Sac'a'rith

by Vincent Trigili

  As I came down, he looked up and saw me and then was gone. My sensors swept the room and found him on top of the box I had leapt over, pointing a wand at me.

  “Bang! You’re dead,” he said, mimicking a gun with his fingers.

  “What happened?” I asked. I replayed the memory and still couldn’t detect his movements.

  “Your plan was well executed,” said Purwryn. “You dodged my attack perfectly, but you made too much noise with your own attack and gave me time to respond. Next time, come in absolutely silently and you should get the kill.”

  Purwryn was far better at this than had been apparent in our previous fights, especially the one against Resden. At that time I’d been hiding that I was a Cyborg, and he that he was a magus. Neither of us had been using our abilities to the fullest, and I was only now starting to understand how much he had held back. That had been a foolish risk on both our parts.

  “Different spells have different gestures, so you’ll have to watch and learn as we go. Pyromancy is one of the most common elemental lines, and the elemental lines are the most common power, so it’s a good one to start learning the defenses for,” said Purwryn.

  “It seems I greatly underestimated you, Purwryn,” I said.

  “Everyone does,” he replied with a grin. “I find it very helpful to allow them to.”

  I smiled. “Indeed it is.” That was one tactic that I definitely understood. My camouflage as a primitive meant everyone always underestimated me.

  I stayed with them another hour learning how to read their casting before I decided I really should jack in back in my quarters. I had plenty of power, but if we did have a fight on our hands tomorrow I wanted to be as ready as possible.

  When I made it to my quarters and looked over the equipment the Wizards had provided for me, I was again struck by the difference between them and primitives. No ordinary doctor would have given me this equipment, and I hadn’t ever seen this quality of workmanship outside the Cyborg ships.

  Musing about the wizards, I was interrupted by an unusual displacement of air behind me and I spun round, ready to attack. Behind me I saw with my organic sensors a man who didn’t belong on this ship. He was completely invisible to my Cyborg sensors and absent from my databanks.

  I started to lunge towards him but he caught me by the arm and swung me around into the wall, pressing me up against it. I tried to break free and should easily have been able to overpower him, but all my implants lost their power and suddenly failed. I collapsed against the wall as my legs turned themselves off to save what little power they had left. I lost my connection to the ship’s network and went mostly blind as the rest of my sensor array went offline. Somehow he had sucked the life right out of my batteries; I was literally powerless, my greatest nightmare realized.

  “Now, Marcus, perhaps you will take a moment to listen,” said the man.

  He was wearing some kind of liquid metal armor that flowed over his body like a second skin. He appeared to be unarmed, but had already demonstrated that he needed no weapon. The most striking feature was his eyes: they were steel-grey and, despite being completely organic, seemed to bore right through me better than any sensor array. They were cold and hard, and in them I saw only death.

  “Who are you?” I mumbled. My jaw was completely organic and continued to function correctly, but I had long ago replaced my vocal cords so that I could impersonate other voices as needed, and with my power so low they were struggling to operate.

  “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that right now your Command is analyzing all the reports you have been sending, and in a few hours they will come to a decision. They will tell you the crew of the Night Wisp is too dangerous and that you are to make sure they are killed in the upcoming fight,” he said.

  Something in his voice made me believe that he knew what he was talking about, but there was no way he could know what decision the Great Core would make. “So?” I wanted to say more but I had to conserve what power I had left; a single syllable was all I dared risk.

  “You will disobey that order and make sure that all members of this crew survive. If any fall, I will come for you. Is that clear?”

  He still held me pinned and I was powerless, so I did the only logical thing I could do: I agreed to his terms with a very slight nod. The vast majority of my systems were completely run down and I was unable to move enough even to turn my head to look at him. He lifted me up and placed me in my charging station, expertly hooked in the primary power coupling and then disappeared.

  With the maintenance station connected, all my systems came back online. I did a full active sensor sweep of the Night Wisp with both my sensors and the ship’s own internal sensors, but found nothing. Whoever he was, he was gone.

  I wanted to report to Ragnar that we’d had an intruder, but I couldn’t; if I did, they would start asking questions about the reason he was here and why he’d come after me. That could lead to them discovering that I was reporting to the Cyborg nation, which wasn’t acceptable. No, I had to keep this to myself, at least until I’d figured out what was going on.

  I was worried about shutting down without knowing the man’s location, but then realized he could have killed me at any time. I suspected no one else on board would have stood a chance against him either. In the long run, it wouldn’t matter whether I was awake or not. I sighed, settled in and activated my maintenance mode.

  Chapter Fifty

  It was late local time when we returned to the Night Wisp and I was tired from my long night vigil, so I had a few hours’ sleep before heading up to the bridge. When I arrived, I found Raquel there alone.

  “Good morning, Zah’rak. I sent Ragnar to bed. I think he stood watch alone the whole time we were gone,” she said.

  “That’s not acceptable. What happened to the others?” With four people on board, there was no good reason for one person to have been stuck on watch alone for the entire time. It should have been easy to rotate their turns on the bridge, but I suspected Ragnar had never asked for help.

