by J. S. Morin
“Stay put,” Carl said. “We’re not killing pilots today.”
“We’re not?” Amy asked, gaze drawn to the radar as the Mobius closed in on Ithaca’s gas giant parent. “Because those fuckers are closing in fast.”
Carl measured the angle to the gas giant against their velocity. Numbers flew past on the computer screen, all red. “Roddy!” he shouted into the comm. “Any power not going to the engines, give to the shields. All forward!”
“Last thing to hit that planet killed a civilization,” Roddy shot back. But as Carl watched the dashboard consoles, he saw that the laaku had done as ordered.
“Not dying today…” Carl muttered stubbornly.
The Typhoons continued to close. It wouldn’t be long before they were in range to fire. With the Mobius’s shields all facing front, it wouldn’t take much to destroy them.
Carl flipped a switch and enabled aerodynamic mode. The shields formed into a knife edge to carve a hole for them in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere.
The ship lurched as they struck. Fire washed over the shields.
“The Typhoons are barely slowing,” Amy reported, able to keep a closer eye on the radar.
Carl angled their nose down. There was no longer anything to see. The atmosphere was muddy once they delved deep enough. “I have a plan.”
Amy released a sigh. “Good. Because I was starting to think we were screwed.”
“I need you to deliver a message to Esper.”
# # #
Esper waited on the common room couch. She could hear the shouts from the cockpit, but the more muted conversations were drowned out by the holo-projector. It was making pseudo-ocean noises and displaying a flowing, surrealistic sculpture rendered in tones of blue and teal. The idea was to relax her before what was promising to be a harrowing escape into the astral plane.
But shouted words like “Typhoon,” “closing,” and “shields full” were making it hard to relax.
Amy’s boots clomped down from the front of the ship. Esper immediately rose to offer up her seat despite being the only one camped out in the common room. “Message from the captain,” she said brusquely. “He respectfully requests an astral drop.”
“How soon can he stop?” Esper asked, watching the miasma of ignited gas flowing by them.
Amy took in a deep breath. “He won’t be.”
“Oh.”
“That a problem?” Amy asked.
The door to Rai Kub’s old quarters opened and the Rucker wizard, Enzio, popped his head out. “What’s this I hear about someone trying a drop on the move?”
“If we stop, those Typhoons are going to sniff us out and dust us,” Amy said. “I’m trying to keep calm here, but the longer you wait, the closer they’re getting. Whatever you need to do to get prepared, do it.”
Esper reached for Mort’s old staff. The wood always felt warm in her hand, more like living flesh than dead oak. It was almost like having Mort here with her and not the mere echo of his soul in her mind.
She waited for a hint of helpful advice, some sign that the despondent wizard was willing to help secure his own survival—and everyone else’s.
“You look unsure,” Enzio said, extending a hand toward the staff. “If you’ll allow me…”
Esper snatched it close to her body in both hands. “This is mine. It belonged to an old friend and mentor.” She shook her head, reminding herself that everyone was relying on her, and if she didn’t try, they were going to let this upstart hooligan make the attempt. “I’ve got this. Shoo. All of you. Go.”
“You sure?” Enzio asked, looking right at her. Esper avoided making eye contact. Whether he was a fool or spoiling for a test of wills for the staff, she didn’t have time for it.
“It’s poetic, in a way,” Esper said. “The Odysseus traveling between astral and realspace on the move is what started this whole business. Now it’s our only chance out. Now GO!”
This was it. Her against the universe with everyone’s life on the line. The rules of wizardry said not to go into astral while moving. Literal motionlessness was impossible, but they mostly meant to stop the silly ship before trying it. A little drifting was just mathematical error—nothing to worry over.
But perhaps the most important rule of wizardry was that wizards were rule breakers. The universe didn’t work to their liking, and when the laws of physics tried to say no, a wizard replied, “why not?” Now it was time to take one of magic’s major warnings and chuck it in the waste reclaim.
