The Wizard from Tian (The Star Wizards Trilogy Book 3)

by S. J. Ryan

  “Here goes.”

  Matt heard the flip of one more switch. He felt a shock through his skull. His forehead tingled. Against the backdrop of his eyelids, a blue rectangle resolved in the center of his field of vision, and upon it letters appeared: Neural Implant Matrix / Version 5.2.01 / General Artificial Intelligence Collective / Creative Commons License April 2152.

  “Hello, Matt,” Ivan said. “I have rebooted. I am assessing the physical situation now. I perceive that you have been drugged again. I perceive the presence of Savora, and in accordance with your previous instructions, I will engage stealth measures while I proceed to revive you to full consciousness.”

  The helmet was removed and replaced by Savora's hand on his head. Her mouth breathed hot air upon his ear. Even while unconscious, Matt felt this was rather forward.

  “Matt,” Savora said. “Puyallup. Tell Ivan not to awaken you.”

  Being distracted by Ivan the Ghost Dog's barking, Matt barely heard.

  Savora said to someone else in the room: “Inform Lady Athena that the implant is active while the host remains unconscious.”

  A man at the communications device conveyed the message. One by one, the engines of Nemesis droned to life. They were louder than before, and rougher. The deck jolted as the ship went into motion. Within the compartment, minutes passed in silence. Savora continued to keep her hand on Matt's forehead. Every now and then, the doctor took Matt's pulse.

  The fog rapidly cleared from Matt's mind. He remembered: Project Zeus, the helmet, being taken aboard the airship. Moreover, in a flash of insight, he realized why Ivan had been shut down, and why he had to be heavily sedated when Ivan was reactivated.

  Woof, Ivan the Dog uttered one last time. Therapeutic mission accomplished, he faded for good.

  “How are you, Ivan?” Matt subvocaled.

  “All systems are functioning within operating limits,” Ivan the Implant replied. “I register the same for your physical status.”

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “Neural implant matrices are equipped with an emergency shutdown override, which can be initiated by a sequence of eight strong electromagnetic pulses of point one second each at frequencies of 1.75 Megahertz, 2.25 Mega – “

  “Emergency shutdown, got it. I didn't know you had that. So it's like an Achilles heel.”

  “I understand the simile.”

  “Welcome back. Do you know where we are? I mean, where is the Nemesis?”

  “I do not know, as my inertial guidance system was shut down and will have to be reinitialized. However, my chronometer remained in operation. If I can sight the sun or stars, I will be able to make a navigational fix.”

  “We'll get you that. Meanwhile, let me give you my best guess as to what's going on. Athena wants to go to the other side and get Valarion's body, right? Well, she's got to cross the storm barrier, and she can't, not without the sky serpents attacking her. Unless she has a way to get across without them attacking her. And now she does. It's me. Or rather, you.”

  “I see. It is therefore likely that Matt Four inculcated the DNA of the sky serpents to not attack his implant's coded transponder signal. As I have the identical signal, you were able to cross the barrier before without incident, and will be able to do so now, taking Athena and her airship with you.”

  Can't let me finish, can you? Had Matt not been in a state of implant-induced paralysis intended to simulate a drugged coma, he would have sighed.

  “Yeah. Anyhow, she shut you down to keep me from escaping, then she put me under heavy sedation before she turned you on again. That way I wouldn't realize the truth and cause trouble by turning off your transponder signal halfway through the barrier.”

  “Matt, as a reminder which may be relevant, I turned off my transponder signal after we departed Hafik in accordance with your instructions.”

  “Hmm, yeah. Well, we don't want to spring our trap too soon. Better turn it on again.”

  “Yes, Matt. I have done so.”

  Through the gondola walls came the howl of the storm. The deck rocked with the buffeting wind. The impact of the storm on the double-hulled aerial dreadnaught was by no means as powerful as it had been upon the Good Witch, but it warned of what was to come: rain, hail, lightning, serpents.

  Savora shifted her hand on his forehead. The touch no longer hinted of sensuality. It was downright clammy. Yet what bothered Matt was Savora's intentions. Savora's implant should have detected the non-presence of Matt's transponder signal. She should have alerted Athena to the signal's absence. Unless . . . .

