by John Daulton
The shuttle’s lasers were far less powerful than the Aspect’s, and the missiles it carried only a fraction of the capacity of those that the starships deployed, but he was compelled to use them as they wove and dodged their way up through the cosmic clash going on above the Earth. Fortunately, the Hostiles were of a smaller variety than he was used to as well, and it was with some luck and some natural proficiency that, when a Hostile swept in at them, this one perhaps twice as large as the shuttle itself, Roberto was able to swat aside its plunging stone shaft with the push of laser energy while launching a pair of small tactical nukes. This was the same old strategy he’d used during the earliest combats with these orbs, the technique he’d used prior to having devised the gravity-pulse strategy that had ultimately proved far more effective and deadly to the enemy. The shuttle didn’t have the power for a gravity pulse anyway, nor did he have another ship flying with him to make the strategy work even if it had been so equipped, so it was all learned reflex and instinct that kept them from being pulverized, certainly no great interest on the part of the pilot.
And so it was, at first disinterestedly, that he noticed his most recent missile had struck a speeding Hostile dead on and exploded with full force. The explosion blew out the back portion of the orb, which then stretched like a thing made of rubber. This was the Hostile shifting its composition from solid to something more elastic in an attempt to absorb and disperse the force. The orb elongated for a time, and both Roberto and the captain assumed it would snap back eventually, changing forms at will and intent on coming after them again. They’d seen this elasticity before. But it did not snap back. Instead, the extended length of its back portions seemed to reach a point of no return and snapped off, a large section tearing away at the thinnest point like chewing gum breaking as a child stretches it out of his mouth. For a time the end that remained attached to the main body blew out the orange goo of its innards as if its guts were being pumped out through a length of culvert pipe. The broken end seemed entirely dead.
The orb wobbled as it flew past the shuttle, and it looked to Roberto like a teardrop made of clay. The shuttle’s aft cameras showed that it was slowly retracting the broken portion of itself even as it shot off in pursuit of its battering ram, which still streaked away from the shuttle, growing smaller with distance as seconds passed.
For whatever reason, seeing the orb wounded but not quite dead lit the fuse of Roberto’s anger, and without asking permission, he swung the shuttle in a wide arc and went after it.
“Commander,” barked the captain, “let it go.”
“It’s almost down, sir,” Roberto said through clenched teeth, doing his best to pretend he cared what Captain Asad had to say. “I can finish it.”
“Commander!” yelled the captain.
“Just wait,” Roberto yelled back. He spun and faced the captain with all the fury and helplessness of a man whose twelve years in space has just culminated in the loss of his best friend at the hands of what amounted to an Inquisition-style tribunal and a death sentence. The heat of his emotions burned in his eyes like reactor cores. “I’m going to kill it.”
Captain Asad glared back at him, his own reflexive anger as hot as Roberto’s was. But Captain Asad was not a fool, nor was he entirely inhumane, especially not for an officer he valued as much as he did Roberto. And beyond all that, his anger had its largest root in the Hostiles too. His frustration ran as far back in time as Roberto’s did. Farther perhaps. And seeing the determination in his best officer’s face, he decided to relent this time.
“Very well, Commander. We will finish this one off.” To prove he was in earnest, he tapped up a chemical-fuel burn, a thrust that spat the shuttle forward, bringing them right up behind the Hostile’s still protruding “tail.” Roberto unleashed two more missiles and the small ship’s laser cannon in response.
The Hostile made a weak dodge of the laser fire, but seemed not to see the missiles, and therefore both missiles hit it, blowing through it like the first one had.
Its mass spread out from the blasts like paint thrown on a wall, and for a time it looked like a big rust-colored chemical spill cart-wheeling across the stars. Two great gobs of glowing ichor squeezed out of rents in the Hostile’s surface and drifted away.
“That’s got it,” said the captain with more than a hint of satisfaction in his voice.
