Mage Hunter (Lost Tales of Power Book 8)

by Vincent Trigili

  “The question is, my dear: what are you?” he said before his ghostly form faded away, leaving Raquel alone looking down on Mathorn and Shadow as they talked. The two of them were from different realms and yet there was a kinship between them, evident even in their silent banter. A kinship that Raquel watched with longing.

  26

  03-23-0065 Lyshell

  Starfire’s eyes widened and for a moment he was speechless. “Her mind wiped?”

  “Yes, that is the fate awaiting both of us if we return,” I said.

  “They would have to fight me and my men before I’d allow such a thing! But how is it possible?”

  “Our memory cores — no, that is not the right word. Our organic memory was replaced by cybergenic memory modules, giving us perfect recall and the ability to share our memories, but being essentially computers, their contents can be erased.”

  Starfire looked me in the eye and said, “I don’t think so.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  He turned to Joan. “Joan, you’re welcome to stay here until we hear back from Master Mathorn. That ring on your finger grants you our protection. However, since you are a mundane I will need to ask you to stay in the quarters that we provide.”

  “You’re going to lock her up?” I said.

  Turning to me, he replied, “She will be given a private apartment but she’ll have to stay inside it. I realize that is essentially a prison, but the only alternative would be to put her back in your apartment.”

  Joan smiled gently. “It’s okay, Ly. Down here they can’t send me any commands or read my memories. I can just relax for however long it takes.”

  Locked up in private quarters versus going back to Command and being reassigned seemed to be only a slight improvement, but at least it would be short-lived.

  “What did you mean by saying, ‘I don’t think so’?” asked Joan.

  “Memory doesn’t work like that. You can’t cut it out with a knife. There is no one place in the brain where memory is stored.”

  That sounded reasonable, but I have had mine wiped at least three times that Joan knew of. “But this wouldn’t be the first time my memory has been wiped. They have done it before.”

  He smiled. “After you’ve had a few years training as a wizard, seek me out and we’ll see if I can find those memories in your head.”

  “How could you do that?” asked Joan.

  “My primary power is what we call the mental arts or psychic powers. That means the domain of the mind is where I work. I would be willing to bet all your memories are still in there, merely blocked rather than erased.”

  I nodded, not wanting to argue the point but still dubious. “You said Joan would be locked up; what about me?”

  “I’d like to put you to work, if you don’t mind. You have extensive training and experience in hunting magi, and that is essentially what we do here. If you like, I could assign you to a station to join one of our data review teams. You have to stay in this complex, but I’m sure you could help.”

  “Do I have a choice?” I asked.

  “Of course you do. I’m not a double-talking mundane, you know.” He paused and looked at Joan. “Sorry, that must have sounded rude.”

  Joan smiled and said nothing. His comment reminded me that there was an inherent bias among some of the magi, a prejudice I would fight once I was securely part of their number. Right now it was best not to rock the boat. I didn’t want to jeopardize Joan’s chances.

  Starfire continued, “You can choose to leave and return to your old life, you can stay here and help or you can sit around and do nothing until we hear from Master Mathorn.”

  “What are the chances that our extradition might be denied?” I asked.

  “In your case, none. You are already free of the Empire and a citizen of the Wizard Kingdom. Normally we can handle everything here without involving our superiors. A magus comes to us and we process him or her. Notifications are sent to all the proper channels, and the magus is sent home to the Wizard Kingdom through the gate. Your case is apparently more complicated, or Master Mathorn would not have interfered,” he said.

  “And Joan?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. We don’t handle mundanes who wish to become citizens of the kingdom . Many do immigrate, but I assume in this case you’re looking for political asylum,” he said.

  I looked to Joan. “Are you happy with all this?”

  She nodded. “I’m an experienced nurse. With your operation, you must have wounded here from time to time. I can help with that.”

  Starfire smiled. “Yes, we do. We usually triage them here. Minor injuries are dealt with, serious ones go straight to the local hospital.” He paused for a moment with a far-off look in his eyes, then snapped back to reality and said, “That sounds like a good idea. Someone will be up shortly to take you to our infirmary. You can work a shift there each day for however long this takes, then return to your room. Thank you for offering.”

  “Thank you for helping me,” she said.

  “What about you?” he asked me.

  “If I just sit around here I’ll go insane. Put me to work,” I said.

  “Excellent,” he replied with a broad smile.

  “How long will we be here?” asked Joan.

  “I don’t know. I imagine only a few days, but that’s an educated guess rather than actual knowledge,” he said.

  A very tall, thin man wearing a medic’s uniform stepped in, saying, “Nurse Joan?”

  Joan rose. “Yes?”

  “I’m Head Nurse Brian; come with me and I’ll show you your duty station.”

  Joan looked at me and said, “Dinner later?”

  I nodded and they left.

  27

  03-23-0065 Lyshell

  Starfire led me out onto the main floor to introduce me to the group that would be my team while I stayed in the complex.

