The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  By the time Rain finished her second transit and emerged into realspace, most of the ship’s officers and some of her crew had at least a smattering of the language, and a few had managed to achieve a fluency equal to Garrod’s own.

  Pilot-Principal Elaeli Inadi was one of those few. She was pleased that her regular duties required her to be present on Rain’s bridge at the time of the dropout. If anything from the new world came over the ship’s communications system, she would be able to hear and interpret it for herself, without needing to ask anyone for the meaning.

  There was a time, she knew, when she would have gone to Arekhon sus-Khalgath for something like that. That was before she had seen him for the first time in the company of his fellow-Mages. She understood, then, how tightly the members of a Circle were bound together—and why Arekhon had felt compelled to opt out of the fleet-family for good.

  It’s not that I don’t trust him any longer, she thought uneasily. Not really. But he thinks about the Circle first, and not the ship.

  He was on the bridge now, along with Garrod; the two Mages were standing out of the way against the rear bulkhead. Elaeli glanced in their direction—looks like they don’t want to hear somebody else’s version of the dropout, either—then went back to waiting for the Captain’s word.

  Sus-Mevyan said, “Stand by,” and Elaeli, her eyes on the screen showing the ship-mind’s running calculations, replied, “Dropout in five, Captain … on my mark, mark.”

  The familiar shiver of discontinuity rippled through her, coursing along the interface between body and mind, and the grey opalescence of the Void transformed itself into ordinary darkness outside the bridge windows.

  Captain sus-Mevyan clicked on the speaker to the engineering compartment. “Fuel status?”

  “Almost flat,” came the reply. “We can do some in-system work—maybe one jump if there’s another star nearby—but we’re not going home again on what we have.”

  “We knew that.” She turned back to the bridge team. “Anything on the electromagnetic bands?”

  The crewmember at the communications board looked up from his bank of screens and readouts. “I’m showing something. Not natural, but if it’s modulated I don’t know how.”

  “Get me a direction on it anyway,” sus-Mevyan ordered. She turned to Elaeli. “Pilot-Principal Inadi, get me a posit and drop a buoy here—wherever ‘here’ is—so I can find my way back to this point if I need to.”

  “We’re working on it, Captain,” said Elaeli. Her hands played over the command switches at her station. “Buoy’s away … if we could have a look at the chart … that’s good. Looks like we’re right on top of our target.”

  Once again, the air above her station sculpted itself into an abstract map of space-time done in colored light. The red sigil marking the inertial location of Rain-on-Dark-Water had moved since the previous dropout; it was now superimposed upon the glowing white dot that marked the position of Garrod’s Star.

  “Sure looks that way,” agreed sus-Mevyan. One of the ship’s apprentices pressed a mug of hot uffa into the Captain’s hand without being asked, and she took a swig without looking at it. “Let’s see if there’s any correlation between those blobs on the chart and what’s really out here.”

  “Working,” said Elaeli again. “It may take some time; the ship-mind is still assimilating new data. Do you think we should start transmitting ourselves while we wait—let the locals know we’re here?”

  Sus-Mevyan shook her head. “Not right now. While we’re waiting, pop off another drone to let the family know we made it this far.”

  “Preparing drone for send-off.” Elaeli glanced over at the communications board. A crash of white noise came from the speaker.

  “Lots of signal, Captain,” the communications specialist said, after silence had been restored. “Artificial radiation all over the EM spectrum. Everything seems to come from the same bearing.”

  “I didn’t come this far just to lurk,” sus-Mevyan said. “Turn toward the source. Pilot-Principal, what do you have out that way?”

  Elaeli checked the data from the Rain’s realspace sensors. “One star, close.”

  “There’s our target,” said the Captain. “Lay in a microjump to the system. It’s time to knock on the door and see who answers.”

  30:

  Year 1128 E. R.

