No More Magic

by Rayner Ye

  Rayner Ye

  No More Magic

  Copyright © 2021 by Rayner Ye

  The following book is fiction.

  Any names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved.

  No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, scanned, or transmitted in any form, digital or printed,

  without the written permission of the author.

  www.rayneryeauthor.com

  To my readers.

  This prequel helps you understand where YuFu has just come from before he returns to diamond fishing.

  For those who do and don’t like magic in their sci-fi and who haven’t read the previous two space fantasy time travel series (Plan8 Slaves and Red Star), I hope that RRT and amethyst temples make more sense now.

  After wondering where to take my books next, I asked my husband for advice. He said that thriller is where it’s at, and I’ll find more readers if I take the magic out. He alos said, “The magic is no magic,” so I got Maki and Crowleen to close the portals at the end of the Red Star trilogy: Chairman’s Escape.

  YuFu’s Run has no magic concerning time travel of river and rain travel, so if you prefer more science in your sci-fi, you might like the technology and things going wrong with technology.

  For those who like science fiction and fantasy, the time portals will open again in another, different series.

  This prequel novelette shows the closure of the portals, to aid your understanding when secret agents refer to it in this continuation series about the Mayleedian Secret Service.

  Table of Contents

  The End of Magic and Time Travel

  Half-failed mission

  YuFu

  Map of Mayleeda Moon

  Map of Planet Eeporyo

  List of Characters

  The End of Magic and Time Travel

  Maki snuggled into Daddy’s chest when their fish-shaped planned suspension vehicle lifted. Teeyen’s snow-covered mountains and valleys looked like giants hiding under a fleece. As he nestled in the warmth of Daddy’s arms, he knew he’d never let him go again. A month ago, Z’Das had agreed to release Daddy and Aedre from their burden. No more secret agency work.

  Even without teleportation, shape-shifting, and body-snatching, Foster would remain an undercover op. She’d get trained in ninja skills. After that, she’d have biotech and cyberware fitted, get more training, and then join Three’s team of androids and cyborgs. With all the knowledge the Mayleedian Secret Service had gleaned from the magic of river and rain travel, Z’Das was keen to create more undercover divisions. But Foster had said cyborgs were illegal on Mayleeda Moon, so she might travel to planet Nerthus and work as a secret agent there.

  Aedre and Daddy wanted normal lives, though. God willing, Z’Das had agreed they could leave the Mayleedian Secret Service.

  After hours of flying over the ocean, they met Cheen’s western desert and continued to the peaks. They touched down outside the pyramid and watched binary suns sink behind distant dunes. When Maki first moved to Mayleeda from the Firesnake, at night time, he thought the gas giant looked like a vast black hole in the sky. But he got used to it. Mayleeda counted on it as Maki depended on Daddy. While gravity kept Mayleeda in Tushing’s orbit, love kept Maki in Daddy’s.

  Bright purple light radiated mountains and sky. Maki and Daddy jumped to their feet and spun. They squinted at a ragged silhouette, stalking out of the amethyst pyramid time portal. Before, Maki almost peed in his pants when he saw the six-foot-tall crow ninja with her sheath of throwing daggers across her feathered breast. Now, he felt close to her and understood the ancient time-traveller and Keeper of Keys had saved his life.

  Darkness returned when ultraviolet disappeared.

  Without saying a word, Crowleen stretched out an open palm. Daddy reached into inside his coat pocket and picked out the remaining amethyst star. “No more RRT?”

  “Aye. No more river and rain travel.”

  Maki spread his arms wide and waved them. “Don’t forget water travellers from outside the boundaries. Can they come to Plan8?”

  “You should know better than me, lad. You’re the one with the book.”

  “Half a book.”

  “Have you read it all? The half book that is?”

  “Yes.” He puffed out his rib cage. “I’m the best reader in my year at school. International Mayleedian isn’t even my first language, but I’m still stronger at reading and writing.”

  Crowleen ruffled his curls but got her fingers hooked. She chuckled and untangled them. “Clever lad, aren’t you?”

  Daddy placed a hand on his shoulder. “He sure is.”

  Crowleen cocked her head and gazed at Daddy. She leaned in and sniffed the surrounding air with her beak before extending a hand and resting it on Daddy’s chest. “That’s odd. What happened to you?”

  “Something intense.”

  “What?”

  Daddy unzipped his jacket and pulled up his top. In the centre of his chest, the white outline of a six-pointed star within a circle radiated light. It was easily as big as Daddy’s hand.

  Maki gave a small yelp. “What?”

  Daddy nodded at him and the crow, then smoothed his tops down again and zipped up his jacket. “Foster and Aedre have them too.” His eyebrows bumped up as his gaze rested on the crow. “How did you realise? I’m wearing enough clothes to cover the light.”

