Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series)

by John Daulton

  He directed Taot down low, seeking to get out of the flight paths of so many roaring sky vessels and down into the cover of the buildings and their endless monotony. Soon they were flying between the shining structures, soaring above the avenues formed by the rows upon rows of them. From this vantage, Altin could see that upon these lanes were small vehicles, appearing not a great deal larger than wagons back home, though many were obviously immense. They moved along in endless caravans, parallel lines of them, one going in each direction, the lot of them making their way to and fro around the blocks of the black-glass buildings.

  He nudged Taot closer to one of the buildings with his knees and looked inside as they flew past, peering through the dark windows of those that were lit from within to see the small figures of men and women going about their daily lives. Most appeared to be in uniform, just like the fleet officers and crew he’d come to know since his first encounter with people from planet Earth, and he couldn’t help wondering if theirs was an entirely military society. He hadn’t seen any other cities, so he couldn’t know for sure, but from the vastness of this one, it certainly seemed so. He marveled that Orli’s people were so dedicated to war. The scale of this city, this fortress, made the War Queen’s city seem an amusement park, a place of fanciful magic and lovely gardens all around. Oh yes, there was a vast military complex near the Palace, massive walls all around, but nothing like this sprawling martial uniformity.

  On and on they flew, sweeping and gliding around spindly towers that seemed to have no other purpose than to hold up a lone blinking light, hundreds of spans high. They flew through venting plumes of steam and down into long dark alleys between rows of buildings that were occasionally larger than the rest. All the while Taot’s nostrils worked steadily, the low huffs of his sniffing sounding like steam blowing through geysers hidden at the back of some dark cave.

  For hours they swept back and forth, Altin continually refreshing the image and the essence of the Orli he knew into Taot’s mind, always confirmed, always sent back perfectly by the dragon, verifying that he understood. They wheeled around buildings, still dodging aircraft now and again, and Altin’s began to grow panicked with the lack of progress and loss of time. He began to fear for her, began to fear the discovery that he had been too late. He saw visions of the dragon catching the scent, only to swoop down and discover her in one of the large metal bins these people kept filled with stinking refuse in the alleyways, her body rotting away, maggots crawling, burrowing in beautiful flesh turned blue and gray.

  Altin Love lives.

  Blue Fire’s thought struck him powerfully, and he realized by the shock of it that he’d started to drift off again, like he had while researching the cold enchantment spells. He hadn’t slept but those two hours in days. He was exhausted. He could imagine sleeping somewhere. Even just laying there in the garbage next to Orli’s body. Her soft bosom a pillow.

  No, came the thought, a mental shout like a gong. It was so abrupt it startled him. He blinked out of the sleep that had nearly taken him again. He drew in a deep breath of the chemical-heavy Earth air. Seek. Altin Love lives. No sleep.

  He shook himself and squinted into the wind of Taot’s flight. Another few moments like that and he might have slipped off and fallen to his death. He would have been the one found rotting and decayed, probably not for a week or more either, not until the illusions concealing him wore off on their own. Or until someone tripped over him, of course.

  Find Altin Love. It came with such a rush of urgency, as if he were about to drown, as if he were at the edge of having to take that breath of water that would end him. He nearly panicked. Which woke him up some.

  Still a little groggy, he sent back to Blue Fire, “I thought I blocked you. You lied. How are you in my head?”

  Blue Fire silence.

  “I should have known I couldn’t keep you out.”

  Rainbow web. Now. Altin’s mind filled then with images of Orli lying in a bed with several cords attached to her arms, similar to the wires and tubes he had seen Doctor Singh use on patients in the Aspect’s sick bay. He then saw a clear image of Ocelot and heard her say, “Venom,” in his mind. Blue Fire had activated that memory. Rainbow web. Now.

  Altin was fully awake then, the horror of the revelation filling him with a chill. “It’s happening now?” he both spoke aloud and sent to Blue Fire across all that space.

  Now. Must speed.

