by Pam Uphoff
She closed up again. She knew he was invisible, and closer to the gate than any sensible person would get. He was, in fact, standing on top of the gate anchor.
The vehicles started moving, the first ones driving through the gate quickly and splitting off in different directions, to avoid any backup that could have horrible consequences for the vehicles behind, and unable to clear the gate. Xen had a big bubble, and tossed it upward in a loop, held it up there with a bit of his concentration. At the top, he opened an entrance—or rather exit. And held it up in the air with sheer will power. Then the other end of the corridor . . . he anchored the top corners, and dropped down on the least crowded side to anchor that bottom, holding the mouth of the corridor closed as gyp after gyp, full of soldiers poured through the gate.
Quicksilver watched the outbound traffic dispassionately, until finally a vehicle faltered, restarted, and was pulled out of line.
::Gap coming up, three vehicles, two, last one.:: She dropped her shields and threw an illusion across the opening of Xen's short corridor. So that the drivers of the vehicles would see the desert camp, and the vehicles they were following. Can't have them stop—yet.
Xen leaped across the gate, opening the corridor. He threw himself to the ground, anchored the corner and ran.
The armored gyp was already falling and hit the top of the gate anchor and bounced off. The next two missed, then Xen got a better mental grip on the loose upper corridor opening and shoved it back over the Anchor. The tank that hit it must have barely fit through the gate and its weight, falling from nearly a hundred feet in the air crushed the anchor like paper. There were three vehicles already falling after it, when it hit. They hit and bounced. Hit other vehicles. A flash of light from the crushed frame, and the multidimensional phenomenon that was the actual gate spewed half melted machine parts as it ripped away from the ruins of the anchor. Another tank charged out and straight into one of the older stone buildings of the base. The tank punched through the wall, with the building collapsing behind it, on it. Then three came through unscathed as the gate drifted across a road. Soldiers scattered in panic. Mettic crashes as they hit other vehicles. Human screams as they hit soldiers. The fourth tank encountered another building, and the building again lost.
Don't they look through the gate? I know the slits are small, but . . .
Quicksilver grabbed the tunnel exit, and pulled it around, lifted it so the exiting vehicles would be damaged, preferably by landing on vehicles already here. Pity about the occupants. She tugged it around and wrestled with it. Another couple of dozen trucks and gyps spewed across the camp . . .
The flow of traffic stopped. About time!
The pressure and awareness of the tornado of energy that was the Earth gate disappeared.
She shook her head a bit and looked around the base. It was a mess. Not a threat. She stood up, on top of the roof that had given her a good view over the arriving vehicles and into the approach lane on the far side of the gate. She traveled to the watchpost, and trotted through the five corridors to the border camp. Someone was getting first aid, in the form of wine. Serious injury . . .
"Xen?"
He grinned crookedly. "Hey, are you the witch that dropped the house on me?"
"Is your name Dorothy?"
"No, I'm Toto, and now that I think about it, it was a gyp, not a house. Damn thing bounced!"
He sounded too indignant to be badly hurt; she guessed broken ribs, the way he was breathing shallowly.
"Are they still coming through?"
"Once the anchor was broken, it started drifting and jumping. No way to keep an illusion in front of it, so eventually they noticed they were spewing tanks everywhere and stopped sending people through. Then they closed the gate."
"Ha! Ouch! Message runners to both remote posts. Confirm that no more vehicles are arriving."
Two of the eager young wizards dived through into two of the corridors they had added to the routes into Fascia.
Q rubbed her face. "There were some troop carriers. And the loose gate was throwing the vehicles into soldiers all over their camp. The body count is going to be high."
Quicksilver settled back into her position and sank into her meditations, found her center and her focus, and shifted the focus into the in between, across the flaws, following her own gate across the big canyon, and then further, to the Earthers' gate complex. The vehicles were still lined up, but not moving.
Then she shifted back to Fascia. Soldiers all over, trying to rescue their compatriots, putting out fires.
She felt someone piggybacking on her consciousness and opened up to pull her father in to see the mess.
:: Well, that worked, in a very messy brutal fashion. ::
She showed him what she'd seen on Earth. Less than a tenth of the invasion had entered the gate, but it looked like they were standing by, prepared to start again, if a gate could be established.
:: What fools their politicians are. :: The God of War sounded resigned. ::All those young men—and women, but I'll bet they’re ninety percent male—all lost, away from home, injured. And they'll do it again, unless we can prove that we're too dangerous to mess with. I was one of those soldiers once. Just as full of myself, just as eager to serve my country. For what good it did me. Or the country for that matter, it's buried somewhere in their world-wide federation, now. ::
Quicksilver gave him a mental hug. ::I wonder how many got through to Fascia before Xen could open the corridor?:: She could feel his expert sweeping assessment.
::Several hundred gyps, a dozen tanks, perhaps two thousand soldiers. Bad, but not insurmountable odds. And you damaged a lot of them. ::
Now to see how the Earthers would react. And she'd be watching. Both here and on Earth. There were a few tricks they could try, to whittle away at the Earthers' strengths.
