Spectra's Gambit (17 page)

“Toys,” she said. “Toys for the learning-impaired.”

“Not the kind of business I would have expected to have spies on the payroll. Anyway, you’re correct. Let’s head toward the core.”

“Oh, it was very competitive,” she said. “Corporate espionage was a key part of any successful business plan.”

We moved quickly through the station and eventually reached a checkpoint where there was a human on guard. He was obviously bored out of his mind and trying hard to keep himself awake. It was odd that they had a guard stationed here deep in the station when there was no sign of anyone alive whose entrance he might want to prevent.

“How do you want to get past him?” she asked.

“There are two options. The easier one is to wait till he falls asleep and then slip by him. The other option is to make a distraction nearby and hope he leaves his post to investigate.”

She reached into one of her pouches, pulled out a tiny box, and said, “This is a noise-maker. We can put it down one of the side corridors and it will make an unidentifiable sound that should draw his attention.”

“There is a robot working at a panel around the corner. Go place it on the robot and teleport back. I’ll keep an eye on the guard,” I said.

As I waited I wondered what new trouble I had got myself into. In my previous life I had had to deal with the dead rising up and attacking me, even if they had been on my side before they died; now I was traveling with the very kind of magi who could perform that heinous act. As if that was not complicated enough, I was falling in love with one of them.

“Okay, all set,” she said, reappearing next to me.

In a few moments I heard a sound down the corridor and had instinctively turned to look when she said, “See, it draws you. It’s as if you can almost identify it, but not completely.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s mind-boggling.”

The guard thought so, too, and to my surprise he got up and headed toward the noise.

“Now!”
sent Saraphym and we quickly slipped past the sentry post.

“He will find the robot as he makes that turn and assume the noise was just the robot working,”
I sent.

“Exactly. I’ll shut it off now,”
she sent.

“Where did you get such a device?”
I asked.

“My father invented it for just this purpose,”
she sent back.

I began to wonder something as we moved deeper in.
“So this is telepathy? Does that mean I can talk to the other magi the same way?”

“I would assume so. Have you never tried?”
she asked.

“You’re the first being I have attempted to reach out to in over a century,”
I sent.

We moved deeper through the station and dodged several patrols of humans until we reached the central command.
“We should be able to find a heating duct someplace nearby,”
I sent.

“But that would cook us,”
she sent back.

“No, that would cook a human,”
I sent.
“For us, the biggest problem will be not to overeat, which would lower the temperature noticeably.”

She sighed.
“I wish I had know that all those times I was trying to find a place to hide on my father’s missions.”

We found a main heating duct large enough for us to climb inside and worked our way through the maze of connections until we found ourselves over a main control room of some kind.
“Be very quiet. These ducts tend to amplify even the slightest sound.”

“Does this mean I am adopted?”
she asked suddenly.

“Well
,
”
I sent, completely unprepared for that angle.
“I would say that is a question for your parents, or maybe Shea.”

Below us men and women were arguing in a language I did not understand over a table with symbols and writing which I could not read.
“Capture as much video as you can with your visor. We can get it translated later.”

“They look like they’re planning something,”
she sent.
“I think that table is a map, and those symbols probably fleets or stations.”

“Yeah, probably both,”
I sent.
“Some of them appear to be moving and some stationary. Wait, I think I recognize some of those dots. They could be star systems.”

Out of nowhere a loud, high-pitched alarm started to sound. People below us were arguing and weapons were being drawn.
“Time to go,”
I sent.

Slowly and as quietly as possible we moved through the ducts, looking for an exit. Then the alarms on our suits began to go off.

“Poison gas,”
she sent.

“Yeah, but don’t worry. You do not actually need to breathe as long as you are absorbing energy. This bipedal form is nowhere near as efficient as our native form, but it can do it,”
I sent. The environmental filters on our armor should have been enough to protect us either way, but I needed her to start embracing what she was if we were to escape this station.

“How do you think they found us?”
she asked.

“My guess is that they found your noise-maker,”
I sent.

“Impossible. It dissolves when deactivated,”
she sent.

“Clever,”
I sent. I didn’t like hearing that, because it meant we must have made a mistake somewhere.

“But if they fill the ducts with poison gas, won’t they all die too?”
she asked.

Just then we found an exit to the ducts and slipped out into the hall. The corridor was filled with the poison, and there were several dead people lying there.
“Yeah,”
I sent.

“But why would they do that?”
she asked.

“Let’s see if we can find a secluded terminal
…
”
I started to say, when I heard something coming.

“Run!” I called out over the inter-suit comm.

Saraphym and I made it around a corner just as two sentry robots came into sight. They opened fire on our position just a fraction of a second too late as we turned the corner.

“Go!” I pushed her in front of me.

“Where?” she asked as she ran in the direction I had indicated.

“We need to find a blast door to put between us and them!” I said.

It became apparent as we ran that we would not make it. They were gaining on us too fast. I knew my blasters were no match for their armor, and I was sure our armor would not hold out against their concentrated firepower.

I stopped running, turned toward the sentries and began to steel my focus. I had never attempted this while in my bipedal form. It was too risky, as it would have made it obvious to everyone that I was not a human, but logically I knew I could do it. I put all sounds of the environment around me out of my mind and focused as the sentries rounded the corner. I removed my gloves and helmet in preparation for battle.

Off in some remote distance I heard Saraphym scream at me to run, but I ignored her and stared down the sentries. For their part, they did not seem to care that I had stopped to face them; as soon as I was in sight they opened fire.