  BEYOND THE FARTHER EDGE: SUS-PELEDAEN SHIP

  RAIN-ON-DARK-WATER

  Arekhon watched the Rain’s officers conferring over the chart and the ship-mind readouts. Intent on their work, they seemed oblivious to the two Mages who shared the bridge with them. He took advantage of their concentration to exchange a quiet word or two with Garrod.

  “You said that Entibor and most of the other worlds on this side of the gap were engaged in constant low-level warfare.”

  Garrod nodded. “It’s their greatest—perhaps their only—weakness.” “I see. So what happens when we show up in their space, looking like a very large target that no one can identify as friendly? How do you know that the local inhabitants aren’t going to kill us on sight?”

  “Because I survive,” Garrod said. His voice held a note of grim humor. “You said yourself that I was—and so, presumably, that I will live to be—a great deal older when you left Eraasi.”

  “That’s reassurance, of a sort,” Arekhon conceded. His attention was only half on Garrod; over by the star-chart, the conference had ended.

  “We have a course for transit,” Elaeli told the Captain. “It won’t put us into orbit around Entibor’s primary, but we’ll be close—and we’ll have some fuel left for maneuvers in normal space.”

  “Can we make orbit?” asked sus-Mevyan.

  “Engineering says not if we want to leave it again. We haven’t got enough fuel to escape from planetary gravity.”

  “I see.” Sus-Mevyan turned. “Master Garrod—”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell me how to contact these people. What kind of light-speed comms are they using?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know, Captain,” Garrod said. “I know that they have such things, but I never discussed the matter with one of their technicians.”

  “Help me out,” the Captain said. “Did you hear a phrase—frequency modulation, amplitude modulation, phase modulation—anything?”

  “If I did, I do not recall.”

  “Wonderful. We can’t talk to them. How certain are you that these people have fuel we can use, and that we’ll be able to buy or trade for it?”

  “Not certain at all,” Garrod said. “When I tell you that the same word for ‘fuel’ is used to speak of what propels deep-water ships and low-altitude flyers as well as what moves the vessels that go between the stars, you will perhaps understand why—but these people do have trade with other worlds, and starships of many types. So I would say that the likelihood of finding what we need is acceptably high.”

  The corners of sus-Mevyan’s mouth turned down. “That’s still not as reassuring as I’d like. But we don’t have much choice. Pilot-Principal, make the jump.”

  “Working.”

  “What is your intention, Captain?” Garrod asked.

  “With everything else we lack, I must act with honor. Treat these people as I would wish to be treated, act as I would hope one of theirs would act if our situations were reversed and they were coming into Eraasian space. Give them a display of shiphandling that will show them—since without communications we have no words—that we have come to this world as their equals, and not as paupers who can only ask for charity and have no power to give anything back in return.”

  She turned to the bridge windows, and to the distant stars. Arekhon braced himself for the crossing of the border between the Void and reality. This time the transit would be a brief one—they were very close to Entibor’s star—and he would need to use the time well.

  He spoke quietly to Garrod. “We’re going to need luck for this. I think it’s time to gather the Circle.”

 
; The older Mage frowned slightly. “Working to affect the course of a transit isn’t a good idea. The forces are too similar—”

  “Not for the transit,” Arekhon said. “For the chase-and-boarding afterward. Captain sus-Mevyan intends to take an Entiboran ship, to show our friendly intention.”

  Garrod paused. “I never heard of such a custom among them. Though I will admit I dealt mostly with their politicians, and not with those of their people who ventured into space.”

  “Good shiphandling has got to be a universal.” Arekhon said. He paused. “Besides, if we do find out that the Entiborans’ fuel won’t work for the Rain, one of their ships may have to take us home. But sus-Mevyan wants to show them that she’s an equal, first—she’d never agree to putting the fleet-family into a subservient position—and making an intercept is one way to do it.”

  Garrod said nothing for what felt to Arekhon like a long time. Then he said, “You acted as the First of Demaizen from the time the great working ended until I came to the ship. Do you want the Circle again?”

