Firstworld

by Paul E. Horsman

  Odysson looked quizzically at him. ‘And how does it work with you?’

  Kyrus laughed. ‘I’m like Grandpa Jurgis—equal partners or nothing. But not yet, bud; not yet.’

  CHAPTER 12 – HEALING MUSIC

  The next morning as she came into her office, Kambisha looked out the window and found six corvettes parked in front of the main building.

  ‘They’re here already!’ she exclaimed, surprised.

  ‘Good morning,’ Gunild said brightly. ‘Compliments of General Cruishand. They’re the RA-V 497 to 502, ready for duty. I suggest six crews of ten each; pilot-captain, co-pilot, medic, tech, trader and five Marines/gunners under a sergeant. The lists are on your desk ready for your signature, with options for destinations.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Kambisha said. ‘That will be a great help. What situations are on the top of your list?’

  ‘The Son 4 shipyards, four different outposts, an entertainment station, a trade port on the moon of a Lesser Planet and a strange signal I cannot place. Admiral Kyrus has one of the outposts and I have corvettes standing by for the rest.’

  Kambisha sat down with a mug of cawah and a platter of sandwiches. ‘The entertainment station; what does it do?’

  ‘BES Studios, beam music and vision. They bring news, sports and entertainment to their subscribers everywhere.’

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ Kambisha said. ‘I will take that one.’

  No-R 77 came out into space close to an ochre planet with a thick, purplish atmosphere.

  ‘So that is Rimrock?’ Kambisha said. ‘It doesn’t look very pleasant.’

  ‘It is not, ma’am,’ No-R said. ‘The world is a cold desert, with permanent storms. The planetary atmosphere is corrosive and incompatible with human life. I would very much prefer it you did not attempt to land. Apart from the category 25 storms the gravity is 3.6 standard and I fear even shielded I would not be able to keep you from harm.’

  ‘Luckily the station we seek is on the moon,’ Captain Joff said. ‘Not that an airless heap of stone is fun, but we are equipped to handle that.’

  They circled the planet and there was a small satellite, looking much like a potato flying over a football.

  ‘It’s tiny,’ Kambisha said. ‘Wait, is that a building?’

  ‘That is the entrance to the station, ma’am,’ No-R said. ‘The studio operator fails to answer my calls.’

  ‘There is a wreck,’ Kambisha said. ‘It looks like a corvette.’

  ‘Crashed,’ Captain Joff said. ‘No way would it have landed that way normally.’

  ‘I’m going down.’ She looked around. ‘Lieutenant Ram, prepare for a little trip.’

  He nodded. ‘Certainly, ma’am.’

  He makes a fine figure in his uniform, she thought. Very tasty. Resolutely she looked away and went to the airlock.

  Minutes later, they rode down to the moon’s surface. They wore new belts, with the heavy battle shields Gunild had made, so they didn’t carry any weapons but their belt knives—even though they couldn’t use those either.

  Kambisha landed in front of the lone building, which was no more than a square hallway with a door.

  Beside her, Tech Donoan looked up. ‘What’s that?’ He waved a hand at a twisted wire contraption hanging from the roof. ‘Some sort of antenna, perhaps.’

  Standing on his toes, he pushed it up with his shield and as it righted, a high voice screamed at them.

  ‘...MERGENCY! BEAM ENTERTAINMENT SERVICES EMERGENCY! NO DOME, NO POWER, NO BRAIN! FAILING! FAILING! COME IN, DA-I 78, WE’RE DYING IN HERE! CURSE IT, ANSWER, DA-I! ANYONE OUT THERE? BES EMERGENCY!’

  Shocked at the raw panic assailing her, it took her a moment to realize it must be a recording of sorts.

  ‘Darned nearly stopped me heart,’ Donoan said shamefaced. ‘It must be a local system, to contact visiting ships. It won’t reach past planetary orbit. I’d say.’

  ‘Would that wreck be DA-I?’ Ram said.

  ‘Good question. Wait here.’ The techneer lifted and rode over to the wreck.

  Kambisha muttered a curse. Donoan was a great tech, but he wasn’t a disciplined type. Curbing her irritation, she waited until he came back.

  ‘It’s DA-I. Before we leave, I must check its AI.’ He grinned. ‘I suppose you don’t want me to do it now?’

