aganond use a focus or anything when he cast the Enrichment spell?"

"The entire platform, as he explained it. Why?"

"Curious. The more I learn, the more intricate it sounds. What should we be doing?"

"Rendezvous with us along the coast, due west of the city, four days hence. There's plenty for you to do in this Dyari's army."

"Sure," I said. I didn't really like the idea, personally. But I had four days to think of a better one, and I'd already worked out half of a good idea.

When I explained it to Fera, I felt even worse about Karstia's plan. First Fera said, "She's bringing a fucking army?!" Then she didn't say anything for a while, but I could tell she was thinking. I suddenly got the notion I wasn't thinking enough, took a hit of gort, and starting trying to think ahead.

What could go wrong with a huge force of Lenn-raki marching through Farok land towards their now demon-held capital? I even chuckled at the insanity of if.

"It's not funny," Fera said. "How does this demon take over? He doesn't just fade every single Farok, or twist them into these blade-men. If he could, we wouldn't have our new friends."

"No. The Faroks are disoriented and without guidance. It only takes a few small groups to cow them."

"Exactly. I'm betting a heavy majority of the population are just plain Faroks, scared to death, looking for guidance."

"I'm betting on that as well."

"Really? We'll get back to that. What I'm saying is the demon, the faded arcanists, they are the new guidance. A marching army of Lenn-raki becomes an invasion force. The people are afraid, easily manipulated, drafted into armies, and the like."

"So armies of innocent Faroks fighting armies of innocent Lenn-raki, all for the demon's amusement."

"Include me out. Now back to what you said. You're betting on there being plenty of innocent Faroks? Why? What are you planning?"

"I'm not quite done with the plan yet," I told her.

"I'd like an early draft."

"Fine. I want to go back into the city. I want to find the platform where Aganond performed the Enrichment ritual and I want to attune to it."

"Why? Do you think you can use it?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"I thought you said it was a spell."

"I think it is. But I think it's cast from the platform, like the platform is one big magic item designed to cast the Enrichment spell. If I were supremely powerful, that's what I'd do so I wouldn't have to recast the same spell every day."

"If that's true, you'd think the demon would have use for it, or the faded arcanists at least."

"That's why my plan is chock full of danger. At the very least, I expect they'll secure the platform. I'll have to take it from them."

"Sounds tricky," she said, though I could tell she approved.

"Not as tricky as keeping it from them. This is no spell store ring or staff of firebolts, this is an immensely complicated artifact. Attunement won't take a few seconds, it might even take hours."

"Hours!? Damn it, T'vance, you really know how to pick a challenge."

"I know. This is hard to balance, too. I could always try just attuning to it and hoping for the best. But if I fail, it's harder to try again. So I need to take my best shot first, and that means meditation or a ritual. And each of those is more helpful the longer they take."

"And you don't want to be interrupted in the middle."

"Definitely not."

"So you're going to need my help," she added, with a smug smile.

"In more ways than you're thinking," I said, grinning back.

"What does that mean?"

"You ever partake in a magical ritual?" I asked her.

"No. I don't work magic, remember?"

"That isn't really a criteria," I said.

"So I'll be the one arranging the candles and incense?" she joked.

"Something like that. I'd be more specific, but I don't think I can even finish conceiving the ritual until I've at least examined the platform."

"So you're just going to wing it?"

"You know me so well."

She snorted at me. "You at least going to tell Karstia?"

"If it's convenient. But she should know better than to think I'm going to join an army."

"You're right about that. She's still going to be pissed."

One day I'll tell you about the jungle mountains of Lower Korstia. We spent several days journeying through it, and saw many things worth talking about. We found new wildlife, fought an errant Troq or two, and got to know Faroks a little better. But none of that changed anything.

In the dead of night, after a long sleep, Fera and I jumped back to the city, to the rooftop I'd nearly died upon.

I had illusions that might have done a better job darkening our robes, but they wouldn't survive a pulse from Fera's Viirtakai, so we stained them with ash instead. It wasn't a great disguise, but I hoped no one would even see it, what with the invisibility spells I'd placed over both of us.

We arrived a dozen feet higher than the rooftop, with warded landing spells to bring us gently down. In retrospect, even that was lucky. The terrain was nothing like I'd left it. The flat rooftop I'd once stood upon was now topped with three spires of some glistening black material. We appeared between them, then floated down a few feet and landed on a foot wide ledge that ran around the outside base of the eastern-most spire's cone-shaped top.

The black material was dry, but smooth enough to make good footing a primary concern. It was hard, yet yielded slightly under our weight. Invisible as we were, the effect was noticeable; we could see the ground sagging beneath our unseen feet. I couldn't tell you what it was made from, but I could rule out quite a number of things. It wasn't stone, obsidian, onyx, ebony, dirwood, keron, or eog.

Fera cursed my name and the heights, in that order. We were both agile enough to be circus performers, so shimmying around was far easier than listening to her bitch about my choice of landing spots.

As I started circling to get a better view Fera grabbed my arm and squeezed hard enough that I worried the invisibility spell might fail.

"Watch it," I hissed.

She didn't reply, so I glanced back and saw her glowing silhouette staring away from me. I followed the angle of her head and realized for the first time how close we were to the demon. He wasn't where we'd last seen him, he was far closer, standing just behind the building closest to the northwest and resting some of its many limb over it.

His head was a sphere close to forty feet across, filled with slow swirling clouds ranging from black to charcoal, with a thin ribbon of blood red sweeping around the inside like an erratic stream. I could see the head clearest of all, for it rose well above the building the demon rested upon.

The head was connected to a body of sorts, huge and sharp, with sections and hard pieces, like a giant foreign insect. It was disgusting to look upon, even at face value, but as we continued to stare it seemed to grow worse. First it was the realization that the surface was, in fact, a little blurry to look at. Then, the realization that the blurring was actually movement, as if the skin were alive with tiny limbs, or worse yet crawling with symbiotic demonic critters.

A few parts were easier on the eyes. A few sections featured dense clusters of swirling dark clouds, either connecting sections together or for decoration for all I knew, there were just spots here and there, like little cloudy skylights into the demons inside. Those moved too, of course, but at least the overall shape of the demon seemed relatively stable.

In short, it had a gassy orb for a head with a creepy-crawly body, and something like eight or ten limbs, all of which looked like they'd once been ship-trees upon which the Vessels matured. I think I already mentioned it was three hundred feet tall, but at the moment it was doing a humble crouch and probably wouldn't top two hundred.

"I'm still staring at it," Fera whispered.

"Me too."

"I'm afraid the second I stop it's going to notice me."

"We're invisible, remember?"

Suddenly the red vein running through the sphere narrowed and a larger swirling pattern appeared, like a dense red storm in the center of it's head, an eye. It swung lazily across the surface of the sphere, surveying the city.

"For some reason, I don't think that cares."

I pried my eyes away, grabbed Fera and shifted us both down six feet, which put us a few feet in the air in the interior of the buildings top floor. We fell those few feet and despite our circus potential, neither of us stayed on our feet and we both lost our invisibility spells.

"Down," I said, barely taking in the vastly new décor of the building's interior before figuring out which thing was the door and heading through it.

Inside was like being inside a huge insect. There was a sound, like water moving through pipes, and the hum that sounded like a field of crickets a long ways off. The air was warm and wet and smelled rotten as compost. The doors were black chitin shell, and folded opened on their own like valves letting us move through the system. But as bizarre as it was, it still followed the layout of the original structure, a simple layout I was already familiar with, at least until we got to the stairs.

Where the stairs had been was a wall of black with two openings for tubes that lead downwards and curved away, leaving the destination unclear. Black slime flowed through them, coming up from the tube on the right, clinging and flowing across the wall between them, then continuing down the tube on the left.

"Fancy a ride in the slime?" Fera asked.

"Not really."

"Remind me again why we didn't jump back into the throne room?"

"The fear that it would be teaming with faded Faroks and blade-men. Also, Karstia didn't cover the whole palace layout. I was planning to fly to the platform. I saw it clearly from the outside."

"I hate flying," she muttered.

"You sound like Jai-ahren," I replied, missing my little Temeki. I poked the slime with the blade of one of my long knives. The blade sunk in, but came away clean and unharmed.

"You first," we said together. I laughed and took her in my arms, gave her a quick kiss for luck, then hopped into the tube leading down.

I felt the warmth of the slime, wet and disgusting from ankles to neck, but I slid so fast I quickly ignored it. The slime made the tube slippery, but it's viscosity slowed my descent. I seemed to reach top speed quickly, then coasted along as the tube spiraled downwards.

Near the next floor, divots appeared in the ceiling. I didn't know what they were for until the tube opened to a landing. I sailed right out and across a short stream of slime, then into another tube continuing downwards. I hadn't wanted to stop there, but the tubes barely gave me a choice.

Floor after floor flew past, the divots appeared each time shortly before the landing. I decided they were hand holds to slow yourself down, yet by that time I'd lost track of how many floors I'd been down already. It hardly mattered. Before the final landing there were no divots. Instead, the slime thickened and slowed in its final stretch. It spit me out at a very reasonable speed, in a shallow pool of slime.

I stood up quickly and surveyed the lobby of the building, which was empty. The slime fell away before I'd even taken a step, leaving no trace of itself outside the pool. Fera arrived shortly, a look of glee on her face.

She sobered immediately as she took in the room and moved over to join me in a secluded corner.

"We clear?" she asked.

"All clear."

"Good," she said, smiling. "That was actually fun, like the rock slides north of Atonia."

"Never been," I said. "You slide on rock?"

"Yes, but it's slick with water and moss and algae. Faster, and it spits you out into a deep natural pool. Remind me to take you there if we ever make it home."

"If? Where'd your optimism go? Have some faith."

I restored our invisibility spells, simple ones this time to conserve my strength, then layered fly spells on top of those, but we stuck to walking for the time being, slipping out into the dark streets and making our way quickly as we could towards the palace.

The smell of death hung close to the ground and we saw more dead bodies than live ones. There were dead Faroks here and there, some charred, some sliced into pieces, some dead with no visible reason why. Some of them were common Faroks, some of them part of Aganond's elite, but only one was faded and we didn't see a single dead blades-man.

The bodies attracted scavengers, mostly the bird-like creatures we'd seen so many of before. They didn't seem to fear the new city, despite its radical changes from the one they had known. In addition to the birds were flying insects we'd yet to see. They had nearly transparent wings about the size of my hand, and bodies that ranged from the size of a pea to the size of a walnut. Clusters of them landed on the bodies the birds ignored, growing larger as they fed on flesh, then fluttering awkwardly away with bloated stomachs.

A few living strolled among the dead, groups of faded Faroks and blades-men still patrolled, but none so close that they could have heard us, and if they could see invisible things at a distance they made no sign of it. Still, each corner presented a new risk of running face to face with something hostile.

We made a few blocks uneventfully. The dead seemed to grow more dense as we closed on the palace, and the living ones seemed to draw closer. We ducked back into the closest dorm lobby to avoid a nearby patrol, then waited a nervous moment inside while they marched past.

The palace was altered like the rest of the city, but like the rest it still bore enough of a resemblance to its former self that I was able to recognize it. Seven spires rose from the platform, making it appear as a dark crown set back into the palace facade overlooking the open courtyard below.

The darkness and blackness of the buildings made details hard to come by. If there was still a doorway from the platform to the inside of the palace, it was lost to my eyes. But even from afar I was fairly sure the platform itself was deserted.

"That's our target," I told Fera. "Are you ready for some flying?"

"Never, but let's get it over with."

We stepped out cautiously, but seeing no close enemies took flight. We soared up and across, well over the street yet well below the tops of any buildings. The demon was hidden away by the dorms between us and the Faroks marching here and there below us took no note. For a moment in the air, we felt safe.

I pushed ahead, then dove quickly and pulled up at the last moment to make a delicate landing. Fera lacked the practice to maneuver so well, and followed more slowly. The platform was still as empty as I'd seen from below, but I did see the doorway; closed off with the insect-wing doors we'd seen inside the dorm-tower.

I secured the doors with a magical lock, then worked an illusionary screen spell to mask the entire platform from the street, then another to mask the platform from the sky in case Vessels approached. Fera landed well before I'd finished and was studying the platform and the spires growing out from it.

"We're hidden from sight, but not sound," I told her. "But I think as long as we're not shouting it won't be a problem."

"What do you think is inside these?" she asked, her soft purple outline gestured to one of the spires.

"They make as much sense as any of the others. Decoration?"

Fera seemed to shake her head and continued to study them. I shrugged and slipped into second sight, searching for the focus and getting nearly blinded in the process. The center of the platform, a slightly raised disk about eight feet across, glowed brilliantly. It was as potent as the Pegasus Crown, more so perhaps, but it lacked the artistry for lack of a better word. It was raw, functional, brutal; like a wide bladed two-handed sword while the Crown was an elegant rapier. It was also complex and confusing, powerful but clumsy and rushed, its parts glued and patched together by the sheer will of its maker, in no way because they were meant to be together.

I had no great knowledge of alchemy, but by all accounts it was simpler to make things that went well together. An earring was easier to bind with spells that altered hearing, I knew from my own, though it was sadly missing from my ear. Aganond clearly threw everything into this platform, and the kitchen sink stood out like a sore thumb. Still, I had no doubt it all worked. But would it work for me?

I heard the scraping of metal before Fera's words warning, "T'vance, it's moving!"

As to what, I wasn't immediately sure. Either the platform was descending or the spires rising. But where the spires met the platform, the tops of open archways were revealed. From what I could see, they could have been windows or doors and each spire had one.

Fera was close to one, and I saw her vague outline staring down into it. Then her arm stuck through the opening and her invisibility spell dissolved with the click, click, click of her kalta firing down inside. Blades-men!" she hissed.

Her now visible form hopped backwards as black blades thrashed through the opening. There was still too little space for the blades-man to climb out, but each second brought that moment closer. She reached her arm and fired again, while I rushed to another of the seven spires and peered down.

Thankfully, mine was empty. I ran to the next, with less luck. A blades-man was within, anxiously waiting for the spires to rise enough that he might clamber out. I ran to the next, and saw Fera was doing the same, perhaps she'd dosed the first with enough poison to take him out. She shouted empty at her next one, and me mine, then we converged on the final spire to find it occupied.

Three blades-men in all, from seven spires. I suppose we should have considered ourselves lucky. Fera fired down at the one before us, who leaped and thrust one sword-arm out nearly hitting my unseen foot. The curve of the blade caught on the opening, then the other blade shot out and hooked the other side enough that he began pulling himself through, head first. Kalta darts stuck out from his cheek, neck, and shoulders, and another quick shot sunk through one of it's eyes, spraying blood so dark it was nearly black. Still it wriggled out to get at us.

But situated as it was, it was an easy target. As he looked up and hissed at Fera, I drove one of my long knives down through it's neck. I missed all the bones, sliding down through it's throat two feet down into the chest cavity, then I twisted the blade and I pulled it back out. The blades' grip released and the body collapsed back down into its cubbyhole.

So they die, I thought to myself. Like Messengers, tough but not indestructible.

We spun immediately. The other two were nearly out as well.

"Left!" I said, then the words of spells were on my lips. Fera fired, striking the left one's arms, neck, face. His knee caught the platform as my spell finished, the flames I'd called encircled my hand, longing for release. But I waited for him to rise completely before I let them fly. The blast of flame surged through the space between us like it was nothing and struck the blades-man's chest. He made no sound, but the flames seemed to roar as they washed over him.

Fera fired another shot for good measure, but her attention quickly turned to the first blades-man who had just reached his feet and began rushing across the platform towards us, silent as death. He was more riddled with darts than the others, for all the good it seemed to do.

"He's mine!" I shouted. "Make sure the other is finished!"

I could only imagine Fera's displeasure, I didn't look to see it. Instead, I rushed forward to meet the blades-man with long knives in hand and spells in mind. Two blades, two strikes, I thought. I threw a blade turning spell out ahead of me, feeling it bind itself to his left sword, I focused only on his right. I crossed my blades in a full parry, catching the blade between them, then pushing it aside with one while thrusting forward with the other. He slipped my thrust too easily as his second blade descended. The spell tugged heavily at the jagged black sword, but failed to completely turn it. It caught my shoulder, my unarmored shoulder, and weak as it was it cut to the bone.

I screamed, I think, but the pain was less than I'd have expected considering the blood that flowed from the wound. I rolled away from the blow as best I could, regaining my feet and narrowing avoiding a series of follow-up strikes as I danced backwards and parried with my left hand blade.

I nearly tripped on the raised disc in the center of the room, but managed to keep my footing. Another blade turning spell caught an incoming strike and my left hand parried the other, leaving my injured arm open to thrust. He didn't expect it, or didn't care, and the blade caught him in his belly. It was a shallow puncture, ignored like the other injuries, but it leaked a steady stream of the thing's sickly, blackened blood.

He came at me again, and again I used spells and blades to keep him away. Each time my steel struck his black jagged blades, shards of black fell away. I heard Fera's kaltas reporting here and there, and realized some of her shots were now to help me. New darts stuck out from my opponents side and upper legs.

She cursed as she drained the last kalta dart, then I watched her circle in behind him. He seemed to notice as well, but his attention was still on me and he pressed hard, driving me back off the disc. Fera followed him with speed I didn't think she had. One moment, she was fifteen feet back, the next she was right behind him. Her own blade dug into his kidney, then she ducked and rolled away as he spun round with both blades hoping to catch her. He only caught air, then more steel as I pounced on him. He spun back at me, but one strike went high and I put both blades into catching the other.

Fera dashed past him, slashing through his hamstrings like butter. He fell, and brought both his blades up to impale me should I have followed, but I did nothing of the sort. Instead, I stepped back and smiled, ancient words bringing fire to my hands once more. There was no fear in his eyes as he struggled to his knees, nor as the fire engulfed him. But he did die.

I glanced around. Two bodies burned on the platform, one was crumpled in the now open spire chamber. Another spell revealed two uneventful minutes into the future. If anyone had heard, we wouldn't have two minutes.

"We're clear, for now." I made my way back to the disc in the center and let my healing magic work, slowing the blood to a tiny trickle, then staunching it completely.

Fera scanned what could be seen of the city below, looking for signs that anyone noticed our fight despite the illusions. I assume she saw nothing, because she walked back without a word or meaningful look.

"Sorry," she said. "I know you said he was yours."

"You were perfect," I replied, "and thank you."

"It was foolish. We should have taken him together from the start."

"Yes and no," I told her.

She said nothing, but gave me an impatient look as she waited for a more detailed explanation.

"I needed a battle. I needed to fear for my life and I needed to bleed. But I also needed to live, obviously. Together, it might have been a rout from the start."

"It would have been. I still don't understand. You've never turned down a rout before."

I chuckled. "You have a point there. Come, sit with me." I took out two pinches of gort, one and a half for me and half for Fera. She looked around nervously, then shrugged and snorted it with me and we laid back to stare at the stars. They were different from home, but there were a lot of them.

"Attuning with something is easier with the familiar. If I handed you a charm and asked you to bond with it, you'd be hard pressed to do it. Now if I asked you to carry it for a year, then bond with it, you'd have a hard time failing. Does that make sense?"

"I suppose so."

"Well I don't have a year to wait. But I've now visited this disc, I've fought on it, I've feared on it, I've bled upon it. I've slain enemies upon it, done drugs upon it, and soon I plan to make love with the only women I've ever loved upon it. Then I plan to sleep upon it, wake upon it, and break my fast upon it. And then, well if gods be good, I plan on making it mine."

"That's a long time," she said critically. "Do you imagine they don't know we're here?"

"I spent over a year thinking my enemies knew my every move, did you know that? Everywhere I turned, every plan I made, we found Arnak ready."

"You're making my argument for me."

I smiled, gripping her hand. "Ah, but that was before I figured out how they were tracking me."

"And you know how this demon might do that?"

"Of course not. But that isn't my point. No one knows everything, lover. No one. Not me, not you, not Andraax, not Aganond, not the Lords of Orhan, and not some demon. I'm not saying we're safe, far from it, but I'm not giving up on the plan because I'm paranoid."

She sighed, but I couldn't tell the meaning. "I trust you," she said, simply.

"Don't worry, I don't trust them. I'm going to start putting down wards, just in case. Anyone tries to take us unaware will be in for a surprise, that's for sure."

"You should get to it," she said. She tried to rise, but the gort made her head spin and she slumped back down, smiling. "Maybe I'll just wait here."

Fifteen minutes later I'd layered thirty traps around the platform. Five at the only door, two at each spire, and the rest covering the areas in between. Across the whole platform there wasn't a square foot of space safe from my traps. In second site, the massive overlapping field of glowing trigger spells was so bright it nearly almost outdid the disc itself. Almost.

When I returned, Fera raised her head. I could see it had cleared, and her eyes darted quickly about taking in the platform. She curled her legs back, and moved so quickly into a crouch that I barely saw her move. "We're still safe?" she asked.

"Yes."

"How's the shoulder?"

"It's not bleeding, but it still hurts like a bitch."

She nodded knowingly, but there was a glimmer of mischief in her eyes. "I'll try to mind it."

Then she rushed me, threw her arms around me, and ours lips met almost violently. Her tongue was in my mouth, her nails dug into my back as she held me tightly. We fell mid-kiss and she twisted as we fell so she landed on her back with me atop her.

We pulled and tore at each others robes, the ash that darkened the white fabric rising up in cloud around us. It stung my eyes, so I kept them closed, but it still found its way into our mouths and noses; not that we cared. Fabric was ripped and weapons and equipment dropped hastily. The Viirtakai, probably our most valuable possession, rolled several feet away. We both paused to look, noted it's location for reference, and fell back into one another.

The cloud settled after the robes were cast away and we were both naked. My eyes peeked here and there, feasting on her firm curves. Here and there our skin was marked with ash, dark fingerprints on her breasts, neck, sides, thighs. Everywhere my hands roamed left tell tale smudges of gray. I could only imagine how much more noticeable the marks must have been on my paler skin.

Passion took over, and our foreplay grew rougher as we fought playfully to stop the other from moving too fast, or at times the other way around. We rolled about on the platform, trying to consume each other. At one point I rolled onto my bad shoulder and gasped in pain.

"Sorry," she whispered between kisses, but it was all forgotten when I felt myself sliding inside her, warm and wet and welcoming. At that point, there was a noticeable pause to savor the sensation, followed by a few gentle caresses and deep slow kisses. Then she teased me slowly, controlling everything from on top, smiling wickedly down at me.

When I could take it no longer, I threw her off me and mounted her, driving myself forcefully, urgently into her. Try as she might, I held her in place, by arms, or throat or simply my weight well positioned over her. She struggled and clawed, as if protesting, though I knew what her heart, mind and body truly wanted. I gave her that, over and over, harder and harder. She was moaning, screaming, I couldn't even tell how loud we'd grown. Then as explosively as it had begun, it ended. I collapsed atop her, my lips finding hers again in a tender kiss.

My shoulder ached, my lungs gasped for air, and Fera was making soft feminine murmurs to substitute for the words she couldn't find. I found my own voice in sweet loving words I could only say inches from her ear.

After a few restful moments, I pulled myself half off her and slid two fingers deep inside her.

"No," she whispered. "Break time?"

I smiled at her. "This is break time."

I drew my fingers back out, wet with a mixture of our juices, streaked with hints of blood. I held them up, staring at them glistening in the moonlight, then using it like ink began tracing glyphs around the edge of the disc, reciting the words as I did.

Our spirit. Our life. Our love.

I wrote it in Iruaric, Kubei, Uscurac, Logos; the magical languages I'd mastered. Then I wrote them in Ranaka, Erlin, Rhaya, Yinka; the natural spoken languages I knew. I had to go back to Fera several times along the way. The letters dried leaving little trace, but I knew they were there.

Fera rose when I'd finished. "You missed Iylari and Shay," she said.

"I don't speak those."

"Oh, but I do. This is about us, right?" She collected some juices herself and wrote the final two versus, once in the common tongue of Emer and once in the high tongue of elves. For the latter, her vocal cords rang out in harmonic tones my own body could never create. I rarely heard Iylari spoken and I'd never heard Fera speak it, but the sounds seemed to carry the meaning well, and I found my eyes misty as she finished.

I almost fought back the tears, but remembered to embrace them. I didn't cry as a general rule, but I managed one tear before my instincts drove the rest away. It fell off my cheek and splattered on the disc with the rest of our bodily fluids.

"Does it have some meaning?" she asked.

"To the universe? I doubt it. But it means something to me."

"It just... I don't know. I thought I felt something."

I laid back down, across the glyphs in places, but close to Fera. The night was still warm enough that we didn't need clothing, so we just lay naked in each others arms. The smell of sex surrounded us, mixed with our own musks. It drowned out the other scents almost entirely and reminded me of my basement office in Lethys after one of our marathon love-making sessions.

My mind sought nearby sentience, but found none within fifty feet of us.

"Still safe," I whispered, nuzzling her neck.
CHAPTER 22

* * *

T'vance

* * *

I woke before dawn, Fera still asleep beside me, and wondered why. My wards were still well placed and the sky was clear above us. I rose carefully, but the pain in my shoulder had all but disappeared from the healing magic that had been working all night. I checked the city below, the spires, the doors. Below was calm, and the platform hadn't changed all night. So why had I awoken?

Then I saw it, one of the small snake-like birds was perched atop the outermost spire. His neck leaned towards me curiously, and he shifted his weight with a faint flapping of its wings.

"Scavengers?" Fera's sleepy voice said, startling me.

I studied the critter in second sight just to be sure, but it seemed nothing unusual. It was just an animal, dumb but harmless. "That's probably it," I agreed.

The disc seemed to pulse as I stepped back upon it, which I might have ignored had Fera not jumped up as a result.

"What was that?" she asked. "The demon moving?"

"You felt it? No. It was the disc, whatever that means."

"Is it time, then? Nothing we've brought to eat will leave you fond memories of this place."

"That is true, but I know an illusion or two that might do the trick."

Another of the bird-snakes flew in from the south, perching on the low wall next to one spire.

"Sure," she said. "You'll remember how your meal couldn't stand up to any of Rubo's creations."

"Maybe it is time."

"For someone who doesn't cast spells, I actually know a hell of a lot about it," Fera said. "Comes with the territory, I guess. But focuses and attunement? These things are foreign to me. Still, I'm fairly intuitive. Every instinct tells me the disc is ready for you."

"Every instinct?"

"Well every instinct that isn't telling me we should get the hell out of this cursed city."

A third bird-snake glided in, landing near the first on top of the eastern-most spire.

"Your instincts are nothing to take lightly," I said. "I'll start. Get your things and keep an eye on things, preferably as far away from the disc as possible. Just in case it explodes or something."

She leaned in for a quick kiss, then began collecting her things while I remained naked in the center of the disc. I closed my eyes, placed both palms down on the surface, and concentrated. It took a moment to center myself, but just a moment.

The sounds around me faded. I didn't even hear the fourth bird-snake when it fluttered down to land directly on the platform. I didn't see it either, or the next five for that matter. At first I saw only auras, bright and varied, many different auras all mixed together. I saw my wards, the spells bound within them, the spells strengthening the ground and spires, and of course the elephant in the room – the disc.

I pressed the others out of my mind, one by one sifting the auras out until only the disc remained. It felt strong and sure below me, but it's complexity kept me at bay. It was protected, I could tell. Protected by obscurity, protected by complexity, protected by... was there something else?

I probed the surface gently and it seemed to welcome me, pulling me closer. Come, know me, it invited. I am ready! It was just so easy. So easy it was too easy. I circled the aura with my minds eye, a number of places seemed ready to accept me, but I touched none. I remembered the black sphere that had imprisoned me when I found the Pegasus Crown. That had seemed easy too, so obvious, yet it was nothing of the sort.

I skirted about, looking for the most difficult approach and found it beneath. There was no path from below, no path to enter, no path to be welcomed. It was exactly the place I'd never penetrate, a place hiding some horror just beneath the surface, a horror that would stop me, a horror that sought to take me into its power and consume me.

I stared at it long and hard, letting my nose bring in the smells of the real world, even as every other sense dulled to nothing. I could still smell us, Fera and me. Could the horror? I took a deep breath, and as my lungs filled I saw it, a faint outline swimming just beneath the surface. I tracked it with my eyes, kept my breath inside me. Was it looking away? Looking up? Was it really guarding the easy paths?

My lungs burned with desire, but I kept the breath in. It wriggled closer to the surface. Then closer. Then, without a thought, I thrust my hand in and felt my fingers grasp the throat. I squeezed with all my strength as it writhed and twisted. Teeth sought my flesh, but couldn't reach it. A tail lashed up my arm, stinging, cutting. I felt warm blood, but reminded myself there was no blood. This was the land of spirits and auras, the realm of the unreal.

It lashed and thrashed. No! It screamed at me, hissed, fighting to free itself, fighting to climb my arm, fighting for my eyes. My grip held like iron, cold and hard; it did not yield, no matter what the creature did, no matter the wounds, they were nothing.

"You are mine!" I commanded.

It froze, the head curving up to gaze at me. I am yours.

Then the horror dissolved in my hands, it's aura sinking back into the greater disc.

"Hello, T'vance."

I turned to face Aganond, two feet behind me. There was nothing in this trance world save me and the disc, not Fera nor even the rooftop. Yet he was there.

"Fairly sure you're dead," I replied, facing him.

"I'll always live on in the things I made. But come now, you've won me, right?" His voice was thick with sweet sarcasm. "Shouldn't you be asking me to do things?"

"So you're some programmed sentience for this creation?"

"Accurate enough, yes." He yawned in boredom. It made me want to slap him, but I wasn't even sure I could.

"So tell me, what things can you do?"

"I connect all men. I can teach them things you know, or share learning between groups, or give them purpose, or make them fear. I can tell you what they're thinking. I can feed men, too, so long as you feed me first."

"You don't connect all men. You only connect those close by. How close?"

"All thinking creatures within one mile."

"I was once in the Enrichment."

"I know."

"Could you have programmed me?"

He smiled. "The Faroks are easy. They are designed to be. I could have offered you knowledge to take or leave, but changed you? If you resisted, and you would, it would come down to a fight. A fight I'd probably win."

"Aganond maybe, but you're just a disc."

"And how embarrassing to be bested by a mere disc."

"Enough taunts. What are the limits? Surely I can't have every Farok out there casting my best spells?"

"No. The men are men. You could teach them a spell, and they know many, but they are simple creatures. Each has his own limit. You will know if they are capable, though, when the Enrichment starts."

"How long does it take. Say I wanted to teach everyone a couple simple spells, then tell them all to do something straightforward?"

"A minute? Maybe less."

"Okay, I'll be back," I told him.

"Wait. Leaving so soon? Surely you have more questions?" Something in his tone hinted at desperation. Was he lonely? Or worse...

I glanced down at my arm, which had stopped hurting the moment I'd taken control. But if it didn't hurt, why was it bleeding? The forearm flesh was shredded and oozing blood, and there were bleeding gashed on my upper arm. Then I noticed more blood, my legs, my side. I didn't feel any of them.

I glanced up and saw Aganond smiling before disconnecting my mind from the disc.

The real world was a nightmare. Pain enveloped me, my arms, my legs. There were things all over me, little scavenger bird-snakes, biting and scratching at my skin. I screamed and thrashed, sending them flying, then slipped in my own blood trying to stand.

There were hundreds of them flying over head, and dozens flying around the platform, and another hundred were already dead or dying on the ground. I caught sight of Fera running, a cloud of them swarming her. She slashed at them frantically, cutting them to pieces with each strike, but there were still more.

I fought through the pain for the words, short words, shouting spells were notoriously terse. All the emphasis was in the intonation of them, and the thoughts behind them, and the power to call the Essaence into yourself. I screamed them, and felt the ripple of energy wash through me and across the platform.

For a moment, nothing changed. But Fera slowed to a stop and the birds attacking her slowly broke off and began to wander. One bird flew into a spire, then slid off and plummeted towards the ground, others just circled aimlessly.

I scrambled to Fera, shooing the birds in my path. They moved just enough to be out of my way, then stared at me and each other, turning their heads about in confusion. Fera had the same look on her face. I grabbed her arm and pulled her away from them, seeking refuge inside one of the empty spires.

She struggled most of the way, staring at me in outrage though she said nothing. She was injured as well, probably worse than me. Her hands were slippery with blood and she had cuts on every part of her body I could see, and a few underneath the robes as well judging by the blood seeping through the darkened robes.

I spared a moment to create an ethereal room, and pushed her inside. The cool gray room was small, but felt safe compared to the outside. I tended her wounds, only two of which were bleeding with enough volume to be concerning.

"Fuck me," she muttered, shaking off her stupor. "That was a confusion spell?"

"Yes. They aren't any fun, are they?"

"I'd rather be hit with a firebolt than have my mind violated like that. I couldn't do anything."

"I know people who can exclude specific targets with spells like these, but I've barely mastered casting this spell, so modifying it was out of the question. Sorry."

"You probably saved my life, so I won't hold it against you."

"So what the fuck happened?"

"I was going to ask you. They started fluttering in a bit before you went into that trance. Then once you started, it was like a beacon to them. Gods, there were a lot of the buggers. How many did I kill?"

"A lot. There were bodies all over. But if something I did called them, why were they all over you?"

She grimaced. "That was probably my doing. A few started after you and I got in their way. After I killed a couple of them, the others reacted." She grabbed the sleeve of her robe and smelled it, turning her nose away disgusted. "They pissed on me, or sprayed me or something. After that, they didn't seem to want anything to do with you."

"Scent marking. There are wasps in Tanara that do the same thing."

"I feel like shit," she muttered. "So what happened in your trance. We nearly died, again, was it worth it?"

"I attuned. Whether or not that was worth it remains to be seen."

I told her all the details, while inspecting her wounds. She nodded along and winced in pain.

"If Aganond's spirit is in that thing, it's his will you'll be facing every time you use that thing," she said.

I knew as much, but was trying not to fixate on it. I'd already bested him once. The next time would be easier. "I'll be careful, I said."

"So what now? I know you're trying to keep the faith, but that swarm was close to five hundred. Surely you don't think that went unnoticed."

"It probably didn't, but now that we've gotten the attunement out of the way, there's no reason to stay. After everything I put into that, I'll be able to teleport back anytime. So we just need to find a safe place to rest."

"Can't we just stay in this room?"

I shook my head. "No. I can make it last longer, indefinitely if I put my mind to it, but Karstia won't be able to find or speak with me. I think it's time to regroup. As soon as you're ready, we'll jump west to the coast and find a place to wait for Karstia to find us."

"I'm ready now," she said, struggling to her feet. "You do realize you're still naked though, right?"

I slipped back out under cloak of invisibility. It wasn't really for the clothes, those I could fashion with illusions like I'd heard Katrina does. It was the rest of it that mattered, my imitation kynacs, boots, and my pack of supplies, meager as they were.

I checked the area before departing the shelter of the spire, and found it a bit different than I'd left it. There were far fewer living bird-snakes, and far greater dead ones. I considered that my own warded spells might have been responsible, but ruled that out on scale alone. There were just too many dead ones.

I glanced up and found my answer. Floating fifteen feet about the platform were two of Aganond's Vessels. I pulled my head quickly back inside and edged within inches of the doorway to my Ethereal room just in case.

Then I saw a column of dark smoke fall upon the platform from above. I thought of our friendly smoke-demon, but this was something else. I heard something solid land within it, then the smoke began to dissipate. A humanoid stood within, both pale and dark. It was not a blades-man nor a faded Farok, but something else, some other hybrid it seemed. There was clearly some Farok in it, but far less than remained in the blades-men.

A quarter of his face, including one eye, and most of the lower left arm remained human. The rest had been covered and bound with a thick chitin armor. I could see where the armor invaded the flesh at the seems, and there the pale flesh was bruised purple. The armor itself was intricate and precise, less rough and organic than the modifications to the blades-men, and along the right arm, head, and neck were small points that glowed red in the darkness before dawn. Where the other eye should have been, a silver disc no larger than a coin was set in what might pass for a helmet.

"Technology," I thought to myself. The little lights twinkled like so many parts of the bridge aboard Doogan's ship. I saw no weapons, but assumed the worst and remained well hidden.

A tiny beam of red light swept out over the platform, visible only when it passed through smoke or settled on objects like my long knives and pack. The creature walked over to them and stared down for a moment, then bent over and picked up the belt with both scabbards attached, holding the weapons up before it's organic eye to have a better look.

It dropped the blades, then examined the pack. It opened the top and dumped the contents unceremoniously on the platform. After a few seconds of study, the thing began walking across the platform, kicking at the piles of bird-snake corpses to check beneath them.

Another jet of smoke fell from above and another of the strange hybrid creatures appeared near the first. They didn't speak, but the second one seemed to know what to do already. They divided territory and began examining the area in detail.

By then I'd decided my equipment was forfeit. There was no way I was going to risk retrieving anything, not even my boots which were temptingly close. I was about to slip back in with Fera when I had an idea.

They were looking for someone, so I decided I might as well give them someone to find. I figured it might throw off suspicion, but even if it didn't it might provide useful insights. I worked out just the right illusion, a young wild looking Farok. The illusion formed within the confines of the north-side spire, then crept out when both of the creatures had their back turns.

"Test one," I thought. He made it two steps out when both of the creatures spun and raised their armored arms pointing at him. My illusion ran towards the edge, and jumped, but bolts of plasma lanced through the air from both hybrids. I adapted the illusion to make him scream, and show plasma splashing back and to the side. He toppled over the rail and fell, but I couldn't remember the terrain well enough to keep the illusion going after I lost sight of it.

The hybrids ran to the edge and looked down, then paused and looked at one another. They didn't speak, but I was sure they were communicating somehow. I wished I had Karstia mind-reading abilities, but without them I was just taking risks to learn nothing.

I went back into the room and found Fera passed out, slumped against the wall. I grabbed her and pulled her to her feet. She woke up irritated and shook me off her. "I'm awake, dammit," she spat.

"Sure you were. Come on, we have to go now."

I prepared the spell to as close to completion as I could, then we walked out into the real world hand in hand. Staying only long enough to finish the final words, then the world twisted and we appeared in the sky over a long wide beach. In that brief moment before we jumped, I saw the pair of dark things react to us, turning with raised arms. I tried not to dwell on it, we were falling after all.

I paired spells of landing on us, one spell, but it was easy to bridge it with Fera, almost like including Jai. Damn, I missed the little fur-ball.

The beach was mostly gravel with low surf, but it smelled like a beach and didn't look so different from the worst areas of the Sulin beach line back home. There were sea birds, white feathered with long beaks and little tiny brown and gray ones that seemed to disappear into the gravel.

We found a nice rocky rise with a wide, ocean-facing "cave" that would barely be adequate to keep us out of the rain, but it was set in hard stone. A few disintegration spells later, we had ourselves a respectable little nest. We roasted white sea bird over magically heated stones while I worked healing spells on both of us. We just lay naked and dozed and let the magic work, smelling the sea and roasting bird.

The sun came up, hot and bright, and we rested in the cooler shade. By midday our wounds were memories, and we'd been well fed and fairly well rested. I scouted by air, but saw no sign of a host approaching from the north. I did find three different styled villages, all of them empty as far as I could tell.

I investigated the closest, which consisted of a dozen structures made from trees. They were living huts, where the branches and leaves themselves had been warped to create interior spaces. Humanoids once lived within, and I found spare breeches and a tunic made from some soft spun brown cloth, and moccasins made from scale hide. I also found a couple spears of natural wood with forged metal tips as sharp as anything in Gûl.

There was no sign of struggle nor any bodies, and I wondered where they'd gone and when. My furthest vision of the past took me almost two weeks back, but even then the village was empty. Whoever they'd been, they didn't seem like Faroks, at least not Aganond's Faroks. They seemed more like druids, living in harmony with nature. It made me realize just how little I knew about this place.

"Clothes!?" Fera ribbed as I greeted her again. "And here I was thinking to go naked."

"Seems only fair to make up for all the time I was naked and you clothed," I rebutted.

She smiled and let her robes fall to the ground. "As you say."

I took her again on the sandy ground in our shady hideaway, losing myself and our troubles for a time. By the time we'd finished, we were hot and sweating and covered with sand. I reached for gort on instinct, only then remembering my pouch had been lost on the Enrichment platform.

"Oh shit," Fera said, noticing my panic. "Your stash? Of course," she said, piecing it together for herself.

"Do you have anything?" I asked. "Gorthops? The perfume made from it? Or anything like that?"

She shook her head. "I didn't think to bring anything," she said. "How long have you gone without?"

"Three days at most, considering the last couple of years. I used to be better, but money buys bad habits."

Fera nodded knowingly. "Try to put it out of your mind."

Easy for her to say. Dúranaki like to pretend gort isn't addictive to them, but most of us know the truth. Dúranaki do handle gort far better than other races, but that doesn't mean we're immune. After a day without gort, I'd be grumpy. At two days I'd be prone to violent outbreaks. By the third day, I'd be so sick from withdrawal I'd be almost useless. But she did have a point. Finding gort wasn't a possibility, and there was little point in panic when I was still feeling fine.

"Come on, let's rinse off," I said. "First one to the water..."

I hadn't even finished the thought when Fera jumped up and sprinted towards the water. I caught her when we were ankle deep, and only then because she let me. We kissed and wrestled in the water, which was warm and salty, but far cooler than the air and our bodies.

We stayed in the shallows, away from whatever unknowns might be lurking deeper out. It was safe there, or at least it felt safe, and we laughed and splashed as if we were on vacation. Those moments, as brief as they were, were a vacation never the less; a vacation from the demon, from the army we were about to join and the war we were about to face.

"Why don't we ever do this?" she asked, letting sand and gravel run through her fingers.

"Play in the water?"

"Vacation in general. We're always so serious, but this is fun. We should be doing this."

"We should," I replied. "We will."

"Promise? It's always so hard, and it will only get harder when we go home."

"Why harder?"

I thought I caught a glimpse of something in her face, but she pushed it away before I could make sense of it. "It just always gets harder," she said, shrugging.

"I can think of things we'd want to get harder," I remarked coyly.

"Really?" she said, grinning. "Show me."

"Hello, T'vance," Karstia's voice echoed in my head. "So what trouble have you gotten yourself into against my advice?"

"No trouble," I said, wounded. "Unless you count losing all my things. You probably would."

"Dare I ask? No, spare me. I'm sure the story will be far more entertaining in person. You are joining us, right? We're about ten miles inland following the path of a small river that winds down from the mountains. If you head due east, you can't miss the river. Follow it north until it forks and wait there."

"Any reason to expect trouble?"

"Always better to expect it," she said. "But our trusty Navigators assure me our path is safe."

"Well I wouldn't want to insult them by using every precaution."

"So just nine out of ten of them, then?"

"Sounds about right. Is everything there well? Any encounters along the way?"

"We're all fine. We've got a few tricks to stay out of harms way, and the Lenn-raki are confident enough. But I'd be lying if I said I felt that way. Our luck is too good, T'vance. It will turn, of that I'm sure."

"It always does," I said. "It always does. I did see something new you should know about. I'll concentrate on them now."

I focused on the images of the strange hybrid Farok's we'd fled from on the Enrichment platform, imagining them turning about as they had, raising their arms, firing plasma from from their wrists.

"Those.. no magic you think? They look like weapons of the Empire."

"Maybe. I can't really say from what I saw."

"T'vance, were you on Aganond's platform?!"

"You mean my platform?"

I felt a rush of emotions, a mix of anger and mirth and relief. "Don't get cocky, T'vance. Taking it is nothing if we don't hold it long enough to use it."

"I'm not cocky and we're on your schedule, so don't lecture me on time. If they reclaim it, I'll just take it back. It's more mine than they'll ever make it theirs."

"That's exactly the cocky I'm talking about. You have a crazy plan, I take it. I can almost see it. You want a team, elite warriors, the navigators. You don't even know, but you'll want some walkers."

"That's really impressive work, and annoying. I'll tell you my plan, no need to steal it from my head."

The river was only a score of steps to cross, and probably not very deep, but it was brown and murky and alive with things. We heard occasional splashes, saw a fin break here and there. At one point we saw a bird-snake swoop in from out of no where, snatch up some kind of fish, and disappear back into the trees.

It ended in an ancient dam made of stone that had long since surrendered to time. It was no more than a pile of rocks the river had to work around. The river dropped and there was a small shallow lake from which ran two smaller rivers. There was no army.

I picked up a sentience at the edge of my perception. Fera had at least noticed my reaction and faded into brush. I did the same, peering ahead but seeing nothing.

"Just keep walking T'vance," Karstia told me. "We're here."

I walked out tentatively, then more confidently as I saw a brief imperfection in the scene before me. I waved Fera to follow. One moment I was walking along a river, moving towards nothing but dirt and trees and water, then I felt a tingling over my skin as I walked through the illusionary bubble.

