Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series)

by John Daulton

  She lay on her stomach and tried to crawl through, but the module on her back was too big. “Damn it. I’m like a pregnant camel in here.” She flipped onto her side and tried to wriggle through, but couldn’t get enough traction to move. “Push my feet,” she said. “At least until I get far enough in to pull myself through with the lip on the other side.”

  Altin peered through the space into the area beyond. He didn’t like this at all.

  “Come on, Altin. Just do it.”

  He put his hands on the bottom of her boots, the chevron treads still filled with red grit and gravel from the surface far above. He gave a shove.

  She pushed away from him with her legs and got her hands on the upper edge where the small opening gave way to the chamber beyond. The substance her fingers came in contact with was supple, spongy, like the rubber mats in the hand-to-hand combat rooms on the Aspect, but it held. She pulled herself through and quickly looked around, blaster ready as she verified that she was, in fact, alone.

  She was.

  “Come through,” she said, holstering her weapon. “I’ll pull you.”

  She reached back into the gap and, between the two of them, they managed to get Altin through as well. “We’re definitely not going to be able to make a hasty retreat if it comes to it,” he reiterated as she checked his suit for rips.

  “There’s no turning back at this point anyway,” she said as she finished going over his suit carefully with her hands and eyes. “Now look and make sure nothing came loose on mine and that there aren’t any tears anywhere.”

  He nodded that her point was accurate as he inspected her suit as well. “Nothing I can see,” he said after a time. “Let’s go.”

  Soon they were moving through tunnels again, although this time with no need of spotlights. The glow coming from the soft substance on the cave walls was everywhere. The small chamber they’d entered was covered floor to ceiling with it, a pale green luminescence that Altin said was exactly like the stuff he’d found on Blue Fire’s world. They were definitely close.

  “Be on the lookout for balls or tubes or barrels of this stuff,” he warned. “She sent me a guide when I was there, a creature like a rolling log. It might be hard to spot since it looks exactly the same as the walls and everything. It will blend in. But look for motion of any kind.”

  “Are they dangerous?”

  “I have no idea. I’m not even sure it was a creature.”

  Onward they ran, as fast as safety would allow, Altin’s blind reliance on memories he could not actively draw upon guiding them. They ran through caves and caverns. They ran up gentle slopes. They used the prism twice more to accommodate long drops, though nothing of the magnitude of the last. On and on they went.

  Finally they came to a long, narrow tunnel that was, in places, so low Altin had to stoop, though he never had to crawl. They squeezed through the tunnel’s narrow places, ducked and leaned around several bends, until suddenly, around one sharp turn, Altin gasped.

  “What?” Orli demanded as she came around the bend behind him. It became clear he need not answer it as she stepped beside him and muttered, “Oh, shit.”

  They’d emerged at the bottom of a tremendous chamber filled with red light. An entire cavern covered at every inch by projecting crystals, like broken fingers, each aglow like the warning lights of a billion ships’ alarms, red beacons that seemed to radiate nothing but “Get Away!”

  They both gaped, staring around them, slowly turning as they took in the awesome spectacle. It might have been beautiful had they not known what it was. Who it was, and what it represented to humanity and to Blue Fire.

  Orli recovered first and patted her satchel filled with mining charges as she looked up into the seemingly endless vault above. “So, where’s the heart? Let’s do this.”

  “Gorgon’s blood!” came what served as his reply. At first she thought he was still marveling at what he saw, but when she looked to him, she saw that he was pointing off to their right. “Look, here come the rolling things.”

  Orli drew her blaster and fired a few quick bursts at the nearest of six oblong creatures—if creatures were what they were. Even from twenty yards away she cut it easily in two, the bright beam of her laser halving it with the barest flicker of flame and a wet hiss of steam. Both halves came rolling on, however. Now there were five big ones, about waist high, thick as an oil drum and twice that wide, and two more smaller ones. She flipped her weapon to conventional rounds and sent two shots at one of the bigger ones. The flare of the discharge flashed white in the red chamber, and the concussive blasts echoed and amplified from everywhere around. The creature gave no indication that it had been struck, though Orli was confident that she hadn’t missed, at least not with the first two rounds. And yet still it came, right along with the rest.

