Rift in the Races (44 page)

Roberto informed the captain over the com that they were ready, and shortly after, they got the green light to take the small ship out of the
Aspect’s
shuttle bay.

The youngest mage began to gasp and guffaw immediately upon exit. She stared out the small portal near her seat and simply could not stop pointing out one thing after the next. “Look how big,” she cried. “And oh, how green Naotatica is!” Then, seeing the
Aspect
as Roberto turned the shuttle and angled it away, she remarked at how brilliant the starship’s lights were, how long and imposing it looked. “So much more miraculous than a frigate or man of war,” she said. “It’s so … regal and powerful.”

The rest stared out the window and silently contemplated the view, lost in their own private worlds, some afraid, contemplating what would happen if this test went wrong, not trusting what was described—at least back at home—as “the fragility” of the Earth ships, despite how imposing the
Aspect
looked just then. They were trained well enough for their task, the cream of the crop and the first of the
Citadel
casters to have taken a redoubt to Luria and the space just beyond. They knew that what they were about to do worked. But despite the successful practices with
Citadel’s
squat combat towers over the last week, and those with the probes and the shuttles from the surface of Prosperion yesterday, none of them had really thought it wouldn’t be Altin doing all of this.

In the absence of Altin’s comforting power and expertise, the frenzy of preparation now combined with the imminent nature of the task to set nervous minds to contemplating the odd Earth helmets and crinkling plastic-encased pressure suits. More than one of the magicians looked into the reflections of themselves in the dark visors of those helmets, watched the curving surface distend the trepidation that was readily apparent in their eyes and the pale gray of their lips. They stared at the strange Earth items, wondered at the clumsiness of them, even wondered at what would make anyone want to invent something as needlessly complex as a “zipper” anyway. Strange beings these humans from Earth, these aliens. More unnerving was the thought of dying on an alien ship in an endless night. None of them had been out here before, beyond the range of Luria’s sweeping orbits. Despite putting on a brave face in front of the admiral, the conduit and even the Queen, these mages were just as green as space mages could be. They were the first crop, barely emerging from the seed. It was an exciting opportunity, to be sure, and a rare one to be among the first, but in that moment, just past launch, more than one of them found that they were afraid. The flight away from Naotatica was an emotional one, and even the conduit had enough sense to keep his comments to himself.

At length, they were clear of the planet’s gravitational effects and prepared to start the experiment. The plan was to let the magicians look out their windows and get a sense of place for where they were. Roberto was then to take them a half-day’s distance toward the edge of the solar system, at which point, the magicians would bring them back to the original casting point. Compared to the distance they would need to acquire if they were to assist the rest of the fleet, this was only a marginally greater teleport than they had achieved in their practice with the redoubts and the unmanned shuttle from Prosperion, but for them, it would be an enormous leap.

“All right,” Roberto announced when they’d reached the coordinates that had been determined for the first test. “How stationary do we need to be?” he asked. “We can get this thing to varying degrees of stop depending on how much time you want us to spend on it. Right now, this thing is
not
sitting on the ground.”

“Full stop, Captain,” said the conduit. “Let’s not take any chances. At least this first time.”

“Roger,” said Roberto. “And I’m only a lieutenant.”

“‘Captain’ has a certain ring, wouldn’t you say?”

He grinned. “I guess.”

“Then we shall ring it out here. I feel safer in the hands of a captain anyway. Don’t you?” He looked to his wizard companions, a few of them nodded, but mainly out of reflex. Roberto got the distinct sense most of them were not particularly fond of this crimson-clad man.

“Watch the ass-end doesn’t come around,” Roberto told Ensign Nguyen. “Yaw, man.”

“I know. I got it. It’s a lot easier when the computer does it.”

“There you go,” Roberto said as the ensign got the rotation stopped.

The two of them eventually brought the ship to a complete standstill. “All right, Conduit, anchor’s away.”

The conduit peered out his window to confirm. He nodded, the rise and fall of his chin pronouncing and un-pronouncing a fourth layer of neck in alternating tides of flesh. “Very well. Then let’s not waste any time.”

“What should we do?” Roberto asked.

“Sit there and keep your pipes shut.”

Roberto laughed. “Pipes shut, sir.”

“All right, people,” began the conduit. “Envette, you are the big stick up here, so you’ll do the cast. Kindlemet, you’re first funnel if she needs it. Mason, you, then Pingermash, Hotblood and Thistleblat. I know we won’t need it, but just be alert. And all of you pay attention because you’re going to do it next.”

He turned to Roberto. “Captain, are all your contraptions … settled, or pointed the right way—whatever you require for this exercise?”

“Yes, sir. We’re good to go.”

“Very well.” He turned to the young woman in the drab gray robe. “Envette, when you are ready.”

The conduit sat back in his chair, and his face went abruptly blank. He did not close his eyes; he simply stared straight ahead and seemed no longer to see. He was waiting for the first thread of mana to be gathered up and sent to him by the young teleporter. The woman closed her eyes and began to chant in a low voice, slowly, rhythmically, but with no extraneous motion of her arms or body. She pulled in mana and fed it to the conduit’s mind, gently, as she’d been trained to do, pulling the strands from the vastness around them into her mythothalamus, twisting them together, then winding them like a watch spring whose tension could be released as fast or as slowly as the conduit required. She was an X-ranked teleporter, the might of her magic fabulous, and the conduit, despite so many years in the Queen’s service, privately reveled in being fed so much power from a single mind.