  ‘How did you guess?’ Kambisha couldn’t help but smile. ‘Let’s see the station first.’

  ‘All right.’ He gripped the door handle. ‘Locked. Now what? I can’t use me tools out here.’

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Kambisha thought of the tower in the Peaks, and sent her mind through time and space, seeing the lock laid open before her. The mechanics were simple, but working through the Intermedium wasn’t, and it took all of twenty minutes until the door swung aside. ‘There.’

  ‘I would love to know how you managed that,’ Donoan said.

  ‘If only I could explain,’ Kambisha said. ‘I barely understand it myself. It is not common magic and I can’t tell you how to work through the multidimensions. Not unless you are a mathemagics genius.’

  ‘Don’t try,’ Donoan said quickly. ‘I’m not even a math dunce.’

  ‘My dad doesn’t understand it either,’ Kambisha said.

  She took a deep breath and went inside, into absolute darkness. Her mind touched button four on her belt, and her whole shield began to glow, lighting up a beautiful tiled hall and a big sign “Welcome to BES, the Beam Entertainment Services”.

  But her eyes went to the airlock leading into the station. Both doors were open.

  ‘Power failure,’ she said.

  ‘My meters say there’s no air inside,’ Donoan agreed.

  The floor was littered with skeletons, looking as if they’d been running for the exit. They must’ve hoped to reach DA-I, she thought. Apparently they didn’t know it had crashed. Then they died when the power went down. But how? They must have had air, so what killed them that quickly?

  She stepped through the airlock onto a sloping ramp that circled an enormous, shaft into which a steel tower had been built. Right before her was the dark top room, connected to the ramp by a steel bridge, and with its door wide open.

  ‘Enemy!’ Ram said and at the same time she saw something shine in the dark room. Then a blinding beam of energy splattered all over her shield.

  Ram shoved her aside and crossed the bridge at a dead run, crashing into the enemy soldier in the room.

  ‘It’s a Dregh!’ His voice over the comm. sounded disgusted. Two of his guys rushed after their lieutenant, pushed a second Dregh from the room and wrestled him over the balustrade to splash on the bottom of the shaft ten floors below.

  Curse it! Kambisha thought furiously. No weapons, no magic...

  Then a bolt of fire shot past her, its outer edges causing a rain of sparks on her shield. It caught a Dregh two floors below them and slammed him over the railing.

  Kambisha whirled around. ‘Who fired that bolt?’

  ‘Me.’ Elementalist Noya’s voice quivered.

  ‘How? How did you do that?’

  ‘I don’t know! It was a reflex.’

  You can’t do that through a shield, Kambisha thought. We all know you can’t. ‘Try it again.’

  Noya held up a hand out, and a ball of fire appeared outside her shield, about a foot away from her fingers. She raised her arm, and the fireball moved with it.

  ‘Darn!’ Kambisha called a fiery spear outside her shield. It appeared hovering at her shoulder, burning even in the airless space. She moved her arm, and though she couldn’t feel the magic shaft, she found she could the weapon acted as if she held it in her hand. How do we do this? Suddenly she thought of the commset. It let her mindspeak; that meant it helped thoughts pass the shield. And magic was done by thought!

  A red beam came from below, hitting her squarely on the stomach. Her shield absorbed the energy and she merely grunted as she threw the fiery spear at the soldier. It passed though the Dregh and his weak shield and smash
ed the creature hard against the wall of the tower. He flopped, slipped down and stayed there.

  Hot excitement welled up in her. ‘It works! Just think up your spell outside your shield. You can’t grab it, but you don’t need to. Just do what you normally do.’ She saw Noya nod and joyously she called her partner and went to work. Going down, the two elementalists cleaned out the tower until no Dreghs were left.

  One of the Marines stood staring at a dead Dregh in a pool of purplish blood. ‘I’m gonna be sick.’

  Ram turned around and looked at him. ‘It isn’t fun. It shouldn’t be fun. The moment you start to like it, I’ll kick you out of the corps. We kill them not for laughs, but because there is no other way with those alien creeps. Now if you must spew, don’t do it inside your shield.’

  The boy swallowed a few times and shook his head. ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘You’ll get the hang of it,’ another Marine told him. ‘My dad fought those jinn beasts with the lord Wyrmcaller, and now I am killing Dregh rats with the lord’s daughter. Funny universe, ain’t it?’

