Kingdom of Stars (The Young Ancients: Timon Book Three)

by Power, P. S.

  For all he knew no one was interested, and he was starting something that would just be awkward and cause problems. Noram common girls weren't all that forward most of the time, so he didn't think it would be that big of an issue, but one of the girls, whose name he hadn't asked at all, stepped toward Deshi and bowed.

  "Would you be my husband, mage Deshi? I'm not rich or anything, but I make a gold a month at my current job and it's good training. I can work a kitchen, and will keep your home well, if you have one. If not, I can help build one. I used to live at the focus stone manufacturing center. I learned a bit there from some of the men."

  Timon saw her blush again, and got that she'd probably traded sex for that knowledge. It was about the only coin that an orphan had. If so, she'd probably gotten good value for her time, if the fellows had actually shown her enough to make a real home that way.

  "Really? How good are you?" It was an interruption, but sounded interested enough that she turned to him and smiled.

  "Well, making things with focus stone isn't all that hard, to be truthful. I nearly went into that business, but the Orange Lady, she said that she needed cooks for a grand adventure, so I signed on here. Not a lot of the girls have yet and more of us took the cooking and baking learning than the boys." She bowed her head a bit, but seemed pleased and a bit catty, if Tim was reading her right. "I have a compression unit though, gifted as promised by the Wizard Tor, and if we had to, we could sell it for several gold, to give us our start."

  Why she was looking sly, Timon didn't get until he looked at the other two, who seemed chagrined. From the way they were holding themselves, they hadn't done the complete focus stone section and now didn't have that little extra.

  Timon nodded.

  "Deshi, you should look at it and make some more of them. We'll need ones that are more versatile and can do both very large and smaller works as well as work from inside a ship, influencing the outside world. For the Colony project? It will have to be a very large city, that's able to keep all the air inside. Get with Monroe for what's really needed on that. Um... this young lady, sorry, I don't know your name?"

  She curtsied, messing it up horribly and looking awkward, but he didn't say anything about it. They weren't in the King's throne room and he wasn't going there anytime soon. Neither was this woman.

  "Wistra, Countier Lairdgren." The very young woman blushed again, then looked half panicked. "I mean... Countier Baker!"

  That got waved away. They were in space and while he wasn't going to tell her about it, she probably out ranked him, actually being ship's crew.

  "Tim. You should all call me that. Anyway, Deshi, get with Wistra and see if she'll let you examine her equipment." He paused for a beat, waiting for someone to laugh at the double entendre, but no one did, not even the other girls that had been holding back. "Then, I don't know, you might want to actually discuss that marriage thing? She seems nice enough. It isn't my place to say, of course. Other than approaching Lyn about it. That's a Noram thing."

  Smiling he covered his mouth.

  "Though if you want, whoever is currently the ship's Captain could marry you, or if you can make a guide fire, you can do it Vagus fashion and hop over it holding hands. It's a nice little ceremony. Maybe something different though?" Now he was just teasing them both, but Deshi, who had apparently been born either incredibly gullible or half diplomat, stood and bowed low to Wistra.

  "I was supposed to marry another girl, but she died three years ago, before the Healing Stones came from the Great Mother's family. I would be honored to get to know you now, with the promise of possible marriage later." It could have been him putting her off, but Tim was reading his field, rude or not, since if it were going to be a mess, it was his fault.

  He was serious about it though, and was actually just not certain that the girl wasn't teasing him a bit, in some strange and foreign manner. No one had really wanted to marry any of the mages yet, considering them a bit holy, after a fashion. They didn't have vows of celibacy though, and Lyn had married Dorgal, so he figured it would be within the rules.

  Rather than keep things going, since they could probably cover the rest of it themselves, more or less, he looked at the other two and winked.

  "See, it pays to be a bit forward at times. So, you two... Well, there are other men here, and you don't have to get married if you don't want to."

  The one in the far back turned to a steaming pot and waved a focus stone spoon at him, then stopped as if afraid that he'd think she was threatening him with it.

  "Does the pretty man of darkness have someone yet? He's very nice to me, always smiling and telling me how pleased he is that I'm here."

  "Monroe? I don't know, to be honest. I don't think so, but you need to ask him outright. I... There are some problems there. He's immortal, and old, after a fashion. He has the memories of a life from a long time ago at least, which sounds confusing, I don't doubt. Don't be shy with him however. He may say no to you, but he won't be mean about it. He can't." The rest of it he'd let her find out for herself, if she really wanted to.

  The other girl just looked away shyly.

  "Do you have anyone yet?"

  Timon looked at her and was so glad that he only had about half the ability to feel embarrassment as a regular person did. It was a lot more off-putting when you were the one on the spot.

  "Yes. I'm married. She lives in the Capital right now." That should have been enough for a common girl, if she'd been raised properly, in a rural setting, since marriage actually meant something there. At the orphanages, that wasn't such a big thing though.

  "But she's not here? Would you like to have me come visit you later? I saw you when Wistra and I showered you, you're very manly."

  Timon shook his head a bit, but smiled, trying to copy how Monroe always did it, showing just a hint of exasperation.