Feeling her reserves loading up adequately, the conduit fed a needle-thin bit of mana into the ship, not into the shields as Altin had done—as he had described to them all in detail on so many occasions—but into the deck. He let it wend its way through the very essence of the metal, into the foreign and strange shapes he found there, following the crystalline formations of the metals, the sinewy ropes of wiring, the odd plastics and unfamiliar compounds that made up the completely alien computers, and into the brilliance of the small reactor in the rear of the ship. When he had it all outlined, every surface, bolt and seam, he got them all coated, wrapped and wound with the mana he took from the young teleporter. Once he had the ship suitably encased, he sent a thread of mana back out to the next magician in the circle—or rectangle as this particular instance happened to be. First he fed a thread to Kindlemet, then Mason, and on down the line of them until all eight mages were included in the spell.

For Roberto and his copilot looking on, nothing was happening. Nobody else was chanting besides the woman. Nobody was waving their arms, fluttering their fingers or swaying about like Altin always did. There were no strange objects being pulled out of pockets, no dust of newt or wing of bat or whatever else these people used. They were all just sitting there, eyes closed but for the conduit and the one woman muttering under her breath. Roberto glanced over at Ensign Nguyen. The younger man looked frightened and did not look back. Roberto shrugged.
It will suck if we die
, he thought. But that seemed unlikely.
Altin does this on his own all the time,
he reminded himself.
So how hard can it be with eight of these guys?

Then the lights went out. It was very dark but for the rectangular patches of starlight coming in through the windows around the ship. Roberto was used to this power flux from his experience with Combat Hop, so he waited and spent his effort on staying calm. The red lights of the backup systems came on a moment after that.

Roberto spun in his seat, prepared to manually restart the ship’s main systems, but in a few hastily indrawn breaths, the systems came back on their own, fast enough to see Roberto’s heart rate rise only thirty or so beats a minute, well within acceptable range.

He looked out and saw Naotatica glowing in the distance like a tiny frozen pea.

“We didn’t die,” he announced. “Or at least I didn’t. How about you guys?”

He turned back to see the magicians opening their eyes, one at a time, starting from the last mage in the list of backups and moving in reverse order to the young woman whose spell it essentially was. None of them had been aware of the loss of power, so quickly had the systems returned.

The conduit withdrew from the depths of the spell last, then leapt up and nearly stuffed his round face into the porthole just behind Envette.

“Aha!” he cried. “There it is. Fat green bastard. There’s a diet for you!” He bent down and clutched the young woman by the shoulders and gave her a hearty shake. “Beautiful execution, my dear. Nicely fed and perfectly shaped. Congratulations on a first for your guild.”

She beamed at his praise. “Thank you, Conduit.”

He turned to Roberto. “Am I correct in assuming it went perfectly, Captain, as it by all appearances appears to have?”

“Well,” said Roberto, “I’m not sure we can call it perfect. We still had the same kind of systems fade that we got from Altin’s hoppy spell, and I think it lasted longer than I remember from before. But we’re here, so I’d call it a win.”

“Excellent. Do you think your system can take a bigger leap?”

“Honestly, I have no idea, because I have no clue what you guys do. I’m just here to drive.”

“Fair enough. Then let’s get to work.” He turned back to his circle of mages. “Mason, send a lizard to Vorvington. Let him know we’re not dead.”

“They already know, sir,” said Ensign Nguyen. “I’ve just confirmed it with the admiral. Lord Vorvington is with him and asked that I tell you, ‘Huzzah.’”

“Efficient,” said the conduit. “And most certainly,
huzzah
.”

Chapter 29

F
rom the point of the first successful trial teleport, each teleporter took turns channeling the main spell in a sequence that had them sending the shuttle back and forth between the edge of the solar system and the original coordinates just beyond the influence of Naotatica’s gravity. After each teleporter had a go at it, they concluded that at least for this mass and distance, any teleporter with a rank of L or higher could do it alone. That was counted as extremely good news for everyone aboard, excepting the J-class teleporter who proved to be the first of them who needed mana from a companion. He’d been close, though, and Conduit Huzzledorf spent some time debating whether to make the cutoff at K or L, but he decided it was not worth the risk with so much at stake.

“All right then,” said the conduit after they were once again at the edge of the system, and all the teleporters had been tried. “Let’s see how far we can go on our own. Since Meade managed to mangle himself, we can’t get a guide to the seeing stones he’s already cast, so we’ll make our own path starting from here. I’ve actually been looking forward to this.”

He put a hand out, thrust forward as if he were a coachman expecting a tip. The sorcerer who’d been identified as the J-class wizard, Pingermash, reached into a satchel he wore on a strap over his shoulder and handed the conduit a large, uncut diamond nearly the size of a walnut.

Conduit Huzzledorf resumed his position at the center of the circle, jamming himself unceremoniously into the chair again. “This may take a while, boys,” he told Roberto. “If you brought along something to read, now would be the time.”

The two men from Earth nodded patiently. “Do what you got to do,” said Roberto.

“We shall see about that, Captain.”

With that began another six hours of casting seeing spells and teleporting diamond seeing stones, this time the conduit and his concert of wizards slowly trying to replicate the blind magic that Altin had spent years developing. With the help of copies of Altin’s detailed notes and a long period of practice, at the end of the experiment, they felt they’d found something of significance, a far greater distance than they’d been able to accomplish on Prosperion from the school in Crown, where mana was rationed tightly to ensure no one emptied the sky.

Conduit Huzzledorf had worked several times on this experiment over the last three months with the X-ranked Envette and the well-dressed Kindlemet, a P, from a dune in the Sandsea Desert, but even from that remote location they’d not had any luck approaching what he was certain they’d just done this time.

“Huzzah!” he cried at the end of a particularly long-in-releasing cast.

“Fantastic, Conduit,” Kindlemet exclaimed. He hoisted a fist in triumph, the pale flesh of a man who rarely went outside revealing itself as his embroidered silk sleeve slid to his elbow. “Truly a miracle.”