Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (17 page)

For a time, Orli tried to convince herself that it must be technology that somehow caught her attention, some particular discovery on the part of the Andalians that sent the ripples out for Blue Fire to see, but then she realized it couldn’t be that either. Altin’s world had no technology, at least nothing to speak of beyond an enchanted windmill or some other simple, ancient-seeming device. Whatever bit of technology might have served as a signal did not exist on Prosperion. And even if they had somehow discovered it, that hole had been punched into the desert long before his people had even invented the wheel. Altin said the origin of the Great Sandfalls was beyond history, a mystery relegated to myths alone. It might have happened hundreds of thousands of years before humans had evolved, millions even. She had no way of knowing. But whenever it was, that was the time Blue Fire had discovered Prosperion. So technology wasn’t it either.

That left magic. Perhaps magic was how the Hostile worlds found life. It made sense. In fact, Orli even recalled Altin’s having mentioned that he perceived “mana,” whatever it was, as being a thing of pink and purple currents, whorls and vortices. It would make sense for that to be true, as Blue Fire obviously had magic powers to spare. Perhaps she could detect a world when someone or something on it used magic. The problem was Earth had no magic, so whatever world was attacking Earth, it didn’t find it by ripples in the mana either.

Leaving Orli with nothing to hold on to. Certainly not enough to make a case to fleet command. Hell, she couldn’t even shout it to her guards, assuming there were any outside. Not only would they have no idea what she was talking about, she had a goddamn gag in her mouth. They’d taken away her only way to warn them. The fools. Which meant all she could do was wait. Wait for fate or God or random chance to do whatever it had in mind for her in this sick game it played with everybody’s lives.

Chapter 13

R
oberto marched in handcuffs alongside Captain Asad into the hangar, a pair of Marines behind them looking almost as stern as the captain did. The captain went up the ramp first and once inside the ship leaned out the hatch and motioned for Roberto. One of the guards shoved him up after the captain by jamming the butt of his rifle into the Spaniard’s back.

“We have orders to shoot him if he even turns back to look, Captain.”

“He won’t.”

Roberto knew better than to tempt them. He could still feel tingling in his feet and fingers from where the electricity had jolted him to unconsciousness, and his whole body was sore. He’d almost made it to the same floor Orli was being held on before they caught him. Almost. He didn’t remember much from there. He’d “just been going to say goodbye.” At least that’s what he told them when he woke up. Everyone knew that was bullshit because he’d jump-wired two sets of elevator controls and knocked out the staff sergeant at the receiving desk on the floor above the level where Orli was. That was how close he’d gotten. Only Captain Asad’s connections—and the fleet’s desperate need for pilots of Roberto’s skill—had managed to get him out of the predicament. Otherwise, he might have been in that cell with Orli now, and not in a rescuing way.

Roberto took his seat in the pilot’s chair mechanically. He couldn’t shake the malaise that lay upon him, the frustration and sense of futility, and the outright grieving that had begun. That trial had been a farce. The child of an attorney they gave Orli had never had a chance to get her out of it, and he knew it now. He wished he’d lied on the stand, but he hadn’t realized what was happening until too late.

He hadn’t told them anything they didn’t already know, though. And he had tried to put things in context as best he could. So much so that Commander Adair had accused him of being a “hostile witness,” but Roberto still felt like everything he had said was a nail in Orli’s coffin. A coffin he wasn’t even going to get to stand beside. There would be no NTA flag draped over it, no honors for what she had done to save all the survivors of the
Aspect
’s crew. No nothing. Her only monument would be in memory. His memories. His recollections of her struggle to stay sane during all those years in space followed by a few glimmers of happiness on Prosperion—even those stolen from her at the end—and then a ramrod trial that would end it all. He wondered if Colonel Pewter even knew. His absence at the court martial suggested he did not. And the more Roberto thought about how it had played out, the more he was sure there was no way the colonel had been told. The fleet had to be unbelievably paranoid to do what they had done, to simply throw out the rule of law. Intellectually, he understood that the Hostile invasion gave them reason, but how much of a threat could Orli really be? Or even Altin for that matter. What more could Altin do if he did come? How much worse could it get? There were Hostiles literally everywhere. One more magician one way or another wasn’t going to make a difference now.