  "Tempting, but I have to go right back to work. Deshi will be too, I think, since he's taking the lead on the big project." It wouldn't hurt to talk the mage up a bit, Timon decided.

  Then, without making a big deal out of being asked if he wanted the kitchen help in his bed, which he sort of did, he realized, Timon got them to load him up with food. He had a heaping tray of things that wouldn't go bad too quickly, and took it with him, so that he could stock up a bit before the hard part started.

  It was, as he'd figured, nearly impossible. Tor had made it sound simple enough. You took several large containers of nano-dust, in this case made of carbon, since that was what Monroe had been able to provide him, and grew the field, making it very clear that it was to grow and spread, making millions of copies of itself, with each little bit holding one.

  That was basic enough, until he tried it, of course. Three times he had to restart, failing utterly. The second one was so bad that after a week, all the carbon had fused together into a single block in each container. It held a lot of individual fields, but it was almost totally useless. Monroe seemed impressed though, that he'd done that with nothing except his thoughts, but it was an annoyance and was costing them time. Finally, after a month of trying, he managed to get a good batch going.

  The whole thing was mind numbing, and to his chagrin, the girls kept showering him, every two days or so. They didn't abuse him, as far as he could tell, but he didn't really need it, being able to move on his own a lot more than normal. It wasn't horrible or anything, since they were all so short, being smaller than he was. They also didn't push him for sex or anything, which was nice, but he couldn't really speak the whole time, and since it had taken most of two months to get it all done, he was nearly crippled by the time it was all over.

  Stiff and in need of a lot of exercise.

  Worse, even as he came to the surface, he noticed that he was different. It wasn't a little thing either, since his mind kept trying to move back to holding the field he'd been making and had to be forced away from it, over and over again. It felt like he was stuck, in a cage of his own making. It meant that, an hour after g
etting up, drinking all he could hold and finding some food, he was stumbling around the halls, feeling more than a little bit like he wasn't really there.

  The woman that he met in the hallway had orange on her cuffs, which meant she was important. Nearly as high in rank as Alice, if he had the system right. That the kitchen girls all did too... Well, they'd been there the whole time, so he thought he understood what Alice was thinking. These were going to be the section heads, or maybe even the instructors for the entire fleet. They were young for a job like that, but that would change, with time.

  This one though, was tall, and clearly of Noram nobility, being about seven feet tall and very thin. Not too old either. Blinking he finally put a name to the face and then, after a while, managed to speak. It was Judith Kerry, and considering she was probably his best friend in the whole world, other than Denno or Petra, it wasn't a good sign that he hadn't recognized her.

  "Judy." He wanted to explain what he'd been doing, but she moved in and hugged him, which had more of an air of someone trying to keep another from falling down, at first. His face hit her right in the chest, which made him blink. She was a lot taller than he was still, but his growth made a difference.

  He must have been five-seven or eight already.

  "Tim! You look like death left out in the rain. What in the seven hells have you been doing? I'd heard you were working, but this isn't normal." She frowned at him, but didn't take him to task past that one line.

  She just held him instead, right there in the hallway. She was tall, and that should have made him think of Nora, but he didn't. Instead he let his arms wrap around her for a bit and then stood back, noticing that he really was unsteady.

  "I... built..." It was so hard to explain it all really, what it did. What it would really do. "It's a kind of shield, really. For the whole world. It only works against one thing, but that's a dangerous weapon that the others, the bad Ancients and their clones, have."

  Two things happened then. The first was that she didn't ask him what a clone was, which was telling, since in Noram that wasn't a subject covered in school really. She'd been around the idea though, and had clearly picked it up. The second was what she'd said.

  "The Sunset Fire?"

  Timon went silent for a bit, "Um, micro-plasma?"

  She grunted, her voice low and angry sounding.

  "That's the name. We all call it Sunset Fire. Near on a month back they used it on Austra. They took nearly a half million lives with it. It's part of why we have so many bodies here now. A lot's changed in the last days. You should talk to someone about it. I can fill you in some, but you have better sources than I do. If you can help with that though, well..."

  Then, without asking, or telling him what was happening, she kissed him. It wasn't a peck on the cheek either, but held a bit of lust that he hadn't expected from her really. He wasn't all that old and she wasn't either, but she had four years on him, at least.

  When she stopped, she didn't blush or say anything about it, just taking him by the hand.

  "Come on."

  Where they were going he didn't know, but it was happening at a brisk walk, which was a bit faster than he could comfortably go at the moment, his legs feeling a bit heavy still from disuse. It was probably good exercise though. He figured on a trip to the mess hall, which was what they called the dining room on the ship. Or possibly the shower, or maybe, given the warmth of the kiss he'd gotten, her taking him off to her bed chamber. That was just possible he knew, since he was a bit out of it and she was a noble woman.

  They ended up on the bridge however, and walked to the right hand side where there were three different kinds of communications devices set up. Two were normal enough, a regular communications device, like his own and an Austran one. Or at least it was similar, if a lot larger than the other one. The one that Tor made was more colorful, having brilliant and glowing blue sigils all over the milky tan stone.