“Mort,” Esper whispered. “If you’re paying any attention at all, keep quiet unless I really start botching things up. Then, yell like crazy to get my attention.”
It was a paltry provision. If Esper failed, it was going to be too late for a recovery. One didn’t juggle the forces of the cosmos like eggs and ask someone to help once they hit the floor.
Using the dark language she’d once swore never to utter, Esper chanted.
The Mobius shook, and she pushed it from her mind.
The universe bucked like that mechanical bull the azrin used for amusement. Esper held tight.
Reality twisted in her grasp, snakelike, poisonous, but she refused to let go.
Ancient whispers from travelers long dead, lost in the astral while trying this very feat, attempted to dissuade her.
Esper ignored them.
And thus, the universe relented.
The astral gray appeared, and the navy ships were nowhere to be found. Here in the astral, Esper would have felt them.
Esper allowed them to drift a little deeper before she felt safe reporting to Carl. When the first tinges of purple appeared in the overhead dome, Esper stumbled to the cockpit. “Don’t make me do that again.”
# # #
Things had cooled down in the cockpit and the common room of the Mobius, but elsewhere on the ship tensions boiled. Roddy paced the cramped space of the engine room, digging deep into his stash of Earth’s Preferred, waiting for his captain to arrive.
When the door creaked open, Roddy threw back the last of his current can and tossed the empty over his shoulder to clatter into a corner. Then he drew himself up as tall as his laaku stature allowed and prepared for a confrontation.
“What’s the problem?” Carl asked. “And don’t tell me it’s anything mechanical. The next time you ask for my help with a systems problem will be the first. Especially with Niang aboard.”
Carl crossed his arms and leaned against a coolant pipe that sagged under his weight.
Roddy cringed, trying to force from his mind the work he’d have ahead if Carl ruptured that line. “It’s this whole misfit recruitment thing you’re fixated on. You’ve taken it too far this time.”
“Thought you and Niang were buds,” Carl said as if the notion perplexed him.
Roddy picked up a spanner and slammed it against the wall. The clang snapped Carl from his stupor to cover his ears. “Not him, you dimwit. Enzio. That Rucker double agent you picked up. The one trading fluids with your ex. You can’t possibly believe that a zillion Rucker ships left Ithaca, but this guy needed a ride with us.”
“He’s a defector.”
“On his own say-so! That’s just what a double agent would say.”
Carl sighed. “Listen. Do you trust me or not?”
“Trust is a corner table with your back to the wall,” Roddy countered. “Plus, you’ve got a spotty record on judging character.”
“Only on techs,” Carl pointed out. “Wizards I’ve got a feel for.”
Roddy bunched his fingers in the fur above his ears. “You don’t get it! Wizards and ships don’t mix. Everyone else uses star-drive mechanics so they get their shit fixed with minimal risk to the rest of the systems. If this boat wasn’t reinforced against astral magic—and don’t even get me started on how that all works—we could have been a toaster floating through space instead of a starship. We don’t need more wizards. We’ve got ‘em stacked like poker chips around here. Once we make it back to Pleasant Va
lley, we’ll be up to four. Six, if you count the stupid little tricks you and Amy can pull.”
Carl’s face became sober as a job applicant on test day. “You might be counting high.”
Roddy ambled over to his stash and pulled out two cans. He lobbed one to Carl and opened the other all the while keeping a narrow gaze on the con man he called captain. “What are you not telling me?”
“It’s just a hunch. Tea leaf reading. That sort of shit. But I think we might be running low soon.”
“Wait. What?” Roddy asked, sipping tentatively as his beer lest he spray it at Carl’s dangling bombshell. “You think Cedric’s gonna split over that pirate lady?”
“I’m not gonna make any predictions,” Carl said. “But my gut tells me we’re in for a shakeup. Felt the same before the Half-Devils split on us, but I didn’t want to admit it.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Never is.” Carl popped the top on his beer and lifted it in a toast. “To being wrong.”
