Mercenary Mage - A Dark Space Fantasy (Star Mage Saga Book 4)

by J. J. Green

  Her experiences had left her messed up, she knew. She loved her siblings dearly—with the exception of Castiel—but sometimes she struggled to show it, especially when they were being exceptionally annoying.

  One activity she’d instituted to build bonds between her and her little family was to tell them all she knew about mages. It was important they understood why they were going to Ostillon and what she hoped to discover there.

  Another activity she encouraged was for everyone to sit together for the main meals of the day. Though sometimes the bickering and whining, particularly of Oriana and Ferne, made her grind her teeth, she did her best to not react. However, she would catch Bryce smiling in response to the faces she pulled.

  One dinner soon threatened to test her patience again. She had just asked Darius if he’d remembered to Cast Cloak over the ship that day when Oriana dropped her cutlery with a clatter and suddenly burst into tears.

  Ferne, exhibited his characteristic brotherly love by rolling his eyes and saying, “For stars’ sake, what is it now?”

  It took several moments for Oriana to compose herself sufficiently to speak coherently. “I know it’s stupid, but I don’t know how old I am.”

  This comment drew a confused silence around the dining table.

  “You’re twelve, the same age as me, you idiot,” said Ferne. “What’s wrong with you? Are you getting space sick?”

  “Are we twelve, though?” Oriana asked. “I’m sure our birthday was weeks ago. Now we’ve left Ithiya how can we tell how old we are? Ostillon and Pirine both take longer to circle their suns. Their years were longer, though their days were shorter, and they had different names for the months.”

  Though Oriana was over-emotional about it, her meaning was sound. Carina herself had kept only a rough tally of time passing after she’d left her home planet. Aboard the Duchess it hadn’t been too hard to track the days and months according to ship time, but after she’d resigned to pursue her quest of discovering the mages on Ithiya, things had become trickier. Even she wasn’t certain if she was now nineteen.

  People who spent most of their lives aboard starships lived according to ship time. Most other regular folk rarely left their home planet. But those who lived on and off ships existed in a confusion. If they wanted to know their biological age they could ask a splicer but as far as Carina knew, they rarely did.

  Why did it matter how old you were? Why wasn’t an approximation good enough? Carina’s gut reaction to Oriana’s outburst was similar to Ferne’s. She wanted to tell her sister off for being self-centered and silly, but she swallowed the harsh words that sprang to her lips. Perhaps there was more to Oriana’s complaint than she was stating.

  Carina said, “I guess back at your home on Ithiya birthdays were a big thing?”

  Oriana nodded glumly. “We would have a party and a cake, and Father would give us so many presents.”

  “It was about the only time he was nice to us,” said Ferne wistfully.

  Carina could only imagine how Stefan Sherrerr’s pleasure at the anniversary of his children’s births, the products of rape, would have made Ma feel, but she kept quiet. It takes a great deal of cruelty and abuse to crush a child’s love for its parent, and she guessed that by the time her siblings had grown old enough to notice what went on in their household, Stefan’s behavior had moderated somewhat. Despite all that he’d done to them, there was a part of his children’s hearts that missed him as well as the luxurious life they had led in his care.

  “I have an idea,” Carina said. “Let’s have a birthday party now.”

  “What?” Parthenia said. “For whom? How do you know whose birthday it is?”

  “Let’s make it all our birthdays.” Carina shrugged. “You can be sixteen, Bryce and I will turn nineteen, the twins can become thirteen, Nahla will be nine and Darius will be seven.”

  “Woohoo!” Darius exclaimed, “I’m seven!”

  Parthenia went to speak, as if to pour cold water on the idea, but then her mouth closed and she smiled. “I think I’d like to be sixteen.”

  “The let’s celebrate,” Carina suggested. “Let’s print a cake.”

  “Cool!” exclaimed Oriana. “We’ll put all our names on it. We can design it together.”

  “I want chocolate,” said Ferne.

  “No, lemon butter cream,” Oriana said. “You know I hate chocolate.”

