by Clara Woods
“Back when humans lived in caves?”
“Nah, that was already advanced technology of Old Earth,” Lorka answered.
“And what do you know about the Cava Dara?” Lenah said, not interested in learning Old Earth history today.
Lorka turned red. “I…only what is public knowledge: Cheung army handling some ancient creatures coming for the orbit of Astur. And you,” his gaze fluttered to Lenah, then to his rice again, “blowing up the danger, threatening to make a mere trifle galactic news. Not my words,” he said, nodding rapidly, still staring into his food.
“You’re not a good liar, Lorka,” Lenah said, sending the slightest influence toward him. The group would react well to hearing the truth.
“Hey, don’t do that! Didn’t you get lesson one in mind magic?” Lorka exclaimed, and Lenah dropped her influence, taken aback.
“What? You felt that?”
“Yes, it tickled like hell. Don’t they teach you manners in that secret cave of yours?”
“Cave? Tickle?” she echoed, feeling stupid and excited at the same time. All these years of looking for someone else with her same abilities and this young mage knew something?
Of course, Lenah had read up on the Guild. That had been one of the first places she’d looked. But all that her search had revealed was what everyone knew already. The Guild trained warp mages. There was no mention of anything else.
“Uhm, you are a mind mage, right?” Lorka asked Lenah, drawing his thin eyebrows together in one line. “Because if not, just forget what I said.”
“I…yes. I’m a mind mage. But how did you know that? It tickled you when I touched your mind?”
“Yes, but how do you not know that? You were trained by the Guild, were you not?”
“Well, no.”
“What? But why?”
“Er, I didn’t know about it?”
“But the test.”
Lenah shook her head at him. “What test? The only one I know about is the test they do on newborns to determine if they might have warp magic. I didn’t test positive. Because I don’t have a smidge of it.”
Lorka looked thoughtfully at her.
“I’m not sure, but I think there used to be a test for mind magic.”
Lenah sat silently at that. How was it possible that this young mage had so much information? He seemed to know mind magic better than Lenah who had lived with it all her life. Did the Guild train mind mages in secret? Why? And why hadn’t she been discovered? Or Corinna? Lenah had read that she’d gone to one of Arcadia’s best universities to study business. There was no mention of staying with the Guild for years to train her abilities. Could Lenah believe anything Lorka was saying? Now she wished that she could influence him as Persia had suggested.
“Are you okay?” Lorka asked into the silence when Lenah didn’t speak. She looked up to see that everyone was looking at her.
“I…yes.” She really wasn’t. With all the changes her life had taken in the past few months, this one was the hardest to digest.
“If there’s a test, how come I didn’t test positive?”
“No clue. I don’t know what they test for. I don’t really know anything about the mind mages.”
“And what does that mean?” Cassius growled. “You just knew a lot.” He put his hand on Lenah’s shoulder.
The gesture sent a shiver down Lenah’s spine.
“I…it’s not public knowledge,” Lorka stuttered.
“Then how do you know about it?” Cassius didn’t sound any friendlier.
Lorka sat back in his chair—possibly to get as far away from the angry cyborg as possible—his meal forgotten.
“It’s just something I once overheard my dad say. He and another council mage walked straight to that cave entrance and they didn’t realize I was there. The cave is magically protected, supposedly because the caves inside are in danger of collapsing. They started to talk about the mind mages training area in there. How the tests hadn’t revealed anyone in ages. That’s all I know, and it didn’t make any sense to me then, until years later, there was a mention of a different kind of mage in one of the old books they give us. Mages who influence what people do. It also said no one has seen one in hundreds of years. It made me recall the conversation at the cave. All this was an eternity ago. At least ten years.” He let out a long breath.
Lenah looked Lorka up and down. He couldn’t have been more than eight or nine. He certainly felt like the sort of person who’d make up all manner of vivid stories in their head. But what if not?
“Are there mind mages training there right now?”
“I…don’t think so. At least, not that we are told. I’m sorry, Lenah.”
She waved her hand dismissively. One, because she didn’t think he had anything to apologize for. But also, because a lump had started to form in her throat. Cassius looked at her with knowing eyes and appeared about to protest in her place, when Uz and Doctor Lund interrupted the uncomfortable silence by choosing that moment to walk into the common room.
13 Now What?
“Did we already miss part of the meeting?” Uz asked, pouring herself a glass of water.
“What meeting?” Cassius asked her. “We were just keeping young Lorka company while he had dinner.”
