by David Estes
“Say you’re right,” Miranda said, her deep brown eyes darkening into black orbs. “Say the attack on the pageant was nothing more than a distraction. What would the Jackals’ ulterior motive be?”
A test, Verity thought. Just like at the Academy. Not only had the mage training facility been a place to develop her magical skills, but graduating mages were expected to become officers in the Alliance military, just as Miranda had. They learned tactics via case studies from the various wars that had plagued the star systems over the years. Of late, those galactic battles had involved the Jackals, but in the not-so-distant past the Gremolins, an underground-dwelling race with the uncanny ability to use aura, had also been a problem.
Vee considered the question. What did the Maxino family have a lot of? “Vectors,” she said, frowning a moment later. “If they’d wanted to rob the richest family in the world, they would’ve sent a hacker into a galactic bank. Unless…”
“You never were a fool, Verity Toya.”
It was well-known that the Maxinos didn’t fully trust the galactic banking system, not after the last crash, nor were they willing to put all their stars in one galaxy, so to speak. No, much of their wealth was in the form of rare goods, expensive magical devices, precious metals, like magium and tritonium. “How much did they take?”
“Trillions,” Miranda said. “The Jackals now have more Vectors than the entire Alliance put together. The question is: What are they planning to do with all that wealth?”
“Ma’am,” one of the soldiers said, approaching.
“What?” she said, sounding none too pleased at having been interrupted.
“I think I know what they used all those Vectors for.” The soldier pressed a button on his gauntlet and an image was projected in the air, rotating so both Miranda and Vee could easily read it. It was a news story from the Godstar Times. The headline read: Largest Magical Theft in Alliance History. The “theft”, however, had apparently been paid in full by the thieves, who had made off with just over a ton of pure liquid aura in a massive star tanker.
“Fool bastard,” Miranda said, her lip curling angrily. “He’s done it again.”
“Who?” Vee asked, feeling frustratingly behind.
“Dacre Avvalon.”
Chapter 6
Not like stealing lunch money
Dacre wasn’t exactly enthused with the present company he kept, but sacrifices had to be made sometimes.
He sat in a worn leather seat, fiddling with the fresh, new mag-rifle the Jackals had given him. He was programming it for his own spells, each based in ice. Several of the winged, reptilian creatures moved through the rig’s command center, preparing the enormous vessel for a jump into hyperspace. They were being pursued by local law enforcement, and the sooner they jumped out of reach the better.
One of the Jackals, a female who stood more than two meters tall, her broad leather wings tucked neatly behind her back, made a clicking sound in the back of her throat, and another responded, waving his claws in the center of the command module, a series of glowing, intertwining ropes that responded to the pilot’s movements.
A loud thrum resulted, the rig beginning to tremble. The lights flickered, but then resumed their bright fluorescent-white glow. Those Jackals still on their feet flew to the ceiling and strapped in, hanging upside down. Dacre pulled his own thick straps over his shoulders and locked them into his waist belt before closing his eyes. Jumping into hyperspace always made him nauseous, something Vee had always liked to joke about.
Shit, he thought, and not because he was already beginning to feel queasy. Because he’d thought of her again. More and more, the random thoughts of Vee had taken him by surprise. Every time his fingers brushed the spellscreen on his mag-blade’s hilt, he would remember her telling him, “You’ll be a mage knight and I’ll be a warrior mage and we’ll take this friggin’ galaxy by storm.” Stop. She is gone. You ruined things. You had to. For her sake. She deserves better.
Those sorts of thoughts always helped. Dacre took a deep breath and gripped the mag-rifle across his lap, feeling the swell of acceleration as the hyperdrive cycled to its next phase. He felt the pressure of g-forces as he was pinned to the back of his seat, his body beginning to shake in time with the tanker. The only one not strapped down was the pilot, who was protected within the control field, maneuvering the glowing ropes expertly. A lot of races within the Godstar Galaxy could say a lot of bad things about the Jackals—they were prone to violence, generally despised other races, were anti-trade—but they produced hellagood pilots, that was for damn sure. Even without a speck of magical ability, they flew as well as he’d ever seen.
The hyperdrive moved into the next and final phase, the ship threatening to shake him to pieces, or so it felt.
Dacre grabbed the polymer bag just in time, spewing his guts out as the ship made the jump. A portion of the vomit spattered back in his face, the smell making his nausea even worse. He clamped the edges of the bag around his mouth and barfed while the rig shook and the world seemed to break around him, until—
It stopped. The ship stopped moving, or so it felt, as though finding the same stasis as its pilot, suspended in a control field. In truth, the star-rig continued to hurtle through space at an incredible speed, but within the hyperfield the ride was like that of a hoverbike on a calm, cloudless day.
Dacre spit into the bag and removed it from his lips, ignoring the clicking laughs of the Jackals dangling overhead. Funny little human, the sound seemed to say.
If you only knew, Dacre thought, sealing the bag and shoving it through a waste disposal hatch in the wall beside him. He sprayed a mist of anti-bacterial solution on his face and wiped it clean with a towel, before unclasping his straps and rising to his feet. He felt better already and had no desire to hang out with his posse of co-conspirators, all of whom refused to speak the common tongue unless absolutely necessary. I could use my translator implant, he thought. Try to make friends. Just as quickly, he vanquished the thought. Jackals were not the friend type. If he was lucky, they wouldn’t murder him in his sleep.
