Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) (55 page)

Sure enough, beyond the temple, the broad sweep of once majestic Unification Avenue seethed with activity. It was the point of the spear thrusting toward the city’s royal heart, all its glorious towering oaks had been ripped out like weeds, the statues of the great kings and queens all gone. Now it was broken and swamped with a tumultuous crowd of war. At its farthest end, the Royal Army was being compressed against the Palace walls like twenty thousand grapes in a wine press made of demons, the libation of their bodies, their red blood, running through the filtering heaps of the hacked apart and dying, an intoxicant for the invading horde.

Altin wanted to look for Orli’s father, but knew he couldn’t take the time to sort through all that activity. He also realized as he thought about the Earthman that there was no laser fire coming from above. He looked skyward and recognized that the fleet had stopped helping them, even from the safety of orbit. He also noticed that
Citadel
was back. The great sphere of it hovered, barely visible against the clouds. He saw no redoubts in the air and figured that the wizards must have gone to the Palace walls.

He came out of the spell right after and went to where Orli sat at Tytamon’s table, once again tapping away at her tablet.

“Asad and the others are no longer helping them,” he said. “The laser fire has stopped, and
Citadel
is back at Crown.”

“I figured as much.” The quizzical look that ensued upon his face prompted her to fill him in. “When you brought us to Mars, on the way out to Red Fire, you stopped in orbit, and I saw another one of the big Hostiles had returned. Not as big as the one you guys sent into the sun, but big enough. I had a feeling Nakamura would take that wrong.”

“They could have just taken
Citadel
back and gotten rid of that one too.”

“True. If they’d known it was there. But how would
Citadel
have found out about it? It’s not like anyone on Earth could call them up and tell them another one had come.”

Altin wanted to shout, to vent the pressure of his frustration, but he held it back, plunging his fingers into the muss of his dark hair instead, blowing out exasperation in a long, low hiss. “Surely the director must realize by now …,” Altin began, but let it die. Of course he didn’t. “I need to let Aderbury know.”

Orli nodded that she thought that was a good idea, and so Altin sent
Citadel
’s leading wizard a telepathic nudge. Unlike last time, he did not get an immediate response. In fact, he knew he was making contact, but Aderbury wasn’t answering. That did not bode well, and wouldn’t if they’d needed
Citadel
. He needed Aderbury alert up there, ready to go.

Altin sent another nudge, letting go the first and trying anew, this time more urgently. He still had to wait for a reply, but finally one came. “Tidalwrath’s fits, Altin. It’s about time. Her Majesty has ordered us back. The fleet stopped helping, and Crown is about to fall. I’ve been trying to contact you for over an hour. We cut down tons of the Hostiles above Earth. Another hour or two and we would have had them all. Half a day at most.”

“What are you doing out there? Why didn’t you answer? What if I needed you?”

“I’m transmuting these harpy-spawn demons,” he snapped back. “They aren’t as resistant to stone as they are the elements … so long as you don’t mind getting close enough to touch one anyway.”

Altin could feel the pulse of Aderbury’s battle rage in the message as it came.

“I’m sorry,” Altin said afterward, imagining his friend running around, unarmored, dancing between the crushing footfalls of those giant demons, muttering transmutation spells that would turn them to stone, but only if he lay a hand on one. Brave. And insane.

“So who is in command of
Citadel
?”

“Peppercorn,” sent back Aderbury. “There’s not much an enchanter can do down here, and all the available conduits are already working with the Enchanters Guild to keep up the supply of arrows with transmutation spells. Not that it’s really helping much.”

“All right. So do you still have teleporters ready to go? Can I contact her if the time comes?”

“Yes, they’re all still up there waiting. They’re working with the seers and dropping broken columns and pieces of the wall on the demons. Most of our healers have gone, though. They went down into the Temple of Anvilwrath with the Liquefying Stones. They’ve got some kind of spell down there to help with mana flow into the city, so we decided to give a hand. It was running pretty low.”

“That’s good. But please, make sure the teleporters are ready.”

“They are. We didn’t send the redoubts out.”

“I saw.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at Calico Castle. Orli and I found Red Fire.”

“Who is Red Fire?”

“The other Hostile world.”

There was a long pause and Altin knew Aderbury was working through it and forcing himself not to ask. He was as much aware of the time constraint as Altin was, perhaps more so given his circumstance. Altin hoped he wasn’t putting his friend’s life at risk distracting him, even as he realized he clearly was. So he cut it short then. “Be safe, Aderbury.”

“I will if you hurry up and do whatever you are going to do.”

“I will.”

“Mercy be with you.”

“You too.” And then Aderbury was gone.

When Altin turned back to Orli, she could see how pale his face had gone. She asked immediately what he had learned.

“Aderbury and the rest of the transmuters are fighting on foot at the Palace walls. Peppercorn has
Citadel
. The teleporters are waiting for us, but I’m not sure to what end. I don’t even know where to go. Ocelot was useless, and the Palace is going to fall.”

A wave of emotion overcame him, and he stalked away, trying to force himself to think, but with no direction to think in.

Orli watched him, could sense the feelings of impotence and rage.

“Altin,” she said, giving him only a minute to deal with himself. “I need you to get me back to Earth.”

He stopped his pacing, straightening stiff as a stick, his back still to her. She saw by the movement of his shoulders that he drew in a breath. He turned back, his cheeks puffing as he let the breath back out. “Where?”

