Captain sus-Mevyan was talking over the audio pickup with the officers on the muster bay auxiliary bridge. “What’s the holdup down there?”
“Somebody didn’t get the word, looks like,” came the reply. “Our boarding party had to blow the outer lock.”
“That’s a dead waste of some pretty maneuvering … are we in yet?”
“Door’s opening-I can see—”
There was a sudden noise, a crescendo of volume and pitch underlaid by a deep hum. The link dropped.
“What was that?” demanded sus-Mevyan into the silence that followed. “Communications, get me the muster bay. I want to know what happened, and I want to know it now.”
The audio pickup crackled back to life. “Muster bay here, captain. Whatever hit us, bad—we’ve lost contact with the boarding party. Nothing and nobody coming back.”
“Send a runner down. Let me know what’s happening.”
The Rain gave a sudden, violent shudder. The sensation reminded Elaeli unpleasantly of the throes of a wounded animal.
Energy weapons, she thought, with a sense of outrage. They’re hitting us with energy weapons.
“Lost communications with engaged-side forward engineering,” reported the communications specialist. He was pale and sweating, but his voice was calm. Another shudder ran through the ship. “Loss of pressure alarm forward.”
The fleet-apprentice who had brought Elaeli her uffa not long before swallowed hard and said, “What’s going on?” in a voice that didn’t quite squeak.
“They’re cheating,” Elaeli told him under her breath.
The communications specialist was still relaying bad news to sus-Mevyan. “No communications with the boarding party, no communications with engineering. Repair parties report hull breached.”
“Muster standby boarding party.”
“Interior communications are all down, Captain.”
Sus-Mevyan’s features hardened. “Bridge crew, secure your stations. Send runners. All hands, muster in the boarding tunnel. Lock all air-tight doors.”
Arekhon stood in a desolate landscape where blue-grey storm clouds gathered above the peaks and threw the upper slopes into shadow. A cold wind blew down off the highlands to scour the valley below.
He was not alone this time; Vai was with him, partner and adversary in the dance of their working. It had been a long while since he had last tested himself so much, moving at full speed and full strength without holding back—not the crushing, relentless onslaught of a great working, driven by the need for enormous amounts of sheer power, but something far more delicate and complex. They were building an intention, he and Vai, weaving the eiran into a sturdy network through the speed and grace of the blows they struck and blocked and struck again.
Vai wore a Mage’s black robes, here in Arekhon’s dream-landscape as well as in the physical world that their bodies still inhabited. She brought her staff around in a snapping blow, and the loose cloth fluttered and swirled around her like wings. Arekhon blocked the blow as it came in, the staves meeting with a resonant percussive outcry of wood against wood. He heard Vai laugh out loud from sheer delight.
Their staves were glowing golden and violet, drawing lines of dazzling color against the dark green of the mountainside and the dark grey of the lowering sky. The eiran wove in and out among them, shining like polished metal, making a pattern strong enough to capture the wild luck of the universe and direct it according to their desire. One of the threads had enough power to pull others toward it, and to draw on the luck that Arekhon and Vai were calling up between them.
Ty, Arekhon thought. Once recognized, the younger Mage’s touch was unmistakable. And Ty was—was—
With the boarding party.
Here in the world of his own mind, Arekhon found that the idea of a boarding party was a hollow one—barely a word, with almost nothing behind it to provide a referent. But Ty himself, through his presence in the working, remained vivid and familiar. The luck that the intention had gathered belonged with him.
Ty.
Arekhon feinted at Vai’s head, then struck low, aiming for her leg just above the knee.
With the boarding party.
Vai ignored his feint and moved to block the leg blow coming in. Their staves let loose fiery cascades of sparks in gold and violet, and the sound of wood striking against wood echoed off the mountainsides like thunder.
Luck.
Shadowy figures moved among the fallen in the darkened airlock of the Entiboran ship. They paced along the line where the front rank of Rain on Dark Water’s boarding party had stood, pausing at each of the dark shapes lying crumpled on the deck.