  “Where? Where is she? Gods-be-damned, can’t you show me where?”

  He saw an image of Earth in his mind.

  Altin’s exasperation made him cry out in frustrated agony. Of course she was on Earth. To Taot he sent the sense of urgency. “Lower,” he shouted. “Go down closer to the streets.”

  The dragon responded to the thought Altin sent, and they plunged down to only just above the movements of the rumbling vehicles. Taot rumbled in response, a growl in his throat at the fumes coming from them, the ionized quality of their exhaust and even the black material of their wheels giving off odor from simply rolling across the ground. He rumbled, but he flew. He banked sharply around corners, the speed of their flight blurring the glass panels of the buildings into one long smudge in Altin’s eyes.

  Finally, an agonizing span of minutes more, Taot let out a roar. He pulled up so sharply that Altin would have slid down his back and tumbled off his tail had he not grabbed hold with all his strength to one of the dragon’s large scales. The dragon turned back in a steep powerful arc, twisting as he banked, nearly inverted for a time and diving down as if upon newfound prey.

  He pulled up sharply again, only this time to stop, and with three powerful sweeps of his wings, brought them to the ground. Even with the braking movements of his wings, they hit the ground so hard Altin tumbled off anyway, spared injury only by having bounced once off a wing as it was folding in.

  Altin wasted no time thinking of such things. He merely righted himself and sent Taot a single thought: Where is she?

  Taot’s sinewy neck snaked down, and he lay his big head upon a metal grate set into the ground. He gave a long, audible sniff, then blew a little puff of smoke out of his nose over it. The gray wisps of it were carried instantly up and away by air currents coming through the grate.

  “She’s in there? Down there?”

  Taot rumbled again, the sound accompanied by the mental essence of the dragon’s carnal understanding of Altin and Orli’s relationship.

  That was good enough. With no warning for the dragon at all and only the barest glimpse of sight into his cave, Altin sent Taot home. Hardly a heartbeat passed after, and Altin’s seeing spell was cast again, this time his vision plunging down into the grate and chasing hope through every twist and curve of ductwork at speeds that more than rivaled dragon flight.

  Chapter 20

  “I don’t want your stupid meal,” Orli spat at the corporal as she twisted in the grip of the two men holding her down on her bunk. “Fuck you. I hope you and your whole goddamn family die in agony from Hostile disease.”

  While executions were rare, the corporal charged with seeing the process through was a seasoned enough prison guard to be used to that sort of remark, so he didn’t let it bother him. “You don’t have to eat,” he said. “It’s up to you if you want something fancy or not. I’m just supposed to ask.”

  “Ask yourself why you’re such a worthless piece of shit.” She hated him as much as all the rest despite his attempts at kindness. She hated him because he didn’t believe her story about Blue Fire’s innocence and that there was another Hostile world. He’d only smiled politely and done his job, every time she tried to tell him, meal after meal.

  “I’ll put you down for whatever they’ve got made,” he said. He nodded to the two men with him, and the biggest of the two put the gag back in Orli’s mouth. She mumbled and drooled a series of unintelligible profanities at them as they left.

  When they were gone, she slumped back against the wall of the cell bunk and fumed. She had to channel her pan
ting fury through her nose, which made her eyes water and threatened to gag her by the backpressure of it. She had to mellow herself out. This wouldn’t be any better than crying, she knew, and she’d done enough of that during the night, crying and all the rest, the fits of fury, defiance, terror, sorrow and regret, all going round and round. Doing most of that was miserable with the damn gag blocking everything.

  She wished she knew what time it was. She had no frame of reference. Only the meals. There had been four since her court martial. And since they’d just asked her what she wanted, the one they’d just offered her would obviously be her last.

  A knock on the door was followed by its opening to allow her attorney, Angela, inside. The youthful lawyer looked down at Orli with her splotchy red face and the glistening stripe of drool running down her neck and shook her head. “You look like shit,” she said. She immediately stepped near and removed the headgear with the ball gag.