Roberto considered trying to get word to Colonel Pewter, but he couldn’t help wondering if that would be a terrible idea. What brand of recklessness would that initiate? Probably recklessness of the variety Roberto himself had just tried. Or worse. And the colonel was not in favor with the upper echelons of the fleet like Roberto was, not after he snuck off ship just as the fleet was about to attack Blue Fire, abandoning his post to assist Altin in searching for Orli right at the moment the battle began. No, the colonel had burned down any mercy he was going to get with that maneuver. And likely Roberto had burned down all the mercy he had coming for himself as well. And since the fleet was not interested in fair hearings at this moment in history, he knew exactly what would happen if he got caught leaking Orli’s plight to the colonel, just as he knew what would happen to the colonel if he got caught doing whatever he might do to try to stop it. They’d all three of them, Orli, Roberto and the colonel, be lying on the executioner’s table with poison running into their veins. The whole thing was so infuriating he could hardly concentrate.

Captain Asad removed the handcuffs once the hatch was locked. Neither Roberto nor the captain spoke as they left Earth’s atmosphere and headed back through the melee that seemed to be everywhere in orbit at once. Roberto flew as if he were the autopilot function of the ship, emotionless and detached, his movements automatic, his evasions of the incoming Hostile shafts reflex. He avoided death without interest, his ability to care parched to nothingness by electricity and the realization of the kind of world he lived in. He was simply part of the machine making its way back toward the
Aspect
, back toward the fight, unsure what it was they were fighting for anymore. But he did. That was who he was.

The shuttle’s lasers were far less powerful than the
Aspect
’s, and the missiles it carried only a fraction of the capacity of those that the starships deployed, but he was compelled to use them as they wove and dodged their way up through the cosmic clash going on above the Earth. Fortunately, the Hostiles were of a smaller variety than he was used to as well, and it was with some luck and some natural proficiency that, when a Hostile swept in at them, this one perhaps twice as large as the shuttle itself, Roberto was able to swat aside its plunging stone shaft with the push of laser energy while launching a pair of small tactical nukes. This was the same old strategy he’d used during the earliest combats with these orbs, the technique he’d used prior to having devised the gravity-pulse strategy that had ultimately proved far more effective and deadly to the enemy. The shuttle didn’t have the power for a gravity pulse anyway, nor did he have another ship flying with him to make the strategy work even if it had been so equipped, so it was all learned reflex and instinct that kept them from being pulverized, certainly no great interest on the part of the pilot.

And so it was, at first disinterestedly, that he noticed his most recent missile had struck a speeding Hostile dead on and exploded with full force. The explosion blew out the back portion of the orb, which then stretched like a thing made of rubber. This was the Hostile shifting its composition from solid to something more elastic in an attempt to absorb and disperse the force. The orb elongated for a time, and both Roberto and the captain assumed it would snap back eventually, changing forms at will and intent on coming after them again. They’d seen this elasticity before. But it did not snap back. Instead, the extended length of its back portions seemed to reach a point of no return and snapped off, a large section tearing away at the thinnest point like chewing gum breaking as a child stretches it out of his mouth. For a time the end that remained attached to the main body blew out the orange goo of its innards as if its guts were being pumped out through a length of culvert pipe. The broken end seemed entirely dead.

The orb wobbled as it flew past the shuttle, and it looked to Roberto like a teardrop made of clay. The shuttle’s aft cameras showed that it was slowly retracting the broken portion of itself even as it shot off in pursuit of its battering ram, which still streaked away from the shuttle, growing smaller with distance as seconds passed.

For whatever reason, seeing the orb wounded but not quite dead lit the fuse of Roberto’s anger, and without asking permission, he swung the shuttle in a wide arc and went after it.