  “But everyone else likes it.”

  “That doesn’t matter. It’s my birthday and I can have what I want. That’s the rule.”

  “The rule you just made up. Oriana, we’re twins. We can’t both have what we want if we share the same birthday, and today it’s everyone’s birthday anyway.”

  “I’m pretty sure you can program the printer to make a cake in multiple flavors,” Carina pointed out.

  Oriana and Ferne’s jaws dropped open and their eyes popped.

  “Multiple-flavor cake would be great,” said Parthenia. “Let’s go and make it.” She got up from her seat at the dining table and led the other children to the galley.

  When they’d gone, Carina said to Bryce, “Thank the stars for Parthenia. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  “She really does a great job of looking after the other kids,” said Bryce.

  “She understands them better than I ever can,” Carina said. “She grew up with them in that mansion-prison on Ithiya, and she probably had it the worst of all of them—saw Stefan at his worst, I mean.”

  Bryce touched her arm as it rested on the table. “Don’t underestimate how much you mean to your brothers and sisters too. You’re the missing piece in their lives. You’re their source of knowledge about their magehood. You’re the one who can teach them how to use their powers responsibly.”

  “I suppose so, but even my knowledge is limited. I’m sure Nai Nai knew ten times more than I do. She just didn’t live long enough to pass it all on. I sometimes wonder if trying to return to Earth is a fool’s quest. I’m not even completely sure what I should be looking for on Ostillon, let alone where.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to split up from Jace,” said Bryce tentatively.

  Carina’s lips tightened. The decision to part ways with the high-ranking mage had been argued over long and hard before her wishes were followed. “As I said at the time, it was too risky to remain in his company. He was too noticeable.” The tall, broad man with his black, shaggy hair and beard was too attention-grabbing in her opinion.

  “Well, he’s probably found a way back to Ostillon too by now,” Bryce said. “Maybe our paths will cross again.”

  “But what about you, Bryce?” Carina asked. “You’ve thrown in your lot with us mages despite all the risks. What about your family on Ithiya? Won’t they be wondering what’s happened to you?”

  “I’ve sent a packet telling them I’m going on a long voyage. They won’t worry about me.” He took her hand. “I haven’t thrown in my lot with a bunch of mages for no reason. I’m here for you. The kid magicians are just a bonus.”

  Carina smiled and leaned forward to kiss him.

  It wasn’t long before they were interrupted, as always.

  Parthenia headed the delegation just come from the galley. “Nahla wants to put Castiel’s name on the cake.”

  “Nahla?” said Carina. The same Nahla who Castiel beat and tied up only a few weeks previously? she thought but did not say.

  “She says even though he’s a bad boy, he’s still our brother and it’s still his birthday.”

  Nahla could be seen peeking around Parthenia, watching for Carina’s reaction. The rest of the children clustered behind her.

  “Right,” Carina said. “And what do the rest of you think?”

  Parthenia shrugged. “I stopped thinking about Castiel as a brother a long time ago.”

  Ferne stepped forward. “I don’t care but I’ll do it if it’ll make Nahla happy.”

  “I say no!” Oriana exclaimed. “Castiel’s an asshole.”
<
br />   “I don’t think we should either,” Darius piped up. “I can feel him and he’s not sorry for anything he’s done.”

  Carina agreed with the general sentiment. She called Nahla forward and took the little girl’s hands in her own. Was she hankering for the days when it was her and Castiel against their mage siblings? Carina had never considered how Nahla felt about being the only one of the brothers and sisters who had no mage powers. She hoped it wouldn’t make her sister twisted and bitter as it had Castiel.

  “It’s nice of you to think of Castiel,” Carina said. “One day, if he becomes a better person and apologizes for hurting you, he can be with us as a family again. But today isn’t that day. Do you understand?”

  Nahla looked at her toes. “Yes,” she whispered.

  Their dispute settled, the children went back to making their cake.

  “You handled that well,” said Bryce.

