Summoning Light (43 page)

They entered the system, approached the first planet, on which the base had been established. The primitive Earth technology would not detect their presence. Through his ship's sensors, Galen studied the brown, rocky planet, noticing some strange energies.

The ships ahead of him came to a stop. Galen moved below the others so he could get a clearer view, and stopped as well. He focused on the coordinates of the Earth base. An intense burst of energy flashed from the surface, then another. A ship was hovering over the base, firing down on it. Galen quickly checked the surface for life, but found none. Not a single structure of the base remained. The ship had destroyed everything, had killed everyone, and still it continued to fire, blasting a crater deeper and deeper into the planet. That was just what Galen would have liked to do, on Thenothk.

He extended his sensors to maximum, got an image of the ship. It was sleek, black, organic, with glittering skin similar to that on a Shadow ship. Yet the shape was different. From a long, central core, two rows of pointed extensions stretched outward and down, like two rows of legs. The energy readings were not the same as he'd sensed from Anna either. Most of the output looked very primitive, like that of current Earth technology, while other elements, primarily the skin and the weapons systems, reflected Shadow tech. It was some sort of rudimentary hybrid.

Galen was amazed at first that the Earth scientists had been able to construct it. But then he realized that the mages incorporated Shadow tech into their ships, staffs, and places of power. Apparently it was quite adaptable. Yet the Earth scientists hadn't been able to control their hybrid, and it had turned on them. Galen could have told them the results of using Shadow tech. He could have told them it would bring only destruction. The hybrid was, perhaps, a distant cousin, but still they had much in common.

Galen realized that this research was yet another reason the mages must flee. If Earth knew this much of Shadow tech, it would not take their scientists long to discover that the mages utilized that same tech. And from there, the determination to acquire the mages' knowledge, and their power, would follow close behind.

At the front of the mages' formation, the ships belonging to the Circle turned and began heading quickly out of the system. The others followed. Though the Circle maintained silence, their intentions were clear. The mages would withdraw to the edge of the system, where the hybrid could not detect their jump point, and then return to hyperspace. The probe was no longer necessary; no further experiments would be conducted here. And they did not want to become the next targets for the ship. Galen realized they might even fear this hybrid could betray them to the Shadows. Perhaps they believed it a Shadow ship, come to destroy the research. Of them all, only he and Blaylock had ever personally encountered one, and Blaylock had been weakened and distracted. He might not notice the anomalous readings the hybrid was producing.

Galen followed the others, troubled by the possibility that there might be an Anna at the center of this ship. Extending his sensors back, he searched the hybrid for life signs. He found elements suggestive of life in the skin and a few sections of the ship, and there, at its center, a living being, a Human.

How could they have done that to one of their own?

The tech echoed his anger, quickening. And then he noticed the energy readings from the ship were changing. With each blast the hybrid fired down at the surface, the Earth tech within it built closer to overload. It would probably keep firing mindlessly, compelled to chaos, until it overheated its systems and self-destructed.

He'd failed to save Anna. His mind raced to find something he could do to save this person trapped at the center of the hybrid.

If he was the master, and Anna the slave, he wondered if he could order the hybrid to stop firing, if he could order it to land. How to communicate with it? He had only a minute before they reached the edge of the system and jumped back into hyperspace. From his sensor readings, Galen guessed that it communicated, not through some sophisticated Shadow system, but through a standard Earth comm system. The scientists would have built it that way, so they could communicate with it. He searched for any signal it might be sending.

The ship was silent. Yet Galen heard a faint, pulsing signal. It was a distress beacon, its energy nearly exhausted, located about fifty thousand miles to starboard. According to his readings, nothing was out there. In his mind's eye, he scanned through options, narrowed his field of search to the area of the beacon, increased the sensitivity of the scan. Then he heard the voice, desperate, breathless.

"–is Ensign Matthew Gideon, of the Earth Alliance Destroyer Cerberus, to unidentified ships. I need your help. My ship has been destroyed."