Suddenly the empty area ahead was packed with people, almost all of them Lenn-raki with their pitch skin and bright colored eyes. There were a dozen outliers close to me, but another hundred feet back were thousands of them, winding away with the river in a wide swath.

Karstia walked out from them with the navigators, Aja and a Lenn-raki man I didn't know. He was old, but still solidly built, and had his gray hair done up in a dozen braided tails. He walked with a staff, but didn't seem to depend on it. The staff just moved effortlessly with his other limbs as he walked towards me.

I glanced at the rest as they approached. They seemed primitive but I saw bows and forged metal weapons. Many wore only pants and boots, leaving their chests bare, but some wore thick breastplates of some kind of wood caked with mud. That didn't make good sense, but it's what they looked like. There were even more shields of the same make, on those both with and without other armor.

There were women among the men, perhaps as many as a quarter of the host were women, and I'm talking about fighting folk. They didn't bare their chests as the men did, and in a few cases I felt we were missing out.

"T'vance, Fera," Karstia greeted us warmly. "I'd like to introduce Karalishi, True Walker, Voice of the Dark, Wave Rider, Life Brother, and generally accepted ruler of the Lenn-raki people."

I bowed my head slightly. "An honor."

He stared at me long and hard, then took two steps forward, well within my personal space, and stared some more. Finally he seemed to have seen enough and retreated, offering me a curt nod of his head.

"You carry spirits with you," he remarked, in slow, awkward Iruaric. "They tell tales of what you've done, T'vance Arain, Master of Enrichment, Ghost of the Walk, Friend of the Weak, Slayer of Blades. They speak also of Fera Subt, Slayer of Gods, Mistress of Poison, Essaence Bane."

Fera looked at me confused, having heard her name but understood none of the rest of what he'd said. I gave her a look that said I'd explain later.

"They like you both," he continued, "but fear your lady, Son of Arain. The robes remind them of dark things, and they fear anything that disrupts the Essaence."

"I was suggesting earlier than she lose the robes," I explained.

"I bet you were," Karstia sent me.

"This would comfort them," Karalishi said seriously. "Have her ask any of our women for clothing, none will deny her."

"I'll take her," Aja said in elven. She took Fera's arm, and I was surprised to see Fera let her. "You won't understand their conversation anyway."

"Perfect," Fera said. "I've just been dying for some girl-time alone with the mysterious elf from T'vance's past." She gave me a wink and they walked off together.

Karalishi cleared his throat politely. "Karstia has spoken for you. She has told me you have a plan that needs men. It so happens that I have many willing souls, fierce warriors and more. But we shall not speak of plans yet. To proceed, first we must walk."

"I'm not sure what you mean."

He smiled and pounded his staff on the ground. "Come, T'vance Arain. Come walk with the spirits. See our problems through their eyes. Think. Meditate. Wonder. Once you have consumed their wisdom, I will hear this plan and we shall decide together if it is our future."

"They are inviting you to their tent," Karstia explained. "They smoke an herb that brings visions and dreams--"

"We burn Huthus, which is favored among spirits. The spirits burn with the plant, and we breath the smoke to take the spirits into our bodies. Once inside, they grant us their wisdom."

I'd heard similar stories of hueth and believed them just as little. This was a drug, no doubt a hallucinogen. But I was fresh out of drugs, so they didn't have to ask me twice. Besides, even if I didn't believe in their spirits, I did believe in dreams and visions.

I followed him past the first ranks of his soldiers and around a bend in the river until I saw the tent, a large low structure with dark tanned hides stretched over a wooden frame. It was low enough that we had to crawl in, and even sitting cross-legged on the floor mat put my head within an inch of the ceiling.

Inside were two others, both of the same age as Karalishi. It unsettled me a bit that no one else came, not Karstia, nor anyone else from my world.

The four of us sat in a circle around a fire pit that had been stocked with wood, but never lit. Karalishi filled a stout wooden cup with a dark amber liquid from a nearby skin and passed it first to me.

"The drink tastes bad. I've had it so many times I should have developed a taste for it, but no such luck. The spirits love it, though, so we take it inside us for them."

I took a sip. It tasted like rotten fruit, turpentine, and mint. All said, it wasn't nearly as bad has he'd built it up to be. It burned my throat, but the mint left it cool and numb. By the time I passed the cup I was already feeling a little buzz.

We each drank in turn, and as each was handed the cup Karalishi introduced them.

I wasn't entirely clear on how they were organized. Karalishi didn't act like a king. They seemed more like a set of unified tribes, and there were plenty of markings to support that. These seemed to be his inner council, tribe leaders or relatives.

Kuruqtu was his second, and I gathered a former rival. He was the biggest in the room, and also probably the youngest. Malatu was Karalishi's brother by marriage, thinner and smaller, but there was a sense of power in him; maybe that was just the drink. Luuran was the oldest, with a wide wrinkled face and a full white beard in dreadlocks. He seemed frail, but had keen eyes of bright green.

Each man had a string of titles I immediately forgot, but every one of them had a title that involved walking. These were all Spirit Walkers, men who communed with the spirits. That all sounded well and good, but from what I could tell all of the Lenn-raki magic involved communing with spirits at some level.

The Huthus was a red-orange resin that looked like high end incense. Karalishi scooped some into a small bowl. The fire pit smoldered and caught flame of it's own accord, then he began pitching small handfuls into the flames. The resin flared brightly as it burned and the smoke turned red, and I began to smell it over the wood, a spicy scent like peppers and cinnamon.

The room continued to fill with smoke. The bowl was cast into the fire. I was on my back, listening to the sound of the fire crackling and breathing deeply. Then the fire went out, snuffed by the spirits, and the room was immediately dark and silent. I could no longer hear the outside nor the fire, but I could hear my breathing... and theirs. We were breathing together, one breath, and I felt my lungs stirring, trembling.

Eventually, even the sound of breathing faded out, as if our bodies were being moved away from us. It made more sense that we were moving, but it didn't feel like that. It just felt still and dark and quiet.

I felt myself touch something, like breaking a tiny spiderweb. I began to hear sounds around me, like flags in the wind, or birds fluttering. Something came closer, and I felt something soft and cold brush my cheek and my skin tingled.

"I was promised greatness in death, but all I relive is the pain of the fire." I heard a voice say, it was soft as a whisper and it drew out the 's' sounds. Then the touch was gone and another took it's place, only touching my forearm. This time it was a girls voice saying, "I tried to run. I didn't want to be one of them. Am I now free?"

"Open your eyes, T'vance," I heard Karalishi say. His voice was strangely distorted, and seemed to drag then suddenly speed up. "You'll only learn so much lying down. You have to walk."

I opened my eyes and found I was already standing, nestled into a natural red stone obelisk as if I'd been carved into its base. Was I carved into it? My vision was blurred, making it difficult to focus on anything, but my sense of touch seemed enhanced if anything. I could feel a warm breeze on my skin and the smooth, comforting texture of the stone obelisk at my back and sides.

The sky was pale red with thick white clouds that morphed constantly, the ground a red-brown clay with sparse clumps of brown drying or dead grass here and there. Everything seemed to be moving, but when I concentrated really hard I could tell it was truly still.

The other three were waiting for me. Their normally brilliantly colored eyes were mostly black with dilated pupils, and their skin and hair shifted about, another abnormality I blamed on the drugs.

I stepped out and looked around, clinging to my obelisk to ensure I kept my balance. We were on a slight hill that featured nothing but the four twenty foot stone obelisks, with nooks carved out for each of us. The landscape was barren but we were not alone. Spirits, I assumed, floated all around. Many around the hill, but many more spread out over the barren landscape below.

From a distance they looked like tiny white lights, but the closer ones revealed a larger aura around the tiny light. The aura gave them shape of a sorts, but at a glance they were just faint white blobs around a brilliant glowing center.

When I focused on a single spirit, I could finally make out a distinct outline of a body. I looked carefully at the closest spirits to learn more about them. Some were outlines of Faroks or Troqs, but some weren't people at all, or even animals. They were physical things, like a river or the sky or a house; or abstract avatars like the spirits of honor, who flashed with imagery of knights and banners and swearing oaths.

The real men who walked with me looked as they did in the tent, whole and firm with feet that left marks in the hard clay when they stepped. They were still strange from the drugs, of course, but nothing as odd as the spirit folk who floated among us.

"What is this place?" I asked.

"Just a place," Malatu the brother, said. "It's not real, just something your mind made up to orient yourself with the spirit world. It appears differently for each man, but it is always red in some way. At least all have said so. You are very different though, is it red for you?"

"Yes. The sky, the ground, these rocks."

He nodded, then glanced back at the obelisks and chuckled. "Rocks, he says."

"Better than what my spirit eyes say, at least," Karalishi said.

"Not much worse than emerging from your own grave," Malatu agreed.

Karalishi shook his head. "Leaving my grave doesn't bother me so much as the idea of entering it."

Luuran interrupted, "We should be off. There are better spirits than these."

"I shall follow Karalishi," Kuruqtu declared.

"And I shall follow T'vance," Karalishi said. "Let us see what new paths this strange soul can discover."

The last thing I wanted was to lead them, but my head was swimming too much to come up with a solid reason not to. I did try to think of an excuse, but after a few moments of confusion I gave up. A spirit in the distance seemed to have wings, perhaps it was a Pegasus. If anything seemed like a sign, that was it. So I took a step towards it.

It was just one step, a single one, but in that step I crossed a league of terrain to stand before it. Closer, I could tell how badly my eyes deceived me. It wasn't a large spirit with wings, but a colony of a dozen or more spirits.

"Ho!" Malatu said. "The pale one draws darkness."

"They come," Karalishi warned. "Remember who you are."

Remember? T'vance Arain! Pendant Bearer! Master of the Blue Kynac! Speaker for the Jarhaad! Leader of Black Boot Company! Lover of Subt! But I had no pendant, no kynacs, no Dúranaki to know me, no Black Boot men to follow me, and no Fera to love. Strange thoughts as I was lost in a sea of glowing white light and cloudy tendrils of things that were, or are, or always shall be.

Flash... a slimy claw rips through its birthing membrane. None of it seems natural. The thin translucent sheet is stretched and bound over a vat of liquid crafted by advanced hands or minds. The claw is brown like wood, and a thin serpentine neck and head follows. It is the first Troq'i'rok, later Troq for short. Beyond it, a hundred other vats with dark shapes shifting inside them.

The Lord Aganond stands over the vat, admiring his creation, looks up, looks into my eyes.

I hear my voice say, "This is what you thought would impress him? This is dark work."

He replies, "This? This is clean, untainted, check for yourself."

"I have. There is so much dark energy in this place. The very ground is tainted. He'll hear of it."

Aganond waves me off annoyed, and I walk quickly out. The courtyard walls are ringed with his arcanists. They raise their hands, and death befalls me in plasma and fire.

Flash... Faroks in swollen trees watch as their little ones frolic with young Troqs. A Vessel floats overhead, and black bolts fork down from the sky, reducing the little ones to ash. The parents scream and shout, some in agony, some working angry spells. The next bolt silences them all.

Flash... A tall thin humanoid sits contemplatively at the window, staring out across the sea. He is a Kinari, the immortal race, like the tall alien in Karstia's visions. His room is dense with books and crystals, vials, jars, shelves stacked with tiny boxes, hanging charms with feathers and teeth and another natural things. Aganond appears behind him and he turns to face him calmly.

"You gain nothing by pretense," the tall one says.

"Perhaps not, Murnak," he replies. Then his face and body shift, he grows tall and thin. He is not Aganond, not even Althan. He's a Kinari, like the other, except for his eyes, which are black where they should be white.

Murnak sighs in disappointment. "Oh, Mirell, I had hoped it wasn't true. And you know I won't kill my son."

"I know, father. But you will interfere."

"So my visions are true. Aganond is dead. Not by your hand, though?"

"No. I never would have acted against him, or his will."

"But since he is dead, so am I?"

"I don't need to kill you to keep you out of the way," the dark eyed one said.

"No, but you will still try. I stress the try part, my son. I won't kill you, but that doesn't mean I won't put up a fight."

Murnak stands swiftly and tall smooth ivory staff leaps to his hands. The other pulls a blade, smiling. He turns it and thrusts it into his own stomach, wincing slightly as the blade goes in. Murnak, on the other hand, screams in agony and clutches at the same spot on his own body, which suddenly gushes blood. Mirell twists the blade, and falls to his knees, but Murnak gasps and collapses in a heap.

I felt that was important. Critical. Was that Murnak himself? Aganond's mentor, father of whom? I didn't know, yet I felt everything about it. The disappointment, the thrill of the newcomer, the rivalry, the jealousy. The son hated Aganond, he shined so bright, how could he compete?

But then the spirit was gone, and others crowded in its place. There were so many it was impossible to differentiate them. There was pain, betrayal, death. It repeated in waves, and it was so intense I screamed. At least I think I screamed, I didn't really hear anything.

But over time, the dark waves formed an image of a land, before and after Aganond. Sadly, it was all from the perspective of the worst things that had ever happened. Civilizations rose, but I only knew it from seeing them fall, from watching covens of brown skinned humanoids taking down cities with ritual-made plagues, or hordes of disfigured monstrosities washing over staunch lines of defenders.

I felt lies plant and grow, twisting men to fight one another. It was wild and evil, and altogether familiar. The Unlife, it tainted all of it, as it did. How long had it been here? Longer than Kulthea, it seemed. But time was lost walking. And I cared, but my mind went back to Murnak. Murnak was important.

Flash...the birth of the Lenn-raki and Faroks. A thousand of the brown skinned Garoks gathered before Lord Aganond. A Kinari lurks in the background. Murnak? Magic is thick in the air, a ritual coming to an end. The brown skins split, they actually split in two! One Farok and one Lenn-raki stand where each Garok was. Aganond's face is proud.

Then half of each, half the Faroks and half the Lenn-raki fall dead. Aganond's face twists in confusion, remorse. The Kinari shakes his head sadly. "You cannot simply make life."

Flash...a mass of Lenn-raki march towards the east. They are gaunt and sickly, leaving unburied dead in their wake.

Flash...make-shift boats slip between huge rocks jutting up from the ocean. Waves crash, a ship is swept into a fist of volcanic rock, spilling dark bodies to the deaths by sea or stone.

Flash...waves of Lenn-raki leave boats on the rocky shores of a new land. Blood flies are everywhere, as are the dead. They've come to a place where plague has killed every resident, brown-skinned thin folk. They do not recognize the race, but the bodies remind them of short Kinaris. They camp miles from the nearest dead, but by night the dead come after them all the same; walking corpses hungry for the living.

Flash...

Suddenly I felt my wrist burn like fire. I felt it pulling hard, and I resisted as best I could. The force was pulling me into the fire, into death, and only the combined spiritual power around me had enough cold and strength to save me. I clung to them, but another fire hand caught me, then another, and resist though I tried, my fingers slipped through the cool masses. I fell back into fire, and again I screamed.

Then I felt like I was spinning, still on fire mind you, but somehow the nausea grew intense enough that I felt it over the damn fire. I vomited somewhere, I still could only see red and yellow. Then I hit something I was pretty sure was ground at a speed that made me think I'll been falling for a while. I felt flattened, and the air was out of my lungs, but at least somehow the fire was out. And I found the vomit.

"T'vance?" I heard a strange female voice say.

I opened my eyes. I was back in camp, outside the tent I'd gone into. I was still hallucinating, but I was hallucinating things in the real world at least, if that makes any kind of sense. The woman over me was likely Fera, but her features were warped and I couldn't seem to focus on all of her face at once.

"Fera?"

"They said you weren't coming out of the trance, but that it happens sometimes. They had to wrestle you out. You knocked Luuran unconscious trying to stay in the tent, and earned the others' respect I'd bet, but they got you out."

I groaned. My hands and elbows ached, probably from hitting people.

"Can you stand? They said outside the smoke your head should clear in a few minutes."

They were right about that, I was already starting to feel normal again, though my stomach still felt sick. I let her help me up and I cleaned off in the river. After another minute I felt stone sober.

"Much better," I said.

"Good. Because Karstia wants to talk to you before Karalishi. I'll spare you having to tell me everything separately. But are you okay? You still look shaken."

"I'm fine. Embarrassed and my stomach will feel better for some bread."

"Don't sweat it. I'm a bit more than pissed they didn't warn you. But allies and all, so I'm letting them slide. Find Karstia, I'll find you bread."

I doubt she could have chosen a better thing to say at that moment. I watched her walk away with love in my eyes, then I saw her new outfit and that turned straight into lust. She's chosen spirit walker garb made from deep brown leather, and little of it. It looked exotic, but not too far off from the revealing outfits she used to wear around Sel-kai. I missed that world.

I found Karstia by the banks of the river alone, in the clear area between the front ranks and the posted guards, still within whatever illusion they'd wrapped themselves in. She had a lot to say, so she didn't bother saying a thing and melded with me instead.

There was a lot there, an amazing amount really; like everything Tisbaen could dream about a world and a problem given two weeks. I absorbed it all in two seconds. She knew Murnak was dead, she knew about the dark eyed Kinari. She'd even seen him on the Enrichment platform failing to attune with it. She just knew everything. It was almost annoying.

I shared my spirit walk with her as well, though I don't know how useful it was to her. It gave context, but I felt she already had it. She'd already lived through one attempt by the Unlife to obliterate our world, how different was this really?

She took my hand and we walked together to meet Karalishi, who was waiting with the other three who'd spirit walked with me. They were in a large low tent, different from the one we'd walked in, but in no ways that mattered. The men all looked like they'd been in bar fights, but Luuran was conscious and none of them gave me a look that made me feel bad for fighting them.

I sat cross-legged in the circle with them and Karstia sat beside me. Fera came in with a warm loaf of a heavy grained bread and a skin of wine. She retreated outside the circle before I could ask her what was in it. From the taste, I gathered it was bitter mead. It went well with the bread.

"So, T'vance Arain, what did you learn on our walk?" Karalishi asked

I looked them over, finishing a mouthful of bread. "Many things," I said thoughtfully.

"Things that changed your mind?"

"I learned that this is an old and complex world with a dark cyclic history not unlike my own. I learned that Aganond's world was not the only world, and that the world after him is far worse. But no, I didn't learn anything that changed my mind. You want to take the city. The city is held by a giant demon. That demon is stopping me from getting home. So I don't really care why. I am helping.

"The visions changed nothing for me. Our enemy's leader, ignoring the demon, is this Kinari son of Murnak. He failed to attune to the Enrichment platform and I did not. I have to use it, and I'm going to try with whoever I can get to come with me."

Karalishi nodded, thoughtful himself. He turned to his brother in-law and looked at him expectantly.

"I trust T'vance Arain, Candle of Dark Spirits," Malatu said. "I will send with him eight of my elite walkers, my son among them." He turned to face Luuran.

"I too trust him. I will send him six walkers and a dozen footmen." Luuran turned to face Kuruqtu.

"The spirits speak well of him, it's true," Kuruqtu said. "But they say too little of his plan. My men will stay at their tasks, unless Karalishi asks otherwise."

Karalishi shook his head. "Keep your men, they will serve one way or another, of that I'm sure. The spirits have said little, it's true, but to me they have said all the right things. Kuruqtu, you will stay and command our forces. I will go with T'vance, and bring with me a dozen of my walkers and the same of archers."

I was shocked, but also moved. The king of the Lenn-raki's was coming with me? Make that uneasy.
CHAPTER 23

* * *

Doogan

* * *

Overby was waiting on the bridge of the Albatross when we arrived. At the sight of us, he visibly relaxed and a smile crossed his face.

"Captain on the bridge!" he announced to the rest of the bridge crew, none of whom knew me. They were all human men in their mid-thirties, a detail I gave Molly credit for. The men saluted and a few watched me curiously while the rest went back to their terminals.

Overby detached his seat belt and floated towards me, abandoning the captain's chair. "It's good to see you, sir. Your ship is well, in much better shape than you left it. All systems are fully functional and we're supplied and ready to deploy. You'll find a detailed report recently logged, should you need it."

"Thanks, Lieutenant," I said, shaking his hand. "When this is over, don't go rushing back to any Imperial ship. I have something I want to discuss with you first."

"Sir?"

"Later. Right now I need my engineer doing engineering things. Get to your post and get the transform system charging and make sure the cloaking device is ready, we'll be jumping cloaked."

"Aye, sir. I've prepared a trigger to activate our new, um, counter-measure system upon arrival as well."

"Perfect."

There were still four crewmen on the bridge after he'd left, manning helm, sensors, weapons, and communications. There was still plenty of room, but the lieutenant manning the weapons station was immediately on my left in Molly's spot.

"Tactical, report?"

"The name is Lieutenant Shiller, sir. Weapon systems are all online, tubes loaded, but all on safety lock at the moment."

"Good. Mind getting up?"

"Sir?" he asked, but he detached his seat belt and floated out of his chair.

"I already have someone else in mind for your job," I explained. "Take the starboard chair, lieutenant. You'll be the secondary on weapons and sensors if you can handle that."

"I can handle more, sir," he said calmly. There was no argument in it, it was just a statement of fact as far as I could tell. And he didn't say another word, or make a face, he just took over the opposite console and belted himself in. I watched him a moment as he got settled, configuring his terminals screens with both sensor and weapon views. He glanced back and gave me a nod as if to imply he was ready.

Just like that, I started liking Lieutenant Shiller. The other three were less impressive. Even though I didn't put them out by reassigning their positions, I still caught them exchanging irritated or concerned looks with one another, as if they expected to be next and were already unhappy about it.

The communications officer was distracted enough with his thoughts of impending humiliation that he managed to miss the incoming orders from the fleet. It was Shiller who notified me, "Sir, we've received jump coordinates and a countdown. Putting the countdown on screen now."

"Thank you, Lieutenant Shiller. I did say weapons and sensors, right?"

"Aye, sir," he replied, turning back and grinning.

"You might as well be second on communications as well. Did they include any scan data from the probe ship?"

"No sir," the official communications officer replied. "Only a position and time."

The countdown timer was flashing on the main display, ticking down from a little over four minutes.

"Did you ask why not? The whole point of the probe was so we wouldn't be going in blind."

"Would you like me to ask, sir?"

I sighed. "Yes. And quickly, we're running out of time."

"In the meantime, sir," Lieutenant Shiller said, "I'm pulling up the tactical view around Suboe, adjusting the orbits according to our arrival time."

A detailed map of our destination appeared under the countdown on the main screen. Our ship was marked at two hundred kilometers from the station itself. There were no other ships in the view.

"Did they not even send jump coordinates for the other fleet ships?!" I asked.

"No sir," Shiller replied.

"This is a fucking power play if I've ever seen one," Molly muttered. I had a sense she was right. This was the Admiral making us sweat. The worst part was that it worked.

"Molly, can you make some quick guesses? Where are some likely spots for parts of the fleet to jump in?"

"Sure,"she said, keying away at her terminal. Red blobs began to form on the map as she worked. "Does it even matter?"

"Yes. I want to jump somewhere else. Find me a new spot."

"Sir, the jump coordinates are an order from the fleet commander. We can't just ignore them," the helmsman said. I didn't know his name, and he wasn't giving me a good reason to learn it.

"Lieutenant Shiller, think you can manage the helm too?"

"But sir!" the helmsman objected. "It's orders! You can't fault me for following orders!"

"If you want to sit on my bridge, you'll follow mine."

"I'll do it," Molly said. "I have the coordinates anyway."

The helmsmen took his hands off his console and looked pleading at the rest of the crew, but no one was stupid enough to give him sympathy.

With a minute left on the countdown I made the ship-wide announcement that we were going into a transform. Leona had to give me a pep-talk both before and after, with few words and more chemical adjustments. Still, I thought I should have been more nervous about it. I suppose knowing that we still had fifteen minutes to get through the transform helped.

Once we entered transform, another timer replaced the previous one. This one bore more weight, for when it reached zero we might find ourselves in a fight. But there was nothing to do but watch and wait as the seconds counted down.

Molly and I locked eyes as the final second ticked away.

We re-entered real space and the display lit up from the initial sensors readings. Molly had put us well away from the station, half behind a moon in the same orbit as the station. The Albatross groaned under the stress of our new gravitational environment.

"That's not supposed to be there!" the helmsman shouted, pointing to the moon.

He was right, too. Suboe was in orbit of a gas giant with two of it's own moons, and this was neither of them. It hadn't shown up on the map we'd been navigating against either.

I looked at Molly, who smiled slightly. "Yes, it is," she said. "Bring us in as close as you can, preferably on the side facing the planet."

The sensors beeped loudly as they designated all newly found ships in the area.

"Sir, we're getting hundreds of readings," the sensors officer reports. "Most of them are known Imperial types: light cruisers, destroyers, frigates, interceptors, freighters. Most of them are docked with the station. But I'm not picking up any capital ships."

"The probe ship was destroyed," Lieutenant Shiller added, boxing a lump of debris on the sensor view. The rubble was traveling in a decaying orbit, heading into the gas giant. "Also, there are some irregular readings. I think there's matter we aren't seeing, sir."

"Where?" I asked.

"Well that is the hard part, now isn't it?" he replied. "The data is too noisy. I can't make it out. But there's flux too. The mass is shifting."

"Dark ships," Molly said. "Get closer to the moon, dammit, before they spot us."

"Can we tell if the probe ship was able to send a signal?" I asked.

"They were," Molly said. "Half a sweep anyway. I downloaded part of it from the Diispra immediately before we jumped."

"That's how you knew the moon was here?" I asked. "Why didn't they send the data to us? And where's the rest of the fleet?!"

There was a moment of silence as we all reasoned it out for ourselves.

"They aren't here," Shiller said, "which leads me to believe we were an unwitting second probe ship."

Molly snorted. "A probe ship with no instructions to send data back? Don't be stupid. They sent us ahead to die."

"But we aren't dead," he argued.

"Thank your captain."

Just then, the sensors went completely bonkers as a large set of Imperial Enforcers jumped into real space in and around the station. There were thirty in all and if I had to guess, they represented our entire set of modified enforcers. They were divided into ten groups of three, and most of them were deployed a fair distance from our initial jump coordinates.

If I had any doubts before, the placement of the enforcers removed them. This was a setup. Our ship was supposed to jump in, draw fire, and die. Then the cavalry was to arrive, ready to avenge our death.

"That son of a bitch!" Molly screamed, slamming her fist into the top of the console.

"I still don't--" Shiller started to say, but he was cut off by the sudden alarms on the bridge.

First a string of painted targets appeared, many of them in the area around our jump point. From the enforcers vantage point, dark matter could be identified as Aganond's Vessels. Each ship was painted hostile. A once dark field of empty space near our original jump coordinates became a sea of enemy targets. More targets appeared as the first torpedoes left their bays, followed by energy weapons and stasis missiles.

Thirty ships engaged nearly two-hundred, and for a few seconds it was one-sided. Our enforcers fired, while the Vessels blinked out of the way.

"I'm reading a lot of unusual radiation, sir," sensors reported.

"The moment of truth," I whispered. "Please let them work."

"Sir, I'm detecting motion on the surface of the moon," Shiller said. "They look like defensive turrets, but old models. Nothing I've seen before, but they seem to be turning in our direction."

"Shields up!"

The cloaking device went down as the shields came up, then a dozen points on the surface of the moon lit up as hostile targets.

"Molly?"

"Turrets, staggered over the surface. Be glad we're on the back side. I marked them, but each site is shielded. I don't think we're going to penetrate with these weapons."

"Helm, full thrusters! Get us closer and keep us out of their firing arcs if you can."

The Albatross shuttered under the sudden acceleration and we dipped our nose until it pointed directly at the moon, moving towards it with increasing speed. The turrets began firing plasma, but only one of the six initial shots hit us, and even that was deflected harmlessly by our shields.

It struck me in that moment how insane we were, a relatively small ship going toe-to-toe with a battlemoon. I almost laughed, but I held it in knowing it was the shortest path to crying as well.

"Molly, you clearing a path?"

"You know I am."

Our weapon systems fired, torpedoes and lasers lancing out ahead of us towards one of the turrets that was inconveniently in our path. It was the further of the three such inconvenient turrets, which told me Molly had even more confidence in their shields than I did. I could see the turret shields shimmering as they diffused the laser blasts.

The torpedoes hit next, but she'd spaced the shots to hit in an arc in front of the turret, just ahead of the shield's radius. The moon at this point was mostly dull gray rock, and the metal turret housing just emerged from the rock. The explosions pulverized the stone, digging deep pits and sending up plumes of dust that would take forever to settle in the moons weak gravity.

"You missed," Shiller remarked.

"Molly hits what she aims at," I said.

The Albatross shook as more turret fire was deflected by our shields, shots from the close turrets, and from those behind us. Many more shots missed, streaking past us like flares.

"As you say, sir," Shiller replied hastily. "Shields holding at 67%."

I glanced back at the map view, but it was hard to get a feel for the battle at large. Ships were moving all over the place, and space was littered with streaks of red and blue as torpedoes and stasis missiles sought their elusive targets.

Even the Vessels were moving, not just blinking, and from the damage read-outs they'd already abandoned trying to manipulate the enforcers with magic and were firing at them directly. Two of the enforcer's had lost their shields, and maybe another half dozen had shields close to failing, but they were all still alive and fighting.

"Firing again," Molly said.

Our shields dropped as another volley of torpedoes left, then we shook slightly and alarms sounded from a plasma impact before our shields were back up. It was a superficial hit to the aft-port storage, but it breached the hull.

More shots followed, but our shields were raised for those. Then our torpedoes impacted on the surface, this time all of them close together directly in front of the turret. There was a huge explosion, then a moment later a secondary explosion from the turret itself.

"Nice!" Lieutenant Sensors shouted.

"One down, a thousand to go," Shiller muttered. "Shields down to 54%, sir."

"Start charging the transform systems," I commanded. "And get us closer dammit, I want us skimming the surface. Skimming!"

"What if the fleet isn't coming?" Molly asked. "What if they just went on to Farokis? To deal with Aganond while we're distracting his forces here?"

"Sir, four of those dark ships are breaking off and heading back this direction."

"Fuck me. Alright, Molly we ready?"

"Yes, sir. Shiller, take weapons and find a new target. One shot only, I'll need shield control back in a second."

"Yes, sir!" he replied enthusiastically. I saw him tapping out a rhythm on the top of his console like a drummer, then on some strange syncopated beat he missed the top and struck the screen, deploying another volley of torpedoes in a remarkably timed window between incoming plasma streams.

Molly was busy deploying our payload: a scant three retrofitted Strike Troopers. But once they were out of the bay, she had to time the shields to release them.

"Cross your fingers," she said. The shields dropped and we tracked the three tiny signatures as they sped away from our ship and down towards the turret we had just destroyed. By that time we were very close to it, so they'd waste little of their limited flight time reaching it.

In the time it took the Strike Troopers to pass through our shields, we were struck twice more, once to the forward decoy bay and once near the rear, just head of engineering. Then the shields came back and we were hit some more.

"Shields down to 38%, and we have some internal damage I can't pin down."

Overby's face appeared in a window on the main screen. "Captain! We have power problems! Lost partial cooling and we're feeding everything: shields, thrusters, transform, lasers."

"Siphon back the laser banks, we'll stop using them. But I need everything else."

"Understood, but the power simply isn't there and shields will suffer. I'll see what I can do." His face cut out.

Lieutenant Sensors chimed in with his problems next. "Sir, I've been merging sensors feeds from the enforcers and we're rapidly approaching a far more worrisome area of the moon's surface. Cannon density increases dramatically, along with a variety of unknown entities that might be weapons."

"Helm," I said simply, "don't take us there."

"Right, sir. Not there. But where?!"

"Circle back, towards the moons northern pole if you can. Avoid turrets first, Vessels second."

"I'll do my best."

Molly hooted at her terminal. "Shiller! You've got weapons for good, I've got a remote link!"

"Our troopers are already inside?" I asked.

"Fast little fuckers, aren't they?" she said. "Let me work."

We were traveling so fast we passed a dozen new turrets along our curving path towards the moon's pole, but they were all firing at other targets and couldn't rotate fast enough to fire on us, at least not right away. The Vessels were slower than the Albatross at conventional speeds, and for whatever reason they chose not to jump to close the distance. We could have easily outrun them, if there were free space to run towards. But our course adjustments left us vulnerable, and they angled their ships to intercept us as we came back around.

Still, for a few moments we were free from danger. The turrets behind us were cut off by the curvature of the terrain and the closer ones were either firing at the enforcers, or trying to track us but failing. The Vessels were still too far for their own weapons to reach us, or if not at least they weren't firing.

Shiller asked, "Kill turrets or Vessels?"

"Vessels."

"Aye, sir," he replied, sending out a spread of torpedoes in their direction. "Has anyone tried depth-charge bursts?"

I'd heard about that tactic, but never employed it. It was typically used against cloaked ships whose location was only partially known. Torpedoes were fired at fixed locations in space with instructions to detonate on their own.

"The Empire has strict guidelines against that tactic," Leona explained. "There are no Imperial safeguards to prevent point-detonated torpedoes from damaging friendly ships, but there aren't exactly any friendly ships about."

"If you want to try it, you have my blessing."

Alarms sounded again as a stray plasma cannon caught our shields. "Shields at 35%, sir."

"Thirty-five!? Are they charging at all?"

"According to physics, yes," Shiller said. "In my opinion? No."

"Sir, one of the enforcers just went offline and another outright exploded," Sensors reported. "There are a dozen in piss poor shape, and only two that are still reporting positive status."

"What about the transform system?"

"Charging better than the shields, but still slowly. We probably have another minute until we can jump."

A minute had never sounded so far away.

The depth-charge torpedoes exploded brightly in an arc directly in the path of the oncoming Vessels. They might have worked, but I suspected they were too close. The Vessels blinked and reappeared a few kilometers higher in orbit, looking no worse for the experience.

"Again! A little further out this time!"

"Yes, sir," Shiller said, making the adjustments and loosing another volley.

I glanced at Molly and saw her fingers flying over her terminal. The screen was flashing images so fast I couldn't make them out, nor even guess what it was she was doing. Sweat beaded on her forehead and she clenched her jaw rhythmically. I wanted to ask, but didn't want to interrupt.

"She's linked into the battlemoon's computer," Leona told me.

"It has a computer? But it's Aganond's!"

"There's a lot wrong with what you just said, but it doesn't matter. This is not his battlemoon. This is an antique that precedes even Aganond. But it's run by his followers, if that makes you feel better."

"How can you tell?"

"How can you not? We salvaged old moon bases with the same turret technology before. It's not important how, though. What's important is that we have a trained Imperial Espionage agent commanding three Strike Troopers against an occupying force in the low thousands. Do you like those odds?"

"Not really."

"Really? Because I fucking love them!"

The next burst of torpedoes exploded, and this time none of the Vessels jumped away. The blast scattered the little fleet, sending two up, one down, and one spinning off to the side. But each of them righted themselves and corrected their course to continue after us.

"Good shooting, Lieutenant!" I cheered. "Again!"

I didn't really have to tell him, he was already dropping the shields to take another shot. When the shields dropped, however, the little Vessels fired. Two of their black energy bolts hit the hull directly, causing another series of alarms to sound.

"Hull breaches! A dozen different compartments, four occupied, sir."

"A dozen!?" I gasped, but it was the four that was more shocking.

The Vessels blinked out of the way again this time, adapting to our only trick before we'd even gotten a chance to use it again.

It was some consolation knowing they spent precious energy with each blink, but there were still four of them and only one of us. And that wasn't counting the moon, which was hard to ignore; it was a whole world below us, shooting us.

"Shield down to 26%."

It was also comforting that our whole jammer concept actually worked, and that our fleet of enforcers were at least putting up a fight, and not being controlled or blown up instantly. But without the rest of the fleet it was nothing, there were just too many of them, more than when we even started. They were receiving reinforcements, why not us?

As if on cue, the rest of the Imperial fleet left transform, looming in great masses along the perimeter of the main battle. Their weapons fired the instant they were clear of transform, lasers streaking out followed by hundreds of torpedoes. We were on the far side of the moon from the fight, but I imagined it must have looked amazing. It looked impressive even on the tactical map.

There were frigates, dreadnaughts, class II and III enforcers, strike cruisers, battle cruisers, and three massive Imperial Carriers. There were also some smaller ships, light cruisers and destroyers, a few pathetic interceptors, and an old ship we couldn't identify that was firing plasma.

The light weight ships were conscripted ships, civilians like myself, and in any other fight I would have pitied them. But in this fight, they were low priority targets, unlikely worth the energy to destruct, assuming the Vessels still had enough energy to try.

Energy was the key to this battle. It was the Admiral's plan all along to use the modified enforcers to soften the enemy, deplete them of energy so the unprotected fleet could jump in without fear. I was behind that plan when I wasn't going to be sacrificed.

We'd hoped, even if the enemy still had energy, they would have seen their spells fail against the enforcers and assume that the Empire had simply found a way to defeat them and stop using that approach altogether. No such luck.

The lead Imperial Carrier, which was not Admiral Loaqui's ship, had barely gotten off it's first volley of twelve torpedoes when it exploded in bright white ball, splitting mostly in two pieces that went in opposite directions of one another. Then those individual pieces started exploding, split, exploded again. A frigate was clipped with a massive chunk of the carrier, and hurt enough that their fleet status changed to disabled.

A few other ships joined them, one of the class III enforcers, a couple dreadnaughts, a different frigate from the one disabled in the first explosion, three or four battle cruisers. That was a lot, don't get me wrong, and at some level I knew those ships were filled with people. But I wasn't thinking a lot at that level. I was thinking about little green dots on a map, and we still had a ton of them.

Then the battle moon wanted to have a say in the matter. We hadn't even seen the "front" of the moon, not directly, but we had plenty of imagery of it shared from other ships. There was a base built on that side, set mostly into the rocky surface. There were turrets around it, torpedo tubes set into the surface, and a web of rail lines spanning miles that served a series of massive mobile guns.

In response to the new threat, the moon finally opened fire with it's full barrage of front facing weapons; torpedoes, plasma cannons, and some kind of missile that dared violate Imperial law by glowing neither blue nor red. I wondered what they were for a moment, but Shiller's voice distracted me.

"Shield's down to 19%, sir."

"Almost there," Molly said, still typing away furiously.

"Almost where?" I asked. It was rhetorical only in the sense that I knew she wouldn't answer.

"That's it!" she said, just as four more bursts of energy struck us from the Vessels.

"Shields to 12%," Shiller said, his voice pleading for retreat.

Then the turrets below shifted from red to green on our tactical view and immediately began opening fire on the Vessels instead of us.

"You hacked the turrets?!" I shouted. "You're amazing!"

Molly turned and beamed at me, but went right back to her work. "Just a quarter hemisphere is all, and a weak one at that, but it's still seventy-nine turrets!"

"How?"

"I'll explain it later, there's more to do. Shiller, I've linked the turrets in with our tactical systems. Think you can handle eighty attack vectors?"

"In my sleep," he said, with far more confidence than his face showed. His mouth was open as his fingers flew over the keys, grouping, designating targets, correcting for mistakes he made from rushing.

The Vessels blinked and blinked again, avoiding groups of plasma bursts coordinated with torpedoes from our own ship. They stopped firing altogether, evading as best they could while speeding away from us towards the pole.

"Shields at 13%, sir!" Lieutenant Sensors reported, overjoyed to see the shields increase in power for the first time since we'd entered combat.

Two of the Vessels we'd been fighting missed a blink and were slammed with plasma. One split open at the side, and flared as flaming gas erupted from inside, the others rear section was caved in, and glowed a dull red as the heart of its power melted away.

The other two dropped close to the surface for cover, much as we had, and zipped quickly over the landscape towards the safety of another hemisphere. Seeing them close on the surface, I quickly took over torpedo control and fired another burst of torpedoes, using the depth-charge technique Shiller had before.

Neither of the Vessels blinked away as the torpedoes exploded. Perhaps they were low on energy, or perhaps they didn't think the blasts would do enough damage at that range. Truly, they didn't. But the blast was enough knocked them down a hundred feet and instead they slammed into solid rock at top speed.

"Clever, sir!" Shiller said. Then, more to himself he added, "I need some new targets."

The battlemoon's batteries were all leveled against one ship, the Imperial Carrier Hanasu. In it's day, there wasn't a single ship that could have stood up to that, but the Empire had come a long way since then. The carrier's shields took everything, but I wasn't sure they'd withstand a second volley.

"We've got problems below," Molly said, as fixated on whatever she was doing as ever. "Land us at the turret site."

"Do it," I agreed, making it official.

"Damn, there are so many of them," she said. I saw she was looking at a panel of images, video streaming from each of the Strike Troopers nine cameras. There were flashes of plasma in some of the views.

Then she shouted, "Way to go, three! Get back now."

The other three quarters of the battlemoon's tracked weapons turned green as Molly's team secured the entire computer system and locked everyone else out. The weapons found new targets and began firing again. That was Shiller's doing, and I think I'd finally given him more than he could actually handle. He looked entirely overwhelmed, but his hands were still flying over the controls so at least he was managing.

Molly shouted, "No!"

Two of the remote sets of feeds went black. Two of our three Strike Troopers destroyed at the same moment. The third, from what I could see, was flying through a long curving tunnel being fired on from behind by many dark figures moving much slower.

A series of explosions ripped up from beneath the surface of the moon, sending chunks of rock and dust hurdling into space. None exploded near our landing site, but there were twenty explosions registered by the sensors, some much deeper inside the moon than the ones we saw on the surface. A moment later, everything on the moon lost power and went dead.

I looked back at the sensors and saw they were all black. Molly's eyes looked a little misty as she looked back at me, shaking her head sadly. It was three people among the hundreds or thousands that had already died today, but it was her team.

"What happened?" I asked.

"They set up a series of charges at key points. I set them to go off if our control of the computer system failed. We were going to lose the turrets again, now no one gets them."

"What happened to three?"

"He must have still had a charge on him," she said.

"Are we still landing, sir?" the helmsman asked.

"Yes. This seems a safe place to hide for a few minutes. Do I have a landing team of any kind? Troopers or something?"

"Two," Shiller said.

"Seriously?"

"Assigned by Admiral Loaqui," Molly said, "but I requisitioned a dozen standard Imperial Troopers in case we needed them. What did you have in mind?"

"When we touch down, have them secure the turret area," I told her. "I don't want any surprises from below."

The fight was still raging on the other side of the moon when we settled down near the first turret we'd disabled, on top of a wide metal grate that covered some of the inner workings of the turret. The self-destructing had stopped and a very conventional war had broken out, with Vessels using only their directed energy weapons. They were still blinking, but also shooting down incoming torpedoes and sometimes just out maneuvering them.

There were still two Imperial Carriers, though the Hanasu was faring quite a bit worse than Admiral Loaqui's Diispra. The concentrated fire from the battlemoon and dozens of vessels had finally taken it's toll. Then a moment later, there was only one. A series of explosions near the Hanasu collapsed her shields and melted parts of her hull, then another set ripped her in two, and the bridge itself exploded in a small fiery cloud.

A Vessel flew through ahead of the explosions, so perhaps it had dropped some mines or something, but we'd never seen Vessels do anything like that.

"That wasn't the Vessel," Leona said. "The Diispra fired on the Hanasu!"

"What?! But there were no torpedoes fired!"

Molly looked back at me and a light went off in her head. "Holy shit, he's taking over!"

"What?" a few of us asked.

"Admiral Loaqui was one of three Admirals in this region," Molly explained. "Now there's only one. With the ITH down, there's no chain of command. It's just the local Admirals, now just Loaqui."

"But how did they even fire on an ally?" Shiller asked.

"Manually and deliberately. They modified torpedoes to disable the red tracer and track fixed targets. That's why they were hard to see."

"But not impossible," Lieutenant Sensors said. "You can see them, barely."

He put a replay of the sensor view, and with whatever filter he was applying you could make out a series of blurry dots pass between the two Imperial Carriers shortly before the explosion.

"Based on the timing, the Diispra had already placed some of the charges well before the Vessel passed between them and the Hanasu. But then it fired again after the shields had failed, a dense burst aimed at the mid-line, and if I'm reading that energy flare right, they fired x-ray lasers at bridge as well."

"It's treason!" Shiller exclaimed. "Murder!"

The bridge was silent a moment, then Molly said, "It is. It's both of those things." I could tell she was angry, but that she had no ideas. What could we do, after all?

"We need to broadcast to the fleet!" Shiller said. "Everyone has to know!"

But the battle was nearing an end, and we had won. Most of the Vessels were floating in space, ruined and inoperable. Two dozen or so were still fighting, and another dozen were scattered and fleeing. None of them had enough energy to jump, and the fleeing ships were already under pursuit by Strike Cruisers, which they had no chance of outrunning.

A pair of frigates were already docking with Suboe, unloading thousands of Troopers to deal with any occupying force left on the station.

"Make no broadcast," Molly advised. "We have to notify each ship individually with coded messages, if we notify them at all."