Roberto was about to agree, but then he shook his head. “Nope. Look.” The orb, still flat and wobbly, though slowly retracting itself, picked up speed and shot off toward the western edge of the planet, apparently abandoning the thick shaft it had been chasing in favor of saving itself. “Oh, no you don’t,” Roberto said as he reached over and mashed the thrust controls still lit on the panel before Captain Asad.
“Commander,” the captain began again but Roberto’s response was already on its way.
“Captain, you said we would finish it. I’ve never known you to run from a fight.”
Captain Asad actually laughed at that, if only briefly. Commander Levi hadn’t earned his promotions for being a poor tactician. With a flick of his finger upon the back of Roberto’s hand, he said, “I’ve got it, Commander.”
Roberto let him take the thruster controls back and, with a degree of satisfaction, watched the Captain move the slider up to a rate that would burn through their chemical fuel in a very short time, a commitment to speed.
Soon they were right behind the fleeing Hostile again, which was back to its fully round state and still accelerating. Roberto sent a laser shot at it, but the orb appeared to pulse and then jumped ahead, a feat made possible by magic, Roberto knew. That’s how the Hostiles could defy physics like they did.
The Hostile completed its reformation as they watched, or at least it did so as best as possible, for they could see that it had huge crevices in it and some jagged-edged fissures that hadn’t been visible before. Still, battered looking as it might have become, it was clearly not interested in dying yet. Now spherical, it continued to transform, hardening itself to the point where its surface became shiny and reflective, similar to the volcanic glass the two Aspect officers were familiar with from previous encounters with the orbs. The color was different, though. This orb turned dark red, like a drop of blood, not the deep black they’d seen in battles past.
“That’s weird,” Roberto commented.
“Well it won’t be weird for long if we let it get away,” said the captain.
And indeed it was pulling away from them again. Fully reshaped, it was now free to focus on its flight, leaping away in what Roberto had come to think of as “impossible motion,” short jumps across space that were quick as a blink, but not so far in distance as to be obvious it had disappeared. It was like watching a video where the recording skipped a half second every now and again. This effect increased in frequency and the fleeing orb began to blur in the direction of its retreat. It would pulse forward in jumps of a quarter mile, and then a half. Soon it was three and four miles at a time, little jumps that both men recognized as something akin to a Prosperion teleport.
“We can’t keep up with that,” Roberto said, his fury cooling some over the course of the pursuit, “and we’ll lose it if we jump.”
“So now you’re going to quit, Commander? That’s disappointing.”
“What are we supposed to do? It’s jumping through time or whatever the hell that crap is. And it’s getting faster.”
“We can warp space time too.” Captain Asad was furiously tapping in commands on his controls as he spoke, his dark eyes narrow and his mouth the very shape of focus, pursed and pressing forth aggressively.
Roberto leaned over and looked into the settings Captain Asad had underway. A moment later he leaned back and grinned. “That’s fucking genius.”
Soon the shuttle was echoing the movements of the Hostile, matching its magical hops with fluttering pulses of warped space. To an onlooker, of which there were none, it would have seemed as if the pair of objects were alternately blinking eyes
racing through the solar system at a quarter the speed of light.
They continued the pursuit in that fashion for several minutes, but despite the rough portions of the orb, the lasers couldn’t cut into it deeply enough to finish it off. Missiles were obviously of no use, and soon it seemed that they might have obligated themselves to a futile chase that could take them farther than either of their respective needs would allow.
“Can’t hit them,” Roberto announced pointlessly as another streak of red laser fire vanished into the galaxy. “And I damn sure don’t want to risk trying to get ahead of it.”
“That would be reckless,” agreed the captain. “And now we’re getting too close to the sun.”
Roberto could tell Captain Asad didn’t want to order a halt to the pursuit. He was showing Roberto unheard-of respect in that, but he was also not going to wait much longer for Roberto to come to the same conclusion himself, for legitimate reasons this time, not simply frustration. Its legitimate reasons for running was a curiosity that suddenly gave Roberto an idea. “Do you think that’s its plan? To suck us into chasing it into the sun, like a suicide run meant to take us out?”
