Rise of Shadows (24 page)

“Wow, I can’t believe we are really here!” I said without thinking.

“Forgive me, Dusty, but where is here?” asked Shea.

“This is the room!” I said.

“Which room?” she asked.

“The room where the Black Snakes became the Council of Wizards!” I said.

“Adders, actually,” said Master Mantis.

I jerked around and looked at him, realizing I had forgotten he was with us, and said, “Sorry, Master. Yes, of course, Black Adders.”

“Understandable mistake,” he said as he walked over to the table and took a long pull from one of the cups there.

“Ah, so this is where it all started, then?” asked Shea.

“Not exactly. Everything was already in motion by the time they came here, but this is where the formal alliance was born,” said Master Mantis.

I was unsure how to proceed; I was literally standing in the presence of the man who was at least partly responsible for the creation of the order of wizards in my realm, and in the very room where it had happened. I just stood there looking around and trying to imagine that day in my mind. I knew that many of my fellow students would have paid a great sum to see this famous room.

“Master, this is a great privilege, and I am honored to be included in it,” started Shea.

“Yes,” interrupted Master Mantis.

“Yes?” asked Shea.

“You were trying to find a nice way of asking if there was a reason I brought you two here, and the answer is yes,” he said.

“Oh,” said Shea.

I could see he had her completely off-balance, so I decided to save her and said, “Master, since you are here, then does that mean I can go home to the Dust Dragon?”

“Yes, it does, but I am going to ask you not to,” he said.

Now it was my turn to be lost, but unlike Shea I was used to it. I went over to the table and picked up a cup at random and took a long deep drink of the most delicious water I had ever tasted. After I put the cup down, I noticed that Mantis’ cup had some red-colored liquid in it, while mine was definitely clear water. Shea’s cup had a different liquid in it as well.

“Master, I guess this is where we are quiet and let you tell what you brought us here to tell us?” I asked.

“Wise words,” said Master Mantis with a smile. “First, I should tell you that Shadow has received a message saying that you are alive and well in my care. I did not speak with him personally, but I am told that he was overjoyed at the news.”

“Great!” I said. “So now what?”

“First, I need you to fill in some missing details. How long have you been in this realm?” he asked.

“Master, I have logged every day since coming here, and I count seventeen days,” I said.

“Good, that matches what we expected. Now, for the rest of the story, we know that you were on the pirate ship, the bombs were incoming, and you cast a scramble tongues spell. What happened after that?” he asked.

I proceeded to tell him everything I could remember up to where I had reached the town where Shea was. At that point, he stopped me and pulled out a scroll from a pocket in his robe. I had no idea how he fit such a massive scroll in there, but it seemed to slide right out as if it was normal to be able to pull out an object many times too big from its pocket. When he spread the scroll out on the floor, it proved to be a massive map of the planet. It seemed to go on forever as he unrolled it.

“Dusty, here is Syncillia. Can you show me where it was that you escaped from the magi?”

After asking a few questions about cardinal direction and scale, I started to trace my route backwards from Syncillia. As I traced the route, an orange glowing line appeared on the map, and a flag appeared in every place that I mentioned. Everything was going well until I reached the town where I had found Shea. The problem was simply that there were no large bodies of water anywhere near Shea’s town. I traced my route right to where the chairs on the beach should have been, then said, “I don't understand. There should be a beach right here!”

“Shea, you lived there for a while. Is my map wrong?” he asked.

“No, Master, but Dusty has traced the rest of the route so perfectly that I begin to doubt my own memory,” she said.

“Indeed, his recall is superb, so I suggest we go and check out this new beach for ourselves,” he said.

We decided that, come first light, we would head off to check out the ocean, and until then Master Mantis gave Shea and myself free use of his library. I taught Shea how to find her way around it, and then I spent the rest of the night researching defense against charms. I would not fail my friends again. Next time that sorcerer showed his face, I would make sure it was the last.