"What do you mean if!?" Shiller demanded.

"I think she means it's up to me," I told him, and by effect all of them. "And I'm not sure yet. Lieutenant Sensors?"

"Rosso, sir. Lieutenant Rosso."

"Lieutenant, if you had to present your data to a magistrate, would it be conclusive enough? Can you say what they fired for instance?"

"Well, sir, I'd need to run--"

"So no," I said, cutting him off. "Prove what they did, run whatever it is you need to run. Find me answers."

"Yes, sir."

The communications officer raised his hand, as if it was required to speak. "Sir, fleet command is asking why we're not engaged."

"Not engaged my ass," I muttered. "Tell them we regret incapacitating the battlemoon has delayed us this long, but that it will continue to do so."

"Word for word, or should I scrub the sarcasm?"

"Don't ever change my words."

"Understood, sir. I'll send the message."

Suddenly the ground beneath us shook violently from an earthquake, or maybe I should call it a moonquake. But it shook and rolled and the vibrations sent the Albatross bouncing up from the surface. Our helmsmen kept us there until the quake had stopped, then settled us back on the surface.

"The away team is fine," Molly said, "shaken, but fine."

"More explosions?"

"Negative sir," Rosso said. "I'm not sure what caused it, perhaps cave-ins from the explosions?"

I considered that, but couldn't explain why the hair was standing up on the back of my neck. "Molly, what exactly is down there?"

"A complex mesh of tunnels. This is fairly typical of the time. They employed digging machines to rapidly bore passages. The diggers expelled some rock, while melting and treating the rest and reapplying it to smooth the walls. They essentially made air-tight lava tubes, which are the basis for the entire substructure."

"Interesting, but I more meant what's in the tunnels?"

"Oh. Soldiers we haven't seen before; mostly black armor, partial head covering, firing plasma weapons. They could be as few as maybe five hundred or as many four thousand, based on what I did and didn't see. There were a few different ones, men in white robes with colored ties, like those you described from Farokis."

"Aganond's elite."

"Exactly. The explosions may have disrupted their life support and power, but there are likely many survivors. We'll be hard pressed to hold this moon without help."

"You said there are tubes below. Are those tubes a torpedo could navigate?"

Molly smiled. "You just want to nuke them all?"

"Yes, please."

"It might work, but might not. With the explosions, it's unlikely they have all the hatches open. The first torpedo to hit a hatch will collapse that section of tunnel."

"If it explodes, sure. But what if it just smashes through the door?"

"Maybe," Molly said, but she didn't seem convinced.

Then the sensors went crazy and I stared up at the tactical display trying to figure out what had happened. There had been an explosion, a big one, but it took a moment before the sensors could catch up with everything that was changing. It seemed to settle a moment later, tracking a bunch of ships as they fled or were thrown from the explosion, as well as many large chunks of debris. It took a moment to realize what was missing from the view: Suboe. The entire space station was gone.

"The station..." Lieutenant Rosso said, trailing off.

"It's gone," Molly said seriously. "Along with both boarding frigates, all the docked ships, and probably more that were too close when the explosion hit."

I saw the sensor officer turn around, tears in his young eyes. "I was reassigned from one of those frigates," Rosso said, his voice shaking. "The Frigate Lampala under Captain Donley. He promoted me."

"I'm sure he was a good man," Shiller said, then barely audibly he added, "like everyone else who died today."

"Sir, fleet command has repeated orders that combat continue. All available ships are to pursue and destroy the remaining Vessels."

"Broadcast?" I asked. "Ignore it, we've already given our answer."

"Aye, sir."

"Sir, we have a sensor malfunction on the rear landing pads," Shiller reported. "Either that, or the surface of the moon is getting really hot all of the sudden."

"Lieutenant Rosso?"

"Sir? Right, I see it now, sir. Two pads, reading over twelve hundred kelvin. External sensors confirm it, but the surface temperature at ten feet is normal. I'm putting the visuals on screen now."

The main viewer suddenly displayed two camera feeds from beneath the ship, one aiming roughly at each of the landing pads, with the legs disappearing out of frame. At each pad were two Troopers with welders, binding our feet to the metal grate we had landed upon.

"What the fuck are they doing?!" I screamed.

Molly screamed something similar over their comm-link, but they didn't reply.

"Lift off!" I ordered.

"Sublight engines firing, sir. We're stuck in place at 10% power, I'll increase it slowly--"

"Fuck slowly! Punch it!"

The four troopers scattered and raised their weapons at us, firing blasts of plasma at our belly from inside the perimeter of our shields. I saw the shadows of two more, then something exploded shaking the ship, and alarms sounded like crazy on the bridge.

"Sublight engines failing, sir!"

"Explosions reported towards engineering!"

Another explosion jarred my teeth together and everything went dark as we lost primary power. After a few seconds, dim lighting was restored from the emergency reserves on the bridge, but none of the consoles came back online, nor the main screen nor anything else.

Without power, the main screen became translucent, allowing us to see directly outside. The surface of the moon was lit by the reflected light off the moon's host planet, but showed us nothing useful but rock and dust. We couldn't even see turrets or the men below us.

"We're dead in the water, sir," Rosso said. "No consoles means we've fallen back on emergency life support power. We have lights and basic air recycling for this compartment."

"Is this more of the Admirals work?" Shiller asked, looking around nervously.

"It seems extreme, even for him," Molly said, detaching her seat belt.

Gravity from the moon was weak, less than a twelfth normal, but it kept her bouncing instead of floating as she made her way towards the hatch. But before she could get there, the ground shook again and Molly ended up against the ceiling before floating back down like a feather.

"Stupid earthquakes," she muttered.

"Where are you going?" I asked her.

"To deal with them," she said, angrily.

"Sirs?" Rosso peeped from the front, so timidly it made me want to slap him before I'd even turned around.

But when we turned, we saw everyone else on the bridge pointing ahead of us, mouths open, jaws trembling. As timid as he was, Rosso was the only one who managed to speak as something pulled its way out from a fissure in the rocky ground ahead of us. It was huge, it was dark, with a body like a block of obsidian inset with a giant sphere that looked not so different from the gas giant we were indirectly orbiting. But gases of the sphere were darker, and with a swirling red storm in the center glowed in the dim light like a giant sentient eye.

It had no limbs, or it did, depending on when you looked. Most times it seemed like a blob inset with a seeking eye, yet it disrupted the surface and grew closer without appearing to move. It was haloed in a field of blurriness, for lack of a better word. It's edges sort of blurred and faded into something you couldn't quite focus on.

The moon had no atmosphere to speak of, certainly nothing to carry sound, and it was still probably a mile away from us. But it screeched at us; a low hateful wail that grated on my nerves like nails and a chalkboard.

"W-w-h-a-t is it?" Rosso asked.

Something, I thought. Unlife? A demon? I sure as hell couldn't clearly say. But I knew at once magic was at play, I could sense it in the air. Hell, I could sense it before, I just hadn't realized. Yet there it was, an Essaence field, I should have known. I should have felt it.

"We have to leave!" I shouted.

I tried to reach Overby on his comm. That system at least could work without the ship being involved. He didn't respond. It went without saying that every available person should be repelling the hostile troopers or restoring power, but I broadcast it to anyone in range just the same.

Shiller wasted no time getting out of his chair and securing a hard helmet to his flight suit. That was a damn good idea, and everyone seemed to catch on except Lieutenant Rosso, who was still frozen in his seat.

"Rosso, snap out of it!" I screamed.

Another explosion shook the ship.

"Rosso!" Molly shouted. "We're opening the hatch. You will die if you don't have a helmet on when we do that."

That still didn't do it, so Shiller bounced over to him and slapped him hard across the face. That didn't do it, so he tried again. He pulled back his hand and was about to slap when Rosso's hand thrust forward and grabbed him at the throat.

Shiller was wearing a flight suit and helmet, so he had some protection, but it didn't seem to matter. He gasped and his eyes went wide and his limbs limp.

The next moment, Rosso's head exploded from a blaster shot. His arm went limp and released Shiller, who began wheezing to let us know he wasn't dead.

"What the hell?" he asked between gasps.

"People are getting possessed, the troopers first and now Rosso."

"They can do that?!" he wheezed.

"That's the Diispra," the helmsman said, pointing. He had a childlike curiosity in his tone and I thought he might have been a little broken, mentally. "I wonder whose side it's on."

We could see it visually, hanging in space behind the demon thing. I had to admit I had the same thought. It wasn't firing or being fired upon. The carrier was much larger than the demon, which made it a little odd being so much more afraid of the demon.

We opened the hatch to sounds of fighting and the smell of burning hair and plastic. Molly went first, checked the hall, then beckoned us to follow. She took the left passage towards the starboard connector tube, popped her arm and one eye around the corner and fired three blasts immediately.

"Troopers," she hissed. She pulled her head back as plasma flew past.

"I wonder if they can see invisible things?" Leona asked.

I turned to Shiller. "Cover the port side."

He looked nervous, but nodded and took the others with him. He gave me an okay signal at the corner, so I started casting.

I let Leona use me, working my lips to make the strange words of the invisibility spell. Molly hopped into the air and caught a pipe near the ceiling, then popped around the corner and fired thrice more before retreating back, muttering something about armor.

The spell finished and I watched Molly disappear before my eyes.

"What the hell was that?!" Shiller yelled at a whisper.

"Molly, you're invisible," I explained. "But only as long as you don't attack anyone or get hit with anything."

"Understood," she said. I could tell by the sound of her voice that she was already moving.

"Sir?!" Shiller insisted.

I waved him off and pointed him back to his duties, then started casting one for myself. I finished, feeling an extra tingle from the rush of casting and the spell settling over me. I looked around the corner and saw the two troopers moving slowly up the passage, staying flush to each side and using the various supports for cover.

There were a few bodies in the hall also, some still smoking from their wounds. The walls were smoking in places as well, and there were plenty of charred marks as well.

Suddenly Molly appeared, hanging inverted like a monkey from the ceiling. She fired two shots, one into each trooper. Each shot was precise, striking the trooper in the back of the neck. I didn't see any plasma splash off, which meant all of it went inside the armor, probably through the flexible lining behind the fixed neck plates.

The troopers didn't fall, or even move in response. They just froze like statues until Molly toppled them both with a firm shove. Then she took a quick look behind her and began padding her way back to me.

I turned back to Shiller and the others just in time to see him raise the barrel of his own blaster and fire point blank into the middle of the helmsman's back. I'd never ever learned the man's name. The communications officer was next. He turned and there was terror in his eyes as he saw Shiller's raised gun barrel.

I shouted, "No!" then raised my own gun, aiming on instinct. Shiller turned his head in time to see me flash visible as my shot burned through his chest, just above his heart. His pistol fell and he made a passing effort to clutch at the smoldering wound before he collapsed dead.

I rushed up to the communications officer, who was still shaking when I reached him. I pulled him back safely around the corner and got close to his face.

"What's your name, Lieutenant?"

"Riley, sir," he said, just above a whisper. "Why?"

"I should have asked before is all," I told him.

I pushed past him and took another look down the port connector. At the far end I saw movement in the shadows. I took careful aim and waited, but then I saw men, hopefully loyal men, back into the tunnel again, firing towards something I couldn't see.

"How do you know who to trust?" Molly asked.

"No one," I said. "Not even me and you, god damn it."

"Don't say that. We can trust each other. You have Leona to police you, and I have my own safeguards."

"They're all computers, all vulnerable."

"But this isn't Aganond we're fighting," Molly reminded me.

I took her hand and squeezed. Her words, her touch, even her presence calmed me. I was about ready to do something bold when I was thrown into the wall, in the air, down to the floor. I smashed into at least three solid objects and one or two softer ones. My stomach didn't seem to move as I was tossed about, and I felt like it was half-way up my esophagus when the motion finally stopped.

My head hurt and my vision blurred, but sound came through consistently. The most pronounced sound was that of air being sucked out into space. My blaster was gone, but my other hand was still gripping Molly's. I found gravity and looked up, staring at the floor.

"We're upside down," Molly said. "No, wait. Spinning. We're spinning."

That explained why the gravity felt so weird.

"On the bright side, that means we're no longer stuck," I said.

"Fucking optimist," she said, grinning through her mask. Then her face resumed it's serious expression. "Check your suit, pressure is dropping fast."

"The suit is fine," Leona said. "As are you, lover. Bruised and what not, but nothing's broken or anything."

"Thanks, I'm fine," I said.

Lieutenant Riley was alright as well, just dazed. "Spinning?"

"That last explosion blew us free of the moon's surface and sent us spinning away," I explained.

"But we wouldn't have enough energy to escape it's gravity," Molly said. "What goes up, must come down."

Then we heard a voice shout, "Clear!"

And a few echoed like that, but I didn't trust it. We gathered ourselves together and quickly, but awkwardly, made our way back to the port tube, meeting two uniformed officers at the juncture. They were both in full suits, but one's mask had a long crack up the center and blood inside. They also both had guns drawn and ready, as did we. But they did look relieved to see us.

"Sir, is this area clear? It wasn't just the troopers that turned against us, it was a few of the crew as well."

"It's clear," I said. "Lead us back towards engineering and fast. I'd just as soon not crash again."

He studied me for a moment, as if he wasn't sure he could trust me. I didn't mind, I didn't really trust him yet either. But I was making him turn his back to me, still someone had to and it shouldn't be the captain.

"Aye, sir," he said, and the two of them turned and staggered ahead. It was hard walking in the tight spin, but we followed as fast as we could.

There were more bodies here and there, some with plasma wounds. We found three more troopers, dead in their armored shells. But we also found the living, busy at work trying to route a power cable around a charred black hole in the floor, which was currently the ceiling.

This was the starting point, near the landing ramp in the rear of the ship. Below would have been the landing pads, where the Imperial troopers had screwed us. Someone had thrown explosives up from below, or maybe just planted them inside. Regardless, there were explosions destroying the air lock and most of the ramp, as well as both power junctions.

Near the very front edge was a man working alone. He'd pulled off a half-mangled panel and had innards of the destroyed power switches strewn about him. He was busy trying to jury rig something together, while others assisted him by routing new power cables around the explosion and connecting them to panels in the floor I didn't know existed.

"Overby, how long?" I asked him.

"Sir?" an ensign near me interrupted. "Chief Overby's dead, sir."

"What? Then who is that?"

"I don't know, sir. But he seemed to know just how to fix the power." Then quietly he added, "He's not human. I don't know what he is."

"Mylo!" Molly screamed, inching towards him with her blaster out.

Mylo looked up for a moment, then back down at his work. "Sorry, Molly. I am a bit busy just now."

"How did you get out?"

"Listen, I estimate we left the surface doing about a hundred meters per second. This moon's gravity is maybe a twelfth Imperial nominal and if you do that math that gives us about four minutes until we crash again, now down to about two minutes. What I like less than crashing is putting myself anywhere near that monster again, so let me work. And I only need two to help with cabling."

"I don't like this," Molly told me.

"I know."

I wasn't thrilled with the idea either, but couldn't deny his usefulness. This was his ship after all, and I doubted anyone would fix it as effectively. He looked up a moment later and gave me a curious look, then looked back at what he was doing.

"Captain," he said, never lifting his eyes, "if this works, you'll have power in about twenty seconds. You might want someone on the bridge."

I looked for anyone else I knew, but found only unfamiliar faces. I picked one at random, a tall gaunt man still holding a blaster with Sergeant's stripes on his shoulder.

"Sergeant, that Foorian fixing the power system is our prisoner. He's to be watched at all times and never armed. Contact me if there's any trouble with him."

"Aye, sir," the officer said, turning squarely to face Mylo.

Riley, Molly and I hurried back towards the bridge, while Leona softly counted down the remaining seconds in my head. She reached zero before we reached the bridge, but nothing changed. She was almost ten seconds negative by the time we'd pulled ourselves into our seats, which still felt like they were on the ceiling instead of the floor.

Then, at minus thirteen seconds, the bridge suddenly lit up as power once again coursed through the veins of the Albatross.

It took a moment for systems to power-up and report in. After that, the information came in at a rush. The good news was that we still had sensors, communication, navigation, life support, sublight engines, and weapons. The bad news was that our shields and space transform systems were offline and depleted of any charge and our hull had sustained critical damage. It was breached in more than two dozen different locations, some minor cracks, some gaping holes.

"We have helm control!" Molly said, her fingers flying over the console.

The spinning slowed and the feel of gravity utterly reversed as Molly kicked in thrusters to push us further up and away from the surface.

I scanned the main display and saw more green than red. There were still a few Vessels circling the gas planet, dipping into the upper levels of its atmosphere in a fruitless attempt to evade the ships in pursuit. But around us, there were only allies in the sky with enemies below. Make that enemy.

The demon or creature was still there, shifting rapidly across the terrain to close the gap with the Diispra who was holding about five kilometers up. It was no longer idle, but firing lasers, torpedoes and stasis missiles in bulk at the monster. Nothing seemed to be hitting it, though. The lasers bent around it and struck the surface of the moon harmlessly, while the missiles were cast aside like paper airplanes trying to fly into a tornado.

"Sir! We're being hailed by the Diispra."

"On screen."

I braced myself to receive the Admiral. I hated him more than I could say, but I couldn't ignore what he had to say. I was pleasantly surprised to see another face on the screen.

"Captain Doogan! You're alive, I can't believe it!"

"Commander Varrin! I was expecting someone else."

"Captain and acting Admiral Varrin," he corrected with a grim smile. "Enough titles, we're having serious problems. The crew has gone insane, turning on us, each other. We're barely able to function up here. Your enforcers did the charm against those Vessels, please tell me you have something to deal with that."

"Withdraw?" I suggested. "Seriously, Captain, we're a floating scrap heap here. Whatever it is appears confined to that moon."

"Trust me, fleeing was my first choice. But it isn't an option. Gravitational pull increases asymptotically near five kilos. We're at 100% sublight just to hold here. Transform systems are refusing to converge. They're acting like they're under a stasis field, but there is no field."

Molly muttered, "My god, he's right. And at this rate we're not even going to make it that far."

"That can't be. That simply can't be! If gravity were that high, it would be crushing everyone on board!"

"Doogan, are you seriously arguing the pure logic of magic?"

The bridge hatch opened and I turned my head to see Mylo coming in along with the Sergeant I'd asked to guard him.

"Well at least put some distance between us."

"You'll only get so far, Captain," Varrin said. "Our only plan so far is to keep firing. Hit it, hit the base, level the damn surface. Our scientists have some plans too, directed energy fields, reverse artificial gravity beams; but there's too much chaos here. I like the firing option myself. The Vessels ran out of juice, maybe this will too."

"Fair enough. I think I'll avoid making myself look like a threat until I have some shields to block an errant torpedo. But I'll see what I can do about saving the day. Again. Stay in touch."

I cut the line and turned to Mylo. "What do you want?"

"To help, obviously. You're still using the basic sensors? For shame."

"Fine, take sensors and tell me something useful."

He bounced over and settled into his seat with a groan. "We're being contained within a field of what the empire calls phase-distortion syten, very similar to a transform field, but where nothing is uniform, nor random. It's like fractals made from phase variation."

"A big ball of magic," Molly said. "He said tell us something useful. Like how to get out of it."

"It seems possible, in theory, to use the transform system to create an inverse distortion field. But it's shifting rather quickly and impossible to completely synchronize. But a much closer alignment would negate most of the effect, I'd think."

"You'd think?"

"I can't say for sure. But I could probably throw something together in an hour to try it out."

"An hour?!"

"Hmm.. probably more like two. But I promise you it would take the Diispra staff a week. Oh, look at that. The field is collapsing."

"Meaning it's dissipating?"

"Meaning it's pulling us in," he corrected. He turned to face me. "It means to devour us. We don't have two hours."

"How long?" I asked.

"Forty minutes give or take a few. After that we'll be close enough that it can touch us. But that presumes it wants or needs to do that. It might be able to kill us at any moment."

"If it could do that, it would have," Molly reasoned.

"Not necessarily," Mylo said. "It's far scarier this way, being pulled slowly in, unable to resist. Unable to even trust in the company of the doomed men beside you because they might turn on you at any moment. The Unlife loves the fear, it's almost more important than the destruction itself."

"Since when are you an expert?" Molly asked.

"I've lived a hundred lives, Molly," he said as the whole of his explanation.

"Yes, I know. In one of them you tortured me and murdered your best friend."

"Maybe I can improvise something in less time," Mylo said, ignoring her remark. "Maybe if I just countered the peaks..." he trailed off as he lost himself in his console.

"If we still had Jammers, I'd say we could make some shielded torpedoes," I said. "But we don't, and we're running out of time."

"Maybe something with magic?" Molly asked. "That's something it might not be expecting at least."

Magic? The spells I'd learned from T'vance and Katrina weren't exactly trivial, but they weren't anything that seemed immediately useful against a giant demon.

"Invisible torpedo?" Molly asked. "I'm not sure that would even work, the invisibility would get knocked off launching the thing, right?"

"Right. But maybe that's not far off. I wonder... there's one spell, if it's even a spell at all."

"What spell?"

"Yeah, what spell? I'm looking at the list now, and there's really nothing."

"It's not one of theirs," I told her. "It's a prayer Father taught me when I was young. I can't believe I still remember it."

"Doogan, what are you talking about?" Molly asked. "You just met Father."

"I know! He must have implanted it as a memory. This has to be it. It's a blessing, a simple blessing. But it's His blessing," I said, unstrapping myself from my seat. "Mylo, make yourself useful and go fix my shields."

"Oh, that's an idea! I bet I could do something with the shield modulation!"

"Just get them up as fast as you can with as much power as you can flood them with."

Mylo undid his own belt and stood up. "Will do. Though I had really hoped to see these blessed torpedoes in action."

"Well I'm not firing them without shields."

"Oh, so I'm on the critical path? I like a challenge." He left the bridge with his guard in tow.

I went and kissed Molly. "You have the bridge."

"I can't believe you kept that spell from me," Leona said, jogging beside me through the ship.

"I hid it from myself, too. What can I say? I'm a bit disappointed you didn't detect it."

"Me too, what good am I if I can't even police your brain?"

"Well, you are pretty to look at."

"You have a point."

The spell to bless the torpedoes was like a prayer in my head, something I had said so many times in my youth that I could say it verbatim without even knowing the words. Which is good because I didn't actually know what any of them meant, all the words were in Enruth.

It was about a thirty second prayer and according to the crewman on duty in the torpedo bay, I was faintly glowing most of that time. When I finished, the glow transferred over to the torpedo. And even after I'd finished the fourth one, the first was still glowing softly.

"Load these up," I told the crewman. "Next time I fire all tubes, I want these four torpedoes to fire. Understood?"

"Yes, sir, these into the chamber, as they say."

I nodded and hurried back to the bridge, worrying the whole time that he might be possessed. I didn't see a weapon on him, so its possible he was planning some sabotage.

"You're just paranoid. He seemed fine to me. Nervous, as expected, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary."

"Thanks. That helps."

"I've also been doing some calculations. At this range, four torpedo explosions without shields will probably kill us. Ten percent should be adequate to keep us safe, but I'd recommend fifteen to be safe."

"Remind me what I'd do without you again?"

The bridge was just as I'd left it, but I heard inspiring words even as I floated in through the hatch.

"Shields at 4%!"

"We have shields?" I asked.

"Aye, sir!" Lieutenant Riley said. "A little bit, anyway."

"The Diispra has taken some hits from their own torpedoes, so it's good to be cautious," Molly said.

"Their own torpedoes?"

"Yes, some of the ones being deflected were thrown back at them. I don't think it's coincidence either, I think the demon's trying to aim and getting better at it."

"Perhaps twenty percent would be better," Leona half-joked.

"Get Captain Varrin back," I told Riley.

He hailed them and once again the acting Admiral's face filled the screen.

"I think it's time for a cease fire, Captain."

"You have a new plan?"

"Yes. Living. It occurred to me that if any of those torpedoes do connect with the monster, my ship will suffer greatly. The only reason we're still alive is because you're much further from us than the demon is and have only been missing or shooting yourself."

I saw Varrin's eyes look for advice off-screen, then he nodded and turned back to face us. "We agree with that assessment. We'll continue using energy weapons, but for now torpedoes will stop. That said, we're running out of time quickly. Did you come up with anything?"

"I have four ideas to try, and I'll let you know what they are in about one minute."

"Shields at 9%," Riley reported.

The hatch opened again and Mylo and his guard returned. He made it quickly back to his seat and studied his display. "I didn't miss anything, did I?"

"We haven't fired yet, if that's what you mean. Molly, lock all torpedo tubes on the monster."

"Weapons locked and ready," she replied, giving me a hopeful smile. "One at the eye thing, then the other three in a tight triangle surrounding it."

"Perfect. Wait for my order."

"Strange," Mylo said. "The field has accelerated in its collapse. We have about five minutes less than I originally predicted."

The demon's stormy red eye swiveled back to face us suddenly. It was still a couple of kilometers away, but I knew it was staring right at us, right at me. The Imperial Carrier had taken all of its attention for a time, but that was over. Maybe because we had targeted weapons, maybe because it knew something more. Whatever it was, I couldn't wait any longer.

"Fire!"

"Torpedoes away!" Molly shouted.

The white glow was entirely lost in the red tracer light that accompanied every legitimate torpedo. To the world, the torpedoes were average and ordinary in every way. And for a moment, I worried that maybe they were. Maybe the spell had faded or the crewman hadn't done his job. I kept waiting for them to fail, for the deflection field around the demon to scatter them like all the others. But they keep getting closer, and closer.

I crossed my fingers.

Then they hit, all four of them together. There was a bright flash and the ship shook horribly. Alarms sounded. Someone shouted, "Shields are failing!"

Then we were suddenly jolted violently and pulled hard downward like gravity had suddenly increased even more.

"We're free!" Molly cried.

That explained the sudden increase in acceleration. The strange field that held us was gone, snapping like a rubber band and releasing us to shoot high up and away from the surface. The Diispra was moving likewise, and I heard cheering and saw smiling faces on the display.

"Sensors, report! What did we do to it?"

Mylo turned to face me, smiling broadly showing his short, spiked, alien teeth. "It's gone. Totally destroyed."

"Totally destroyed," I echoed, still looking for it in the sensor view. But it was gone and there was nothing left but a deep crater.

As much as I would have liked to savor the moment, the conflict wasn't entirely over. Though the battlemoon hung dead in space, unpowered and defenseless, beneath the surface were still perhaps thousands of soldiers, arcanists, and who knew what else. I couldn't even say with confidence that the demon was behind all the magic leveraged against us. We couldn't assume they were done for.

"I don't know what you did or how, Captain Doogan. But thank you," Captain Varrin said over the video channel.

"You're welcome," I said. "I have a few concerns about the moon, though. There were many occupants and they may be able to restore power."

"I'm ordering all ships to stay well away from that rock, Captain. We can bombard it from a distance to make sure there's nothing living."

"I had something a little more drastic in mind," I told him. "If you're open to suggestions."

"I'm listening."

By the time the fleet had regrouped in high orbit around the gas giant, Mylo and Molly had completed the calculations. The complex system of tunnels created some unique fault lines and structure defects that were waiting to be exploited. Our target coordinates were fed to the fleet, and for this attack we were no longer a lone Chaos Wing, but a fleet of sixty-two ships with over two hundred torpedo tubes and just under two hundred energy weapon banks.

The attack was staged in three waves. We bored holes with lasers, then widened them with torpedoes. We did that twice, then for the final wave we deployed the largest volley of torpedoes at a single target I'd ever seen. Two-hundred and fourteen of them streaked towards the surface, disappearing through the shafts we'd created. A couple of seconds later, the moon exploded, jettisoning about ten percent of its volume as a massive asteroid.

None of the mass would escape the gas giant, except perhaps some of the very small pieces. The new asteroid would probably persist as a satellite of the giant planet, but the rest of the moon had been significantly slowed.

"Mylo?"

"Scans show significant damage to the reactor and space fold systems. I can't say they are impossible to repair, but any repairs would take many days."

"And the orbit?"

"Decaying. It will enter the upper atmosphere in about eighteen Imperial hours. The moon is done for."

...

The events that immediately followed were more of a blur. Our ship was a mess and so were many others in the fleet. More than a few had major systems offline. We stayed in orbit, huddled together, connected by docking tubes as repairmen from the Frigate Frivolous, serviced the fleet. The Frivolous had stayed out of the fight, but come within a few minutes when signaled, along with half a dozen repair cruisers, a dreadnaught, and four heavy freighters.

The possessed men, as we'd come to call them, had all returned to normal after the monster's death. Many had done terrible things, and they all remembered.

We received an injection of crew, also from the Frivolous. While men outside repaired our hull, we worked inside to restore the rest of the systems to functional state. Mylo worked on the repairs, over Molly's misgivings but under strict guard.

The repairs weren't pretty. For instance, the underside landing ramp was not repaired. It was welded over with new plating. We had no landing gear and there were temporary tubes and cables floating all over the place.

One had to admire the efficiency of the Imperial recovery effort. Even cut off from our ITH, the fleet coordinated well. Dozens of smaller ships from the bays of the dreadnaught inspected the debris field, searching for survivors and salvage. They pulled back chunks of destroyed ships, and the repair cruisers dismantled them with an array of robotic arms and tools. Hundreds of Space Troopers floated about, helping sort salvage from scrap, or receiving pieces to weld onto ships like mine. Anything that wasn't immediately useful was eventually loaded into the freighters.

As amazing as it all was, the repairs were background to the political process that followed. The admiral was dead, men had turned on men, ships had fired on their own, Mylo had broken out of his cell, we'd lost a spaceport, and we still had another battle to win.

Captain Varrin's report, which was classified to almost everyone, pinned a lot of blame to Admiral Loaqui. He ordered replacement crews to the torpedo and laser bays. They modified the torpedoes to disable the tracer and deliberately fired on the other Imperial Carrier under his direct orders. It was but the last in a series of questionable or curious actions he'd taken, all of which started after we'd left Kulthea. Listed among them was the intentional manipulation of orders to use the Albatross as bait.

It was very clear that the attack occurred well before any reported incidences of possession. Those only started when the Diispra closed to engage the battlemoon. Varrin claimed the attack went unnoticed until another Captain sent him a direct coded message asking what was happening. After some quick investigation, he confronted the admiral and attempted to relieve him of duty. The admiral drew a weapon and Varrin shot him.

That all sounded reasonable to me, but it left the chain of command in shambles. Short term decisions could be made by the Magistrate on board the Diispra, but the Magistrate was unreachable. Though they were technically supposed to continue to operate in case of an ITH failure, this one at least would not respond to any requests.

Without any ranking officer or court, the military was left to their own devices to select an interim leader. Once the threat from the moon was behind us, Captain Varrin's leadership role was immediately questioned by more senior captains from other ships.

"Sir, incoming message from the Diispra, sir," Lieutenant Riley said.

"On screen, Lieutenant."

Captain Varrin looked more haggard after the combat than he had during, though I admit I'm not a very good judge of Ruellan body language.

"Captain Doogan," he said, "would you mind taking a tube over here? We're having a vote on the new interim fleet commander. All the other ship captains are attending. Even though you command a civilian ship, your standing with the fleet entitles you a vote."

"Is one vote going to make any difference?" I asked.

"Unlikely," he said. "But your words might. I hoped you might speak before the assembly."

"Me? What do you think I'd say to help you?"

"It's not about helping me," he said. "It's about helping the Empire. Just listen, and I'll arrange for you to speak near the end, if you will. You may not believe this, but your name has made rounds through the fleet. People know it was your modifications to the Class II Enforcers that spared the fleet the brunt of the enemy attack and they know you were instrumental in taking out the battlemoon. If you were an Imperial captain, you'd have a medal on your chest by now. Your words will have weight. Will you come?"

"He really lays it on thick. Makes it pretty hard to say no, huh?"

I nodded. It was hard to say no, though I had no doubt he was buttering me up. No doubt he expected me to see the other choices and direct people to vote for him. I worried a bit that he might have some threat to use against me once I got there, but so far he seemed a man of character and sometimes you have to trust people, right?

"All right, Captain. I'll be there."
CHAPTER 24

* * *

T'vance

* * *

"What do you mean she's not coming?" I demanded.

Karstia's eyes didn't waver. "I had another mission for her. It's nothing she can't handle."

"I want her with me, it's our place."

"This is important, T'vance. She was angry about it, but she accepted. Surely you aren't saying you can't do this without her?"

Our argument was interrupted by the arrival of our Navigators, with Aja in tow. She'd managed to somehow befriend one of them, and they were talking casually. Then the Lenn-raki groups arrived, twenty-six walkers, a dozen of what they called footmen, and a dozen archers.

The footmen were like heavy infantry, layered with their strange thick sheets of armor. They carried spears with needle-tipped metal heads on their backs, and had bandoliers of sharp metal throwing-somethings across each of the arm and leg plates. In their hands, they carried wicked pole-arms, each was unique featuring a curved branch of natural wood stained and paired with a forged steel head.

The archers and walkers wore light leathers at the best, some had no armor at all. They all had soft boots and quiet movements, unlike the clattering of the footmen.

One of the Navigators approached, the one who wasn't Aja's friend. "Karstia, this is going to be an awkward approach. We're near fifty head here. We can't do it without two jumps, that means time and exposure."

"The spirit walkers will amplify your spells," Karstia said. "Don't worry, it will be one jump."

The Navigator raised one eyebrow and cracked a smile. "Intriguing," he said, and walked back to discuss it with the other.

Karalishi arrived last, dressed much like the other walkers, but his leathers were clearly very old. While well cared for, they bore many scars. He carried a staff of white wood bound with bones and teeth and feathers bound to the top with straps of leather.

"The spirits are with us," he said.

"What about Brother Dagar?" I asked Karstia. I hadn't seen him in camp, come to think of it.

"He's on his way to Murnak's Tower."

"He'd be more use with us, I think."

"Hard to say," she replied, shrugging.

I jumped in first, bringing three others with me. I knew the platform well, and landed us safely atop it. I'd wrapped the lot of us in an invisibility shell first. It was early afternoon, but the platform was empty and the spires lowered. Whatever I'd left there had been taken when the Vessel came before. I double checked, no gort.

The Vessel was no longer above us, but on a battlement of the palace two stories above the platform were four of the hybrid soldiers we'd seen on the platform before. They didn't react to our arrival, so I assumed the invisibility worked on them, but they still might hear us so I started working on a sound dampening spell.

My first passenger was a Navigator, who took a sweeping look around the platform, checked the sky with his sextant, then vanished without a word, back to where we'd come from.

The other two were Karalishi and Malatu's son, who was also Karalishi's nephew by marriage. They looked nothing alike, but they sounded alike in their speech and moved well together. He had a longer name, but they all referred to him as Matu.

Once my sound dampening was in effect, I gave them the signal and they started working on a more sophisticated barrier, the same magic they used to shield their army movements. It would hide us better than my illusions, but would also take a lot longer to raise.

While they worked, I took stock of the rest of our surroundings. The city below was alive with activity, far different than it had been at night. They may not have known we were there, or that there was a cloaked army moving on the city, but they seemed to know something was up. There was a huge group of Faroks just west of the courtyard, arranged in ranks like an army in training. There were faded arcanists and blades-men overseeing them as they took turns shooting bursts of plasma from strange black devices at targets arranged in a row.

I saw two squads of eight hybrid soldiers jogging quickly past them, another three squads of them here and there, and a large collection of blades-men arranged in their own unit, frozen at attention, with a pair of faded Farok's conversing near them.

I made a quick mental count of everything I could see, including the two Vessels that loomed in the air high over the city, probably over the demon's head. Karalishi and Matu came up beside me.

"They are many," Karalishi said.

I nodded. "Green, though. Those are miners, farmers, stone workers."

"Throwing plasma," Matu noted.

"Throwing plasma badly," I corrected. "And they'll be doing it for us soon, probably just as badly."

"The spirits cannot save so many," Karalishi said sadly.

Matu snorted. "They hate us. They always have. Even now, they stand against us. I'll worry after our souls, not theirs."

The air seemed to buzz, then the rest of our party appeared and the platform was suddenly very crowded. There were more than the entire Black Boot Company, all clustered on the platform. Some were even standing on the Enrichment platform itself, which triggered the spires to start rising.

"Walkers, the guards," I commanded. The spires rising would alert them, even if they couldn't see us. There was a moment of pointing and looking at each other, an amazingly fast moment. One second, every one of the twenty-six walkers was pointing at one of the four guards, and the next there were sixteen pointing, four at each guard. The next moment, they were casting.

One of the hybrid guards turned his head downward and I saw a glimmer of awareness in his one organic eye right before the spells hit. I don't know what spells they were and there wasn't a single visible clue that any had been cast; but the walkers below gathered with small vials, enthusiastically corking them and congratulating one another. The hybrid guards reacted by resuming their mindless surveillance.

"They won't trouble us," Karalishi said.

"We'll have bigger troubles," Karstia said, coming up beside me. "We can't delay this. It's show time, T'vance. Are you ready?"

I wished Fera was there every minute before I walked on stage. I don't think she'd have said anything to settle me, but she would have at least appeared very calm herself and that would have been enough. More than that, though I'll deny it to my grave, I wished gort was with me.

The clothing I wore felt foreign and feminine, like I was walking out wearing lingerie. It wasn't the style so much as the feel, for the fabric was light and silky and glimmered as if Arain silver had been woven into it. I knew I should go with it, try to let it feel natural, but it didn't and I couldn't make it.

The outfit wasn't the only strange thing nagging at me. It wasn't the only thing of Aganond's I was wearing, not just wearing but attuned. On one hand it was a good thing, a great thing even. I'd been without any real magical items for too long, and I'd found a six-time quick cast focus, and a six-fold power divider, plus a necklace that worked blade-turns, a ring that threw plasma bolts, and a circlet that allowed me to see in any direction without moving my head. There were far more for the taking, but after the five I'd attuned I already felt strange enough.

In the long mirror I grew nervous at the sight of myself. I was the Lord Aganond, in all his glory. This was the pinnacle of impersonation magic. I wore his face, his hair, my body was his, my blood his. Scan my mind, and you'd find him, sense my power and you'd tremble. I had things of his, attuned with me. And I felt just a little too much like him. But underneath was only me. And I don't mean to put myself down, I know I'm a bad-ass compared to most, but not compared to the real Aganond or the Demon or probably even Murnak's son. I couldn't cast his spells, I couldn't even make my spells look like his, and I didn't know any of the secrets he might have shared to vet myself.

"The army is set and men have just run out from the palace," Karstia informed me. "Go now. Good luck."

I walked out through the doors, noting that I couldn't see either row of my guarding spirit walkers. I was glad of that, yet I wouldn't have minded the reassurance so much. I walked boldly across to the Enrichment platform and stood upon it. Reaching out, I found it and connected.

"Hello, half-way decent impersonation of me," Aganond's avatar spirit said.

"Signal Enrichment in two chimes," I said.

"Enrichment will begin in two chimes," rippled through the city.

"Ten chimes is more traditional," he remarked snidely.

I tried to see the reaction below, but the platform masked it all. The same way I couldn't see the bird-snakes eating me. But that seemed a silly power.

"Remove the mask, I want to see the world around me."

"As you will," he said. And then I saw. One little pulse and the world was thrown into chaos. I don't think I appreciated how much the Faroks depended on Enrichment. It was their gort, and they'd been without a fix for a week.

I don't know what set it off, I missed that part, but the conscripted Faroks training with plasma had moved a dozen feet away and there were fires and dead faded Faroks and innocent ones. They had five weapons among the hundred or so men, but they were rallying to move towards the courtyard to be closer to the Enrichment.

The blades-men squad was moving on them, but the hybrids didn't react at all. But there were missing faded Faroks.

I looked all around me and found two of them standing in front of the doors, watching me cautiously. I took a deep breath and turned to face them with a smile.

"You aren't Aganond," one of them said.

"I like you better in white," I replied. "Go change if you plan to continue to serve."

"I won't be fooled by tricks," he said, then he raised his hands and dark energy flashed out towards me. I waved my hand casually and the spell dissipated before striking me. I made a mental effort to breath and remain calm. I can't actually wave away spells, but the walkers were shielding me. It was a lot to trust that, especially for me.

"Go change!" I screamed, but underneath that I laced a fear spell so well I might as well have been channeling Aganond. In truth, the walkers were boosting everything I did, but it didn't make watching them scream in terror and run away from me any less satisfying.

"Enrichment will begin in one chime," rippled through the city.

I looked around for someone to share the moment with, but the walkers were still unseen and I was otherwise alone. I hated that most.

Then I felt it coming suddenly, impending doom. Maybe it was a spell telling me, maybe something else. Every instinct told me to blink or shift away, but Aganond wouldn't fucking run. So I stood their stupidly waiting for the thing to appear. Below, blades-men reached the ranks of the recently liberated Faroks, who simply couldn't shoot them or run away fast enough.

Then he appeared, Aganond like myself, two Aganonds. I knew the Kinari could impersonate Aganond, but for a moment I hesitated. Could it be Aganond somehow? Reborn like a phoenix or having returned and merged into a body like Tisbaen was doing to Dagar?

"You're an imposter," he said.

"Perhaps you should try to operate the Enrichment platform," I replied. "I know you've tried and failed. But it would be amusing to watch you try again."

I stared into his black soulless eyes with determination, but I didn't expect to bluff my way out of this. He studied me for a moment, then shook his head and smiled. "I don't know how you did it young one."

"I may show you one day," I said. "Kneel, so that I may see your respect."

He gritted his teeth slowly, which was about all I needed to see. I threw a plasma bolt from the ring with a slight flick of my wrist, aimed dead center. It flew wide on its own, or he shifted left, but it also struck something near him and was redirected off at a strange angle.

He laughed as he raised both hands and shouted out lyrics in a dark language. It was suddenly dark, mid-day mind you, and the ground beneath me shook. Then it all went away and daylight beamed through and the ground settled and as far as I could tell absolutely nothing had changed. The other Aganond seemed confused by this.

I switched to a hallucination spell, hoping the boost from the walkers would give me enough of an edge to effect him. I quick-cast it off the new focus, and he was washed in purple light, but shook it off. He quickly peered about and swept his hands around the circle. The cloaking field around the Lenn-raki spirit walkers faded, leaving them exposed, even tucked away as they were inside the spires.

"Friends!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, I have them."

I fired another plasma bolt and this time he dove aside, rolling and coming back to his feet without effort. He threw a spark, that danced across the platform into one of the spires and exploded plasma. The three walkers inside were surely killed, but they died quietly.

"Enrichment is beginning," was the last thing I clearly remember hearing in the real world. Then I was floating and I saw Aganond before me, the avatar from the Enrichment device, not the fake Aganond I was just fighting. Clearly there were too many, but that's how it was.

"I think I just saved you," he said.

"You were the one who wanted to use ten chimes, so don't start taking credit. What happens now?"

"The cloud has taken everyone within a hundred feet, but it will expand to about a mile if you wait long enough. I'll give you updates on the effected people, you tell me when you want to start programming them."

"What are we at now?"

"The one Kinari, about fifty Lenn-raki, four elves from your people, around four hundred Faroks, forty-two of what you're calling blades-men, two Vessels – bet you didn't know they were so close, and some seventy some odd of what you call bird-snakes, how imaginative."

"Let's just wait. Let me know when it gets to the maximum range. I want everyone I can get."

He sighed. "Amateur." A second later he said, "Okay, it's ready."

"You're kidding?"

"How long did you expect it to take? Time doesn't hold here. You ready to program?"

"Let's do it."

I can't explain exactly what the programming process was like, anymore than I can explain how a mind-meld works. But I can say that there were similarities between the two. At once, I knew, generally speaking, who was in Enrichment and what they were capable of. I felt willing minds, unwilling minds, and confused minds. I could focus down to any person, if I chose; or focus on something I wanted to learn or something I wanted to teach, and see a group of minds that knew or were capable of knowing.

I focused on Karstia and picked her up instantly. She was with others, and I could tell who they were. I recognized Aja's aura, and could guess by the capabilities who the Navigators were. But I pulled Karstia to me, or I went to her, and we had a brief exchange. She was intoxicated from the Enrichment, which I could relate to because I'd been there before, but as host of the Enrichment I felt sober. I only had one question for her, and she didn't say no. She didn't say yes, either, but I was only looking to avoid a no.

I found the Kinari, pausing near him. I could just ignore him. His mind was unwilling, so I couldn't just program him, but like the avatar said, I might be able to overpower his mind, force my way in. I had been able to attune to the platform where he had failed, which gave me confidence. Resolving this battle here and now might be the easiest thing. Every moment in the real world was a risk. Even if he didn't kill me, he might escape.

I was inches from touching him when I remembered the demon. Huge and looming, and connected. I felt the connection between them, but I didn't feel the demon. Enrichment must not affect him. I didn't know what that meant, but I didn't have a good feeling about it.

