Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2)

by Glenn Michaels

  The Oni vanished.

  The second engine fired up again, the Sirius Effort lining up once more on its launch profile.

  • • • •

  Daneel had an idea.

  He too had seen the other wizard use a portal to swallow one of the plasma bolts fired at him, diverting it harmlessly off to some other place.

  Timing it carefully, Daneel did the same, opening a portal, but not with just a single entry and exit. Instead, his portal had three entries and one exit. Swallowing the plasma bolts from three of the Oni, a single combined and much larger bolt emerged from the exit—aimed directly at the first of the three Oni.

  Surprised by the sudden tactic, the Oni was unable to defend itself, critically injured from ‘friendly fire’ and dropped in sudden free fall, headed for the ground.

  Daneel grinned wickedly, lining up to do it again.

  • • • •

  She was falling behind, no longer able to keep up with the ship. So too were the Oni and the Errabêlu wizard.

  Daneel was suddenly at her side, his screen displaying a large typed message.

  “Go, Mom, now!”

  She nodded and opened a portal—

  —emerging into the living quarters of the Sirius Effort.

  The place was a shambles! This compartment had taken a direct hit from a plasma bolt, leaving a basketball sized hole in the hull right above the bed, opening this deck to space. And the clutter! Everything not lashed or bolted down was strewn around the room. A huge mess!

  It didn’t matter for now, something to be taken care of later. Right now, Paul was more important. So she darted for the ladder, heading to the cockpit. Due to the ship’s acceleration, she needed a spell to help her along the way.

  • • • •

  Patrick McNamee held up a hand, restraining his remaining Oni as he watched the strange craft accelerate away from him, apparently heading for outer space. He was already so high up that he found it difficult to breathe even with a spell to help out.

  He wasn’t happy about letting those mongrels get away. On the other hand, he didn’t feel responsible for their escape either. There had been three wizards involved, not just one! McDougall hadn’t told him that part. And maybe the bluming bafoon hadn’t known either. But three rogue wizards!

  Worse, one of them appeared to be a metal box of some sort! However, McNamee was already having second thoughts about that. He sure couldn’t see himself convincing anyone in Errabêlu of that! Perhaps, in the heat of battle…could he have been mistaken? Perhaps it was an illusion of some sort…?

  He didn’t mind them doing in McDougall, that dorb! Dumb as a door knob, that one.

  But the buggers had invaded his country! And they had taken out more than a dozen of his Oni!

  Well, at least he had put several big holes into that odd looking ship. It might come crashing down someplace. At the very least, he could put out the word to others in Errabêlu to keep an eye peeled.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Earth Orbit

  1200 mile altitude

  Above Casablanca, Morocco

  October

  Saturday 5:01 p.m. AWST

  “So, Dad, what do we do now?” Daneel asked, his titanium frame hovering up against one wall of the cockpit.

  The three of them were jammed into the small compartment since none of the other areas on the ship were air-tight anymore. Each and every one of them had at least one hull penetration. A couple had more than that.

  “I vote we go back to Earth,” Capie declared firmly, her arms crossed over her chest. “I don’t like this zero gee, I don’t care for this small cockpit and I need a shower, which obviously can’t happen here.”

  Paul nodded. “I agree, in part.”

  “What’s that mean?” she asked, casting a suspicious glance in his direction.

  “It’s possible that they are tracking the ship. If we attempt to land it, Errabêlu might well meet it with overwhelming force this time.”

  “I…see. So, leave the ship in orbit? Just beam down ourselves?”

  He smiled at the Star Trek reference. “Something like that. I want to change orbital parameters a bit, to make it harder for anyone to track the ship. Well, for Errabêlu to track it, anyway. Anyone with space radar can see the ship rather easily. I don’t think we can hide the ship from them.”

  “So they can find out from NASA or the European space agency or the Russians, right?” Daneel asked.

  “In time, yes. When they bother to ask the question. They might not even think of it. You know how arrogant Errabêlu is. But I don’t plan to be gone all that long from the ship.”

