Sac'a'rith

by Vincent Trigili

  However, since everyone else hated what I had become, it was easy to let them sweet-talk me into their ranks. Now things were getting complicated, both because I had found people who cared and because logically their next move wouldn’t work; it made no sense to take out the Night Wisp. I was gaining valuable information. After the last battle, I could see that they had good reason to fear this team, but I wouldn’t expect the Great Core to act on something as base as fear.

  As I sat there trying to think, I heard Raquel address me. I missed the question, but my audio sensors had recorded it. Quickly reviewing my lost logs, I saw that she had asked for my opinion on the chances of a Cyborg attack after we engaged in the system. It was a good question, and one I lacked the power to compute in my current state. “Oh, I hadn’t considered that possibility.”

  I cycled through all my running processes and paused them, freeing up enough brainpower to answer Raquel. When enough cognitive functions had returned, I was able to calculate the odds. “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.”

  There was a man on the primary screen, to whom they had presumably been speaking when I’d walked in. “Are you sure of that?” he asked.

  I paused and slowly recognized him as the captain of the fleet we were flying with. I had gone too deep with my calculations and realized I’d have to limit my processor use in the future. I should have noticed that a mission planning session was going on and paid attention but had been too deep in my own thoughts. “Yes, sir. It’s the action with the highest probability of long-term success, and the Cyborg nation acts solely on probability calculations.”

  The conversation moved on. I looked over the scenarios I’d been running, and none of them looked good. My computers assigned a high probability of termination to all of them. I knew the Cyborgs considered all their members expendable, so contacting them wouldn’t help. I doubted the intruder would want to help me even if I could reach him, and what was left of my birth family didn’t have the resources to combat this problem. I had to solve this problem alone.

  I had spent most of my life alone until I’d met Purwryn. Since joining up with him and his friends, I could finally relax. Everyone knew what I was and no one minded. They shared openly with me, and had even covered the cost of my repairs. I had never met anyone like these strange folk. Truth to tell, I was enjoying my assignment and didn’t want it to end.

  They ended the call with the captain, and I looked over at Raquel. I had yet to see her powers directly used in battle, but watching her manage the fight with the Cyborg fleet supported the information I’d gathered that concluded she was deadly. She carried herself with the confidence of an experienced warrior and had appeared fearless in any encounter I’d been able to witness so far.

  Ragnar told me that she was over ten thousand years old. I was sure he had to be wrong, but he believed it. His personality type was not one to lie or easily be taken in so there had to be a good reason for him to think that, which meant that at the very least she was probably one of the oldest living primitives.

  Watching her triggered a memory. It wasn’t very logical, but this was a side effect of keeping my organic brain intact. It was another advantage of the organic brain: it could make illogical leaps and connect things that no computer would. Many among the Cyborgs replaced much of their brain, but I’d kept mine purely organic. It had disadvantages, but logic leaps like this made up for it.

  The memory of Raquel dated from earlier in our travels. I remembered overhearing her saying, “The Wizard Kingdom is all about second chances.” It was during one of the sessions when they were recounting the history of the Wizard Kingdom for my benefit. They, mainly Raquel and Ragnar, felt that I should have some historical context.

  I remembered the selflessness that she had exhibited when saving my life before she even knew me, and the steady determination of Purwryn as he spent hours working on my implants. My organic brain couldn’t recall the details exactly, but my system logs and the ship’s logs had them all. I’d spent a lot of my time when lying around paralyzed doing nothing but reviewing the ship’s logs and its database. I had learned quite a bit about the crew in those days and was impressed.

  I looked over at Zah’rak, who’d gathered this ragtag group of misfits and turned them into a family, and suddenly I knew I had another option. I quickly ran the calculations and it had a very high probability of my survival. It would mean switching sides, at least for the present, but that was something I’d had to do in the past and probably would again. Besides, the side I was currently on was sending me to my death.

  “Zah’rak, I have something to report. There was an incident while you were away,” I told him. A look of relief passed over his face. That was not the expression I was expecting and it threw me off for a moment. I couldn’t find any logical connection between my statement and his demeanor. I tried to rerun my scenarios to see if I needed to abort, but was unable to calculate due to the lack of information.

  “Go on,” prompted Raquel, drawing me back to the situation at hand.

  With no better plan, I decided to push on. “I was attacked by an intruder in my quarters,” I said and then told them everything that had happened. “When I awoke this morning I had a message from the Cyborg leadership, telling me to make sure the Night Wisp and all hands were destroyed.”

  “Do you often get messages from them?” asked Zah’rak.

  “No,” I replied. I took a deep breath and continued. “Please understand that before I met Purwryn, I was alone and hated by all. My father tolerated me, but I suspect that was only because I was useful on his ships. The Cyborgs discovered me and offered me the world if I would help them as an agent among the primitives. You see, I can do what they can’t: I can blend in. They wanted me to be a spy, and in exchange I would be part of the ruling nation when they took over.”

  “And you agreed?” asked Raquel.