“Great. Then we can start now.” Uz nodded, downing the glass in one go. Apparently, she had come with an agenda.
“We have to decide what to do next. We can’t show up at the mage farm and ask them to flip off the switch, right?” She looked at Lenah. “I don’t suppose you could do that?”
“No.” Lenah forced the word out. She was tired and didn’t feel like having the flaws of the plan pointed out to her right now. She already had too much to process for one night. Besides, nothing significant could come out of discussing this. Out of everyone present, she was the person who knew the mage farm best, though even she had never been there—that was striking her as suspicious now—and short of blowing the whole thing up, she couldn’t really think of any way to deactivate them. And for that, they’d first need something to blow it up with.
“Okay, let me recap so we are all on the same page,” Uz said, giving Lenah a questioning look with raised eyebrows. When Lenah said nothing, Uz continued. “We’ve seen the Cava Dara descend from the temple on Masis III, and we think they are coming for humanity because of the mage farm. We believe that because the Cassidian High Priest approached Corinna Cheung about it, and we also saw the prophecy, and we agree.” She was looking directly at Lorka.
Was Uz this sure that he was honest? Or did she think that she could shock him into a reaction by dumping the scary facts on him? “The Cava Dara were created to come back every six thousand years to punish civilizations that misuse magic. Every time they come, they wipe out everyone.”
Lorka was listening to her wide-eyed, but he didn’t seem more flustered than he’d been before. What did he already know?
“You don’t look surprised, Lorka.” Lenah interrupted Uz, wanting to test him.
“I, um, yes, I already knew some of this. I’ve been serving coffee at the High Ambassador’s meetings and may have heard some things from the back room. But did you really see them? Everyone thought they were only a myth.”
“Yes, we saw them. There were thousands on Masis III. And that’s only in one location. We have no idea how many more are out there.”
“What do they look like?” Lorka asked, his eyes going even wider.
Lenah shuddered. “Like Cassidians with wings and purple eyes.”
His mouth dropped open, and he didn’t say anything else.
Lenah was satisfied. Lorka appeared to have a habit of overhearing conversations that he wasn’t supposed to hear. But apart from that, he seemed honest. At least that’s what she thought, and it looked like Uz did too.
“We need to intercept them somehow. We don’t have an army, so we need to do that at the source: the mage farm. It needs to go.” Uz looked at Lenah, an unspoken question in her eyes. A
s if Lenah were going to veto her suggestion.
Lenah cleared her throat. “Yes, we need to stop the mage farm. For that, we need to sneak into the Callo mansion, steal my father’s key, and take the elevator down to the farm,” she said loudly. Better make her loyalty very clear here. And her loyalty was definitely with the people who’d get killed if they didn’t do something about the farm. “There is only one way I can think of in this short amount of time. We need to blow them up,” she added, feeling her throat clog up.
Doctor Lund looked up; eyes wide. Lenah focused on Cassius, who seemed to smile at her in approval. It was hard to tell, for his mouth twitched back into neutral after a moment, and only his eyes seemed to still gleam.
“You’d blow up your own family’s facility?” Doctor Lund finally said into the silence. “Why?”
“Because I don’t think there’s an alternative. Though I’m open to suggestions if anyone has any.”
“Is there something you could do with warp magic, Lorka?” Uz asked the young mage.
“To destroy a whole compound? No, that’s not what warp magic is about. I assume it’s a big place?”
“I think so,” Lenah answered. “I’ve actually never seen it for myself.”
“Didn’t you live and work right there?” Persia asked.
“Yes, but the compound is off limits. It has new technology that is under strictest trade secret and unstable still,” Lenah said. “At least, that’s what I believed until a few weeks ago.”
“What do you believe now?” Cassius asked.
“That it’s very suspicious that I, as my father’s main assistant, never even set foot there.”
“Hah, let’s blow it up!” Persia exclaimed, clapping her hand on the table.
Uz nodded as if that were the outcome she had expected from the start. “Okay, issue number one is the most obvious one. How are we going to get explosives?”
“I know where,” Cassius answered after a short silence and to Lenah’s utmost surprise. She had expected to spend a lot of time on that particular issue.
“Really?”
“We’ll be getting out of the warp bubble somewhere in the first octant, close to Astur.” It wasn’t a question, but he paused nonetheless, so Lenah nodded.
“There is a smuggler trading hub maybe a day or two away. Neeth Station. And explosives are commonly traded. Great way to illegally mine asteroids. We can get enough to blow up half of Asturis I.”