***
Jaime circulated through the makeshift hospital tents. There wasn't anything else to do. Captain Orobona was there as well and occasionally threw his weight around as the experienced hands doled out magic wine. At least they'd gotten a representative selection of doctors through before the gate was sabotaged. All the broken bones were set, the bleeding stopped, and only time would tell if the magic wine could fix the head and spinal injuries. If the new doctors would stop interfering and let the old hands dole it out in dribbles, to unconscious soldiers. Several of the new doctors had seen enough to become cautiously supportive of this 'Native herbal medicine.'
The captain was avoiding General Soeder, and everyone knew it. Hopefully he was getting his arguments lined up and his anger under control, and wouldn't be too blunt. Or perhaps the general needed a solid dose of blunt. The man had ignored Orobona's twenty years of experience and recommended a full up invasion through a gate, against a world that had superior gate tech. And possibly a transdimensional ally. The government had been so arrogantly sure the "Natives" weren't making or controlling the new gates . . . Not that it had occurred to anyone that the locals could do whatever they'd just done to the Earth gate.
We're in new territory here, and we'd better step carefully.
Jaime looked at his notes. "We've got one thousand one hundred twelve troops in working order, including our old company and most of Soeder's three companies. We have four hundred eighty-nine hospitalized. Two hundred forty-five dead."
"Thanks Jaime." Orobona took the list, and looked over at Lieutenant Harper as she walked up to them.
"Sir, General Soeder want to see you in his new office, Building Ten."
He sighed. "Thanks, Sally."
Jaime fell in beside him as he headed for the main road.
Sally Harper took the captain's other side.
"You my escort?"
"Your assistant, sir."
"No point in getting on the wrong side of a General."
"I already am, sir. Simply because I've been here long enough to . . . figure out Earth ain't God."
Harper was forty-five, a mature woman far removed from the
fresh faced lieutenant who had survived the first few days of their exile with her fire undimmed. Eighteen years ago, the magic wine had perked up her marriage to Sergeant Johnson no end, and the doc had removed her contraceptive implant. Her fourteen year old daughter, and the other children with two Earth parents would have been the only children welcome on Earth. The half-Native children wouldn't have been allowed entry.
And that only if they can find us again, with no anchor. I suppose we could build a honking big electromagnet. They ought to notice that.
"I suggest you keep that to yourself, for the next few weeks, Lieutenant. Until we figure out what General Soeder is planning on doing next." He turned up the street. The troops had gotten all the bodies out from under the vehicles that had fallen from the sky, and charged out of a randomly shifting gate, out from under the bricks and stone of the buildings that had collapsed when rammed by the hurtling tanks. And, of course, the bodies in the vehicles and tanks.
Jaime's mind shied away from thinking about what else could have happened. Surely they had realized there was a problem and shut the gate down. It couldn't have just jumped a few hundred, or few thousand, miles and kept spewing out unsuspecting soldiers. Please.
In Building Ten they just had to follow the noise of a General being an asshole and yelling at his staff. And focusing on the new target.
"There you are. What do you have to say for yourself?"
"We have over eleven hundred men in working order. Another four hundred plus in hospital that will heal soon enough to consider in planning. I do not yet have any data on vehicles or munitions, sir." Orobona left it bare, and refused to let the furious silence bother him.
"Do you have any theories as to what happened, Captain Orobona?"
"I hypothesize that the Native gate techs were able to disrupt our gate. In my opinion, the timing is too perfect to blame it on undetected damage to the gate anchor over the twenty year hiatus, sir."
"So instead of twenty thousand men to capture a world, I have fifteen hundred maybe. And what do you think I should do with them?"
"I am not conversant with your contingency plans, sir. Capturing more of Auralia, securing our logistical foundations and conscripting Native troops comes to mind, sir."
"So, you want to be Amma of five times as much area as you control now?"
"I think that charade is done with, sir. I recommend you start biting off and taking control of the areas immediately surrounding your current territory in the name of Earth, sir." He kept his stare fixed on the wall behind the General.
"Thank you for you opinion, Captain. Dismissed." He returned Orobona's salute, and glared around the office. "So. Get me a report on the state of the vehicles. And munitions. And have you found the highest surviving ranker from the . . . "
"Well, that wasn't so bad." Jaime muttered.
Orobona shook his head. "I just wish I knew what happened to the rest of the army."
***
Pig's vigilance let Xen concentrate on counting men and machinery. The mutt seemed quite proud of his invisible wool cape, and had checked himself in the mirror, to Lily's consternation. It worked quite well so long as he remembered to not wag his tail. Twice his faint growl had pulled Xen out of a small room before it was entered, drawers all properly closed . . .
He had his own invisible suit on, but kept the light warp on top of it. It would be so useful for sneaking up on magical people . . . Okay, hadn't worked on Nil. But the rest of the wizard class had had trouble seeing him, and the old wizard had looked thoughtful. He wondered how long it would be before Nil was stealing ram services.
He found the payroll department. Everything locked away, except a memo recommending how much of the soldiers paychecks should be issued in local currency, and the exchange rate. He contemplated which way to skew things and finally turned a one into a seven in the exchange rate. Bunch of drunken soldiers and more drained treasury never hurt.