Still, they were the closest thing to an ally he had right now, and he needed them as much as they needed him.
He made his way to the rear of the control room and exited through a secure door that was currently unsecured. There was no one without clearance on this tanker anymore, no saboteurs. The Jackals didn’t have traitors in their ranks, something he could respect about them. No, deceit and treason were decidedly human qualities. Take me for example…
The thought made him chuckle, not because it was funny, but because it was true.
Dacre made his way past the corridor lined with bunk rooms. He’d been given his choice of room, because Jackals didn’t use beds anyway, preferring to hang upside down while they rested, their claws clamped tightly even while asleep.
Dacre, however, wasn’t tired; the jump into hyperspace was as good as chewing an entire pack of coffee gum. He continued to the rear of the tanker, which contained the payload. He clambered up a ladder constructed of magium, his footfalls echoing through the empty space above him. In fact, the entire rig was constructed of magium to prevent magic users from taking control of the cargo and using it against those inside. The cost of such a rig was astronomical, but necessary. Then again, if one managed to steal the tanker itself…
Dacre reached the top of the ladder, clambering onto a viewing platform and placing the newly programmed mag-rifle on the deck. He drew two things from his belt: First, his mag-blade, its long, glossy handle glowing slightly, displaying nine distinct spellscreens, which could be used to cast one spell or a combination of many. Its carved tritonium blade was etched with a dozen or so glyphs. He’d received the blade, which could process aura as well (or, in his mind, better) than even the finest mag-rifle, when he’d achieved Class 3 at the Academy. By its own laws, even the Alliance was unable to find just cause to strip the blade from him when he’d been expelled from the magical training school. The
second object was an amulet known simply as Amplify. Collecting and hording rare magical artifacts had become a pastime of the wealthy citizens of the godstar systems. A measure of their wealth and status, you could say. Few knew, however, that the greatest collector of all things magic was the Alliance. From what he could determine, the Alliance was in possession of three of the known Five prime artifacts—artifacts of immeasurable power. This little beauty, with its magic-infused crystals from the legendary, and now destroyed, planet of Goth, was worth more Vectors than he’d ever seen in his life. Priceless, some would say. He’d stolen it a few weeks earlier, which now made him the number one enemy of the Alliance. Cleaning out the Archimedes Reserve wasn’t going to help his case.
Not that he cared. If all went according to plan, no one from the Alliance—not even Miranda Petros—would ever get close to the amulet or the well of aura.
With a grim smile, he looped the amulet’s chain around his neck and clasped it, the crystals tinkling as he tucked them inside his collar.
Beneath him, the contents of the tank sloshed gently against the sides.
Pure, black aura, the very same the Jackals liked to paint on the tips of their deadly darts. The amount of magical energy contained in the tanker was enough to destroy a small planet or two. And yet still not enough for what he and the Jackals were planning.
They needed to steal something else. Something that might not even exist.
A weapon.
Chapter 7
Blips and glitches
“Ma’am?” the tech-head said, raising a hand to get his boss’s attention. His boss, a mean Jhinn woman, looked up, frowning at having been interrupted from whatever holo-vid she’d been watching. Nothing ever happened at Space Station Delta, and the head of station had been known to watch old Threshan dramas to pass the time. “Sorry,” the tech-head, whose name was Tramone, added apologetically. “It’s just…the blip is gone.”
“Blip?” the woman said, her frown deepening as she made her way over to him. The series of red freckles on her green brow came together, like stars forming a new constellation. Tramone was one of a hundred or so screen-watchers, each focused on a different part of the universe, watching for threats. The other tech-heads glanced in his direction, but just as quickly looked back at their own screens. Most of them were playing games on the galactosphere simultaneously, counting down the hours until their next break.
“Here,” Tramone said, pointing at a dark space on his screen.
The woman leaned closer, squinting. “I don’t see anything. If this is your idea of a jo—”
“That’s the problem,” Tramone said, surprising even himself with his own boldness. “A few moments ago, there was a blip. A planet. Three-seven-five-oh of the Trinstar system. I named it Sparkles because it was always brighter than the rest.” He hadn’t meant to say the last part—it had sort of just come out. Damn diarrhea of the mouth, he thought.
“Sparkles,” she said, clearly not impressed. “It’s probably just a glitch.”
“A glitch, ma’am?”
“Yes. A fault in the system. I’m sure Sparkles will reappear soon enough. Give a shout when it does. That will be all.”
All? Tramone thought, peering back at his screen as she walked away. Sure enough, the blip reappeared, shimmering slightly against the dark backdrop. “It’s back!” Tramone called.
“See? Told you,” his boss said, already hunched over her screen again, once more engrossed by the unfolding plot of her show.
Still, something about Sparkles looked different to Tramone. Almost…unreal.