“I wouldn’t put it past them. We saw enough of them using their own sun to destroy missiles when we fought them at Goldilocks.” The captain tapped in a query to the computer and spent a moment reading the calculations it returned. “Except it’s going to fly past the sun on its current heading. It looks like it’s going to just miss Mercury too.”
“Well, it’s definitely not trying to lead us to its home world so that Blue Fire can finish us off—or if it is, it’s going the wrong way. Which means it’s either damaged or stupid or, maybe, even more likely, it’s just trying to drag us out of the fight since it can’t beat us outright. In which case, mission accomplished.” Roberto leaned closer to his monitor and made a face at the fleeing Hostile, but the force of his emotions had finally come under his control. For the most part. “I guess I should give up now, shouldn’t I?”
Captain Asad made a point of staring into his monitor. Another rare courtesy.
They chased it for a few long moments more, both men silent.
“It’s fucking bullshit, Captain,” Roberto said when he finally began to slow the ship, realizing as he spoke that this confrontation was probably the only reason the captain had indulged him at all. Might as well not do this in front of the rest of the crew, Roberto realized. He suddenly felt foolish. Young. Gullible. Captain Asad rarely missed a trick. If it was one. Whether it was or wasn’t, it ratcheted Roberto’s feelings back up a notch. “You know that trial was a goddamn joke. And worse, it was a betrayal. No matter what you think of her, she was part of your crew. And you helped set her up.”
“She set herself up, Commander. She betrayed us, all of us. And I had orders to bring her in.”
“Those orders only came because of what you said about her in your report.”
“What bit of evidence in that court martial wasn’t true, Commander? What tiny spec of it? Give me one fact that was not absolutely spot-on accurate?”
Roberto glared, and his mind raced for one, for anything, any comment made by anyone. But there wasn’t one. It was all factual. It just wasn’t accurate.
He mashed the laser controls and sent seven beams in a series striping harmlessly into the space already vacated by the Hostile they no longer pursued. “Fuck,” was all he said as he slumped and stared vacantly into his controls.
Captain Asad punched in the command to begin swinging them around, steering them wide of Mercury. The shuttle’s shields could withstand temperatures near the sun to a point, but beyond that it wouldn’t last long. They were very close to arriving at that point. It was time to go back.
The shuttle had slowed nearly to a stop, and the Hostile they’d been chasing was only a flickering dot on the sensor screen now. In the sensor grid, its image had almost merged with the bright disc of Mercury as it flew over the planet’s northern pole, and Roberto sighed. He couldn’t even kill one goddamn Hostile as retribution for Orli’s life. He stared down into his console and felt the tears burning in his eyes. He’d let her down again, even in this.
“Hmmm,” hummed the captain with concern rising in his voice.
Roberto didn’t care what the captain had to say just then.
“Commander, we have to go.” That was stern urgency. A creeping dread apparent in the way he said it, which this time caused Roberto to blink and looked up at the man. Roberto’s gaze darted briefly to his monitor, but he saw that Captain Asad was staring out the starboard window instead. He followed the line of the Captain’s gaze.
Just visible around the western rim of Mercury was a great red orb, several hundred miles in diameter by Roberto’s estimate and looking every bit like Mercury had grown itself a moon.
At first Roberto tried to tell himself it was a trick of light, that what he was seeing was the Hostile they’d been chasing coming back at them and looking odd due to the nearness of the sun. But the tiny speck of red that had been their quarry could still be seen, separate and slightly above, as it approached the giant round mass. Soon after, it got too close and could only be tracked on sensors, and in moments after that, it disappeared entirely, vanishing into the surface, the little orb absorbed by the giant one as easily as the sun might absorb the Earth. Roberto’s hopes for strange light play or odd perspectives vanished. There really was a monstrously huge Hostile out there.