  The last one was very different, and seemed to be just a bit of crystallized metal. That marked it as being from Blue, he thought. Unless someone else had come over to their side that had that kind of ancient technology too?

  Judy just stood there, breathing hard, which had nothing to do with the quick walk down the hallway. She was in too good of shape for that. No, she was worried, and while she knew that they needed to get in touch with people, hence them being there, it was also clear that her thoughts had ended with the idea that he needed to do that part.

  Hardly all that Captain like of her. Timon looked into her eyes and smiled.

  "Thank you, Captain Kerry. I'll handle it from here."

  The first thing he needed to do wasn't what he wanted, which was to find out what had happened. No, first he needed to get in touch with Alice Orange, and he worked out the correct sigil for that, with only a bit of fumbling. Well, more than a little. It took about five minutes to work it all out, his mind really not able to track with reality yet.

  "Report." The stern and heavily accented voice sounded snappish and rude, which fit the hard woman better than her normal manner of interacting with the world, he realized. This was the real her, and that nicer version was her playing at being just like everyone else. How he made that leap he didn't know, but it felt right anyway. It was probably that he'd connected with her field when he was focusing on finding her name, even if she was thousands of miles away at the moment.

  "Timon. I have a nano-device set up that will stop micro-plasma. We need to spread it in the atmosphere, all over the world. The continents most likely to be attacked first. Tell the Ancients to stay away from any of it." He realized what that sounded like and tiredly tried to fix his words, sounding almost drunk, he was so out of it. "Away from the micro-plasma. If it's in the air, it will try to attack them before it dies." Hopefully no one had decided to fight fire with fire. Not on their side at least.

  "Tim? You have your work done? Are you sure?" That was her natural skepticism toward attractive men, he understood, but she sounded no worse than normal.

  "I think so, we have to release it to find out, but the fields are strong and feel right. Hopefully I made enough. It will come down to spread patterns, but I couldn't do any more."

  As it was, he didn't feel like he could do much of anything at all, for a long time.

  "I'll send up someone to collect it. Have you been informed as to the situation on the ground here?"

  "No. Just that there was an attack using micro-plasma on Austra?"

  "Seven nukes, two micro-plasma attacks and at least a hundred assassinations worldwide. It's bad enough that even the idiots in Noram have stopped fighting each other, for the time being. Not that it will last. I have someone coming to you for the pickup. We just dump it? Will it self spread, or do we need a spraying program?"

  Timon thought he understood, but didn't talk for a while, his voice not caring to.

  "Ah. Both. Put it over high population centers first. Let it go on its own from there. It will seek out the stuff to stop it, but we have to protect everyone first. I'll call Brown, so he knows your people are coming?" He didn't feel like doing it, but it was his job, he figured. The man was family and so were his people, after a fashion.

  "Understood. We have that craft coming in... approximately twenty-seven minutes. Have the material ready, along with any handling instructions." Then the line broke.

  Things had to be pretty intense then, if that's how they were going to be doing things. Then, that was Aunt Alice and she was nothing, if not a warrior at heart. Unlike him. Timon, he decided right then, was a paper pusher, deep in his soul. Oh, he could learn to fight, or build, but making gold, putting together businesses, that made the most sense to him, personally.

  He also realized that he didn't care for building all that much. Not as a career. He was doing well in it, but it was like being a butcher. He knew how to do it, and would be fine, if he had to for a while, but long term it would bore him too much.

  It took nearly as long to get to Brown as it had O
range, but this time no one snapped at him. The Ancient just sounded worried.

  "This is Denno Brown." He seemed pretty formal about it for some reason, as if he was expecting bad news.

  "It took four tries, but I have a nano-dust that will stop micro-plasma. Alice Orange is sending someone to get it now and then we'll need to have it spread over Austra and everywhere else. It works, but if you know any Ancients that you don't want dead, tell them to stay well away from micro-plasma from now on. The new magics will send it at them, to try and kill them, if they're too close to it."

  "I... May I ask who's calling?"

  Tim cleared his throat, which still left him sounding deeper and a bit gruff and hoarse.

  "Timon. It's a magical build, but it will work. I know that your automated system will be a problem. We can use the space craft for this, or pass it to you so that you can do it, without taking your attack grid down. Either way. Let me know so I can tell the incoming pilot."

  "Timon? That's wonderful! I think we should have our people do it, for morale reasons. Things have been a bit tense on the ground here, after the latest push. Gray has not been gentle with Austra. I don't know why, but it's as if she selected us out personally. Another plague was set on us as well. If we didn't have those healing devices that Tor made still... Well, we're at war again. We haven't done this in nearly two thousand years. The last time, was brutal, but nothing like this. We mainly went after each other, not the general population of the planet."

  He was silent and looked at Judy for a while. The woman was young and not very pretty really, being too tall and gangly for that. She kissed pretty well and was just plain though, not homely at all. It was exactly the wrong thing to be thinking of, standing there talking to a world leader however, and Brown broke in, calling his name after a bit.