Void: Book Five of the Nightlord series

by Garon Whited

  I swore a little bit, finished toweling off, and gave in.

  Diogenes had the electromagical transformers up and running in the workroom, making sure all the power crystals were charged. I activated a scrying mirror and adjusted the view, looking down at the Earth from out in space. There was a complete ring of spell-squares around the equator, all happily absorbing a tiny fraction of the sunlight passing through them and sending the converted energy down as magical power. There were more than I expected—a testament to the strength of continuous investment and compound interest.

  Moving them was going to be quite a feat. How to grab billions of the things and drag them thousands of miles? I never considered I might have to move them. Still, half should go one way, the other half go the other. Equal and opposite movements. Would that make things any easier?

  About an hour later, after expending most of the room’s existing charge, I paused to consider my work. Thousands of panels were redistributed, hovering over the Earth’s poles. Thousands. Out of billions.

  This was going to take a while, even by immortal standards. It was also going to take more power than I liked to think about.

  I went back to the media room, called up a hologram of the Earth, and started thinking about the problem. How do I move a few billion spells approximately six thousand miles apiece?

  My answer: Magnets!

  The whole world is a big magnet. All I have to do is write a new subroutine, using the self-replication setup already in the panels. The panels already have a subroutine to monitor their altitude and orientation toward the Sun. They have a minor ability to move themselves so they can maintain their positions relative to the Earth and each other. By altering their program, I can tell them to head toward the magnetic poles. It’ll take a while to replicate through all the panels and even longer for them to follow the lines of magnetic force, but I won’t have to sit here and supervise!

  Whups! If they all head toward the magnetic north, there won’t be any headed south. I should include a flag in the program. I start the new “Go north” program on one side of the world, then the “Go south” program on the exact opposite side of the ring, they’ll propagate toward each other. The flag is a check to see if the panel already has an instruction. If it already has one or the other commands, it won’t accept another.

  Hmm. I should also limit each panel to two attempts at passing on the command. Otherwise, they’ll all keep trying to tell each other where to go and waste power. I’ll re-check after a few days and make sure they’re all in motion and in roughly equal numbers. I can deal with stragglers then, too.

  I experimented with the hologram, casting spells to simulate the effects. Diogenes and I ran through several iterations, working out the bugs. Never put untested code into production. Always run it through a simulation!

  Then I fired up a scrying mirror, had Diogenes do some counting in the image thus presented, and launched two spells—one over the zero longitude, then another over the one-eighty. The effects would work their way around the planet and meet over the ninety longitude, east and west.

  I watched for a few minutes. It seemed to be working as expected and I was very pleased. Well before morning, it had spread like a shockwave through the equatorial band, altering almost all of them. The ones at the launch points were already visibly moving toward polar positions. It would take days before they finished their migration—their movement was limited by their power intake from the sunlight—but things seemed to be going well.

  Flintridge, Tuesday, September 23rd, 1969

  Things were going well in Apocalyptica, not so much in Flintridge.

  In the Cosmo, Mary installed a transceiver with a micro-gate. Our eavesdropping and wiretapping went straight to Diogenes. His evaluation was the Cosmo and Lorenzo had no material connections to any religious organization. This was fine by me. Any organization with the power to accidentally incinerate me just for stepping on their turf wasn’t one I wanted noticing me.

  Listening in on phone calls, sorting out voices, identifying numbers, all those sorts of things was also a good deal. Lorenzo wasn’t exactly a clearinghouse for vampire hunters, but he did philanthropic work through them. He didn’t run hunting squads, but he gathered intelligence and distributed it. He also made occasional phone calls to smooth out minor incidents with the law, made connections between suppliers and demanders, and so on.

  Why, we’re still not sure. Maybe it’s his religious upbringing. Maybe he lost someone to a fanged thing. We haven’t found out why he does it. I’m sure it’ll come back to bite us, but maybe it’ll brush its teeth, first.