  “This is Laurel; she will be your commander. Traditionally you would refer to her as ‘Master’, and when you go back to the kingdom you should be careful to do that unless told otherwise; out here we tend to be more modern, so ‘ma’am’ will do just as well,” said Starfire.

  Laurel had dark skin and a clean-shaven head. Covering much of her head and face were a series of tattoos drawn with white ink. It was a complete interwoven pattern of raised spirals, dots and lines. The tattoo disappeared into the neckline of her uniform, implying that it covered much of her torso also.

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” I said.

  She scowled. “Great. It would have to be you.”

  It seemed I would have a long uphill battle to rebuild all the bridges I’d burnt over the years.

  Starfire gave her a look and something imperceptible passed between them.

  She gestured at a terminal. “Sit there and start going through all the reports that are piling up. See if you can find anything interesting in them.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” I said and sat down at the terminal. I guessed introductions to the rest of the team would wait until later.

  The reports had been piling up for a while, going by the dates on them. There were hundreds of them, with varying degrees of completeness and detail. Some had obviously been filed just to check a box on a to-do list, and others were blatant attempts to impress a senior officer who had probably never seen the report.

  It took longer than I would have liked to figure out all the controls on the terminal, but once I did I had the reports sorted by date and time and displayed in a high-speed scroll. My cybernetic eye was able to scan them all in and file them for processing by my internal computers much faster than any human could read them. I set two of my processing cores looking for patterns in the data that would suggest something of interest. While that subsystem crunched the reports, I used the time to skim through anything else to which the terminal had access. I needed to build a database in which to understand the context of the reports.

  Some of the reports had notes on them from other magi
reviewers. Most of the notes amounted to marking the reports as not worthy of follow-up. Other files suggested that there were indications that a sorcerer cell was operating out of the area the reports were covering, but nothing in the reports corroborated that. Still, they had continued to send magi to that area to collect data. They must have had good reason to suspect something.

  I pulled up all the video surveillance from the area in question, limiting it to the times when the reports were filed. I compared each report against the video, and slowly something began to emerge. All the videos showed gaps in the crowds that seemed to move with the crowds. Magi.

  I began to build a profile of the movements of the gaps. Some magi were just passing through, but there was a definite pattern to the movement of a subgroup.

  A hand touched my shoulder and I looked up to see Laurel standing over me. “It’s been almost a full day; what have you found so far?”

  “A day? Wow.” I had lost track of time, but my internal chronometer agreed with her.

  I pulled up a still-shot of a market square and zoomed into a specific section. “Ma’am, there is something there. I haven’t figured out what yet and I’m still crunching the data from the reports, but I’m sure of it.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “Possibly a meeting point, but I need more time to be sure,” I said.

  She nodded curtly. “Continue in the morning. Now get some food and sleep,” she said and walked off.

  The morning? A quick check of the time verified that I had been working at this station for hours. A new shift of wizards was taking over the terminals, and one was waiting for mine. He looked young, perhaps only fifty years of age. I didn’t know who he was, and there was no identification floating over his head. He looked human, and was dressed in the uniform of a low-ranking Imperial mage. It seemed odd that they were wearing that uniform in here, but I suppose it made things simpler.

  “Hey, how do I log off this?” I asked, gesturing at the terminal. I hadn’t been briefed on any of the normal protocols and didn’t want to get into trouble on my first day.

  He smiled. “New here? Well, just close whatever you opened. The system tracks who is using the machine through biometrics, so there’s no need to log on or off.”

  I did as he instructed and said, “This is my first day; can you tell me where I can find food?”

  “Here, I’ll give you a map,” he said in my head.

  An image formed in my mind of him holding out a map and offering it to me. The obvious response was to reach out and take it. The moment I did that, my organic mind suddenly understood the entire layout of the complex.

  “Thanks,” I said. Because of my implants and training I was able to keep my voice and expression calm, but inside I was in awe of what had just happened. It was like downloading a map from datanet but a simpler and richer experience.

  I took my leave of him and headed straight for the cafeteria. I didn’t have to follow a map as I would have had I downloaded it, because I knew the way there as if I had been walking these halls for years.

  The cafeteria was busy as men and women of various races arrived for their evening meal. I searched the crowd and found Starfire talking with a female wizard over a plate of food. I could see that it was an intimate occasion for them, but I had to find out where they were keeping Joan.

  I was annoyed to find that this woman, like almost everyone in the cafeteria, had no records I could search to identify her. It was very disconcerting having to deal with so many people without knowing anything about them.

  “Ah, Lyshell,” said Starfire as I approached. “This is my dear friend Maylin.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said.

  “I assume you’re looking for Joan?” asked Starfire.

  I nodded.

  “I’ll have her escorted here to join you. Please help yourself to dinner.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “I’m sorry that we don’t have any regeneration stations here. How long can you go without one?” he asked.