  “No? Maybe not you, but I will. You don’t know how long I can stay in a good hot shower,” Capie pointed out.

  Paul chuckled. “Our goal was to get the ship built first. Except for repairs and replacing the supplies we lost in Australia and during the battle, that goal is accomplished. Now, we need to finish the chutzpah and as quickly as possible.”

  “Thank God,” Capie affirmed. “Those poor people in the Middle East.”

  “Exactly,” Paul agreed with a nod and a small smile. “So, we need to secure a pallasite meteor and convert its isotopes.”

  “You, dear sir, are going to let Daneel and I go and get the meteor,” Capie said, pointing a finger at her husband. “You need to rest. There’s this place in Dubai…”

  Paul frowned. “But—”

  “No argument,” she commanded, giving him a steely eyed glare.

  “Oh, very well,” he gave in. “Daneel, we will fix it so that you can use Hamadi’s old talisman. Frankly, you look ridiculous wearing seven Oni talismans anyway.”

  “Humph, you should try wearing them!” the Scottie stated in a matter-of-fact tone. “So, Dad, do you know where we should look for a pallasite rock? I understand they’re pretty rare.”

  “I do indeed know of a place.”

  • • • •

  “I thought he was teasing me about the long johns,” Capie groused bitterly. “Just how cold is it here?”

  “Oh, this isn’t so bad for David Glacier,” Daneel commented off-hand. “Merely 25 below zero. Of course, with the wind blowing like this at 35 mph, the wind chill is something like 62 below. But as we make our way into the interior, the temperature might drop to 60 below and the wind chill to 100 below.”

  Capie did a quick visual sweep of the frozen landscape, at least as much as she could see through the whirling snowflakes and crystals. There was very little to see except white.

  They were hovering above the middle of David Glacier, near the western edge of Antarctica, a couple of hundred miles north-northwest of McMurdo Station.

  In the middle of a raging blizzard.

  Of course, they weren’t feeling the effects of said storm. Capie was encased in a magical bubble of warm air, protecting her from the onslaught of cold and wind. Daneel didn’t much need anywhere near that level of protection since he was a machine.

  “And this is the best place to look for meteorites?” Capie asked in a voice that clearly communicated her disbelief.

  “It was a surprise to me as well, until Dad explained it,” Daneel admitted. “And then it made sense. The cold and dry conditions here tend to protect the meteorites from being eroded. Most of the meteorites here fall into sheets of ice and, over the centuries, the ice moves outward, toward the coastlines of Antarctica, some of it here up against the Transantarctic Mountains. And the winds here tend to blow the ice away, exposing the rocks. Sometimes dozens of meteorites have been discovered all in the same place, in locations known as ‘standing surfaces.’ And that’s why we are here. Because, since 1976, more than 20,000 meteorites have been found by Americans in Antarctica. It’s not known how many have been found by people of other countries, but it is likely to be in the thousands.”

  “20,000? Wow! Okay, and so that’s why we’re here,” Capie admitted reluctantly, but still leery of the wild weather and desolate landscape around her.

>   “Let’s get started,” Daneel urged, as he waved an arm on screen, propelling them forward, a large display floating in front of him. “We are looking for combined traces of iron, nickel, magnesium, and manganese. I’ll scan out to the right if you will scan to the left. First one to find a pallasite gets breakfast in bed tomorrow!”

  Capie raised an eyebrow at him. “You don’t eat and you don’t sleep in a bed.”

  “Details, details,” Daneel replied smugly. “Let’s go!”

  • • • •

  That same evening in the city of Muscat, capital of Oman, Sultan Quaboos bin Said al Said, absolute monarch of Oman since 1970, died under rather mysterious circumstances.

