Tales from the Magitech Lounge

by Saje Williams

  “You traitorous bitch!” He squeezed the firing stud.

  The weapon whined and bucked in his hand, but did nothing else.

  Dylan smiled sadly. “Add attempted murder to the list of charges,” she said dispassionately. “You’ve lost your mind, Montague. And Fleet knows it. I’ve been recording this whole exchange.”

  “That,” I said, unable to resist the urge to chime in, “counts as checkmate, asshole.”

  * * *

  We attended Montague’s court martial in person. Ordinarily civilians weren’t allowed to witness such proceedings, but we were there as witnesses for the prosecution. And not only us. When Stormchild and Rio, both legendary figures in their own right, took the stand, it was all over for Montague except for the crying.

  Military strategies had changed a lot since the Cen War. Military thinking had changed a lot. The generals now understood that one could be both strong and peaceable at the same time, that diplomacy and negotiation had to be a part of any long-range military strategy. That unthinking aggressive action left you vulnerable, regardless of how the situation looked on the surface.

  Montague had been a throwback—a type of militant left over from a bygone age who hadn’t caught up with the new policies. He was fearful, and believed that the best defense was a good offense. Always.

  These days, Fleet policy suggested the opposite. An effective and powerful defense was the best offense possible. Or, as Deryk Shea, the greatest hand-to-hand fighter in the history of the world, once put it—“attacking first leaves you vulnerable. Counter-punching allows you to take advantage of your enemy’s vulnerabilities.”

  Reportedly, Napoleon had once said, “Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.” And Montague had made a major mistake. He’d played fast and loose with the most powerful beings in this universe. And it had just come around to bite him in the ass.

  Of course, as I was thinking this, he was implementing another plan entirely, and before Dylan could scoop him up, he vanished with a loud “pop”!

  She stared at the spot he’d vacated. “Huh. That’s not good.”

  Jack frowned. “Magic?”

  “Psi. The fucker’s a psi and we never knew it.”

  “Goes to show that even starships with the status of demi-gods don’t know everything,” Jack mused aloud. “Or djinn either, for that matter.”

  Dylan shot him a glance and snorted. “Yeah, well. Omniscience is over-rated.”

  “Speak for yourself,” he shot back with a grin.

  “What just happened?” I asked them both. I didn’t fail to note how comfortable the two of them seemed to be together, and I wasn’t sure quite what to make of it. Was Jack falling into a romance with this creature? Not that I could blame him, if you got right down to it. She was beautiful, after all, and intelligent, and powerful.

  But she wasn’t human anymore. She didn’t really wear flesh, though she cloaked herself in the semblance of it. She was less alive than the vampires that hung out in the Lounge. I could see her true form in magesight, a kind of perception Jack was, fortunately or unfortunately, completely unable to attain.

  In magesight she appeared ghost-like, spectral, the core of her a hard knot of interwoven silver mana strands, a weaving so complex I couldn’t have begun to count all the threads that had gone into forming the heart of her. Her outer form, the spectral one, was made up of more strands, these ones bent and manipulated into particular guises.

  All in all, I estimated her inner and outer bodies were composed of as many as fifteen hundred mana strands.

  Unlike a mage, she could not see and manipulate other strands, but, then again, she hardly needed to. The spell at her core could generate limited numbers of its own threads, and she could manipulate not only those, but any currently being used to form her outer shell in much the same way as any mage.

  Truth be told, she was probably even more powerful than Sirius had been. The mageship Radiance had divested itself of all its magical power at the moment of its destruction, and invested every strand of it into Dylan’s resurrected form.

  I turned and looked straight at Jack. “Now that we’ve got that bit of nonsense out of the way,” I told him, “I want to move.”

  His brow furrowed and he frowned at me. “Move? You don’t like living above the bar anymore? I suppose we could go somewhere else, but—“

  “I want to move out,” I told him simply. “I want my own place. I want to get on with my life, to make up for all the years I missed.”

  I knew it would hit him hard, this admission, and I felt a brief stab of sympathy for his stricken expression. He’d enjoyed his little stint as my surrogate parent, and, I must admit, it was nice to actually experience what a real father may have been like.

  But though I was still trapped in the body of a child, I wasn’t one. And, though it gave me a sense of security to be guarded and treated as if I were what I appeared to be, I knew that time was coming to a close. Jack didn’t know it, but another woman had him in her sights and far be it from me to stand in the way of what could be a romance of epic proportions.

  Or tragic proportions.

  “I don’t understand. Have I done something to offend you, Anya?” It about killed me to see that hurt puppy-dog look in his eyes.

  “It’s not about you, Jack. It’s about me. It’s about the fact that I’ve spent long enough as a child, under someone else’s wing. It’s time for me to see if I can fly on my own. And believe me, I can.”

  “I believe you,” he told me. “So when do you want to do this?” I could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he considered potential places for me to live, safely ensconced within a few blocks of one of the Lounge patrons.

  I considered avoiding anywhere near the others, but decided that might be carrying it too far. There was no reason to completely dodge the people who’d become my friends in order to assert my independence. That would be the actions of a child, not the adult I desperately wanted—needed—to become.