“Back where you found me, back at Fort Minot.”

He let the admonitions, the warnings, the comments about the risk of her being retaken, die on his tongue. He nodded. “Where? The room I found you in?”

“No, that’s too far down. We need to get to a supply depot.”

“How?” He was going to need a diviner to make sense of where she wanted him to go. That place had made no sense to him at all. Everything about it looked the same.

“Just get me there.”

“And then what? We run around?”

“No. I can find one from the air. I’ll know what I’m looking for when I see it.”

“I can’t fly. It will take too long to learn the spell.”

“Taot can.”

“I don’t have time to cast all the enchantments we need to hide us from the heat eyes your people have. The invisibility enchantment that we would need. I’ll have to find more perfume to coat the dragon, or they’ll see us.”

“Then they see us.”

“We’ll be fired upon.”

“We’ll fire back. You said yourself our war machines are ‘in the box.’ That’s the big vulnerability. So, teleport them. Isn’t that what you do? Let’s go!”

“Orli, do you realize what you are asking me to do? To your own people?”

“They’re not my people, remember? And you already know the rest.” The look she sent him was so severe, so frightfully determined, that he knew she was right. He would do what had to be done.

He nodded and sent a message to Taot that was not really a request. The urgency of it was enough to get the mighty beast’s attention, and he agreed, though he hadn’t cared much for Earth the last time they were there.

In the span of five minutes, the three of them were soaring between the upthrust buildings of Fort Minot’s uniformity, winding through the low-slung cityscape of black mirrors and blinking lights. They didn’t even have the advantage of darkness to cover their approach, the sun high as they swooped in. Not that it mattered much, for the air defenses of the base were busily engaged with the Hostiles swarming all around. There was some luck in that.

Red orbs, smaller than the planetary variety, draped themselves over buildings everywhere, flattening out and then oozing like melting wax down the sides. They clung to the mirrored surfaces and ran in long rivulets, dripping elongations of their substance, the once rocky and hard transformed into something different, something malleable, fluid and clearly corrosive in high degrees. Other orbs came speeding down from above and simply crashed through things, blasting into buildings or punching through hangar doors like meteors. In places, the dragon riders could see through the holes and observe the orbs flattening themselves out upon floors or over ships and equipment, forming undulations and lumps that marked where fighters and freighters and vessels of every type and size were being unmade by the oozing Hostile goo, the acrid smoke coming from them testimony to the materials being dissolved beneath.

Orli immediately set to looking for signs that would lead them to a central supply depot. “Take us lower,” she shouted into the wind of Taot’s flight. “So I can read.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Hangars,” she said. “Really big ones, big enough for ships like the
Aspect
. Or garage doors, lots of them, set up for large-scale delivery trucks.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Just take us lower.”

Altin guided Taot downward, and soon they were only a few spans above the lowest of the rooftops. Orli’s head pivoted quickly from side to side, her eyes scouring the fronts and backs of buildings down long streets, piercing the shadows of alleyways, seeking.

Meanwhile, Altin, in his nervousness, watched the skies for signs of pursuit, be they from Earth or another world. For the first several minutes, there was none, but soon enough, in came a long, angular flying craft with a bank of red and blue lights that flashed in sequence on its canopy. It fell in right behind them.

Altin sent the image of it to Taot, but the dragon did not need to be told to avoid it as best he could. He’d heard it coming long before Altin knew it was there.

“I knew they’d find us,” Altin called back to Orli, who glanced behind them nervously.

“Attention Prosperions. Land the … vehicle immediately or you will be fired on,” came the command from the pilot of the hovercraft.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Orli said. “Is he even looking around?”

Altin only shrugged, hoping Orli could do something. Apparently she could not because she went back to looking down into the buildings below.

“Are you going to do something?” he asked anyway.

“Do what? You need to take him out. They probably won’t give you another warning.”

Reluctant to do such a thing, he pressed Taot to fly faster, knowing even as he did that the creature could never match the Earth machine for speed. The dragon dipped and wove through buildings, tilting sideways through the narrowest of openings, skimming surfaces by the barest margins, his agility incredible. But the pursuing craft simply moved above the buildings and followed from higher up. They could dimly hear it repeat the previous command.

“We can’t lose it,” Altin called back to Orli.

“No shit. Take him out before he gets a heat lock on us.”

“He wouldn’t shoot us down without provocation, would he?”

A stripe of blue light streaked through the air, just missing them. It struck the road beneath them, which exploded, a huge hole forming and a spew of black asphalt flying up and all around.

“How much more proof do you need?” she said as she drew her blaster and fired several shots at their pursuer.

“Dragon’s fire!” he swore. “But he’s not the enemy.”

She fired several more shots. “He is now.”

Taot swerved, banking so hard he nearly threw his riders off. A missile hissed past them and blew out the corner of the building Taot had barely missed himself. He roared in fury as shards of glass nicked them all, blown out from the blast.

Altin knew then that she was right. He still didn’t want to kill the pilot, though.

He turned back and, with a few moments to formulate a plan—and several more shots from Orli, one of which blew off one of the ship’s flashing lights—Altin teleported the hovercraft and its occupant into the execution chamber where Orli had once been. He was careful to make sure the cockpit ended up in the center of the room, but he had no time to really consider the relative space beyond that level of detail. With a thought the pursuit came to an end.

“About time,” Orli said. “That was cutting it pretty close.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“Good.” She went back to looking for the main supply depot.