by JJ Green
Brown quickly left. He might have been avoiding Tarsalan’s fury, redoubled after Smitz’s attack, but the man’s hand had damaged her neck to the extent that she could barely croak. The doctor told her to be quiet while he examined her and motioned Carina away. She had hung around in case the doctor wanted to know what had happened, but the evidence apparently said everything.
Carina had passed a curtained bed on her way into the sick bay. She guessed the occupant had to be Speidel. She peeked in. The captain was awake and reading an interface with his remaining eye. A patch covered the place where the other had been.
She opened the curtain wider. “Hi, sir.” She spoke quietly so that the doctor wouldn’t hear and maybe make her leave.
Speidel’s smile when he saw her eased her concern for the older man somewhat. He put down the screen. “Come in, Carina. It’s good of you to come and see me.”
She stepped close to the bed and drew the curtains closed.
“Did doc get all your implant out?” she asked.
“All that was left of it,” Speidel replied, pulling himself into a higher position before relaxing on his pillows. “Several thousand creds gone in a single shot. But I was lucky, really. If the beam had hit my real eye, it would probably have fried my brain. Better one-eyed than dead, huh?”
“I’d say so. Are you going to get another implant or a new bio eye?”
“I’m not sure. I guess it depends on whether I continue soldering or take the hint and retire. Have you heard what’s happening with the company yet? Cadwallader isn’t answering my comm and the doctor won’t tell me anything, except to rest up and not worry myself for a while. Like it’s easy not to worry when you don’t know what’s going on.”
“Well...” Carina wasn’t sure if she should tell Speidel about the incident with Tarsalan and Smitz, but she guessed that he would find out soon enough, what with being right next to the company owner.
“Holy shit,” Speidel said when she reached the part where Smitz had tried to strangle Tarsalan. “What an imbecile. If it wasn’t over for the Black Dogs before, it certainly is now. Tarsalan’s definitely going to cut her losses and split after this.”
“No doubt about it. Which kinda makes your advice to me earlier moot, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. But it was good advice, Carina. Brown, Atoi, and the rest will find another merc band to join. Even Smitz might find someone who’s on the lookout for an insubordinate, aggressive bastard. But...listen to me, okay? I’ve gotten to know you over the years, and you aren’t like them. I didn’t realize it when I dragged you out of that fight. I never told you, but I watched it going on for a while before I stepped in. I watched you defend yourself against those older, bigger street rats, and I saw your skill and strength. But that was all I saw.
“I thought that providing you with a safe place to live and a regular paycheck was fair exchange for what you could bring to the band. And you stepped up and did the job, after a little training. It wasn’t until later that I saw a different side to you. You can fight and kill if you need to, but you don’t like it. You aren’t immune to it like half of the others, and you don’t relish it like the other half.”
Speidel half shut his remaining eye, scrutinizing her. Carina began to feel uncomfortable.
“There’s something else about you too. Something more than disliking the fight.”
Carina felt that familiar wrenching she had whenever she was worried someone might discover what she was. Time to change the subject. She had another topic on her mind anyway.
“What’s going to happen now, sir?” she asked. “About the Sherrerr kid, I mean.”
Speidel sighed. “Who knows? Now that he no longer has his transmitter, it’s going to be a lot harder to find him. Whatever happens, we’re out of that game.”
“Are we? It doesn’t seem right to abandon him like that. He’s just a little kid.”
“He’s just a little Sherrerr kid. If anyone has the money and influence to track him down, it’s them.”
“That’s something I don’t get,” said Carina. “They’re so rich and powerful, why did the Sherrerrs hire us to do their dirty work? Why not send in their own goons?”
“I never got that either,” Speidel replied, “and, for what it’s worth, I feel the same as you. I’m not happy about leaving the search to someone else, assuming someone else is searching for him. But I don’t know what else we can do. He could be anywhere, and the Dirksens sure as hell aren’t telling.”
“That’s the other thing that bothers me,” Carina said. “Why did they kidnap him in the first place if they don’t want to ransom him? They just took him and disappeared. What’s the point of that?”
“Maybe for revenge. Maybe they already murdered him. That room where you found his transmitter, was there...?”
“No,” Carina replied. “There was only a small amount of blood. Not enough.”
“Whatever the Dirksens did with the kid, we’ve reached the end of the road. Even if we wanted to continue after Tarsalan disbands the company, we have no way of finding him.”
“I guess you’re right,” Carina said, but inside she was saying, Yes, there is. She had kept the child’s transmitter. The trace of blood on it held his genetic code—his unique signature in the fabric of the universe—and that meant that she could find him, but she would have to cast.
Chapter Ten
The doctor bought the mercs some time when it came to the breaking up of the Black Dogs. He insisted that Tarsalan remain in the sick bay and leave the running of the ship to Cadwallader for at least forty-eight hours. If the company owner had had her way, Carina was sure she would have thrown them all off the ship at the earliest opportunity with no time to pack their stuff or make arrangements.
As it was, after Smitz’s attack, no one was in any doubt that the band’s days were over, and they acted accordingly. The soldiers began to clear out their cabins and pack the items they wanted to take with them. Cadwallader transferred the monies owed to them to their credchips, and people decided where they would go next.
