Read The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds Online

Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds (26 page)

BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
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He left the little galley behind, and headed for the only part of the base known to him that he still hadn’t checked: the sickbay and the docking area. Llannat was a medic, after all, besides being an Adept. She could have decided to double-check for anything useful the on-load might have left behind.
He was still a corner or so away from the Entiboran room and the entrance to the sickbay when he heard the noise: a faint, high hum at the topmost end of his hearing, mixed with the whistle of parting air and the crack and tap of wood on wood. He halted, frozen, in the darkness, and felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
He’d heard sounds like that before, in a clearing on Nammerin, and he knew what they meant. He still dreamed about that night sometimes: the heavy wet-mulch smell of the rain forest, the poisoned blood pounding in his ears, and outside the downed aircar power surging and flaring in auroras against the dark as two staves met and parted and met again. Llannat Hyfid had fought for his life that night, and the Adept was—he had thought—the only person now on the asteroid base who carried a staff and knew how to fight with one.
D’Caer
? Ari wondered.
Escaped
?
He began a slow stalk down the passageway toward the sound of the fight.
As soon as he rounded the corner he saw them, a changing pattern of light framed by one of the tall archways that led into the Entiboran room. The reverse side of the room’s elaborate holoprojection gave him a view partially obscured by greenery and the spaces between the tall windows, but the illusory moonlight flooding the long chamber showed the two moving figures clearly enough. The light that played about them—vivid green and deep, almost indigo violet—was all he needed to see the rest.
For a moment he tensed, weighing how best to move in weaponless on a duel where both fighters were armed with more than just the staves they bore. Then he saw that the duelists were Llannat and the Professor, and that they both wore the dark trousers and loose white shirt that made up a part of an Adept’s formal blacks. In the clear emerald light of her power, Llannat’s face wore an expression that Ari knew all too well; he’d seen it before on his brother’s face back on Galcen, when Owen sparred with Master Errec Ransome for pleasure’s sake.
The two Adepts fought down the length of the room, the Professor wielding an unfamiliar, shorter staff in an odd one-handed style, and Llannat using the traditional two-handed grip. The auras around her and the Professor grew brighter, until the whole room shone with dancing streamers of colored light.
Llannat swung her weapon in sweeping figure-eight loops. By the intense, unnatural light, Ari could see how the sweat that dampened her shirt had plastered the white fabric to her torso, and how the muscles of her back and shoulders worked to put power behind the blows. The Professor deflected each stroke with easy grace, wasting no motion as he parried, and the violet light around him rivaled in brightness the medic’s corona of vivid green … but he still gave ground.
The younger Adept pushed her opponent farther and farther across the room. Then, without warning, all movement stopped. The Professor had his shoulders pressed to the wall. Llannat stood facing him, her staff laid across the Entiboran’s throat and her whole body poised to press the last blow home.
The Professor said something—he actually appeared to be laughing, for the first time since Ari had met him—and lowered his weapon. Llannat’s aura faded a second later, and the candles in the chandelier overhead flamed into sudden fantasmagorical life as the two Adepts embraced.
Ari turned away. He was not, he told himself, such an inexperienced fool that he would mistake honest comradeship for a highly unlikely passion. He and Issgrillikk had clasped each other by the shoulders in much the same fashion often enough, after a hard-fought bout at hand-to-hand under Ferrdacorr’s watchful eye.
But still, he found himself unwilling to watch any longer. “
Power knows its own
,” he remembered his brother saying once, and like most of the things his brother said, it had turned out to be true. As long as there were Adepts in the galaxy, Llannat Hyfid wasn’t going to need anything else. Certainly not the friendship of a powerless Galcenian medic, even one who’d been fostered on Maraghai.
The game room had lost what little appeal it had held for Ari in the first place, and he made his way back through the darkened hallways to his bedchamber. His valet robot was still there when he got back. Its lights blinked as the door snicked shut, but like a good servant it asked no questions. Ari threw himself onto the bed without bothering to remove his night-robe, and pushed the button that brought the room lights up to “dim.”
After a while he said, “Do you think you could find me a drink to help me get to sleep?”
“Of course, sir. What would you prefer?”