Flashes of light blazed down out of the shadows’ hands. Sometimes the fallen bodies twitched, other times not. Then the shadows moved on.
Ty’s heart pounded. He crouched between Spiru and Kalan, ready to rise and rush forward on Kalan’s word. The wooden grip of his staff felt slick and sweaty in his hand. He remembered, like a glimpse of something from long ago, Delath syn-Arvedan’s practice of wrapping the grip with soft leather—he’d once thought of trying something like that himself but had never done so. Now he wished he had.
The dark figures were coming closer, were almost within reach … luck, thought Ty, luck that they not notice us … luck that they are slow this time with their mysterious fires … .
“One,” whispered Kalan beside him. “Two. Three.”
Ty pushed himself to his feet and surged forward. Kalan and Spiru were running beside him, with their pikes in their hands and poised to strike. More from instinct than thought, he reached out to grab the wild luck that spun out around all three of them like streamers in the wind.
His staff glowed with luck and power, a hot, incandescent green like the color of life itself, brighter even than the flames the dark figures carried in their hands. When the light from his staff struck the dark ones, they halted for an instant—in fear, or in amazement, or in some kind of recognition, Ty never knew—and that instant was their undoing.
Kalan yelled and slammed his pike into the nearest shadow. Spiru thrust at another, and Ty struck out at that one as it fell.
In the viridian glare from his staff, Ty saw that he had brought down a human-shaped pressure-suited figure, holding a weapon of some kind in its hand. He kicked the weapon aside, out of reach of the two fallen bodies—not that either of them would be reaching for it, he thought. They were bleeding too much where the steel pikes had pierced and cut them.
Ty left them behind and sprinted to catch up with Spiru and Kalan, already moving deeper into the mazy tunnels of the opposing spacecraft. Spiru glanced back over his shoulder as Ty rejoined them.
“Nice bit there with the staff. Can you do it again?”
“I don’t know. Wild luck … it changes.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Kalan, and hefted his pike. The steel tip had blood on it, blood as red as any that ever flowed on Eraasi or Ninglin or Ildaon. “If they want a fight, they’ll have one.”
They came to a junction of two passageways. Kalan was in the lead. He paused and looked back at Ty and Spiru.
“Which way’s forward, do you think?”
Spiru shrugged. “Don’t know. Pick one.”
Luck flared suddenly, a pattern of clear silver to draw the mind and the eye—
“That way,” said Ty, pointing.
The other two followed his gesture in time to see a man come around the bend in the passage. He wasn’t wearing a pressure suit at all. Spiru and Kalan thrust and slashed at once, Kalan’s pike coming over Spiru’s shoulder, and more blood sprayed against the bulkheads as the man went down.
The three surviving boarders from Rain-on-Dark-Water left him behind as they had left his companions in the airlock, and ran onward in the direction that Ty had chosen for them.
33:
Year 1128 E. R.
BEYOND THE FARTHER EDGE: SUS-PELEDAEN SHIP
RAIN-ON-DARK-WATER
UNKNOWN ENTIBORAN S
HIP
Elaeli had never performed an emergency shutdown of the pilot’s station, except in drill. She knew the procedures—had practiced them, because in theory even the best ship might someday turn unfortunate and fall prey to mechanical disaster or to criminal intent—but such things did not happen in the sus-Peledaen fleet.
Only now they have. Lucky, lucky me, to get to see the day.
She worked as fast as she could, pulling boards and disconnecting power cables with hands that she didn’t dare let shake or fumble, watching the screens go blank and the readouts die. The rest of the bridge was already dim and shadowed. Outside the bridge windows, the white bulk of the Entiboran ship shone with the reflected light of Garrod’s Star.
Captain sus-Mevyan stood at her shoulder, watching. “Are you done, Pilot-Principal?”