I felt my armor heat up as the blasts from their weapons surrounded me. I had raised my hands to catch the blasts, but not quickly enough. As my armor heated up, I sucked the power into my body and they continued to march toward me and fire. Pain ripped through me as I slowly adjusted to the speed at which the highly-focused energy was hitting me. In the past being hit with blaster fire had brought pain and damage to my body but the pain had always convinced me to find cover, not stand and deliberately expose myself to more. However, I had no choice this time: if I did not stop these sentries, Saraphym’s life would be in danger. Alone I was sure I could get away, but now I had someone to protect.

I felt that my bipedal form could not hold very much power, and I would be quickly overwhelmed unless I did something with it. Slowly I began to focus on reflecting the power back on them. It was so much easier in my native form, but it began to work.

There was a large explosion as I finally redirected enough power back at one of the sentries to destroy it, and then bolts of energy flew over my head and slammed into the second sentry, destroying it too. I collapsed against the wall, feeling as if my whole body were on fire. The world around me started to get darker and darker as I held on dearly to my life. I had to live to get Saraphym to safety.

“Here, quickly, drink,” I heard in the sweet voice of my Saraphym.

She poured something down my throat and I could feel strength return to my body. It was like drinking cold fire. It spread through me and slowly my vision cleared. Most of the corridor around me was destroyed by blaster fire, and Saraphym crouched over me with her staff drawn. “Can you walk?”

“Yeah,” I said and started to get up. “No,” I said as I fell back down.

“Here,” she said and put her arm under me. “We just have to get to an airlock, right? Then we can jump out into space and you will be fine?”

“Yeah,” I managed to get out. I did not know if it was true, but I needed to keep her moving.

She virtually dragged me through the station until armed guards cut off our path. They pinned us down around a corner. Once again she pulled her staff out of thin air and used it to hold them off, but it was only a matter of time before we were overrun.

“Can you walk yet?” she asked.

“Too weak. I need energy,” I said. “I sent too much of it back at those sentries. Now my body is starved.”

She fired a few more shots, then her eyes lit up with an idea. “Stay down.”

I certainly was not going to be standing up anytime soon, so that was easy to comply with. She tossed something around the corner and then stood and began to chant. I had no idea what she was doing, but I hoped it would be fast. I tried to draw my blasters to give her cover fire and realized that most of my armor had been destroyed, along with my blasters. “Great,” I mumbled to myself. A friend from a previous life had made the armor; it was marvelous, wonderful, irreplaceable and now completely destroyed.

As she finished chanting I heard screams coming from around the corner and sounds of outright panic of the kind I had not heard since dealing with the wraiths.

“Here, drink this!” she said.

“What is it?” I asked as I started to drink.

“Illuminescence! You’ll love it!” she said.

She was right; it felt like drinking the purest, cleanest energy I had ever found. “This is what that ghost back on Nemesis gave me!” I said, feeling my body begin to recover as the energy flowed through it.

“Yes, Nanny,” she said.

My mind slowly cleared and I grew concerned about Saraphym. She looked more exhausted and drained than I had ever seen her. “Are you all right?”

“I can’t hold up this spell for much longer. We need to move,” she said.

“Cancel it, then and let’s go,” I said as I got to my feet. I was still weak and needed the wall for support, but that drink had given me enough strength to move on my own.

She let out a slight sigh, and the screams died down. “Run!” she called out.

“Follow me,” I said and headed toward what I hoped were the docking bays. “We need to find an outside wall, airlock, docking bay or anything like that.”

Her staff operated much like a rifle and she was firing bolts of energy behind us as she ran, trying to slow down their pursuit. With no blasters and still fairly weak, I was not much help to her.

“Turn left at the next junction, maybe?” she asked. “I think I saw docking bays in that direction when we were drifting in.”

“Okay.” I had been so busy looking at her, I had not thought to scope out the station during our approach. After making the turn we found ourselves at a dead end.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Blast through the wall with your staff. Cut the straightest possible path to the outside,” I said.

She turned her staff on the wall and blasted through into another corridor, and then another. “This is too slow! They will catch us!”

“Quick, blast a hole into the next corridor,” I said. Once that was done I pulled her down the original corridor. “That might buy us a little time.”

We continued to move and dodge patrols as best we could until we finally found one of the docking arms. I collapsed against the wall and said, “Go. You can make it to the airlock from here. I will just slow you down.”

“That’s not gonna happen!” she said and turned her staff on the wall of the docking arm. Before I could say anything she had blasted right through to the hard vacuum of space. The force of the air flowing out of the station quickly sucked us both out.

Once in space I was able to stretch out my wings and just glide on the gravity currents. I slowly banked back toward the station.
“Saraphym?”

“Greymere?
” she responded. “
What are all these colors?”

“Colors?”
I asked.

“All around me; it’s like I’m drifting in a sea of multicolored water,”
she sent.

“Oh, those are gravity waves and other energy currents. We float on them to get around,”
I sent. I finally located her some distance from me.
“My, you are even more beautiful than I imagined.”

I watched her turn and twist in her native form, looking for me,
“Where are you?”

“I am quite far from you but flying over. Just stay put. You are still wearing your armor, so Nemesis will be able to find you, but not me,”
I sent back. While I worked my way toward her I slowly coached her on how to read the currents and move through them.

“Why haven’t they called me yet?”
she asked.

“They might have, but you have no ears,”
I sent.

“Master
Spectra? Can you hear me?”
she asked.

“I don’t know if that will work,”
I started.

“I think it will,”
sent Spectra.

“Master Spectra! We are adrift in space, and it’s so pretty out here,”
sent Saraphym.

“We have your signal, but not Greymere’s,”
sent Spectra.

“My armor was destroyed in a firefight on the station, but I am working my way toward Saraphym,”
I sent.