The Galactic Mage (39 page)

“Good gods,” was all he managed to get out.

“Does that mean I can’t pet him?” Orli asked, sounding a bit disappointed as she took a step away from the dragon lying on the floor.

“No,” Altin said as the pricks of heat slowly faded from his face. “Quite the opposite. He seems to…,” he paused, appropriate words not at hand. “It’s fine. Go ahead.”

Orli moved cautiously to the dragon and reached a hand slowly out towards his snout. As no fire erupted to consume her, she pressed her fingers against the very tip of his nose where it was pointed, almost like a beak. The skin there was scaly, hard like industrial plastic and just as smooth. The dragon made no move to bite her, and so her confidence grew.

“There’s some softer skin just behind his ears. He likes when you rub him there, if your hands are strong enough. Don’t be afraid to dig right in, or he won’t even know you’re there.”

She followed Altin’s instructions and found the spot that he was speaking of. Rubbing the thick skin was rather like trying to knead body armor, but, using both hands, she managed to pull it off. Taot let out a low rumble that rattled the stone beneath her feet. She echoed it with a less stentorian version of her own.

“Oh, Altin, he’s amazing,” she said after petting the dragon for a while. “So beautiful and strong.” She cooed at the dragon and spoke to it as if it were a puppy or soft kitten in her lap.

Altin grinned and watched her with warmth filling his chest like hot water being poured into a bath. She was so innocent, standing there like that, sweet and pure, yet clearly not like any other woman he had seen. She was strong and confident, even assertive, but not like Lena or any of the other girls he knew, and not crude like the women who fought for the Queen with knives and swords; she was not a hardened warrior despite the red-light strapped to her thigh. Orli’s was a different kind of strength, an alien one, entirely unique. And she was exquisite to be near.

That was when the button she had given him began to squawk from inside the pocket he had dropped it in. He could not make out the words, as whoever spoke had not been included in the translation spell he’d cast a few moments ago. But whoever it was, they were clearly quite upset.

“Oh shit,” she said as the button sounded off. She spun and stared out at her ship. “They can see me standing here.”

“Who?” said Altin. “Is that the captain yelling there?”

“Who else?” she replied. “You’d better take me back.”

Judging from the captain’s tone, Altin could tell that it was true. “All right,” he said, his heart breaking at the thought. He handed her the device, but she did not take it. She closed his hand around it with both of hers; he could feel the wetness in her palms as they wrapped around his fist. “Enchant it, like you said.” She went to the table then and took the dagger from where he’d placed it coming up. She deftly sliced another sample of her hair from behind her ear and turned to him with a grin. “If we keep this up, we’ll both be bald.” She laughed and handed him the lock of white-gold hair. “Can you send me back alone? I think you might be safer here.” She glanced down at the silver button in his palm and gave a semi-shrug. Altin knew exactly what she meant.

“Yes,” he said, his hand going absently to the dark patch upon his chest and the wound that lay beneath. “Perhaps you’re right about that.”

The silver button nearly exploded with the violence of the captain’s next command.

“I need to go, Altin.”

He’d never wanted to kiss anyone so much in his entire life, but he tore his eyes away from her and went to the scrying basin, calling up the hospital room where they’d first met. It was empty. With agony in his heart, he turned, smiled, and sent her back.

Chapter
40

“W
hat in the hell did you think you were doing, Pewter? You just leave the ship with the first swinging dick you meet? Are you out of your fucking mind?” Captain Asad was fuming, his brown eyes wide and his voice booming from deep inside his chest like explosions from some unseen engine catastrophe. “I should have you shot for unspeakable stupidity, not to mention aiding and abetting the enemy, dereliction of duty, unapproved leave and treason. My God, Ensign, what the hell is wrong with you?”

Orli leaned defiantly into the wind of the captain’s tirade, too rapturous from her moments in Altin’s tower to let the words get beneath her skin. Being there with Altin and his dragon was the most fun she’d had in her entire adult life. Altin was alive, a real man from a real place, not some sterile military robot like everyone in the entire goddamn fleet. Let the captain shoot her. She didn’t care. She finally felt alive. For the first time in memory, she lived, as if something had come awake inside. And besides, she’d just scratched a dragon behind the ears. How dangerous could the captain possibly be?

Her silence only made matters worse. “Speak up, Ensign, what the hell were you doing down there? Tell me your infatuation has not endangered the entire fleet. Did you even have yourself decontaminated before coming back aboard?” He didn’t wait for her reply. “Of course you didn’t. You’re too busy thinking with your cunt to have one thought for the safety of this already decimated crew. Goddamn it, Pewter.”

The veins in his forehead were enormous, thick wires trying to swell through his heated flesh. He’d always been a surly man, but she had never in ten long years ever seen him get like this. She actually believed she was in real danger of being shot.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice trembling now. There were a million emotions coursing through her veins, fear was only one. “It seemed harmless.”