  What we also didn’t know was how to bug his actual penthouse. Oh, there are directional microphones, laser microphones, telephoto lenses, thermographic cameras, even specialized radar for looking through walls. We simply haven’t had opportunity to install them in neighboring buildings. They’re not exactly the most subtle of equipment. Diogenes has the technology to build actual, robotic bugs, however. The things can fly up, latch on next to a window, and use a tiny camera and microphone to watch and listen. We never needed them before, so we didn’t have any on hand.

  As a result, we missed the planning stages of their raid. The first Diogenes heard of it was when Mary activated her Diogephone bracelet in a motel in Flintridge and immediately got into a fight. This caused Diogenes to interrupt me in Apocalyptica.

  “Professor, Mary is engaged in combat and has attempted to request assistance, either in escape or in battle.”

  “What time is it there?” I demanded, heading for Wardrobe.

  “The local time differential has just completed the sunrise cycle.”

  “Damn. I’m still fully dead—I’ll be useless if I go now. We really do need more gate options around the planet.”

  “Noted. May I suggest taking a portable gate with you in the new aircraft?”

  “What aircraft? Do we have—oh, right. You did say you completed testing on a supersonic airplane, didn’t you? How long will it take to get me to the sunrise line?”

  “We can have you in Maine in about an hour. However, if you are willing to wait an additional twenty-three minutes, you can use the transport gate from the Pennsylvania campus base to Flintridge.”

  “I need to know more. What’s the situation with Mary?”

  “I am sorry, Professor, but I cannot monitor her vitals through her communicator. The conflict appears to be resolved. Judging by the voices, several of her assailants are wounded, she has been subdued, and her captors want her alive for questioning.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so! Get the plane; I’m in a hurry. I’ll also need a disposable gate to take with me.”

  “Loading the plane now, Professor.”

  “By the way,” I continued, as I strapped on weapons, “any new versions of the Diogephone are to include more surveillance devices for you and some sort of health monitoring. A stick-on patch over the heart to communicate with the phone, glasses we can wear to act as video feeds, whatever.” My cloak changes shape most readily at night, flowing like water into new forms. In this case, it turned into a black jacket.

  “The spy circuits have already been incorporated in newer models, Professor, but vital-signs monitoring is now being included in the latest design.”

  “Good.” I finished arming myself. Forget going loaded for bear. Go loaded for human. They're the more dangerous animals.

  I don’t usually carry guns. I’m a decent shot, but only because I’ve practiced. I’ll never be a marksman. I made an exception, carrying two, one in a shoulder holster, the other in a holster at the small of my back. The sword I carried in its scabbard, not certain if I wanted to wear it in a mostly-unarmed society. It depended on where I came out and who was around. A sheathed sword is cargo if you carry it, a weapon if you wear it. Weird, but true.

  I stepped through the shift-booth to the Denver industrial center.

  When we started the Denver site, it was just a cluster of reclaimed buildings on the ou
tskirts of a blast zone. It acted as a central hub for reclamation, refurbishing, and recycling of old parts. Now, the place is a sprawling mass of streets and machinery, thirty miles across and always growing. It didn’t resemble a city so much as an open-air factory, but it was a hundred thousand factories, machine shops, and chemical plants. You name it, we make it here. Rails were everywhere, in the ground and overhead, along with power distribution points for robots needing a quick recharge. And robots were literally everywhere. Tracked robots were dragging trailers, wheeled robots were whizzing about, even a few multi-legged robots were going up or down in the maze of the structure.

  It was alien. I’ve never noticed it before.

  Diogenes’ primary drone guided me to a flatbed transport. I rode it to the launchpad and the sleek, sharp-looking airplane. The thing reminded me of an arrowhead, a narrow triangle ready to punch a hole in the sky. The canopy opened and I leaped up, settling myself into the front seat.

  “Please fasten your safety harness,” Diogenes requested. I heard the engines whine to life as I fumbled with the straps.

  “How fast does this thing go?” I asked.

  “It has been tested at six thousand, five hundred, and fifty-three kilometers per hour.”

  “You weren’t kidding about transportation,” I observed.

  “You did order mundane transportation methods, both for you and for Mary. You did not give specifications.”