“May you never get tired of it,” Roddy replied, and they both tipped back their beers.
# # #
Amy snorted when Carl plopped down on the bed beside her.
“You come back from an urgent call to the engine room and there’s beer on your breath,” she observed.
“The engines practically run on beer,” Carl countered. “Keeps the mechanic running.”
Amy let out a sigh that seemed to empty her completely. She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. “Somehow, I expected things to change.”
“Like, change how?” Carl asked. “I mean, the whole kid thing’s gonna shift the dynamic around here, but other than that, what were you thinking?”
“I dunno,” Amy replied. “Maybe rethinking our priorities? Playing it a little safer.”
“Sure. We’ll play it safer.”
“Safer how?” Amy asked. “We just tried an experimental magical solution to running a naval blockade while being chased by a squadron of Typhoons. If they match your voice patter or descramble Yomin’s fake ship ID, we’re right back to being wanted criminals with warrants across ARGO space.”
Carl sighed. “Maybe I need to update those vows I made to you.”
“They’re kind of traditional,” Amy said. “It’s a standard package.”
“Yeah, but we aren’t. So here’s the deal,” Carl said, looking Amy in the eye and seeing the love in hers. “I promise to love, honor, and all that stuff I already said. Plus, I promise not to lie to you except for surprises and things I think you’d be happier not knowing. I promise to keep you, the baby, and any potential future kids out of harm’s way to the best of my ability. I also promise to find some way to keep a breathable atmosphere around us, food on the table, and a fridge full of beer. I promise to find some way to make ends meet without being in constant danger, whether or not it’s legal. And I promise not to get mad if you point out how I’m fucking up any of it. I want to get this right, and I want to find out about it before it goes into unstable orbit.”
Amy smiled lopsidedly. “That’s the sweetest thing I think you’ve ever said.”
# # #
Roddy crept into his own quarters, knowing that the place was too small to hide. The meticulously maintained hinge didn’t make a peep, but the heavy steel door was impossible to silence. Shoni looked up from her computer console the instant he entered.
“Rodek,” she said formally with an incline of her head.
“Hey there, slick fur,” he replied cautiously.
“You have a choice to make,” she said, slipping away from the computer and settling onto their bunk with a conspicuously Roddy-sized space beside her.
Roddy eyed her like a coiled snake as he took the offered seat. “What kind of choice?”
“I realize that life on the honest side of the law offers a laaku in my position few options,” Shoni said. “The only skills for which I am formally trained I have been barred from practicing. However, that doesn’t mean I can subsist indefinitely on a diet flavored heavily by my own adrenal glands. I don’t mind cruising the dark side of the law, but as I learned in my time working for Don Rucker, there are safe places in the underworld. I’d like to live in one of them.”
“I didn’t hear a choice in there,” Roddy pointed out.
“The choice is whether you want to come live there with me.”
“Oh.”
Shoni raised a brow.
Roddy began to sweat. This was what he’d been dreading for months. He knew that one day he’d be called on to make a choice. It was Shoni or Carl. His best friend or the woman he loved. Neither was perfect. Arguably, both were trouble.
His hesitation lasted too long. Shoni grabbed one of the pillows off the bed and shoved it at him. “You can sleep in the engine room until you make up your mind.”
And so Roddy found himself wandering through the common room in a daze, clutching a pillow to his chest. Yomin, Esper, and Niang were sitting around watching some garbage on the holo—some romantic crap. It was bullshit, top to bottom. Romance…
What had romance ever done for anyone outside a holo-projection field?
There were times when the walls between quarters were too thin, but Shoni hadn’t once raised her voice. Nevertheless, everyone seemed to know not to bother the laaku mechanic as he sleepwalked his way down to the engine room.
He had some hard thinking ahead, and he didn’t plan on doing it sober.