  “If you don’t mind, Jack, I’d like to speak with her for a moment,” said Dylan, and I froze. What could she say?

  Had I been being entirely honest with myself at the time, I would’ve acknowledged, at least privately, that part of my decision to become more independent was in reaction to the apparent affection growing between the two of them. I was jealous.

  I’m not sure why I should have been, considering I didn’t see Jack as anything more than a father figure. If anyone, my romantic interest, subtle as it was, had fallen on Kevin. To him, however, I was a child, regardless of how precocious I may have been.

  In some ways he was right. My ability to deal with the social requirements of an adult, and my sense of emotional balance were seriously undeveloped, but the growing awareness of my lack had also made me realize that I needed to be on my own. As long as I was treated like a little girl, it would be that much harder for me to present myself as a grown-up.

  Let’s just say the whole thing tied my thinking up in knots. I think I was doing the right thing, for the right reasons, but I doubt I’ll ever be a hundred percent sure of that. I kept stumbling over my emotions. All that which I experienced inside the Dimension of Mirrors may have given me some perspective, but I was still physically just entering puberty. Which meant that my hormones were raging, my brain wasn’t completely routed properly, and my concept of adulthood was still as much a personal theory as any kind of living reality.

  I looked beseechingly at Jack, who of course had no real say in the matter. She’d asked as a point of courtesy, not because she required or requested his permission.

  He nodded abruptly. “I’ll be upstairs.”

  We both watched him leave and, once we’d heard the upstairs door close, I turned to inspect her. She was truly beautiful, I noted, with a distinct pang of something approaching envy. She was everything I was not: a fully formed woman with curves in all the right places and a perfect, heart-shaped face that no man could see as anything but
breathtaking.

  Even if she was no longer human, she was still gorgeous. I sighed. “What?” I didn’t feel like being diplomatic or polite. Not at the moment. Yes, it was juvenile, but what difference did that make in the scheme of things?

  “This decision of yours…it has nothing to do with me, does it?”

  “Shouldn’t you be out chasing Montague?” I asked her. Hardly a subtle change of subject, I know, but it was the best I could come up with on short notice.

  “He can’t get far,” she replied, raising one eyebrow.

  I wondered if she could do that before she became a djinn or if that was a useless but interesting side effect of the transition.

  “I like Jack a lot,” she continued, “and I’m pretty sure he feels the same way about me. I’m not trying to horn in on your life here—“

  “You’re not,” I interrupted. “I need to make my own life and this provides me a good opportunity.”

  She wasn’t buying it. Not entirely. Her calm gaze turned sympathetic and it made me want to scream at her. I didn’t need her sympathy. I didn’t need anything from her.

  “You are legally an adult,” she stated, unnecessarily, “but I’m not sure this is the best thing for you right now. A few months of tutelage with a couple of mages doesn’t take the place of real schooling. If I were you, I’d consider enrolling in one of the retro high schools here in the city. There are a lot of skills you’ll need if you really plan to make it on your own out there. Magic will only get you so far.”

  Don’t you just love unsolicited advice? I wanted to tell her to go screw herself, but didn’t see how that would help matters any. “I’ll keep that in mind,” I said dryly. “Is there anything else?”

  “What do you have against me?” she asked, surprising me a little. I guess it was a little silly of me to expect her not to notice.

  “You’re not human,” I told her. “You’re immortal now and Jack’s falling for you. I don’t see how that can end any way but badly.”

  She let out a short laugh. It sounded a little bitter to me. “For me, perhaps. Jack’s an ordinary mortal, not even parahuman or a mage. His lifespan may reach a hundred years and I’ve lived nearly half of that already. I’m the one who’s going to have to watch him slowly descend into decrepitude and sit by him on his deathbed.” Her lips quirked into a sad smile. “And what’s really bad about it is that I could easily grant him eternal life. But I know he won’t take it. He likes being a normal. It’s who he is—the one ordinary man surrounded by freaks. A part of them but apart from them.

  “He knows what I am, Anya. And it doesn’t bother him. Why does it bother you so much?”

  I really didn’t want to answer that question. Primarily because I didn’t have an answer. Not even for myself. So I shrugged.

  Her gaze took on a piercing aspect, as if she were trying to penetrate a veil that didn’t exist, to read something in me I couldn’t identify myself. “Dammit, stop it!” I snapped. “I don’t know! I’m surrounded by freaks all the time and don’t care one way or another who they become involved with, but for some reason it bothers me that you’re becoming involved with Jack!”

  She nodded as if this was nothing more or less than she’d anticipated. I hated how smug she seemed at that moment. She might not have been all-knowing, but she played the part entirely too well for my taste.

  “I don’t know the whole story of how you became trapped in the Dimension of Mirrors, Anya, but I have a feeling it has to do with a very serious betrayal. Something with which you’ve never had the opportunity to come to terms. So you’re dragging around a large piece of baggage and you refuse to let anyone else try to lighten the load for you.”

  I wanted to snarl at her, but she was right. As far as it went. My trust for adults—for most other people—went only so far. I trusted Jack, but I guess now that someone else, someone I didn’t know very well at all, was entering his life, I expected him to turn away from me too. It was an all-too familiar pattern in my life.