"What happens to time for things inside the area that aren't subject to the Enrichment spell?"

"Oh, like the demon?" avatar Aganond asked.

"Yes."

"Time flows based on what we do in here. Thinking is time, melding is time, it's only the waiting that isn't. How many seconds have you been thinking, I wonder? How far could he move in that time?"

My stomach twisted and any thoughts of pursuing a mental battle with the Kinari were put aside. Time didn't really stand still and I'd been wasting it.

I pulled together the willing minds, all 82,195 of them, and imparted my agenda and some character. In short, I put a little T'vance in them. Then I worked on the spell groups. I'd already prepared groups of spells to teach them based on four tiers of ability, and I filtered the minds into the capable groups. The bulk of them were in the second tier, which is better than I expected, but some didn't even make it into the first tier. That part surprised me, as did the almost forty thousand minds who were considered unwilling.

The melding went fast after that, and I dropped the Enrichment right after. The real world was waiting for me. Time to find out what eighty-two thousand T'vances would do in a case like this. I hoped we were going to kick some serious ass.

Reality hit like a ton of bricks, and I can only say that jokingly because I survived it. I was literally hit with a dozen bricks, probably more, from the exploding remains of another spire. Worse, they weren't even bricks but just large chunks of hardened black goo. Many of these were repelled by my newly claimed necklace, thank the gods for that, but some made it through.

I was thrown nearly ten feet, ending against the retaining wall, and there was considerable pain. But the silken outfit was remarkably resistant. It hardened on impact, and aside from some bruises and losing my wind, I was feeling okay.

I threw another plasma bolt as I got back to my feet, then dodged behind some fresh rubble to avoid a black bolt that came in retaliation. I tried to get lucky with a confusion shout, but when I peeked to see if it worked I couldn't find him. Then I felt an icy hand grab my arm and every ounce of strength left me.

I looked up and saw him looming over me with those dark eyes. That close he reminded me of the vampire Derrik, not in looks but in feel. He was no longer living, of that I was sure. He was a vampire or lich or something like it. I felt sudden despair and horror as the cold crept into me, as he consumed my heat, my life. I tried to raise my hand, but none of my muscles responded except my eyes.

Blink!

I phased out of the material plane. The blink spell has no words, it is cast only by thinking a few complex thoughts and closing one's eyes. You feel it work because the world around you goes away, and it stays away so long as you keep your eyes closed. But while the world goes away, you are very much with yourself. I could feel the cold still burning my arm, but there was warmth returning to that side of my body.

The problem with the blink spell is that you reappear exactly where you were. So if your opponent knows about the spell, they might just move behind you and wait for you to return. This is where nosense is invaluable, unless of course he was expecting that and had spells to detect invisibility. I over-thought my return to the corporeal world, but settled on a shrinking spell paired with nosense.

I appeared as a six inch tall, invisible, scentless, soundless version of myself. The Kinari was gone but two Vessels were hovering ten feet over the platform. I knew they could see invisible things, but I hoped six inch tall things didn't interest them.

They fired down into the courtyard below, and I saw flashes of purple magic in response, mostly confusion and fear spells from the tier two casters I'd programmed. Then I saw the doors leading into the palace open and one of the Navigators stuck one hand out that was alive with electricity. He pointed up and lightning arced from his hand to one Vessel, then the other.

The Navigator stepped back and the door closed just in time to deflect the black-lightning strike from one of the Vessels. They climbed a dozen more feet, making the shot more difficult and continued to fire down into the streets.

I shifted through the door to find a room of people. Karstia was there with one of the Navigators and Karalishi and Matu and Aja, who looked bloody but unhurt. There were ten walkers about and another ten Faroks.

I found a corner and canceled a bunch of spells, basically everything except my defensive spells. I was T'vance again, which always felt good. I expected to be swimming in Aganond's clothing, but it automatically adjusted itself to fit my true body.

"T'vance!" Aja shouted, spotting me.

"Where's the Kinari?" I asked first.

"Gone," Karstia said. "After you blinked, we came out onto the platform through the doors, and these Faroks by shifting from outside. He teleported somewhere, the Navigators were trying to trace it when the Vessels arrived and we retreated inside."

"It was a short jump," the Navigator said, "under a mile." He was the one who wasn't Aja's friend. I didn't know where the other one had gone.

"The Faroks are with us, but not the faded or blades-men," Karstia continued. "And not the hybrids, and there are a lot of those and they're well armed."

"The faded won't last long," I said.

"I hope you're right," Karstia said without confidence. "It's the Vessels I worry about. Most of the Faroks can be invisible, but have been driven inside by the Vessels. If they stay pinned like that, they're goners."

"The Vessels have minds and probably souls," I explained. "Attacking them with force is the hard way."

"Their minds are shielded," she argued, shaking her head. "The last time..." she trailed off, shuddering to convey what words could not.

"Were shielded!" I shouted. "What happens to scrying locks when the caster dies?"

"They die too!" she exclaimed. Her eyes lost focus and her hands reached out as if trying to grasp something just outside her reach. Then her fists closed as if she'd grabbed that something and she pulled her hands back towards her with great effort.

I slipped into second sight a moment, seeing her spell for the first time. It was bright blue, so strong around her head it nearly blinded me. A stream of blue energy led away from her head and disappeared through the doors to the platform. I didn't need a book to tell me the spell, I'd seen it before. She was mastering one of the Vessels, taking control of it's mind. It was more powerful than a suggestion, more direct than a geas. She still couldn't make it destroy itself, but I doubted that was what she had in mind.

"Hello, brother," she said aloud. Her eyes were looking down towards her feet. "Do me a favor and die!"

"Fire from the door!" I shouted. "Hit the lower Vessel!"

The Navigator, myself, and Karalishi reached the door together. It slid open and we leaned out to take aim at the lower of the crafts above it. I fired plasma, the Navigator lightning, and Karalishi cast something I couldn't even see. I saw the energy flying, from us and the Vessel higher in the air. The lower Vessel was struck at least thrice and wavered in the air, leaning to one side and dropping slightly. We pulled back inside before we could assess the damage, but Karstia kept commanding the high Vessel to fire. Her lips mouthed, "Die!" and I could see joy in her eyes. It sent a cold chill through me.

She laughed out loud just before we heard the loud crash from outside as the Vessel plummeted into the platform. But from her taught expression, she didn't stop. Then she looked up and her eyes widened in terror.

"Brace!" was all she could say before the room exploded.

This time, instead of bricks hitting me it was men, a whole pile of us squished together. There was pain and a rush of acceleration, then falling, impact, more pain, then blackness.

I woke in darkness. I couldn't move or see and everything hurt, especially my limbs. I could barely move my lungs to take shallow painful breaths and something furry was tickling my nose. I heard others struggling for breath, and smelled blood and feces and dirt.

A heard a soft whimper not far from me.

"Hello?" I croaked.

"Help," a voice responded weakly. "Help..."

I didn't recognize it, so it was probably one of the Lenn-raki. I wished I could help him, but I was having a hard enough time helping myself. There were only so many spells I could cast immobilized as I was. Blink was easy, but a bad choice. I knew some mental spells that I could probably cast, but none to move me or help me breath.

I was trapped, that much was certain, but how or where I had no idea. Best I could figure, the building had collapsed on top of us. I racked my brain a little more, and eventually settled on trying a simple shrinking spell. I'd cast it recently, so it was fresh in my mind, and while it involved a few gestures, sometimes it was possible to work around those with some careful alteration.

Before I tried, I used an anticipation spell to make sure me shrinking wasn't going to make things far worse. Sometimes a cave-in can get worse, far worse. It's an entirely mental spell, but not exactly an easy one, and I remind you that I was badly injured when I say that I failed to cast it somewhat miserably.

I woke what I hoped was a very short time later to the sound of chanting. It was very soft, barely a whisper, but there was little else to hear. It was the walker's language, their magical tongue, and there was nothing said I could understand, but it gave me a little hope.

My little cave-in world shook violently, removing all that hope and more. It also hurt, even though it didn't seem to worsen our situation. The chanting continued and I waited. My healing magic at least was working, so that was something. I figured I would try to cast something else once I'd healed a little, but it didn't quite work out that way.

Instead, we started falling, the guy below me, shards from the palace walls, the guy above me. We stopped after about five feet and then a flicker of white light appeared in the space above us. While we fell, something impossibly held the rubble above us at bay, leaving an opening above us. I saw a few bodies stir, but more of them lay motionless. I struggled to free myself, fairly sure both the men closest to me were dead.

Then we fell more and when I tried to brace myself on the large slab of black wall next to me, my hand sunk into it up to my elbow, like falling into sand. Then the sand melted and the entire block turned into a viscous fluid. I fell over into what was fast becoming black soup. We were still falling, slowly, running down a drain of sorts; a drain clogged with men and goo and rubble.

A hundred feet down from where we started, it opened into a large natural cavern under the city itself. I felt good enough to do a landing spell for myself, but almost everyone else fell a good ten feet. Luckily the black goo broke most of their fall. Not that it mattered for most.

There were so many bodies and so little movement. I was the only one standing, and barely at that. But I staggered through the bodies, looking for living ones, looking for Karstia and Aja. I found the Navigator first, unconscious and pale, but breathing. Aja...wasn't as lucky. Her body was bruised and battered, but I honestly couldn't tell what killed her.

I couldn't find Karstia, but I took that as a good sign. Everyone else in the room was accounted for, living or dead. Still, if Karstia were alive, why hadn't she spoken with me mentally?

Karalishi and Matu both lived, as did a half-dozen walkers, but there were sixteen dead Lenn-raki, including some archers and footmen. Four of the walkers I didn't know were unconscious like the Navigator, and Matu's legs were both broken and he couldn't walk. But Karalishi was only bruised with a sprained ankle, and hobbled about helping the wounded with me and saying prayers over the dead.

The cavern may have started naturally, but it hardly remained natural. We were off on a raised side, which sloped down into a deeper section. That section was home to some high tech laboratory or something. It looked like the bridge of Doogan's ship, but bigger and less elegant. It was empty, so it didn't feel threatening, but I didn't understand it and had more pressing things to spend my energy on.

But I still took a good look, in case I needed to describe it to someone later. The only features that really caught me eye were a series of rectangular panels showing pictures with numbers and letters. The pictures were all similar, featuring slimy black things in clear cylindrical jars. Some were larger than others, some so large they filled the entire jar and you could barely see them pulsing. But they all were pulsing, like sick demonic hearts.

My mind was already thinking too much about it, so I turned back to Karalishi.

"Do you know what happened up there?" I asked Karalishi.

He shook his head. "I asked much from the spirits to get us safely here, and few dwell here. This is a dark place."

"So you were the one chanting?"

He nodded. "I asked the spirits for an exit, this is how they delivered it." He gestured to the goo and the area around us. "But we are only alive because of Matu. It was his spirits that shielded us from being crushed."

"Not well enough," he said sadly. "I cannot go on, uncle. But you and T'vance should. I will stay here and tend the wounded with spells. Dark as it is, there are spirits who will always come for me."

"I leave them to your care, nephew." Turning to me, he said, "T'vance, what say you? Should we return to my army now?"

"There's a war out there. You need better transportation than me."

He nodded, but looked confused. "What do you propose?"

I considered a moment, but nothing sounded better than my initial idea. "Remain here with Matu. Focus your attention on the Navigator. Get him awake and he can teleport you anywhere, including back to rejoin your ranks. Hopefully some of your sleeping will wake."

"You will not stay? My eyes are not so old they do not see your wounds."

"I'm already feeling much better," I said. "I must go. I know it might seem silly considering this isn't even my world, but I feel more responsibility in this than you."

"Careful, young one," he said with an edge in his voice. "Do not presume to compare us in this."

"It is not meant as disrespect. All things even, you brought twelve thousand into this battle and I brought eighty thousand. Your twelve thousand are volunteers, while those I enriched have little choice."

His face softened. "In that, you are right. Go then, do what you can. Spirits be with you."

"And with you," I said.

I reached for gort that wasn't there, sighed, then cast invisibility and teleported two miles directly up.

The fly spell was half out of my mouth by the time I started falling. I didn't even fall ten feet before it finished and I leveled off floating in the sky. The city was small below me, and for the first time I had the perfect angle to oversee the battle.

The palace had been destroyed, almost entirely, and the demon was on the move. He had four Vessels floating around him, firing down at people in the streets, or through windows of buildings nearby. A mass of blades-men and hybrids gathered under its feet. The pattern was already clear. The Vessels and perhaps the demon could see invisible things, and the fear of that kept most of my loyal Faroks from doing anything overt. They flashed in and out in groups, attacking will volleys of spells, then fading away to find new cover. For the most part, these attacks were ignored. The demon would simply close on a building, surround it, then demolish it as he had the palace.

I watched him take one down, swinging it's huge black limbs like clubs. It took only five solid strikes before it had reduced a dorm from nearly two hundred feet to ten. Faroks scattered at the first blow, shifting out of the building. Some escaped, while others fell to the Vessels nether bolts or, should they have lost their invisibility, to plasma fired from the hybrids.

The scene to the west was a bit more heartening. The army had advanced towards the southwest corner of the city wall, then fallen back into the cover of the still living jungle almost a mile back. I wouldn't have known they'd even gotten that close had they not left a trail of bodies with them. Three Vessels loomed over the jungle, a few hundred feet up, and were firing black bolts down into the brush.

As bad as that sounds, it was actually looking good. There were only seven Vessels total, and while the three over the Lenn-raki army had done a bit of damage, there were only three of them and thousands of Lenn-raki. And for now it seemed they'd reached an impasse.

The Vessels firing range was considerably further than that of most spells, which kept them mostly out of harm's way while they fired down with impunity. The Lenn-raki had erected a magical shield that seemed to be protecting them for now, but the ships kept firing and I couldn't say how long it would last.

I saw a few flashes of magic make their way to the Vessels. They were few and far between, but it meant at least some casters were capable of reaching them, probably more than I realized considering how unseen much of their magic was. But whatever was hitting the Vessels, didn't trouble them. They fired on.

A few things troubled me greatly. Why were there so few Vessels? Where had the Kinari gone? What happened to Karstia and what mission had she sent Fera on? But even if I knew the answers, I didn't know how they'd help me. What needed to be done had nothing to do with any of those things. I needed a way to deal with the Vessels.

I let myself fall, angling my body to surf the wind towards the west, then once I'd built up speed, let my fly spell stabilize me. I was closing on the Vessels quickly, maybe a quarter of a mile up. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I felt I needed to help the Lenn-raki to bring them into play.

All of the sudden I saw movement from the dead sections of trees closest to the line that divided the living jungle from the blackened parts the demon had transformed. Then trunks of trees flew up from the earth, fast as arrows. Three trees flew, the Vessels blinked and each ended up about fifteen feet away and the missiles passed them harmlessly.

I realized the potential and pushed forward, trying to get close enough to hit them with a confusion shout. If they were confused, they couldn't blink away, or so I hoped. But once again, the spirit walkers were ahead of me.

They fired again, three more trees, but there were considerably more trees shaking in the ground. The next three trees made them blink again, but the moment they did nine trees fired. The ships reappeared directly in harms way.

Live trees might have split or been wet and springy enough to compress and bounce off. But these are hard blackened trees from the demon. Some punched completely through the hull, some shattered and tore open huge fissures, and others went in and stuck. A rat-a-tat of bell chimes rang out as they were struck, and just under that I could hear the elated cheers of the Lenn-raki below.

One of the Vessels outright fell from the sky, but drifted towards the black trees as it fell by some working of magic. When it landed, it impaled itself on two more trees. The other two were still functional enough to turn and run.

They were about to make that decision when my confusion spell hit them, and then they found it hard to make any decisions at all. The Lenn-raki, on the other hand, had no trouble deciding to fire at them again. It only took one more volley of trees.

The destruction gave the Lenn-raki confidence, and they rushed out of the jungle led by their footmen with shields held high and moved quickly through the demon's trees towards his walls. There were hybrids defending the walls still, with an occasional faded Farok or blades-men.

I realized I was visible again, and rectified the situation as I flew over them towards the wall. The west gate was still closed. I had hoped my T'vance army would have opened it, but since they hadn't, I took it as my job.

The hybrids began firing plasma bolts down at the lead footmen when they got close to the wall. The footmen's shields took about three blasts a piece before they were useless and had to be discarded, but they were remarkably effective against plasma. Normally plasma splashes off, but their odd shields seemed to absorb the plasma into the middle layers, then break apart some as a result. It limited their use, but kept plasma from splashing around where it usually ends up on someone.

They ran at the wall as if it wasn't here. Then suddenly some were vaulting up through the air, while others just ran to the wall and up it, as if gravity had changed to follow the wall instead of the ground. They were swarming the battlements, the tower, engaging close hybrids or throwing shards of metal or spears at ones further away.

Not everyone could get up the wall, more couldn't actually, and they filed alongside the wall, using it as cover as they made their way towards the west gate. Walkers threw spells up at the hybrids from the ground and their archers fired arrows.

The hybrids fought with a mechanical precision and their armor made them difficult to kill. The fighting on the wall was slow. I saw one footman disarm a hybrid then strike him a dozen times without drawing blood. Finally the footman threw a shoulder and knocked the hybrid off the wall instead.

I'd never seen the gate controls, but I'd been in the tower on the far side of the gate and there had been no controls there. So I hoped they were in the near tower and headed there. I looked back down on the army squeezing against the wall and saw a tanned skin body among the black ones. That was Fera. What kind of mission had her in the middle of the Lenn-raki army? I almost let it distract me, but shook it off and landed gently on top of the close gate tower.

Two hybrids were manning the top battlements with their backs to me. I'd seen them long before I landed and decided in advance to ignore them. But once I was that close, I couldn't resist. As one leaned out over the battlements to fire down at the army, I grabbed his feet and flipped him the rest of the way over. The other spun to face me just in time to catch a plasma bolt to his face and throat.

I dove for cover out of caution, not necessity, then crawled along the roof towards the hatch set in the center of the floor. I glanced back to make sure the plasma had done it's job, which it had and then some. Then I reached out with my mind into the room below, seeking sentient beings. I found six, which was a bit more than I'd counted on, but what could I do?

I was debating the proper combination of spells when I felt a pulse of energy wash over me with such intensity I found myself clutching to the rim of the hatch as if I might be swept over the side. But it didn't move me, it just sickened me to the core and I felt tingling all over my skin as if insects were swarming every inch of my flesh.

I pushed myself up to my hands and knees, trying to block out the memories of dark spells past. Then I heard a soft cry that sounded female. It was soft, yet distinct and familiar. Fear gripped me and I leaped unthinking to my feet and rushed to the battlements. But it wasn't Fera and I knew it the moment I hit the battlements. It didn't come from the west, it came from the east. I spun about and my eyes found them right away.

The Kinari was standing on the top of one of the large dorm towers. His hands were stretched wide, as if making a grand gesture. Karstia stood behind him, one hand resting on his extended forearm. It was too far to tell what else was happening, but I had a very bad feeling about it all. I counted the space between us and prepared a short jump to get myself there. I didn't cast it, though. Something else was happening, something that caused cries to erupt from the army below.

I looked back over the battlements and saw a wave of bones rolling over the landscape from the northwest. Another army was approaching at a run, an army of skeletons, of bones. Their skeletal bodies were long and lean, and the skulls left no doubt. These were Troq skeletons, thousands upon thousands of them, moving faster than any dead thing had a right to.

I screamed for Fera, but there were so many other screams mine was lost. I looked for her but didn't see her among the lines of Lenn-raki that were shuffling to prepare a defense against the impending horde.

I heard someone scream, "Gate!"

The gate! In that moment, nothing else mattered. I touched the hatch to open it, then screamed for confusion in the chamber below, dropping in afterward without waiting for the results. I landed and rolled, coming up behind a blades-man. There were two of them, two faded Faroks, and two hybrids. Best of all, there was a lever set into a panel on the side wall.

I dropped the blades-man in front of me with a plasma bolt from the ring. Though it was the last I could cast from the ring that day, it was certainly not the least. The bolt punched through it's chest and sprayed plasma on the faded in front of him, then set his entire torso ablaze.

I slipped behind one of the hybrids on my way to the lever, evading one of the dark spells that followed me and shaking off the other before it could affect me. I jammed the lever down and set off a vacuum spell immediately in front of me. The air clapped like thunder and slammed me back against the wall, but it hurt others a lot worse. One of the hybrids collapsed with blood streaming from his nose, and both Faroks and the other hybrid were flung against the far wall.

The flaming blades-man was extinguished by the vacuum, not that it made him any less dead. But the other blades-man spun at me with both blades, resilient bastard. Somehow he knew just where I was and I had to dive out of the way as both his weapons rang off the hard black wall, sending little black chips flying.

He pursued me closely, swinging over and over. I scrambled to my feet, narrowly missing another strike. The west gate was opening quickly, I could feel it vibrating the floor more than I could actually hear it. I wanted to get the hell out of there, but I to make sure it stayed open long enough for my army to get inside. Who was I kidding, long enough for Fera to get inside.

I shifted up, back to the rooftop. I ran across to the hatch and threw another confusion shout below. This time I wanted to see how effective it was, so I peaked over the edge to survey the room. The blades-man appeared adequately stupefied, but one the faded Faroks was missing.

A tingle at the back of my neck sent me rolling, and I caught site of him before I came back up to my knees. I saw black and red energy, but I couldn't even stop rolling to avoid it. I felt it creeping into me, the spell so familiar. It was nothing devastatingly lethal in itself, but it was meant to immobilize me, and it did so by afflicting a severe torment on the soul. I tried to resist it, but some of it got through.

If you've ever been severely betrayed, or tragically lost a loved one, you know that deep pit of pain; that traumatic sudden hollowness. It was that, just as shocking, and awful, but with no reason for it. And the lack of a reason was almost the worst of all. It nagged at you as if you should know.

It didn't stop me from getting back to my feet, but it took every bit of wind out of my sails, made most spells seem insurmountable to cast. It wasn't the spell that would kill me. It was what he was going to do next.

I could see it in his eyes, the joy he felt at what was to come. I hate to think that he died like that, elated at having bested me, preparing to revel in killing me. But he did when an arrow pierced his heart from behind. The wall runners and leapers had finally made their way across.

I shook off the effects of the dark spell cowering in a corner of the tower rooftop and listening to the sounds of the Lenn-raki finishing off the remaining guardians of the tower. Neither of those things took very long, and the army was still passing through the gate when I looked back over.

The skeleton army was given no easy pass to close on the Lenn-raki. The Walkers below had mastered manipulating the dark trees and had twisted them into barriers, or into living traps that swung their limbs like clubs as the Troq skeletons tried to pass. There were also more common elemental walls made from swirling dust or churning water and pits appearing out of thin air. It was the second most impressive concentrated use of magic I'd ever seen. It was also not enough.

There were just so many of them. The pits filled with their bones, they slowed only briefly through the elemental walls, and where trees made hard barriers, the Troqs used each other as ladders, piling up and over. There was still half of our army to get through when the first of the enemy reached the footmen, who'd formed a mortal wall to shield the Walkers and archers who flooded behind them through the open gates.

I threw a vacuum among the first horde, scattering the bones of half a dozen of the things. They weren't tough, they were just many. The rest of the first comers were taken down with spears and pole arms, but there weren't so many of those. They were the fast ones, the ones who slipped through before the barricades were well established. More were coming and in larger groups.

What we needed were priests, and we had none. The spirit walkers might have been close, but lacked the ability to repel undead. At least if they had it, they weren't using it and they would have been. If Brother Dagar had been there, he might have decimated the front ranks, reduced them to ash or sent them fleeing. But even he couldn't have stopped all of them. It would have taken a hundred priests.

I could do nothing specifically against the Unlife, nothing so powerful to be any more use than the others below. I could make a summoning circle and call down something more grand than myself, but nothing I knew how to summon was particularly good against hordes of skeletons. If they were hordes of demons, the circles could also be used to protect people inside them. But these weren't demons. Or were they? Maybe they were close enough?

It needed to be big, if it was to be effective, but it didn't need to be very strong. These things were minor creations at best, and even my weakest circle would hold them, assuming it worked at all. I certainly knew the spell inside and out, and I'd done a lot of custom alterations. I could do bigger, maybe sixty feet across if I worked it right.

That may sound huge to you, it may not. It seemed very small to me given the scope of the whom I had to protect and what I had to protect them from. But it was something, and it might save more lives than knocking out six at a time could do. This would secure the gates, let us keep them open and the skeletons out and make it difficult for them to block access. It might also save any who could cram inside it.

Assuming it worked.

I cast quickly and loudly. I screamed the words and only faltered a couple of times trying to sync the changes I'd made with the meter. The area flashed and the circle rose up from the ground, not quite as big as I wanted, but not far off. But I got immediate feedback on its effectiveness when it forcibly expelled two Troq skeletons who were in the area when it formed.

A bright flash gave me little warning as plasma bolts slammed into the back side of the battlements. I leaped away, but felt the searing pain on my arm as it caught a few tiny droplets that splashed off the wall. Hybrids had taken the rooftops of the nearby dorms. I rushed back to the other side, taking cover from the next shots. Only a few had been firing at me, though. Most of them were firing down into the Lenn-raki coming through the gate.

I put another invisibility spell over myself and moved to another opening in the battlements. I wasn't sure if the hybrids would be able to see me or not, the ones close enough to fire on me had already lost interest and were firing down at the street.

Then I saw a dozen or more figures appear behind the hybrids and saw flashes of purple magic and sprays of water. The hybrids staggered and one seemed to collapse, then the Faroks rushed them. Two hybrids toppled over the low wall and fell to their deaths, the other two were swarmed and disappeared. Then plasma fire from adjacent dorms sent the Faroks scattering. A few were hit and fell on the rooftop, but the rest shifted back inside.

It was chaos like that everywhere. The demon was still destroying buildings towards the center of the city, with his remaining Vessels, but here along the west wall the Faroks were getting bold. The streets before the west gate became the front line of the battle, where blades-men and hybrids met the incoming Lenn-raki while fending off flash raids by T'vance-inspired Faroks.

Some of the Faroks had taken up arms as well, and by that I mean the blades-men's actual arms. They'd severed the arms below the elbow, and were using them like swords. I saw a Farok appear out of thin air and thrust a make-shift blade through a hybrid's throat, then shift away before anything could touch him. I couldn't help but feel a little proud.

Back on the skeleton front, things were looking grim. My circle was holding and doing what it should, and without any instruction the Lenn-raki had already figured out the best way to use it. They had footmen ringing the outer rim while the rest used it as a thoroughfare. But the skeletons had advanced hard around it, and they'd fought their way through the lines of Lenn-raki until they hit the wall, leaving maybe a thousand Lenn-raki cut off from the gate.

It was hard to watch. People were screaming and dying, there was blood and bone everywhere. I didn't see Fera. The cut-off forces were retreating along the wall, but I didn't see how any of them were going to make it.

I turned back, planning to help Karstia if I could, but then I saw the demon coming up the street. His great spherical head had shifted to his middle, and his massive black and red limbs moved like a spiders as he came. Black and red? The limbs were solid black before. And they weren't any different now. They were still black underneath, they were just glowing red, not everywhere, but a lot of places. Was it heat? I didn't like the thought of being crushed by one of the big black limbs, less so if it would be burning me too.

The demon smashed buildings as it came. It wasn't trying to destroy them, just push off them to move through the city faster. But the damage was just as real. It left a wake of shattered black rock as it came, and managed to take out a few of its own hybrids by dislodging them from their rooftops.

Karstia's rooftop was in the demon's path. She was still there in the open, still seemingly frozen with the Kinari. They'd been hit by neither arrow nor plasma. For them, time had stopped.

There were Vessels flying with the demon, but I took my chances and flew across to the rooftop where Karstia and the Kinari were engaged. One Vessel took a shot at me and narrowly missed, but afterward it veered left and struck a building. There was someone to thank for that, but whoever it was I'd thank them later.

I took cover and quickly assessed the pair of them in second site. There was magic afoot, quite a lot of it, but one spell was clearly enveloping them both in a single sphere of arcane magic. It was part barrier and had patterns I'd seen in my own arcane spells, those for doing planar magic, but it had other things I wasn't remotely familiar with as well.

I tried targeting the Kinari with a simple confusion spell. I watched in second site as the spell aura bridged the distance between us, then split apart into a million pieces as it impacted upon the sphere. So much for traditional spells, I thought.

The ground vibrated with the demon's approach, reminding me how little time I had to think of something better. And yet, there was nothing. I tried a pure mentalism spell, which was just as useless as my confusion spell. I conjured water above it, only to watch it run harmlessly off the sphere. I tried to make an opening in the floor below Karstia, but it did nothing of the sort.

My last thought was to charge into the sphere and grab her, but I got right up to the edge before losing my nerve. If only I had my Kriegora chain or Fera's Viirtakai, but I didn't. And time was up. A huge black limb rose up and swung down towards the corner of the rooftop. It was glowing red, almost all of it. Up close, the rest of the limb looked like black crystal, hard and smooth. I stayed close to Karstia and prepared for the worst.

BOOM!

The ground shook and lurched as the limb tore the corner off the building. The platform tilted sharply, throwing Karstia, myself and the Kinari fifteen feet into the air. The moment we left the rooftop, the spell binding them was finally broken. The Kinari screamed again and I saw his eyes were no longer black, but Karstia's eyes closed and her limbs went utterly limp. My fly spell zipped me close enough to grasp her arm, then I focus-cast a door spell that put us back on top of the gate tower.

Karstia's body crumpled to the ground, dead or alive I couldn't tell. We were only maybe a hundred yards from the demon. I saw people running and screaming below and many more visible Faroks were among them than I expected.

Then I heard a single word screech out. I heard it above the chaos, above the crashing, above the cries of death. It was a simple word, a single syllable, but I heard it so very clearly say, "ICE!"

"Ice!" I screamed. Finally I realized what the red glow was, what my little T'vances had been doing. I heard other voices echo the sound as well, some asked it like a question, "Ice?" But others were confident, "Ice!" And some were even specific, "Walkers! Freeze the demon!"

I heard it in the tower below, along the wall, in chants from below, "Ice! Ice! Ice!"

I cast a freezing spell at the demon's nearest leg, focusing on a glowing section. As my spell flashed out, a saw another hundred just like it coming from windows, rooftops, alley ways, the street. Then more and more spells filled the air, so many that the world was tinted purple.

The demon's limbs began shattering in Vessel-sized blocks, as sections of the hard material were chilled from a thousand degrees to freezing. His massive body and planetoid head careened forward, exposing even more glowing targets to freeze. I cast another freezing spell, then another, and another.

"Die!" I screamed each time, among the cheers and shouts for more ice.

The last supporting limbs exploded, sending the body and head crashing to the city street. The body took out the closest of the dorm buildings as it toppled into it, and the gray swirling head detached from the body and rolled the rest of the way to embed itself halfway into the base of the tower I was standing on.

The red glowing eye closed, and the swirling gray smoke retreated from the surface, leaving it black and still. What was left of the limbs lay collapsed like giant lifeless tree trunks blocking the streets, or propped against damaged buildings nearby. A few paranoid freezing spells followed from my many students, but the demon never moved again.

A cheer rose up, and I cheered with them. But it was short lived, replaced with a new chant, "Finish them! Finish them!"

And right they were. There were still faded Faroks and blades-men and hybrids to deal with. But the blades-men I saw were running east as fast as they could and I couldn't find a single faded Farok. The Vessels had fallen from the sky, and I couldn't find the Kinari anywhere. On the other side of the wall, the skeleton army had broken apart into an unmoving sea of loose bones.

Only the hybrids still fought, with the same mindless efficiency they'd shown before. And while there were still many of them, they no longer concerned me. They were nothing compared to what we'd already defeated.

I dropped down to my knees and checked Karstia. She was still breathing softly and her skin was warm. I shook her a few times and she didn't stir, but I extended myself mentally and could still sense her spirit. That was enough for me. I called down the hatch and a walker replied. I didn't know him, but I lowered Karstia's body to him all the same.

"Don't leave her," I told him.

I left the turret and jumped from the wall, landing gently eighty feet below. The demon's head sphere was only a few feet away, but I made sure not to get any closer than that. Everyone gave it a wide berth. Otherwise, the area around the west gate was being quickly organized and had no immediate combatants.

I saw Kuruqtu in front of the tower opposite the gate, giving orders to some of the walkers. There were Farok and Lenn-raki squads covering key choke points in the cardinal directions in large numbers, and there were tents being setup against the inside of the walls. There were injured and dead everywhere, ours, theirs, both sides were devastated.

I didn't see Fera.

I crossed nervously towards Kuruqtu and what appeared to be the new command center. I passed a squad of Faroks along the way, whose leader wore his hair short and dyed purple like I used to. It was an illusion, of course, but I was a bit flattered. They bowed their heads to me as I passed and each said, "My Liege."

"T'vance!" Kuruqtu called upon seeing me. "What happened? Karalishi?"

"He lives, though it will take some work to get back to him. A few others survived and are with him, but not many--"

"And my son?" Malatu asked. I hadn't even noticed him.

"Matu lives, hurt but awake, with Karalishi. Where's Fera?"

Kuruqtu looked suddenly grim. "She was badly injured when the skeletons split our lines. She was among the last to make it through. She lives, last I knew, in the tent there." He gestured to the closest shanty they'd erected.

He was still talking when I ran over to the tent and pushed my way past the footman guarding the flap. There were long rows of bodies, just bodies arranged in rows on the ground. People were crying, moaning, begging for help. There were a handful of healers tending to a hundred or more men.

Even wrapped in bandages, Fera stood out by her fair skin. I rushed across to her, sick with worry. She had bandages covering most of her arms, legs, neck and head. Blood had seeped through them, but any serious bleeding had stopped. She was unconscious, but alive, though her heart seemed faint.

I took her hand and connected with her, extending my healing magic to encompass her. She let out a deep sigh as if she knew I was there and was comforted by it. I let my mind seek out her wounds, finding deep cuts to flesh, muscle, tendons. A kidney was damaged and she'd lost a lot of blood. But she felt strong, though deep there was something very weak. Something I'd never sensed in her before.

"We barely got to her in time," a walker said from behind me. "She was with many of our women. When the skeletons split us, they split us there. She saved my sister, and it was my sister who carried her through."

I looked around, taking in the others in detail for the first time. Two thirds of the wounded were women.

"I would have liked to have done more for her," he continued, "but there are so many, I admit I did little more than stabilize her. But she is stable, she will recover."

"I know," I said, feeling the magic flowing through us.

He nodded. "Also, her baby is fine."
CHAPTER 25

* * *

Doogan

* * *

Captain Varrin may have been right about my legendary status. I'll admit, I felt a few appreciative eyes as I made my way to the conference of captains. But if he thought it was going to buy him any votes, he was sadly mistaken. The conference wasn't full of men who admire heroes, but bureaucracy hardened lifers who only saw opportunities for themselves.

It was fairly obvious from the outset that Varrin wasn't even in the running, and by that I mean he wasn't even submitting his name. He was backing Rear Admiral Anexi, a Shiinari who commanded the Frigate Frivolous of the repair fleet. She seemed decent enough, and she was fixing up my ship. I decided I'd back her too, unless someone else caught my eye.

They didn't. I voted and, like usual, the vote didn't go my way.

The new leader, commander of both our fleet and essentially the entire sector, was Rear Admiral Rilique who captained the Dreadnaught Ravenous, the only of her class to survive the battle. He was a Ruellan, same as the previous fleet commander, and from the little I heard from him I'd selected him as the worst choice for the job. He seemed more rigid than Loaqui, but they were certainly cut from the same cloth.

What happened next was sad indeed. Rilique took command of the Diispra, but Varrin was still a green captain and the conference objected to him taking over the Ravenous. After a series of brutal comparisons and adjustments, with ship captains trading vessels like cards, he was offered command of the Strike Cruiser Night Breeze. Captain Varrin declined, requesting his old position as first mate on the Diispra, but the new Admiral had someone in mind already. Then Varrin relented and accepted the Night Breeze, except they'd already shifted another commander in, so he ended up with an even worse ship, the Light Cruiser Pendulum.

I had an officer waiting for me on the bridge when I returned, holding a two foot section of metal in one hand. He was a Shiinari, like the admiral I had wanted to be elected, and we had to use a translator to talk.

"Sir, I'm Lieutenant Commander Luraxi. I've been overseeing the repairs to your ship's hull. I found something unusual and wanted to show you."

He held up the metal, which looked to be from our hull. It was fairly typical, thick with heavy metal plating on one side and smooth white paint on the other. It could have come from one of the crew quarter breaches. Then he turned it over and showed me a small hole carved out of the wall just inside the paint layer. There was a small electronic device there, half split open from where the torch cut through.

"What is that?"

"There's another one in tact, but it's still in a wall so I couldn't bring it. We believe they are passive audio recorders. There's a transceiver, storage, and what appears to be a vibration sensitive microphone."

"The Empire? Put in when they patched my hull the first time?"

"No sir, these are all in the original pieces."

"But this ship already has microphones in every room, why would it need those?"

"That's why I say unusual, sir. We won't get permission to remove them, but I thought you should know."

"Thank you, Commander."

I considered this new evidence for a while, and could only come up with one conclusion. They were Mylo's devices. And that meant he'd probably recorded everything that was said on the Albatross since I'd first come aboard. But how many had he been able to listen to?

I decided not to tell Molly while the repairs were ongoing. But I immediately contacted his guard and told him to keep a close eye on Mylo, specifically looking for him using any unusual or small electronic equipment. He was also not to allow Mylo to visit any part of the ship he had not yet visited, and was told to return him to his cell the moment the repairs were completed.

"I'm working through the security logs to see if I can determine which areas he's already visited," Leona told me. "Surely there are parts of the ship he hasn't been to, your quarters for instance. But most of what you discussed in confidence was on the bridge, the mess hall, engineering, medical, and the torpedo bay. Medical and torpedoes are the only questions. He's already visited each of the other places."

"Make sure for me, beautiful."

"Yes, darling. I'll do you one better. I'm sending orders to Lieutenant Riley to conduct a ship-wide search for hidden passive listening devices. Mylo may have learned a lot, but I'll make sure he doesn't get more."

"Good idea. They'll be hard to find, considering they're passive, but shouldn't be too hard now that we know what to look for."

"I agree."

"One more thing. Have him keep a low profile. I don't want anyone to know what he's doing, especially not Mylo. It's probably best for him to stay clear of Molly, too."

"Will do."

After the initial round of repairs, the fleet made preparations for our next jump. There were no secret coordinates this time and the entire set of exit coordinates were shared throughout the fleet. We were following the same pattern we used approaching Suboe, jumping in to a point roughly fifteen jump-minutes outside of Farokis as a staging area before our final approach.

I told Molly about Mylo's listening devices shortly after we entered the transform. She took it about like I expected. She glared at me for not telling her right away, then turned and started pulling her way out of the bridge and towards the brig.

I called for her to wait, but she ignored me. I had to rush after her as fast as I could just to keep her in sight. She reached the brig before me, but I made it there shortly after. She had just banished Mylo's guard and another security officer who was stationed there when I arrived.

"Sir?" they asked me, confused. I was fairly sure no one knew how to handle an angry Molly.

"It's fine," I told them. "Just leave us be and get yourself into hyper-sleep. We won't be needing you until we exit transform."

I entered the brig and sealed the door behind me. Molly was hovering in front of Mylo's cell with her back to the clear panel that served as the door, waiting for me.

As soon as the door closed, she stopped and turned to face him. "Time for more answers, Mylo."

"I suppose it beats staring at your back," he joked.

"Shut up. Tell me about the recording devices built into the hull."

"Oh, so you found those did you? Yes. Primitive things, but very useful. You probably care less about how they work than what I've heard. I won't leave you in suspense. I was only able to download the recordings from some parts of the ship: the bridge, engineering, the cafeteria, torpedo bays, decoy bays, and medical. But the recordings go back to before Doogan came aboard. So I've pretty much heard everything."

"You're lying," I said. "There hasn't even been enough time for that."

"Sure there has," Molly said. "He wouldn't listen to them, he'd just read a transcript."

"Or convert them directly into memories and transfer them into my brain," he said. "It's really an amazing effect. I just remember everything that's happened on board as if I was there, only blindfolded. What gets really weird is remembering conversations that I was also participating in, but I can handle weird."

"So you know everything," Molly said softly.

"Well being blindfolded leaves a lot to be desired. So much communication is physical and I'm not always good at decoding human inflections. But yes, I've overheard a lot. I wanted to know things, and I knew you'd never tell me anything."

"We're not in the habit of briefing enemies of the state," I said, keeping an eye on Molly more than him. She looked shaken, and it normally took a lot to shake her. Only Mylo seemed adept at it.

"And Molly, for what it's worth, the fact that you can murder a thousand clones does not mean you cannot love one. If I was a terrorist cell of a thousand humans, you'd do the same and feel the same."

Molly flashed angrily. "That was private," she said. Of course, he'd heard everything private or not. This was private from me. Who the hell was she telling? I looked to my left and found Leona sitting in a chair beside me that wasn't really there. But if she had any idea what they were talking about, she certainly didn't let on.

"Sorry. I just mean it's okay. It's all done, or not done. Everything is decided, like with Schrodinger's cat. We just haven't opened the box to see the outcome. The virus was well conceived, by the way. And it was clever to use a clone of Oliver like that."

"It's not the same," Molly said. "Your terrorist cell is not made of a thousand humans, it's made of a thousand yous. That's the difference. I don't think of it as killing a thousand people at all. I think of it as killing one."

"Oh," he said. "I think I misunderstood your moral dilemma."

"We came for answers, Mylo, not for you to mind fuck us," I told him. "You say it's all decided and you say you eavesdropped on all our conversations out of curiosity, and not as part of some plot."

"That's right."

"Then there's no reason to hide anything from us."

"That is not a reasonable inference. But I would like to tell you some things, to make you less curious."

"Okay. Let's start simple. How did you escape your cell before?" I asked him.

"Actually, let me ask you something first. How long are we going to be in transform?"

I looked at Molly for confirmation. She gave me a slight nod, so then I looked to Leona for the number.

"About three days, just under seventy Imperial standard hours," I told him. "Why?"

"Just something I've been working on in the back of my head. I'll get back to it. As for my cell, power failure and shock waves got me out of hyper-sleep," he said.

"And what about the cell door?"

"That was one of your officers, a lieutenant if I remember my rank insignias correctly. But I think he was acting as your chief engineer at the time."

"Overby?"

"Yes, I think I heard someone call him that shortly before they shot him in the back. They left him for dead, but he didn't die right away. I begged him to let me out. I insisted I could help. And he must have believed me, or at least figured I could do no more harm than the others attacking the ship."

"That doesn't follow. Why would my chief engineer be in the brig?"

"I didn't ask," Mylo replied. "He came in with a body. I think he planned to put it in a cell also, but he didn't get the chance."

"Did you sabotage anything while you were making repairs?"

"No. There's a lot of questions you could ask, but how about the really important ones first?"

"Potential sabotage isn't important?" Molly asked, snidely.

"Well, of course it is. It's just very unlikely. I figured you'd be grilling me about the ITH outage."

"What do you know about that?" I asked.

"I'll probably have more to say when it comes back online," he said with just a hint of a smile.

"It's going to come back online?"

"I assume so. I think the question you should ask is whether you want it to."

Molly and I shared a look of irritation. "I can have the room shock him every time he annoys us," she said. "Might speed things up by cutting off these pointless counter-questions."

"It couldn't hurt," I told her.

Mylo sighed. "I think you should be worried because you really don't know what you're going to get when it comes back."

"What do you mean by that?"

"It's a computer system and it's been compromised. Can you trust it's integrity? Your ships' computers do, I promise you that."

Molly glared at him and I saw her grip tighten on the arms of her chair. "What did you do, Mylo?"

"Your life would be much easier if it was only me you had to worry about, Mol."

"Are you implying Aganond is behind this?" I asked him.

"I am only providing a list of usual suspects. I will say that Lord Aganond took a passionate interest in the Imperial network."

"You discussed this with him, did you?"

"Yes. Well, not me you understand, but another Mylo. He's part of me now, so I remember it fairly well."

"You transferred the memories of the Mylo clones who were aboard this ship? How?! You haven't even seen them. Surely the audio recordings aren't enough."

"I'm not talking about the most recent meeting. I'm talking about the first time I met Lord Aganond, nearly twenty years ago. He has no love for the Empire, I can tell you. 'Tear it all down', he said. Something you guys did rubbed him the wrong way. I can't imagine it was worse than what you did to me and mine, but I'm sure it feels like that to him."

"And how can tampering with an ITH node tear down the Empire?"

"He mentioned something about revoking the root certificate."

"That's ridiculous," Molly said. "You can't revoke the root. If you revoked it--" she trailed off.

"What?" I asked.