“I don’t care,” Ari said. “Whatever’s handy, as long as it’s strong.”
“Understood, sir,” said the robot. It trundled out the door, and returned shortly with a heavy cut-glass tumbler on a silver tray. A deep amber liquid filled the tumbler to .within an inch of the rim.
“Thanks,” Ari said, picking up the tumbler. He took a careful swallow, and then set to work finishing the rest.
“That was good,” he said a few minutes later, contemplating the thick bottom of the empty tumbler. “But I’m not sleepy just yet. I think I’ll try another round.”
 
Harsh light streamed in through the glassweave curtains and beat against Ari’s protesting eyes. Somewhere outside his skull, a maniac was playing reveille on the door buzzer while the robot announced, in dulcet tones, “Your clothing is ready, sir. My series-mates report that the others are already awake.”
“All right, all
right
.” He sat on the edge of the bed for a minute and then stood up, swaying a little. “Death and damnation … open the door and let whoever the hell that is come on in so they’ll shut up.”
Ari stumbled off in what he hoped was the direction of the bathroom, the rumpled night-robe flapping around him. He emerged several minutes later, dressed in the garments that a blessedly silent robot had handed him one piece at a time, and found Nyls Jessan sitting in the chair by the window.
The Khesatan, dressed for the upcoming journey in a free-spacer’s loose shirt and trousers, was smiling a little as he looked out at the holoprojected garden. He half-turned at the sound of footsteps, and his eyes widened. “My word, Ari—what hit you?”
“About a liter of something or other that one of the Professor’s robots found for me,” Ari told his friend. “And for space’s sake, Nyls, have some respect for the dead.”
“You got drunk?”
Ari nodded, and wished he hadn’t. “It took some work, but I managed.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Ari turned to the valet robot. “Where’s the blaster I brought with me?”
“Right here, sir.”
Ari blinked at the weapon and holster the valet robot held out in one mechanical hand. “Ah, yes … I see it. Thank you.” He belted on the blaster and turned to Jessan. “You said the others were waiting?”
The Khesatan smiled. “No, I didn’t. And you forgot your boots.”
Ari sat back down on the edge of the bed with a curse. “Where is everybody?” he asked, as he pulled on first one boot and then the other. “Still having breakfast?”
“Llannat was drinking cha’a the last I saw her,” said Jessan, “and the Professor was making a final check on something or other. Beka went back to get into her Tarnekep gear, and I drew the short straw.”
Ari glowered at him. “There’s nothing like friends—thank the universe for small favors.” He stood up again. “Now, shall we go?”
Jessan rose lithely from his chair. “Of course.”
In the docking bay,
Warhammer
and
Defiant
waited side by side on the deckplates. Even through his headache, Ari could hear the low hum of the active engines, and sense a readiness in the air that hadn’t been there before.
“Still the same matchup?” he asked Jessan.
“That’s right. You and Llannat with Beka in the
‘Hammer
, and me in
Defiant
to help watch the autopilot and bring the Professor cups of hot cha’a during the tough parts.”
Ari grunted. “Sounds like a hard assignment—think you can handle it?”
“I’ll push myself,” the Khesatan assured him. “Good morning, Professor.”
“Good morning, Commander.”
The grey-haired Entiboran stood next to the lowered ramp of the Magebuilt scoutship. He still wore the black trousers and white shirt he’d worn when Ari had last seen him. The short, black and silver staff he now carried tucked under his belt. Ari saw Jessan’s eyebrows rise at the sight of it, but the Khesatan didn’t say anything beyond “Are the captain and Mistress Hyfid here yet?”
“Mistress Hyfid is already aboard the
’Hammer,”
said the Entiboran. “And Captain Portree is arriving now.”
Ari looked back the way they had come, and saw the sickbay doors closing behind a figure he hadn’t seen since that first meeting off Nammerin.
Long brown hair queued back and tied off with black velvet ribbons; white spidersilk shirt frothing into pure lace at the neckcloth and the ruffled cuffs; heavy government-surplus blaster holstered low and strapped down onto one thigh—from up close, Tarnekep Portree looked like nothing so much as a foppish piece of very rough trade. Ari searched the features of that androgynous but extremely menacing young gentleman for some trace of his sister Beka, and found none there.