  “What difference does it make?” Orli said after taking a long, deep breath. “They’re going to kill me now. I’m pretty sure I just got offered my last meal.”

  “You did.”

  “I’m surprised they let you back in here.”

  “So am I. I had to make a pretty big stink. Plus, I think they felt bad at how grotesquely obvious their denials of all my appeal applications were.”

  “I don’t suppose you got any help from your uncle in Reno, did you?”

  “Not yet. They’ve had a spate of desertions out there. I guess there are quite a few people who aren’t as happy about their enlistments now that there is a war on as they were when they were traveling the system on the NTA’s tab and hanging out in base bars looking for hookups.”

  “Oh, well that’s definitely more important than this. Heaven forbid some eighteen-year-olds decide they’re suddenly afraid to die. We definitely want to get right on that. I appreciate your uncle’s ability to prioritize.”

  “Ensign Pewter, I’m doing everything I can. I’m trying. I swear I am.” The dark circles under the woman’s eyes verified it. Endless frustrations and conspicuous roadblocks to her attempts to file for appeal had worn her down considerably, and she hadn’t gotten any sleep at all.

  Orli laughed, more a breath than a sound, a pulse of air through her nose as she shook her head. Twenty, she thought as she watched her attorney fighting with guilt and fatigue. They shouldn’t have sent such a bright young mind to do this. They were probably just going to traumatize the poor thing for having failed so miserably in her first assignment. Better they had just let Orli die alone. The charade of a defense wasn’t going to mean anything. Except for the official record obviously. It was important for posterity that no one discover how crooked and desperately afraid they all were. They could make up a story about the initial hearings, of course; all of that had happened on the Aspect, the records would say. Or on some ship that had been destroyed. Nothing left for evidence. “Such a shame, but these things happen” and all of that.

  “It’s okay,” Orli said, letting Angela off the hook. “We both knew how this was going to work out. I’m just glad you tried. And who knows, maybe your uncle will figure something out at the last minute. If not for me, for the next guy. It’s bad enough the Hostiles are trying to kill us, you know? I have to tell you, this is a shitty way to go given the circumstances.” She wasn’t going to say what she really thought, that she was still hoping Altin would find her somehow. It was as if speaking his name might somehow curse the hope of it.

  Angela started to speak, but she looked like she was trying to hold her own emotions in check. She only managed, “I’m sorry.”

  “So what happens next?” Orli asked while Angela pulled it back together. “I eat, they send me a preacher or something, and then, into my veins with the cocktail that finishes me?”

  Angela nodded, composing herself. “Basically. Your record shows no religious affiliation, so they’ll send a chaplain if you want. You can refuse it, but it will buy you a few minutes of time if you let him come.”

  “So what am I supposed to say to him?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Ask him to read to you from one of the holy books. Hell, just ask him to tell you a story. Tell him one of your own, call it a confession. Just … I don’t know. Get what you can.”

  “That sounds like shit, to be honest. But it’s probably a good idea.” She was doing her best to remain glib as her guts twisted nervously inside. She really did have faith in Altin somehow finding her, but if he was going to do it, he needed to get to it pretty quick. The sands in the hourglass were running low, as he might say, and with every grain that passed, she grew more afraid.

  Angela looked uncomfortable for a moment, glancing nervously up at the bright light of the diffusion panel, in which she knew a video feed was piping this interview into a monitor somewhere. She seemed to consider saying something for a moment, the pursing of her lips the evidence for a half second before it went away. Instead she blew out a long breath that inflated her smooth young cheeks.

  “What?” said Orli seeing it.

  “Nothing,” her attorney said.

  “No, tell me. What were you about to say?”

  “It’s nothing. I just—. Well, you know, before, you said that Altin Meade might come.” She glanced up at the ceiling, choosing her words carefully. “Do you think that is still a possibility?”