It has been thirteen days, just shy of two full weeks since we lost Dusty, and there still was no word. Spectra was confident beyond reason that he was alive and well. I must soon ask her where that confidence comes from, but for now I was content with letting her keep everyone hopeful that we would find him soon.

“Sorry, Shadow, there has been no change in his condition,” said Doctor Leslie as I walked into sickbay.

We had taken the magus out of the hyberpod the morning after we had secured Doctor Leslie’s freedom, and almost instantly upon waking he went into violent convulsions, which caused completely random bursts of magic to be released into the room at a great rate. Between Phoenix and myself, we were able to contain the power so that no one was seriously hurt, but that was only after Leslie had been thrown across the room, and one of the hyberpods was destroyed. Leslie was bruised and sore from her unscheduled flight, but ultimately she was fine. The convulsions lasted only a few minutes, then he slipped into a coma in which he has remained for the last two days.

“Leslie, what are the chances that he will never wake up?” I asked.

“Pretty good at this point, I am afraid. We lack the resources to help him out here,” she said.

“So if we were at a star base you could save him?” I asked.

“Maybe, just maybe,” she said.

“I see. How much time, then, do you give him before he cannot be saved?” I asked.

“No idea. He might already be beyond that point now, or he might have years,” she said.

“Well, continue to do what you can for him,” I said. I would have liked to drop him off at a hospital somewhere, but with his apparent loss of control of his magic, it would be too dangerous. I thanked her again for her help with him and left her to her studies. Ever since she learned she was free she devoted all her spare time to studying all the medical information we had in the ship’s computers. I was glad that she was working so hard because I knew that we could not just abandon her at some random star port, as that would just set her up to be a slave again. We would have to help her get a job somewhere, perhaps with the Aleeyron Navy.

“Hi, Shadow. The drives are almost ready to jump again,” said Flame as I entered the bridge.

“Excellent,” I said. Before the Great War there was no such thing as a ghost ship, but since the war there has been a steady increase in them. That told me they must be connected to the sorcerers somehow, so we decided to head to a well-known haunt of theirs. I hoped that when we arrived we would find a sorcerer stronghold, or at least some clue as to what was going on out here.

“Now, everyone, remember our drill out here. As soon as we come out of jump space, I will put up the cloak, Flame will begin evasive maneuvers, and Phoenix will ready the shields. Spectra, I will need you scanning space, but not with the ship’s scanners. Leave them on automatic because I need you to look for ghosts.” Everyone indicated they understood, so I opened the ship’s intercom and called Dr. Leslie.

“Yes, sir?” she asked.

“Leslie, in a few minutes we will be jumping, and if our suspicions are correct, there could be an enemy stronghold on the other side of jump space, so you will want to make sure you and your patient are secure,” I said.

“Understood,” she said.

“Flame, jump when ready,” I said.

“Just another five minutes,” she said.

As we waited for the jump drives to finish charging I looked again at the data that led us to this jump. I had a deep, nagging suspicion that I had missed something critical to our success. I could feel the ever-rising power of darkness over our realm, and the scariest part was that no matter what we did, it continued to grow in power. It was almost as if we were helping it. No matter how hard I looked at the data, I could find nothing new. In this region of space, all the ghost ship reports were centered around the location we were about to jump to.

“Jumping now,” said Flame, cutting short my analysis.

As we exited jump space, I rushed to get our cloak up, and Flame quickly changed course to prevent us from flying into our doom. “Spectra, tell me that's not real,” I said.

“Sorry, Shadow, it’s there,” she said.

What was there was a large fleet of warships. The fleet was made up of mismatched ships of every caliber and class arrayed before us, with one exception: there was no capital class ship. What there was instead was far stranger and potentially far more dangerous. In the center of the fleet where the capital class ship should have been, there was a tear in space and time. It was as if someone had cut reality itself, and jump space was leaking into normal space.

“Spectra, get a message out to the navy. Send them our coordinates and tell them we may need backup from a stealth bomber wing. Tell them a full report will be coming, but we need those bombers en route right away,” I said. I was worried that if the fleet detected us they might flee before the bombers could arrive. “Flame, low power mode. It would be best if they do not see us, and slowly pull away from that fleet.”

