Mage Hunter (Lost Tales of Power Book 8)

by Vincent Trigili

“Hey! You there!” came from behind me.

  I turned and saw several guards running towards me. “Phym! We’re discovered! Get them out of there. I’ll create a distraction!”

  I rushed the group of guards heading towards me. They were expecting me to run, so they weren’t prepared as I slammed through their group and back the way Phym and I had come.

  “Stop!” they yelled.

  I kept running and they gave chase. I used the numerous junctions of the halls to stay just one turn ahead of them so that they couldn’t get a good shot, but close enough to be tantalizing. I didn’t want them to turn back.

  The station lights came on around me, so someone back in Central Command must have activated the power here. That would mean the security cameras and other defenses would be online also. That wasn’t good.

  “Wings, we got them out. Where are you?” said Phym’s voice over the comm.

  “Pull out from the station; I’ll jump into space and find you. If you have to flee, just go. I can hitch a ride home.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” she replied.

  “Then meet me in space,” I said. She was being foolish, but I hadn’t time to argue the point.

  I turned a corner and, as I’d feared, they had organized themselves and cut me off. I knew by the maps we had memorized that I was near an outside wall, but there was no airlock in this section.

  “Halt!” they yelled as they saw me.

  “I wondered if I’m your first love?” Phym’s question came unbidden into my mind.

  I stopped and took off my helmet, then my gloves. I turned to face them, and something inside me gave way. A dam broke and emotion washed through me. I was finished hiding. I was finished running. I turned and faced them.

  “Put your hands up and get on your knees!” they called out.

  I smiled. “No, I don’t think so.” I started walking towards them. “I’ll head for the airlock, if you wouldn’t mind moving out of my way.”

  “Kill him!” one of them called, and another shouted, “Fire!”

  Perfect! I felt the need to say something here, and a phrase came to me that I had read in a story about a man who rode dragons into war.

  “Not today!” I called and held up my exposed hands.

  I didn’t merely absorb the power, I pulled it in, drawing even their misses. They continued to fire and I continued to pull it in. I could feel the power growing inside me, wanting to claw its way out, but I continued to absorb it. My insides started to burn and the corners of my vision slowly turned red as I tried to hold in the power.

  “I wondered if I’m your first love?” played again in my head. I was done with hiding; Phym deserved better than that. I couldn’t teach her who she was just by telling her. I needed to live it myself.

  “Cease fire!” came the call.

  They must have temporarily blinded themselves from all the blaster fire and assumed I was dead. I heard them gasp as they saw me. I smiled. “Thank you; that’ll do nicely.”

  A fire was writhing in my gut, trying to get free. This bipedal form could not safely hold energy for long, unlike my native form. I need to consume it or expel it quickly.

  “What are you?” one of them gasped.

  I pointed a hand at the wall next to me. “One of the Shadow People. You might want to hold onto something now.” I activated the magnetic locks on my boots for stability, and then released the power in a jet that tore through the outer walls of the station and right into space.

  The atmosphere of the station rushed out into space and around me and blast doors dropped into place to protect the station. The guards were on the other side of the walls, protected from the vacuum of space. I waited until they were looking through the window.

  I stood there with my helmet and gloves off and waved at them, then leapt into the glorious vacuum. No more would I hide; I owed it to my first love to embrace who we were.

  As I flew away from the station, Phym came into sight.

  “I figured if a huge hole suddenly appeared in the side of the station, it would be connected to you,” she sent.

  “Phym, my love, let’s fly back to the Hospital Station as ourselves, alone,” I sent.

  “Do you really mean it?” she sent. Through our connection, I knew she was asking about more than the trip home. That was the first time I had used the word ‘love’ to define our relationship.

  “Yes. All of it.” I headed towards Master Raquel’s ship, reached out to the telepathic network and sent, “Master, we’ll meet you back at base. We’re going to fly back ourselves.”

  “Are you certain?” asked Master Raquel.

  “Yes. Saraphym needs to experience this, and Lyshell will need at least another week to work on the data,” I sent back.

  “Very well,” she sent with a mental smile. There was something else in her mental voice; longing, perhaps. Was she thinking about Narcion?

  We watched the cruiser align itself and jump away, leaving us alone in space.

  Phym flew loops around me. “A week? We have a whole week?” Her mental voice was giddy with excitement.

  “Well, I could get us back in a day or even less, but we might get distracted en route and be delayed,” I sent back.

  69

  06-05-0067 — Lyshell

  After a week with the data, it was time to present my findings to Master Raquel, Dr. Leslie and Dr. Hawthorne. The entire team assembled for the meeting, including Joan. Each of them had helped, and this was as much their work as mine. Once everyone was settled in, I flipped on the holographic display and set it to display an image of the station and the communications satellites around it.

  I took a deep breath and began. “As you are aware, we have found that the cyborg nation is actively broadcasting signals into our station from these jump repeaters with the intention of taking control of any and all persons who have implants. What we did not know was how or why. Thanks to the recent capture of an initiation broadcast, we have been able to build an implant simulator which allowed us to join the cyborg network.”