  “Did I?” Carina asked. She wasn’t so sure. She worried that Nahla’s childish, confused loyalties would get them all in trouble.

  “Have you decided what we’re going to do with the prick when we get to our destination?” asked Bryce.

  “Nope.”

  Carina had returned to the problem again and again since putting Castiel in the ship’s brig, but she was no closer to a solution. And she didn’t have long. In another three days they would arrive at Ostillon.

  Chapter Eleven

  Months had passed since they’d been on Ostillon. As Carina sat at the pilot’s station inputting the final set of coordinates that would put the Zenobia in high orbit around the Dirksen-controlled planet, she wondered what had happened there while they’d been gone. They had left behind a war-torn, ravaged world, struggling to rebuild after barely repelling the Sherrerr invasion attempt. Had the Dirksens aided in the planet’s recovery or had they abandoned it, deciding the expense was not worth the potential profit?

  Carina hoped it was the latter. It would make her job so much easier.

  Darius wandered onto the bridge, as he often did when the children were practicing their Casting. Carina had taught them all she knew during their trip and Darius had soaked it all up with ease. She knew the practice sessions bored him so she didn’t mind too much when he played hooky.

  Nahla was already there too. She’d taken to investigating the Zenobia’s data base while the other kids practiced their mage skills, immersing herself for hours. She particularly seemed to love gazing at the blueprints of the ship. Carina sometimes wondered if the little girl was finding places to hide in case Castiel turned on her again.

  Darius stood beside Carina and draped an arm lazily over her shoulders. “What are you doing?”

  She was seated, and as she glanced at him standing over her Carina could have sworn the boy had grown five or six centimeters in a few weeks. He would have his father’s height and he was a negative of Stefan Sherrerr’s coloring, but luckily he hadn’t inherited the man’s temperament.

  “I’m setting our final heading,” she replied.

  Darius heaved a sigh and rested his head on her shoulder.

  “What’s up?” asked Carina. “Are you sad our trip will soon be over?”

  “Kinda. It’s been fun living on the ship all together.”

  “It has, hasn’t it?” Carina gave her little brother a hug.

  “If you forget about the beast in the brig,” said Bryce from the captain’s seat.

  “Yeah.” Now it was Carina’s turn to sigh.

  “I liked learning all about what it is to be a mage,” Darius said. “So much of what the Spirit Mage taught me makes sense now. All the old stories and the lore. I hope I can take her place one day and pass on what I know.”

  “You do?” Carina asked. “I think there’s a lot she didn’t tell you. She said you would have had to live with her for years so she could train you to take over from her.”

  “But maybe I can learn the rest of it on Earth,” said Darius. “If that’s where we come from, I bet the stories are still there. The mages must have left some things behind when they left. Information on systems.”

  “That was thousands of years ago,” said Bryce. “It’s hard to recover data that old. It’s even hard to find data from a few decades ago.”

  “Then maybe there will be books,” Darius said. “Like the religious book on Ostillon you told us about, Carina.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe mages are living there still. I’m not sure they all left. It’s even possible more have appeared within the population and if they found the historical sources relating to the mages who were driven away, they might have learned how to Cast.”

  “They might have invented new Casts like I did,” said Darius.

  “I thought you only invented one,” Carina said. “The Cloak Cast.”

  “I’ve invented another one.” The little boy looked away. “I know I was supposed to be practicing, but…”

  “It’s okay,” said Carina. “I don’t mind. What did you invent?” She wistfully hoped it was a Cast for disappearing Dark Mage brothers, but she doubted it.

  “I call it Guise,” said Darius. “It’s kind of like Cloak in that it hides you, but it hides you by making you look like someone else.”

  “Uh huh,” said Carina, sitting upright and turning widened eyes to Bryce. “Can you give us a demonstration?”

  “Sure.” Darius removed his elixir flask from the belt around his waist and sipped the liquid. His eyes shut, he took one step backward.

  For a moment nothing happened. Carina began to wonder if Darius’s new Cast was all in his seven-year-old mind. She didn’t doubt his ability but in every other way he was still a young child.