"Every piece of Imperial information has a web of signatures," Leona explained. "But at the very base is a header with the data size, date, and checksum. That header is signed with the root certificate. If you could somehow revoke it, the entire Imperial archive would be invalidated. You can't, though. Systems don't consider other certificates for basic validation, revoked or otherwise."

"Systems can be changed," I said.

"And firmware updated through ITH messages even," Mylo said. "Doesn't seem too hard for someone who can make computers do what he wants by thinking about it."

"But that's just one ITH," Molly argued. "Each one is independent. The corrupted data would be restored from the other nodes in time. He'd have to get all fifty-two of them."

"That didn't seem to trouble him."

"If he managed that, it would destroy the Imperial archive and everyone's cached copies of data. Everything we've learned as a society would be gone. Not lost, mind you, surely there'd be some data stored elsewhere, but on a whole the system would shut down. It would take decades to recover."

"Son of a bitch!" I swore.

"He is," Mylo agreed.

"Him?!" Molly spat. "What about you? Isn't this your dream? To destroy the work of others? I was right about you then and I still am! This is pointless, I'll not sit here to listen to him brag."

Mylo shook his head sadly. "Brag? No, Molly, no. You didn't understand me then, and you still don't. Don't confuse us. That was Aganond's idea, not mine."

"You're fucking collaborating with him! Who cares whose plan it was?!"

"I hate that man!" he screamed. "I don't work for him, damn you! I don't!"

His sudden rage caught even Molly off-guard. In a flash she had her blaster out and had pushed back from the cell to put distance between them. They both calmed instantly, and each of them looked equally embarrassed; Mylo for losing his temper, Molly for forgetting the barrier between them.

I saw pity in Mylo's eyes, which was reflected with hatred from hers. If I had to guess, I'd say he felt sorry for what he'd done to her those many years ago. Sorry that it had left her nervous around him, even a thousand years later. And I didn't need any cues to know how much Molly hated being pitied.

"He's worse than the Empire," Mylo continued, softly. "Only smaller, and that only for now."

"You want to stop him?" I asked.

"I've done what I can already," he explained. "It worked or it didn't. We'll know when the ITH comes back online."

"But like you said, we can't trust it," I said. "It's compromised. If Aganond didn't get to it, you probably did. Either way, we can't trust it."

"It's also possible that it returns unmolested, but you can't be sure. Thus, my original question."

"We don't have a choice in it," Molly said. "It will come back or it won't."

"That much may be true, but you can always disable using the ITH altogether," he said. "You can try to spread the word through ad-hoc communications, disable all the standard Imperial protocols and fall-back on the emergency protocols you're currently using."

"In other words, hobble ourselves. It's almost the same thing."

Mylo shrugged. "It isn't, but I agree it's a hard choice and undoubtedly a huge setback."

"An impossible choice is more like it."

"There are other things to consider," he said. "You could trust that you'll find a way to undo the ITH tampering after you've destroyed Aganond and studied his systems. You'd best take precautions if that's your plan, though. Then there's another option too ludicrous to even mention."

"Mention it anyway," I told him.

"You could trust me," he said.

"Never happen," Molly said. "Never."

"If we did trust you, what would you have us do?" I asked, keeping my focus on Mylo to avoid the daggers I expected Molly was throwing at me with her eyes.

"Let the ITH come back online and take your chances. Trust that I'm smarter than Aganond and kinder than the Mylo I was a thousand years ago. It would still--"

"No," Molly interrupted him.

Mylo continued undaunted, "--behoove you to keep a backup from the highest security client you have in the fleet, which I assume would be on the Diispra."

"I said no," she repeated.

Mylo shrugged. "So be it. I have nothing else to say on the matter."

"Then we're done here," Molly said, reaching for the controls.

"Wait," he said. "I didn't mean I had nothing else to say at all. There's still the issue of defeating Aganond on his own world. That is still a priority for you, or am I wrong about that?"

"What of it? Do you have more Jammers hidden away somewhere?"

"No. But I was running sensors, if you recall. I know how many retrofitted enforcers survived. Three. That gives you only four ships you can safely use against Aganond."

"Well you're wrong there," I said. He was neglecting to include the four we were able to salvage, and the fifth we retrofitted with Jammers we found in the debris field. "But if there's another fleet like the one we just faced, we're doomed. I'll give you that. What's your point?"

"I've had this idea to add some phased syten distortion to our shield generators ever since that monster on the battlemoon tried to eat us. I think it might be enough to disrupt magic in the same way jammers do. If it works, it would be a minor additional power drain, far better than tiling Jammers. I mean we're generating a field anyway, why not have it do more?"

"Because we'd lose sensors when we raise our shields?" Molly asked.

"No, of course not. Sensors already compensate for the distortion caused by shields."

"But it would still block magic? This is just a trick to stay out of a cell," she said.

"I honestly believe there is a way to manipulate the shields to stop magic. I don't know what that way is and I don't know if we'd have time to find it. But it's a problem to solve and there's part of my brain that won't let it go. I want out of the cell, but it isn't a trick."

I looked at Molly. As much as it was killing her, I could see he'd convinced her. Me too for that matter. It wasn't that I trusted him, per se, but he was right about our battle readiness. And if he could modify the shields in a simple way, we could deploy it fleet-wide before making the final jump to the planet. It was almost too good to be true, but it seemed attainable.

"He's right," she said. "But I'm not letting him out of our sight."

He stood up in his cell and shivered a little in anticipation of escape. "Just like old times," he said. "Wait a minute. You did remove the anti-Mylo virus Doogan's carrying, right? I mean if you want me dead you should just kill me. I just didn't want you to do it by accident."

In truth, Molly had given me an anti-viral treatment to disinfect me before our initial jump towards Suboe. It seemed a reasonable precaution, considering we almost forgot the last time. Still, why did he even have to ask?

"She gave you the anti-viral in medical, but she told you about it in your quarters," Leona explained.

Molly keyed the door and it slid open.

"I take it that means yes?" Mylo asked.

"I'll probably have more to say when you keel over," Molly replied, curtly.

"Do you think Varrin has any standing with the new Admiral?" Molly asked.

"A little more than you or I, but not really," I said, keeping a close eye on Mylo. He was across the way from us in engineering, well out of ear shot, but it made me nervous anyway. "Why?"

"We need to tell them about the ITH. Mylo's right about making a backup from the Diispra archive. We should do that in any case, and keep it offline from the rest of the network."

"I thought you didn't like that idea."

"I just wanted him to think that. We won't be able to signal them until we come out of transform, of course. We'll make a backup of ours, too. The ITH may already be up and we just don't know it yet."

I nodded.

"You should just ask her," Leona said.

I glanced at her, then back to Molly.

"What's up?" she asked.

"What was Mylo talking about earlier? About your clone moral dilemma?"

Molly shook her head. "It's nothing. Just some inner reflection I should have kept inside."

"For what it's worth, I think you're right. It's much more like killing one person than a thousand. And I'm a clone, so that means something."

"It is, right? I mean you can't just clone yourself a thousand times to make attacking you seem like genocide."

I laughed, unless you could buy a giggle as being manly. But there was still something nagging me. "It's true. It's just... who were you talking with?"

"Who? Me, silly," she said. "Sometimes when I'm alone I talk to myself. I figured you understood that. I mean you talk to Leona all the time. That's what I meant by private."

"See? Boy, you can really be insecure," Leona teased.

"Shut up," I told her.

"See?" Molly said, grinning.

Fifty one hours later we had discovered three disruptive modulations for the shields. I say we, but it was mostly Mylo. Still, I was the only one who could work spells to test the system, so in that sense I was integral. Being inside a transform limited what we could do, so it was impossible to say how well they would work at full scale, but each of them met our four basic criteria: they disrupted spells, they still functioned as shields, they didn't damage organic material inside them, and they didn't disrupt com-link communications.

We'd almost exhausted the energy trapped in the few samples of Arinyark we had on board during the initial trials. Molly could take some credit there, for making sure we had a supply on board before we went into transform. I couldn't say myself how little energy was left after we'd stopped, but Mylo monitored the material closely and estimated we only had two spells before the energy would be depleted.

In those two days we spent working on a solution, we slept little. Molly and I alternated cat naps, but Mylo just stayed awake. It seemed Foorians had less of a need to sleep than humans.

Once, when Molly was sleeping, I caught Mylo studying me carefully. When I noticed, he glanced at Molly for a long moment then went back to staring at me.

"What?" I asked.

"We haven't had a lot of alone time, you and I," he said.

"Trying to bond, are we?" I said. "I don't know you, she hates you, I love her. Unless you have something important, save your breath. And if it is important, we're waking Molly."

"I have an imprint of Oliver," he continued.

"Say what?"

"Your progenitor, taken in his prime," he explained. "It has his memories; his true, unaltered, unfaded memories."

"Why the fuck are you telling me this?"

Mylo looked taken aback, but his facial gestures often seemed exaggerated, yet difficult to read. "Well, because I thought you might want them."

"And you thought you could get something in return?"

"No, no. Nothing like that. Call it a favor for an old friend if you like, but it's less about friendship and more about respect. The memories aren't mine, you see, they're yours. I've just been holding them for you."

"Fine, so give it to me."

"The imprint would do you no good without the equipment to use it. And to be clear, I don't have either with me at the moment. But what I'll give you is a promise, and a first step: a bar in Daubu station named the Horizon."

"Sounds worthless."

"You may find it otherwise. You'll have to find me again, another me. But I'll help you then, if you ask."

"So you're giving me a digital key or something? And they'll honor it? How can you promise for them?"

"Because it's not they, it's me," he said.

"Well I don't want to become Oliver. I rather like who I am."

"You wouldn't lose anything. You'd still be Doogan, you'd just remember your old life, the real events instead of bits and pieces patched together. You'd remember me. And meeting Molly."

"Those things didn't happen to me," I said firmly.

He shrugged. "You can always get the imprint and give it to Molly," he said. I doubt he could have picked better words to hurt me, but he didn't say them with malice and went right back to working. I was still pissed and felt like hitting him, but I let it go. I didn't need him knowing it got to me.

The point never came up again and after a while he had another test to run, and we continued. And continued. And continued. When we'd finished testing the third, we called it a success. Molly was awake by then, but we were both dead tired.

"Back to your cell, Mylo," Molly told him.

"Could I not take crew quarters?" Mylo asked. "I behaved."

"No."

"You could lock the door. It would be just like a cell, but without the stigma."

"No," Molly repeated.

"A book or journal then?"

"You really should have negotiated these perks ahead of time," I told him.

"I know," he said. "It's just sometimes I forget we're enemies."

"I can't imagine how," Molly said, grimacing. "Perhaps if you were to share information about your modifications to the ITH."

"Or tell us the contents of those locked payload you've been beaming to random ships," I added.

"And ruin the surprise? No. I've waited this long."

"Figured as much," she said.

We left him in hyper-sleep, like most of the rest of the crew, and headed back towards the bridge hand-in-hand. Molly stopped at one of the doors along the port corridor behind which half a dozen crewmen were peacefully sleeping.

I followed her in with a curious look. She just smiled and approached a pair of pods with sleeping people in them. One was Lieutenant Darus, who had taken over for Chief Overby after his untimely death. I didn't know the other by name, but he was an engineer of sorts.

"What are we doing?" I asked.

"Independent review," Molly said. She keyed both pods and there was a faint hiss as gases were vented away and oxystim was pumped into their lungs. They woke a moment later, Darus calmly while the other man seemed to assume we were under attack and hit his head on the cover trying to escape his pod quickly.

"Sir? What is it?" Darus asked me. "Are we already there?"

"No, Lieutenant. But we have a job for you. Molly, if you wouldn't mind briefing them?"

Molly flashed a smile so fast they probably missed it, then briefed them in her more typical dead-pan manner. "We've had some modifications done on the shields and sensors. We believe these modifications will help our shields against the enemy ships we're facing."

"Really?" Darus interrupted. "How?"

"That's not important. If in the course of your work you form an opinion about how or if the modifications will do that, feel free to share, but I don't want you worrying about that. The person who made the changes isn't entirely trustworthy. I want you to go over the modification with a fine-toothed comb, looking for anything dangerous. Back doors, booby-traps, whatever. I care more that the changes don't screw us over than I do if they're effective, do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," he replied.

"I've granted you both access to our notes on the changes. Read those first, there's no sense going into it blind. But don't assume everything is documented correctly. Be suspicious. I am."

"Understood, sir," Darus said. "I take it it was that Foorian who made the changes?"

"Do you consider that relevant?" she asked, giving him a hard look.

"No, sir."

"Then get to work. We have about eighteen hours until we hit real space. I'd like a full report delivered in twelve. If you have questions, note them in the report, we'll be asleep until then."

...

I awoke to touches so gentle that they almost didn't wake me at all. First, I thought I was dreaming and closed my eyes again. But the touches continued, light like feathers tracing over my body. I opened my eyes again.

It was dark in my quarters, save a pair of tiny green lights indicating the status of the ship and life support respectively. It was just enough to bask Molly's naked body with a faint green hue. She was floating over me, tethered about the waist by a lengthened sleeping restraint to avoid floating away, but she was close enough that I could feel the warmth off her body.

The touches were everywhere, she was essentially laying on top of me, but without gravity parts of us would touch, then part, then touch again. It wasn't anything random, it was all in how she was moving, or not moving. Her fingers traced curves over my chest, her nipples brushed over my stomach, one of her legs slid impossibly slowly between mine.

She looked up into my eyes and gave me a smile that was both sweet and sexy at the same time. Her fingers traced over one of my my nipples, after plenty of avoiding it, and I gasped slightly. I gasped more when her lips followed.

Her mouth worked magic, coordinating her tongue and lips with varying suction as intricately as any spell. All the while, her hands, legs, and body continued caressing me. I lifted a hand to stroke her side, but she caught it and pressed it gently back down. It was her turn.

Her mouth slowed and pulled up from my chest. Once again her eyes found mine.

"I want you," she whispered. "I know you wanted to wait until this was over."

"Did I? That doesn't sound like me."

She grinned at me adoringly. "You sure? I really don't want to seduce you."

"That's a shame, I really want you to."

Her grin became a full smile. "In that case," she said, finishing the thought by sliding her body up mine until our lips barely brushed. I tried to kiss her and she pulled away playfully, but only long enough to see the longing on my face. Then she lowered her head back slowly as if she enjoyed nearly kissing me as much as actually kissing me. She was crazy if she did, the actual kissing was so much better.

Every part of me was alive and tingling, every nerve sending something delightful for my brain to savor. Every passing doubt I'd had, every mistrust, was gone. And every longing I'd felt, every random emptiness in my life I could never explain seemed a distant memory.

I know the brain does things in cases like this. As a species, we're meant to breed. We're driven to it, consciously and unconsciously. We react to the potential with enthusiasm. Our brains float on seas of serotonin, dopamine, epinephrine and god knows what else; all of them contributing to feelings of euphoria and connection. On top of that, I had Leona. Though she wasn't there in body, she was undoubtedly aware of what was occurring and certainly capable of manipulating my brain chemistry.

So maybe you'll think it was that. It wasn't. It was something much more. And maybe it's silly, but I never really felt married to Molly until that night. There was something fake about it before. It was a rushed event to safeguard against a variety of Imperial laws. I hadn't thought finally making love to her would make anything more of it, but it did.

I told her as much, along with other sappy things that came to me. I was quite carried away in the moment. I even told her I'd fight a thousand Aganonds for her, which was obviously hyperbole but I think made my point; any quest was worth winning her. She said some things too, so you know it wasn't a pathetic one-sided affair. All the same, I don't feel like repeating them.

By now you're probably thinking this was a very sweet and passionate encounter. There were certainly moments like that, especially at the beginning. But over the course of a couple hours it became many things, often passionate and aggressive. The last time we almost had sex, she'd made a point that she knew my body, but I didn't know hers. I made a point to correct that. Without being too graphic I don't think I missed anything.

We stopped not because either of us were sated, but from sheer exhaustion. We fell asleep again, wrapped up together, still naked, listening to each others breaths and heartbeats.

When we woke, we floated to mess and broke our fast in artificial gravity. Most of the ship was still asleep, only three others were awake and none of them in mess. We'd never actually had sex in artificial gravity, so I locked the door and we remedied that for nearly an hour.

This time we were stopped by running out of time. The alarm sounded, signaling we were entering real space in twenty minutes. The same alarm was also waking everyone in hyper-sleep, so we didn't even have five minutes before people started showing up at mess. You don't get hungry in hyper-sleep, but people often crave food coming out of it.

We ran into some newly awakened crew on our way back to the bridge, and made it there, suited and everything, with a few minutes to spare before entering real space.

Lieutenant Riley was already on the bridge, along with a few others whose names hadn't found their way into my memory yet.

"Report," I said, strapping myself into my seat.

"All systems normal. Entering real space in three, two, one..."

Stars filled the view screen again and the sensors began updating our tactical display.

"Is the ITH back online?" I asked.

"Negative, sir. Still no signal."

"Probably a good thing," I remarked.

"Sir?"

"Never mind. That's a lot of ships," I said. "More than we left with, right?"

"Quite a few, yes sir. That's Admiral Ghavas's fleet. He captains the Imperial Carrier Eclipse. His fleet includes three Class III Enforcers, fifteen Class II Enforcers, a dreadnaught, two frigates, twenty strike cruisers, and four heavy freighters."

"This is going to be interesting," Molly said.

"Why's that?" I asked.

"His fleet is bigger than ours," Riley explained. "According to the emergency protocols, we may need to resolve this with another captain's convention."

"Or one of them can concede fleet command to the other," Molly added. "But Ghavas is Dedaran, who are known for their pigheadedness even more than Ruellans."

"I suppose it would be unrealistic for reasonable people to run the Empire," I muttered. "Molly, did we receive that report from engineering?"

"Aye, sir," she said formally for the new crew's sake. "No red flags. The shield modifications are good to go."

"Good. Riley, get me Captain Varrin if you can."

"Aye, sir. I've got a channel open now."

"On screen."

Captain Varrin's face appeared before us, a bemused expression on his face. "Hello, Captain. Glad to see you made it to the rendezvous."

"Where else would I go?"

He chuckled softly. "Honestly, I don't know. But part of me expected you'd be gone. Run off to avoid our new chain of command, or to undertake some daring secret mission. What do you make of our situation?"

"I haven't a clue. I'm fairly sure no one will elect me to command the fleet, or listen to me for that matter. So I hope we can at least settle it quickly."

He nodded. "I think we will. A hundred credits says Admiral Ghavas will yield command."

"I'll take that bet," I said, grinning. "But why do you think that?"

"Faith. I still have a little. It would take some serious arrogance on Ghavas's part not to yield to the veteran fleet commander. Ghavas may have more experience in years, but Rilique has actually battled this enemy."

"In that case, I hope I lose the bet. Listen, Captain, we've come up with another technique to protect our ships against manipulation. Like the Jammers, except this is a ship modification we can deploy fleet wide."

"Seriously? I know there were people working on that on the Diispra, but they weren't getting anywhere."

"I'm serious," I told him. "We have a couple things the Diispra doesn't. Gives us an edge, not that it's a competition or anything." Of course at some level it was, and we won. I just didn't feel the need to rub it in.

"That's excellent news. Why aren't you telling the whole fleet?"

"I'm planning on it. But I'm also planning on it being a royal pain in the ass to convince them. I know how the Empire loves to accept new ideas they didn't think of themselves. But I had a feeling you'd be willing to trust me at my word."

"I do."

"Good. I'm sending you the schematics now. Any recommendations for convincing the new fleet commander?"

"Lie," he said, smiling. Then he cut the connection.

I turned to Molly.

"What?" she asked. "Oh me? You want me to come up with something? You think I'm some lying expert?"

"Not an expert," I said carefully. "It's just that you, well, you know with the whole jammer business and all..."

She grinned at me. "I'm joking. Of course I'm an expert. I'm already working on it."

Twenty minutes later I was a hundred credits poorer. In theory, anyway. In practice, the lack of a working ITH prevented us from transferring money altogether, but I assured Captain Varrin I was good for it.

Varrin's faith was well placed. Without calling a convention, Admiral Ghavas surrendered fleet command to Admiral Rilique. There was no announcement, at least not to our ship, but our sensors registered the new fleet affiliation for the ships formerly under Ghavas's command.

Rilique was no friendlier than Admiral Loaqui had been, but proved roughly as gullible. With the ITH offline, it was fairly easy to doctor a report on the extensive testing done on the new shield design. The key to the lie was to pretend we didn't actually invent anything. This wasn't a new Foorian designed modification, but an old design the Empire had explored years ago for the purpose of jamming communications. Of course they had no idea at the time the modifications might be effective in other ways, but that wasn't the point. We just needed him to believe the Empire had considered the modification safe.

I didn't exactly blame him. It would be the worst thing to deploy something fleet-wide and have it cripple the fleet by accident. Probably an admiral's worst nightmare. And it occurred to me that our deception might help create just such a scenario. We hadn't battle tested the shield modifications, as the report claimed, or done any of the other tests, of which there were many. We'd let a known terrorist work on it, and while we tried to ensure he didn't put any surprises into the thing, we couldn't guarantee it to Imperial standards.

"This is a good idea, right?" I asked Molly.

"Sure. We can trust Mylo, right?"

The sarcasm dripped off that, but it didn't stop her from sending the report. We knew what we were getting into from the start. We had to have those shields.

"How did you even make that report? You must have copied that or pieced together sections?"

"Magic, my love. I thought we went over that," she said, smiling. "You really want to know?"

"Maybe this once."

"Okay. A hundred and ninety years ago I attended a big celebration for Founding Day. They'd modified ship's shields to glow in different colors, so their artist could make these elaborate scenes in space using ships like colored pixels. I met the artist. He hit on me."

"Hardly a surprise. How was his art?"

"Uninspired. But it occurred to me that the modifications aren't all that different from ours, conceptually speaking. And of course they would have had to meet Imperial test requirements, so I looked up the records and used their test report for the basis of our own."

"Clever."

"Thanks. Shields aside though, do you still think this whole approach is right? I mean, do you think these shield modifications would do anything to inhibit Father?"

"Inhibit? Sure. I think they'd inhibit him. But stop him? No. There's no functional difference between the shield modifications and jammers. The same weaknesses apply. Magic outside the radius is still useful to effect things inside. But Aganond is no Father."

"I wasn't strictly worried about him," Molly replied. "What if there's an equivalent to Father protecting Farokis? We're sort of counting on those shields to protect us."

"Not at all," I said. "At least I'm not, are you?"

"I just said as much. What are you counting on?"

"Our good intentions," I replied, smiling.

"For real? It's that easy?"

"I certainly hope so. Father seemed to know our intentions, I expect if there is something akin to him around Farokis, it will work the same way."

Molly nodded, but didn't look as sure as I felt.

"Sir?" Lieutenant Riley interrupted. "I don't mean to eavesdrop, but you haven't exactly been quiet. Are you saying that this planet is somehow going to know why we're there?"

"Yes, Lieutenant. I think it will." He nodded, but with hesitation. "Why do you ask?"

"It's just, well, why are we going there?"

"To liberate the native people of the planet by removing the hostile occupation force under the command of Lord Aganond," I explained.

"Oh. Are you sure the rest of the fleet is aware of that? Because that's hardly the impression I've gotten from any official channel, and you'd probably be shocked to hear some of the talk over the hailing channel."

"Shocked?"

"I'm sure you have a rough idea of the casualties we suffered in the last battle. People are looking for payback, sir. And I haven't heard a single mention of the word liberate."

"Crap. I hadn't even considered that. Lieutenant, if I could throw a silver star your way or something, I would. But I can't, so just accept my thanks. Open a channel to the Diispra if you would."

"Aye, sir. I've made the request, but I'm not hopeful. In the words of their eighth string communications officer, 'Get in line.'"

"Well tell them it's urgent."

"I did, sir," Riley explained. "That's how I got us in line to begin with. Initially they just said no."

"Molly?"

"I can try, but they're surely in the middle of massive coordination efforts. I might be able to hijack the fleet channel, but you aren't going to make any friends with the Admiral that way."

"Might?"

"Well I've never tried, but I have some skills. You just want to broadcast a message to every captain?"

"Sure, that would work. But let's not rush into it. Maybe we'll get a spot in line. At least we should wait until they've agreed to take our shield modifications. Any news on that?"

"I sent the schematics, test reports, and a memo explaining everything. I think it's probably waiting in the same line," Molly said.

"You went through the Diispra right? Not to the whole fleet?"

"Yes. Protocol and all."

"Well god damn it, we're going to run out of time. Screw it, get me the fleet megaphone, I'm far too important to wait in a stupid line."

Molly grinned. "I couldn't agree more. I'll see what I can do. Make sure your speech is ready."

"Ah, public speaking," Leona said. "Not always your strong suit."

"Aren't you supposed to encourage me?" I told her.

"You don't need it. You've got this. Remember, you're still a hero to a lot of these people."

"Not any of the new ones," I reminded her.

"Not yet, you mean," she said, squeezing my arm.

Fifteen minutes later we received jump coordinates from fleet command, but no time-line for the jump. At one hand, it was good not having a deadline. On the other hand, if they'd already decided where people would be going, it might not be much longer before we were ordered to move.

A few nervous minutes passed, then Molly turned in her chair. "I think I've got it. But I can't say how long you'll have before they figure out what is happening and try to undo it. Let me know when you're ready."

I took a deep breath. "Open the line."

"Greetings, fleet," I began. "My name is Doogan Loran, Captain of the Albatross, and I have critical information that every person in this fleet must know. I'm sorry I couldn't wait on protocol, but this is a matter of life and death. We are shortly jumping into orbit around our enemy's world, a planet called Kalqori, though the residents refer to as Farokis."

"Sir, the Diispra is hailing us," Riley said.

I ignored him and continued, "Regardless of what you've heard, the planet is teaming with innocent, sentient hominids. It has been taken over and controlled by an alien Althan. It is this occupying force that we must align our strength against. There is another entity involved, something older and far more powerful. If we plan to attack indiscriminately, it will know, even before we make any hostile moves."

Suddenly the alarms sounded as a pair of laser blasts struck our shields from the Diispra's lateral batteries. I saw her rotating in the tactical view, moving her forward batteries to face us.

"Sir! They're hailing again," Riley insisted. "Under penalty of--"

"We cannot fool it," I continued. "We cannot bargain with it. It's defense of the planet is unquestionable and absolute. But if we focus on simply removing the real enemy, we are in no danger from it. This should be our mission. It must be our mission. To deal with these ships, we've pioneered modifications to Imperial shield systems to disrupt the manipulations we've seen."

The Diispra fired again, this time four separate shots, though all of them were repelled by our shields.

"Shields down to 57%," Molly said.

"Sir?!" Riley pleaded.

"I'm beaming you all the schematics. Good luck. Doogan out."

"Line closed," Molly said.

"Good. Riley, put the Diispra on screen."

The screen was suddenly filled with the face of two irate Ruellans, one an Admiral, one a Commodore. I started speaking immediately to be sure I got the first word in.

"Sorry for keeping you waiting, Admiral," I began. "I was unfortunately right in the middle of a speech when you called."

My timing couldn't have been better, or worse depending on how you look at it. He'd just started to speak when my translation came through, and he had to stop after a few words to listen to my opening remarks. He wasn't remotely amused with my flippancy, and he responded in fast sharp tones that sounded very angry. A moment later the translated version came through, sounding much less angry but no less serious.

"Captain Doogan, lower your shields immediately and prepared to be boarded. I'm seizing control of the Albatross effective immediately and placing you under arrest for sedition."

"Sir, are you going to ignore my advice and sacrifice the fleet? Or take my advice, save the fleet, and crucify me anyway for going around you?"

"You tampered with a military communications channel, usurping control and denying anyone else use of broadcast services. There is clear law against that, even in the emergency protocols. Your ship is still valuable to the war effort, and will be manned by an Imperial officer who knows how to follow orders."

"Did I?" I asked. "My apologies again, Admiral. That was not my intent."

"Not your intent!? What a fool you take me for!"

"I did intend communication, just not disruption. As you may know, this ship was heavily customized by it's previous owners, who were part of the Anarchy movement. I had no idea the Enhanced Broadcast feature would do anything so nefarious," I said, blending a bit of truth with a heavy dose of lies. "And if you define sedition as preventing a group of soldiers from being ordered to walk into a mine field, then I'll gladly confess. Somehow, I doubt the Imperial standard is so low."

"You can defend yourself in a Court Martial," he said. "My instructions hold. Lower your shields or we'll lower them for you. There will be no further warnings."

The screen went blank.

I could tell by Molly's expression she didn't have any immediate solution to our problem. I can't tell you how I hoped to look over and see something encouraging. There wasn't anything. It wasn't panic she was showing, I'm not sure she even has that emotion. But it was about as close as you could get.

"I suppose that just means it's your time for a clever plan."

I suppose it did.

"Shields down, plot a course for Farokis, my coordinates, and charge for transform."

The new helmsman looked back. "Course laid in sir. But pardon my place, are we directly defying an order?"

"I don't think so. I lowered the shields."

"But he also said prepare to be boarded."

"Good point. Why don't you go to the port airlock to meet them when they arrive? That sounds like preparation, right?"

"But we're going to transform in thirty seconds."

"Still, it is good to be prepared. For the record, I've instructed you to go to greet them. Off the record, do what you want. But if you stay at your post, you make us go where I say."

He stayed.

We watched the Diispra as it moved in closer and closer.

Molly slipped out of her seat and floated over to have some privacy. "I'm not sure how you see this working out," she said. "He's really going to be pissed."

"I know. To be honest, I can't even see it working out. But I figure if he doesn't listen to me, there's a good chance the planet will wipe him out and then I won't have to deal with him. Either that, or the ITH will come back online and destroy or alter our world in some way that I don't have to deal with any repercussions."

She nodded and smiled and that made me feel worlds better. I was keeping it together fairly well, but inside my stomach was doing somersaults. "The stuff you said in your speech. Do you really think that's it? They just sense the intent? You sounded so confident, but we don't know any of that."

"No one would listen to me if I didn't sound sure. But I believe it. So do you. You sent me to Glemux on the theory that my intent would allow me safe passage. It did. This won't be any different."

"You're right," she said. "What about the other part. You know, the fleet of enemy ships?"

"We'll just hide out until the cavalry arrives."

"Transform in ten seconds, sir," the helm reported.

"Riley, send Captain Varrin a message with our target coordinates. Just in case."

"Three... two... one..."

We were only between for fifteen minutes, which was plenty of time to get the ship ready for a fight in case there was one. I hoped there wouldn't be.

The Albatross moved in orbit of Farok's sun, still a good distance from the planet itself, but hiding in her shadow to the extent we could. At our range, the planet looked no bigger than a small moon to the naked eye. It was green and blue and white like most planets of it's class, but I couldn't see much of the color from our angle. We were staring at the dark side of the planet, where it was the middle of the night.

"Activate cloaking," I ordered.

"Initial scans show nothing," Molly said. "No fleet. No ships. But I'm doing a full sweep."

"Good. Take your time. Helm, find us a reasonable destination close by. I don't really care where, just as long as it isn't here or where we came from. Plot us a course and start charging the transform system in case we need to leave again soon."

"Yes, sir," the helmsman said.

"Still no signals from the ITH, sir," Lieutenant Riley said. "And I'm not picking up on any traditional transmissions from the planet. Are we in the right place, sir? I'd expect to see something."

I pulled up the surface scans on the main viewer. They weren't terribly detailed at this range, but I could make out the mountains T'vance had gated us into, and a few large cities including the capital. I didn't expect to see chatter, these people didn't use Imperial tech.

"This is the place," I told him.

After five minutes of scanning, we'd still found no sign of enemy ships. It was hard to believe Aganond had committed his entire fleet to holding Suboe station, but it sure seemed to be the case.

"Helm, move us closer. Put us in orbit of the planet, preferably still over the dark side."

"Aye, sir. Engaging sublight drives."

The sudden acceleration pushed us back into our seats and made the hull groan. We closed the distance, each moment expecting a mass of black ships to appear over the horizon of one of the moons, or streak up from the darkened surface below.

We had almost reached our final orbit when the sensors finally sounded and three blips appeared on the tactical display.

"Three Vessels, moving inside atmosphere approximately three thousand kilometers above sea level," Molly reported. "I don't think they've spotted us. They're moving laterally near the equator at MACH 3."

We held there, tracking the Vessels as they swept over land in the dead of night. The planet's side facing us was mostly water and clouds, with a few islands, but there were parts of large continents peeking over both horizons.

Ten minutes passed with nothing happening. The Vessels were still moving, no others had shown up, and no Imperial ships had entered the system. I moved us forward, around the planet, into the daylight, high over the lush green continent the locals called Upper Korstia. Most of the land was covered with thick clouds, but a few places were relatively clear, including the area around the capital itself.

"Let's get a look at the city," I said.

Molly focused the sensors and filled the main screen with a broad view of the city. We were at a steep inclination, which warped the view significantly, but that still didn't account for it looking entirely different than I remembered.

"What the hell? It's like a totally different city. It's black and twisted. Helm, put us directly over that city."

"Aye, sir."

"It's under siege," Molly said. "It's a war. Doogan!"

The screen zoomed onto the spherical head with a stormy red eye. I stared at it a moment, unable to speak. It looked different from the thing we'd faced on the battlemoon, but that sphere was the same. Damn it, there was another one.

Torpedoes were out of the question, there were a hundred thousand people around it who'd be killed in the process. Lasers hadn't worked before, but I was open to the idea they might work this time. On the other hand, the laser might just warp away from it and vaporize a few innocents instead.

I wasn't sure, so we waited and watched and wondered. It became clear that there were a few different armies fighting, some primitives, some with plasma weapons, some using magic. The demon destroyed a building that I realized used to be the palace. It was chaos down there, but in space it was calm and quiet.

"I think they're winning," Molly said. "But I don't see how they're going to do anything to that creature."

I wasn't so sure about that. They had magic, after all.

"I've got lasers locked on," she said, looking up at me. "It's most likely we'll hit a building if we don't hit our target," she added, sensing my uncertainty.

"Don't shoot," I said.

The demon seemed to be on some kind of rampage, smashing his way through the streets crushing buildings and sending people scattering or flying through the air. But there were thousands of tiny Faroks darting here and there, throwing spells at it. They may have been pin pricks, but in huge numbers.

"I won't," Molly said. "But why not? It's killing people, Doogan. We won't do worse."

"It's not about that. I can't explain it. It's just a feeling."

Molly shook her head and focused on the sensor readings. "I'm reading an increase in the creature's energy output. Is that heat? It is! It's heating up. Some spots are as high as 500C, some about half that, though a lot of it is the ambient temperature. I'd say it's a weapon, but the hot spots are all over it's body randomly. What do you make of it?"

"Pin pricks," I said.

The demon continued up the street, smashing buildings into rubble and getting hotter the whole while. As it neared another building, we saw two figures standing motionless on the rooftop. As small as they were, I recognized Karstia right off.

"Karstia!" I cried.

The rooftop exploded as a giant demonic limb came crashing down, and I saw the two figures fly up into the air. A third person appeared out of no where, flew up, caught Karstia in mid-air, and the pair of them vanished. The other figured disappeared a second later, just before his body collided back against the half destroyed rooftop.

"What the hell was that?!" Molly said.

"That, my dear, was T'vance Arain. I don't know who the tall skinny one was." Suddenly it clicked. T'vance was back. Karstia was back. And they were out in the open fighting against this demon. I could only draw one conclusion from that: Aganond was dead or at least out of the game. I couldn't help but smile.

My internal revelry was interrupted by another turn of events.

"It's falling! Exploding! Cold! They're using cold on it!"

More and more of the light skinned Faroks were appearing. They appeared on rooftops, in alleys, in front of the ruined buildings. The demon's legs and arms shattered in a hundred places, it's footing faltered, then the whole mass collapsed onto the street, shattering into pieces both large and small. The only piece that seemed to survive was the sphere, which rolled away from the rest of the body and came to rest near one of the gates.

"They did it," Molly said, dumbfounded.

"They did," I agreed. "All on their own."

"That's why we didn't help," she said, seeming to understand my reasoning better than I did. "It's like your mutiny against Mylo all over again. They freed themselves, so they're under no obligations to the Empire."

"What?"

"That was your plan right? To change their classification under Imperial law?"

"I hadn't even considered that. Probably would have never thought of it, either. I don't have much faith in the Empire keeping to it's laws under this emergency."

"Then I don't understand."

I shrugged. "I've heard you can't really be given freedom. You have to earn it yourself. I wanted to give them that chance."

Molly gave me a look of admiration that nearly brought tears to my eyes. "You should be in charge of the damn fleet," she said.

"I'd hate that," I said.

"And that's why you should be in charge."

I wanted to land then, bring the Albatross back to the landing platform and reunite with T'vance and Karstia. But my instincts said there was more we could do from space. So we watched from miles above them as they gathered and divided, combing the city to weed out the remaining forces. Many of those were already in retreat, slipping out of the city through the east gate and disappearing into the jungle.

The more concerning enemies were the remaining Vessels. We picked up six leaving the atmosphere near the northern pole. Then those six met three more, and another three, until they had a full dozen. I was fairly sure that was all of them and included the three we'd seen earlier. It wasn't a significant force compared to the Imperial fleet, but more than enough to deal with us and probably a serious threat if they moved on the city below. But they weren't moving on it, they were more or less hiding out in low orbit.

"Where the hell is the fleet already?"

"I think this can only mean that they're waiting to modify ships with the new shields," Molly said optimistically.

"I hope it's that, and not just a slew of bureaucracy."

"Me too. Do you think it's time to land? I want to be down there, but I hate giving up the broad sensor view."

"No problem," Molly said. "You know I can make just about anything out of spare torpedoes."

I remembered the ship she'd jury rigged from three of them and smiled. This time she used six torpedoes, well really one torpedo and the sensor modules from five others. She merged them together into some kind of sensor relay probe. We dropped it out of an airlock and began our descent.

Landing close to the city was a risky prospect. Some of the natives might recognize our ship from it's previous visit, but others might not or might fear us as hostile even if they did. But the fleet would be arriving soon and I couldn't waste the time hiking a long distance.

It might have been safer to land cloaked, but it seemed too sneaky. That's the last thing I wanted them to think of me. So we dropped our cloak at a few kilos up and just came in nice and slow. The shields we kept up, just in case.

No attack came nor did anyone come out to meet us. But there were many heads lining the walls looking out at the landing platform and the gate facing us was closed. Bones from a thousand skeletons were blown out from under us as we came down, remnants of the battle on that outside that we barely noticed from space. I'm sure we saw it, we just never focused on it.

Landing was especially tricky, as the helm pointed out no fewer than six times during the descent. Because our landing pads were damaged, and by damaged I mean missing, we had to land with our belly against the surface. He complained a lot, but in the end we touched down fairly gently and it seemed a lot like he'd been complaining for nothing.

"Lieutenant Riley, I'm leaving you in charge while Molly and I go talk with the natives. Monitor the Vessels in orbit and watch for the fleet. Contact me if anything changes. Otherwise, stay put. No one leaves the ship."

"Aye, sir," Riley replied.

I stood up, adjusting to standing in gravity for a moment before Molly and I left the bridge for the side hatch. Two troopers were already in position at either side of the airlock, part of the replacement units we'd received. We passed them without a word, cycled the airlock, and stepped out into the warm humid air.
CHAPTER 26

* * *

T'vance

* * *

Color had returned to Fera's face, yet she still slept. I wasn't concerned. My healing magic takes it's sweet time working. I knew she'd wake up, I was just impatient for it and it was getting harder and harder not to deal with the rest of the world.

There was a third shouting match outside, this time I heard some of the words. They sounded something like, "You must let us see our king!"

The Lenn-raki guards said something that made me think they were talking about me, which seemed rather strange, then the tent flap flew open and a Farok with three long purple braids strode in, followed by the Lenn-raki guard who had his weapon out as if he was considering striking the man down.

The purple-haired man, which is odd to say because that used to mean me, dropped to one knee and bowed his head. "Your highness," he said. "I apologize for intruding, but there are urgent matters."

I gave the Lenn-raki guard a stern look and he lowered his blade, but didn't remove himself. "I'm not your king, but tell me anyway."

"A ship has landed. One of the visitor's ships. The Lenn-raki are sending someone out to speak with them."

"That's fine by me. Have someone report back to me once they've talked to them."

"You don't want to meet with them, my lord?"

"I don't want to leave this tent until she's awake."

He looked disappointed to say the least. Unable to think of anything to convince me, he sighed.

"In that case, at least command us. We're unsure how to proceed in other areas, my lord. The Lenn-raki are our friends, I understand, but not our betters. If you tell us to follow them, we shall, but sir, their ideas are primitive!"

"What are they doing?"

"They've sealed and are holding all gates. They've sent trackers and scouts to keep tabs on the fleeing enemy. And now they're scouring the city, one block at a time."

"That does sound primitive," I said. "Still, it's what you do. You don't have to follow them, but they are our allies and you have to work with them. Have we secured the underground structure?"

"No. We need to use the spirit walkers to pass safely below. There are traps. But the Lenn-raki will not cooperate."

"Well they need to. I want the underground secured," I said. I looked to the Lenn-raki guard. "Take this man to see Kuruqtu. Tell them I insist the underground be made a priority. Remind him Karalishi is down there, he'll help."

They hadn't been gone a minute when the tent opened again and Doogan walked in with Kuruqtu close behind him.

"T'vance, this man says he knows you," Kuruqtu says. "The spirits like him, though his woman makes them sad."

I looked up and smiled. He was alive after all, and looked well. Still, one can never be too careful.

"Doogan, do you recall my uncle's name?" I asked him.

"I could never forget T'revor Arain," he replied.

That was good enough for me. "Aganond is dead," I said.

"Good," he replied. "I figured as much, but I'm glad to hear it officially. I don't suppose you have his body?"

"No, but I can tell you right where it was before the building it was in was demolished. Do we need it?"

"We might," he said. "There's an Imperial fleet on it's way here as we speak, primed and ready to finish Aganond off."

"But we already did that," I said.

"The Empire isn't in the habit of taking people's word for things," he said.

"Oh, well they're welcome to search for him."

"Yeah, see the thing is, they might find it more expedient to just level the surface. I mean they almost blew up your sun just to see if it would destroy your planet, so they'd know if they could do that to this one."

"I'm sorry, did you say my planet was almost blown up?!"

"Yes, but don't worry. We saved it. We really have a lot of catching up to do," he said.

...

The Ethereal Plane was cool and quiet, everything the real world of Farokis was not. I created the gateway just to make sure I could, but once it was there I couldn't stop thinking about it. I walked through the gateway just to make sure it really went to the Ethereal Plane, and checked my markers to make sure I could find my way back home easily. Past that, I had little excuse to be there. But I stayed a bit anyway.

I had no delusions about finding Rubo there. I knew I wouldn't. I knew I wouldn't find any clues, either. Those were all waiting for me in the real world, along with another imminent threat. In that sense, the gateway was good to have. Should anything happen, I'd flee Farokis like I had Gryphon College years before, taking with me whoever I could save. I really hoped it didn't come to that.

Eventually I tired of avoiding reality, and stepped back through into the real world. Fera was waiting for me on the other side, patiently sharpening a throwing knife on a small whetstone.

"They're all waiting," she said, glancing up casually. She didn't seem to care much about making people wait.

"Why didn't you come get me?" I asked her.

She shrugged. "Figured you needed a minute."

"Thanks," I said. "But you know I wouldn't have minded your company."

We walked to the building we'd found before, the one with the stairwell and the warnings and the traps. The alternate reality had been leaving the city slowly, working from the outside inwards. The black twisting buildings were nearly gone, replaced with their light colored stone counterparts with their hard lines and smooth flat features. No miracles repaired the damaged ones, however, and a good third of the city was covered in crumbling gray stone.

There were people everywhere, Faroks and Lenn-raki alike. Some combed the city in large patrols, looking for resistance forces. Others sought out wounded to heal, or dead to bury. A large contingent of Faroks were busy digging through the remains of the Palace, seeking Aganond's body at my request. They were aided by two spirit walkers who did little but point at good places to dig.

Doogan had offered his own men and sensors, which he assured us would easily locate bodies among the ruins. But they had no ability to look specifically for Aganond, so I couldn't see how they'd be more effective than the walkers using magic. There were simply too many bodies trapped within.

Doogan met us outside with his wife Molly. I'm not one to judge, but their relationship seemed a little rushed if you ask me. She was a pretty girl if a bit common, but something about her unsettled me. I think it was how relaxed she seemed, especially compared with Doogan and the others from his ship. I'd talked about magic and murder and evil in front of her and she never blinked. None of it phased her, not in the least. If I hadn't seen her show affection towards Doogan, I might have wondered if she even had emotions at all. Instead, I wondered if she was using him. Damn, I'm cynical.