“Message sent, Shadow. They are predictably requesting more information,” she said.

“They will get it later. For now, get on your scans and tell me what you see,” I said. While she did that, I stretched out my awareness and probed the tear itself. I could sense ghosts coming and going through it and flying through space at great speed. I could not tell where they were going; their flight path was simply too erratic. We had found the source of the ghosts it seemed, but what did they need with such a fleet?

“Shadow, this can’t be right,” said Spectra.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The sensors are picking up no life forms of any kind,” she said.

I looked over the fleet and noticed that, just like the battleship, these ships had absolutely no markings of any kind. That meant they were not part of the Scorpion Gang’s fleet, but then whose were they?

“But there is something else,” she said. “Those ships are filled with undead energy.”

“What exactly does that mean?” asked Phoenix.

“Those are all ghost ships,” she said.

“Oh my,” gasped Flame.

I looked at the rip and started piecing things together. “Someone must be sending the ghosts out to collect these ships, and they have been doing it for a long time,” I said.

“But who could rip a hole in space like that?” asked Spectra.

“No one,” I said, and I really wanted to believe it.

“Yet there it is,” said Phoenix.

“Shadow, we need to close that tear,” said Spectra.

“Sure, but how?” I asked. I watched the ghosts come and go through the tear in space. They did not seem to notice our presence here, so far. “Spectra, if all the people on those ships were killed, how do you propose they got the ships here?”

“Zombies,” she said. “Once they kill a mundane, they can re-animate its corpse for a short time. The corpse has no will of its own, but still has all the skills it had in life.”

“So they fly out, take over a ship, create some zombies, and fly back here?” asked Phoenix.

“Yes,” said Spectra.

“With this much firepower, why haven’t they attacked yet?” asked Phoenix.

“Zombies decay fairly fast and probably did not last much longer than it took to get the ships here,” she said.

“That still means someone is gathering a fleet, but we do not know who,” I said. “Spectra, open a channel to Bill. Phoenix, keep an eye on our friends out there. If they notice us, turtle up. Flame, get us out of the gravity well of that fleet in case we need to run.”

“Hello, Bill,” I said as Bill’s image came up on the main screen.

“Hello, Shadow. Sounds like you found something out there,” he said.

“Yes. Here, let me patch in our display,” I said. Once I had tactical patched in so that he could see the fleet, I said, “As you can see, we found a fleet of ships.” I explained to him that every ship he saw on the display was a ghost ship and that he needed to get bombers out here, but under cover for now. It would be a serious blow to Aleeyron’s ability to defend itself if the ghosts took over one of their elite bomber wings.

“So, what do we do?” he asked.

“First, there is one more bit of bad news,” I said.

“Shoot,” he said.

“The sensors do not seem to register it but, in the center of that fleet where you would normally expect a capital ship, there is a hole in space-time.”

“Okay, you’re gonna have to give me more than that,” he said.

“We do not know much more yet, just that space-time is torn here, and that is where the ghosts come from. They seem to be gathering these ships for someone, but we do not know who,” I said.

“How can there be a hole in space-time?” he asked.

“As far as I understand, there cannot be, hence our confusion,” I said. I explained to him that we planned to close the hole once we had worked out how, and that I figured that would draw out whoever it was that was gathering this fleet. “Cutting off the ghosts’ route to and from jump space should slowly kill them off as a nice side benefit.”

“When will you need the bombers to make their run?” he asked.

“Not sure yet. If we do anything to tip our hand before closing the tear, we might not get the chance to seal it, so I think that has to happen first,” I said.

“Makes sense. I will get a wing out to you as soon as we can,” he said. “Please keep me informed on what’s going on out there.”

After that, we wrapped up the call, and I turned to talk to Spectra about the ghost when something highly unusual happened. The ship’s intercom buzzed. It took me a moment to remember we had a mundane on board, and she would have to use it to reach us.