Mealtimes became almost convivial as stories of old missions were recounted, then the mood would turn melancholy as the dead were remembered. Silence would eventually fall as the mercs no doubt inwardly reflected that their fate would be similar.
Captain Speidel was up and about the day following Smitz’s attack, looking more than ever the old soldier with his eye patch. The skin on his face glistened with burn-healing gel and only very pink, fresh color remained of the damage the Dirksen guard’s weapon had done.
Carina was happy to see him looking not too the worse for wear, and not only for his own sake. The plight of the Sherrerr boy had lain heavy on her mind and heart ever since the failure of their mission. She had made the Cast and found the child, but the knowledge was useless if she had to attempt a rescue alone. The Dirksen force was formidable, and she doubted she could defeat them even using her special abilities.
She needed help, yet how could she convince anyone she knew the boy’s location unless she explained how she knew it? She would have to reveal that she could cast. The thought of it alone made her break out into a sweat. Nai Nai had impressed nothing else upon her more than the fact that she must never divulge her secret. Even the idea of it felt like an act of betrayal to the woman’s memory, but if she didn’t do something, she would be leaving a young child to suffer—perhaps even to be murdered.
Carina was glad the captain’s recovery was going well because she’d decided that, of all the people she knew, he was the one she trusted the most. He’d also expressed his concern about the missing child and he might be persuaded to help her mount a rescue.
When her cabin was empty, Carina removed the canister of base elixir from its hiding place in her mattress and went to Speidel’s room. She found him alone.
“Come in, Carina. I’m glad to see you. Have you come to tell me what you’re going to do next?”
She stepped into the man’s single cabin
and waited for him to close the door before she spoke. “I have, and I need your help to do it.”
Speidel sat on his bunk while Carina took the chair. The captain rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands. “Would you like me to write you a reference? I’m happy to, but I’m not sure how relevant it will be if you’re giving up the soldiering life as I hope you are.”
“I’ve thought about it,” Carina replied, “and maybe you’re right that I’m not suited to life as a merc. Maybe I will give it up, but it isn’t over for me yet. I have one last mission I have to do. I want to rescue the Sherrerr kid.”
Speidel straightened up. “I understand how you feel, but as I said, we’re hamstrung on that. We don’t know where—”
“I do know where he is. He’s in the smelting plant. He was probably there all along. We were just tricked into going to the wrong part of it.”
Speidel’s expression was a mixture of confusion and disbelief. “But surely you’re speculating. You can’t know for sure, and we can’t return to the plant on a guess. It’s far too dangerous.”
“I’m not speculating. I know where he is.” Carina took a deep breath, trying to quell her racing heart. “I know because I cast to find him.”
“You...?”
“Sir...”
The captain was looking concerned. Carina became even more aware of her flushing face and anxiety. Was she making the worst mistake of her life? Perhaps, but she was committed. “You must swear to me that you will never tell to anyone what I’m about to tell you. If you can’t make that promise, then we can’t do anything about the Sherrerr boy. It’s very important that what I tell you remains a secret between us. My life depends on it.”
Speidel nodded. When Carina waited expectantly, he said, “I swear.”
“Thank you,” Carina said. “It’s a little difficult to explain, sir, but I can do things that most people can’t. Things that I can’t rationalize and that don’t make sense scientifically, as far as I understand. Yesterday, when I was with you in the sick bay, you said there was something different about me. That’s because I am different, though I don’t know how or why.”
Speidel didn’t speak. He was giving her the space to finish what she wanted to say.
Carina explained how her Nai Nai had brought her up after her father died and her mother disappeared, and how the old woman had taught her to harness and hone her casting power. She didn’t tell him the details like the Elements, the Seasons, the Strokes, or the Map. Those weren’t necessary for the captain to know. He only had to believe what she could do and that the Sherrerr boy was where she said he was.
“It isn’t a simple or easy process,” she went on. “The reason I was able to cast to find the child was because I had something of his. I had the transmitter that Atoi found. I can’t find people randomly, or at least I never learned how. Nai Nai died when I was ten, and I was alone after that. I couldn’t fit in where I was. Maybe the people in my neighborhood could sense the same thing that you can—that I wasn’t like them. I used to get picked on a lot.”
She stopped. She felt she had said enough for Speidel to take on board for the moment. Oddly, though all her life she’d feared someone finding out that she was a mage, she now felt relieved, as if a burden had been lifted from her. It felt good to share her secret with someone else. She realized how alone she had felt before.
Speidel rubbed his stubble. “That’s quite a story, Carina.” His tone was non-committal.
Carina’s heart sank. He didn’t believe her.
“I take it you can prove what you say,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied, her hope rising. “Yes, I can. I thought of a simple Cast I can do to show you, but I don’t want to unsettle you.”
“I’ve been a merc for eleven years and in the military for thirteen,” Speidel said, laughing. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do to unsettle me.”