“Good morning, Professor,” said Tarnekep. The Mandeynan’s gaze flicked over to the other two men in the docking bay. “Ari … Jessan.”
“Morning,” said Ari.
Jessan only nodded.
A corner of Tarnekep’s mouth turned up for a second in what might have been a smile. “Is everything ready?”
“Since yesterday evening, Captain,” said the Professor.
“Then let’s go. If everything works, I’ll see you on Darvell.”
“And what if something doesn’t work?” Jessan’s voice had a note in it Ari couldn’t quite place.
“If something doesn’t?” Tarnekep shrugged. “Then this is it, I suppose.”
“Like hell it is,” said Jessan harshly.
Ari stared—the words and tone were a sharp contrast to Jessan’s usual flow of light chatter—and was still staring when his friend took a sudden step forward and grabbed Portree by the shoulders.
“Get yourself killed on the way in,” the Khesatan said, “and I swear I’ll never forgive you.”
He pulled Tarnekep toward him into a hard embrace and a prolonged, almost desperate kiss. After what seemed to Ari an unconscionably long time, the two figures broke apart. Jessan turned and strode up
Defiant’s
ramp without looking back.
Tarnekep watched him go. Then—still wearing that maddening half-smile—the Mandeynan nodded to the Professor.
“Well, we’re off,” he said, and started for
Warhammer
at a brisk pace that was almost a run.
Ari caught up with him in a couple of long steps. “Was that last bit really necessary?” he growled.
The single bright blue eye and that unnerving eye patch looked at him for a few seconds from a thin-featured and deadly face, and then Beka chuckled.
“No, it wasn’t necessary … but it sure was fun. Come on, big brother. Let’s go set Darvell on fire.”
 
H
IGH OVER the Darvelline system, so high that the central star and all its planets were only brighter spots against the backdrop of the galaxy, the substance of realspace altered for a second as
Warhammer
popped out of hyper.
“There it is,” Beka said, regarding the starfield before her with satisfaction. “Are we getting anything on the sensors?”
“
Defiant
entered realspace about a second behind us,” replied Ari from the copilot’s seat.
“We should be getting her on visual soon … ah, there she comes.” Beka smiled as one of the specks of light outside the cockpit window grew into the distant shape of the Magebuilt scout. “Are we hearing anything?”
“The Professor sent us a quick-burst message on a tight beam as soon as he came through.”
“Play it back.”
Ari toggled the audio-replay switch. “Replaying now.”
“Emission Control Alpha,” said the console speaker. “Activating cloaking. Follow me close. See you on the ground.”
The transmission broke off short on the last syllable.
“Are we going to reply?” asked Ari.
“No,” Beka said. “He won’t be expecting it. Besides, somebody might hear us.”
“This far out?”
“You never can tell,” she said. “Darvell has its own fleet. Who knows how far out they make a habit of listening?”
Beyond the cockpit window,
Defiant
wavered and faded from view. Only a blurred and distorted patch of starfield remained to mark the scoutship’s position.
“There she goes,” Ari said. “All our sensor screens read clear.”
Beka nodded without taking her eyes away from the cockpit window. “Good. Then so should everybody else’s.”
Out against the starfield, the faint blurry patch began to move toward the planetary system. Beka pushed the
‘Hammer
to the left and down, adding forward vector as she did so in order to bring the freighter closer to
Defiant’s
position. When the distortion covered ninety degrees of her field of view forward, she slowed the
’Hammer
again to match speeds with the scoutship.
“And that’s all there is to it,” she said. “As long as we keep the same distance, we can share
Defiant’s
cloak and sneak right in behind her.”
“It’s going to be a long slow sneak at this rate,” said Ari. “And hard to do on visual alone.”
She smiled. “Don’t worry, big brother. Between us we can handle it.”
Ari muttered something under his breath in the Selvaur speech he’d learned from Ferrdacorr. The comment—what Beka could catch of it—sounded unflattering; she ignored him and flipped on the
’Hammer’s
internal comm.
“Let’s see how the rest of the ship is doing. Mistress Hyfid, is everything all right back aft?”
“Everything’s just fine, Captain Rosselin-Metadi,” came the reply from the common room. “Smooth as spidersilk.”