  She emptied the clip blasting at it, certain she must have hit it several times, and probably the one behind it as well. But nothing changed, and on they came, rolling steadily forward in a strange and silent form of menace she’d never dreamed of before.

  The chamber began to rumble, two tremors and then violent movement of the floor. The rough surface beneath them began to buck like a wild thing, and they were thrown to the ground by the turbulence. Orli staggered left, then right, tried to catch herself on a rock but missed, and then went down to her hands and knees. Altin was simply thrown straight up, flung a quarter span into the air, and then down he came, landing like a tossed sack of coal. He landed heavily, and worse, he landed on the drill. The bit nicked through his suit just below the knee, and with it a hiss of escaping air added itself to their list of problems more than disturbingly.

  That was not the end of it, however, and they bounced around like beads of cold water in a very hot pan for what seemed an eternity. They both grunted and oomphed aloud as they bumped and tumbled around, wondering if it would ever stop. Orli tried to get hold of the Higgs prism, but it was impossible, the quake was too violent. She was left simply hoping that it would not be broken in the violence, fearing that being pinned to the undulating floor might get them snapped like dried twigs rather than just being tossed around. Better to be bounced than broken, she thought. The only real upside of the quaking floor was that it seemed to be affecting the rolling creatures too, which gave her and Altin a brief reprieve from their advance, assuming that was preferable.

  Eventually the tremors stopped, and as they picked themselves up, they looked over to check on their presumed attackers, expecting them to be coming at them again, but rather than coming straight for them as before, the creatures were spreading out.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t shoot them?” Orli said.

  “Maybe you should. At least they aren’t coming at us now.”

  “Not yet. Now they’re doing something that looks like a plan instead. We need the heart chamber fast, and I don’t want to do that earthquake thing again.”

  Altin scanned a section of the cavern a few hundred paces from where he stood, climbing its walls with his eyes, seeking something familiar up there, something recognizable in the memory Blue Fire had given him. That seemed like where he was supposed to look. And then he saw it. “Look, up there. See where it turns orange by the bulge?”

  She followed the line of his pointing and, after a moment, saw it too. She guessed it to be three hundred feet up.

  “How are we supposed to get up there?”

  “Can we use your prism? Make a jump?”

  “Not accurately. These things really aren’t meant for that. And I don’t have any practice with it.”

  “Can we try?”

  “Not together,” she said after a moment’s thought, and more than a little reluctantly. “But I might be able to do it alone.”

  “That’s not an option.”

  “Altin, if that’s it, I have to get up there. You’re right about the prism. It’s the only way.”

  “We’ll do it together.”

  “We can’t even fall together well. How are we going to fly
three hundred feet jumbled together with dangling drills and blocked jets, and me not able to balance well even on my own? We’ll have to be at zero g to do it, and I only have …,” she paused and checked the reading on her gas canisters. “I only have four minutes of jet thrust left. There’s barely time enough to do it, much less for having to figure it out with you. If these suits weren’t designed for flying one person, they damn sure weren’t meant for two.”

  “You can use the gas from my suit if we use up all of yours.”

  “Altin!”

  “I’m not letting you go up there alone. Besides, you said if we get separated from the prism, the planet’s gravity could kill us.”

  “It can.”

  “So, we have to stay together.”

  Orli looked him straight in the face, eyes narrow, waiting. She didn’t say anything.

  He tried to match the intensity of her gaze, but hers was unwavering. He tried anyway, to wait her out. But she was still as stone.

  “I’m not letting you go alone,” he said finally.

  “Then everyone dies.”

  “Orli.” It was insistent, but pleading.