  “Yes. I think anyone might have. I was alone, depressed and desperate,” I said.

  “When you joined this ship, was it as a spy, then?” asked Zah’rak.

  “No. Purwryn brought me on board. My original plan was to see him off safely and then find a new place to blend in for the Cyborgs. That plan was derailed by my injuries and Raquel saved my life. The Cyborgs decided I should stay and ordered me to study the magi and send them information on how you work magic.”

  They were quiet for a while. I decided to let them think about it. It was likely that they were communicating via their telepathic link, something that I had no access to. I wondered what it was like. The ship’s database described it as a direct thought transference. They could apparently exchange more than just words: memories, scents, emotions, anything that could be thought could be shared. It sounded much like downloading memories from other units and replaying them, but they could do it in real time.

  This period was a little nerve-wracking. If my calculations were wrong, they might kill me or bind me in some prison until they could get rid of me. That would mark me as a failure and I’d be assumed defective by the Great Core, which would mean termination.

  “During the battle, what were your orders?” asked Zah’rak.

  “They wanted me to destroy you then because you were having too much success, but I refused and persuaded them it would be a tactical error. I don’t expect they are happy with me right now, and by telling you this I have made myself an enemy of the Cyborg nation. There’s no going back, but I don’t think there ever really was after I came on board.” I didn’t know if that was actually true, but I suspected it was. Even still, I thought there might be a way around it if I was careful to keep my options open.

  “Why are you telling us this?” asked Raquel.

  This was the question I’d been waiting for; if I answered well, I’d live. “Becau
se I envy you. You’re a family. Sure, you’re not actually related, but I see Raquel going out of her way to help Shira heal, and Shira running to help Zah’rak understand Raquel. I watch Purwryn and Crivreen practice together with complete trust. I viewed the logs of Raquel saving my life. There’s all that and much more. I want to be part of a family, and I can’t be if I’m on a different side.”

  I waited in silence, assuming that they continued to confer telepathically. I knew from the stories I’d heard that both Raquel and Shira used to be enemies, not only of each other but also of Zah’rak’s team. It was hard to imagine, but apparently at one time Shira had been doing all in her power to kill everyone who was now her friend. These stories gave me hope that switching sides as a means of avoiding deactivation would be a successful move.

  Raquel smiled. “I could call home and ask Grandmaster Vydor, but I know what he would say.”

  Zah’rak walked up and placed his hand on my shoulder. “You’re right, we’re family. All of us have troubled pasts; yours pales compared to Shira’s and you see how well she has worked out.” He paused and looked at Raquel, who smiled again. I was sure some silent communication had passed between them. “Welcome to the team, Marcus.”

  “This intruder - did you get a good look at him?” asked Raquel.

  “Yes,” I said and sent a copy of this memory to the ship’s primary monitor. “My implants couldn’t read him but my organic mind had no problem, even with the lack of power.” That was yet another reason I kept my organic brain. It could see and remember magi.

  Raquel gasped. “Curetes.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  I awoke in my room on the Night Wisp, sore in a dozen places from the workout the previous day with Crivreen. I’d gotten much better at blocking his attacks, but he’d also greatly improved his attack skill. He must have singed off most of my hair; it had certainly smelled like it. I decided I wouldn’t look in a mirror for a few days until it grew back.

  The computer had woken me with just enough time to get ready and have a meal before my shift on the bridge, so I knew I had to get up, but trying to swing my legs over the edge caused pain to shoot up through my body and out of my eyes. I screamed a curse and tried to stand. You idiot! You could be in battle today! I thought to myself.

  In the bathroom, I splashed water on my face and tried to pull myself together. The room spun around my head in a strange up-and-down fashion, and whoever was staring back at me from the mirror looked like he’d spent the night drinking. The gaunt face and dark shadows under the bloodshot eyes told the tale as clear as day. I had to grab the sink to keep from falling over. I cursed some more, realizing I’d overdrawn on my resource pools while training my powers. Then I reminded myself that I hadn’t wanted to look in a mirror.

  I fumbled around the room knocking over data pads and bruising my shins in a dozen places until I finally found a protein pack and ate it. I wasn’t hungry until I started eating, but as soon as the bland paste hit my tongue I became ravenous. I sucked down the paste as fast as I could manage without falling over, and forced myself to let that settle before trying to eat anything else. Then I attempted to take a shower.

  The shower was an ordeal, as I was sure the walls moved when I tried to grab them for balance. The water hitting my body felt like swarms of tiny bugs crawling on my skin, but I knew it was all in my mind; I just had to push through it and hope it didn’t cause nightmares. I had read about this happening to magi, but I’d never been foolish enough to experience it myself until now.

  Clean and dressed, I made for the mess hall to get something more substantial to eat. Rest and food were the only cure for this condition that I knew of. I found Crivreen there, holding his head and eating slowly. He looked disheveled, and I guessed that he had decided to skip the shower. I didn’t blame him; it had felt very dangerous when I’d done it.