“Good,” said Beka. “Let’s hope it all stays that way … gotten any anonymous notes lately?”
She heard a faint laugh. “Not even a picture postcube, Captain. Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Beka. “I just love surprises. For now, Mistress, if you want to see what we’re going to be up against, you can flip down the bulkhead viewer.”
She nodded toward Ari as she spoke. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him begin punching in the codes that would translate the sensor data to a visual signal and feed it to the common-room screen.
Even this far up, the Darvell system made a spectacular sight: planets and moons and a yellow dwarf sun, flung out against interstellar night like jewels on black velvet. But as the
’Hammer
and
Defiant
drew closer, the picture changed. Dim, half-seen shapes of cargo carriers appeared, shuttling among the system’s uninhabited planets to pick up raw materials for Darvell’s ring of massive orbiting factories. Along a narrow corridor guarded by heavy warships, freighters moved to and from their jump points in regular array. More fighting craft orbited the planet itself. A thick layer of satellites circled beneath the patrolling warships—weather and power and communications satellites in familiar domestic configurations, but also the darker shapes of spy-eyes and weapons platforms.
The Master of Darvell took no chances.
 
On board the
’Hammer,
Beka took the conn for the final approach. As her brother had predicted, the run-in to Darvell had been a long one—three Standard days at low speed, with close maneuvering the whole way. She and Ari had stood alternating watches, four hours on and four hours off, during the realspace passage.
Defiant,
normally a one-man craft, had also carried a double crew for this run. Nyls Jessan had never mentioned before that he knew his way around a spaceship’s controls, but Beka hadn’t been surprised to learn that he did.
“I’m qualified,” he’d protested, during that last dinner back at the asteroid base. “That’s all.”
“Like you’re only ‘qualified’ with a blaster?” she had asked him, remembering his cool accuracy back in the firefights on Pleyver.
He had the grace to look apologetic. “In this case, Captain, all ‘qualified’ means is that I’ve got a license.’
“A license is more than Mistress Hyfid’s got,” she told him. “You’re crewing on
Defiant.”
Beka hadn’t expected, at the time, to miss having the Khesatan around for the hyperspace transit.
Better get used to missing him,
she told herself.
Remember, you have to give him back to the Space Force when this is over.
Stifling a sigh that threatened to turn into a yawn, she shook her head impatiently and squinted at the control panel readouts. This low-velocity, follow-the-leader approach was hard enough as it was. She didn’t need thoughts like that to distract her.
Defiant
led them in slow and easy, making planetfall just before dawn in the mountains of Darvell’s northern hemisphere. Beka put the
’Hammer
down on the other side of the small clearing a few minutes later. The
Defiant’s
electronic cloak made a wavery dome of visual distortion over the two ships—somewhat attenuated, by comparison with the invisibility the field generated in deep space, but good enough to disguise their presence from orbital spies.
The bit of sky visible overhead had gone from dull grey to pink by the time she finished shutting down the
‘Hammer
. The Professor’s ship, a one-man craft not meant to carry cargo, had taken less time. When she came down the
’Hammer’s
ramp with Ari and Llannat close behind, the Entiboran and Jessan were waiting.
Jessan’s glance went to the others for a second, and then came back to her. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
Beka found herself a place to stand that would allow her to lean back against the
Hammer’s
comforting bulk, then crossed her arms and grinned at him. “Flattery gets you nowhere, my friend. I got my beauty sleep four hours ago—can’t you tell?”
“Not really.”
“I can,” growled Ari. “She woke me up to get it.”
Beka ignored him and turned toward the Professor. “What happens next?”
“We wait,” said the Entiboran. “If the locals mount a systematic air search at full daylight, we’ll know for certain that somebody spotted us coming in.”
“And if they don’t start searching?”
“The lack of any obvious activity will not, unfortunately, prove that the contrary is true.”
“Now that,” said Jessan, “is what I call really helpful.” Beka snickered, and swallowed another yawn. “Seriously, people,” she said, “one of us needs to head into town and pick up some information.”
She heard Llannat sigh. “I’m the only person here who doesn’t need a whole day of sleep to be functional. I’ll go.”
“Sign me up, too,” Jessan said. “All I did on the way in was stand by while the Professor handled the tricky stuff.”