“You can’t be fucking serious.” Flecks of spittle flew from his mouth, luminous particles of irritation launched at her, given light by the glow from the console by which he stood. “Harmless? Boarding an alien vessel without permission. And alone, no less. That doesn’t seem stupid beyond the pale?” His eyes bulged with incredulity, the whites tinted blue by the same light that illuminated his apoplectic spit.

“Well,” she stammered, “not once you get to know him. If you just took the time to talk to him like we did…,” she gestured to where Roberto normally sat, but their shift had still not come back around. There was only Lieutenant Mitur sitting there, and he didn’t appear to have any intention of helping her.

“Some of us have duties to the rest of the crew. Some of us think about other people besides ourselves. You have a duty to the goddamn crew, Pewter. To the rest of us. To the fleet.”

Orli began to recede into herself; clearly nothing she could say would abate the captain’s wrath. And so she stood silently in the storm of his assault, her unfocused gaze absently aware of the panel lights flickering behind him until at last his anger had played itself mostly out. He stood there glaring at her for a moment in silence, a looming presence in the dimness of the bridge. He seemed to swell almost, as if frustration and rage inflated him from within, but at last he relented and his presence normalized. After a very measured breath, he spoke again.

“You’re lucky I have no other choice,” he said. “Otherwise I’d be sticking you in the brig. And the first second I have an actual crew again, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. You have my word on that. You’re living on borrowed time, Ensign, trust that. You better hope the rest of the fleet never decides it’s safe to board my ship again, because on that day you’re through. Now get out of my sight. If I see you in that tower again, I’ll fire the lasers myself. Do you hear?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t think it was going to be that big a deal.”

“Get out.” He looked as if he wanted to spit on her for real, so she turned and immediately went away.

Back in her room she cried into her pillow for nearly an hour and a half. This place was so horrible. God, she just wanted to go away. She wished they’d left her back on Andalia, even if there were Hostile spores hiding in the dirt. Who cared? At least there’d be no one there to make her feel like shit every time she made a move. Goddamn it. This ship was such a fucking nightmare. She hated it. She hated the fleet. She hated them all. Every last one of them in their goddamn matching clothes and matching words and matching every-fucking-thing. Goddamn it. She wished Altin would come and just take her far from here. He said his world was only a few moments away. Maybe that was true. Maybe he could teleport home as easily as he could teleport from his tower to the ship. Maybe it really was that easy.

Or maybe it was just a dream. Maybe the captain and Roberto were right. Maybe it was some horrible Hostile ruse. Maybe they really could control everyone else’s mind. It did seem awfully hard to believe. The magic. The dragon. A man that was more than simple lust. That really was impossible if she thought about it very long.

She raised a trembling, tear-dampened hand to her ear, to where so much of her hair had recently been clipped. The ends were blunted in three distinct places, cut with no concern for aesthetics or for style. If this was all a dream, then the Hostiles didn’t miss a trick.

But it couldn’t be a trick. How could it possibly be? The way he blushed, the rustle of his robes. My God, the tables were all burnt. So was the carpet on his floor. She had smelled the smoke. And the clutter. The half-eaten bread. The sound of bones crunching in the dragon’s mouth. And it had been so terribly hot in there. How could the Hostiles create a hallucination so completely real, so filled with the most random things? And why? Why would they feel the need for so much insignificant detail? It didn’t make any sense.

Or at least it didn’t make any more sense than did a magic man floating in a tower with a dragon out in space. She sighed and sniffled all at once, the combination giving her the hiccups in its wake. She sighed again and curled up into a ball. Maybe she could go to sleep. A few hours to at least dream that he was real. She had just enough time for that before her shift came back around and she had to return to her post up on the bridge. Where the captain was. She shuddered and rocked herself to sleep, visions of green-eyed sorcerers and rumbling dragons whirling in her mind.

Her alarm woke her in what seemed only an instant after that, an atonal clarion of misery. It was time to go back to work.

“They’re regrouping,” Roberto informed her when she sat back down in the com-station chair. He pointed at the main monitor with his chin as he started shaking his head. “Look how many now.”

Any vestiges of lovesickness that may have been haunting her were immediately whisked away. At least twenty orbs were now visible on the screen, and another appeared even as she watched. “Good God,” she said. “How far away is the rest of our help?”

“That’s your job, Pewter. I suggest you make some attempt to do it now.” That from the captain, of course.

“Yes, sir,” she said. “On it.” She was never going to have his favor back, but she had to at least make an attempt. The cessation of his contempt had been nice to have in those few days that followed her contribution to the cure; she’d actually been able to relax, almost enjoyed being on the bridge—at least during those moments when they weren’t under attack. For a time he’d at least treated her with respect. But deep down she knew that this time the damage was permanent. She sighed and pulled up the data from the fleet. All three squadrons should be arriving at any time, and she made the announcement as soon as the specific distances came up. “Twenty minutes to Echo, forty for Bravo and Delta to arrive. They’re almost here, sir.”

He made no answer, and the raw fury radiating from him confirmed her sense that the friendly banter on the bridge had come completely to an end. Roberto sensed it too, and, unaware of her brief foray down into Altin’s tower, he shot her an inquisitive glance.