“Holy shit,” Roberto said, his words nearly choked in the grasp of bewilderment. In the span of seconds, the shuttle was streaking back toward the Aspect, both men anxiously working their controls for speed.
Chapter 14
The branch snapped so loudly it startled Altin, spinning him around, prepared to hurl the hissing shaft of ice he’d conjured and had kept hovering near his shoulder since arriving deep in Great Forest. The corpulent Doctor Leopold, trailing in Altin’s wake, sent him a sheepish look, directing Altin’s gaze with his own down to the dried-out old tree branch his heavy foot had trod upon. The limb, half as thick as Altin’s wrist, might have easily endured the weight of the young magician’s tread, but the prodigious mass of Doctor Leopold counted two men at least—assuming they were hardy fellows and fond of fatty meats and ale—and so, where Altin might have snapped a twig here or there, the doctor had been snapping branches often over the duration of their hike, usually with enough volume to alert any creature that might be listening for a full measure round.
“Tidalwrath’s fits, Doctor, you’ll have every last wolf, spider and troll in the woods down upon us with that racket. Watch where you put your feet. I can’t fend off every predator in Great Forest, you know.”
The doctor’s face was blotchy and red, and his breath came in a panting wheeze that began as a rattle in his chest and emerged in a high whistle through his nose. He clutched a dripping handkerchief in one hand, mopping at his throat and face in a futile attempt to stem the flow of sweat that ran from his pores as if he were some great sweat-filled wineskin and a legion of tiny archers had shot him through.
“You’re the one who suggested this wretched business,” sniped the doctor as he approached a fallen oak that Altin had just scurried over easily. The portly physician stared at the waist high obstacle as if it were a cliff rising a thousand spans above, shaking his head and letting go a long, exasperated breath. “I came to help save the girl, but who will save me?”
“You also came so that the next time you are out here, you will be able to get over that tree,” corrected Altin. “Now come. We don’t have time for this. And watch where you are walking.”
“How am I supposed to get over that? I am not a squirrel, you know.”
Altin dismissed the ice lance and, with a thought, teleported the doctor to the other side of the obstacle, bringing him beside him in the span of an instant. It was the fourth time in only an hour that he’d had to resort to such things.
“You should have just done that when you found the witch,” the doctor
said. “Could have saved us both a great deal of misery if I didn’t have to be here until then.”
Altin paid the man’s complaints no mind and started back in the direction that Doctor Leopold’s last divination had suggested that they go in their quest for the Z-classed diviner, Ocelot. Anything like a path had been long abandoned, and they’d been making their way through near darkness for almost half a day. Adding to their difficulties, the terrain had gotten increasingly steeper over the last hour as well, and Altin was afraid he might have to do precisely as the doctor asked if it got much worse. The man simply wasn’t able to navigate the worsening incline with all its brambles and rocks. And the slippery footing of ever-damp leaves and slick needles on the slope made it hard going at times even for Altin, who had the vigor and agility of youth to aid him.
Altin recast the ice lance and started climbing again, once more heading purposefully upward. He came upon a broad stretch of rock rising from the ground like a massive single stair, high and wide, vanishing into the trees on either side. Moss covered it like dark green down, making it too slick to climb, and after giving them a rigorous pair of pulls, he determined that the scrawny vines crawling up its altitude would not hold his weight, much less the doctor’s. A wide crack ran straight through it, however, and he thought he could see the slope continuing beyond on the other side. He thought about trying to squeeze through, but even if he could make it, he knew his counterpart could not. Pointing that out would only further irritate the man, so Altin moved laterally until he found a place to go around. He grumbled as he did so, aware that it cost him, and Orli, several moments in just doing that simple thing, but also aware that he couldn’t just keep casting for every tiny thing, or when he needed his strength most, he might be too tired. It was a fine line of haste and conservation that he walked. Every second ticked off another moment of danger for her, for beloved Orli lost to him somewhere on distant planet Earth. Every spell ground down a bit more of his endurance, even with his ring. He’d already been awake for well over a whole day.