  “Man, that was one great party you threw,” I said as I took some food and joined him.

  He cursed under his breath. “Purwryn, not so loud.”

  I nodded and we ate in silence. We had both overdone it in training and burned through all our illuminescence stores. Once a magus runs out of illuminescence he begins to tap his own life force, which is extremely dangerous and foolhardy. It would be a day or two before we recovered, and we could easily have killed ourselves had we gone much further. This was foolish at any time, and absolutely insane on the eve of a battle. Eating and drinking helped a little, especially the natural sugars in the fruit that Shira had grown for us, but not as much as sitting and letting our bodies begin to regenerate illuminescence.

  “We’d better put some limits on these practice sessions,” Crivreen said quietly. He was very pale and I doubted he would be much use today.

  “You think?” I said.

  The meal did help to relieve some of my symptoms, so I headed up to take my shift at watch on the bridge. I wasn’t sure I could handle it if anything actually happened, but I could at least hit the alarm button if necessary.

  I cleaned up after myself and stumbled up to the bridge. As I entered, I saw on the screen the image of a man who I’d hoped never to see again. I froze on the spot and a chill passed through my body.

  I heard Raquel gasp and say, “Curetes.”

  “That’s him!” I called out.

  Everyone turned and looked at me. My mind was suddenly crystal clear as my heart pumped blood faster and adrenaline surged into my bloodstream.

  “Who?” asked Zah’rak.

  “That’s the man who jumped me on the Paradise!” I said.

  “Who’s Curetes?” asked Marcus.

  “He is,” said Raquel as she pointed at the screen. “One of the most dangerous magi alive today.”

  “Who is he?” I stared at the image of my tormentor on the screen. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. He was wearing the same liquid-looking metal armor, but it was the eyes that gave him away. It wouldn’t matter if every other detail about him had changed; those eyes would give him away every time. The fact that this was merely a still image did nothing to lessen the effect. I felt that those eyes could bore right through me, stripping away my body and laying my soul bare.

  “The right-hand man of Henrick, who is the most dangerous man alive, outside of the Wizard’s Council itself,” said Raquel.

  I stumbled over to navigation and sat down. I was still tired and weak and the adrenaline rush was fading, leaving me shaky and lightheaded. I had hoped never to see him again, and I was in no condition to process the implications of the fact that he was on our screen.

  “What do they have to do with anything?” asked Zah’rak, who was obviously taken aback.

  “It seems our enemies are multiplying,” Marcus said.

  “Henrick is not exactly an enemy. We actually have a treaty with him, and he was involved with us in a recent war that the Wizard Kingdom fought for the survival of the realm. I wouldn’t call him a friend either, though. He has his own agenda and his own nation of sorts,” said Raquel. “If he’s active out here, then we know something big is happening; really big.”

  “Wouldn’t his attack on Marcus be in violation of the treaty we have with him?” asked Zah’rak.

  “No, because he could claim it was in defense. And before you ask, when he attacked Purwryn he wasn’t part of the Kingdom,” she said.

  “When did he attack Marcus?” I asked.

  “Yesterday Curetes jumped Marcus in his quarters and left him completely disabled,” said Zah’rak.

  I didn’t like the idea that my attacker could reach Marcus here. “How did he get on board?”

  “A gate or teleportation, most likely. If Shira and I had been here, we would have noticed his arrival and acted, but I imagine he deliberately waited until we were gone,” said Raquel.

  I turned to Marcus and asked, “Why didn’t you call for help?”

  He hesitated and then said, “If your arm was cut off and you were bleeding to death, what w
ould you do first: stop the bleeding or call for help?”

  “Well, I’d have to stop the bleeding or die, so that answer is obvious,” I said.

  “When I was finally connected to power and could react on my own, he was already gone, so I concentrated on ‘stopping the bleeding’; that is, I told my station to repair and recharge my systems.”

  I wondered about that; the analogy didn’t seem to fit because being connected to power meant he was already stable. He was probably embarrassed that he got beaten by an unenhanced human, I thought to myself. I remembered how annoyed he’d been during our short training run in the cargo bay. He was used to winning any one-on-one competition and had a hard time dealing with failure. “Next time, call for help. There’s no shame in it.”

  “I agree,” said Raquel. “If Curetes returns, call me immediately. Don’t try to engage him; all of you combined wouldn’t even stand a chance.”

  “And you would?” I queried.

  “Maybe, maybe not; but he can’t attack me without risking the treaty, so it won’t come to that. The important thing is that if he’s here, then Henrick is at the very least interested in what’s going on in this system. That means we are probably heading for something big. We’ll all need to be at the top of our game, and I’d better try calling home. Grandmaster Vydor will want to know about Henrick’s interest.”

  “When do we jump in?” I asked.

  “Soon, but we’ll be holding at the system edge until probes can get in and give us some idea of what we’re up against,” answered Raquel, and then she sent privately, “So make sure you rest and get your strength back. No more practice sessions for now. ”