Carina took out her canister of elixir and sipped a mouthful. She scanned the cabin for a handy object and saw the captain’s uniform hat on a table. She closed her eyes and drew the ideogram in her mind. The Cast was an easy one.
She opened her eyes to see that the captain had an indulgent, disbelieving look on his face. He opened his mouth as if about to say something to mollify her, but then his hat appeared on his head. He reacted as if a poisonous spider had just fallen on him. He threw the hat to the floor and leapt up so fast that his legs hit his bunk and he overbalanced, falling comically onto it.
Carina tried to suppress her laughter but was unsuccessful. In all the years she’d known him, Speidel had been the model of self-control. She’d never seen him so surprised or amazed.
Still lying on his bunk in an awkward pose, Speidel blinked his single eye several times. He sat up. “Well, I asked you to prove it, and you did.” He straightened his pants and ran a hand through his graying hair. Reaching down to the floor, he picked up his hat and turned it over in his hands. “I guess I believe you.”
“You do?”
Speidel nodded. “It’s a lot to take in, but to tell you the truth, it isn’t the first time that I’ve heard about such abilities. Of course, I never believed the stories before. What else can you do?”
“Quite a lot of things, though some are easier than others. I can move things, as you just saw, and find things that are missing if I have a part of the object—something to link to it. I can heal, though it’s difficult and not fast. I can’t prevent someone who’s been shot from dying, for instance. I can start fires and engines at a distance, open locks, change my appearance—”
“Can you hurt people...kill them?” Speidel asked softly.
Carina looked down and slowly nodded. “But it isn’t straightforward. Shooting or knifing is much easier.”
There was a moment’s pause as Speidel considered her response. “Oh,” he suddenly blurted, his eyes wide. “It was you! At the Matahman Embassy. It was you who made the enemy soldiers disappear.”
She gave another quick nod.
“Did you kill them? All of them?”
“No. Like I said, that’s hard to do. I just moved them about a kilometer away.”
Speidel whistled in admiration. His brow furrowed. “I saw you drink from that,” he said, indicating her canister. “Is that essential to what you do?”
“Yes. I must take a sip of elixir. And...do some other things.”
“So if I drank that, would I be able to do magic too?”
A shadow settled over Carina’s heart. Was this what Nai Nai had meant when she’d said that knowledge of her abilities would turn friends into enemies? A change of direction to the conversation was needed. “I don’t think of it as magic. ‘Magic’ sounds like something out of children’s stories, like three wishes and wizards disappearing in puffs of smoke. I think my ability is natural, only it’s very rare and outside our current understanding of the universe.”
She paused. “Even if you had the ability, you wouldn’t be able to cast just by drinking the elixir. It takes training and practice and there’s a lot more involved besides.” She handed him the canister. “Take a sip and try if you don’t believe me.”
He took the offered canister and lifted it to his lips. His gaze upon her, he tipped back his head and poured a measure of elixir into his mouth. Immediately, the liquid erupted as he spat it out, splattering it across the floor. He coughed and retched for a minute or so. Wiping his eye, he said, “You didn’t tell me it tastes like weeks-old piss.”
The corners of Carina’s mouth twitched. “You get used to it. Are you going to try some ‘magic’ now?”
Still wiping his eye and mouth, Speidel burst into laughter. “Okay, you got me good. If I have to drink that sewer effluent, I’d rather stay non-magical. What’s in it?”
“Nothing that’s important by itself. What do you say? Do you believe I’m right about the location of the Sherrerr boy? Will you help me rescue him?”
“I do believe you. How couldn’t I after your little de
monstration? And I will help you rescue the child. But I don’t think we should try to do it alone. I’ll speak to some of the others. I’ll tell them I received additional intel from the Sherrerrs. Maybe we can rope in some of them to help us. But we’ll have to start soon.”
“Yeah. I hate to think about that kid all alone among those thugs, especially after what they already did to him.”
“Not only that,” Speidel said. “I plan on us going in fully armed this time, which means we need to leave before the doctor lets Tarsalan get up.”
Chapter Eleven
Somehow, Smitz got wind of what they were doing, and he insisted that he wanted to come along too.
“He’s just saying that so he can get out of the brig before Tarsalan recovers,” Carina said to Speidel when he told her. “The minute we arrive planetside he’ll be gone.”
“I don’t think so,” the captain replied. “There’s more to Smitz than meets the eye. I would have kicked him out of the Black Dogs ages ago if I didn’t think so. He talks a lot, but he always follows orders in the end. And he came on the previous mission when he didn’t have to. He could have bailed like most of the rest did.”
“He was expecting a bonus, though.”
“And when he found out he wasn’t getting one, he came along anyway. I think he wants to help.”
“I don’t know, sir. I don’t like it.”
“I’ve been commanding mercs for a long time. They’re a difficult bunch and it’s easy to underestimate their better motivations. I think you should trust me on this.”
Carina sighed. “Okay, if you say so.”
Atoi had also quickly volunteered when approached, and Stevenson was happy to fly the shuttle.
Scans of the smelting plant showed that the explosions had put it out of operation. The damage the mercs had caused was extensive. There was little movement and the furnaces were cooling after being shut down.