“Almost, Captain.” Elaeli pulled out the backup data-wafers for the updated star charts and sealed them into the inner pocket of her uniform tunic. “There. That’s the last of it.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
They hastened through the passages to the muster bay, their footsteps echoing in the unnatural quiet. The floor of the bay was crowded with members of the Rain’s crew, some of them armed with boarding pikes but most of them carrying nothing but what they’d had in their hands when the order came.
Elaeli tried to spot ’Rekhe and the other Mages amid the crowd, but no one in the muster bay wore robes or carried a staff. The Circle’s absence both worried and heartened her. She didn’t want Arekhon sus-Khalgath to die lost and forgotten on an abandoned ship, and she didn’t want him to die for the Circle, either—but if the Mages hadn’t given up working to bring the luck to Rain-on-Dark-Water, then some of the people aboard her might yet make it back home.
The muster bay’s auxiliary bridge held most of the Rain’s officers. Elaeli and Captain sus-Mevyan climbed the narrow metal staircase to join them.
“What’s our situation?” the Captain asked the Chief Engineer as soon as she reached the upper level. “How soon can we effect repairs?”
“Looks bad, Captain,” said the Chief Engineer. Elaeli felt a surge of sympathy for him. He’d already worked miracles to give sus-Mevyan the engine power she’d needed for the chase and interception, and now he had nothing more to give. “Our fuel’s flat, and we’re holed and leaking atmosphere fore and aft.”
If his news discouraged Captain sus-Mevyan, she gave no sign. “What you’re trying to say is that we aren’t going home in this vessel.”
The Chief Engineer nodded wearily. “That’s about the shape of it.”
“Fine.” sus-Mevyan turned away from the consoles of the auxiliary bridge and pointed down across the muster bay at the open mouth of the boarding tunnel. “Then we’re going home in that one.”
The three survivors of Rain-on-Dark-Water’s boarding party stood outside a closed air-tight door.
“I think this is the way to the bridge,” Kalan said.
Ty looked at him. “What makes you think that?”
“Just guessing,” said Spiru. “We found the galley and we found crew berthing, and there wasn’t anyone in either of those places.”
Kalan tried the heavy lever-arm that should have opened the door. “I think it’s locked, though.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Ty. There was still luck in the universe—patterned and focused, the product of the Circle’s labors. He seized on it and directed it into his staff. Then he touched the lock.
Metallic noises came from inside the door. The lever-arm moved down and back up again. With a final groan, the door cracked open.
“There,” Ty said. “We can go in. If this is the bridge, maybe there’s somebody on it who’ll give us a chance to surrender properly before we have to kill them.”
“I sure hope so,” said Kalan, and kicked the door open so hard that it slammed against the limit of its hinges. The Rain’s boarding party—what was left of it—leaped onto the bridge through the widening gap.
Ty saw a room full of consoles and displays, and a person in drab clothing standing at the central point. She had an audio pickup link in one hand and what looked like a weapon in the other, and she was raising her hand to fire.
Spiru was in the lead; he brought the butt of his pike around and knocked the weapon out of her grip.
It clattered and spun across the deck. The woman jumped for it, but Kalan moved faster and threw himself on top of her, bearing her down under his weight.
“We surrender,” he said breathlessly. “Surrender … surrender … ah, lasreno! Het lasreno!”
She kept on struggling. Spiru pointed the tip of his boarding pike at her head.
“Comrade, friend,” he said. “Idesten …”
The woman spat out a string of angry words and redoubled her efforts at escape. Ty stepped forward, groping in his mind for more of the phrases that Garrod had taught them.
“‘We-are-honored-to-meet-you,’” he rattled off in rote Entiboran. “‘We-come-to-make-a-trade.’”
After a moment the woman started to laugh. It was hysteria, not mirth; she didn’t stop laughing until after Kalan had tied her hands with the belt of his uniform, and her feet with Spiru’s. Then the laughter turned to weeping, and then to silence.
Ty drew a deep breath. “Now what do we do?”
“We wait for the Captain,” Kalan told him. “And we let the Captain figure it out.”
The airlock at the far end of the boarding tunnel was a slaughterhouse.