  Orli’s eyes went wide, the mention of his name horrifying. It was as if she hung by a crystal thread above a pit full of spears, and Angela’s speaking his name threatened to snip that last lingering line that kept her aloft. It was as if Angela, perhaps fate itself, was trying to ruin her last hope. Her body tingled as if she’d already been hit with the electricity waiting beneath the cell floor, ready to burn her for having spoken his name as well. But she held on to her composure, forced herself to respond calmly despite what went on within her. “I wish he would, but he won’t. He has no idea where I am. And even if he did have an idea, how would he find me down here? There is no experience among his people that would make him think to look this far underground. They just don’t do that. Maybe in a few mines or something, but they don’t build bunkers like this. They have no need. They are civilized people.” She hated how true all of that was, most of it anyway, even as she was trying to make a lie of it.

  Angela nodded, disappointment as obvious in the curve of her mouth as it was in the way she slumped, deflating visibly, if only for the barest of moments, so bare in fact that it suggested she hadn’t really thought it possible anyway.

  She went to where Orli reclined against the wall and sat down beside her on the bunk. Another long sigh. The two of them stared into the emptiness for a while, neither having anything to say.

  Finally, a knock on the door came again, followed by the entrance of the corporal with a tray of food. “I got ham and chicken, and the mashed potatoes are good. I had some earlier. Didn’t know if you like gravy, but I got a coffee cup full in case you do. They let me bring three different kinds of pie.” His smile was flat and sympathetic, and the mournful droopiness in his eyes suggested it was genuine. He looked back over his shoulders at the two guards at the door, but they weren’t watching him all that closely; their eyes were all on her. He reached into his waistband and pulled out a black plastic flask, which he slid onto the tray. “It’s really good vodka,” he whispered. He glanced to Angela and added, “Just make sure you take this with you when you leave, or I’m screwed.”

  Angela took it off the tray and nodded that she would. “Thank you,” she said in the absence of any gratitude on Orli’s part.

  The corporal nodded back. He obviously understood. “One hour,” he said. “Then the chaplain will come.”

  Angela nodded once again for Orli’s part.

  The corporal left, and once more the two women sat in silence for a while.

  “You going to eat any of this?” Angela asked eventually. “The gravy won’t be any good cold.”

  Orli shook her head.

  “
The pie looks good. Look at the color of that strawberry glaze. Come on, have something. I feel terrible.”

  “I’m sorry to put you out,” Orli said. “You don’t have to be here. You are free to leave. I release you from your duties or whatever I’m supposed to say. Just go.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Angela said, frustrated. She leaned back and once again silence filled the room.

  They were both startled by the next knock. It was the corporal again, this time with the chaplain. He looked down at the untouched tray and sighed, just as Angela had been doing so often since sitting there with Orli. He took it after only a brief exchange of glances with the attorney. He didn’t have the heart to look at Orli again.

  The chaplain stepped into the room as the corporal went out.

  “Ensign Pewter,” said the chaplain. “I’ve come to help you prepare.”

  Orli looked up at him, and her eyes filled with fire. “Prepare yourself,” she said. “It’s your conscience that’s going to burn for this. Do whatever you need to do to make yourself and the rest of those lying cowards up there feel better about it, but I have no use for you.”

  “You have no peace to make with your maker? Nothing you would like to say to God?”

  “God already knows I think he’s an asshole, so there you go. And now that we have that out of the way, why don’t you just fuck off?”

  “I will pray for your soul then.”

  “Why don’t you pray for someone to figure out that the Prosperions aren’t the enemy, that I’m not the enemy, that there’s another Hostile world attacking Earth? Pray for someone to pull their head out of their ass before it’s too goddamn late. That’s what you should pray for.”

  The chaplain straightened himself, brushed his fingers over his salt-and-pepper mustache and nodded. “Very well, I’ll let them know you are ready. And I will pray for you anyway.”

  “Whatever gets you through the nights,” Orli said slumping back against the wall.

  When he was gone, Angela looked to her client and shook her head. “I suppose I should admire your courage,” she said. “I think I’d be a crying mess if I were in your shoes.”