  My mother had done that. She’d put the wants and needs of the men in her life before my own. Every time. And I’d finally paid a very high price for her neglect. The way I saw it, the only higher price I could have paid was with my life, and even that was debatable.

  On some level I might have been grateful, because the bastard had given me the gift of magic—though he had no idea that was what he was doing at the time. How could he have known? He must’ve been one of the first few infected by the arcane virus. And since he was half blotto most of the time on alcohol or other drugs, he probably never recognized or even noticed the change in perceptions it inevitably brought.

  I looked outward once again and saw Dylan shaking her head. “You don’t need parents, Anya. You’ve grown beyond that need, mentally, if not emotionally and biologically. What you need most now are friends, adult friends who can teach you what it means to be a grown-up in this brave new world. And I know you harbor some resentments against me, but I’d like nothing more than the chance to be your friend. In fact, I’d consider it an honor.”

  Her words and the sincere tone carried with them seemed to paralyze my tongue. I tried to make it work, to send words forth, but it was as if she’d glued the organ to the roof of my mouth.

  She didn’t appear to notice. “Most humans in this time, freak or no, grow up surrounded by a loving family, raised by parents who work very hard to teach them the ins and outs of a strange, strange society where monsters are only rarely monsters in the truest sense of the word and the most innocuous can be the most dangerous. But, in the end, Anya, you’re nobody’s child but your own. We can guide you, we can protect you when you most need it, but the only one who can really teach you about this world and your place in it is you yourself.

  “And that’s the one thing you can’t ever forget. What you do and choose to be is on you. No one else.”

  I stared at her. She was right, of course. I think all of us had tried to think of me as a kid who needed parents, someone in particular to gradually introduce me to this world and its strange inhabitants and customs, all so different from the one into which I’d been born. But I wasn’t a child. None of them were, or could be, my parents. In an odd way, it was as if I had been born fully formed, able to speak, to learn, and to work magic in a world that made no real sense to me.

  And it was my task to figure out where I belonged within it. No one else could determine that for me. No parents could guide me in their footsteps. There was no family business or legacy to which I could be attached. I was alone and yet I wasn’t.

  I had all of them, my freakish brethren. None able to act in loco parentis, but as strange siblings to prop me up when I faltered. Not blazing a trail for me to follow, but traveling alongside me wherever it may lead.

  I understood what she meant now, and suddenly I realized that I’d been about to make a terrible mistake. I wasn’t ready to leave the nest completely. I needed to ease myself out of it, not abandon my strange family, but expand my horizons.

  “Tell me more about these retro high schools,” I said to her, offering up a tiny, slightly apologetic smile. It was really the best I could do. But at least I meant it.

  Episode II: The Dream of the Djinn

  Most people mistake me for a human being. This is good because I don’t want to have to explain what I am to anyone I should happen to meet on the street. Mages can see what I am if they look, but few of them are rude enough to question me.

  I’m a djinn. Possibly the only djinn on Earth Prime or in the whole Confederation of Human Worlds. That makes me more unique than anything that walks or flies in this universe.

  And I’m in love. With a mortal man.

  I look at him sometimes and it makes me ache to know that his short life will be over in what amounts to the blink of an eye. He will be gone and I will remain.

  I understand why many immortals forswore love and even passion for thousands of years. They could not tolerate watching those they loved wither and d
ie in front of them, powerless to do anything about it.

  I can’t imagine how many times they had the lesson driven home before they were able to grasp this reality, though. Our emotions are not so easily bent to our will. Agony must be piled on top of anguish for us to learn how dangerous love can be.

  My name is Dylan Shepherd. I was once a mageship pilot, a member of one of the most elite units in all of the Confed Fleet. But my ship destroyed itself in an act of desperation, trying to save what has become an alternate Earth from the depredations of another of her kind—a rogue mageship whose base programming had been altered by a human intelligence operative. The way I see it, that agent himself is responsible for Radiance’s death and my own.

  Yes. I died. But in her last breath, so to speak, my ship used every erg of her magical power and skill to bring me back from beyond the grave. She grabbed my spirit and forced it into the artificial construct of an extremely complex spell weave. I was dead and then I wasn’t. I personally buried my own body, along with the others who’d died in that short battle, some half mile beneath the place where we had fallen.

  When I returned to Earth Prime, the world at the center of the immortals’ sphere of influence, I resigned my commission from Fleet. I didn’t belong there anymore. My ship was gone, my memory of her sacrifice too bitter in my mouth for me to pretend to respect my superiors.

  I had changed in more ways than immediately apparent.

  I sought out the Magitech Lounge and the man who ran it. The one who had been brought into the past by Radiance and had witnessed both my death and rebirth. An ordinary man with an extraordinary heart.

  I was already falling in love with him, though I didn’t really know it yet. I knew I wanted to see him again, to look into his eyes and see myself reflected there.

  When I arrived he had company, a Military Intelligence agent of my acquaintance, one who’d been involved during the design phase of the second run of mageships—the run that had produced Ranger, the ship who’d gone rogue.