  “Sensed it. I’ve been the keeper of keys for over a million years.” Crowleen cocked her bird-head the other way. “What new superpowers do you have?”

  “Superpowers?” Daddy slid his hands into his pockets and stood with legs astride. “Who said I have superpowers?”

  “Come on, man. You must have something. If the three of you got those symbols on your chests, you must have some kind of superpower.”

  Daddy stared at the moon and whispered, “Superpowers.”

  Crowleen heaved a sigh. “Well, you use them wisely.” She tossed the star-key and caught it, then turned it over, gazing at the amethyst. “Well. I’ll be seeing you.”

  Maki’s shoulders sagged. “Don’t we get a hug?”

  She smirked. Maki had never seen her smile before. He’d assumed it was because she had a beak.

  She crouched on her skinny bird-legs, talons stretched out on gravel. “Come ‘ere.” She held out her arms, and Maki flew into them. “If I don’t see you again in this lifetime,” she said, “I’ll see you in another—be it past or future.”

  His heart banged against her feathered breast. He thought he heard her snivel.

  “I’ll miss you,” he said.

  “No, you won’t. Let us all hope you’ll be secure and normal, now. Who’d have thought a five-year-old-boy would find the courage to enter a time machine alone so he could go back to find his dead mam?”

  Maki wiped his wet cheeks on her feathers.

  “Who’d have thought he would have the courage to rescue hundreds of slaves, hundreds of natives, with so much love and selflessness?”

  Maki flinched. “Are you crying?”

  “If you were a bird hybrid like me, you’d know, my lad.” She straightened her knees and rolled her shoulders and spread her wings.

  “Normal boring,” he said. “If Daddy’s got superpowers, we must understand what he can do. I might be only seven, but I’m not scared.”

  Crowleen chuckled and turned on her heel. After three strides, the pyramid’s darkness swallowed her. Bright purple beamed all around once more, and when it faded, all the stars came back.

  Daddy held Maki’s hand. “Come on. Let’s hea
d home.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you had that star in your chest?”

  “Because of the last thing you just said to that crow-ninja. That’s why I never said about river and rain travel or time portals. What dad would crave for his son to go on such dangerous adventures?”

  ***

  After bidding Maki goodbye, Crowleen appeared in Heaven Island’s pyramid, many light-years away. She rubbed a finger in the centre of the star-key. Once it rose into her palm, she slotted it behind her sheath of throwing daggers along with the other which Maki had given her. After she wiped tears from her feathered face, she evacuated.

  As she descended through clouds, she reflected on how it was better to lock up the time portals and mask the star-keys for good. So much good could be done with the authority of the amethyst doorways through time and space, but villains would always abuse such power for their greedy ends.

  As Crowleen beat her wings, she let out an old woman’s sigh. She’d have to eliminate the star-keys. The United Wheel of Eeporyo waited for the final two.

  After a week of flight, rest, and hunting, Crowleen found the canyon which ran under the United Wheel of Eeporyo. Rather than touching down at Diamond Hall’s entrance, she did what they considered respectful and proper, and settled on the cliff. Her talons slipped on the glass bridge.

  She bit down on her beak, refusing to look at the canyon below.

  Only the Empress of Eeporyo sat in her Diamond Hall. Starlight cast a gentle glow on her through spaces in the ceiling. The cat woman jumped off the podium and padded on 2 feet towards Crowleen. She opened a palm. “You have the amethyst stars?”

  “I do.” Crowleen picked them out from behind her dagger holster and passed them over.

  “Thank you. Will you help me somewhere to hide them?”

  “You trust me?”

  “No. I don’t. But you must show me that invisibility spell.”

  The Empress was right. Only a time-traveller was capable of the invisibility enchantment once he or she had found a place to hide the object. Could she trust herself with knowledge on their whereabouts?

  Her breath snagged hold of something inside her chest.

  The Empress inclined her head. “You fear you’ll go mad without a key?”

  “That I do.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Kill me. I don’t trust myself.”

  “I cannot kill. Although I’m half cat, I’m half-human too.”

  “Humans can be wickeder than cats.”

  The next day, the United Wheel’s House Guard secured a carriage onto the back of an eagle bigger than Ama. The Empress had all her luxuries for the long journey ahead.

  Darkness had fallen by the time they reached Crowleen’s hideout in Hearthrum. Inside the cavern, stalactites and stalagmites glistened against glow balls. Crowleen opened her palm and gestured towards the natural rock ledge in which she’d always housed her collection of amethyst stars. “We can hide them here.”

  “Don’t tell me how,” the Empress said.