  I changed the display to show a generic bipedal form. “First, all implants can be interacted with wirelessly. This is necessary, since doing surgery to check on their status is impractical. Through this wireless connection, the cyborgs have been able to inject code that infects the implants and ultimately gives them complete control.”

  “But the implants are encrypted and secured,” objected Dr. Leslie.

  “True, but every major hospital in the galaxy has the means to access the implants,” noted Dr. Hawthorne.

  “Yes, and that provides a very large number of targets who could be compromised and expose that information,” I said.

  “Is that how it was done? Someone stole the information to exploit it?” asked Dr. Leslie.

  “Impossible for me to know. What I do know is that they’re using the master reset interface to get into the implants,” I said.

  “Of course,” mused Dr. Leslie. “That interface was built to provide access in emergencies when normal channels were compromised.”

  I nodded. “Once they’re in, they upload their custom code and take control. So far, they seem only to be recording information.”

  Dr. Leslie looked alarmed. “Are you saying that every single person on this station who has an implant is effectively a spy for the Cyborg Nation?”

  “Yes, which explains how they’re able to find new victims so quickly. We had assumed they’d compromised our computers, but they didn’t need to when they had a spy network in place,” I said.

  “To what end?” asked Dr. Hawthorne.

  I sighed. This part was not pleasant, and the images I’d viewed on the cyborg network were not ones I wanted to see again. “Experimentation.”

  “Of what nature are these experiments?” asked Master Raquel.

  “The very worst kind.” I flipped the screen to show one of the monstrosities I had seen on their network. It was roughly bipedal, but that was about its only resemblance to any
thing normal. It was hunchbacked, its skin was a blend of various materials and it had spikes down its back. Where you would have expected fingers there were long metal spikes and its legs were massive, presumably giving it the power to leap great distances and run faster than most creatures.

  I nodded as I saw the revulsion on their faces. “This is one of two experiments they’re running. These creatures are being bred to be sent to Korshalemia … ”

  “Wait,” interrupted Dr. Leslie. “Are the cyborgs planning to invade Korshalemia?”

  “No,” I said, removing the image of the creature. “The cyborgs appear to have struck a deal with the sorcerers there. They are providing them with these beasts so that the sorcerers can take over their own realm and cut off the Wizard Kingdom from the knowledge and power there.”

  “But we’re already cut off!” exclaimed Dr. Leslie.

  “True, but it seems the cyborgs don’t know that. Anyway, the sorcerers take these beasts and leave, thereby eliminating a powerful potential enemy from the region.”

  “Is that all the cyborgs are getting out of it?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “There is more. The sorcerers are suppling the cyborgs with native-born but untrained magi for experimentation.”

  A look of horror passed over her face. “What kind of experimentation?”

  “They’re trying to find out which organic parts make a mage a mage.” I didn’t want to consider what that meant they were doing to those they had in custody. “As far as I can tell they’ve made no progress on that front, but they are aggressively pursuing this goal.”

  An uneasy silence fell across the group. Dr. Hawthorne asked, “What are we going to do about this?”

  “I suggest we raid the base where all this is happening, get a copy of their central database, free any magi who are still alive and then destroy it,” I said.

  “But what about all the people here with implants?” asked Dr. Leslie.

  I brought up a display of the cyborg jump relays surrounding the station. “The moment we begin our attack, the Hospital Station’s defenses should take out all the relays. That will prevent new instructions from being relayed. Dr. Hawthorne tells me he has a fix for the security issues with the implants. Everyone will need an upgrade, but that should solve the problem for the moment.”

  Dr. Leslie frowned. “Getting everyone in for the upgrade will be tough.”

  Master Raquel stepped forward. “The Wizard Kingdom will defray any cost that the patients on this station might incur because of the upgrade. I suggest that you begin with hospital and military staff. When they report to work, upgrade their implants. Combine that with training every member of the hospital staff about the risk and the method of fixing it. Broadcast to the other hospitals, informing them of the situation, and provide them with the means to repair their patients’ implants. Then contact everyone who has had an implant and tell them there is a known flaw in their implant which needs to be corrected as soon as possible. This will be an extensive operation, so if you wish I shall obtain temporary staff to help you to cope with the workload.”

  Joan spoke next. “The problem is that it is likely there are some people on the station who are actively and knowingly working with the cyborgs. The moment we make this move, they’ll become a danger.”

  I agreed, but that was a risk we would have to accept. “True, so we’ll need to have our Battle Wizards on high alert when we execute the operation.”

  “What about the armor?” asked Dr. Leslie.

  Master Raquel answered, “The Academy has found a way to shield the armor from this kind of intrusion, but it will be some time before we see upgraded suits out here. I have of course requested priority, but the reality is our ability to manufacture the armor is still very limited.”

  Dr. Leslie looked at me and asked, “How sure are you of all this?”

  That was a fair question. “Very sure. All this information came directly from their network.”

