by J. N. Chaney
“It’s a 3-D printer,” he said.
“It is,” Telesa replied.
Thorn wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be impressed or not. 3-D printing tech was common. The Hecate had a number of them on-board for printing parts and tools, and one big one for making bigger structural components. Still, he did his best to look impressed, even if this was kind of underwhelming. Of course, it made sense, he supposed. He was still a stranger here, so they weren’t likely to show him their best, and probably most secretive tech.
“That’s impressive,” he finally said, smiling.
A wave of fresh rain scent rolled off the Imbrogul. Ondric even smiled. “When we first met, Thorn, it struck me that you may prove as difficult to read as any other race we’ve encountered.” He nodded toward Yinzut. “Our Astarti friends are particularly hard to see as more than somewhat dour and closed in on themselves.”
“Hey. We’re passionate in our own way,” Yinzut put in, blinking slowly.
“I needn’t have worried, though. Your emotions inscribe themselves on your face, for everyone to see,” Ondric went on to Thorn.
“Really?”
“Yes. And you are not, in fact, particularly impressed by this technology.”
“Well, to be honest, we use 3-D printing, too,” Thorn replied.
“And you were expecting something more spectacular.”
“Yeah, I kind of was.”
Ondric looked at the machine’s operator, who nodded, fiddled with some controls. The mist in the second compartment faded away. He opened the machine, extracted the slim blade, then immersed it in a small tank of murky fluid. After a moment, he extracted it, dipped into another tank, then wiped it clean and presented it to Ondric.
Who presented it to Thorn.
Thorn accepted the smooth metal blade flat, across his palms. His immediate thought was, well—it’s a knife. The Imbrogul had made a knife, which was only a few thousands years short of the tech that interested him—the grav tech of the bubble-car, or even the elevator he and Bertilak had taken down from their quarters.
But, as he studied the blade, his breath caught.
The blade, blue-grey metal, shone with a deep luster. Fine, spindly characters had been inscribed into it, then picked out with a brighter, cleaner metal. The edges seemed insanely sharp, so much so he found himself suddenly nervous even having the thing near his skin.
“If I may,” Telesa said, taking the blade back from him. The printer operator held out a small metal bar. Telesa smoothly shaved a metallic curl from it, apparently without much effort. The operator then dropped a square of fine, gossamer fabric. Telesa placed the blade beneath it as it drifted slowly to the floor. When it touched the edge, it neatly parted in two.
Thorn examined the blade when Telesa returned it to him. The edge looked as keenly sharp as ever.
“Okay, this is one hell of a knife, I have to admit. Your 3-D printing tech is nothing short of brilliant.”
“As the atoms are vaporized from the source, they’re drawn into the fabrication chamber. There they are mixed with nano-fabricators, which cooperate to arrange them in a precise configuration, one that depends on what we wish to manufacture,” Telesa said.
Thorn looked from her, to the knife. “Wait, you mean that you can assemble things by controlling how the atoms are arranged? I’m no expert, but that’s beyond our current capabilities. Excuse me—beyond my people’s ability, that is.”
“This time, I believe you,” Ondric said. “And that does please me, because this blade is yours, Thorn. It is made from metal culled from the meteorite you brought down to the surface.” He pointed at the lump of metal still in the 3-D printer. “We gave you a piece of that, as well, in the box we gifted you.”
That pulled his eyes from the remarkable knife. “Ondric, this wasn’t necessary.”
“Oh, but it was. We needed some way for you to remember this day, when we paired against the Nyctus, rather than together for mere profit,” Ondric said.
Now Thorn gaped for a moment. “You mean you’re willing to work with us?”
“We are. We have considered the matter, and have decided that the moment has come to stand against the—what did you call them? Skids?”
“Squids.”
“Yes. The truth is that the Nyctus are an aggressive, expansionistic menace. They have already subsumed several races, and would soon turn their attention toward us and the Astarti. Your war with them explains why they haven’t done so already.”