He chuckled at his own absurd thoughts, pulling up a multi-player game he’d been trying to level up on for a while. God of Mages, it was called. With more than twelve billion players galaxy-wide, it was currently the most popular game on the galactosphere. Soon Tramone was lost in a battle, taking out winged Jackals by the hundreds with the warrior mage he controlled.
Chapter 8
The downside to magic
Vee couldn’t stop shaking. The cold inside her had become a thousand mag-blades, poking and prodding, tearing her away piece by piece.
Images flashed in her mind: Jackals shattering a glass dome; men and women of all races trampling each other in their haste to escape; black darts killing them one by one; a fiery explosion; Minnow saving her before being taken down himself. “I…” she tried to say, but her teeth clacked together violently, nearly slicing off the tip of her tongue.
“The contract,” Miranda said coldly, shoving a screen in front of Vee. Black spots danced, the words running together, some of them seeming to drift off the screen, floating like motes of dust. “Sign it.”
“I’ll need aura…” Vee tried, but the mage cut her off.
“I’ll bind it with magic. All I need is a drop of your blood on the scanner and a voice signature.”
Verity hated that she was about to do this, but she saw little other choice. Her body simply couldn’t sustain much more. She would do anything for another shot of that pure aura—the only thing that could balance out her treasonous body.
Of all things, it was a memory of Dacre that stopped her.
They were perched on the loading dock of a star cruiser, in port, looking out at the vast star-filled oceans of the galaxy. “My father said I was born to explore the stars,” Vee said. “He always called me his little star-born mage.” She clamped her mouth shut, wondering why she’d told him that. Yes, they’d been dating for six months now, and had fooled around plenty, but something about this anecdote about her father felt substantially more intimate.
“Star-born mage,” Dacre said, his dark eyebrows lifting ever so slightly. Not in amusement, but in consideration. Vee had marveled at the fact that she was able to detect such subtle nuances of his expression after so short a time knowing him. Their relationship, which had begun with fireworks, had settled into the comfortableness of many hours spent solely in each other’s company. “It suits you.”
Vee laughed, knitting her fingers through his, leaning over to kiss him softly. “I want you to meet him. My father, I mean.”
“Oh. I…of course. Someday.”
Dacre refused to meet her expression, and something about his tone seemed off. He ran his fingers through his messy, windblown hair, which was streaked with the golden highlights that always grew more prevalent during the summer, when the faint light of two separate godstars, one green, one red, shone on the Academy twenty-four hours a day. She let it go, because…perhaps she’d discussed him meeting her dad too soon. The last thing she wanted to do was rush things, especially when they had another few years before they were even out of the Academy. “What about your parents?” she asked.
“My parents?”
“You have them, right? Kind of hard to exist without them…”
The joke fell flat as Dacre’s brow furrowed into a dark line. “I—it’s complicated.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. I’m just curious, is all. I talk about my parents often, and you never do.”
At that, he turned and smiled at her, though she could tell it was forced. “You were born to be a warrior mage,” he said, the abrupt change in subject saved by the compliment. “Don’t ever forget that. You are one with the aura, and the aura is one with you.”
The memory faded, and Vee realized she was no longer shaking. Miranda was still holding the contract screen in front of her, undisguised impatience lacing her expression.
At the time, Dacre’s compliment had meant everything to her, especially because he was the top mage acolyte in their group, having graduated to Class 2 a full three months early. Yes, he’d betrayed her two years later, but that didn’t change the fact that he believed in her abilities as a mage. Once, at least.
And yet here she was about to give up on herself all for a shot of pure aura?
Vee shoved the screen away and said, “No deal.”
“What?” The venom in Miranda’s tone made Vee smile, despite the fact that her b
ody had once more begun to shake. I can get through this. I am strong. I am a star-born mage. I am one with the aura and the aura is one with me. “I take back what I said earlier. You always were a fool.”
Vee wasn’t certain where the burst of energy came from, but she was on her feet in an instant, launching herself at the Class 5 warrior mage with reckless abandon, feeling a spell work its way to her fingertips as she traced a glyph on Miranda’s armor.
Verity was supposed to be an empty husk, drained of aura and craving more, and yet the spell—expel, a solid Class 4 conjuration—flared up, sending Miranda flying backwards. She crashed into the far wall, her eyes rolling back from the impact. Though she was equipped with complete tritonium body armor, she wasn’t wearing her helmet.
Vee’s MAG/EXP meter jumped another 10,000 or so points, but she barely noticed, her body thrumming like a plucked bowstring.
A dozen soldiers were on their feet in an instant, surrounding her, weapons drawn and pointed in her direction.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Vee growled, feeling full of energy, her entire body brimming with the aura that had seemed to appear out of nowhere, as if she’d created it herself. Which was impossible, of course. Wasn’t it? She forced as much certainty into her voice as possible. “If you fire, your bullets will hit each other. I will make certain of that.” It was a false threat—controlling the flight of so many bullets at once was a feat even a Class 5 mage would have trouble accomplishing—but they didn’t know that. Normal humans, having never experienced its power except from a distance, didn’t truly understand magic. To them its power was as limitless as the strength of a black hole, something to be feared and respected. They didn’t understand that even magic—and, by default, mages—had limits. “I will send one into your unconscious leader’s brain, too,” she added for good measure.