# # #
The trip back to the safety and tranquility of Pleasant Valley had been mere days. Everyone who’d been left behind there was fine. The passengers aboard the Mobius had been tense, but the tension slowly eased for everyone aboard.
With one exception: Mort.
The huddled, occasionally weeping figure in Esper’s brain bore a resemblance to the Mort she’d known, but he wasn’t the same man. The familiar voice was laced with bitterness. The once-proud bearing was now a pair of hunched shoulders and a chin that spent most of its time resting on a collarbone.
Even Mort’s bowling was halfhearted these past days.
It was time Esper worked on fixing him.
As the rest of the crew offloaded personal effects to their asteroid-base accommodations, Esper sought out Keesha Bell. There was always an odd presence that wizards had, a sort of lump in the local laws of physics. Even at rest, a wizard exerted a pressure. There were two such lumps in Pleasant Valley—not counting her or Enzio. One was Cedric, and his was easy to account for since he came to meet the Mobius upon landing. Esper paid him little heed; she wasn’t in the mood for his mooning.
Keesha Bell was the other distortion in the laws of nature. Thanks to the peculiarities of asteroid geography, Esper felt the woman down below ground but knew it meant she was around the far side of the celestial rock.
Esper hiked. On foot, it was kilometers, but she had a purpose in her stride. Her resolve kept the journey from feeling its length. It was under an hour before she came within shouting distance of the distinguished old wizardess taking a picnic in the newborn grasses.
“Well, fancy seeing you here,” Keesha called out. Her manservant Hobson bowed gracefully at Esper’s arrival. “Won’t you join us?”
“I need to talk to you about something,” Esper said, eschewing propriety and manners in favor of maintaining her composure.
“Hey now!” Mort snapped in her head, suddenly figuring out her intent. “Don’t you dare. Don’t. You. DARE!”
“I declare. Is something bothering you, my dear?” Keesha asked, standing and brushing off her dress.
“Do you trust me enough to look me in the eye?” Esper asked. “I have… a certain ability that I learned from Mort.”
Keesha narrowed her eyes, then nodded, catching on quickly. She fluttered a hand toward Hobson. “Take the hover-cruiser. We can walk back.”
“Madam,” Hobson said with a bow before taking his leave.
As the echoes of the vehicles engines faded, Keesha looked into Esper’s eye. �
��Be warned. I’m no pushover.”
“Don’t worry,” Esper assured her before plunging them both into Esperville.
Within the confines of her own mind, Esper was in charge. She shunted Mort off to his own domain and locked the door behind him. When Keesha arrived a fraction of a second later, there was no sign of Mort.
“How quaint,” Keesha said, looking all around and strolling through the fields of grass not so different from Pleasant Valley. “So what’s this all about?”
“Mort’s not dead,” Esper blurted. The secret had clung too hard to be removed from her soul gently. She pulled it off like an adhesive bandage, quickly, to get the pain over with.
Keesha’s eyes flared. “That no-good, rotten—”
Esper put up her hands. “His body DID die,” she clarified. “I… I only saved his soul.”
Before she knew it, Keesha wrapped her arms around Esper. She felt the older woman’s sobs as her chest shook. “You did save him. Oh, Lord almighty, how I hoped you had. But you never said boo. Can’t just ask a girl if she’s a mind-stealing murderer, but I’d hoped. I prayed to the devil himself that you’d done it.”
“It was a split-second decision,” Esper said. “I wasn’t sure how much Mort ever told you.”
“I knew everything about that man,” Keesha said. “Closer than lovers, and I loved him all the more because he kept his word to Nancy despite having every reason not to.” She pushed away and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Funny, but Esper didn’t recall creating this version of Keesha with one. Must have been a function of her time spent in Mortania. “So where is he?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Esper said. “He hasn’t been himself lately. I don’t know if it’s cabin fever or existential dread or what, but he’s just moping around and making cruel comments at every opportunity.”