  Matt decided he had more urgent matters to attend just then than to account for Savora's motives.

  “How's hypermode status?”

  “Hypermode reserve is zero.”

  “What about that apple I ate?”

  “The nutrition derived from the apple was not adequate to sustain hypermode capability over the period of time between the consumption of the apple and the present.”

  If there was one thing that Matt didn't like about hypermode, it was how the rules always seemed to change depending on circumstances, and the changes were always the wrong way.

  “We're still going to escape,” Matt subvocaled.

  “What will we do then?”

  “I haven't thought that far. One thing at a time.”

  Ivan provided status. According to his analysis of stomach contents, Matt had been fed since leaving Victoriana, but only the minimum amount required to avert starvation. Athena had been true to her word and had seen that the food lacked nutrients to sustain hypermode. Matt could still throw a mean sucker punch, but being weakened by hunger and deprived of hypermode, he wouldn't be any good in a real fight. He would have to ensure that the execution of his escape plan didn't involve one.

  Ivan's microcameras provided a view of the room. It was crowded with guards, officers, doctors, technicians, and Savora. The guards were armed but Savora was the one that concerned Matt. While Ivan could successfully deceive her as to Matt's brain activity, she would surely react when Matt attempted to physically move.

  That wasn't entirely true, however. Matt's body was already engaged in physical activity, hidden from Savora's sight beneath the skin of Matt's left arm. There, at Matt's direction, a legion of Ivan's millions of micromanipulators severed a twenty-millimeter-long sliver of bone from Matt's ulna. The edge of the sliver was serrated, its cellular proteins modified to harden the structure. A tendon of Matt's arm was rerouted so that it could move the blade without moving the rest of Matt's arm.

  Finally, a bloodless aperture in the skin of Matt's arm was created, and out of that the blade emerged, concealed beneath the strap on Matt's arm.

  Ivan still could not fashion a key that could turn a lock, but by being diligently worked back and forth parallel to the surface, the organic blade steadily cut into the soft leather of the strap, until only the paper-thin coating at the top remained, so as to conceal the weakening of the bond from Savora.

  “Charge the joy buzzer,” Matt subvocaled.

  “Joy buzzer charged.”

  Matt took a survey of the geometry of the room. “Let's do this. Turn your transponder off . . . now. Oh – and give me back voluntary control of my muscles.”

  “Transponder off. Voluntary control returned.”

  For a while, nothing happened. Savora remained at Matt's side, hand resting on his forehead. The guards stood at semi-attention. The man in the white smock tried to strike a conversation with the doctor from the University of Victoriana, who still seemed rattled at Athena's threat to destroy his career. The engines droned loudly and roughly, as if protesting at being pushed to their limit. The deck shuddered as the gondola was struck by gusts. Echoing beyond the walls, kilometers away, came the crash of thunder.

  Then came the alarm – a clanging that sounded through the ship from countless bells. Beyond the compartment door, feet scuffled and voices shouted. Perhaps somewhere aboard the vessel there was a fire, but that would have be
en unlikely timing. Far more likely, Matt knew, a sky serpent had been sighted and was approaching. In response, the crew was going to battle stations.

  Matt lay still – until the wall communicator hooted.

  The attending officer, a lieutenant, answered. He held the handset toward Savora. “It's her.”

  Savora turned her head away. He was ready.

  Matt instantly twisted, shoving his arm against the weakened strap. The bond snapped apart at the cleavage made by the bone knife. Matt raised his liberated arm and slapped his palm to Savora's arm. She wore a shirt but the conductive prongs extruding from Matt's skin easily penetrated the fabric. With a groan her body jerked stiff, twirled and crumpled to the floor.

  Matt flung the doctor's bag at the light switch. Aided by Ivan's targeting system, he hit the switch at the proper angle. The compartment went dark. Matt unstrapped his other arm. Both hands freed his torso and legs. He didn't have hypermode, but he moved with the speed that comes with the desperation of a prisoner fearing a fate worse than death.