Bertilak smiled. “It also means that by helping us fight them, you don’t have to.”
Ondric arched a delicate eyebrow. Mint sharpened the air. “I never said we weren’t a practical people.”
Thorn gripped the blade by the tang, making sure to keep his soft flesh away from that fearsome edge. “Thank you, Ondric. Thank you to everyone. This is—” He stopped and shook his head. “Let’s call it memorable.”
He offered his free hand to Ondric. This time, the Imbrogul didn’t hesitate to shake it.
“Just keep that spiffy new knife of yours in its sheath. I think it could probably puncture the hull if you drop it,” Bertilak said.
Thorn laughed and settled himself into the Jolly Green Giant’s co-pilot’s place. The knife still hung from his belt, now sporting a finely-graven wooden hilt and securely enclosed in a sheath made of the same metal it was.
Thorn touched the hilt. “Ondric told me what the characters inscribed on it mean. They’re apparently the part of the great Song of Creation that describes their first meeting with us, with humanity. It seems they record historical events as music. In theory, I guess, you could inscribe their entire historical record and it would hang together as one huge song.”
Bertilak’s eyebrows shot up. “Impressive. It also seems a little complex and unnecessary, though.”
“Not if you’re an Imbrogul. Is everything loaded?”
Bertilak nodded. “I just finished securing the hold, in fact. We’re ready to get underway anytime.”
Thorn looked at the viewscreen, at the Imbrogul homeworld sprawled out before them. This had gone remarkably well. Far better than he’d expected, in fact. They’d retrieved a load of various types of ore from the Astarti, then returned it here, where the Imbrogul crafted it into a load of gravity polarizers. The devices, which ranged in size from a clenched fist to a control console, could manipulate gravity much faster and more fully, and with far more control, than any corresponding ON tech.
He smiled. To the Imbrogul, the knife had been the most trifling of toys. What the Giant now carried in her hold could actually change the war.
Mind you, the knife meant far more to him than even the slickest gravity polarizer.
Thorn turned to Bertilak. “We’ve said our goodbyes to our new allies, my friend. Let’s go home.”
22
Morgan pried her eyes open. Something had changed.
She floated in a sphere of water, contained within a powerful field of magical denial being continuously generated by an unknown number of Nyctus shamans. She’d been here—she wasn’t sure how long. It seemed like forever.
Yes. Something had changed. Someone was approaching out of the heavy darkness that pressed in from all around, a presence that lit up her awareness—and her deepest, most primal instincts.
Morgan allowed herself a shuddering sigh. When would they give up?
The Seeker had led repeated efforts to break through her defenses already, and now it seemed another was on the way. Morgan had no clear idea how many times it had tried, only that it had failed every time. They’d reached a sort of grim stalemate, the Seeker fruitlessly shifting tactics, but coming up short every time.
Morgan kept wrapping herself in an impenetrable cocoon of protection, her own little bubble of denial, that shrugged off both psychic and physical harm. It took all her willpower to do it, though, leaving her unable to do anything more than simply keep resisting. Offensive attacks were beyond her, for the time being.
/> They couldn’t even starve her. Morgan just kept altering reality slightly, maintaining one in which she was comfortably hydrated and nourished. It was the only proactive thing she could manage, though. They infused drugs into the water to keep her senses dulled, and constantly maintained at least some magical pressure, never giving her a chance to rest or recover.
And here it was again.
Morgan slowly turned herself to face whoever was approaching. She blinked, and it took effort, and it hurt her eyes. Her vision, blurred by a haze of stress and fear and fatigue, cleared slightly.
It was the Seeker, because of course it was.
“Go away,” she whispered. “Leave me alone.”
The Seeker said nothing for a moment. When it did speak, Morgan couldn’t help noticing a hardness to its voice, an almost brittle tone that hinted at bitter resentment and frustration.
That almost made Morgan smile.
“I am not the one that will be going away,” the Seeker said. “You are.”
Morgan blinked again. “Where am I going?”