  Then he turned into Bryce. It wasn’t a gradual transformation where he grew taller and his face changed shape. One moment he was himself and the next, a perfect copy of Bryce.

  The real Bryce was so astounded he stood up.

  Carina laughed with delight. “Say something, Darius.”

  “What do you want me to say?” He sounded like himself so she figured the Cast only extended to the mage’s appearance.

  “How long will you stay like that?” she asked. “Can you turn it off when you want?”

  “No,” Darius replied. “I stay like this as long as the Cast lasts. Just a few minutes. I can’t control when it stops. And I have to be able to see the person to do it. I know because I tried to turn into different people when I was alone in our cabin. I thought about how they looked, but it didn’t work. I have to make a copy of someone I can see right then. I tried it out by peeking at you guys around a corner and then Casting.”

  The restriction fit in with the natural laws that seemed to apply to Casting. Though it wasn’t always impossible to Cast at something you couldn’t see or had no tangible relationship to, it was hard and sometimes it was impossible. Darius might eventually refine his skill so that he could create a Guise of someone he couldn’t see but he clearly hadn’t developed the ability yet.

  “Can you do a quick lap?” asked Bryce. “I’d love to see how I walk.”

  Darius took a stroll around the bridge, producing fits of laughter from Carina and Bryce.

  “Not bad,” Bryce said. “But of the two of us, I think I’m better looking.”

  The bridge door opened and Oriana and Ferne burst in.

  “Whaaaaa…?” said Oriana, holding Ferne back with one arm, her mouth remaining open. Her gaze switched between the two Bryces.

  “I’m the real one,” said Bryce.

  “No, I am,” piped Darius.

  “This is too freaky!” Ferne exclaimed.

  “It’s Darius’s new Cast,” said Carina. “It should wear off soon.”

  “That is so cool,” Oriana said. “You have to teach us how to do it.”

  “I can try,” said Darius. His attempts to teach the Cloak Cast had failed. Even Carina couldn’t learn it. All the mages could write the Character but when they sent it out nothing happened. Carina didn’t know why that was so, but she
suspected the same would be true of Guise.

  “We finished today’s practice,” Ferne said to Carina. “Can we go to lunch now?”

  “Yes. And while we’re eating we can talk. We only have a few hours until we arrive at Ostillon and I want to tell you all what will happen then.”

  “Don’t we get to decide anything?” asked Oriana, pouting.

  “We’ve talked about this stuff for weeks,” Carina replied. “I’ve listened to everyone’s opinions but I’m making the final decisions and that isn’t negotiable, sorry.” She was aware the children may think she was overbearing but she was happy to have that reputation if it meant she kept them as safe.

  Oriana snorted her disapproval and stomped out of the bridge. Ferne tutted and followed her, his hands clenched at his sides. Carina wondered which of his bossy, difficult sisters bothered him the most.

  ***

  The children had become adept at using the food printer and they’d thoroughly familiarized themselves with the copious supplies aboard ship. They made two main meals per day together in a chaotic mess of banter and minor bickering that nevertheless resulted in delicious dishes everyone liked.

  Bryce took Castiel his meal while the children laid the table for what would be their penultimate meal aboard the Zenobia. There was no question they must leave the ship behind when they arrived at Ostillon. Carina had searched the place high and low—even venturing into the accessible sections of the engines—but she’d been unable to discover the tracker. If they didn’t leave the ship its smuggler owner would catch up with them eventually, and Carina would rather face the Sherrerrs or the Dirksens.

  This was the first decision Carina had explained to her sisters and brothers and it was met with predictable complaints. After weeks of moving from place to place, hiding out from their pursuers, the children had settled into living aboard the starship and had probably come to feel like it was home. This sense was probably heightened by the Zenobia also mimicking their first home in terms of luxurious fittings and supplies.

  Yet the disgruntlement over leaving the ship was soon forgotten, however, when Nahla asked, “What’s going to happen to Castiel?”