  The two elementalists came back, still exhilarated.

  ‘It worked beautifully,’ Noya said.

  Alim nodded. ‘It’s a bit strange at first that your spell is beside you and not in your hand, but it works the same.’

  ‘How can you aim?’ Donoan said. ‘If I held a ball at arms’ length and threw it, the gods know where it would end up.’

  ‘That’s not how it works with us,’ Alim said. ‘As long as we have an image of the target, our spells aim themselves. You didn’t think we mages were world champions throwing things, did you?’

  ‘All right, we’ll pass the word later,’ Kambisha said. ‘First we must restart the place. The brain should be below, in the cellar.’

  They hurried down the stairs. The bottom of the shaft was a shambles. Stepping over several Dregh bodies she fought her own bile down and concentrated on her goal. The door stood open and bits and parts of the inventory were strewn all over. Her training said it had nothing to do with the station losing power, but then what had caused it?

  ‘Blowout,’ Donoan said. ‘Something overloaded violently. A place like this was explained in that tech course Gunild gave me. Lemme think.’

  They went on, stepping around torn-off panels until they came to the room market ‘Brain — No Entry’.

  ‘That’s it.’ Donoan pointed at a fused mass of wires.

  Kambisha looked at it. ‘Fine. Now what is it?’

  Donoan grinned. ‘Their Imaginator.’

  She sighed. ‘I’ll bite. Donoan, you clever and insightful master tech, WHAT THE HECK IS AN IMAGINATOR?’

  ‘Now!’ he said, stepping back. ‘Easy! Of course, you’re a drive engineer; you won’t know what I know. An Imaginator, High Admiral, ma’am, is an apparatus that creates imaginary landscapes. You want to make a motion picture in a jungle? It turns your room into the Greenwall. You want the bottom of the sea? It will attempt to drown you.

  ‘But that uses lotsa power, so they gave it its own mana-generator. Of course the silly thing couldn’t handle the quake and blew, downing the brain’s connection to the station at the same time.’ He kicked the wreckage. ‘Fools! Never build anything else in a brain room. Yet they all do. Well, it ruddy killed them.’

  ‘What?’ one of the Marines said. ‘How?’

  Donoan gave him a dark look over his shoulder. ‘Mana from the pump is like watered wine and comes out obeying to all the nice laws of our ordered universe. What that quake brought, was undiluted, the original multidimensional stuff. When that generator blew, the altered stuff inside mixed with the raw mana and the result was death. In a matter of moments, the clean, breathable air turned into a thousandfold overdose of mana, killing every living thing in the building.’ He slapped the wall with his hand. ‘And I bet they didn’t wear their belts, so no stasis suits.’

  ‘Now we know,’ Kambisha said. ‘Can you reconnect the station to the brain?’

  ‘From inside me shield? No, ma’am.’

  Alim came forward. ‘Allow me...’ He called up his own magic shield and dissolved the one from his belt. Bit by bit, he enlarged his own force field, another trick the mechanic ones couldn’t do, until it encompassed Donoan and Kambisha as well.

  Unhesitatingly, she took her own shield down. The air was thin, but breathable and their combined belt breathers would help make it better soon.

  Donoan joined them. ‘Scary, this.’ He walked to the brain’s control board and screwed it open. ‘Yes, I see. It’s not as bad as I’d feared. They made sturdy stuff, those Moi techs. I like that.’

  Humming softly, he went to work.

  Kambisha sat down, watching him. A solid guy, Donoan. A good technician. Where had they found him? Then she remembered he was one of the lads Ky had brought in the second day; an apprentice mechanic whose master kept him from his journeyman’s exam because an apprentice was cheaper. Well, the guy was way past even a master’s level now.

  She jumped as a siren blared a warning and saw the lights come alive on the control panels.

  ‘Yeah, we know there ain’t no air,’ Donoan muttered, and quickly shut off the noise. ‘Power’s back on.’ He looked at Kambisha. ‘Now the brain. Do you want to do it, or shall I?’

  ‘You know how as well as I do,’ Kambisha said. ‘Go ahead.’

  Donoan nodded and went over to the brain console. Without a moment’s hesitation he went through the routine, and with a ten-story shudder, the whole tower awoke.