  The next morning, Major General Faheem Qureshi of the Oman Royal Guard held a news conference. The new Sultan, he said, would not be a member of the al Said royal family, as had been widely anticipated. Instead, the new ruler would be Mahmoud Almasi, a senior cleric from the Shi’a Islam religion. The new arrangement was at the behest of the Sultan, in a letter given to the general the previous year, so the general said.

  The new Sultan, who would take power within the week at a small legal ceremony, had already announced that formal relations with the United States and Britain would end and that a new regional alliance would be made with Iran.

  Their first joint act would be the explicit closing of the Strait of Hormuz.

  So explained the general.

  • • • •

  On Tuesday morning at breakfast, the Armsteads discussed the ramifications of the new government of Oman and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz to all shipping, especially oil tankers.

  “This has to be the work of Errabêlu,” Capie said with conviction as the waitress handed the bill to Paul.

  “Undoubtedly,” he agreed, taking out his credit card.

  “So why are they doing it? And the sinking of the Coast Guard ship? Do they want war with the United States too?”

  “Probably not,” Paul said, with a shrug of his shoulders. “My theory is that the wizard or wizards of Errabêlu behind this are pushing the envelope, striving for maximum possible gain. He or they want a war with Israel and since the United States is Israel’s strongest ally, they want to bloody America’s nose too. You will notice that there have been no consequences from the United States for anything that Iran, or for that matter Syria or the Palestinians have done so far. Not for the sinking of the Coast Guard cutter or the tanker or any of the bombings or other attacks in Israel, and some of those who died were Americans. Oh, yeah, sure, Israel launched air strikes. But not the United States. Lots of tough talk from Washington. Nothing beyond that. So, no war there. Not even when they close the Hormuz.”

  “Twenty percent of the world’s oil goes through that that narrow passage of water,” she pointed out.

  “Yep. As they say in Washington, you can’t confuse the issue with facts.”

  She grunted. “Cynic.” Then she sighed. “We are almost finished converting the isotopes in the pallasite meteor. And in record time too. It helped a lot to have all three of us working on it.”

  Paul stood, helping Capie slide back her chair. They headed for the door of the restaurant, weaving between the tables.

  “Daneel helped a lot with that theory of his and the quasiparticles,” Paul said with a chuckle. “I would never have thought of breaking the neutrons into their component quarks before moving them from atom to atom. Brilliant. Saves a lot of time AND energy. That will help a lot on Mars.”

  The brief stroll through the sumptuous lobby of Atlantis, The Palm dropped them at the elevators.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Capie said, taking her husband’s arm as they entered the elevator car. She pushed the button for their floor. “Are we going to have the chutzpah ceremony here in Dubai?”

  “Ah, no. We can’t have it here.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “Well, to make this chutzpah, I need a place with a really big rock. Real big. It can’t be from an ordinary mountain because most mountains are made up of lots of small rocks. For my purposes, I need the rock to be all in one really big piece.”

  “And?” she asked, a degree of impatience in her voice. “Why do you always make me drag it out of you?”

  “Well, for political purposes, I want to make it in the United States. There are several really big rocks in North America. I’m talking mountain sized rocks. The largest is the granite rock known as El Capitan in California. They used that mountain when filming Star Trek V, The Final Frontier.”

  “Is that where we are going?”

  “No, we are going to another one. It’s smaller but it works better for my purposes too,” Paul explained—again without telling her where they were going.

  They got off on their floor, turning down the corridor and heading for their room.

  “You’re going to sleep on the floor if you don’t answer my question. Where. Are. We. Going?”

  Paul grinned. “Devils Tower.”

  She blinked. “That name sounds familiar.”

  “It should. Re, Mi, Do, Do, So,” he sang the notes.

  He wished he had a camera for that moment, to capture the look on her face.

  “You’re pulling my leg!” she said accusingly, a little too loudly. Another couple passing them in the hallway gave them a curious glance. She lowered her voice. “You’re not pulling my leg, are you? We are going to that mountain in Close Encounters of the Third Kind?”

  With a smug expression on his face, Paul replied. “I think it’s appropriate, don’t you?”