He looked around in frustration. There should be so much more he could do.
He slipped out and Pig followed him quietly as he slipped into the medical tent. Some of the injuries even the wine couldn't cure. Brain tissue could be regrown, but the information, the memories, and the skills were gone forever. The random connections of the new growth would take years of therapy to sort out. And reeducation. He stopped at a young woman's side, and tried to impose his own brain activity on the growing mass inside her skull. He sighed. Maybe it would help if he tried it after the brain was grown, but a baby wasn't deeply comatose, and the brain tissue being grown just wasn't getting the right stimulus. All he could do was try. He walked between the six beds trying to impose order on chaos. Giving them wine. At least it was quiet here. The doctors tended to take care of the noisy ones first, when it got busy.
He checked the spinal injuries, and sighed with relief, this time. These injuries could be healed, and were coming along nicely. He dosed them as well.
Amputations. He'd seen the old hands circulating with wine, down here. He gave them each another heavy dose. From what had been said they could regenerate limbs when they got back to "a proper hospital on Earth." So Xen was just speeding things up, in case they got stuck here for months. Years. If they make trouble locally, or start recruiting and training, we'll have to do something about them.
He listened to the chatter, subdued and shocked . . . among some of the men who'd been here for decades, there was even a bit of pride that the sneering newcomers had been slapped down by the magic they had scoffed at. But it was pretty subdued; many of the old timers hadn't really believed in magic. Not the kind that had just killed over two hundred of their fellow Earthmen.
He reported back, getting sent up the chain of command and finally landing in Rufi's office, with Janic.
"Any recommendations?" The general glanced between them.
Xen sighed. "They sent some kids to the wizard school. Nil sent a note to say that he'd study them for a bit. But I don't think we should let them leave."
Janic drummed his fingers. "Right check the Wizards' School, and Ash. I don't want to face trained wizards the next time we tangle with Auralia.
"I can bubble them, release them when this war with Earth is settled."
Both his superiors gazed at him.
He sighed. "Or kill them."
Chapter Thirty-two
Fall 1395
Wizards School, Prairie Coast
Pyrite was happy to carry Xen down to the Wizard's school.
:: You don't need me, on the border. ::
"Yeah . . . so far. If I leave you here, how much trouble are you going to get into?"
:: I ought to steal a couple of mares from Dun. ::
"That's only fair—since he hogged most of the palominos. Okay, but be careful. He's a canny old fellow and he knows a lot of magic."
:: If he turns me into a purple bunny, will you rescue me? ::
:: Of course. ::
They wound through corridors, Karista to Crossroads to Ash. Then a ten mile gallop down to the wizards' tower and through the gate to Prairie Coast.
Xen unsaddled Pyrite and shed his boots and more clothes, dumping everything on the porch of the "University" before walking down to the beach. Class was in session, with a pack of teenage boys having a sandcastle contest—still in the building stage. No doubt, after lunch they'd be attacking and defending them from each other's magically thrown sand missile attacks.
Dydit was stretched out on the sand, pretending to snooze while making sure his students didn't kill each other or themselves.
Nil was further down the beach with two men.
Solti Kenton Lillian, when he was in Karista, playing diplomat. And a blonde man, good looking, a few years older than Xen. Both of them leaked glow, thoughts and emotions.
Poor fellows. I'm not going to teach them how to form a really strong mental shield . . . yet. I need to pick their brains, since they're right here and handy.
"So, gave up on the social whirl in Karista?"
&
nbsp; The former Solti Kenton Lillian squirmed a bit. "I need . . . I just couldn't stand not finding out about these things I do."
"Yeah, and instinctive magic can be dangerous. Well, accidentally dangerous. With training we do it on purpose. So. Master Dydit says you and . . . Basil and Lenny? You three need mage specific training. Which I have."
It always worked better with eight, but four would do. Xen hauled them a bit further up the beach and demonstrated how to form a compass.
And in a mage compass, their thoughts were much more open to each other. Xen had enough experience to shield what he didn't want them to know, and picked their brains mercilessly.
Then he reverse bubbled them all. "Sorry, but there are some things that the Earth, as a whole, should not know. And how very few strongly magical people we have and how we are so unorganized and mostly not connected to the military? Nope. Not till you lot agree to leave us alone and stick to it."
He sauntered down the beach, bubbling the Earthers as he encountered them.
Nil scowled at the statues spotted about his demesnes. "Goats work better."
"Yeah, but we can pop these guys out in a few months—or years—and they won't realize that any time has passed. Some people pick up bad habits in that goat shape."
"Most of them were already corrupted." He cast a glance down the beach, where the other students were shifting the "statues" around. "But you're right. Dydit wasn't a very nice fellow for several years after getting out of the spell."
Xen reported back to Colonel Janic, who just sighed.
"I hope they stay that way, surrounded by a pack of juvenile wizards. It kept the God of Art out of the way for . . . ?"
"Almost three months." Xen nodded. "But he was a god, with lots of experience with bubbles. These are kids, and only one of them has any dimensional ability at all. And no training."
"I hope. Now check in with Lefty. We shouldn't need anything but observers for awhile on the border. So perhaps this would be a good time to start on some reports?"