  ‘Done.’ Donoan took a deep breath. ‘Entertainment studio?’

  ‘Oooh!’ a beautiful male voice said. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Report, will you?’ Kambisha said.

  ‘Report? I’m a vision actor, not a soldier, ma’am.’

  ‘I am High Admiral Kambisha,’ she said, and she gave him her code.

  ‘Oh! You are?’ he said. ‘You do? A change of management? Well, you didn’t make me a soldier now, did you? This is Beam Entertainment Network, for all your empty hours,’

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Ortheus, High Admiral dear. Surely you must have heard of the famous vision lead Ortheus the Magnificent?’

  ‘Ortheus, would you check your dates?’

  ‘My dates? Did we have a d... Oh. Oh dearie. And... I’m all open and naked in the dark. My... the quake. It blew me away. Now the public went home and weeping I sit, alone.’

  ‘Well, I suggest you clothe yourself, lighten up and fill your bowels with air,’ Kambisha said.

  ‘I don’t recall that line, ma’am. Which play?’

  ‘No matter. How much time do you need to be operational again?’

  ‘Weeks, ma’am. And not even novas will hurry me.’

  ‘No, that’s all right. We shall send technicians round to assist you. Tell me, how many of your contacts can you reach?’

  ‘I am checking, ma’am. Many, but most do not take my call. NavBase... Good day to you, General. No, I am not up to date with the news. I fear BES Networks are temporarily down for maintenance. Gunild! My dear! Yes, YES, she’s here. Isn’t she wonderful? Of course I can send you a repeat of the last shows. Standby, love. Athelstan! And what has my handsome boy done lately? Ooh, you naughty man, you didn’t!’

  Kambisha sighed. ‘We’ll be back later.’

  ‘Yes, dear—I mean admiral. So nice of you to stop by!’

  ‘We’ll port,’ Kambisha said firmly. She gathered Ram and the team and returned to No-R 7.

  ‘I am in contact with the station, High Admiral,’ No-R 7 said.

  ‘Good,’ Kambisha said. ‘BES Networks is online again.’ She sat down in the empty co-pilot’s chair.

  ‘The DA-I,’ Donoan said. ‘I still need to find its brain.’

  ‘I will go with you, if my captain permits.’ Lieutenant Borallen, the ship’s first officer, looked at Joff. He was a tall, thin Garthan, who had been apprentice on a Seatome harbor tug, waiting for a chance on a mate’s berth. At nineteen he’
d been waiting three years when Kyrus started recruiting and he had jumped at the offer.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Joff said, grinning. ‘Just don’t think we’ll tow that wreck back to Realmport.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Borallen said. ‘She doesn’t look salvageable. I will see if there’s anything else worth taking, though.’

  ‘Let us know,’ Kambisha said as she accepted a mug of cawah.

  The two left, and she sat down in the first officer’s chair, watching them ride the short distance to the downed corvette.

  ‘Borallen’s right,’ Donoan’s voice came. ‘A total wreck; cracked open with its innards scattered all over the place. We can climb straight into the bridge.’

  ‘She must’ve made a hard landing.’ Joff sat down in his own chair and looked at the two men clambering into the wreck. ‘Only the brain can tell us why.’

  ‘It’s a mess,’ Donoan said. ‘The brain console looks undamaged, so I will just take the AI out. Maybe that braintech fellow Admiral Kyrus brought back can look at it.’

  ‘Captain!’ Borallen’s voice said excitedly. ‘There’s a body in a stasis suit. Must be alive; its light is solidly green.’

  ‘I’m coming over,’ Kambisha said. ‘Thon?’

  ‘Right behind you.’

  Ram snorted and followed them to the airlock and rode to the wreck.

  The ship was a write-off, so much was clear. If they’d been landing with the engines running... The quake might have killed the power crystals and the crew, but it wouldn’t have taken the speed off the ship. Impact had cracked the hull wide open, so that Kambisha could almost ride straight onto the bridge.

  She went as low as she could go and dropped the last two yards. There was Donoan, holding a rectangular box in his arms that had to be the AI, and Borallen on his knees at the foot of a mountain slope of twisted metal.

  ‘Over here,’ the lieutenant said. ‘I never realized, but that stasis suit is truly immovable.’