  Arekhon braced his shoulders against the cold metal of the bulkhead behind him. “I’m not trying to take your position away from you, Lord Garrod—”

  “But you have opinions on what should be done.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you certain of them?”

  “Not certain,” said Arekhon. “But …”

  “Another reason that you should take the Circle,” Garrod said. “Seconds don’t have doubts. Firsts do.”

  “Being named Third was an honor. Being Second came to me through the working. I never aspired to be anything more.”

  “This is not about your ambition,” Garrod said. “It is about the working, and the good of the voyage. I ask you again, will you take the Circle?”

  Arekhon drew a deep breath. “For the good of the working … yes.”

  Elaeli was so immersed in watching the calculations for the transit that she scarcely noticed when the two Mages left the bridge. Short transits, with their fine adjustments of time and distance, put a greater call on the resources of the ship-mind than did the longer passages. Nobody wanted to be on the rare unlucky ship that never returned from a routine jump. Mostly they were never found, but the disaster of 1114 and the meteor shower over Ramsit were remembered all too well in the fleet.

  This time, when Rain-on-Dark-Water came out of the Void, the ship was close enough to the Entiboran system that Garrod’s Star was the brightest object visible in the field outside the Rain’s bridge windows. Elaeli made certain that the calculations were transferred to the star map, and readied another message drone for the fleet. The next Eraasian ship to make the transit would not have to travel blind-if there was ever another Eraasian ship to visit this world.

  Which there would not be, unless Rain and her crew could obtain—and obtain soon—the means to go home. Hunting in normal space took fuel, too.

  “How far?” sus-Mevyan asked.

  “Middle-space,” Elaeli replied. “Eight months of realspace thrust to the primary.

  “We don’t have eight months’ food. And we don’t have eight months’ fuel.”

  “Normally I’d recommend another micro-jump,” Elaeli said. “We’re about the range for in- to out-system shipping lines, for interstellar distances. No gravity bobbles for the run to jump, close to a micro-piloting situation.”

  Captain sus-Mevyan was standing by the bridge windows, looking out at the starfield as though she could find with the naked eye what the Rain’s sensors were waiting to report. “Get me a scan of near space,” she ordered. “Tell me who else is out there. If there’s another ship, I want to know it.”

  The communications specialist was already working his panel intently. “Intermittent raw carrier, no signal.”

  “Hail them anyway. Do you have a position on any of them?”

  “I’ll get running fixes soon. I’ve got up-Doppler on a couple. I’ll work those first.”

  “Work them,” said sus-Mevyan. “Pilot-Principal—”

  “Standing by to calculate intercepts,” said Elaeli. “How shall I set the fuel consumption parameters?”

  “Give me as much speed and maneuverability as you and engineering together can squeeze out,” sus-Mevyan ordered. “Meanwhile, I don’t want any surprises. Muster the boarding party and have them stand by at the sally lock. When I arrive at Garrod’s Star, I want to give them as much honor as we possibly can before we have to start asking for favors.”

  The members of the Circle aboard Rain-on-Dark-Water assembled in the meditation chamber in response to Arekhon’s summons. Narin Iyal looked calm and alert—standing with her feet braced apart, gripping her staff just as she might have done while watching for bad weather from the deck of a Veredden fishing trawler. Ty, on the other hand, had a bright-eyed, excited look that didn’t augur well for his steadiness later. More than any of the other Mages, Ty had made friends among the Rain’s crewmembers, and worry, Arekhon knew, made a powerful distraction. Vai, of course, remained as quiet and self-contained as always—Arekhon supposed that witnessing a great working within hours of joining a Circle would leave one unimpressed by anything less.

  They were all of them well-practiced, he reflected. As the door closed, they moved without needing consultation into the white circle on the black enameled deckplates. None of them appeared startled when Garrod took the place meant for the Circle’s newest member, or for a visitor, and Arekhon spoke the words to begin the working.