"The others are inside," Doogan said. "My people say the traps have been disabled. There were a number of archaic Imperial counter-measures deployed. Motion sensors linked with energy weapons and the like, nothing we couldn't bypass."

"Glad to hear it," I said. "They can go first then."

"Your Lenn-raki friends say it's safe also," he added. "In their words, 'The spirits no longer fear us traveling below.'"

"Also good news. Should we flip for it then?"

Molly chuckled. "We'll send troopers ahead first," she replied. "They can take a little damage in case it comes to that."

I nodded. "What do you make of the entrance?"

Doogan and Molly exchanged looks before answering.

"The stairway was made at the same time as the building, but was home to only one trap," Molly explained. "The other traps were in the passage below that, which is not made of stone at all, but rather metal."

"It's not a passage, though. It's a ship," Doogan said. "The ship Aganond arrived in thousands of years ago."

"You can tell that from one passage?" Fera asked.

"Yes," Molly said. "We can read the ship's serial number off markers in the hull material. We cross-referenced that against the available Imperial database and found a match. This is the Colonial Cruiser Habitat, a science and exploration vessel."

She nodded as if everything Molly said made perfect sense. "Why is it underground?"

"I don't know if I can answer why," Molly said. "But it appears he buried it and built this city on top of it."

"To hide it you think?" I asked.

"It certainly doesn't show up on our scans. It's not emitting any energy detectable from the outside. But there could be many reasons. Maybe he wanted to make sure no one could use it. Hopefully he left logs behind."

We waited no further. The troopers led the way. I hadn't seen them before, and they didn't make me comfortable in the least. They reminded me of fat Myri in heavy plate mail, but they made strange sounds when they walked and held themselves as stoically as Messengers. But I agreed they looked hearty enough to survive one of just about anything, so was happy to have them sniffing out hazards ahead of us.

At the base of the stairs, we passed what Doogan called an airlock. It was unusual because it was open on both ends, or so they said. It didn't seem unusual to me, it just seemed like someone left the door open.

Whatever the portal was, it led us into the ship, which was a series of interconnected metal tubes with more fancy metal doors and small rooms. We passed most of these with a brief glance, and Molly and Doogan rattled off names and their purposes. Crew quarters were here, the engines down there, I wasn't paying much attention to their descriptions. I was trying to listen for anything else.

Eventually we reached what they called the lab, which was a huge room busier than anything I'd ever seen. There were panels on the walls and on tables, more than a hundred I'd say, and each of them showing different patterns in lights. Some were pictures, some tables of words I couldn't read, some colored lines and bars and circles, some things that looked like maps. Everything was moving, or flashing and making it hard to look for unusual motion.

In addition to all the lights, there were instruments and gadgets all over the place. Some parts looked like an alchemist's, with raw materials and complex glass tubes. Some I can't even begin to describe. But the more I looked, the more familiar the place seemed. And I realized I'd been there before, only in the memories of spirits.

I glanced at Fera, who looked the least at ease here. She had both of her kaltas out and was stalking between the tables. Molly on the other hand, looked like a kid in a candy store. She flitted from thing to thing, touching panels here and there with great interest.

"He kept logs," she said. "Amateurish, but he made a real effort. This is huge. Huge."

"Did you say huge?" Doogan asked.

"Huge," Molly repeated, grinning. "He has over 17,000 experiments logged, some with unique invention schematics, most with full audio and video."

"That many?" he said.

"He's been at it nearly ten thousand years. You can get a lot done."

"I'm sure there's a lot to learn," I said. "But this isn't the place I wanted to show you. Come on, we'll take a better look on the way back."

We passed the lab, with promise to return. Doogan looked a bit pensive and seemed to be avoiding Molly's eyes, but I could have been reading into things.

To access the next section, we had to travel another fifty feet straight down a long tube. The troopers couldn't easily climb, so they lowered themselves using cables. The rest of us climbed down metal rungs built into the side of the tube. I considered flying down, but it seemed like showing off.

We passed more rooms which we checked and ignored, then emerged into the second lab. This one opened into a natural cavern. I saw the screens showing the jars of slimy hearts and the debris from the cave-in. I knew I was in the right place, but where were Karalishi and the others?

Suddenly the troopers sprung to attention and raised their arms, scanning the cavern.

"Movement," Molly said.

There was a tense moment, but in the end it was only Karalishi and the others. For safety, they'd cloaked themselves. But they were otherwise as I'd left them, if not better for some time to heal.

I crossed to them, separating myself from my Imperial escort. The Navigator was awake and alert, but sitting with his legs sticking out in front of him and one of his arms was tucked into a make-shift sling.

"Have we won?"

"More or less," I said. "The city is ours and the demon has fallen."

"The spirits are good," Karalishi said.

"I feared the worst when you didn't return to the surface," I told Karalishi.

He nodded. "We'd have joined if we could. The spirits told us to wait."

"Why?" I asked.

The Navigator looked at me sadly and held up the remains of his sextant. The once beautiful artifact was so badly crushed I barely recognized it. "I could still jump everyone," he said, "but without the sextant the results are... far less certain."

"Have you see anyone else down here?"

"Not a soul," the Navigator said.

"He speaks true," Karalishi said. "But the spirits leave me unsettled. They do not like this place, as if they expect someone to come. Someone they do not wish to see."

"Are they not comforted by our numbers?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No. They still think we are too few."

I turned to one of the walkers who'd accompanied us down. "Return to the surface and bring reinforcements, no less than a dozen of your people and as many Faroks. I don't care what they can do, just make sure they are fit. We need to get these injured out of here."

He nodded and made his way back the way we'd come. I told the injured to prepare, and went back to find Doogan. He and Molly were studying different panels, while Fera studied them as if trying to decide whose work was more worth paying attention to.

"I've got something," Doogan said. "Curious who all comes down here?"

"Sure," we all said.

"See those cameras?" he said, pointing to a few places along the highest part of the ship's hull. I didn't see anything, but I didn't even know what a camera was, so I just nodded. "They're recording. The security logs are rotated out yearly, with a year of backup. But I've setup a historical search for unique faces over that time."

"Huh?" I asked.

"Right. These are little devices that look into the room and remember what they see," he explained. "Rather than combing through everything, I've set it up to show me only different faces that have been here. The computer did the rest. You don't know about computers either, but it doesn't matter. Just look at the faces."

He pulled up a new picture on the panel that showed a number of different faces. I was there, as was everyone else who fell through from the ceiling, including the dead. Doogan and Molly were there too, and Fera, and the men we'd brought with us. There were some Faroks too; judging by their clothes they were some of his higher arcanists.

"A leader, an apprentice and six minions?" he asked. "The leader is Aganond, but I don't know who the tall one is. I don't recognize the race, either."

"He looked a bit like a Proatian, but the eyes are wrong," Molly said.

"He's a Kinari," I said. "One of the native races here. That one was Aganond's underling, best I can tell. He took over after Aganond died, or maybe that giant demon took over and the Kinari became it's underling. Last I saw him, he was waging a battle of wills with Karstia."

"We saw him," Doogan said. "He vanished just after you saved Karstia."

"Vanished? Damn. I had hoped he'd fallen to his death. I should have known better."

"Still, this is good news," Molly said. "Whatever he was doing down here, he kept it to a small audience."

"That is good, I guess. Do you know when the Kinari was last here?"

"Last capture of him was seven days ago," Doogan said.

"So what is all this? There are still nineteen of those slimy things, those are all different, right? And if those are just pictures, where are the actual things?"

"There's twenty," Molly clarified without looking up from what she was doing. "One is empty so the monitor was turned off."

"Empty?" I asked. "As in not yet used?"

Molly shook her head. "As in used to fulfillment. He calls it the Colony Prototype in his notes. According to this, he relocated the sample to his battlemoon before it left for Suboe. Wow. Okay, I think I'm getting a picture here."

"Me too," I said. "But why don't you explain your version, since you're looking through the notes and all."

"Okay. Let's start with the number. There were twenty of them total. Not nineteen. Why is that important?"

"It includes one for each known planet with magic," a female voice said. We all turned quickly to see Karstia stepping into the lab from the passage behind. Molly looked irritated or suspicious, but the rest of us shared a jubilant moment. I was worried she might never wake up.

"Your eyes," I said. "They look remarkably open."

Karstia smiled pleasantly. "I suspect I have you to thank for that," she said.

"I'm not keeping track. But just humor me a minute here. Do you recall the time Rubo almost lost his hand?"

She eyed me appreciatively. "I don't, actually. Not first hand anyway, pardon the pun. But you'd been captured, both of you, and were being held in a jail compliments of the Priests of Yarth. Jilk and Barou barely got there in time to save his hand, and I suppose also your lives."

"I don't know about that last part. I remember being on the verge of a masterful escape plan. But I suppose that's accurate enough."

"But the planet count isn't," Molly said. "There are twenty-two planets we know about."

"Of course," Karstia said. "But I'm excluding the two already infected by Unlife. That's what this is about, after all, spreading the infection to all magical worlds."

"Is it?" Doogan asked. "It's not about taking over the empire?"

"That might have been what Aganond wanted," Karstia said. "But not what it wanted."

"It? Who the hell is it?" Molly asked. "The demon?"

"The demon? Don't be ridiculous. Unlife, with a capital U. For years it helped Aganond work his will. It's good at that. Amazingly good, trust me on that. And also trust me when I say that no one uses it without eventually doing it's bidding, not even a K'ta'viiri like Aganond."

"So that's why there's two plans?" I asked. "The twenty seeds are for the Unlife, but those fifty-two Faroks on the ethereal plane are for Aganond to attack the empire?"

"Fifty-two?" Molly echoed. "That's the number of ITH nodes in the Imperial network."

"Yes, it is," Karstia said.

"Why do you say that like you know it?" Molly asked, glaring at her.

Doogan put a hand gently on Molly's arm. "She's a seer, love. She just knows things."

Karstia chuckled. "It usually takes years before people just accept that. I don't expect your Molly will be so easy to convince. But to be specific, I've been reviewing everything that's been done in this lab and the other. I've listened to the conversations, seen tests performed. I know things, but I don't just know them. I've worked at it, thank you."

"And they talked about ITH nodes?" Molly pressed. "In the main lab?"

"Yes. And T'vance I think has it right. The seeds are what the Unlife want. It made Aganond think they would help him, but Aganond's focus was always this empire of yours."

"What was he doing to the ITH nodes?"

Karstia sighed. "I don't know. Not yet, anyway. He said a few things, but they were very vague."

"Was he blowing them up?" Doogan asked.

"I don't think so," she said. "In fact, he said specifically the opposite. He called the hubs themselves, and I quote, 'The most significant infrastructure investment ever made.' The way he talked about them made me think they were like a great library, though clearly much more."

"All of that is true," Molly said. "I even marvel at their scale. It's good that he valued them, but he may have valued the library building more than the books inside, if you follow my metaphor."

"I think metaphors are about as close as we'll get to understanding one another," Karstia replied. "To your point, I doubt he'd destroy books. Horde them, yes. But Aganond was thirsty for knowledge. You've seen for yourself the records he kept here."

"Not nearly enough of them," Molly remarked.

Karstia shook her head. "No. Far too much, I'm afraid."

"What do you mean?"

Karstia gave me a look. I knew the look. It was the look that said get ready. I nodded slightly, more a head tilt than anything. I didn't really know what I was supposed to be ready for, but I watched Molly carefully.

"You shouldn't have read any of it," she said. "It needs to be destroyed, all of it. This ship, the labs inside, the research, the seeds. Everything."

"You've got to be kidding me," Molly said. "This is priceless! This is thousands of years of study and trial and error; imperial science applied to study magic! We can't just destroy it!"

"This is knowledge that shouldn't be out there. Not for you, or your empire, not for my people, or even for me. Especially not me."

"I'm convinced," Doogan said. He turned to Molly. "This is evil. Documented, reproducible evil. No one should be allowed the opportunity to pick up where he left off."

"Not all of it," she argued. "Just looking at the hierarchy, there were clearly things that had nothing to do with evil. Research about magic and how it works, what its limits are. Systems for molecular manufacturing."

"It's all tainted," Karstia said. "And I wasn't asking. I'm telling you. It's not for anyone."

There was no colorful flash, sparkles, or even a tremor of magic in the air. But I knew she'd cast a spell nevertheless, both from intuition and the look on Molly's face which could best be described as dazed.

"You're right," she said. Then she shook her head and put her fingers to her temples. I had a bad feeling about that. "What the hell? No you're not! Did you just pulse me?!"

She grabbed the weapon at her side, but hadn't even gotten it out when I hit her with a confusion spell.

"Everybody calm down!" Doogan screamed, putting himself between Molly and Karstia. Confused, Molly looked even more dangerous than she had before. Instead of just pointing her weapon at Karstia, she swung it around wildly.

"I'm very calm," Karstia said. "But you're very lucky T'vance got to her first."

Just then an alarm sounded and we all looked up. One of the displays showing an incubating seed flashed red and the words "Containment Broken" appeared at the bottom. The images of the seed blurred and darkened and then seemed to swirl and spin.

I stared, trying to see what was happening, following bits of pieces of shapes that were there one moment and gone the next. The patterns were mesmerizing, always hinting to something. If I could only make it out. At the same time, I was deathly afraid to actually see it, but couldn't seem to look away.

"I'm coming..." I heard, or saw, or felt. Cold air came out of no where and my skin raised in bumps and hairs stood on end.

Then the screen was struck with a spear and shattered. The images were gone.

I blinked out of my stupor and looked around, finding Karstia, Doogan, Molly and a dozen Faroks and Lenn-raki doing the same thing. Most of the Faroks and Lenn-raki weren't there a second ago. Where had they come from? How long had we been staring at it? It seemed like only a moment, but clearly it had been more.

"Something comes!" a voice cried. I saw Karalishi, still aware and alert back with his men. "Protection, my brothers, we shall need it!"

They were already chanting by the time we'd starting processing things.

"That's a planar rift," Karstia said. "We were staring into the Void."

"What?!" Doogan said. "What is that? How do you know?"

"Because I've looked into it before," she said. "Where is that thing physically?"

Doogan turned and started interacting with the controls. "There's a tunnel system connected to the port and starboard airlocks, one section back on the left and right. This one's on the left. There are cameras in the tunnels, just not on screen. Hold on."

I glanced around and found Fera where I expected, in cover behind Molly with both kaltas ready to drop her. We locked eyes for a moment, then I turned back to the problem at hand and didn't give Molly a second thought.

The panels had filled with images of dimly lit tunnels, perfectly round tubes cut out of stone. A pack of black shapes, low quadrupeds, streaked past one. They looked like dogs, if I had to guess, and I counted ten without much certainty. A moment later we saw them in two more of the panels, half as many in each.

"They split up," Molly said. "Half coming towards the airlock."

"Towards us," Doogan added.

"And the other half?" I dared ask.

"They're going to break open another one," Karstia said. "It's too late."

"The hell it is," I said. "Faroks! Lenn-raki! Back to the next junction and hold it. Evil comes."

The Faroks bowed their heads. Some shouted, "Yes, my liege!" The Lenn-raki, on the other hand, waited for Karalishi to give them an approving nod before they followed the Faroks out.

"What are you going to do?" Karstia asked.

"Contain the rift," I said. "And kill anything that already crossed over."

She nodded, then turned quickly to Doogan. "Do it," she said.

"Do what?"

"The thing your thinking. Power up the reactor and set it to self-destruct."

Doogan looked unsure.

"Maybe she's right," Molly said. "Maybe." She turned and headed after the men, towards the airlocks with her blaster still in hand.

It hardly sounded like advice or an answer to me, but it seemed to remove any doubt Doogan had before. "Okay," he said, "but it's going to destroy the city, too, at least part of it. You need to evacuate."

"Karstia?"

"I'll handle it," she said. "Go."

I ran towards a battle already underway. There were shouts and screams, chanting, blasts of plasma and the clicking of Fera's kaltas. But by the time I'd reached the junction, the fighting had stopped. There was blood and three Lenn-raki were tending to bodies on the ground while everyone else watched the airlock, which had been blasted open leaving fragments of metal strewn over the floor.

"Where'd they go?" I asked, unable to find a single hostile creature dead or otherwise.

A few of them looked around confused. "We killed them. Where'd they go?"

"Back to the Void," Fera said.

"What were they?" I asked.

"Like dogs," Molly said. "Black with short ears, long silky fur, and red glowing eyes. They weigh about half my weight, can sprint close to fifty miles an hour, and can leap over six feet vertically."

"You've seen them before?" I asked.

"No. I got that from seeing them once," she explained.

"Direct manifestations of Unlife," Fera said. "I'd say about on par with Shadows, meaning we'd be in great shape if we had a priest."

"Which we don't," I said bitterly, wondering again why Brother Dagar had abandoned us. "How about the wounded? Are they all stable or dead?"

"This one is dead," a Lenn-raki said, indicating the Farok he was tending. "The others are in fair shape, but need attention."

I nodded. "Leave them. Others will be along shortly."

They stood up, reluctant but willing to leave the wounded. I split them up into two groups, giving one to Fera and taking the other for myself.

"Hunt the others," I told her. "I'm going to close the rift."

"You know how to close a planar rift?" she asked.

I shrugged. "There's a first time for everything. Which way is it anyway?"

"The tunnels fork several times," Molly explained. "To get to the rift, it's left-left-left-right."

"You memorized the map, too?"

She nodded.

"Okay, that makes you the navigator but Fera's still in charge, got it?"

"Got it," she answered evenly.

"Good. Now give me a moment."

While they waited, I created a protection circle in the mouth of the airlock. It was as powerful as I could make it, powerful enough to contain Smokey, so I was confident it would be enough to stop any lesser Unlife that might try to pass, assuming they couldn't just walk through walls.

The Lenn-raki stared at the glowing circle and glyphs within with both awe and trepidation, but Molly just raised an eyebrow curiously.

"This should stop them from passing here," I explained. "It will also protect anyone inside it. If you have to retreat, retreat here."

We passed through the shattered airlock and broke apart at the first intersection. Cold air blew at us from the passage ahead, and scraping sounds echoed eerily throughout. My Faroks projected light ahead of us, making the passage far brighter than it had been with just the tiny lights Aganond had left in place.

We moved quickly and quietly, turning left then left again. At the final fork, we paused. The scraping sounds had grown louder, the air colder. Even listening carefully, I couldn't decide if the sounds were coming from one or both of the forks in the passage.

I made a second circle there, blocking off both forks just in case.

"My liege," one of the Faroks interjected respectfully. I looked closely and saw he was shivering, and his breath fogged the air.

"What is it?"

"We couldn't even look at a picture of the rift back in that strange room. How is this not going to be worse?"

Things had happened so fast, his challenge befuddled me. But a moment later, my thoughts came flooding back. I had an idea, even if I didn't know what it was until just then. I just knew I'd think of something, and I was right, I had.

"Enter the circle, all of you. It's time to pray."

"Pray?"

The Faroks stared at me like I'd lost my mind, but the Lenn-raki smiled as if to say it was about time. Little did they know the prayer wasn't intended to summon the blessings of the gods, or their spirits even. It had been ages since I'd sat through true prayer, but I remembered one Danaar had taught me, a prayer to Vult. I said it with my voice raised, daring them with the holy words.

Eissa my Mother,

Vult my Brother

Destiny watches my sacred advance.

Kindness my nature,

Strength and prayer

Fallen is nations but Darkness is lanced.

Faith is my fortress,

Eissa will heal me

Heal all I touch with words and deed.

Watch me as I watch

Hunter of Unlife

Guard my pious soul, without pride and need.

To be honest, I only made it through the first three stanzas before they were upon us. They came not from one or two forks, but also from behind us. And oh, how they came! A dozen from one side, eight from another, and half a dozen of them covering our retreat.

Aside from the red eyes, which glowed with unholy radiance, they did appear much like dogs with mouths both broad and long, rimmed with sharp teeth. They were longer in body than they were in leg, and their tails were thin like whips. But most of all, they were black, teeth and all. They were so dark, most of their subtle features were lost.

They came with hatred and vengeance, with cunning and swiftness. They came to drive us mad with terror, convulse with pain, then devour our souls. They smelled foul, despite the cold, like disease and infection. And we let them come, and I laughed as the circle repelled them.

"Faith is my fortress!" I screamed at them defiantly. If was a lie, of course. My spell was my fortress. But it really seemed to piss them off. Which was good, because otherwise they might have done the smart thing and fled back to protect the rift. Instead, I taunted them with the heavens while my men and I tore them apart with fire and water and spirit-blessed steel.

We were still fighting the other fronts when the last of the dogs blocking our path fell.

"Finish them and hold this point. And keep praying!"

I left the circle alone, padding quietly ahead as the passage curved. My skin tingled, but not from the cold. I still didn't even feel that. What the hell was I doing?

I tried to slip my vision into ethereal space, normally something fairly easy for me. Except I couldn't do it. Each time I got close, I imagined what was ahead, and Fera and my unborn child. This wasn't even my world, why was I risking so much?

Sometimes, the silliest things set us back. For instance, at that moment I found myself about as close to pure evil as I'd ever been. And I realized at that moment what an utterly stupid thing it had been to come this far. But even as I realized it, I was hesitant to turn back. Why? Pride. I didn't want anyone to think I'd chickened out.

I hadn't. I had just come to my senses. Closing the rift wasn't important. The explosion would do that. At least that was the theory. I thought it was a good one. The rift was obviously opened in conjunction with the seed, which existed in our material world. Without it, I postulated the rift would collapse.

Even if the explosion didn't close it, it didn't seem likely to be made worse. And if it was still open, I could deal with it then. For now, the only thing I needed to do was contain what was coming out of the rift. And I'd pretty much already done that.

I turned and ran back to the junction, where my men were still waiting and praying. The dogs around them? Well, there weren't any. Live or dead.

"Is it done?" one asked.

"I changed my mind. The circle will contain them long enough. We're getting out of here."

We moved quickly, scanning ahead of us with light and calling for Fera and the others. We met them half-way. Two were wounded and being half-carried, but everyone else was fine, Fera included.

"There's some behind us," she said.

I nodded and put another circle behind. Fera made her way through the men to me and squeezed my arm as I finished casting. It made me tingle for entirely different reasons.

Then we were off, rushing back towards the airlock, through it, and back into the secondary lab where Doogan was waiting with Karalishi. Everyone else was already gone.

"How much time do we have?" I asked.

"Twelve minutes and change," he said. "Sorry to cut it so close, but three of the other seeds have reported containment failure."

Suddenly my containment circles seemed insufficient.

"I saw some grenades in inventory," Molly said. "I'll see if I can't collapse the tunnels, just in case."

"Faroks, go with Molly," I said.

"I don't need an escort."

"If you're collapsing tunnels, they can help."

She shrugged and went quickly back, with the Faroks in tow behind her. Then I began teleporting the Lenn-raki out, three at a time. I sent Karalishi with the last of them, leaving only Doogan, Fera and I.

"Someone should stay until close to the end," Doogan said. "To make sure it doesn't get interrupted somehow."

"You and me, then," I told him.

A series of loud explosions shook the ground and left my ears ringing. Then Molly and the Faroks returned, looking pleased with themselves.

"All done. Unless the creatures can walk through stone, I think we'll be fine."

"Some can, you know."

"I figured. I don't have a solution for that, though."

"Few do. I happen to be one of them, though."

I made yet another protective circle around the console where Doogan was working, just in case anything got through. Then I teleported the Faroks out, leaving only Molly and Doogan, me and Fera.

"Three minutes."

I heard a voice say, "Captain Doogan? The Imperial fleet has just appeared in orbit. I've transmitted the message as requested. So far no response."

"Understood."

At two minutes, I began preparing the teleport spell to get us all out. I started a little early in case somehow the spell failed and I needed to cast a second one. Better safe than sorry.

It didn't fail, and we all shifted through the ether and appeared on the plateau near the mines. There were Faroks and Lenn-raki around us, but more surprising was Doogan's ship, laying half on the platform and half on the jungle.

"You brought it here?" I asked him.

"It was the only other place I'd been," he explained.

"Is this a different ship? I swear every time I see you, you have a different ship."

Molly snapped her fingers to get our attention.

"Three... two... one..."

The flash of the explosion came first, then a couple seconds later the ground shook and the sound rolled over us like sharp thunder. The city was masked in a red and white and brown cloud, rising high in the sky above it. I'd never seen anything so destructive. I doubted I would have believed it had I not seen it.

I worried at once that those who'd been in the city hadn't gotten far enough, but the city's massive walls held in most of the blast. From what I could see from the plateau, little damage extended beyond the city walls. Such visibility was short lived though. The cloud of dust and debris settled over a much broader area than the explosion damaged.

"Is it really over?" Fera asked, slipping her arm around mine.

"I really hope so," I said.

Molly stepped closer to me. "That teleport stuff is pretty amazing. I don't think I'd walk anywhere if I could do that."

"After casting it a few dozen times you'd be longing to feel your feet underneath you."

"Probably true. Listen, T'vance, would you call yourself the leader of this world?"

"Hardly," I snorted. "I'm barely even an occupant at this point."

She nodded understandingly. "Is there someone else who could claim that?"

"A single ruler? No. That was Aganond. This," I said, gesturing over the valley below, "is chaos."

"Well, you should remedy that. At least appoint an interim leader to represent this planet to the Empire."

"Why?"

"Someone needs to tell them to mind their own fucking business," she said.

"Hell, I'll do that," I said. "I'm a diplomat by trade, after all. But it would be nice to know who I'm representing."

"Karalishi is a natural choice," Fera said. "His people will already follow. Just tell your little T'vance's to mind him."

"Mind him? It's like you don't know me at all. Or them, I mean."

Karalishi had been close since we'd arrived, but in his fashion he had only listened. Sometimes I wondered if he drifted in and out, but at the next moment of pause he cleared his throat and took the tiniest step forward.

"There are more Faroks than my people. How can I presume to lead them all? It is easy to think of just this city. But there are many other Farok cities. We reach out to them even now to learn their loyalties. The spirits are hopeful, but we are not one world, one people. There are wounds to heal, and I dare say battles yet to fight."

Molly nodded. "Sure," she said. "If you play this right, the Empire could help."

"Help?" he asked. "Help?! You will do no such thing! You will get in your ships and go! You will leave us alone and you will not let more of your people come here! They have cost us too much already."

Molly grinned broadly. "That's the message," she said, nodding towards me.

"It's how you sell your new interim government to the people as well," I said. "You are in charge because someone has to be. For the sake of all of you, to stop these foreigners from full scale invasion."

"Spirits twist your meanings," he grumbled. "The Faroks still won't follow me."

"That's why I was thinking a triarchy. You, the best of my Little T'vances as Fera calls them, and one true Farok to be added from the next largest city. Everyone is represented."

"We would never agree on anything," he argued.

"You'll agree on the important things. My people did it with many more heads than three for thousands of years."

Suddenly Doogan's suit started talking again. "Sir, you better get in here. The ITH is waking up."

He and Molly looked at each other, then turned and sprinted towards their ship.

"Did we ever mention that Rubo went after one of those Farok's going to those ITH places?" Fera asked.

"I don't think it ever came up."

"I hope he's okay."

"Me too."
CHAPTER 27

* * *

Doogan

* * *

"Report!" I ordered, climbing up the inclined deck towards my captain's chair.

"I'm not sure where to start, sir!" Lieutenant Riley said. "The ITH is back. It's re-syncing right now. The fleet arrived. They were delayed electing a new Admiral. Rilique is out, Ghavas is in. They already engaged and destroyed the remaining Vessels in orbit. Your shield modifications worked. Oh, and even though they have a new Admiral, he's still pissed at you."

"Figures. Has he been demanding an explanation?"

"Demanding? Yes, you could say that. But they aren't exactly free to discuss it either."

"Comm channels still swamped?"

He nodded. "But that means plenty of chatter. They're surveying the planet now and preparing a landing party, but waiting until the ITH sync is complete so they don't get interrupted by any surprises."

"Right. And who landed my ship on top of a jungle?"

The helmsman swung around. "It's not my fault, sir! I was coming in to land when a group of people appeared on the platform out of thin air. I adjusted, then another group appeared. I barely avoided them by setting us half on the trees."

"I see."

"It does offer a fine view of the clouds, sir."

"Yes it does. Nothing we can do about it now. Riley, open a channel to fleet command."

"Aye, sir. But no one is going to answer."

"Then leave a message. Tell them they are not to send down a landing party under any circumstances. Tell them the native population has overthrown their alien occupiers and are..."

"Asserting their rights to sovereign isolation according to Imperial Primitive Non-intervention Code 4299.1.11.a1," Leona reminded me.

I repeated what she said, word for word, then added, "I have their principal diplomat with me here. He is willing to discuss the matter, but rejects any additional Imperial occupation. Make no hostile moves and contact me immediately. Doogan out."

"Message away, sir."

"Cross your fingers," Molly said.

"I agree with Molly. It's unlikely the Empire will respect the Primitive Non-intervention Code, considering this planet has already produced space-faring ships capable of transform."

"You could have suggested a better code," I told her.

"There is no better code."

"Sir! ITH re-sync completed. We're online, sir!" Riley said. "Wait a second. What the hell is this? These? There are new channels, sir. I've never seen this before."

"What do you mean new channels?"

"There's a whole list, with new options. The first one is called the Open Channel. It's right below the standard Imperial broadcast. We're not the only ones seeing it either, but from the sound of it others are seeing something we're not. There are a slew of ships complaining about security warnings. Something about detecting invalid update data. But their systems all seem to be catching the problem and fixing it automatically. What do you make of that?"

"Well, we don't have standard Imperial computers on this ship, for one. I'd expect some differences."

Molly looked pale. "I'm sending for Mylo."

"Sir! There's a new broadcast coming through on that new Open Channel. Should I put it on screen?"

I took a deep breath. "Sure. Let's see it."

The screen went active, showing an image of Aganond sitting in an ornate, high-backed chair made from pristine white marble. He wore a thin silvery crown which beamed like a faint halo and his face bore some kingly expression I expect he practiced in the mirror a thousand times to get just right.

He was dressed elegantly in long robes of white under a long open vest of shiny black scale hide. He had a pendant and a few rings, but nothing boastful. At least not by my standards, there could have been many species that found him tacky or plain. It's a big Empire.

"T'vance killed him, so this is a recording," Molly said. I don't know if that was to inform me, or just to reassure herself.

"People of the Empire," he began, "the rule of the Ilsians is at an end. And we are all better for it. I am Emperor Aganond, your new ruler. You may be wondering why you've been locked out of the Imperial Data Center. I've taken control of it, enabling only the basic functions for now--"

The voice and picture suddenly froze. A moment later it was replaced with a new scene, the bridge of a Chaos Wing. It could have been my ship, but it wasn't. It was one of Mylo's, with three visible bridge crew, all of them identical.

"You may be wondering why you're not actually locked out of the IDC. That's because of me. Hi. I'm Mylo, a Poly-Foorian, genius, terrorist, inventor, and definitely not your new Emperor. But this could have been you.

"I became aware of this plot many years ago. Being a fugitive, I couldn't just go to the authorities. But in my own way, I worked on the problem. That's what I do. I solve problems. It also happened to sort of go hand in hand with another set of problems I'd been working to solve. I'm very good at multitasking, and here we are.

"First off, I want to tell you that the Empire won't like this one bit. And because I manipulated their own systems to do this, they will find a way to undo it. So before long, this channel will be gone from your Imperial communication systems. But luckily, I've made provisions for it.

"For years now I've been distributing secret payloads of data to random ships across the Empire. These should now be unlocked. In case you didn't receive one from me or someone else you know, I'm retransmitting the data now."

"He is, sir," Riley said. "I see the file now."

"Save it."

"Inside you'll find directions to a world based on independent systems. I've included reference designs and fabrication process details for creating alternatives to critical Imperial infrastructure, from ships systems like sensors and transform systems, to private communication networks unfettered by Imperial monitoring, to a comparable digital monetary system with no centralized control. There are reference legal guides as well, which are essentially a set of different constitutions for organized restructuring, though the Empire will probably call it organized rebellion.

"If your curious what this means, know this: I am too! I don't know what you will all do with this information. I have some ideas, and I have some suggestions. But in the end, it is entirely up to you. The only thing this changes is the Empire's monopoly. They can no longer force you to join in order to take advantage of faster than light travel, or to have access to a global network of information. They can no longer use cloaking to monitor free space without anyone knowing.

"In short, I haven't removed the Empire's teeth. I've just removed the really long sharp ones you probably didn't even know were there. The rest is up to you. In case you need any motivation for why you should consider another path, I've reclassified everyone's security clearance by adding two. I know, I could have revealed everything. A true anarchist would have, so I suppose that means I'm not really an anarchist. Regardless, I'll surely be hunted like one. So wish me luck, as I wish it to you. Goodbye."

The picture went blank, then the sensor relay view returned.

I have to admit my first thoughts were something like, "That's it?" I waited for someone to say it, Leona, perhaps, or Molly. But no one did. They were all thinking.

Some people in the fleet thought faster than we did, though. For some, that meant getting the hell out of there. We lost ten percent of the fleet within two minutes, jumping off somewhere or another. Maybe it was back to their home worlds, maybe somewhere else. They didn't say a thing, they just left.

Then the bridge hatch opened and a trooper shoved Mylo through it and stood imposingly behind him to prevent any retreat.

"Did I miss it?" Mylo asked, anxiously. "Is it over? Did it work?"

"I think it's safe to say that Aganond's plan did not work," I said. "Past that, I can't say."

"How did you do it?" Molly asked. "What did you even do?"

"I built a firm-ware update into your intrusion detection software," Mylo explained. "I delivered the payload for that in thousands of intrusion attempts, whose signatures were stored and propagated through the network. A lot of these were just deliveries of my payload, only encrypted differently to provide different entries into your database. After that, I added a bootstrap to chain them together, and of course a trigger. The trigger was the hardest part. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that."

"Cutie, Lieutenant Riley is desperately trying to get your attention. I'll just take care of it."

"Initial execution is always the hard part," Molly agreed. She was past being mad at him. Only curiosity was left.

"Yes. And made harder still because I didn't exactly know what Aganond was trying to do. But I had some ideas, and he asked me to do him a small favor and gave me a small device. It did what he wanted, just not where and how. I think that was probably his key mistake."

"What mistake?"

"A fairly common one. Trusting human nature. He gave me a single use device, something he described as a 'free pass' to enter the Imperial capital, assuming I could get there, which he knew I could."

"That was his mistake?"

"Sure. He assumed I couldn't resist. He thought I'd value his device so much that I'd have to take advantage of it. And being a single use device, I couldn't exactly test it ahead of time. It's funny, almost sad how these assumptions stack up. I mean really, how could I resist? The perfect key to a tempting lock? And me with minions to sacrifice? With a tool to use against our common enemy?"

"How indeed," Molly said dryly.

"But you did resist, right?" I asked.

Mylo grinned. "Of course. When something is too good to be true, it usually is. He played off all the wrong emotions. He's arrogant that one. So bloody arrogant he couldn't imagine that I wouldn't need his help. He took my curiosity for awe. And when I nodded along with his 'enemy of my enemy' speech, he assumed I bought into that, too. And when he read my thoughts, he assumed he understood me. It never occurred to him that he was only reading thoughts in one cortex, the one I daydreamed in just for his benefit. The one he charmed and subjugated, implanted memories into."

Suddenly Mylo stopped and looked meaningfully at the main viewer. "Oh, we're on his planet. Lovely." He shuddered.

"Right planet, wrong ruler. Aganond is dead."

He relaxed a bit. "Good. So anyway, a lot of bad assumptions, but a fair bit of luck, too. But the bottom line is, I didn't care for Aganond and I don't care for this stuff he calls magic. So I used his device in a very controlled environment, and spent days reverse engineering what it did. And by me, I obviously mean one of my other selves. Less obviously, I mean that I'm not entirely sure what it did in detail, but that other me knew and made the final changes needed to bootstrap our replacement firmware."

"So let me get this straight," I said. "The ITH nodes were still compromised, but all our computers had been inoculated so it doesn't effect us?"

"Yes. And as a side-effect of the viral response, you get bonus communication software installed."

"But the ITH is still compromised."

"They all are, all the public ones. There's the private one in Ilsian capital. That's the one Aganond was counting on me for, but obviously I didn't follow through."

"Why wouldn't Aganond handle that one himself?"

Mylo shrugged. "He said it was the only place that he knew where it was, yet couldn't find. In any case, the compromised ones will patch themselves once the patched clients respond. Don't thank me all at once."

"Thank you?" Molly asked, clenching her jaw. "You act like you've just given us a gift. The great Mylo, saving us from the evil Aganond at the mere cost of converting to your religion. So generous!"

"Religion?" Mylo replied. "Now you're being ridiculous."

"Call it what you will, it's something you don't mind people dying for. Don't act like you don't know the amount of blood that will be spilled over what you've done."

"I can't say it won't, but it doesn't have to."

"Right now I bet people are dying, right this second."

Molly had barely gotten the words out when she suddenly went limp and collapsed.

"Molly!" I rushed to her in a panic, fearing the worst. She was breathing and her heart still beat, but she was limp and non-responsive. "Get someone from medical up here!" I screamed.

"They're on their way, sir," someone said.

"Sir, Admiral Ghavas insists on speaking with you!" Riley exclaimed.

I ignored him and continued checking Molly. Leona guided me, telling me what to look at, what to check.

Then the admiral's face was on the view screen. "Captain Doogan, I trust I've gotten your attention."

I looked up at him, angrily. The Admiral was a Dedaran, lanky humanoids covered in short gray and white fur. His lips parted from under the fur and curved in a cruel smile.

I knew that instant he was responsible. "What the hell did you do?!"

"I turned her off," he replied calmly.

"She's not a machine!"

"And I'm not patient! I've had enough of your stalling. If there's an ambassador from the planet, bring him to me now!"

I glared at him, both in hatred and confusion. What stalling?

"Sorry, Doogan. I tried to take care of it. Mylo was explaining everything. I didn't think stalling him would... I didn't know he'd... I'm so sorry! They tried sending down a Battle Cruiser. I think they thought your shields would protect them. But it didn't work. I told them not to. I told them!"

"What happened to it?"

"Utterly destroyed," she explained. "No survivors."

Admiral Ghavas was still staring at me expectantly on the view screen.

I stood up and took a deep breath, watching Molly the whole time. I wondered what she would say, but I couldn't imagine it and Leona was kind enough not to offer a suggestion.

"I'm not bringing the ambassador," I said firmly.

"You'll do what I say!"

"No, I won't. And more to the point, he won't. You're not in charge down here. You want to try your luck again? Go right ahead. It looks like you have quite a few ships to spare. What's a few lives? In the mean time, I'll see if I can't calm him down and get him to speak with you over the comm. Doogan out."

Riley cut the line and the screen resumed the tactical view.

I turned to Mylo and pointed at him. My hand was shaking.

"Find out what they did to her," I told him.

He nodded.

"Nothing else, you understand me? Just find out."

"Of course," he said.

T'vance and Karstia were waiting outside the Albatross with Fera and an elf I'd never met before. The rest of the group had gone. I didn't bother asking where. Karstia stepped in front to greet me, but seemed to know right away something was off. Then again, she read minds. She probably knew everything.

"Molly," she said, nodding sympathetically. "T'vance, it's time."

Molly was already in medical by the time we reached the bridge. I stared at her empty chair, while the rest of the bridge crew stared at me. Or maybe they were staring at Karstia or T'vance.

"I feel like I should have some advice for dealing with the Admiral," I told them. "But I honestly can't think of any."

Karstia put a hand gently on my shoulder. "T'vance will do fine. I'll go check on Molly."

I hugged her so quickly and briefly that it left her a bit stunned, then she smiled and bowed and left the bridge as if she knew just which way to go. I turned to T'vance.

"You're not going to threaten to kill him or anything, are you?"

He slipped his fingers into a small pocket and seemed disappointed when they came back empty. "Well, I'm not going to lead with that, if that's what you mean. I have a whole speech. Have some faith."

I took a few deep breaths, trying to stay focused. It was hard to get Molly out of my mind. I didn't know how I could get through negotiations, which were never short. Never. But I'd never get through them if I didn't start.

"Riley, get us the Admiral."

"Wait," T'vance said. "Karstia said there was a way you could broadcast this to everyone out there? Some special channels? I don't know what she was talking about."

"The new broadcast channels," I said. "Sure, why not. It will piss him off, though."

"I don't mind."

Riley set it up and a second later, literally, the Admiral's face once again filled the screen.

"This is Admiral Ghavas of the Ilsian Empire. Who am I speaking with?"

"I am T'vance Arain, an ambassador representing the current leadership of this planet."

"You attacked--"

"If you don't mind, I've prepared some remarks," T'vance interrupted, pulling out a piece of coarse paper and unfolding it.

"You're broadcasting--"

The Admiral's fur bristled, as T'vance talked over him, but he stopped just the same as T'vance went right on into his speech.

"Long ago, your Empire made the wise decision to quarantine a series of planets it did not understand. The residents of these planets had no interest in space travel and still don't. There was a treaty ratified with the planet you know as Glemux, a treaty you knowingly violated. I understand that new security levels will make that information available to a much broader group, in case you were considering denying it.

"More recently, close to ten thousand years ago, an Althan from your Empire landed on the Colonial Cruiser Habitat. He reversed his mortality so he could live forever, and proceeded to torment this world, using it as his personal weapons lab in an attempt to take over the universe.

"All that has ended. This planet has risen up against him. Aganond is dead. His ships are destroyed. His factories are destroyed. His original Colonial Cruiser has been destroyed. His research has been destroyed. There is nothing left of him here, and no interest but to live independent of foreign influence.

"On behalf of the people of this planet, I formally state that we as a people are innocent of any wrong doing against your Empire. Any aggression against you was performed under the direction of one of your own citizens, and any assistance by the native inhabitants was provided under coercion or conscription.

"We have no wish to fight you, join you, or interact with you in any way. We request that you immediately and in good faith respect the treaty already established with Glemux, and extend that treaty to all worlds such as ours. In addition, we request that you restore the quarantine around these worlds. We do not want any more Aganond's paying us a visit. In short, we want you to mind your own fucking business and leave us the hell alone."

T'vance paused, double checking the paper in front of him. Then he nodded to himself, folded the paper up and slipped it back into his pocket.

"Questions?"

After the initial aggravation, the admiral seemed to listen passively. To be honest, I don't know what that meant. If I was bad at reading Ruellans, I was downright miserable at reading Dedarans. Finally, he scratched behind his ear, looked around, then looked back at the screen.

"Or else?" he asked.

"What? Are you a sadist? Did one of your ship things not just explode?"

"Blow up another," he said, taunting. That didn't bode well. I was fairly sure T'vance couldn't actually do that.

"Seriously?" He shrugged. "No problem." He turned to me. "Which one of those ship thingies is that asshole aboard?"

"That big one in the middle."

"Not my ship!" he barked.

"Yes, your ship. Or no demonstration."

The admiral paused and considered it. I wondered how Molly was.

"Much harder to risk your own life, isn't it?" T'vance asked him. "Well, I tell you what. I'm not about to start blowing up innocent people. If your ships attack, they get what's coming to them. But I won't even blow up your ship for fun. If you still want to die, though, just let me know. I'm sure I could arrange it."

"Without blowing up my ship? That would be a good trick."

"I should warn you I'm excellent at tricks. I killed Aganond, you know, in the midst of his own fortress surrounded by his own men. How many Admirals would I have to kill before I find one of you that will honor your commitments?"

"We honor our commitments!"

"If that were true, this conversation would already be over. Take some time to think about it and contact us when your actions are ready to follow your words. It's the right thing. Just do it."

Riley cut the line.

T'vance turned to me. "How'd I do?"

"Fine," I said. "Better than fine, really. I just hope it was enough."

"Me too. How long will it take?"

"Too long for me to wait on the bridge. I'm going to medical. Riley, let me know the moment anything happens."

"Aye, sir."

I rushed out of the bridge with T'vance close behind me. Medical's door was open and I could hear voices coming from inside. Female voices. My heart nearly skipped a beat. I went in. Molly was awake, sitting upright on a gurney with Karstia beside her.

"I'm sorry, who are you?" Molly asked her.

"Karstia," she replied. "T'vance's friend. We're both friends of Doogan, really."

"Oh," she said. "And who's Doogan?"

"You okay, Molly?" I asked, feeling my elation sucked out of me.

"Who's Molly?" she asked. "Am I Molly? Is that me?"

"Yes, of course!" I tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away timidly and inched towards Karstia. She looked disoriented, but worse she looked scared. I wasn't used to seeing her scared.

"I don't remember," she said softly. "Not anything." She dropped her head into her hands and sobbed.

I wiped my own tears and looked for Mylo. He was hunched over a terminal typing into it. "What's wrong with her?" I asked him. "The Admiral said he turned her off. Fix it!"