She waved him off, indicating with a shrug and the expression on her face that the answer would have to wait. She returned her attention to the com.

“Twenty seven,” she announced as she picked up a handful of orbs coming into scanner range but not yet on the screen. “Five incoming.”

“Tell the admiral to bring the entire fleet.” Then a moment later, he said, “Stow that.” Three more orbs had just joined the growing swarm. “Just radio our report.”

She did, and after a moment, the admiral’s face appeared upon her screen. She punched it up to a quarter of the large monitor on the wall. After a brief exchange between the captain and the admiral, it was decided that the rest of the fleet should assemble a half-day’s distance from where the
Aspect
currently was. The three squadrons already on their way were to continue coming to their support, but the rest of the fleet would gather in full at a distance first, and then move in to help if there was anything remaining of the smaller group. Deciding to leave the four squadrons to fate was a hard decision to make, and both men walked away from the conversation looking grim. It was not the kind of decision Orli ever wanted to have to make: deciding who was going to live and who was probably going to die. The callous emotional distance required to make that kind of call reminded her of the first few hours of vaccinations when the crew was dying faster than the doses could be brought. No, she never wanted to be party to that again.

After his exchange with the admiral, Captain Asad sat quietly in his chair watching the screen without comment as Orli occasionally announced the latest tally on the orbs’ steadily growing swarm. They were up to nearly a hundred by the time he finally spoke. “Any idea what your friend over there is going to do?” He was looking at the portion of the monitor that still kept Altin’s tower securely in its sight. Orli had been glancing at it occasionally too. She wished she were there. If the orbs were going to kill her, she’d rather die with him.

“He said he had to send his dragon home. That’s all I really know. I wasn’t over there long enough to learn anything else. He had to recast his language spell, so we didn’t get much chance to talk.”

The captain grimaced at the use of such ridiculous words, but let it pass. “Do you know if he’s planning on staying long enough to fight?”

Her first instinct was to say, “Why the hell should he? You shot him, you fucking ungrateful ass?” But instead she managed to say, “I have no idea,” though not without a tremendous amount of restraint. Thinking of Altin like that stirred up an emotional force that had her hands trembling against her console by the time she finished speaking on his behalf, her skin moist and slightly sticky where it pressed against the glass. The fact that the captain considered Altin a potential ally after treating the magical man so poorly was both evidence of the captain’s recognition of Altin as a potent military force and of the captain’s sense of just how dire their circumstances had become. The former had to be more painful for him than the latter was.

She looked up at the monitor and saw that the dragon had just disappeared. She said as much aloud. The captain nodded and gave the briefest hum.

“He must have teleported it home,” Roberto said, daring to butt into the captain’s ominous mood. He heard the captain grunt again. He hesitated, reluctant to go on, but, given the obvious misery that had settled upon Orli since the last time he’d seen her, he felt that whatever had transpired between her and the captain, he would rather come down on the side of his best friend. “Captain, with all due respect, you are wrong about him. The magic is real. I saw it too. So did Doctor Singh. He does it.”

“Lieutenant, I’m too old to believe in fairy tales, and not spiritual enough to believe in miracles and myths. There is no such thing as magic. The hologram of the dragon has simply been shut off.”

“Fine, sir, call it what you like. Matter transmission. Dimensional shift. Whatever. But that don’t change it. The effects are real. I’ve seen them. I’m telling you: it’s real.”

The captain nodded. Clearly he’d considered that option, but he was just not sure how he wanted to proceed from there. The whole idea of magic was ludicrous, but the circumstances were such that any options had to be taken into account, even ridiculous ones. And at this point, it probably didn’t matter if Altin turned out to be friend or foe anyway. With a hundred orbs out there, they were all going to die shortly after the orbs decided to attack. What difference did it make if it was by the onslaught of a hundred Hostile shafts or some trick of that enigma out there floating in a tower made of stone? The only difference was that the robed man at least presented the possibility of being an ally, however unlikely that might seem. And, once again, it would make little difference in the end.

Four more orbs flew in and hovered with the rest.

“They’re here,” Orli announced a little while later. “Echo is finally here.” She quartered the view on the monitor again to allow the image of five long Earth ships to appear approaching on their starboard side, slivers of glowing metal hope, white against the darkness out of which they came. “Finally someone else is here.” She punched up the location of the other two squadrons and found they too were only a short time away, and in the span of half an hour, their numbers had grown to eighteen.

Unfortunately, the orbs now numbered one hundred and thirty-two.

Roughly an hour later, after the commanders of the other ships and Captain Asad had worked out a tentative plan for their defense, the captain addressed her once again. There was an aspect of reluctance in his voice that she had never heard him use, resignation and something else. Humility? It couldn’t be, not after the vehemence of his tirade.

“Pewter, do you think you can get him back, so we can talk to him again?”

At first she thought he was talking about the commander of Echo squadron and started to punch that ship’s com officer back up on her screen.

“No, Ensign. The magician. Can you get him to come back to the ship? We need to find out what he’s planning to do, if he’s going to fight again—assuming he ever was.” He couldn’t help adding the last.