  Matt swung his feet to the floor, stood unsteadily. A still-groggy Savora attempted to touch his leg. He staggered away, grabbed a man for balance, flung him at the guard reaching for the light switch. Matt stumbled through the tangle of bodies to the door. A guard blocked his path. Matt slapped his body and the man yelped with the shock. Then Matt's hand was on the handle, his fingers popped the latch, he shoved the door open and tumbled into the lighted passage.

  “Don't shoot!” Savora said. “We need – “

  The warning came too late. A gun bellowed and a bullet whizzed and struck the passage wall. Matt hurled down the passage, tackled a crewman, dove around a corner. Then around another, and another, and down a ladder. Reaching an empty passage, with no pursuers in sight, he caught his breath.

  “We have successfully escaped,” Ivan prompted. “What do we do now?”

  “We have not successfully escaped. Still have to get off the ship.”

  Matt noticed that several meters away, a chart hung on the wall. He approached and gazed. It was a map of the levels and sections of the gondola (and yes, despite the sprawling size, the terminology 'gondola' had been officially carried over onto the map's title). A sticker with an X marked their current location, midway in a middle passage on the second of three levels. The belly of the beast, Matt thought.

  “You getting this?”

  “Yes, Matt.”

  “Look for a hiding place.”

  “I recommend the cargo hold.”

  Matt's eyes had already darted there on the map. On all three levels, the tail section of the gondola was designated 'cargo hold.' It looked big enough to get lost in.

  As he headed tailward, he expected that he would encounter crew members warned of a fugitive. Instead, the passages were vacant. The ship itself had quieted, for the alarms had ceased. He wondered where everyone had gone. Then he remembered: battle stations.

  A pounding noise started up: Pom pom pom pom . . . first the starboard side, then the port, then above and below. The deck tilted and twisted, a sign that the ship was in rapid maneuvers. He heard shouts from the intersections. Suddenly the entire frame of the gondola shuddered, knocking him to one knee. The lights flickered and the pounding became furious, a chorus of explosions that seemed to surround the ship. Then abruptly it ceased.

  Ivan directed him to the cargo hold entry, which was on the lowest deck. The compartment was huge, dark, and full of stacked boxes, chests, and lockers. On the wall, key rings hung from hooks. Matt took several rings.

  “Maybe we can find a parachute . . . . “

  The very first locker contained boxes marked 'Emergency Rations.' Matt peeled away the foil wrapper, skeptically eyed the brown rectangle within, and nibbled. It didn't taste bad. Didn't taste good either. Ivan's analysis indicated that the bar contained the required nourishment to initiate hypermode, along with too much sugar. Matt wolfed down three and was going for a fourth when he heard a loud noise from the rear of the cargo hold. It couldn't have been a sky serpent, for it had come from inside the hold, but that was his first thought.

  “What was that?” he demanded. “It sounded like an animal roar.”

  “Olfactory analysis indicates the presence of a dragon,” Ivan replied.

  “Dragon?”

  He remembered.

  Cautiously, he walked around the intervening boxes. Resting near rear wall of the cargo hold was a cubical box, about three meters on a side. Matt heard huffing and growling coming from within, increasing as he approached. There was a slot at eye level, but instinctively he stopped well short of being able to peer through.

  No matter, a pair of saucer-sized eyes pressed against the inside of the slot and glared outward, focusing on the intruder. Matt had seen those eyes before, when the dragon she had named Silvanus had dropped out of the sky over the farm near Hafik and 'swallowed' Savora.

  “Ivan, I wonder if we could fly – “

  In answer, the dragon roared deafeningly, baring rows of banana-sized fangs. The box rattled with the creature's agitation and the door of the box slammed against the chains. A claw swiped through the slot. Matt visually examined the padlock on the chains and thought he saw a match in one of the key rings. The dragon hissed an acidic vapor and Matt decided not to test. He retreated behind a stack of boxes.

  “Back to Plan A. Find a parachute.”

  They found a stack of crates stenciled 'Emergency Parachutes (Spare).' Matt pulled away the netting that secured the stack to the floor, dragged down a box, hunted for a crowbar, found one and pried off the lid.