Beka looked from the Khesatan to Mistress Hyfid and back, blinking her eyes against her own fatigue. One or the other of them, or maybe both, was lying about being rested.
Just the same, without local knowledge we’ll all be stuck, and the Professor and I are about to drop
. She looked at her brother for a second, and gave an inward shake of her head. Ari probably had another solid week of work left in him—but unless everybody on Darvell was a giant, her brother was guaranteed to stand out in a crowd.
“All right,” she said to the volunteers. “You two have it.”
 
After his trip aboard
Defiant
, Jessan found himself enjoying the hike downslope to the nearest road. The air had a clean, resinous tang to it, another welcome change from life aboard ship, and he had to suppress an urge to whistle as he strolled along.
This is no time to be feeling cheerful
, he reminded himself.
Spying is serious work.
All the same, he couldn’t help smiling. After a few minutes, he became aware of Llannat’s eyes on him, and turned the smile in her direction.
The Adept gave him a curious look. “You’re on top of the galaxy this morning.”
“Sorry,” he said. “It comes from being out in the open.”
“You—the outdoor type? Tell me another, Jessan.”
He laughed. “Making a hyperspace transit as the second body in a one-man scout will do that to you.”
They walked on. About local noon, they emerged from the trees and picked up a steep-shouldered road that followed the curve of a valley between two peaks. Up on the wooded mountainside, the air had begun to feel almost warm, but here a brisk wind blew through Jessan’s hair and made him grateful for the jacket he’d pulled out of his locker.
Llannat, for her part, had ended up wearing a black sweater from Beka’s old collection of dirtside gear. “I don’t care whether it fits or not,” the Adept had told the captain, “so long as it’s warm.” And warm it certainly was, not to mention somewhat snug around the chest. Llannat was considerably shorter than Beka Rosselin-Metadi, but the Adept couldn’t have passed for male even in a dim light.
“The town should be downhill from here,” Llannat said after a moment’s consideration.
“Downhill it is, then,” agreed Jessan. “Let’s go.”
The road maintained its general downward trend, broken only by occasional steep upgrades as it wound through the foothills of the mountain range. As they neared the crest of one such hill, Jessan became aware of a low, subterranean growling from somewhere behind them—a sound not so much heard as felt through the soles of the feet.
“Heavy ground transport,” said Llannat, at the same moment. “Heading this way.”
“Time to blend back into the trees for a bit, I think,” said Jessan, stepping off the road.
He found himself a patch of ground in the shadow of a tall conifer. Moments later, the transport crawled into view, engines roaring as they fought the upward slope. The vehicle’s nullgravs whined under the weight of bulging brown sacks piled high in the open-topped cargo compartment.
Jessan felt an idea forming in his mind, and looked over at Llannat. From the expression on the Adept’s face, she’d already been thinking the same thing.
“As soon as it goes past,” she murmured. “One, two, three—”
They sprinted around behind the laboring transport. Jessan jumped, and found a handhold on the first try—just as well, since as far as he could tell Llannat wasn’t using a handhold at all. He scrambled over the top of the cargo compartment, and landed with a lung-emptying thud on a dirt-covered fabric bag that turned out to feel even knobbier than it looked.
“Oof,” he muttered. “What are we sharing a ride with, anyhow?”
Llannat poked an experimental finger at the bag she sat on. “Edible roots of some kind, I’d say.”
“Thanks for reminding me we didn’t wait around for breakfast.”
“Cultivate a philosophical outlook,” she recommended.
“I’d sooner cultivate a hot meal. Oh, well—it’ll give me something else to look for when we hit town.”
They made themselves as comfortable as they could. Llannat curled up in a compact bundle, and within moments her chest began to rise and fall in the slow, even rhythm of sleep.
Jessan wondered, yawning, if dropping off that fast on a mattress this lumpy constituted some kind of galactic record, but couldn’t keep his own eyes open long enough to decide. The warm sun shone down on the cargo compartment; the transport’s engines grumbled in a deep, comforting monotone; and the edible tubers in the sacks piled around and under him breathed out a not unpleasant vegetable odor. He pillowed his head on his arm and slept.
BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
10.42Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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