  She punched his arm. Hard, this time.

  An hour later, as they stood in front of the bathroom mirror preparing for bed, Capie asked Paul what was so special about Devils Tower.

  Paul put down his toothbrush and considered how best to answer her question. “Well, there was once an active volcano there. Then something happened underneath the surface, blocking off the lava inside the throat of the volcano. It solidified into one solid hard rock. Then, over who knows how many millions of years, the rest of the volcano crumbled and left only the hardened lava rock behind.”

  “That’s pretty incredible,” Capie said, running a hair brush through her hair. “But I guess I asked the wrong question. Why do you need such a large rock to make a chutzpah?”

  Paul paused, with the toothbrush nearly ready to put into his mouth. Instead, he put it back down again. “Let’s see if I can explain this properly. When I created my first talisman, it turned out to be inferior. Dr. Ruggiero said I didn’t use the proper incantation and the ceremony must have been weak. Well, this time, I want to maximize everything involved. Yes, all my materials are far superior to anything that Errabêlu has used. But I want more than just that. Devils Tower carries a lot of special meaning. I figure the location will help enhance the ceremony. But also I can tap the power of that really big rock.”

  She frowned. “But we have McDougall’s and Hamadi’s talismans and a bunch of Oni ones too.”

  Paul shook his head. “Not nearly enough power for what I want to try.”

  Capie still didn’t seem satisfied with his answer. “What do you need that much power for?”

  He put the toothbrush down a third time. “For one thing, the ceremony. I intend to ramp it up, big time. And there are other things I want to try too. I’m not really sure if they will work or not, but I want the option available to me.”

  She raised her eyebrows expectantly. “And you won’t tell me what those things are?”

  “I can’t even put them into words in my own mind yet,” Paul confessed. “If they don’t work, well, then there’s no point wasting the words.”

  “So, when do we go try this?” she asked.

  Another of his big smiles. “As soon as we finish the pallasite conversion, probably tomorrow afternoon. The sooner this is done, the sooner we can stop a war.” And he popped the toothbrush in his mouth before she could ask another question.

  • • • •

  D
aneel’s last portal left them, their suitcases, and three backpacks on the summit of Devils Tower, looking out over the incredible vista of surrounding countryside.

  “They say you can see five states from up here,” Paul remarked, impressed with the view.

  “I believe it,” Capie said, gazing out over the open countryside.

  Paul began digging the component items of the chutzpah out of the backpacks.

  “It doesn’t look like the movie up here at all,” Capie observed, taking a seat on a nearby large boulder. “It’s all rocky and uneven. There’s even grass growing here. And it doesn’t seem all that large a place.”

  “The end of the movie didn’t take place on top of the mountain,” Daneel pointed out, “but on the back side.”

  “Oh, I think you are right,” she admitted. “I guess it’s been too long since I’ve seen that movie.”

  Paul waved an arm and a holographic hundred fifty foot white circular ring appeared, lying horizontally. The rim of the ring was maybe eight inches wide and two inches tall. In some spots, the ring nearly touched the rocky ground but in other locations, it was six feet above the ground.

  “That’s level?” Capie asked.

  “The circle is, yes. I’m tempted to level the top of the summit here to match but that would be an act of desecration. I might be able to put it back the way it was and then again, I might not. Better to leave well enough alone. Besides, this will work just as well, I think.”

  “I agree,” Daneel concurred, floating through the air toward the center of the summit.

  “The breeze is picking up,” Capie noticed. “I bet it gets pretty windy up here sometimes.”

  Paul waved his hand again, moving the circular ring, the edge of it moving through and past them until they were just inside one edge of it.

  “The wind is getting stronger,” Capie said, pointing at the grass. “But funny thing, I can’t feel it anymore, not since you moved the ring.”

  Paul looked at the blades of grass outside the ring. They were lying flat, pushed over by a really stiff wind. But Capie was right. He could no longer feel the wind from his position inside its circumference.