  The engines grunted and the ship lifted straight up. I didn’t expect that. I finished buckling in.

  “We may need to discuss your definition of ‘mundane’,” I observed.

  “Shifting to flight mode,” Diogenes warned, just before the seat tried to eat me.

  It’s a good thing I’m dead at night. I think I would have passed out. It was a lot of G’s.

  “We are now cruising at Mach five-point-three,” Diogenes informed me, once the ship quit shoving my back into my front.

  “We’re definitely reviewing your definition of ‘mundane’,” I decided. “Excuse me while I cast some spells.”

  “Of course, Professor.”

  The spells, of course, were combat spells. I don’t like being shot and I have a hard time running around corners at high speed. I admit I have a weight problem. Most of these problems can be mitigated or even eliminated, but it’s important to prepare. My amulet was multiply-enchanted with such things, but it’s always good to get a head start when entering a low-magic environment. I recall a time when my inertia-shedding spell quit on me in the middle of the night—which was most inconvenient, since I was running at the speed of dark and trying to hook a left on wet pavement. I survived the slip, but the dumpster didn’t fare so well.

  “Any news on Mary?”

  “I believe the communications bracelet is no longer on her person, Professor. I conjecture, from the thumping and clanking, that all her usual accessories have been confiscated and placed in a container.”

  “How the hell did they figure her out, anyway?”

  “I am continuing to monitor the intelligence channels, but I lack the ability to directly monitor most face-to-face conversations. One of her assailants used the motel phone, however, to report to someone in the Cosmo, confirming the success of their raid.”

  “Right, right.” I sighed. “They probably know about me, too.”

  “The balance of probability suggests it, Professor.”

  I spent the rest of the flight working on my defensive spells and swearing.

  How did they mark her? Did she do something in the casino while I was scouting the hotel? Was she under observation elsewhere? Did someone notice something on the security footage? I know I saw cameras—big, bulky things by my standards. Was there someone in the basement screaming about vampires in the place?

  Okay, one vampire in the place. I don’t show up on cameras at night. Could that have tipped them off? It might have been odd when Mary walked arm in arm with me. If I were a professional vampire hunter, I would be deeply suspicious of anyone without a reflection and without an image on camera.

  I suppose I should find out. Maybe I will. Afterward.

  Diogenes warned me about approaching the sunrise line before coming out of supersonic flight. I held on and waited while the aircraft descended to subsonic, noting we were already at an extremely low altitude to avoid the high-altitude sunlight. I could feel it tingling already.

  “Does this thing have a rear camera?”

  A heads-up display showed me the rear view. The boom track through the forest behind us was very clear. Never fly low when you’re hypersonic. It’s bad for the vegetation.

  Well, I was in a hurry and Diogenes knew it.

  The plane came to a hover, deployed landing gear, and settled in a meadow on the west side of a rocky hill. I started to get out but Diogenes darkened the canopy until it was an unrelieved black.

  “Thought of everything?” I asked.

  “I try to, Professor.”

  I waited out the sunrise, sweating and stinking. When Diogenes finally popped the canopy open, I was ready with a cleaning spell. I didn’t need the distraction of my own filth in a fight.

  I plopped down a portable gate and it sprang into a wire hoop. A little fiddling with it and I had it braced against an outcrop of rock.

  “Still got that connection to Mary’s phone?”

  “Yes, Professor.”

  I flipped open mine, magically backtracked through it to the silo, diverted through her micro-gate, and used that as a targeting fix. I already knew I wanted Flintridge, but I wanted to land somewhere near where Mary was. My portable gate shimmered, seemed to rotate, and the silvery flush-and-snap opened.

  I make it sound easy, don’t I? It is not. If there’s one thing I’m good at, gates are it. Don’t try this at home.

  The view was a junkyard in the desert. Judging by the viewpoint, the most congruent connection point was a missing car window. The early-morning light was bright and already hot. There was no one to be seen.

  Worked for me. I dove through, rolled to my feet, and stood beside of a pile of dead cars, looking around. The gate closed behind me.