  She still looked skeptical. “Could they have planted false information, in case someone tried the very thing you did?”

  “They could have, but I’m confident they didn’t and that this is accurate information. We have reports from other teams of fighting earlier generations of the creature I showed you, and everything else that we can check externally agrees with the information we have,” I said.

  I didn’t add that the cyborg network was wide open with little security. They believed that the free flow of information was essential to the life of their people; to put a false idea on their own net would have seemed blasphemous to them in its own way. I didn’t say that aloud, because even the thought of it was a temptation to return to that life, an emotion I was sure would be audible in my voice.

  Master Raquel said, “When we have attacked the cyborg station we will know more, but we must be careful not to reveal our plans in advance. If they discover what we know, they shall move their operation elsewhere and we will lose our opportunity of learning more.”

  Dr. Leslie nodded. “We’ll need time to prepare for this, and I would be grateful if you could acquire temporary staff augmentation for us. We can train everyone on the academy side of the gate and bring them over at the last possible moment. That will reduce the chances that our plans will leak out early. I assume you’ll require Ramsong’s squad for the assault, so if you could provide us with additional guards also, that would probably be prudent.”

  “I shall make contact with Grandmaster Vydor and inform him of the situation. I feel confident that he will be supportive of these requests. For how many weeks will the extra staff be required, and how much time will you need to train them?” asked Master Raquel.

  “At least two weeks to get them up to speed, and I would think at least several months to complete the project,” answered Dr. Leslie. She drummed her fingers on the table. “We’ll have to come up with a schedule to spread out the work in order to prevent a mad rush on our facilities.”

  Dr. Hawthorne nodded. “We should prioritize those who are traveling in the near future and those who have access to sensitive areas.”

  “Then we had better make haste. I dislike the idea of harboring so many spies on this station for a moment longer than necessary,” said Master Raquel.

  70

  06-29-0067 — Greymere

  Phym and I drifted lazily over the Cyborg Station. It was massive and the exterior was completely unadorned. The station’s hull bore evidence of many battles, and the exterior had no lights and no obvious signs of life. All in all, the station appeared to be abandoned.

  We knew we were at the right station, as this was the only location at which all the predicted paths for the jump space repeater broadcasts intersected. To my Shadow People eyes, I could clearly see that the station was alive and well. There was a high-grade power plant at its core and, while the shielding on the power conduits was impressive, there was still enough leakage to make it clear this was a fully operational station.

  What it lacked was windows. I didn’t know how Lyshell’s team would make it aboard. They were currently sitting on a fast-attack cruiser tucked away in the sensor shadow of the station. The plan was for myself and Phym to slip aboard first and attempt to acquire a copy of the data in the station’s computer core.

  Lyshell reasoned that when the cyborgs realized the station was compromised they would destroy it, rather than risk us getting hold of the data. To prevent that we would steal the data first, and then try to gain enough control over the station to prevent its destruction for long enough to rescue any magi prisoners on board.

  “Master Raquel, we are ready to board the station,” I sent as we passed near the hiding spot of the cruiser.

  “Understood. Proceed as planned,” she sent back.

  Phym and I slipped onto the station, which in some ways was easier than usual as the cyborgs depended too much on their electronic sensors; these were easy for Shadow People to outsmart. Phym could hide through her magical skills, but Shadow People ha
d another option. We could absorb and release the energy around us so that we were essentially transparent at all wavelengths. This required a level of control well beyond Phym’s current capability, and was difficult even for me to do when moving quickly. It worked best when slinking along in the shadows.

  Unlike the previous station we’d infiltrated, this one had active patrols, well-lit corridors and active security systems. As we made our way through the station, we often had to stop and watch from the shadows as a patrol passed. I suspected that none of them had organic eyes which could see Phym, but it was a risk not worth taking so we hid as if they could see us.

  Phym touched my shoulder and sent, “So we’re on, and you need a terminal. I assume any terminal will do? What about that one?” She indicated one just down the hall.

  “It’s too exposed. Let’s explore a bit first,” I sent back.

  She nodded. “Then I suggest we keep heading towards the center. If they segmented the network at all, then the closer we get to the core the more likely it is that we’ll find a terminal with the access we need.”

  I beamed at her. She was so incredibly playful that I often forgot how good she was at this. While there was no technical requirement that network segmentation and proximity to the core should correlate, they were often laid out that way as a matter of convenience. “I agree, though Lyshell seemed convinced that they wouldn’t bother.”

  She frowned. “I’m skeptical of that opinion.”

  I started moving down the hall, being careful not to enter the line of sight of any of the patrols. Phym followed about fifteen paces behind, her wands at the ready. Working with them, I had learned that was a standard Battle Wizard tactic. It separated us enough to make it difficult to catch both of us in the same trap, and left us close enough to provide support.

  “Turn left up ahead. It looks as if the power dips in that direction. Maybe the corridor is used less frequently?” she sent.

  “As good a guess as any,” I sent. We had no map, so every turn was essentially an educated guess.