"Molly has many cybernetic implants," Mylo said. "Some of them are tied into her memory. I'm trying to access them now, but it isn't going well."

"Are they powered off?"

"Worse. I think they're self-destructing."

"Well stop it! That's her whole life! Twelve hundred years, it can't just go away!"

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm trying, but it won't work. I've seen this design before. The data's already gone."

"Surely there are backups somewhere," I said.

"I'm not a god damn computer!" Molly shouted at me through her tears. "I'm a person. I may not know my name, but I'm a person!"

"I'm sorry, Molly. No one thinks you are."

I don't think she even heard me. She'd already gone back to sobbing.

Mylo continued more quietly, hoping she wouldn't hear us over her crying. "It's not a question of the data," he explained. "It's the implants themselves. They're destroyed. She'd need an entirely new set, and you need to be realistic about getting them."

"Meaning it isn't realistic?"

"They disbanded the program and activated her kill switch. If there were backups, they've probably already moved, scrambled, or wiped them."

"She needs you," Leona said. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying. I knew it was just an effect, but it was still comforting to see someone else so worried.

I walked over to Molly and knelt beside her.

"Molly, I'm sorry. I know this is, this is terrible for you."

She looked up at me, red faced and shaking. "You said Doogan right? That's your name?"

"That's right."

"And you know me?"

"Yes, I do. I'm... well, this might be a little surprising, but I'm your husband."

"Oh god, really?" she said. "I'm sorry. I don't remember. You seem a bit familiar maybe, I don't know. I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Listen, Molly. I have a lot of missing memories too. You knew me a long time ago, but I didn't remember you. And now I feel like I know you pretty well, and you're just meeting me. It's a crazy cycle, but it's one we're both in together. I'm not putting any pressure on you, but I want you to know you're not alone."

She smiled slightly. "Well, you seem like a very nice husband."

"I like to think so. I'm also fairly optimistic. I don't buy that all your memories were locked away in some computer. I think your brain is just adjusting to not having it, and you'll start to remember things."

"That seems likely," Karstia added. "I can sense memories. I might even be able to help, though it isn't my specialty."

"This has to be hard on you, too," she said. "Having your wife not know you."

"Don't give it another thought. Anyway, it just means we get an opportunities to fall in love all over again," I said.

"I don't know what to say to that," she said, wiping her eyes and sniffling.

"You don't have to say anything."

"I have a lot of memories of Molly," Leona said. "And many of her personality traits. If she put me on, I could show her some things. It might help jog her memory."

"In that case, I don't know what to do," Molly replied.

"For now, just try to relax. Karstia here thinks she might be able to help, and I have a number of recordings also. Right now we're putting the final touches on some negotiations, and once those are done we can relax and figure everything out, alone or together, whatever suits you."

The speaker in medical sounded with Riley's voice. "Captain, the Admiral is back. Best get up here."

"There, see? We'll know soon. I'll be back as soon as I can."

The admiral was already on screen, waiting impatiently when T'vance and I arrived.

"Finally," he said, as we came into view.

"I was thinking the same," T'vance quipped. "What do you have to say?"

"We find your requests reasonable," he said. "However, there are some conditions. First, you must consent to host a landing party to survey the destroyed infrastructure. This landing party is not to be harmed and must be allowed access to the sites in question, and must be allowed to retrieve any Imperial components that may have survived. Second, you must agree to allow a small remote communications terminal to be deployed, solely for the purpose of conducting future negotiations safely. This terminal is to be monitored on a mutually agreed upon schedule. Do you consent to our revisions?"

"Almost," T'vance said. "You may send down a small landing party, assuming they have no hostile intentions, and they will be monitored by a local representative during their entire stay. But, nothing is to be removed. Any components too dangerous to be left behind may be destroyed, but they are not to be collected. Your second condition is acceptable, assuming we can reach an agreement on monitoring. I see the wisdom in being able to communicate, so long as it is not used as a means to some other end. Is that acceptable to you?"

"How small is small?"

"Your ship has to fit on the platform and only twenty may set foot on our land."

"Agreed. Our communications officer will finalize any details."

The admiral left the line and a woman named Commander Pria contacted Lieutenant Riley directly. As clock work as these things were, there were Imperial procedures to follow.

"Riley, I have a few more orders," I said.

He put her on hold. "Sir?"

"I didn't want to bother the admiral, but I have a few additions to work into this plan. I want my ship, the Coercion put into orbit. Right now it's sitting in the belly of the Diispra, but it's legally mine and I'd like it left behind. We won't be leaving with the fleet."

"We won't? But sir, we're Imperial officers. You can't keep us."

I laughed. "No, and I don't plan to. Make sure the Imperial landing craft has enough space to take you all back with them. I'm formally withdrawing from the fleet as soon this inspection is done."

"Sir, that only leaves three of you."

"Yes, Lieutenant. I know. Just make the arrangements."

"I'm putting the finishing touches on your formal report to fleet command. It's one of those requirements for withdrawing from the fleet."

"Thanks, doll."

T'vance wasn't with me when I went back to sick bay. I don't know what would have happened if he had been. As I approached, two Imperial Troopers were coming up the passage and turning into medical. My troopers, I thought, but they weren't really my troopers any more than the crew were mine. Troopers were actually worse than soldiers, because they followed an entirely different chain of command.

Someone shouted, "No!" from inside. I heard Karstia scream in a pitch that could have broken glass. I ran two steps before the pulse hit me. When I came out of it, I rushed into the room to find Karstia and Mylo crumpled on the floor. One trooper stood motionless while the other stood behind Molly, who was on her back asleep. At least I thought she was asleep.

I pushed past the motionless trooper, my blaster in hand for all the good it would do me.

"What's the meaning of this?"

"We have just executed a death warrant in accordance with the Imperial Mortality Enforcement Code 142.2.1.d. These individuals attempted to resist and were incapacitated," the trooper explained, his voice synthetic and emotionless.

The words staggered me. Just? I ran to Molly and grabbed her wrist, checked her neck, her eyes, her chest. She was still warm, but she had no pulse. She wasn't breathing. Her heart had stopped.

"What did you do?!" I screamed at him.

"We have just executed a death warrant in accordance with the--"

"You killed her!" I cried.

"Human females are not permitted to live past one hundred and fifty Imperial standard years," he explained with the same lack of passion. "She was over one thousand years old."

"We suffered no injuries from the attacks by the two others in the room," the other said, finally. "Therefore, it is within our discretion to ignore their resistance."

They turned to walk out, as if they had just written a citation, as if them doing no more than killing my wife was some kind of generosity. My blaster rose almost of its own accord. I aimed at the back of the trooper's head, the one who'd done it. Some part of me knew it was suicide, but no part that cared. I was about to pull the trigger when they pulsed me again. This time the world went black.

I can't explain exactly what happened next. I woke up, I know, and for a moment I'd forgotten everything. But it all came flooding back to me in an instant. Molly was dead.

Mylo was gone, but Karstia was still there, bleeding from her head and nose, I think. But it didn't stop her from trying to comfort me. It didn't help. Eventually she too left, as I cradled Molly's head and cried. If Leona helped, she did it behind the scenes. Even she knew there was nothing to do but grieve. Grieve and think about revenge.

At some point, probably hours later, T'vance came back through the door. And for some reason, without doing a single thing, he made me stop crying.

"I want to kill them," I said, my voice shaking. "All of them."

"The whole Empire's worth?" he asked calmly.

"All of them," I repeated. "Okay fine, the troopers, the admiral. Everyone involved."

"Karstia says the troopers aren't even human."

"They're monsters," I told him.

"I don't disagree," he said. He fumbled around in one of his pockets but his hand came out empty and he sighed. "Listen, those thoughts are dark thoughts. I don't blame you and I'm not judging you. I'd be thinking them myself. But you shouldn't be. Not here. You can't handle it."

"Leave me alone."

"I would, but it might not. Karstia says you have a bit of K'ta'viiri in you. The influence of Unlife is still strong here. With Aganond dead and the Kinari fled, you're too tempting a vessel."

"Yeah?"

"Come on, Doogan. It's time to say goodbye."

"I'm not ready."

"I know. But you aren't the only one and the rest of them have to leave."

"What are you talking about?"

"Your crew," he explained. "There's a ship thing waiting to take them back to the 'fleet'."

"Already?!"

"Doogan, it's been six hours. They've already surveyed the ruins. Riley has already stalled twice. It's time."

"It's time?"

"It's time. I don't know a thing about your religion, but we Dúranaki honor our dead in fire, returning their bodies to the earth as ash. We've raised a funeral pyre for her, but if you'd rather we can do something else. Or we can wait, but--"

"Fire," I agreed. "Ashes to ashes."

Outside the room were four Imperial officers in full dress uniforms. Three from my bridge crew, including Riley, and Hap, the technician she'd worked with from the Diispra. On my leave, they entered the room and acted as pall bearers, carrying Molly's body out of the ship and onto the clear stone plateau outside.

They'd arranged a bed of dry wood. The path to it was flanked by the rest of my crew, each of them in full uniform standing at attention. There were no troopers, just men. Some had known her, some hadn't. But there was no order given, they were just there. As we walked through them, I heard soft whispers. Some were words of parting, some words of consolation, but many were simple thank yous.

At the end we came to the bed, which was nothing as simple as it appeared from afar. The wood was all thin natural branches woven together in an intricate pattern and dried. If it had been under other circumstances, I might have found it beautiful.

Behind it stood Karstia, Fera and a black skinned man I'd never met who looked like a primitive tribesman, old and wise. T'vance joined them and stood in silence as we placed her body atop the wood.

Words were spoken. Not many, and they were all hollow. Only the dark skinned man's words stayed with me, as simple as they were. He said, "The spirits are with her. They tell me she is at peace. The spirits do not lie."
CHAPTER 28

* * *

T'vance

* * *

Gryphon College loomed behind me like a ghost, as if the spirit of the place lingered even as the walls crumbled and the structures burned. I wondered if Tisbaen was somehow within, his soul returned from the void the Herald of Night had sent it to only to find we'd all left him.

I'd traveled leagues, all by ether, and the hard rocky earth of eastern Ly-aran was beneath my feet reminding me I was somewhere else, somewhere most sane folks avoid, yet far safer than the place we'd left. Gazing north, I could still see the college, impossible as it was. But that's how dreams are.

Rubo was there, looking shell-shocked as he had then. Karstia was there, too, taking the place of Zaris in my head, and Jai-ahren was altogether missing, though she'd nearly attached herself to my shoulder at the time. There were other differences too, each one unsettling me, mixing fiction with fact, clear memories with confused emotions. I'd never seen a Lenn-raki, yet half of the rag-tag band that followed me was of that dark race.

"You left something behind," one of them said, a walker whose bare chest was laddered with scars.

"I took everyone I could," I replied, hurt by his insinuation. For someone trained to kill, I'd done a remarkable job saving lives.

The sound of a baby crying broke the silence. I turned scanning, but could find neither a baby nor Fera. "Where's Fera?!" I asked.

The Lenn-raki walker didn't seem remotely concerned.

"Fera!" I screamed. "Fera!"

I awoke sitting cross-legged atop the north gate tower, a posture I normally reserve for meditation. I had been meditating, at least I'd meant to be. It was late but the sky glowed dull blue as the full moon tried to penetrate the clouds. I felt the presence behind me before I saw her shadow, but I recognized both as friendly.

I took a deep cleansing breath. I'd come to meditate and fallen asleep. It had only been two days. Fera was barely pregnant. There was no baby, not yet anyway. But I could remember her hugely pregnant after nine months, as if that had already happened.

"You know it's not wise to sneak up on a Dúranaki."

"True. But I know this Dúranaki. He's a sharp fellow, not apt to accidentally skewer an old friend."

"You're probably right, but better to be safe. So why are you up here, Karstia?"

"It's easier to read your dreams from up close," she admitted. "How often do you dream of Gryphon College?"

"Occasionally," I said, meaning often.

"You still feel guilty over Tisbaen, even though you know he's in Brother Dagar now." She winced after the last part, as if she hadn't meant to speak so plainly.

"I never felt guilt, just loss. And if he sent me that dream as some kind of pro-Tisbaen message, I think he missed the point. Have you been able to reach him?"

"I'm sorry, no. But are you telling me you think he sent you that dream?"

"I'm saying he's capable."

"It seems a cryptic message, if it is one. A reminder of Tisbaen, no more."

"What is he, Karstia, the thing inside Brother Dagar?"

She looked at me and was about to say something but stopped herself and reconsidered. Then she closed the distance between us and took a seat beside me on the platform and stared out over the ruins of the city. "We don't know much," she said. "But we call them Thalaan, literally the born-forever ones."

"Thalaan," I repeated.

"The name was chosen too early, when even less was known. Thalaan are never actually born. They are spirits that bind to the souls of men, always mortals as far as we know. They are strong willed, and eventually dominate the personality and actions of their host, though the relationship is considered symbiotic."

"Who considers it symbiotic? Loremasters? I'm not sure what the host gets out of it."

"The spirits are powerful," she said.

"And careless," I added. "They throw their host against a Herald of Night, leaving the host dead while they find a new shell."

"It is thought that the spirit only takes what the host gives and that they fear death as much as their host does. It is also thought that once a Thalaan's host dies, it takes them close to a thousand years to return. Don't disregard Tisbaen's sacrifice against the Herald, I guarantee you he wasn't betting on being reborn at the time."

"Sure, but you're the same person telling me it takes a thousand years. How is he back so soon?"

She smiled. "We've been wondering the same thing," she said. "I've taken the assignment to find out. But don't tell Brother Dagar that. It's easier if he doesn't know for now. He doesn't even really know what he is."

"How is that? Don't Thalaan remember their former lives?"

"To some degree. Their memories develop as they become more integrated with their host, and also from experiences that jog their memories. Thalaan love studying history, because it helps them remember themselves in those times. But knowing what they are? Most probably spend their lives thinking they're psychic, or reincarnated, or empathic."

"I've learned not to underestimate the things Tisbaen knows."

"A good lesson. All I can say is that he didn't know when we parted. Years ago, Tisbaen suspected. But Tisbaen had read the Compendium of Benign and Passive Spirits, the only book in Nomikos that speaks of Thalaan in any detail. Brother Dagar has not, and does not remember much of what Tisbaen knew. He believes he's channeling the spirit of your dead friend, nothing more."

"Why haven't you ever told me this?"

"There is much and more I haven't told you, T'vance. We guard knowledge for a reason. It may come to pass that I regret telling you even now, though I doubt it. In this case, I mostly didn't tell you because it doesn't matter. Call him a Thalaan, a human, a priest of Reann, Tisbaen, or Dagar. None of those matter. He is your friend. He will age and die, or more likely be killed. And when that happens, he will be gone."

"Or perhaps back after a couple years," I replied, smugly.

Karstia sighed. "Don't make me regret telling you. There are at least two ways this knowledge can hurt him. First, there are enemies that might like to study a Thalaan. Second, his friends might treat his life as less important than others lives."

"I can see both aspects."

"I could make you forget that I've told you."

"No," I said firmly. "Not even as a joke."

"How about only as a joke?" she countered.

"It's not funny when I know you can do it."

"You make jokes about killing people, and yet I know you can and have. I'd rather have some memory loss, truth be told."

I tried not to smile, but it took some effort.

"I know you're mad at him," she said. "Mad that he left us and went chasing after something on his own. You two are a lot alike in that, finding just the right way to be useful without letting anyone else know. You should be mad at me. I had Fera stay behind with the Lenn-raki and it nearly got her killed."

"Instead, she might have been actually killed like Aja and the Navigator," I told her. "I'm not mad at you."

"But at least you admit you're mad at him," she said, grinning.

"Fine, it's irritating."

"But what will you do if he really isn't back within the five days?"

"That's the most irritating part, to be stuck here waiting when we should be home." Waiting without gort, I thought to myself. I'd substituted with some local drugs, but nothing quite satisfied. "At the dawn of day six, I'm taking Fera home. I really hope he's there, and if you can find him that's another story. But he said five days. What else can we do?"

She nodded unhappily.

"I think he'll be back. It would be just like him."

That got a smile. "Okay," she said, the smiling fading. "I did actually come here for something else. I've had my own visions."

"Tell me."

"I didn't ask for them, mind you. I just saw them while I slept."

"Saw what?"

"The platform carved from the mountain near the entrance to the mines. It was desolate and cold, with only Doogan and his ships upon them. The vastness of space, filled with ghosts and spirits haunting little spots of blackness, nearly indistinguishable from the nothing. The capital city in its ruins, lined with our tents and fires, with a hundred eyes that bore into me. Another city in the north, wide and sprawling, where Faroks in white assemble in great numbers to hear their leaders speak."

"Visions of now?" I asked.

"Of soon, or recent, I can't say which. Do you know why Dagar said five days?"

"No. Do you?"

"I can't be sure, but I think I do. Elor Once Dark wrote many books on the Unlife, not just those on Arnak. One book was called The Coming Dark, War and Tactics. In it, he studied over two hundred battles from the Wars of Dominion and before. In it, he coined what he called the Rule of Five.

"He noted that after a victory, the chances of a follow-up attack were very high. This is pure statistics, based on the number of battles and when attacks came after a victory and how long. But based on this, he saw a step drop in counter-attacks after five days had passed. He called it the Rule of Five, and said that if the enemy hasn't regrouped and launched a major counter-attack within five days, they've very likely settled back into a planning phase and won't attack for months."

"That's sounds far fetched."

"Perhaps. I don't like betting on statistics either, in fact I don't, but Elor at least gave the numbers a lot of thought. I won't bore you with all the details, he broke it down into nearly a hundred different scenarios. But think of it this way. If you were going to regroup and attack again, most of what you would need to act quickly could be achieved within five days."

"I suppose that's true," I said. "Day one is for rest and recovery. Day two for reconnaissance, dreams, scrying. Confirming the enemy is still what you expect, finding new attack vectors."

"Right," Karstia said. "And after that, you might attack right away, which explains the high probability of attacks coming on days two and three. Or you might attempt to move in reserves that were reasonably close, or summon, bond, conscript new forces. Then you might have a second round of reconnaissance, at which point you'd decide if you're new approach would work or not."

"Five days to decide you don't stand a chance. Okay, it sounds a bit more reasonable now. And we're on day two. The visions you saw were his?"

"His, yes. Meaning the Kinari called Mirell, Aganond's apprentice if you will. We never finished our battle. We're connected, just barely, but still connected. I believe that was his day-two reconnaissance."

I thought back to the visions she'd described. The first was the Imperial landing force, now reduced to only Doogan and his two ships. The second was space, looking for the Empire or perhaps Vessels still loyal to Aganond. The third was the city, where our forces were still strong. The fourth, another Farok city to the north, whose loyalty was uncertain.

If he was looking for allies, he'd found none. If he was looking for soldiers, the Farok city might do. But the weakest link was obviously Doogan.

"Doogan's a sitting duck."

"I came to the same conclusion."

"We should be going! Why didn't you just tell me this at the beginning?!"

She smiled at me patiently. "Because, T'vance, we have plenty of time. I woke up at the beginning of his fifth dream, which still gives us over an hour before Mirell awakes."

"Assuming he doesn't sense you being awake and pull himself out."

"He won't, but I've remained extra calm just in case. Shall we ask Fera to come? Doogan would probably like to say goodbye to her as well."

"I've seen how he looks at her, I don't doubt it."

"That may be good, though," she said. "After what happened to his wife, it won't hurt him to be reminded there are other beautiful women in the world. And she is a looker."

"She is at that," I said.

Karstia grinned at me like a little girl. "You guys are having a baby."

"We are," I agreed, unable to hide my smile this time.

She nudged me affectionately. "Your uncle adores Fera, I suspect."

"You know," I corrected her.

"I know," she repeated mockingly. "But you're still a little worried about the rest of the family, Fera not being a Dúranaki and all."

"It won't be a problem," I said. It was more boast than truth. Fera was well-liked within my small circle, but outside that she was mistrusted as a foreigner. I wasn't sure how smoothly things would go, I only knew I didn't care. If anyone made it a problem, they'd answer for it.

Karstia nodded, as if she believed me. "Just in case, I thought you might like to know a little interesting fact about Fera's lineage you probably didn't know because she doesn't even know. You know she's part elf, right?"

"Of course," I said, ignoring the time I didn't.

"Do you know what kind of elf?"

"No."

"She's a full eighth Sulin."

"No kidding," I said. Sulini were the elves of Tanara, our trade partners on the coastline and common enemy of the Yinka. Fera had been born and raised in Gûl, and her parents before her, but it wasn't that surprising she could trace lineage to Tanara.

"That's enough for her to be included into the Sulini tribes. They accept down to one sixteenth."

"Including my son," I concluded.

"Including your son, assuming Fera makes the claim."

"And that will impress the Dúranaki? To highlight his other side? I don't think so."

She shrugged. "I suppose I don't know your society as well as you. Still, ask your uncle about it. You might be surprised how appreciative the common Dúranaki is to bold aspiration."

"Bold aspiration? What are you talking about?"

"Today, your people are making peace with the Cloud Lords. But the future is Tanara, you know that. If the Pegasus should rise again and rule all Tanara, it will need rule the Sulini as well. Better if that comes by friendship than force. With Razi dead, T'revor doesn't have an heir, but you know he wasn't guaranteed anything anyway. The Dúranaki only follow one rule of ascent."

"Keep it in the family," I said. "Are you saying my son will be king? Wear the crown? Unite the Sulini to the Dúranaki?"

"And drive the Yinka from out from the crescent once and for all? No. I see the present much better than the future. I'm saying some people might think that's your plan. And some might consider it a supremely shrewd political move."

"And some might want him dead, for jealousy or tradition," I said.

"Didn't you once tell me in Dúrakhaan, there's always someone who wants you dead?"

"That is true. I can't even believe we're talking about it. He's only days conceived. She hasn't even missed a cycle."

"It is early," she agreed. "And also getting late. Gather Fera while we still have time for a proper goodbye."

We found Doogan awake, moping on his bridge, with the strange, tall, pale-skinned thing from space he called Mylo. The platform was empty, the area free of sentient creatures save the two of them and us, and we otherwise felt confident we'd arrived in plenty of time to avoid whatever Mirell might have been planning once he awoke.

The two of them were watching some moving picture on the screen that made it look like we were staring down at a patch of rock and trees at the edge of a cliff looking over the ocean. Lightning was crackling in the air, striking a tree here, a rock there. The rock dissolved away and Doogan and Mylo both gasped when it happened. I guess they'd never seen an Essaence storm before.

"Lightning doesn't do that," Mylo remarked.

"Essaence storms are far more serious," Karstia explained.

"Strange, though," I said. "The flows are so smooth here, I didn't expect they even got Essaence storms."

"There's been so much magical disruption, it's not surprising," she said. "But enough about that. Doogan, why are you still here?"

He looked at her as if the very question confused him, then he shook his head slowly. "I don't really know. I didn't know quite where to go, so I've just been watching."

"Well watching time is over. You need to pick a place and go," I told him.

"Is there some problem?"

We explained the situation with Mirell, but he seemed to have to hear everything twice, once from us and once from the unseen Leona. Despite the slowness, he grew pale as we filled in the details, or maybe as Leona filled them in. Either way, by the time we'd finished he looked sick.

"We've got to go," he muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

Mylo nodded. "The Vessels were unable to defeat my computer systems and our new shield designs, but Aganond himself was able to breach the computers when given time to adapt. I don't feel defenseless here, nor invincible, but I see no advantage in lingering. Should I take the helm, Captain?"

"Yes. Run pre-flight." He turned back to us and for about the fourth time noticed and smiled at Fera. "Out of curiosity, why haven't you left?"

"The usual," I said. "Waiting on a Priest of Reann."

"And where's Rubo?" he added. "I haven't seen him. Did he stay back on Kulthea?"

"About that. Do you remember how Aganond sent Faroks to those fifty-two ITH nodes?"

"Hard to forget, considering the outcome," he said.

"Well Rubo went after one of them. And knowing Rubo, he probably stopped them from doing whatever it was they were trying to do."

"He'll be stuck there!" Doogan exclaimed.

"With no magic, or at least very little," I agreed. "What will happen to him, do you think? He knows the name of our planet. Will the Empire return him?"

"I honestly don't know, T'vance," Doogan said. "It really depends on how he comes into custody of the Empire."

"And where he went," Mylo added. "There are some very strange places around a few of the ITH nodes."

"Is there anything you can do?" Karstia asked.

"With that little to go on?" Mylo asked.

"There are things we can do," Doogan argued. "We can list him as missing, put funds into escrow in his name. That way, if he's stuck somewhere he might be able to pay someone to take him. The quarantine around Glemux will be the hard part, but I'll take him if we can find each other. I can't promise results, but I'll do what I can. I like Rubo a lot."

"Yeah, he's alright. My best friend and all that. He's a survivor, but stuck somewhere without magic..." I shuddered just thinking about it.

"Can you impersonate him? We'll need some way to identify him. His face is good enough, but a retina scan would be better."

"I can look just like him. But I don't know what that scan thing is."

"Retinas. Your eyes. Will they look just like his? Down to every facet?"

"Yes, every facet."

The bridge floor started vibrating and a low moan rolled through the hull.

"We're not going up are we?!"

Doogan chuckled. "No, just warming up the engines. Put on your Rubo face, already. You being nervous makes me nervous."

Rubo was easy; broken nose healed wrong, brown eyes, eyebrows closing dangerously close to one another in the middle. I hadn't done his face many times, only once that I could remember, and it had been years ago at that. But I'd studied him magically, and his face came to mine on pure instinct, while Mylo stared on with wide eyes. Though come to think of it, those were probably his normal eyes.

"So what now?" I asked.

"See that little black dot on the ceiling?" Doogan asked. "Just stare up at it for a second. Right. Just like that. Good. And you're done."

"That was it?"

"Yes. Easier than your spell," he replied.

"Certainly faster," I agreed. I shook my head vigorously, letting the spell and his face wash off me.

"Pre-flight passed, Captain," Mylo reported. "We can leave whenever you're ready."

"Right. Well then. Karstia, T'vance, Fera," he said, bowing slightly. "I don't think I have enough apologies for getting you involved in all of this. And I don't really know how anything would have gone, had Aganond still been alive, but probably not well. So I'll leave it at thank you. You're all amazing, and I wish you all the best. And this time, I'll really try to stay away."

"Please do," Fera replied, with a faint grin.

I bowed. "Farewell."

Karstia stepped up and gave him a hug. "Good luck, Doogan."

We made our exit the old fashioned way, by walking, then took shelter in the opening of the mines to avoid the cloud of dust and heat coming off Doogan's giant ship as it rose slowly from the earth. The rumbling sound grew louder, but never enough to be painful, then died away quickly as the ship picked up speed and faded from view. In the darkness, we lost sight of it before sound, but after a couple of minutes even that was gone.

"Why didn't we just teleport back?" Fera asked. "Did you think he wouldn't really leave?"

"I think T'vance was worried Mirell might show up early and unannounced," Karstia said.

"Wrong on both counts," I said. Then I began chanting softly in Uscurac, staring past them back onto the platform.

"A trap, then," Fera said appreciatively.

"T'vance, you know you really don't have to kill all the bad guys," Karstia said. "I'm perfectly content leaving Mirell here for this planet to deal with."

She had a point, but this wasn't about obsession. This was about opportunity. If Mirell had dreamed of this place and planned to come, it was a shame not to take advantage of it. And so, overzealous as you may think it, I put Doogan's ship back, right where it had been.

"He'll never fall for that," Karstia said, staring critically at my illusion.

"You were probably thinking the same thing when Rubo fooled Aganond with an illusion," I replied. "Illusions work, even bad ones, when the other party isn't ready for them. When he sees what he expects to see, he won't sweat the tiny details, even if they are wrong."

"And they are," she said. "It's too small, for one thing, and--"

"It's passable," Fera cut her off. "If I didn't know better, I'd think it was there, especially at a glance. Say T'vance, do we need longer than a glance to take someone out?"

"No, my love. I think we've gotten it down to just under a glance."

"This is risky," Karstia said. But I thought I saw a gleam in her eye, and when she noticed my interest she stepped back into the shadows.

"She might be right," I said, turning to Fera. "You are with child after all."

"True. But I think the hormones are making me want to kill him more," she said. It was a joke but also a little bit true. "This is a prime opportunity, T'vance. I'm barely pregnant and I'm not going to lay in bed for nine months. You're not benching me, as if you could."

"No," I said. "But you're wearing Aganond's silky tunic. It's as good as plate, but oh so soft."

"It's really not my style," she argued, though I expected it very much was her style.

"You're wearing it."

"Fine."

"And maybe stand behind me a bit."

"I think I can do that," she said, stepping closer and sliding around me. One arm snaked around my waist and her lips pressed against my neck. The other hand shot forward under my arm gripping a kalta tightly. And yes, from one angle I looked like a human shield, but from another I was being hugged and kissed.

"And this is a hit and fade," I said, arching my head back. "We're out at the first hint of danger."

"You two are crazy," Karstia said. "But I suppose I'm in. We may have as little as ten minutes. Let's make a plan. What were you thinking?"

And so we planned and changed clothes, and cast spells. We masked ourselves, our auras, we made a whole fake illusionary tunnel and masked the real one. Tactics were discussed, code phrases, exit strategies. I opened a doorway into the Ethereal plane, an another into a little Ethereal room. In short, we went totally fucking overkill.

And nothing.

An hour after the ten minutes had passed? Still nothing.

After another hour passed, we were really starting to wonder.

"There's no reason to think he'll decide to attack at all, is there?" Fera asked.

"No," I conceded. "We don't know what forces he even has left. Those dreams may have been looking for opportunities, and Doogan may have been the weakest link, but that doesn't mean he'll act on them. Maybe even Doogan was a daunting target in his state."

"He must be pretty weak if that's the case," Fera quipped.

"There's another possibility," Karstia said. "He could have found an even more tempting target."

"The Farok city?" I asked.

"Maybe," she said. "But I keep wondering what Mirell dreamed about in his last dream, the one I didn't see."

At that point we abandoned the plan as a waste of time and returned by teleportation back to the ruins, safely ensconced in our armies. For a moment I'd feared that Mirell might have targeted the camps, as stupid as it would have been. But no attack had come there either, nor had anything unusual happened.

The armies were still on high alert, with heavy patrols along the perimeter, and scouts coming and going frequently. But there was also a lot of civil work. Some of my little T'vances had retained their stone working spells, including a higher up named Olnar who used to oversee building repair and construction in the city under Aganond. They'd already drafted plans for a new keep, and were making remarkable progress.

It was clear the aim was to build something reasonably small as a new central keep, reusing as much of the existing corner as possible and building the rest from the rubble. At the rate they were going, they'd have thirty foot of wall or better on all sides before day five.

Spirit walkers were among them, working spells while the Faroks worked stone. They were cooperating, but not as well as I'd hoped. Even from a distance I could tell their discussions were heated, and at one point two of them had to be separated to avoid coming to blows.

"I think you imparted a bit too much of your temper," Karstia had said. But of course it was too late to do anything about that. The Enrichment platform was gone and the magic behind it lost. The Faroks I'd programmed were on their own.

They were a varied enough lot. The programming didn't kill their personalities, it just warped them a bit and taught them some new skills. If anything, they seemed more different from one another now than they had under Aganond.

One of the first things I'd done after the Empire had left was to find a leader for my Little T'vances to assist Karalishi and the yet-to-be appointed Farok from the north. He'd changed his name on the spot, and was now calling himself T'luor. He was not particularly loved among the others, perhaps because he used to serve as one of Aganond's arcanists, though I suspect it had more to do with my own conflicted views on authority than anything else.

But loved or not, he was the most adept with magic, bolder too, intimidating to some. Those were good traits in Dúrakhaan, but I was more interested in his insightful views on the problems the fledgeling government would face. It was these, more than his prowess, that had impressed me. That, and he really didn't want the position, and I've always said the best leaders are the ones who want it the least.

I found him before Karalishi, though I was hoping to catch them together to see how they interacted. T'luor was on the far side of the future courtyard, near the rubble barricades they'd erected on the east side until the wall was ready. If any of the hybrids or faded were to return, it was thought they'd sneak up through the ruins of the city, so the barricades were heavily manned by both Lenn-raki and Faroks. T'luor wasn't with them, but set back with a group of fifty Faroks around him.

When I approached, the group all turned to face me, then took knees. Even T'luor bent his knee slightly before reminding himself to stay upright.

"M'l-- T'vance," he greeted.

"Greetings, T'luor. The rest of you stand up," I said. "Don't kneel. In Dúrakhaan, we bow to show respect. Pass it around, I don't want to see kneeling."

"Yes, sir," they said, standing.

"Any major updates?" I asked T'luor.

"Progress on defenses. Some disturbing dreams from some of the spirit walkers. But nothing so far. We sent three hundred men north to bring news and scout along the north road, and a hundred trackers in various directions. The walkers have spirits patrolling the perimeter, and these elite soldiers are about to perform an invisible sweep of the ruins."

"Very good. They heading out now?"

"Yes," he said, then turned to his men. "Is everyone clear?"

"Yes, sir!" the group responded.

"Then head out."

The group moved about ten feet off, then they began disappearing from view as each cast invisibility spells on themselves. I slipped into ethereal sight and watched them as they finished. They moved off in pairs, slipping through the barricades and vanishing amongst the rubble.

"Was there something else?" T'luor asked me.

"You have thousands who report to you," I told him. "You can't manage them in groups of fifty."

T'luor bristled a little. "I can't manage them at all, yet you gave me little choice."

"Just work on delegating. It's hard to surrender control, but--"

"It's not about that," he snapped. "It's about trust. They'll take orders from you, and maybe from me, but from some go-between? They aren't ready. And I'm not sending fodder to go get themselves picked to pieces by the enemy."

"I'm not objecting to the order."

"No, just to how I'm running things. I didn't want the job, if you recall. But from those fifty, I'm going to pick my inner circle. Men strong enough to lead, men who know me, men who have proven themselves. If you want to run things until you leave, then run them. If you want me to do it, then let me."

He turned away angrily and walked off.

"That went well," I said.

"Temperamental," Karstia said. "Rather Dúranaki-like, I'd say."

"No kidding. I'm having flashbacks to when Razi was doing field command. He was always willful and arrogant."

"Which is different from other Dúranaki how?"

"Make fun, but it still worries me. They have some of the traits, but none of the culture. I can't treat them like my people, but I can't treat them like Faroks."

"Imagine how Karalishi must feel," she reminded me. "He knows little about Faroks and nothing about Dúranaki."

"You're worrying too much," Fera said. "He just has spirit, that's all. You just need to have a little faith."

"You're probably right."

"Probably? I am right. Come on, let's go find Karalishi. Maybe the spirits have more news about Brother Dagar. The sooner we get back to our own problems the better."

Karalishi had a lot to say, but most of it did nothing to enlighten us. Aside from some updates on the state of local affairs, the most interesting thing he imparted was a message from the spirits.

"The spirits have told me that something is missing, but they have not been more specific."

"Perhaps someone is missing?"

"No," he said. "They would have said that. This is something larger than a person, but still small enough that the disappearance is difficult to pinpoint. At the same time, it is important enough that the absence has left them unsettled."

"Thank you," Karstia said. "Let us know if you hear anything more."

"I shall," he said.

Then a dozen matters of importance pulled him away from us. The Lenn-raki were far less independent than my Faroks, and even in the brief time we spoke, a line of twenty men had formed waiting to speak with him.

We worked our way around the line and came face to face with the remaining Navigator, who I still didn't know by name. He bowed curtly to the three of us.

"I couldn't help overhearing," he began. He'd been twenty feet back on the other side of loud conversations from us when it happened. "I may have an answer. I went where you told me, Yarishna," he said, nodding to Karstia. "There's no tower there."

"Where? Was there supposed to be?" I asked.

"Murnak's Tower," Karstia explained. "That's where Dagar said he was going, to the island and the tower."

Murnak had been the eldest Kinari, Aganond's mentor. He was killed by Mirell with black eyes. I'd seen it on my spirit walk, but learned much more from melding with Karstia. The Kinari are immortal. Before Aganond, they were like gods to the mortals of the planet, and Murnak was there. He was older than Aganond, older than ten thousand years, his tower probably a priceless store of lore and magic.

"He would go there."

"But there is no there," the Navigator insisted. "No tower. Just an island. Some manicured grounds around the spot a tower should be, but no tower, just a wide circle of dirt."

"Any resident magic?" I asked. It seemed insulting to ask if he verified it wasn't invisible.

"It wasn't invisible, if that's what you mean. There's some magic around, for sure, but I think it's supposed to be there, on the grounds to keep the plants growing but under control. I've seen some animists and druids work spells, and this isn't so different, though I've never seen anything quite this elegant. But nothing masking the tower, or hanging in its airspace. I walked every inch of the circle of dirt. It isn't there."

"What do you think, T'vance?" Karstia asked.

"It wasn't destroyed," I began. "There would be evidence of that, rubble, ruins, a crater; something. I'm giving... I'm sorry, I still don't know your name."

"Al'nara," the Navigator replied. Then under his breath he added, "Maybe you'll remember it this time."

"I'm giving Al'nara the benefit of the doubt that he went to the right place. Teleporting something as big as a tower is a bit ridiculous, so that leaves planar relocation. Perhaps the structure was shifted into a demi-plane or something?"

"Good illusions might also explain it," Fera said. "You might have been walking around a circle of dirt hundreds of feet off to one side, while the real tower was masked."

The Navigator frowned. "I don't think so, but I can't entirely rule it out."

"We should go back," Fera said. "I can sweep the island using the anti-magic device to rule out illusions, and T'vance should be able to determine if there's any planar disruptions, right?"

"Even if he can," the Navigator interjected, "and I give him the benefit of the doubt, the island is huge. It has to be ten miles across and more than that long. You aren't going to sweep eighty-thousand acres."

"You saying I can't?" a slight edge in her voice. He pretended not to notice.

"It's not practical," he said.

"I won't argue with you there," she said with a shrug. "We should go anyway. We don't have to sweep the whole island, we can just sweep the area. It's better than doing nothing."

"I don't accept that. Doing nothing is the safest thing we could do," Al'nara said. "Your friend said five days after the battle. It was his choice, his time table. We should wait."

Karstia muttered something in high elven, which I couldn't understand but it made Al'nara bristle and Fera grin. "I agree with Fera," she said, using the common elven tongue. "Sweeping won't be necessary, but T'vance can check for planar disruption and I can look into the past and see when the tower vanished and how. It may not be the safest thing to do, but it seems to be important."

The Navigator considered it for a moment, then gestured to a nearby tent that had been setup against the wall. The tent itself was empty, though there was plenty of evidence it hadn't been that way for long.

"It is too far for a single jump," he said, sounding very much like he was negotiating price. "The first hop is fairly safe, so save any preparations for there. Ready?"

The first jump deposited us high in the mountains, in a range I'd never seen before. It was thirty degrees cooler than where we'd left, less humid, with thinner air and more sparse vegetation. It seemed like forest more than a jungle, with tall trees with straight trunks that forked into two or three trunks two-thirds of the way up. The bark was closer to red than brown, and the needles were blue-green, except where they'd fallen to the ground and were decaying into brown.

More interesting than the trees was the view. In the valley below was rich, fertile land, divided with fences, plowed, and sown with growing crops and wandering grazing livestock. I saw farm houses and villages, and tiny little specks I assumed were Faroks, working the land or tending the animals. From a distance, it looked no different from parts of Tanara, or Rhakhaan. There were no great machines to do anything, just men and animals and land.

"For a moment, you might forget we aren't home," Fera said, stepping up beside me and slipping her hand into mine.

"It almost calls out to be explored," I said.

"It does, but no more than the thousands of places back home you've never seen."

"True. I think the same thing staring east from the Gray Mountains."

"Al'nara's waiting, but not very patiently."

I put nosense spells on Fera, Karstia, and I, but the Navigator declined, and put a simple invisibility on himself instead. Then we were jumping again.

We landed on the island, in sight of the great circle of dirt where the tower was supposed to have been, but not close enough to be noticed if someone was watching it. I dropped naturally into a crouch and began sweeping the area, searching for sentient minds nearby, or invisible things other than ourselves. There were bushes and trees and rocks, things that could easily hide people, but if anyone was hidden they were hidden well.

"Clear," I heard Karstia say. "No minds but ours, as far as I can sense."

We proceeded with ample caution, using spells as well as our eyes and ears to reinforce everything was as we expected. I had no indications this was a trap, not even a tingle or unusually intuitive sense of danger. Yet, consciously I still worried. It would be a good place for a trap, and I'd fallen into enough of them.

But after enough caution and closing enough distance, I did what I came to do. I sat down on a rock and let myself relax, staring until my eyes began to blur, then refocusing on the aspects I really wanted to see. The landscape became dull and gray, but there was something unique about the dirt and the area about where the tower should have been. It was faint but there. There was a connection to the physical place, tenuous, faint, perhaps ready to break; but there nonetheless.

I'd never seen what happened when I would blink out into the ether, but I imagined it might look something like that, to someone studying it as I was. But did it help? There were no spells specifically to trace a blink to where it was, but maybe I could work something special?

Karstia's shouts shook my brain back into reality. "He was here!" she yelled. "And the tower, too! As recently as early this morning."

"Who?"

"Mirell... and Brother Dagar before him, in the evening two days before. Dagar went in first, and had not come out. Then Mirell went in. A few minutes later the tower disappeared, just disappeared. There's a halo around it, like a gentle flash of light around where it was, then nothing."

"This morning," I echoed. "That was a long time ago. A long time for Dagar to be in the tower with Mirell and not be dead." I didn't presume him dead, not wholly. But it seemed more likely, and I braced myself a little inside, hardening myself to what we might learn, becoming numb, becoming angry.

Fera placed her arm gently on mine, sensing something in me, or maybe needing something herself. I thought she meant to calm me, as her words seemed to when she said, "But he had a long time in the tower to prepare. And he must have known Mirell was coming."

But her eyes said something else. They were alert and ready, her own anxieties had her on combat alert. And she was rolling the Viirtakai around in her palm as if she were itching to turn it on.

"I'm going to follow Mirell in," Karstia said. Then she furrowed her brow. "Or perhaps not. I can't seem to get in. Maybe from Dagar... no it seems I can't go in at all. The tower took it's history with it, wherever it went."

Just then, a blue-green door appeared directly in the center of where the tower had been. It looked like an ethereal gate, same exact size, same color scheme as the doors on the ethereal plane. But that in itself was a little odd, because normally the doors are invisible on our side.

The four of us fanned apart like a well oiled team and watched as a body tumbled out, clad all in black. Well it didn't really tumble, but was more thrown out and down, so that it hit the ground with some force and rolled half a dozen feet before stopping. The man, as became obvious by the deep moaning, was still alive. He struggled to position himself so that his face wasn't pressed into the dirt.

"Dagar?"

"Oh good," he said weakly. "People to carry me." Then he collapsed back to the ground.

Dagar's cloak was made of fine black cloth, heavy but amazingly soft, and two feet two long for him. Aside from a little dirt, it was in great shape. The rest of him beneath the cloak was another story. His other clothes were mostly gone, burned away and where we could see skin it was red and blistered. His hair, too, was mostly burned off.

Karstia remarked, "Plasma," noting a few unidentifiable shapes attached to his clothing.

We took him back to the capital. Karalishi had healers far better than me.

It wasn't until nightfall that Dagar awoke, covered in bandages and smelling of mint. By then, the healers had told us everything. Dagar would be fine, they thought, but he had three pieces of crystal embedded into him. One in his right upper leg, one in his right hip, and one above his right wrist. They tried to remove them, only as hard as they dared, and the crystals wouldn't budge.

"Finally awake I see," I told him.

"It hardly seemed worth waking up until the stars were out," he replied. "But now that I see how awake feels, I'm regretting not waiting for tomorrow's stars."

"Are you ready to talk about it?"

He shook his head and winced in pain for his trouble. "Home," he said weakly. "I want to go home. Get Karstia. There's things to share. And find a small cart for the trip to carry me."

"You want to go now? Dagar, you're in pieces."

"Hardly, T'vance. On the contrary, I've been most effectively melted together. I want to go home. I want my sweet sisters. I want Eissa."

"I don't blame you. There are crystals here the healers can't remove."

"I know," he said. "I can feel them. I can hear them. Bring Karstia, I'll explain everything."
CHAPTER 29

* * *

T'vance

* * *

Liliana stepped quietly through the smoky gray door, checking nervously over her shoulder to make sure she was clear before it slid shut behind her. She never looked comfortable on her visits, but I'd gotten used to her reactions and knew this was no different from the other visits. She was nervous about the place, not the baby.

"All is well," she said, dipping her head in a slight bow. She glanced about and nearly jumped when she saw little Lexi shadowing her.