  Still nobody. I wasn’t far away, surely, but which way?

  I muttered metaphorical curses and a non-metaphorical location spell. Over that way? Yes. Good. Not too far—close enough to make this a getaway point. I unfolded my other portable gate and laid it down in the bed of an ancient pickup truck. We could activate it, jump in the bed of the truck, and be gone. It’s always good to know your escape route, but to do that you have to have one.

  My spell led me to the used-car dealership next door to the junkyard. From the looks of the cars for sale, it was probably part of the junkyard. Most of them—thirty or so—were not happy to sit out in the desert. The only good-looking vehicles were parked in front of the wooden office building—a red ’66 Toronado, a black ’67 Impala, and a familiar-looking yellow ’65 Thunderbird convertible. The convertible needed a new top and the Toronado’s right rear fender sideswiped something long enough ago to show signs of rust, but they were otherwise in good shape. The cars for sale, by contrast, might run. The legendary caveat emptor no doubt applied.

  Okay, so she’s in the building. At a guess, it has a toilet and three rooms: A front office, a private office, and a back room. If I were holding her captive, where would I put her?

  To be fair, if I were the one trying to keep her captive, it would involve wrapping her in polymer straps, duct tape, and concrete, but I know her. Where would they put her? That was the real question.

  I circled the car lot, dividing my attention between speed and stealth. The back had a door, but no windows. Probably there. It’s awkward to have to explain to the rare customer why you have someone tied to a chair in your lobby. Then again, the car lot was part of what was obviously a ghost town, dusty and abandoned. All the scenery needed was a rogue tumbleweed. Still, there was nothing to see through the front of the shop, so, best guess…

  I crept up on the
back door and wished for tendrils. Knowing my luck, if I tried this at night I’d run smack into all sorts of anti-vampire charms. Being shot wouldn’t bother me so much, though. There are trade-offs in any situation and I was in a hurry.

  Mary is the stealthy one. If she were rescuing me, she would disarm all the alarms, sneak into the building, search it, locate everyone, steal their guns, then quietly cut their throats while they were discussing what to do with me. I can’t do that. If I tried it, I’d kill someone silently and he’d still raise the alarm.

  I drew my sword, drew a gun, and kicked in the door. The bolt tore from the frame and the bar snapped. When I kick a door, I mean it. It slammed open and the top hinge tore away, making it hang askew. I went in even before it hit the wall—I’ve had doors bounce closed again, a no-good way to make an entrance.

  Mary was in the room, wrapped in rope and suspended from the ceiling like a heavy punching bag. Judging from the rolled-up sleeves on the gentlemen in the room, I assumed it was more than a resemblance. A circle was centered under her, painted on the floor. It contained symbols I didn’t recognize, but I didn’t take time to do anything but note it.

  I shot the man to my immediate left in the chest, barely missing the cross he wore. It wasn’t a fancy shot, simply center of mass to discourage him and unnerve everybody else. There’s nothing quite like a heavy-caliber gunshot indoors. It assaults the ears and feels like a physical blow. It also rattles most people, disrupts their thinking, slows their response. There are exceptions, of course, but it usually works.

  I was prepared for the noise. Without pausing, I disemboweled the man on my right with an upward cut, testicles to sinuses, almost cutting him in half. I moved around the room for the remaining two without breaking stride. The first stared at me with a horrified expression. It stayed horrified as his head fell toward the floor. The second tried to draw a gun. He succeeded. He was surprisingly fast.

  Unfortunately, two things worked against him. First, his weapon was in a shoulder holster and had a snap to keep it in place. It’s not a quick-draw rig. It’s a way to transport a firearm. Second, proper firearm safety says you don’t keep a round chambered in an automatic. You have to work the slide to chamber a round and cock the hammer. This isn’t usually an issue, but that extra step can be fatal if you’re not expecting gunplay. It was. I went right past his pieces as I finished my circuit of the room, put a neat thrust through my gunshot victim’s eye, threw open the door to the front of the building, and searched the place. There was no one else.