Galen found him: one person, floating in the vast emptiness of space. The hybrid must have destroyed the Cerberus. He saw no debris, but assumed it had dispersed. Somehow, in the face of the hybrid's ferocity, one still lived. It was a miracle.

"I don't know if you can hear me, I don't know if you can understand me. But – in thirty minutes, I'll be dead and – there will be no one left to speak for the people who died here. You have to help me, you have–"

At least some of the mages must have detected the beacon, must be hearing the message. Yet they were not slowing. Galen didn't know why he would be surprised. They were abandoning the galaxy; what was one person more or less?

He checked the position of the hybrid ship. It remained focused on the planet, continuing to attack it.

"Don't go. Don't – Don't go!"

He'd wanted to help the hybrid, his kin, and nearly overlooked one of its victims. The hybrid had killed many, just like him. Its carnage could just as easily have been his carnage. This Matthew Gideon could just as easily have been one of his victims. But this victim wasn't dead yet.

Galen directed his ship to starboard, breaking from the other mages.

He had hoped only to do no more harm. But perhaps, just this once, before he left it all behind, he could do something good. Perhaps he could save without killing. Perhaps he could bring light, rather than darkness. If he did have a choice, then let him, this last time, choose well.

He received a message from Blaylock.
Galen, we dare not delay. This may be a trap. The ship may detect and attack us. It may inform others.

Then I will stop it.

It can destroy you long before you are in range to use your weapon.

That, in all likelihood, was true. But he did not want to destroy it. He still wished simply to stop it. And if he could not, then he would have to become its victim. For under no circumstance could he use his spell of destruction. He feared that once he cast it, he would not be able to stop. He would become just like the ship he destroyed.

Then leave without me, he wrote. I must do this.

He realized the truth of it as he sent it. He could not make the murder of this man his final act. After all he had killed, he could not bear the weight of one more.

The distress beacon was now only moments away. In his mind's eye he saw Matthew Gideon, illuminated by distant starlight, a lone floating figure in a grey EarthForce EVA suit. If this was a trap, there was no sign of it.

Energy surged through him, burning along the meridians of his tech, and he held it tightly, determined to retain control. The mage ships were receding into the distance. He had to rejoin them quickly. He had to reach the hiding place.

He brought the ship up above the lone figure, matching speed. He opened the small air lock on the underside of his ship. If Matthew entered there, Galen could keep him to an unused storage room, limiting what he saw. He must not realize he'd been rescued by a techno-mage.

Galen visualized the equation, conjured a flying platform at Matthew's back, pushed him up to the air lock. Through the ship's sensors, Galen watched as Matthew took hold of the air-lock hatch, pulled himself in.

As soon as the ensign was inside, Galen closed the hatch and directed his ship at top speed after the others. A swirling orange jump point had opened at the edge of the system, and the mage ships were entering. He must leave with them.

Yet still he had a minute before he would reach the jump point. He opened a communication channel to the hybrid.

"Stop now," he said. "They are all dead."

Intense bursts of energy continued to flash over the site of the Earth base.

"Use your sensors. Look. They are all dead."

At last, the firing stopped. Then, after a moment, a whisper, obscured by static. "Who are you?"

"I am your brother," Galen said. "And I have learned. We need not destroy."

From the first planet, the hybrid shot up, accelerating rapidly. It was coming after him.

Ahead, all the mages had gone through the jump point except for one, the one who generated it. Galen found the rune on the side of the ship: Elric. He waited for Galen.

The hybrid shrieked toward him, closing the distance. The Earth tech within it was overheating, reaching critical.

He'd been a fool for communicating with it. Yet now he must keep trying. "If you continue to attack, you will overload your systems and self-destruct."

A red beam shot out from the front of the hybrid. Galen changed course, changed course again. The hybrid fired one blast after the next. Frantic energy welled up in him, desperate to defend, to counter with deadly force. The hybrid could kill Elric, kill Matthew. Or if they survived to reach the jump point, it might follow them through.