  Crowleen placed all eight stars on her shelf where she had carried so many hopes. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. After exhaling, she waited with empty lungs while visualising eight keys on the shelf. When she breathed in again and opened her eyes, the star-keys looked as if they were no longer there.

  The Empress’s stare darted from Crowleen to the ledge. “It worked.” She crept to the ledge. Her eyes widened as she ran her clawed hand along the mineral surface. “Where are they?”

  “Still there. But no one can feel or touch the keys. Only a time-traveller could bring them back.”

  “Can a time traveller come from outside the boundaries?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  Outside, Eeporyo’s Empress asked, “Where would you like to die?”

  Crowleen winced. In the past, she would still have clones waiting to be activated. But when she’d got depressed during her weeks in the Firesnake, she’d destroyed all her clones. “Take me to the volcano in the South. Where orange groves grow.”

  When they reached the orange grove, Crowleen stood by a bubbling sulphur pool on Steamy Vent’s volcanic plateau. Above the stench of rotten egg, Eeporyo’s three crescent moons rested in a triangle. She detached her case of daggers and gave them to the Empress. “Give these to my friend, Sharr Shuvuu.”

  The Empress tied them around her torso. “Are you ready?”

  Crowleen nodded.

  Two Phoenix with human arms and hands stalked forward. They aimed their laser guns.

  A cold sweat broke out under her feathers, and she shook uncontrollably. The last thing she saw was her reflection in a phoenix’s pupil. Not her crow face, but her human face from the start of her time-travelling days.

  Half-failed mission

  YuFu eyed the slavers’ spaceship from a small stealth-cloaked vessel which hovered around its perimeter with another twenty in the Interstellar Police’s fleet. “RRT agents,” he mindspoke. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, Commander,” seven voices chimed in his consciousness. “First, we’ll concentrate on capturing the flight crew so they can’t escape, then we’ll focus on the armed guards.” He sniffed. “I’ll check out the flight deck. You go elsewhere. Stick to your ghost forms.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  He spoke his intention to what they called the river and rain system. “Take me to the bridge of that spaceship.”

  Only three people occupied the immense area. They sat in a triangle, competing in a warring game which played from an orb between them.

  “I’ve only got three here. How about you guys? Anyone?”

  “I’ve found four, Commander YuFu,” Grace said in his mind.

  “And I’ve found three in a sauna,” Adam said.

  YuFu nodded. “Where are yours, Grace?”

  “Dancing with some scantily clad women in a nightclub, Commander. They don’t look happy. The women, that is. I suspect they’re victims of the sex industry too.”

  “Anyone else in the starship capable of flying this thing?” YuFu asked.

  “I’ve asked the river and rain system,” a guy called Paul said. “But I just get teleported to the same places you are: the bridge, the sauna, and the disco.”

  YuFu rubbed his hands together. “Let’s capture them in unbreakable Biluglass spheres.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  He pointed his invisible fingers at the three gaming companions. “Capture these people in an unbreakable Biluglass bubble.”

  The purple-skinned Fenuk woman was the first to notice the inside of the sphere glinting under the white overhead light. “Shit. What’s going on?”

  Her red and black-striped man-friend stood and bashed the interior of the orb. “What the fuck?”

  As their ranting got louder, armed guards rushed in and tried to smash the thing open. One guard pushed it, and it rolled towards a control panel.

  YuFu blinked rapidly. “Connect it to the ground.”

  The ball stopped rolling as a solid base connected it to the floor.

  “Make sure you attach the things to the ground. Adam and Grace. Did you succeed?”

  “Yes,” they both said.

  “Everyone. Let’s do the same with the guards.

  “Commander YuFu, Z?” a quiet agent called Simon asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Can’t you make the intention to imprison everyone who works on the spaceship? While you leave the victims of slavery free?”

  “Of course.” The river and rain system was easier than a computer game. “You make the intention, Simon.”

  “Okay.”

  After inhibiting the movement of all the staff and clientele, they freed the slaves from cages and brothels throughout the vessel.

  YuFu’s hand casually anchored on his hip as all six-hundred victims of human trafficking gathered in a cavernous hall. He observed with satisfaction as the throng of
innocents got smaller and smaller. His team of river and rain travelling agents and interstellar police shipped them away via tachyon thrust, where they’d find sanctuary on his moon-world, thirty light-years away.

  When half of the innocents left the slavers’ spaceship with liberators and half remained in the slavers’ ship, YuFu jolted awake. Under the canvas roof of the RRT tent, he frowned up from his metal platform, which resembled an iron Lilly pad, set in the middle of the magic river. YuFu blinked up at water, rebounding off the surface of his aurashield from the sprinkler system set in the tent’s ceiling. What happened? Had the sprinkler system stopped for a few seconds, breaking the spell?