  “Purwryn and Crivreen spent most of the time training, ran themselves ragged and collapsed. According to the ship’s logs, Marcus had a power failure and was forced into maintenance mode.”

  “Any indication as to why?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “Yes, but it’s not good.”

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “When Marcus’ systems failed it triggered a medical alarm, which was sent to my medical station. Ragnar didn’t know he should monitor that station, so it went unnoticed.”

  That issue would have to be addressed also. Ragnar was from Korshalemia, which had a very primitive society. The people were far more advanced than we were in the ways of magic, but they hadn’t even discovered electricity yet, never mind starships. The amount of catching up Ragnar had to do was immense. He had done well, but obviously there were still gaps in his knowledge; if he didn’t know he should look for medical alerts, then those gaps were dangerously large.

  “When the medical alert went off, the internal video surveillance in his quarters automatically started recording and tied itself to the alarm log. I think it would be best if you watched this,” Raquel said and brought up the video playback.

  I hadn’t known that feature existed on this ship. It seemed that there were gaps in my knowledge, too, which I would have to fill. I was unsure how I felt about the presence of cameras in our personal quarters, but at that moment I was glad of them.

  I watched as Marcus fell against the wall and slowly slid to the floor. There was something odd in the way he moved, but it was difficult to analyze. He was struggling to speak, but the audio was too low to make out any words. I wondered if he was trying to call for help, as fear was clearly evident on his face. Never having seen him scared before, I wondered what could frighten a superhuman like himself.

  Suddenly he was moving, but obviously not of his own accord. He looked like a ragdoll being carried by a child,
yet he was alone in the room. His body was lifted and placed roughly into his maintenance station. Once reconnected he quickly regained his mobility and jacked himself in the rest of the way.

  Raquel stopped the playback there. “Once he was back in his station, he was able to use its power to reactivate his systems, but he wouldn’t have been able to leave the station for a while. The ship’s logs show he did a full sensor sweep of the Night Wisp, which found nothing, and then he dropped into maintenance mode. Though the logs won’t show it, I’m sure he swept the ship with his own sensor array also.”

  “That would have been wise. What do you think happened there?” I asked.

  She backed up the video to the point where Marcus was being carried by some unseen force. “What does a magus look like on sensors?”

  “They don’t show up. Are you saying a magus was in there with him?” I asked.

  “Suppose a magus came aboard by teleportation, gate travel or some other means. Shira or I might have detected a traveler had we been on board, but no one else was likely to. Whoever this was, he surprised Marcus in his chambers and somehow disabled him.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Since Marcus relies on his implants as his sensor array, he would have been just as blind as the camera.”

  “Something tipped him off. He spun round to attack but was too late,” she said.

  “Does anyone else know?” I asked.

  “No. I waited till Ragnar was gone to check the alerts; I wanted to be sure he actually went to bed.”

  That was probably wise. Ragnar tended to be completely selfless in his service, and would have refused to retire had he known about this. “We will need his divination skills.”

  “Definitely, but first we should wait for Marcus to waken and get his report. We also have an offensive to plan, and the captain of the fleet will be calling soon to do it with us.”

  “I think it’s best if we keep this incident to ourselves for the moment,” I said. The last thing I wanted was Phareon demanding to come on board and ‘help’ with the investigation.

  “I agree. Let’s get the planning out of the way so we can focus on this,” she said and started working the controls on the comm. station. Soon the captain from the Phareon fleet came on the screen.

  After the appropriate pleasantries, Raquel asked, “Captain, to what extent is your fleet ready for combat?”

  “We lost much in the Cyborg ambush, but most of what we have left is nearly back to full operational status.”

  “What are we facing in the system?” she asked.

  “They took out the jump repeaters so we can’t get any current information, but that leaves them just as sensor-limited as we are. At this distance we’re too far to tell much.”

  “Sounds like they’re better prepared than our last target.” Raquel paced the deck in front of the screen, deep in thought. “Based on your educated guess, do you have the numbers to complete the mission?”

  “It’s hard to say. Fleet records show this to be an uninhabited and barren system, save for the outpost we had here. If they brought no additional equipment there would only be that one base to deal with, but they could have a full fleet in there and we couldn’t tell at this distance, or not until their EM emissions finally reached us. Even that would be very old information.”

  “Since they’re ready for us, we can assume that the trick we used last time won’t work.” She paused there as Marcus came onto the bridge and took his station at tactical. “Marcus, what are the chances that the Cyborgs will jump into the system and take advantage of the fight to take out both parties?”

  “Huh?” His head came up. He must have been thinking hard, because he was never surprised like that. “Oh, I hadn’t considered that possibility.” His eyes defocused for a moment while he thought about it, or at least that’s what I presumed he was doing. It was hard to tell with him.

  I wondered what it was like to have a computer system in your head. I think it would be distracting dealing with all the status messages and suchlike that computers insisted on constantly providing.

  “Raquel, why did you ask him that? How would he know?” I sent privately.

  “For the same reason I’d ask you if we were facing a fleet of Zalionians. He’s a Cyborg and can think like them, just as you can think like a Zalionian,” she sent back.