  “Weeks, if I remain undamaged,” I said with a smile, and then left them to their meal.

  The cafeteria was set up like any other military cafeteria I’d had the dubious pleasure of eating in: cooks with pots dumping unidentifiable food onto plates while men and women lined up holding trays for these plates. At times like these I was thankful I had no taste buds anymore.

  I found a free table and waited. It wasn’t long before Joan came in, got her food and joined me.

  “Hi, Ly,” she said as she sat down.

  I smiled. “No guards?”

  “They’re with me most places I go, but when I told the head nurse I was going to have dinner with you, he told the guards to leave me alone.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, I think they have the idea we’re in a relationship.”

  I had to chuckle at that. It was an obvious assumption for people to make, but as a mage hunter that kind of thing was beyond my programing. Was that how I knew Joan, though? Had we once been in a relationship? I couldn’t experience one, but maybe she still could. This was not the venue to ask those kinds of question, but hopefully in a few days we would be free to speak privately and I would finally get some answers.

  “I didn’t see any need to tell them otherwise,” she said with a smile.

  “If it keeps you free from the guards, then I don’t either.”

  Her smile faltered at that comment, but only for a moment. I knew that was an important clue, but I couldn’t see how it fit into the bigger picture. She told me a little about her day as we ate, but underneath her words I could see something was bothering her.

  “What’s wrong, Joan?” I asked.

  “Oh, Ly, once we get datanet back, I’m doomed.”

  No datanet! That’s why I don’t have anyone’s identification. The few I had must have been cached. “What do you mean?”

  “The moment the data connection is restored, my internal systems will dump everything that has happened here and retrieve my new orders.”

  “What will those orders be?”

  She shrugged. “Most likely to return to base for reassignment.”

  “If Master Mathorn is able to secure your freedom, that won’t happen.”

  She looked up with tears in her eyes. “I want out, but I know if I go back they’ll make me stay.”

  “Not while I yet live,” I told her.

  28

  03-24-0065 Lyshell

  The next morning, Laurel sent someone to fetch me for my shift, with the simple instruction to continue from where I’d left off. I found an open terminal, reset it to work at my speed and dug back in. I had let my cores continue to crunch data overnight while I lay in maintenance mode, and they’d found some very interesting patterns that I wanted to verify visually. By midday I was sure I had found something.

  Laurel was working nearby, so I stood up and waited for her to notice me. Eventually she did and walked over.

  “What is it?” was her curt greeting.

  “Ma’am, I’ve found something,” I said.

  “And what would that be?”

  I gestured to the map on the screen. “I’m 87% confident that there’s a sorcerer rally point in that warehouse.”

  “87?” she repeated with raised eyebrows.

  “Yes; it’s hard to get a higher probability without visiting the location,” I said.

  “Not 90 or 85, but 87?” she said again.

  Then Starfire walked over, apparently summoned by Laurel. “What’s this, now?”

  “The walking computer thinks he’s found something,” said Laurel.

  “Show me,” he said.

  I pulled up screens and traced some lines. “These lines all represent unknown magi traveling through the area. Many just pass through with no discernable pattern; these are probably normal citizens. However, at the same times each day various groups enter and leave that warehouse.”

  “How do you know they are sorcerers
?” asked Starfire.

  “I searched all your databases and found no reference to the location. You have several teams routinely monitoring the area because you suspect a cell is operating out of it. Well, there is definitely a group of magi there, and since you think there’s likely to be a sorcerer cell in the vicinity, I can reasonably assume that they’re sorcerers.”

  “Laurel, send a smoker to check it out,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “What is a smoker, sir?” I asked.

  “A mage whose specialty is stealth and reconnaissance,” said Starfire.

  “You know, I remember chasing a mage into that building,” I said. “It was a long time ago. The magus had a good lead on me, but we had troops closing in on the area. I saw him enter and followed. Huh.”

  “Huh? Huh, what?” asked Starfire.

  “Reviewing my logs from that incident, it seems that I felt cold as I crossed the threshold, which — ”

  “Cold like a cool breeze, or cold like ice?” cut in Starfire.

  “According to what I recorded, it was like ice pouring through my veins.”

  “Hold! Hold! Hold!” I felt or heard or something.

  Everyone in the room paused. I heard no more but suddenly everyone was in action, focused on their stations. Minutes passed before I finally asked, “What’s happening, sir?”

  Starfire looked at me in surprise, but quickly recovered. “Sorry; I forgot you can’t hear us yet.”

  “Sir, I heard a ‘hold’ command but nothing more,” I said.

  “I had to stop our smoker before he reached that warehouse. It would be foolish to send in a single mage after what you just said.”

  “But why, sir?” I asked.

  “You are a mage. If you felt that degree of cold, that was your body’s way of warning you that powerful sorcerers were present, possibly even a necromancer.” He turned to Laurel. “Get a team of our three best smokers to check the story, and prepare a raid team to follow them.”