“You will soon find that out,” the Seeker snapped, then began issuing rapid-fire orders.
The wall of psychic refusal surrounding her vanished. Morgan wished she could take advantage of it, to strike back, maybe even try to escape. But it took all of her strength just to hold off the relentless pressure from the shamans trying to break into her mind. That hadn’t abated at all.
Armored Nyctus closed in around her, wielding poles ending in loops of black cable. These were clamped round her limbs, then she was dragged away, out of the blackness of wherever they’d been keeping her. She had vague impressions of rooms and corridors, all shrouded in gloom, and then the sensation of rising. Above her, the world began to slowly brighten. Eventually, light flared, dazzling her, and she was pulled out of the water and onto a hard platform made of smooth stone.
Morgan gasped with the transition from water to air, from darkness to sunlight, from black despair to—hope? She didn’t think for a moment the Nyctus were just letting her go, but if they were taking her somewhere, it might give her a chance to break free along the way.
Figures swam into view. They were silhouettes, though, vaguely framed by a sky so bright and blue it hurt. It took her a moment to realize that these figures were different. They weren’t Nyctus. They had, instead, two arms, two legs and a head, which meant they might be humans—?
Morgan was suddenly dragged to her feet. The human-like figures, she could now see, were clad head-to-toe in some sort of dark, smooth armor. It even covered their faces. As her vision continued to clear, she could see they weren’t actually human. For one, they weren’t proportioned quite right, being a little too thick and stocky, their legs too short and squat for their bodies. They were also short, only about her height and, in a couple of cases, even shorter.
Morgan didn’t have time to get much more than a vague impression of them, though, before she was dragged off toward a spaceship squatting on a blast-pad nearby. She was pulled up a ramp, into a big compartment with metal walls. The ship stank of something like mildew, a comingled reek of mold and decaying leaves. A single seat had been placed in the very center of the compartment, with others lining the walls. Morgan was unceremoniously dumped into the lone, center chair, then strapped in so tightly she couldn’t move a muscle. Even her head ended up strapped in place, a single band cruelly digging across the soft skin of her forehead. She fought a whimper, and tried to speak.
“Where are you—”
A strap was pulled across her chin, cutting her off and preventing her from opening her mouth.
The ramp closed, sealing her in the ship. The reek of rotting vegetation intensified, now that no fresh air wafted into it. Morgan saw the short, armored figures settle themselves into the seats along the walls. All of them were armed with guns with big, gaping muzzles, all trained on her. She noticed that the Seeker was here, too, conferring with one of the short figures, before turning and settling into a seat. The Seeker still radiated a sense of anger and frustration. That had to be important, but Morgan couldn’t figure out how.
A shrill, teeth-chattering whine vibrated through the ship, and it began to move, lifting and climbing away from the planet. Morgan could do nothing but sit here, helpless, firmly strapped into a seat, on her way to some place that was no doubt at least as bad as where she’d been, and maybe even worse.
Morgan snapped awake. That grating, ear-scraping whine from the ship’s drive had stopped. Figures moved around her, unstrapping her from the acceleration couch. Again, she was caught up in looped cables mounted on poles, and stumbled, half-dragged and half-carried, down the ramp and out of the ship.
In a cruel flood, light stabbed her eyes after the dim interior of the ship. It was a colder, greyer light than the planet she’d just left, though, so her eyes adjusted more quickly. Worse, though, that vile, organic stink of wet and rotting vegetation slammed into her like a wall as she came down the ramp. Blinking stupidly, she stared across a flat, green-brown swamp that extended into a pervasive fog. An elevated walkway led across it, from the pad where the ship had landed, to some humped, boxy buildings rising from the marsh a few hundred meters away.
Morgan was pulled that way. She did her best to keep her feet, glancing from side to side as they went. She saw a swamp. Swamp one way, swamp the other, swamp everywhere. The whole landscape seemed to either be murky, brackish water in standing pools, or hummocks of moss and reedy plants protruding from it. In one direction more bulky shapes in the mist might have been buildings, maybe a town or even the edge of a city, but she couldn’t tell.