  That seemed like a reasonable answer, but Marcus still hadn’t responded. Just when I thought he’d fallen into a daydream, he said, “Unlikely. The most likely scenario is that they’ll fall back to reorganize and rebuild their fleet before taking the offense again. The Wizard fleet beat them pretty badly, so they’ll need longer to do that than this engagement should take.”

  The captain sighed deeply, obviously relieved. “Are you sure of that?”

  Marcus paused before answering, but finally said, “Yes, sir. It’s the action with the highest probability of long-term success, and the Cyborg nation acts solely on probability calculations.”

  “Excellent,” said Raquel. “That leaves only the system itself as an unknown.”

  “Then I suggest we jump short of the system and launch probes to scout it out. That will give us an idea of what we’re about to face,” said the captain.

  “That will delay our attack by at least a day, if not two,” said Raquel.

  The probes would have to fly into the system, being too small to have effective jump drives, and get within range of the target before they could begin scanning. Since the jump relays had been destroyed they would beam their message back to us at the speed of light; and while that was fast, it was slow on the scale of distance in space.

  “Yes, and quite frankly my fleet needs that time. My men have been pushing hard to get repairs done, and I’d rather not head into battle with a tired crew if I can help it.”

  So the real answer to Raquel’s earlier question about the fleet’s battle readiness was that they needed more time. I sighed to myself. People really needed to learn to be more straightforward. Had we decided to rush in without knowing that, many more could have died needlessly.

  Raquel nodded. “There is wisdom in that, and I doubt we are likely to surprise them at this point.”

  “Then it’s agreed: we’ll jump a couple of hours short of the system and send in the probes,” said the captain.

  I almost chuckled at that comment, remembering how confused Ragnar still was over the measurement of distance out here. Obviously, the captain meant light hours, or the distance light traveled in one hour, rather than a measure of time; that concept, however, was foreign to Ragnar. To him hours could only mean time. It would take the probes many hours to cross that distance, but they could travel much faster than the fleet.

  “Sounds good. Please make sure I get the encryption codes so we can receive the data here directly,” said Raquel.

  The captain didn’t look pleased by that request but made no objection. He had probably been told to cooperate fully, and warned that if he caused an incident it wouldn’t be good for his career. Phareon couldn’t risk losing this small chance of making friends with the Wizard Kingdom, especially if Raquel was correct in her prediction that they would fall within a decade.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  It was almost midday when my systems were fully powered again. I disconnected from my maintenance station and checked the ship’s logs to see what I had missed. The logs told me that Raquel and company had returned in the middle of the night. Raquel and Zah’rak were on the bridge, and Shira predictably back in hydroponics. I was about to check on the others when my thoughts were interrupted by a message.

  “Agent P2003, report,” said the voice.

  “Mission continuing as planned. Night Wisp is approaching final jump before attacking a target of interest to Phareon and the Wizard Kingdom.”

  “We are aware of the target. Make sure the Night Wisp does not survive the battle.”

  “Current mission parameters don’t allow for that
action. That would eliminate the possibility of success.”

  “Your mission parameters have changed. The Night Wisp and her crew are too dangerous to us. Ensure it is eliminated and then report back for a new mission.”

  After that the connection was broken.

  Every system in my body froze at that command. Whoever that intruder was, he had correctly predicted the Great Core’s decision. That should have been impossible for any unenhanced being, even a magus. The Great Core makes all its decisions internally on its neural net, which is completely inaccessible to all but the elite among the Cyborgs.

  Each decision it makes is carefully researched and vetted in an objective matter. Not even the Great Core itself could know of a decision it hadn’t yet made. So how did the intruder know? It was obvious he was a magus of some kind, but not a type that I had found in the catalogue of magi on the Night Wisp database.

  Those orders left me with an impossible set of choices. I had to choose between being deactivated by the Great Core for failing to follow orders, or being killed by the intruder for following those orders. I needed a plan quickly, but nothing came to mind.

  I set all my spare CPUs to run various scenarios, trying to find a way out of this trap. It was risky dedicating so much processing power to any one task, as it would dramatically slow or prevent other operations from happening. My organic brain could handle basic life support, but all my implants needed guidance from my core processing units.

  I distractedly walked towards the bridge as I allowed my CPUs to run on overload. Since the only two options before me would end in my death, and my will to survive was still strong, my internal network was stymied looking for a solution. What was left of me walked like a zombie to my station on the bridge. Had I been attacked in the corridor, I would have been dead before I had even fully registered the attack.

  I didn’t even particularly want to be part of the Cyborg nation. They had found me on the Paradise and recruited me because I could still blend in with the primitives. I was far less enhanced than the Cyborgs were, but that was advantageous to them at the time. Stumbling onto the Night Wisp was a stroke of luck that elevated my value in their eyes, but they had never given me anything other than the promise that I would be part of the ruling class when they’d conquered the region and wiped out the unenhanced. They hadn’t even help to pay for the repairs I’d needed when one of my implants had failed some time ago; they just asked for a report on new operating parameters once the repairs were complete.