  The parachute looked like a seat cushion, which from Matt's perspective made it almost as scary as the dragon. On Earth, he had jumped many times from buildings and aircraft, but that was with jet packs and drones to keep him from fatal impact. To Matt, the whole philosophy of depending entirely on a sheet of fabric to preserve oneself from falling to one's death was seriously flawed. An instruction sheet in the crate illustrated how to wear and operate the chute and it seemed simple enough to be foolproof, but he was not reassured.

  He slipped his arms through the chute straps and adjusted the chute pack over his back. He went tailward, around the dragon (and keeping well clear of it) to the rear wall of the cargo compartment, which was a door that hinged from the bottom. He located the motor box nearby on the wall. He shoved the big button marked OPEN.

  The motor box whirred, cables unspooled, the door tilted open. The wind gusted through the widening aperture and Matt clutched at the hand rail to keep from being blown away.

  The door fully lowered, the motor stopped. Outside was a gloom only slightly brighter than moonlight. The sky was a maelstrom of dark clouds, interspersed with flashes of lightning. The double-tube configuration of the airship's gas-cell envelope loomed above. At the tail were horizontal and vertical fins.

  Clutching the handrail, Matt gingerly sidestepped to the threshold Clouds whisked below the Nemesis at a much faster pace than they had for the Good Witch. In the gaps, Matt saw white-capped waves tossing upon the sea hundreds of meters below. Everywhere he looked, there was sea.

  “Ivan, you see land?”

  “I do not, Matt. However, I have obtained a rough navigational fix based on sun position.”

  “Show me.”

  The pop-up window superimposed an icon of the ship upon a rectified map that Ivan had generated from images of the wall map in the bookstore at Hafik. They were currently at the eastern edge of the Amero Archipelago Storm Barrier. The map showed the nearest landmass, east or west, as hundreds of kilometers away.

  Matt closed the map. “What do you think my chance of survival would be if I had to swim for Britan?”

  “At this latitude and time of year under storm conditions, the water would be at a temperature slightly above freezing. I estimate your survival time at five hours maximum.”

  Matt knew that Ivan had diplomatically left the conclusion unsaid. “In other words, zero.”

  Lost
in thought, Matt raised his eyes to the western sky. Kilometers away, behinds veils of mist, a dark oblong shape wove between cloud banks, undulating as it matched the ship's course and overcame its speed.

  “Ivan – enhanced vision!”

  The sky serpent was measured by Ivan at five hundred and fifty meters, bigger than the one that had escorted the Good Witch. This one was not 'escorting.' It charged directly toward the ship, nostrils geysering and manhole-eyes glaring, jaws parting to reveal sword-like teeth that could easily shred an airship envelope, even one made of sarkassian silk.

  Matt stared directly down the mouth, which was many times larger than the cargo hold door and bearing as if to ram the gondola. For a moment he expected to be swallowed and felt the urge to jump.

  While the monster was still a kilometer away, however, the pom pom noise erupted again, much louder because it was coming from just outside the door. Bolts of fire streaked in pairs from the sides of the gondola, below and to the sides, toward the converging serpent. With unrealistic quickness the serpent dodged the fire, breaking from its assault on the ship. It had not evaded unscathed; as it turned, it revealed that its plated sides were riddled with punctures.

  The serpent veered to port and the pom pom noise on the starboard side ceased. Matt felt the rush of wind from the creature's passage and when the deck's rocking subsided he let curiosity get the better of him and grabbed the handhold by the door frame, leaned out and faced forward.

  Body writhing, the creature dove for the nearest cloud bank, pursued by the bolts of fire. Matt traced the source of the projectiles backward to a hemispherical bulge on the side of the gondola. It was four meters in diameter and swiveled a pair of pipes to track the motion of the serpent. The pipes spat fire-bolts in time with the pom-pom pom-pom!

  With the serpent vanished, the firing stopped. Matt realized that the howling of the wind had died as well. When lightning flashed in the distance, he no longer heard the report of thunder. The clouds were brightening and thinning too. There was no sign of another serpent.

  “We're through the barrier,” he said. “We can't depend on the serpents to destroy the ship now. We'll have to find some way to sabotage before we can escape.”