Her captors thrust Morgan into a small cell with metal walls, and a thick metal door with a small window covered with a metal plate that could only be opened from the outside. As soon as they released her, she turned toward the door and stood as defiantly as she could, wobbling on her feet.
The Seeker stood with one of the short, armored figures. It reached up, twisted something on the neck of its helmet, and popped it off with a brief hiss.
Morgan just gaped at the face that it revealed.
A lizard, or something like it. Sharp teeth set in wide jaws, dark yellow eyes with vertical slits for pupils, scales that were mostly bluish-black. A deep, crimson stripe started on the top of its snout, extending up and across the top of its head, and presumably continuing down its back.
“You’re ugly,” she croaked.
The creature ignored her, instead turning to the Seeker and starting to rock from foot to foot.
That piqued Morgan’s curiosity. If this were a human, she’d think it was excited, anxious, or both. Curious, she extended her thoughts, but did it tentatively, ready to retreat back into her mental fortress. Nothing impeded her, though. She found no resistance, no wall of denial from a massed group of shamans. She still didn’t have full or clear control over her magic, though, probably because of the drugs. She was able to sense that the creature—it was apparently called a Bilau, she saw in its mind—was indeed anxious and excited, but not in a good way. It seethed with apprehensive uncertainty, as though worrying about something terrible about to happen.
She withdrew her thoughts. As she did, two more Bilau pushed into the cell. Before she could react, one of them jammed a tube filled with a yellowish liquid into her arm. A sharp burning, like fire, quickly spread from the puncture, pulling a groan from Morgan. Once more, her head began to swim, and she had to work hard at just concentrating on understanding the creatures as they spoke.
The helmetless Bilau looked up at the Seeker. “Despite my misgivings, we have honored our agreement. Six hundred forty days and nights of peace begin now.”
The Seeker’s gaze remained on her. The Nyctus still emanated a sense of frustrated outrage. When it spoke, its voice was tightly controlled. “Very good. It will give us the opportunity to finish our war against the humans.” The Seeker turned to the Bilau. “You are not the only one with misgivings. I believe we were close to breaking he
r.”
Morgan glared. Or tried to. “You wish,” she slurred.
The Seeker and the Bilau ignored her. “I am warning you, she is willful and she is very, very dangerous. You must be prepared to kill her in an instant.”
“We are. And we will.”
As soon as he said it, his head exploded in a bright shower of gore.
Morgan blinked. What?
The Seeker turned, just as dazzling bolts of energy slammed into its armor. It threw a protective barrier of magic around itself, then lunged toward Morgan. She wasn’t sure if it was going to try and grab her and escape, or simply kill her. She did her best to interpose her own magical barrier, and the creature faltered. More shots flashed along the corridor. Another Bilau died to a fusillade of searing bolts, just outside the door to her cell. The Seeker turned and fled, using magic to shield itself from the fire.
More shots. Morgan cringed, waiting to see what would happen next. Her world had collapsed down to a tiny window of time, extending only a few seconds into the past and future. Nothing else seemed to matter.
More Bilau appeared. Two rushed into her cell, grabbed her, and dragged her toward the door. She thought about resisting, but these Bilau seemed to be attempting to—rescue her? At the very least, they wanted her to leave the cell, and she was quite happy to do that.
They shoved her along the corridor, back the way they’d come. Morgan scanned the aliens with a quick spike of insight, harsh and violating.
The Bilau were wracked with fear. It was a very specific fear, too, and aimed squarely at her.
They were terrified of her.
They reached the exit from the building, where it opened onto the walkway leading back to the pad where the ship had landed. The ship still sat there, Bilau dashing around it, exchanging shots. Dead or incapacitated Bilau sprawled across the walkway. The Bilau pulling Morgan along were dragging her toward the ship, but she wasn’t sure why.