Galen could turn on the hybrid, try to draw close enough to use his spell, and destroy it. But he must not, must not. Better to fly straight into the hybrid, to end it for both of them, now.

But then Matthew would die.

Leave me,
Galen wrote.

The response came almost instantly.
No.

The energy burned through Galen with brilliant, merciless intensity. With fierce focus, he fed his ship one course after the next, jigging up and down, side to side, evading the blasts. The hybrid was inexperienced, but determined.

Then Galen came even with Elric, and they were both speeding toward the immense, swirling jump point. The hybrid's beam clipped Elric's ship, and as it spun wildly, a hoarse scream sounded through the comm channel. Behind them, the hybrid's skin suddenly blazed a brilliant red. Then the glowing ship exploded, fragments shooting outward.

Galen was sucked through the vortex with a great wash of turbulence. For an instant the ship's readings went black, and he lost all sense of direction or movement. Then the red currents of hyperspace appeared around him. To his relief, Elric was at his side, the ship now under control. Galen detected no serious damage to it.

He wanted to make sure Elric was all right, to thank Elric for waiting, but he didn't know what to say. Nothing had changed.

The rest of the mage ships waited for them. They continued on their way.

Galen was racing with energy, his body shaking, heart pounding. He forced himself to take deep, calming breaths, resorting again to a mind-focusing exercise. Slowly, by small increments, the energy declined. He tried to focus on retaining control until they reached the hiding place. But the end of their journey would provide no relief. And he did not know how he would get through whatever years followed, cloistered away with no outlet for destruction but to visit it upon himself. The hybrid had been unable to stop its destruction, to escape its programming, even to save its life.

Galen had hoped, somehow, to save the person trapped within the machine. It had been a foolish hope. By contacting the hybrid, he had merely hastened its end.

He had wanted to save without killing, to do something purely good. And he had failed. One died, another lived. The universe continued in its maddening course of chaos and death.

Yet he told himself that he had at least saved one. That was something.

Now the mages would have to make one more stop, to drop Matthew Gideon at a safe location. Galen was sure the Circle was already debating what to do about the outsider. They wouldn't appreciate Galen's disobedience, but the rescue hadn't endangered their hiding place.

The mages would want to get rid of the ensign as quickly as possible. If they got close enough to a colony or friendly ship, Galen could put him into a life pod and fire him in the right direction. They could quickly be on their way again, and finish the journey.

But before that, Galen needed to put a face to the man he had saved. He hoped that it might help to restore his peace, that it might help him leave all this behind knowing that he had done one small bit of good, at least.

The dead had many faces. Isabelle, Burell, Kell. The Drakh from Zafran 8, his first murder. Then countless more Shadows and Drakh, twisted in torturous convolutions. Rabelna Dorna, shoulders stretching out to each side, grey scaled face distorted in fear. Tilar, silvery chrysalis ballooning upward, mouth rippling out in a silent scream, before he was crushed to nothingness. And then there were all the dead who had no faces, whom he'd killed from a distance, down to the whispering voice within the hybrid. Let the living at least have a face he could take with him.

In his mind's eye, Galen saw that Matthew Gideon had emerged from the air lock into the darkness of the empty storage room. Galen activated a single light above him. Matthew was kneeling. He jerked his head up at the light. With quick, panicked movements, he pulled off the helmet of his EVA suit. He was a young man, perhaps just a few years older than Galen, with a long, thin face and sharp chin. He was panting, his skin sheened with sweat. He looked frightened and disoriented.

Seeing him in this way was not enough. Galen had to see him in person. Galen made his way back to the storage room, entered silently. Matthew was at the far end of the room, facing away. Galen remained near the door, uneasy with his need.

"Rest," Galen said.

Matthew jerked around, mouth open.

"You're safe now."