  The glowing creatures were creeping forward, holding a formation that would not allow bullets to penetrate one and hit another. But they were cautious now. At least it seemed that Orli’s bullets had had some kind of effect, even if nothing obvious. Unfortunately she’d emptied the clip, and she didn’t have another one.

  She looked from Altin to the approaching objects rolling slowly near. “Altin.” She spoke his name just as fervently as he had hers as she looked back at him. She didn’t blink. He didn’t blink. They stared at each other some more, almost hostile in their way.

  A single tear ran down his cheek. She could see it glinting in the orange light. She knew he recognized the truth of what she’d said, knew he’d seen what she had seen too. It was their only hope.

  She lifted the drill strap over his helmet, pulled it off his shoulder and slung it over hers.

  “I’ll hold him off as long as I can,” he said.

  “I know.”

  He reached up to hit the catch that released his helmet seal, but she stopped him.

  “Wait,” she said. “Let me adjust the pressure. At least some to even it out.” She looked up into his eyes. “Altin, this is really going to hurt.”

  “I know.”

  A few moments later she nodded. “Lie down,” she said. “It will be easier once the prism is out of range. And you won’t black out. Go home before you suffocate. You’re not going to get much air.”

  “I’m not going home,” he said once they had him laid out. “Not until I see that you are safe.” He hit the latch on the helmet. It hissed as air escaped.

  Immediately he could feel the burn of strange gasses in his lungs and the helmet was only open just a crack. Drawing breath was a huge labor as well, the pressure of being so far down pressing upon him instantly. Orli saw it in the way his face blanched, and she took his arm and adjusted the oxygen flow to its highest output. With the tear in his suit, the pressure was even lower than it could have been.

  “Altin, get home. I will be all right. I have my amulet. I’ll come back to you, I swear.”

  “I’m not leaving until I see,” he gasped.

  “Don’t do this, Altin. Don’t make this all for nothing. You fight as long as you can. Just like Ocelot said. You fight. You get me as much time as you can, and then you go home. Don’t make me grow old alone. You go home, Altin. Swear that you will.”

  “Orli … please.”

  “No, you fucking swear it, Altin.”

  Tears ran down both of their faces. But he agreed. He was already running out of time. He could feel it. “I swear.”

  “Please,” she begged. “I will be okay. Have faith in me.”

  “I do.” He gritted his teeth, steeling himself. His chest was on fire. His eyes ached. He tried to nod, but the effort seemed like too much. He started to choke on the mix of air; it was like coughing with a mammoth sitting on his chest. “Go,” he rasped.

  She smiled down at him, poured love from her eyes into him. “I love you.” She turned quickly then and looked up at the wall, spotting the orange light high above. She spun the Higgs prism dial around to zero, and pushed off. Altin watched her soar away.

  It terrified him. He tilted his head up and looked to where the rolling creatures still approached, but then the prism moved too far off and his head slammed back to the cavern floor with violence, rolling the helmet completely off.

  The pull of powerful gravity stuck him to the ground like a brick of lead. He tried to look up but he could not. The pressure was intense, as if the mammoth had now brought its friends to sit on him as well. The sting in his eyes intensified, and his sinuses felt full. He thought his ears would burst.

  He’d feared that some of the creatures would be going after her. He wondered if somehow they would know what she intended to do. He tried once more to look, but it was futile. He had to prevent them from chasing her, from climbing up the wall. He didn’t need to see them with his eyes now anyway. His magic would work now that the suit was open like it was. It would work, but he also knew what else it would do.

  A quick seeing spell showed him where the creatures were. Sure enough, several of them were rolling rapidly back toward the bright light on that far wall, and quickly too, one of them already trundling up the wall like some sticky, impossible snowball rolling up a cliff. The others were getting close as well, three of them. But not for long.

  With a thought, Altin conjured a fireball as big as a house and sent it at the one already moving up toward Orli’s goal. The flaming missile struck it with an explosive flash that Altin could see reflected and refracted by crystals everywhere. The flash was followed by a splat, which was accompanied by the crackle of flames and the hiss of escaping steam. He’d found his mark, and he was glad.