  “Rain-on-Dark-Water has come safely out of the Void,” he told them, “and now the difficult part of our journey begins. Unless we take a ship, we won’t have the fuel to get home. It’s time for us to join in meditation and see to it that the eiran are brought together where they’re most needed.”

  No more words were necessary. The Mages knelt on the deckplates with their staves before them within easy reach. Arekhon let his mind slip into the passive, half-thinking state where the eiran appeared most clearly.

  One piece of good fortune we’ve had already, he thought. We came out near other ships, and there’s luck all over.

  He studied the silvery eiran, trying to determine which ones were the most suited to the Circle’s purpose, and which ones made the strongest connections to Rain-on-Dark-Water. His task was made more complex by the wild disarray of the cords as though no one on this side of the interstellar gap had ever bothered to cultivate and untangle them. Distinguishing between one cord and another, and following them back to their sources, took concentration.

  That one … there. Or the other one, close by …

  No. Wait.

  “Ty,” he said.

  No answer for a moment, while Ty brought his mind back from whatever places he went to search for the eiran. Then he said, “’Rekhe … Lord Arekhon?”

  “Go stand with your friends, at the sally lock.”

  “Yes, lord.” Ty rose obediently, but his voice sounded startled and a bit hurt. “Are you dismissing me from the Circle?”

  “No,” Arekhon said. “I want you to take the Circle with you. The eiran here—you’ve seen them. We need to hold fast to our own if we’re going to make luck for anyone at all. Take the eiran of the boarding party and weave them into ours. When the time comes, we’ll work the luck for everyone.”

  Elaeli felt drops of moisture springing out on her forehead and the back of her neck.

  Nerves, she thought, as she huddled with the Rain’s communications specialist over the displays of first one station and then the other. By the time this is all done I’m going to look like a wet mop.

  She had good reason for tension. A normal-space interception was the most complex and delicate set of maneuvers that a vessel like the Rain would ever undertake. The ship-mind integrated realtime data as fast as it could, but interpreting its recommendations about course and speed—and about what the other ship would do in the face of pursuit—called heavily upon the luck and good judgment of the Pilot-Principal.

  The first set of
reccos came up on Elaeli’s screen, a double-handful of them, ranged from near to far. She pursed her lips in a silent whistle.

  No wonder we haven’t aroused anybody’s suspicions yet! This place is as crowded as the city lake on a hot day.

  She discarded all but a couple of the ship-mind’s recommendations as too distant for practical purposes. Even the quick Void-transits necessary to close the gap would use up more of their precious fuel reserves than she wanted to risk. The Captain was the sort to call for fast moves and lots of power at the end of the chase.

  If we have it, Elaeli thought.

  “Two targets in normal-space pursuit range,” she said aloud. “Intercepts possible.”

  “What kind of range?” sus-Mevyan demanded.

  Elaeli glanced down at the numbers on her display, working to translate the specifics listed there into the kind of useful abstractions that the captain wanted.

  I wish there were some kind of display for this, like the star charts.

  “Close range for target number one,” she said at last. “One hour approximately. And the other … at least eight times that. The close one’s faster, though.”

  Captain sus-Mevyan gazed out at the darkness beyond the bridge windows as if she could see something out there besides the stars. If she was sweating, Elaeli couldn’t tell.

  “Set course for match and intercept on target number one,” the Captain said at last.

  Elaeli let out her breath and began giving commands. “All engines on line,” she reported when she was finished.

  “Course and tracking laid on.”

  “Lock on, lock confirmed.”

  “Commence approach run.”

  Then came the long wait. The Rain’s great engines pushed harder and harder, and Elaeli watched the readouts for the target ship and for their own pursuit. The gap narrowed, increment by increment, while Elaeli sweated and Captain sus-Mevyan stood motionless at the bridge window. The closer they could get before the target ship became suspicious, the better … Elaeli stiffened and hissed through her front teeth in frustration.