“Commander,” barked the captain, “let it go.”

“It’s almost down, sir,” Roberto said through clenched teeth, doing his best to pretend he cared what Captain Asad had to say. “I can finish it.”

“Commander!” yelled the captain.

“Just wait,” Roberto yelled back. He spun and faced the captain with all the fury and helplessness of a man whose twelve years in space has just culminated in the loss of his best friend at the hands of what amounted to an Inquisition-style tribunal and a death sentence. The heat of his emotions burned in his eyes like reactor cores. “I’m going to kill it.”

Captain Asad glared back at him, his own reflexive anger as hot as Roberto’s was. But Captain Asad was not a fool, nor was he entirely inhumane, especially not for an officer he valued as much as he did Roberto. And beyond all that, his anger had its largest root in the Hostiles too. His frustration ran as far back in time as Roberto’s did. Farther perhaps. And seeing the determination in his best officer’s face, he decided to relent this time.

“Very well, Commander. We will finish
this
one
off.” To prove he was in earnest, he tapped up a chemical-fuel burn, a thrust that spat the shuttle forward, bringing them right up behind the Hostile’s still protruding “tail.” Roberto unleashed two more missiles and the small ship’s laser cannon in response.

The Hostile made a weak dodge of the laser fire, but seemed not to see the missiles, and therefore both missiles hit it, blowing through it like the first one had.

Its mass spread out from the blasts like paint thrown on a wall, and for a time it looked like a big rust-colored chemical spill cart-wheeling across the stars. Two great gobs of glowing ichor squeezed out of rents in the Hostile’s surface and drifted away.

“That’s got it,” said the captain with more than a hint of satisfaction in his voice.

Roberto was about to agree, but then he shook his head. “Nope. Look.” The orb, still flat and wobbly, though slowly retracting itself, picked up speed and shot off toward the western edge of the planet, apparently abandoning the thick shaft it had been chasing in favor of saving itself. “Oh, no you don’t,” Roberto said as he reached over and mashed the thrust controls still lit on the panel before Captain Asad.

“Commander,” the captain began again but Roberto’s response was already on its way.

“Captain, you said we would finish it. I’ve never known you to run from a fight.”

Captain Asad actually laughed at that, if only briefly. Commander Levi hadn’t earned his promotions for being a poor tactician. With a flick of his finger upon the back of Roberto’s hand, he said, “I’ve got it, Commander.”

Roberto let him take the thruster controls back and, with a degree of satisfaction, watched the Captain move the slider up to a rate that would burn through their chemical fuel in a very short time, a commitment to speed.

Soon they were right behind the fleeing Hostile again, which was back to its fully round state and still accelerating. Roberto sent a laser shot at it, but the orb appeared to pulse and then jumped ahead, a feat made possible by magic, Roberto knew. That’s how the Hostiles could defy physics like they did.

The Hostile completed its reformation as they watched, or at least it did so as best as possible, for they could see that it had huge crevices in it and some jagged-edged fissures that hadn’t been visible before. Still, battered looking as it might have become, it was clearly not interested in dying yet. Now spherical, it continued to transform, hardening itself to the point where its surface became shiny and reflective, similar to the volcanic glass the two
Aspect
officers were familiar with from previous encounters with the orbs. The color was different, though. This orb turned dark red, like a drop of blood, not the deep black they’d seen in battles past.

“That’s weird,” Roberto commented.

“Well it won’t be weird for long if we let it get away,” said the captain.

And indeed it was pulling away from them again. Fully reshaped, it was now free to focus on its flight, leaping away in what Roberto had come to think of as “impossible motion,” short jumps across space that were quick as a blink, but not so far in distance as to be obvious it had disappeared. It was like watching a video where the recording skipped a half second every now and again. This effect increased in frequency and the fleeing orb began to blur in the direction of its retreat. It would pulse forward in jumps of a quarter mile, and then a half. Soon it was three and four miles at a time, little jumps that both men recognized as something akin to a Prosperion teleport.