Elaeli smelled the extent of the carnage even before her eyes took it all in: Blood and filth and cooked meat and melted plastic mixed together into a foul, malodorous slurry. Bile rose in her throat, and she swallowed it back down.
She was the Pilot-Principal; she was syn-Peledaen; she was supposed to set an example for the fleet-apprentices and the ordinary crew. If Captain sus-Mevyan could walk through the ranks of burned bodies, struck down where they stood and lying where they had fallen, then Elaeli Inadi could follow her.
It wasn’t hard to figure out which way to go. Two of the bodies in the airlock hadn’t burned; they’d been hacked apart with boarding pikes, and the blood that ran out of the cuts and slashes in their pressure suits had covered the deck with a wash of sticky red. The bloody prints of boot soles led away from the puddle into the depths of the ship.
Elaeli didn’t want to look at her own feet. She let sus-Mevyan set the course. They came to a place where two passages crossed, but—Elaeli fought down an impulse toward manic, inappropriate laughter—the Rain’s boarders had considerately left them another body to mark the trail, and even more blood.
No pressure suit this time, and the man’s face was untouched. He looked scared and surprised, and distressingly ordinary in spite of the wounds that had killed him.
An alien from beyond the Edge, she thought. And if he wasn’t dead I could invite him home to dinner and nobody would even blink. Arekhon was right; the Sundering isn’t a legend after all.
The realization sobered her. She was just as glad that the blood-trail she and the captain followed didn’t lead to any more bodies. They hit a couple of dead ends—empty compartments full of bunks and kitchenware—before coming to the ship’s main control room and the survivors of the boarding party: Two of the Rain’s crewmembers, their hardmasks and armored jackets smoke-stained and streaked with red, and one of Arekhon’s Mages in long black robes gone stiff with blood at the hem.
The two crewmembers took off their hardmasks as the Captain approached. sus-Mevyan looked at them, her mouth bracketed by hard lines and her face revealing nothing.
“Spiru and Kalan and”—the cold eyes paused for a moment on the young Mage before lighting briefly in recognition—“Ty. Are there prisoners?”
“Yes, Captain.” Kalan pointed toward a bound figure slumped against the far bulkhead. “That one.”
“Are there any others?”
“No, Captain.” Kalan’s voice wavered. Elaeli realized that he was close to breaking down.
“Should we have—”
“You did well,” said sus-Mevyan firmly. She stepped over to the control panels, but was careful not to touch them. A chair was bolted to the deck on the right-hand side of the compartment, and she sat in it. “Now we have to go on. Let’s get a temporary lock rigged, and start salvaging the Rain. I’m going to need the charts, the communications rig, and as much else as we can carry and will fit.”
Kalan looked relieved to have something more to do. “Aye, Captain.”
“And fetch Lord Garrod. I need him here.”
The working was over.
Arekhon knelt, exhausted, on the deck of the meditation chamber, waiting for his head to clear. Vai leaned against the bulkhead a few feet away, breathing hard. The working had been a strong one, building to a great rush of focused power, and Arekhon felt a faint surprise that it hadn’t gone so far as to call for a life. He was tired, and bruised in a number of places, but in spite of everything he had come out of the experience without serious injury.
He pushed himself back onto his feet and looked over at Vai. Her black hair was slicked into flattened tendrils against her cheeks and forehead, and when she lifted her hand to wipe away the sweat, the sleeve of her robe fell back enough to show a discolored welt above her wrist. Except for that, she was as uninjured as he was.
Narin and Garrod remained on the perimeter of the circle. The working hadn’t called on them to do anything more than steady the pattern; odd, again, seeing that the luck had been so strong.
Unless I misdirected it, Arekhon thought. Unless I only thought we’d made enough luck …
“The engines have stopped,” said Narin. “Is that good or bad?”
“Not good, usually,” he said, coming back from his worries with an effort. His voice sounded hoarse, and his throat felt sore and scratchy. “In our case, it probably means that we’re out of fuel. Which is why we did the working in the first place.”
The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds Page 28