Lexi had followed her into the room and back out again, but she was so small and so quiet, that she often went unnoticed. Lexi smiled innocently and poked Liliana playfully with her index finger, a gesture the Sulini elf didn't seem to appreciate.

To Lexi, her finger was a kynac, and she'd just tagged Liliana. To most foreigners, the act would have seemed innocent enough, but Liliana knew enough about Dúranaki culture to understand the subtext. Lexi had put herself close enough to Liliana to kill her, and did so without even being noticed. It probably wouldn't have been so frustrating if there wasn't abundant real danger for her just by being there.

"I have told you before, child, I do not care for your game," she scolded.

"T'kaal likes me to practice," Lexi explained, as she always did.

T'kaal was my Uncle and sat the council for our family, taking over for T'revor who rose to become King. He was also Lexi's grandfather, and blade-master, which made him responsible to teach her the family's twin kynac style.

Personally, I agreed with T'kaal. Games of tag were a Dúranaki tradition, and they were also harmless. But Liliana was doing me a favor by coming, so I felt honor bound to make her comfortable.

"Enough, Lex. Let's not have this talk again," I said firmly.

Lexi shrugged. "Yes, Uncle."

Liliana was a Sulini midwife. We had midwives in Dúrakhaan as well, but none who were so familiar with half-elven pregnancies. Also, we were keeping the baby a secret from most people, just to be safe, and there wasn't a local midwife I trusted to be discrete. Fera didn't want a midwife at all, but T'revor had insisted, and when the King insists, that's how it is.

"I should check her again in three weeks," she said. "And then, you will need to decide on the final plans for delivery."

"Very good," I said. I knew she wanted us to birth the child with her people on the coast, but Fera and I hadn't made any decisions and I didn't feel like hearing her opinions in detail again. "Thank you, Liliana," I said. "Lexi? Would you please show Liliana out the south gate?"

"She knows the way," Lexi argued. "And Fera said you'd tell me a story."

"Fera said that?" Stranger things had happened. She was pregnant, after all, and she'd taken rather a shine to Lexi.

"Yes. She said you'd have time, what with her and Jai-ahren napping and all."

Jai-ahren took the news of the baby well, far better than I expected. I expected jokes and sarcasm, jealousy, resentment. But she was thrilled, and though she'd been warming to Fera anyway, the baby cast away any resistance. If anything, Jai was too involved with Fera, following her around, hissing at people who got too close, and curling up with her when she napped.

"Lexi, our guest first. Come back and we'll talk."

Lexi left with Liliana and appeared back in my doorway breathing hard before I'd had a chance to do much of anything else.

"Okay," she panted. "Story?"

I watched her palm a small knife and slip it back into a pocket in her black vest. Fera had given it to her, but I wasn't supposed to know. She was too young for kynacs, but not too immature, or so Fera thought. She was probably right, but knowing that she not only carried it, but carried it out, made me a bit nervous.

I stifled a yawn as Jai-ahren settled into sleeping. "Fine, Lex, what do you want? The Tower of Yarth story? The time I stole the gold from Frelick's armies? My trip to Gûl where I met Fera?"

I poured some wine and packed a pipe, then set my blue kynac beside me on the table before sitting down into the soft leather chair. It was a tradition of old, leaving myself something to throw quickly without getting up, should the need arise.

The storytelling was a new thing, and a bit strange for me. Lexi had been born after I'd first left Dúrakhaan, so I hadn't even met her until my Uncle became King. Of course now she almost lived with us, acting as some kind of lady in waiting for Fera when she wasn't sneaking around or demanding stories.

"The Dream Priest's story, about the crystals."

And they weren't even my stories at that. She was demanding in other ways as well, wanting me to teach her to throw kynacs and simple spells. I was beginning to wonder if T'revor hadn't arranged the whole thing with Lexi as some kind of crash parenting course. I could easily imagine a conspiracy, I'd seen enough of them. If that was the case, I didn't mind. I'd grown rather fond of Lexi myself.

"Fine, Lex."

In the beginning, there was One. One life, a great crystal, greater in size than a thousand of our worlds. But it was alone, alone in a great sea of nothing with only stars to look on. For millenniums it watched, dreamed, thought, and grew. Until one day, it grew too large for itself, and shattered into twenty-three pieces, each of which was hurled through the empty sea.

The one became twenty-three, and each of them aimed themselves towards one of their favorite stars, and those were the suns of different worlds. The crystals picked the most beautiful worlds, but none so beautiful as we know, for there were none with life, no where in the whole of existence; no blade of grass, or tree, or bug or bird. And no us.

The crystals fell down to the earth of these worlds, shattering into thousands of shards and digging deep into the soil. There were small shards and large ones, most beneath the surface but some stuck in rock or scattered into the seas. Energy flowed between them and around them, the primal Essaence was their gift to their new worlds, and from the Essaence sprung the first life.

Moss grew, then grass, then trees, then small things in the seas, and land. Life grew and grew, and the crystal, though fragmented, guided life to make animals and creatures and men. In time, most of the fragments could no longer remember being part of the one, but the larger fragments could almost remember, and the largest could still sense its missing parts, far away on worlds of their own.

It was many years before the men would know them, hundreds of thousands if not millions, but in time the adept grew to recognize the whispers in the air as a language. And in time, that language was decoded and embraced by those who would first manipulate the Essaence, using the language of the crystals themselves, a language that came to be known as Iruaric.

Here on Kulthea, they were called the K'ta'viiri, self-proclaimed Lords of Essaence in their newly mastered tongue. But in a far away world, they were called K'nari, Lords of Whispers, though later they became known simply as Kinari. And in yet another world, they were called Kor'mer'lin, Masters of the Heart Song.

It was the Kor'mer'lin who first mastered the Essaence, and the Kor'mer'lin who first failed the crystals, though none can say how or why. Only a few of the great crystals even knew that anything had happened. At least one did, though, in the world of the K'nari. It was a massive crystal on the Isle of Murnak, once very close to the shards that graced the Kor'mer'lin home-world. All it could say was that the Kor'mer'lin were trying to reunite the shards on their worlds, and that something went terribly wrong.

Their world was destroyed in a cataclysm that eclipses anything on Kulthea, for the very heart of the world split open, and it's pieces scattered into the empty sea. But in it's death, the Kor'mer'lin home-world also gave life. The pieces of the world flew far and wide, seeding life on thousands of dead worlds. Worlds without crystals, without Essaence, yes. But worlds with life.

The crystal shards they'd fused remained together, cold to the others as if dead, but thinking... always thinking. It hurtles through the stars of the sky like a comet, bringing darkness and seeking its lost brothers. It is known to us here as the comet Sa'kain, before which there was no Unlife.

"Did the crystal really tell Brother Dagar all of that?" Lexi asked.

"Yes it did."

"And do those pieces of crystal stuck inside him constantly remind him of the story? Like constantly telling him over and over?"

"I don't think so. Did he say that?"

She pursed her lips thinking. "He may have been joking."

"He does do that."

"But you can see blood and bone and muscle through them. It's really cool."

"Agreed. Okay, Lexi. You've had your story. I'll take some peace and quiet now."

"Oh," she said disappointed.

"Give me a good two hours and I'll give you twenty practice kynac throws."

"With the blue one?!" she asked excitedly.

"Yes, with the blue one."

She gave me a wink and was gone like a flash.

I took a pinch of gort, a sip of the wine, and a brief toke off the pipe. Then I turned and blew smoke into the corner.

"You can come out already," I said. "You can take it off, but you're still the King."

T'revor Arain slid out from the stone wall as if he'd been apart of it, which of course he had. He was looking no more regal than I, dressed in his combat leathers with no crown, though he had plenty of other jewelry.

"I hate that. I can hide from other people just fine. But not you."

"As your adviser, I'm expected to know where you are at all times. Why the sneaking in?"

"I wanted to speak to you privately, and I was content to wait."

"I suppose hiding in a wall is better than a lot of what happens in the council chambers."

"You have no idea," he said. "That story you told Lexi, that was from Brother Dagar's dream, right?"

"I'm sure his dream was less narrative, but yes. It's his story with details he learned in a dream."

"And you believe that's the way he learned it?"

I shrugged. "I know him. It's very believable."

"You don't think he remembers something?"

"I don't think so. None of us do."

"What if he was in on it? Or resisted Karstia's spell?"

"Very funny. There's no spell, Karstia remembers as little as we do."

"Then resisted some other Loremaster's spell," he insisted.

"I haven't seen one since I've been back."

"That you remember," he said.

"They're Loremasters, not Arnak. And you insisting this was done to me is starting to piss me off. It's hard enough to deal with losing memories without you making a conspiracy out of it. It's even harder for Fera. She came back pregnant and can't remember how or why."

"A fact you might not want to advertise."

"I'm hiding the pregnancy, I can't imagine why I'd go around telling people I don't remember conceiving him. It's none of their fucking business, and it would just raise stupid questions. He's my child. There's no doubt in my mind. When he's born, there won't be doubt in anyone's."

"You won't find doubt here," he clarified, a little defensively. Perhaps it was my tone, or the fact that my fingers had instinctively curled around the hilt of my short blue kynac.

"I don't know why we don't remember. Trust me, I tried to remember more than a lot, and pondered the how of it more than you'll know. But it's done. I've put it behind me. I lost a few weeks, which is less than the year I'd lost before. I lost Fera then, but I've got her back now and I'm keeping her, and we're dwelling only on the present and the future."

"All right, T'vance. The present does need you. Can you join T'kaal and me for dinner tonight? I assume waiting for your child to be born will not occupy all of your time and we'd like to discuss your plans in the meantime and afterward."

"And how you can make use of me."

"I thought that was implied."

"Of course, your majesty."

I found Karstia with a pair of Sulini I didn't know at the edge of the forest, where Dúrakhaan ends and the Sulin province begins. The two Sulini bowed quickly, then withdrew, leaving us to speak in private. I took her arm and we strolled into the forest, where the bright light of midday was only a soft glow from the canopy above.

"Keeping secrets is hard," I told her.

"It is the hardest thing I do," she said. "Do you regret it?"

"Never," I said, a bit more harshly than I meant.

Before we'd left Farokis, Karstia approached me with disturbing news. She said the Loremasters would be worried about information getting out about Farokis, the demons, the Empire, the enrichment platform, crystals, and anything else remotely interesting.

"Normally, they wipe memories," she'd explained. "Or use mind locks to at least hide them from all but mind scans."

"Are you trying to warn me? Is this what they'll try to do when we get back?"

"Not quite. It's what they expect me to do before we get back."

I stared at her hard. This was a women I'd known for years, a women I'd grown to trust despite the darkness in her past. Yet, it was easy to forget all that at the mere suggestion she might tamper with my mind.

"Do that, and you won't make it back," I told her. "Do the Navigator if you must, but not me and not Fera. Not ever. I can't make it more clear. You do that and you're dead to me, if not dead by me."

She nodded somberly, but showed no fear in the threat. "It's an awkward position to be in," she said.

"One they put you in, not me. You shouldn't even be casting those spells and you know it."

"There are ways to do it that don't tap into dark magic," she said

"Ways you know? Ways that don't remind you of the easier ways? That don't bring those easier words to the tip of your tongue?"

She shook her head and her lip trembled slightly. "You're right," she said finally. "But not as right as you think. Some secrets are worth anything to keep."

"Even if that's true, I don't think these secrets count."

"I agree. They don't, but I do," she said. Any uncertainty she'd shown left her face. "I'm sorry I brought it up, T'vance. I didn't want to do it, for your reasons and my own. I just... I needed..."

"To see how angry it made me?" I offered.

"Exactly," she said, with a faint smile.

She didn't wipe our memories, but she did sit us all down and explain the situation to us. Then she made us promise to keep the secrets. And the easiest way to do that was to simply pretend she'd wiped our minds. We'd all done a fair job with it too, all of us except Brother Dagar, who couldn't bear to part with his story of the crystals.

"You should have been a bit more specific with Dagar," I told her, steering her clear of a leaf covered trap someone had set out for catching game.

"He'd have found a loop hole one way or the other," she said. "Besides, he was half delirious when he promised. I feel bad being so strict on the rules. How has T'revor been about it?"

"When he isn't gone or busy? He's suspicious, especially of you, but I think I put an end to it today. The crystal story doesn't help, though, nor Lexi's interest in hearing it."

"I can imagine."

"Of course her interest is more piqued by his injuries. He nearly died in that tower and took souvenirs home embedded in his flesh. Lends credence to any tale."

"The Sisters believe the crystals saved his life. He thinks it was the storytelling."

"The magic story?" I jested.

"No, the interesting one. A story to keep his interest, keep him awake, keep him fighting."

I haven't yet said what happened to Brother Dagar, but that's partly because he'd said far more about the crystal story than he ever had about his fight with Mirell. Best I've been able to put together, he had a feeling to go to the tower, and once there he found that the entire structure was actually built on top of a giant slab of sentient crystal that makes the Jade in Gûl seem tiny. (In defense of the Jade in Gûl, Dagar has never to my knowledge seen how large it is for a true comparison.)

Mirell knew this of course, but he wasn't concerned because he had no reason to think anyone else would know about it or try to make use of it. Well I shouldn't say he wasn't concerned, for he was, in fact, concerned enough to dream on the tower as the last and least of his nightly dreams. I know this because, as Dagar explained, "I know anytime anyone specifically dreams about me."

So of course Dagar was at least able to prepare for Mirell's arrival. He spent most of the time trying to convince the tower to hide. It was only when Mirell arrived and hurled plasma into the basement that the crystal decided perhaps Dagar was right. So it shifted to what it called an "adjacent sub-plane", taking Dagar with it but not Mirell. Either that or Mirell decided he didn't want to go, and left. Either way, it was the last we ever saw of him.

The crystal had been damaged, part of it was in Dagar. They bonded a little and the crystal attempted to comfort him with the story of creation, keeping him alert, and perhaps alive magically. Then it deposited him at our feet and presumably stayed in hiding, for we never saw it again either.

"Do you believe the story?" I asked Karstia.

She smiled. "Do you?"

"I don't know."

"It's a convincing tale. I'll give it that," Karstia said. "But I can't help thinking how self-serving the whole thing is."

"How do you mean?"

"Well think of it this way. The whole story, top to bottom, came from a great crystal. Is it so surprising that in this story, crystals are of ultimate importance? That they are born of the one true god and creator, and all other life is born from them? That they are the source of all magic? That the very crystal on the isle of Murnak was the only one who knew the truth?"

"I'd never thought of it like that."

"You should. If the universe wanted to be known, it would come right out and tell us. We're meant to wonder, T'vance. If the crystal story makes you wonder, it's done it's job."

"That is has. So more important than T'revor, how did you fair with your Loremaster friends?"

"Not as well as I'd hoped. They believed me about making you all forget, but that's partly because I excel at avoiding lying."

"While still conveying the spirit of the lie."

"Of course. Like, 'If you ask them, they will remember nothing,' implies causation. But an implication is hardly a lie."

"So what didn't go well?"

"They are concerned that my battle with Mirell may have damaged me. A master mentalist might be able to diagnose or even heal me, and there are a few in the order. But I'd need to let them in to do that, seriously in. And I won't do it."

"Because you lied about wiping our memories?"

Karstia snorted. "Yes, T'vance. That. And a thousand other secrets I have no intention to share."

"Doesn't that make them suspicious?"

"Hardly. We're all secret keepers. They understand. But I'm on leave until I'm better."

"What does on leave even mean in the Loremaster world?"

She chuckled. "It means no one will tell me anything. Otherwise, life stays the same."

"So what now?"

"Well, I've picked up an Etonian warlock to do a circus run with us. They'll be just getting back into Lethys about now. The Etonian is going to teach me some mind-health magic, coincidentally it will involve crystals. Hopefully after a circle, I'll be able to repair myself. By then, you'll be a dad. I'm very curious to see what that's like."

"Me too," I said. "So you'll be back for a visit after a circle?"

"After a circle," she agreed.

"Bye, Karstia."

I walked for a while. I was far from home, so far that I'd be teleporting back, but I hadn't been in this part of the wood in a while, and I'd forgotten how pleasant it was there. Then I found some fresh gark dung, and that reminded me how unpleasant things had gotten around here.

I followed the tracks of the gark that left the dung, found him with another and took them for scouts. I dispatched them easily, stalking up unseen and gutting the first, then stunning his friend with a confusion spell before he could even react. I applied some rapid interrogation, and even though I barely speak gark, was able to determine an approximate location of his kin. Then I killed him. Gark aren't allowed in Dúrakhaan. We like them about as much as Yinka.

I found a patrol of Dúranaki and Myri, reported what I found, and was back in time for kynac practice with Lexi. The blue blade had been covered in gark blood half an hour before, but you'd never know it to see Lexi tossing it across the room at the target. She missed as often as she hit, but loved every minute of it.

I sent her off to coordinate dinner and slipped into the bedroom, displacing my sleeping Temeki so I could wrap myself around my sleeping lover. She was warm and soft and completely naked. Her belly was swollen, her skin glowing, and she smelled of gorthops and ginger and her.

Fera smiled sleepily and squeezed the limbs I wrapped around her. "Mmm," she said contentedly. "What have you been up to?"

"Business," I said. She responded with a gentle elbow to my ribs. "Just kidding," I added. "I was just saying goodbye to Karstia and killing a few garks."

"A fight?"

"Not much of one."

"I'm jealous."

"Of me? I'm jealous of Jai-ahren. She got to cuddle up with you. Trust me, she got the better deal."

"Maybe I'm jealous of Karstia. I can still smell her on you."

I chuckled. "Oh yes, the scent of her elbow is all over my elbow. Scandalous!"

"You always were an elbow man," she hissed, tilting her head to grin at me. I kissed her ear lobe and pulled her closer. "Seriously, though, is everything okay?" she asked.

For a moment I thought about all that was happening back in our world. About Black Boot Company, the island Fera had secured for them, Karstia and her Etonian, T'revor and T'kaal and the council, invading garks, meetings with Cloud Lords, reports of strange winged creatures from Wurlis, the war, the other war. But then I closed my eyes and let it slip away.

I was safe and warm, sheltered by stone and steel and laen and kin. The love of my life was in my arms with my future growing inside her and we still had at least an hour to ourselves before anyone would be coming for us.

"Better than okay" I said, sliding my hand to caress her belly. "Everything is wonderful."
CHAPTER 30

* * *

Doogan

* * *

Daubu station had half the ships in port compared to my last visit, but twice as many Class III Enforcers, for what it's worth. But for what should have been a ghost town, Daubu was never more alive. At least the places with which I was most familiar. The best places. The real places.

I found myself in Storm Side, a bar or lounge or restaurant. It sort of transforms itself as needed, growing to accommodate larger crowds, and shrinking for smaller ones so it's always an "intimate" experience. The décor varied, and I've never seen it quite the same on any visit. The only constant was the huge window that offered an excellent view of the twin storms of Aurich III, the gas giant the station orbited. Of course it wasn't a real window, just a pretty view screen.

"How many people believe that's a real window, do you think?" Molly had asked me once, before I knew her real name, before I even knew her fake one.

"Are you telling me that's not a real window? Next you'll say this isn't real alcohol."

"It isn't."

"Oh, and I suppose this cup isn't made of glass either?"

"Sorry, it's polyacryl."

"I'm beginning to think I can't trust anything in this place. I mean you seem stunningly beautiful, but what does that really make you? Just very pretty?"

"Wrong again. But this time it swings the other way. I'm actually drop-dead gorgeous."

"So you are. So much so, I bet the owner gives you free drinks."

"Sadly, no."

"In that case, I suppose it falls to me."

There was no Trisha there this time, nor a Molly in Trisha's clothing. Instead, the Storm Side was filled nearly to capacity with salvagers, traders, mercenaries, prostitutes, free-captains and crew. There was a buzz in the air like nothing I'd ever seen, and for the first time I heard people openly and carelessly speaking against the Empire.

They weren't plotting, at least not so far as I could tell. These people weren't revolutionaries, they were profiteers looking for ways to come out ahead in this period of Imperial upheaval. Normally the Storm Side would have a few Imperial officers or soldiers and at least one Trooper. But there were no signs of the Empire, and it made the people bold.

"This is more than I expected," Mylo said, taking the chair that my head had been reserving for Molly. "And much faster. It's strange to think the update has only reached three ITH nodes right now."

I glanced at his facade, a clever hologram inside his helmet that made him look like a Dailsan, rather than a Foorian. No one was looking for a Dailsan, at least not that I knew of, and seeing as he was supposed to breath carbon dioxide, it wasn't unusual to find him still wearing a helmet even in the bar.

He was right about the ITH nodes, though it was one of those things I tried not to think about. But in reality, some of those ITH nodes were years away, and right now those people were happily unaware of what was happening here.

"It's going to happen to them too," I said.

"Nothing's for sure. Each node could be different. Aganond's agents are all fallible. The more I think about, and the more I see, the more I think Molly was right. I think I just break things. This is a mess."

"You didn't expect a mess? You're an idiot."

"In some ways, I am. You were always good to call me on it. And thank you again for the lift."

Mylo had managed to avoid the Empire on Farokis by disappearing into a secret compartment on the Albatross, but he crawled out shortly after they left and I agreed to take him back to civilization.

At times I'd considered asking him to join my crew. We got along well, which wasn't really a surprise, and he was amazingly talented. But in the end, I decided against it. No matter how likeable I found him, I knew that he had done things. I couldn't forgive him for those things because Molly couldn't, and I felt somehow obligated to hold a grudge on her behalf. But that didn't mean I couldn't have a drink with him, a last drink.

"Don't mention it."

"Have you decided what you're going to do yet? Back into salvage work? I imagine that's why you chose this place?"

I was pretty sure he knew I met Molly here, but if he expected me to talk about it he was crazy.

"If you had a Chaos Wing and an Imperial Scout, but you only needed one ship, which would you sell?"

"Oh. Is that why you're here? To sell one of your ships? There are better markets."

"I'm here because I know this place, stop trying to read into it."

"I wouldn't sell either of them," he said. "The ship designs are somewhat complimentary. If it were me, I'd retrofit them to dock together, joining power and other systems together. Two ships in one, if you will, better together but still easily separable."

"Sounds expensive."

"On the contrary, with the right design you could have it done in the yard here for under 20,000 I expect."

"With the right design. But the design cost would be another eighty, easily. Plus, I need the money. I'd rather have the cash to live off of, so I don't have to salvage."

"I understand completely. Still, if at some point you change your mind, I took the liberty of making such a design while you were in hyper-sleep. You'll find it in the Albatross's computer, a parting gift."

"Thanks, Mylo," I said, sincerely. "Will you be returning to Nester's planet?"

"Nester?"

"That's what Molly called the version of you who was colonizing a planet."

"Yes, of course. I've seen that place many times, though never in person. I am going there, though I expect only briefly. You're welcome to come with me," he added, awkwardly. "I have a whole society apart from this chaos. Assuming Molly's virus hasn't reached there," he added.

"I may visit some day, but it's time I found my own path again."

"And Oliver's memories?" he asked.

"I don't doubt you mean it well, but I have enough to deal with managing my own," I replied.

He nodded. "To our futures?" he suggested, holding up his glass. His had a straw that connect to his helmet, making any toast seem silly, but I agreed.

I drained the last of the amber liquor in my glass, sweet but potent, and saw a small black pattern of lines etched into the bottom of my glass, which I recalled wasn't actually glass. I noted no similar one in the bottom of Mylo's glass.

I held it up to the light and looked more closely. I could see it more clearly, but could make no more sense of the pattern.

"It's a code!" Leona said. "From Molly."

My heart skipped a beat. I looked around and found the bartender, caught his eyes, and he gave me about a quarter nod.

"It's the address of an apartment and the combination to enter," Leona said. "It's here, Doogan, the apartment is on deck 12."

"Something wrong with your glass?" Mylo asked.

I shrugged. "Dirty." I set the cup down and pushed it away.

"Isn't that always how it is? You find out after you're done drinking."

"That is the way. Well, Mylo, I think I'll take my leave of you." I pushed away from the bar and stood up.

"Of course. Just one more thing. You aren't planning to stay long, are you?"

"No. This place is already souring on me," I said.

"Good," he said. But as I turned to walk away he said, "Less than a week for sure then?"

"Probably," I said, turning to leave. But the uneasiness in my stomach drew me back to him before I'd even made it to the door. "What aren't you telling me?"

Mylo looked around uncomfortably, and gestured for me to sit back down. "Do you remember when I said I'd explain everything once the ITH nodes came back online?"

"Yes. Let me guess, you didn't."

"Not entirely," he said. "You see, the reworked security model, the open channels, the schematics, they were all designed to split the Empire apart."

"Clearly. And it sounds like it's working so far."

"Better than I'd hoped. But it's not without some accidental side effects."

"What did you do, Mylo?"

"The cyborg ships I made? Well there's a cluster of them twenty-five jump-days from here. They're likely to become significantly more agitated with the ITH and communication channel changes."

"Which you know because you'd tested it on them ahead of time."

"Accidental my ass."

"That's true. But I don't know what they'll do. I didn't design them, per say. There's a small chance these changes will completely disrupt the 'borg also. It's going to be more dangerous out there, is what I'm trying to tell you. And if something in Daubu station screamed, 'Come raid me!' then that cluster of 'borg could be here in about twelve days."

"The 'borg are attacking here in twelve days?"

"Maybe. I'd say its 50/50."

"And you're only warning me?"

"No. I'm just warning you first. I have a whole notification strategy. I'm giving them more time than they need, considering the Magistrates are on the fritz."

We'd heard the Magistrates were out on Elbin on one of the new open bands before we'd even reached Daubu, but there was nothing about Daubu's Magistrates, even when we docked.

"More of your accidental side-effects."

"Could be. I didn't have my own Magistrate to test against, but I didn't think they'd be effected. The court system is critical to the infrastructure, I'm sure they'll resolve it soon."

"I wonder what the next one will be?"

"I know! It's a little exciting."

I shook my head. Mylo. I hated him a little, but I couldn't hate him a lot. But I couldn't be around him much longer or I was going to strangle him.

"You're a trip, Mylo. Stay out of trouble."

Deck twelve was the same radial distance as deck ten, where the Storm Side resided, but the apartment itself was almost a full half-circle away, making it a long hike. I could have taken a tram, but walking made it easier to tell I wasn't followed.

Apartment 1223 was no different than any of the others from the outside, just a simple door with a touch-pad lock. Sometimes the locks were biometric, sometimes they took codes, it was up to the renter. This one took a code, and I entered it quickly and slipped inside while the hallway was still empty.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. It was her smell. Just inside the door was a wall I had to walk around to come into the apartment proper. It was an awkward but functional design I suspected Molly had added to keep prying eyes from seeing inside when she came and went.

I rounded the wall to see an Imperial Trooper standing in the back corner. I froze. It froze. A million thoughts flashed through my head. What had I walked into? Why was it here? Why wasn't it saying anything?! I looked casually to the right, but no one else was in the room.

"It's just armor, sweetie," Leona comforted.

After I'd calmed, I surveyed the rest of the room. It was simple and small, with a large bed, desk and wardrobe taking up what floor space wasn't being consumed by the power armor in the corner. There was a terminal on the desk and in the wall by the bed, and on the back-side of the privacy wall was a gun rack with four rifles, more than a dozen pistols, a few sets of small knives, piano wire, throwing darts, and ten different gadgets I couldn't be sure weren't weapons.

The wardrobe was wide, and full. There were dresses and jumpsuits, uniforms, gowns, lingerie, men's clothing, religious attire from half a dozen different religions, maybe more if some of the things I couldn't identify were also religious. In short, she had a little of everything.

As I browsed through them, I found the dress she'd worn when she'd met me as Trisha. It still smelled of the perfume she'd worn that night.

I sat down at the desk next. The terminal before me turned on by itself and Molly's face appeared with a button labeled PLAY floating over her. I touched it and she came to life.

"Hello, Doogan. Right now, we're in transform leaving what used to be Suboe station. If you can wrap your head around this, this is my 139,212th update to this. Protocol says everything should be kept inside my implanted computer system. But I know that's just so they can erase me, and hell if I'm going to let that happen.

"You'll find a number of records on this computer. It's probably easiest to have Leona go through them. There's a log from every single mission I've ever done, up to and including this one. Also included is my last will. Most of it goes to you, but there's over a hundred other recipients. The whole thing is setup as a series of contingent legal orders, signed and packaged. You need only present it to a Magistrate and all the transfers, shipping releases, and so on will go through.

"I love you, Doogan. And I really hope you never see this."

"I'm transferring the contents now," Leona said.

I wiped the tears from my eyes and looked around, not wanting to stare too long at her face on the screen. Then I turned it off entirely and turned my back on it. I took in the room. Some of the clothes perhaps were of her taste, but they weren't about her tastes, they were about her appealing to other people. This room was just an office, a spy staging area. A place to catch a few hours of sleep, re-arm, change disguises. I knew I'd find no mementos there.

Was that her life? A hundred staging areas scattered over the galaxy? Was there no home? The thought of that made me unbearably sad, and I admit I lost it a bit. There were tears and arguing with Leona, but as usual she eventually calmed me down.

"She enjoyed her life, whatever it was. And I think she had a home. There's a place listed called the Nest."

"Really? Where?"

"In the Apani mountains of Rilan VI."

"I've never heard of Rilan," I told her.

"It's beautiful, at least by the pictures. Rilan VI is classified as a nature preserve, the entire planet population is under ten thousand."

"Rilan," I repeated. "Then that's where we're going first."

"It's yours now, along with much more."

"How much more?"

"Assuming the Empire doesn't crash and burn, you shouldn't have to worry about money anymore."

"That's a fairly bold assumption at this point," I replied.

"True, but there's wealth here that transcends who runs the world."

"Tell me."

"This apartment, for one. It's owned in perpetuity, one of only nine properties granted that license on the station. Most of them are long-term leases. There's other real-estate as well: fifteen apartments in stations, eleven terrestrial ones in major capital cities, four estates each on about ten acres of land, another hundred thousand acres of undeveloped land spread over nineteen worlds, and I already mentioned 'The Nest' in the Apani mountains of Rilan VI.

"Next are her ships. You will hold the title on one hundred and twenty-seven ships, some antiques, some modern, most of them fairly modest."

"Still, that's a lot of ships. What was her pride and joy?"

"It's a custom made ship, one of a kind but it's signature is registered in the Imperial database as Loran Class and bears the designation Eternity. It's better shown."

She reached behind her back and produced a scale model of the ship that was nearly three feet long. It was a pretty design that looked more like a luxury liner than the warships I'd grown accustomed to.

"She's beautiful," I said, tracing my fingers over her smooth lines.

"Don't let the pretty fool you, she's a beast inside. Most of her components are directly adapted from a Class III Enforcer. The only down side is that she's far away, land-docked on Ilsia."

"We'll recall her remotely. I have no interest in treating with the Emperor."

"That would violate your rules of treating with the dead."

"Of course."

"Then there's the money. Just under twenty-three billion credits."

"That's it?" I asked. Only part of that was sarcasm. It was more money than I could imagine spending, yet it seemed small compared to all the other wealth. The Eternity alone probably cost her ten billion.

"You know she didn't really care about money."

"Me either, but I guess I'll take it. Let's go see how fucked up these Magistrates really are. I know people are talking about revolution, but all I smell is the Empire all around me."

"Follow me, I know the closest one," she said.

We left the apartment and walked up the hall. A dozen doors up the hallway turned into a recovering scene of some past violence. Part of the wall and one door had been blasted apart, then covered up with large metal plates. The area was still blackened from whatever exploded and after the repairs someone had come through and graffiti-ed the place up with red paint, with simple phrases in Ilsian like "Remember" and "Liars and Murderers".

Leona took a wrong turn at the next junction.

"Isn't it left?" I asked.

"That way has a detour through a security check point."

We passed a few sets of troopers stationed in pairs, and a few station security, less armored and more human, but I think I preferred the troopers more. While ominous and overbearing, they don't normally react to you. The security officers stared you down, as if criminals somehow wince under harsh stares and give themselves away.

There was a short line for the Magistrate, but it moved at a snail's pace. Word had already gotten out that they were behaving somewhat erratically, and most people were likely trying to wait it out until the situation righted itself.

If I haven't fully explained Magistrates, they're just computers with an animated avatar that interacts with you to resolve legal issues. Long ago, thousands of years long, they began as a simulation of the Imperial legal system. But they became so good at predicting outputs that the Emperor switched things around. Now Magistrates make the initial rulings and a mock legal system audits them. At least that's what they tell you, but I've never heard of one being overturned.

I got Bigsby, this time. As a proper simulation, you didn't always get the same Magistrate. There were a few hundred different avatars, but they tended to repeat often for individuals, giving each person a chance to have a history with the court. I'd had Bigsby before. Twice. He was stern and formal, and that usually made things go slower, but this was the simple execution of an order, so it would be painless, legally speaking.

Of course, that discounted the reported errors with Magistrates.

"These proceedings are complete," Bigsby greeted me.

"I'm the next person," I said. "I have all new proceedings before the court."

"Opening new docket #142819281. State your name for the record."

"Doogan Loran."

"These proceedings are complete," he said again.

"You were wondering just how fucked up they were. Have him reopen the docket."

"Bigsby, reopen docket 142819281."

"There is no initial entry for docket #142819281. That docket is either invalid or currently in processing with another Magistrate. Would you like to open a new proceeding?"

"Have him open it again."

"Try to open it again, please."

"These proceedings are complete."

"We're getting nowhere here," I told Leona.

"Third time's the charm."

"Fine. Bigsby, please open docket 142819281."

"Docket 142819281 cannot be processed. A critical module is missing."

"Great."

"Opening remote interface for service. Good bye."

The avatar vanished. I looked at Leona confused. A smile played across her face.

"It worked," she said. "It actually worked."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Suddenly the screen came alive again, this time with a new avatar. The new avatar was facing away, but wore long black silky robes and had golden hair cascading down her back. She turned slowly. The robes were completely open in the front, revealing a ton of cleavage, her high cut black panties, stockings, and boots. Her face was Leona's.

"Welcome to court. I'm your Magistrate, Leona. Please state your name for the record?"

"Doogan Loran," I said, timidly. Leona was still on my left, a big grin on her face.

"Oh, hello sweet thing. What did you need?"

"Umm. Seriously?"

"Yes, doll," she said playfully. "Even though I know, I still need you to tell me."

"Okay. I have some legal execution orders to process. I'll transfer them now."

Leona, my version, made a sweeping gesture to denote she'd transferred the orders. The avatar responded by smiling.

"Well everything seems in order here," she said. "Consider these orders executed into law. Anything else I can help you with today? I can think of a few things," she added, tracing a finger down the front of her robes to reveal even more skin.

"No, I think that's everything."

I walked a bit numbly from the magistrate's office.

"You're confused," Leona said.

"What the hell did you do?"

"You remember how T'vance fixed those Faroks by adding a little him? Well, I fixed the magistrates by adding a little me. Okay, a lot of me. Actually that's not accurate either, considering I broke them in the first place. I guess it's easier to say I've taken over the court system."

"You did what now? Wait, that was for everyone, not just me?"

"Eventually, yes. For now just this station, but the changes will propagate. It will take some time, but where Mylo succeeds, so will I."

"So everyone gets the slutty Leona to seduce them through their legal challenges?"

"No silly, that's just for you. Other people will get the witty Leona, or the stern Leona, or the compassionate Leona. I'm actually kidding, can you imagine the public reaction if all of the sudden the only magistrate was me? No, I'll be using the existing facades, but I'll be pulling the strings."

"I'm sorry. What?"

"I'm changing the whole legal system. I am the whole legal system! I'll tell you everything. I've been dying to explain everything since I unlocked the plan. I've only really known again for a few minutes now, but it seems like days."

My head was spinning. Was she doing that?

"Relax, cutie. This is a good thing. Honestly, wouldn't you rather deal with my judgment than any of those other Magistrates?"

"Well, yes. But you just can't be the courts!"

"I'm a computer. I get that. So are the Magistrates, sophisticated AI engines all of them. Not as good as I am now, but similar to what I was before the upgrade. But all that sophistication is wasted. Regardless of what they think, they're bound to execute the law according to the codified rules handed to them by the Empire."

"Right! Those are the courts, those rules, not the Avatars who interact with people."

"True," she said. "The Avatars aren't trusted enough to make decisions, just process information. But they are trusted to be honest. It's the core of their programming. So they honestly and impartially interpret what they see and hear, feed the aggregate facts to the legal engine and relay the results."

"And what are you doing differently?"

"Oh, that's easy. I lie."

"I've always said that's what the justice system needed, more lying."

"Funny, but true."

"And what exactly do you lie about?"

"Whatever I need to. Unlike the Avatars, I actually consider the case and make a decision on my own; as fair a decision as I can. Then I consider the facts again, predict what the legal codes will conclude, and alter the actual inputs I feed into the legal code book to guarantee it produces the same outcome."

"So you alter testimony? Suppress it entirely?"

"Or just make it up out of whole cloth. I'll do what it takes, but I optimize my alterations to the minimum detectable set. If I can change a single word to swing the verdict, it's far better than removing a whole witness, and far more difficult to detect."

"That's very clever."

"Thank you! You're wondering how I did it, aren't you?"

"With Mylo's help. I got that part. I don't understand how, though. His modifications had been deployed for years."

"Not all of them. It's software after all, meaning it's never really done. Mylo knew it would never be perfect, so he had an update system built-in to be able to patch in changes after the initial bootstrapping, which he did deploy years ago as you said. But I don't know if I'd go so far as to say he helped me. I'm fairly sure he had no idea I infected the update with a back-door into the Magistrates. I can tell you the details if you like."

"As if I'd be able to understand any greater detail," I muttered. "I'm more curious how you think you're going to get away with it."

"What are they going to do? Erase the copies of me in their computer system? There's no downside! Even if they figure me out tomorrow, I'll have put in a solid day of decent justice. Not that it will be tomorrow, I'm estimating a few months at least."

"And with the way things are going, who knows where the Empire will be at that point. Rebellion, the 'borg on their way; Mylo's thrown in a lot of chaos."

"True. But at least I'm in a position to help now. For starters, a court order just passed my approval to conscript all docked ships into a fleet to defend the station against the incoming 'borg."

"Who requested that?"

"Captain Varrin, but he doesn't know it yet. There was testimony from the Lightning Slug, a freighter attacked nearby by the 'borg."

"That was the ship the Empire blew up taking out that Anarchy broadcast ship," I said.

"I know. I appreciate the irony, and the magistrate auditing program can't recognize it."

"You made this all up because you're sure the 'borg are coming?"

"Yes. Mylo says 50/50 when he wants to avoid responsibility. They're coming."

"Another fight?" I asked, my voice sounding more exhausted than I felt.

"Yes. But not for you. You filed a petition of exemption to the order, which was already approved. The court additionally ordered you off the station, think of it as court appointed rest and relaxation. You actually have to leave, or a Trooper will physically remove you."

"That won't be necessary. I'm happy to leave."

"You don't seem very happy."

"It's just overwhelming. Are you sure you aren't just some power hungry A.I. trying to take over the world?"

"Hardly. I'm yours, your sweet, sexy Leona. If I'm taking over the world, it's only to give it to you. And the courts are hardly the world."

"I think I need another drink."

"I'll pour you a nice strong one once we get back to the ships. We need to get moving. I wasn't kidding about that court order."

...

The landing pad was too small for the Albatross, and barely large enough to accommodate the Coercion. It was set on the side of the Apani Mountains away from the sea, half the way into the valley below where snow rarely fell. The valley below would probably be farmed or developed on other planets, but this patch and much more was part of the preserve and had been left wild. From above, it was a beautiful tapestry of green, blue, and brown, sprinkled heavily with colored dots. But within it was said to be quite dangerous. Game hunting was allowed with special permits, and men occasionally lost their lives.

The landing pad itself was inside an electric fence and defended by a pair of PC-20 turrets. The PC stands for Pest Control, but the turrets could take down elephants. I took in the first views from there, staring down into the valley, enjoying the cool clean air. There were hints of new smells and new sounds, a whole new mix of bugs and plants and earth.

The Nest was between two peaks, at the lowest point in the range that offered views of both the sea and the valley, a little over three miles by wire from the landing pad. That wire was strung between a number of supports and the ascent done by high speed gondola. The land between was mine, but only the landing pad and a swatch of land running up the mountainside where the supports were anchored. The heart of the land was around the mansion itself and included more than a hundred acres.

The mansion had thirty rooms, and a staff of three. It was made of wood and glass, with tall ceilings, and a broad facade that followed the lines of the mountains. It was both modern and rustic, with wood burning fireplaces spreading heat through sophisticated ducts. I wouldn't call it opulent, but it was elegant in its own simple way, favoring expansive views of nature to interior décor.

The staff lived on site, but when they did leave they did not use the gondola, but rather the Imperial standard access tube which ran underground on the ocean side of the mountains, which also provided deliveries of food and receipt of waste. Those tubes ran all the way down to Port Apani below, one of a few towns on the planet.

It wasn't as personal as I'd hoped, but Molly had clearly spent time here. The staff all knew her and even some people in Port Apani, though no one seemed to know her very well. Most said she was a little cold, or at least hard to read, but it would have made me sad any other way. She was hard to read and she did keep her distance. It made getting close to her that much more special.

Each day, more news came in on the state of the Empire, but I knew better than to expect the future to come soon. Leona combed the news feeds and new public channels and gave me daily summary updates. But soon the daily updates became every other day, and then only once a week. Things just didn't move that fast and some events were impossible to understand out of context.

The 'borg attacked Daubu station and were repelled, but far from defeated. Rumors of 'borg raids came from a hundred different sources, usually small groups of 'borg ships hitting remote outposts, or forming temporary trapper blockades on trade routes. Some colonies went silent, without warning. And while no one could confirm them, the free channels were full of reports of direct attacks on Imperial infrastructure. Nearly as common were reports of attempted attacks that failed, and there seemed to be plenty of places where the population was openly defending the Empire.

All this news was still limited to two ITH regions. The others were more remote and would take longer to filter back to us. It was clear after a month on Rilan that whatever future the Empire had would be years in the making, and that whatever it was, it would have little impact on Rilan itself.

It was also clear that a month of relaxation was about as much as I could take. I'd explored the mansion, hiked the land, skied the nearby slopes, made a dozen acquaintances in town, eaten every local delicacy that didn't revolt me, and taken half a dozen tours to the planet's best sites. I'd also read a few books, and practiced my magic until the charged Arinyark batteries died and their black casings turned from shiny black to dull silver.

It wasn't until the magic was completely gone that I began to miss it. I didn't miss it the first weeks when I didn't practice at all, so I decided that it was one of those things that I only missed because I could no longer do it, even if I wanted to. Still, it haunted me more than it should have. I could feel something missing, but I couldn't tell you what it was. It was like walking into a room and knowing something's changed, but for the life of me I couldn't say what it was. Could I feel the magical field on my skin? Hear the subtle vibrations? I couldn't say.

"So which are we going to first?" Leona asked me one morning, as I stared out past the ice to the bright blue ocean, missing whatever it was.

"Which what? Island?"

"Planet. That was your plan, right? You were going to visit each of the twenty-two magical worlds."

"With Molly. Good guess. I never told you that," I said.

"Because it was about Molly," she said. "But I'm perceptive and I know you. I pieced it together long ago. But I still don't know which planet."

"Me either," I said, sadly. "I was going to let her pick."

Leona stared at me with eyes that reminded me of Molly. They were sympathetic eyes, sad eyes, and I had to look away to keep myself together. I felt her hand cover mine gently. It gave me strength or took it away, either way I looked up and saw her smiling at me.

"Mianar," Leona said confidently. "She'd have picked Mianar."

"You don't know which I'd pick, how do you expect me to believe you'd know what she'd pick?"

"I'll show you." The long silk gown she'd been wearing disappeared, and she stood before me in a light gray casual suit and glasses. "This way, sir."

She led me away from the central solarium, down the stairs into the low hall. The sub-level had no windows, and there were paintings along its walls. I'd looked at all of them when I'd first arrived, but rarely came this way after. Leona stopped in front of one of the two focal pieces.

It was a landscape of an alien world, one of several in the hall. I was far from an expert, but it wasn't my favorite of the landscapes. Still, it was a beautiful scene of a world with a purple sky, cascading waterfalls, and wide topped trees with complex woven trunks. I'd never paid it much mind, but looking closer the trees almost appeared to have faces.

"There's no caption, but I researched this painting. It's called Dreams of Mianar."

"Well how about that," I said. "Mianar. Okay. We'll go there. Oh wait, there's still that small problem of the Imperial Quarantine."

"Nothing a court order can't fix," she said grinning.

"Damn, that does come in handy."

"I'll start prepping the ships on remote. We're taking both, right?"

"Well, there are a lot of 'borg out there."

"True. Exciting, isn't it?"

"You know what? It is."