  He sent three more fireballs into the remembered places of others that had gone after her, cast in rapid succession, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Again the flare of the strikes and the sound of fire and steam.

  He finished the others near him similarly, burning them into puddles of nothingness, but even as he did so, the ground began to shake. The violence of the floor’s movements bent and twisted him, for he could not bounce anymore. He was stuck to the ground like a barnacle to a boat, and he suffered every wave of Red Fire’s anger, the undulating cavern floor painfully arching his back as he rode out the storm. In that same instant, as the quake once more began, there came upon his mind the full might of Red Fire as well. Red Fire had found him there.

  Die, was the only thought that filled him. Die, die, die. Over and over again. Were the hatred in those thoughts to have possessed physicality, the whole of space could hardly contain it. It was the absolute refinement of hostility, the purest form of anger possible, and it swelled in Altin’s every thought like a bladder into which magma poured. It ran searing red inside of him, and Altin could not gulp down mana fast enough to cool the fires. It swelled and swelled and swelled, and though he could, somewhere in the tiniest recesses of his mind, still conjure the idea that he might somehow fight back, it was not enough to give him strength to do anything. So he gulped at the mana, scooped into the motionless mist of that familiar pink sea like a man drowning, sucking it in like life’s last breath as the unfathomable fury of Red Fire crushed him beneath all that hate. While the pressure crushed him. While the gravity crushed him.

  He felt himself smothering. He felt himself ebbing away. Leaking out the things that were in him like the hiss of air coming from the rent in his spacesuit, from the oxygen pump spewing uselessly at his neck. Red Fire would stamp his imprint into him like a footprint on a bug.

  He fought to see through the torrent of hate-filled redness that Red Fire pushed into his brain. His vision subsumed by the fire of it just as the red rolling things burned with Altin’s fire. He blinked and struggled to rise against the impossible grapple of gravity.

&nb
sp; He opened his eyes and willed himself to see. A red haze had come upon everything.

  He saw the flicker of a white jet from Orli’s spacesuit high above, sailing away from him, just a pulse of it and its soft sound. It looked like a feather, a white plume at the tip of a goddess’ wing. It was the gentle breath of goodness in the awful place of hate and torment.

  He gulped in more mana as he saw Orli disappear into the mouth of the orange light. He gulped and gulped and gulped and tried to hold on to what was left of him. His body was leaking horribly. Failing under the press of so many fronts. He choked on blood that poured into his mouth, that ran down the back of his throat. He could hear the bubbling in his own breath even as he felt his lungs burn with the fluid pouring in.

  He gulped at the mana and the blood, gulped for oxygen. There was none. He couldn’t see her anymore. Orli was gone. Or his vision was gone. Or both.

  Orli Love home.

  It was a whisper. Far away. Blue Fire in his mind.

  Orli Love home. A plea.

  He couldn’t leave her.

  Home. Home.

  He had promised her he would.

  Fire filled him. He knew he was drowning now. On his own blood. He choked up a gout of it that wouldn’t clear his lips for the pressure and the gravity, so he choked on it again.

  Orli Love home. Blue Fire was desperate.

  He tried to pull more mana to fight, but he could barely reach it. Even the mist was vanishing. Just a puff left, a diminishing cloud fading into the vacuum.

  He’d promised her. He had to have faith.

  With the last wisp of mana, he cast himself home.

  Chapter 46

  Most of the cowardly humans had filed back through the gate, hiding behind the weakness of the golden queen’s magical walls. But they would not hold for long. The demons poured around the palace like black blood, and they leapt and battered at its walls. The city walls had fallen easily. And now the palace would as well. The humans had even brought back the flying crystal sphere, but to no avail. Humans in a bubble, a water drop, its falling rain of broken stones all but meaningless. Stupid magic that would mark their graves when it finally fell from the sky.