“A smuggler hub that close to the planet?” Lenah asked. “How is that even possible?”
“It’s not really close to any planet,” Cassius said. “More in the gray zone where Astur’s authorities, or the ones from Victory II, aren’t pointedly looking. Galactic Security Force doesn’t come out that far very often. They tend to stick to the more populated areas like Galtaca and Arcadia.”
Lenah nodded. From the perspective of UPL station, Astur lay on the fringes of the populated galaxy. A provincial hub, no more. Victory II was even worse—a dust ball with no significant industry.
“Besides,” Cassius continued, “it’s a flexible set-up.”
Lenah looked at him, shaking her head.
He nodded. “Every other tenthday several modified spaceships dock together and form a unique trading station: a canteen, market place, and private bays for bigger or less legal trades. It all can be assembled and disassembled in a matter of minutes. If the authorities ever get a whiff of Neeth Station, then the next tenthday it will simply be put somewhere else. I think it’s never in the same spot exactly and can be a hundred thousand klicks more over here or there.”
“How are we supposed to find it if we don’t know where it will be?” Persia asked, tipping her head to the side.
“I know who to call to pull in a favor,” Cassius said.
Persia let out a loud breath, then chuckled. “The benefits of having a smuggler on board.” She looked at each of the, triumph written on her face.
Cassius looked sternly at her, but finally he shrugged. “I’ll make the call once we exit the warp bubble.”
14 Uz’s Tale
Hesitantly, Lenah knocked on Uz’s hatch, unsure if the Cassidian would welcome or condemn the reason for Lenah’s visit. That worry increased when she didn’t get a response for at least twenty seconds. She knocked again, and this time heard a soft ‘Enter’ spoken from inside. As Lenah stepped through, Uz was sitting cross-legged on the floor of her cabin. Her immaculate cabin, Lenah noticed. Was Lenah still on the same ship?
“Wow,” she said, looking around in astonishment. “I mean, can I interrupt your, err, sitting for a moment?”
“Sure,” Uz nodded. “I was just meditating over my accomplishment. Do you like it?”
“Like what?” Lenah asked, still distracted by the shiny surfaces.
Uz nodded toward the wall. “I used a hull brush to go over all the surfaces. They’re meant for smoothing c-carbon, so they go into the intely-steel walls easily. What you see is literally the layer under what formally were the walls. I figured I might as well do a deep cleaning and make sure there are no more explosives wedged into secret hiding places.”
“Like grenades in the crack of your mattress?”
“Precisely.” Uz shuddered. “And then I thought, might as well do a really good job with it.” She nodded back to the wall again.
“Right.” Lenah followed her gaze. “And can you do that to the whole ship?”
Uz nodded again, her eyes sparking. “Absolutely. She’ll be as good as new. Like ours, you know.”
“Like ours,” Lenah repeated, not missing how Uz’s eyes brightened at the words.
“So, what’s up?” Uz changed the topic. “You’ve never come to visit me in my cabin before.”
Lenah shrugged and put her hands in her pockets. “Right.” Seeing how well Uz looked, maybe she was overblowing this. “I just wanted to check up on you. I thought that the way Wise Ikanobu treated you was really terrible.”
To her surprise Uz’s lips opened into a smile. “Ah.” She got up to sit on the bed and offer Lenah a seat next to her. Since there was no other furniture to sit on, Lenah took a seat on the mattress.
“That’s fine, Lenah,” Uz said after a short silence. “I’m used to it, really. And over it, too.” Her hands went to the scars on her forehead, but her smile didn’t falter. “I’ve handled this for many years of my life, and now I have friends and somewhere I belong.”
Lenah looked at her, feeling unsure. Wise Ikanobu had treated Uz like a flea, certainly not like an intelligent being. How could she be okay with that?
“Really,” Uz assured her, surprising Lenah by patting her leg. Cassidians hated touch, but Uz seemed to be different in that department as well.
“I suppose you might be more human than Cassidian at this point,” Lenah said, looking down at her leg.
“Hah, I like that.” Uz grinned. “And I even almost became a human spaceship engineer.”
“You are a spaceship engineer. You have your own spaceship.”
“Full of dirty walls to polish?” Uz asked, still grinning.
Lenah sobered. “If you want to. Once this is over, I’ll gladly drop you off on Arcadia and you can continue your training. Not like you seem to need it.”
Uz nodded thoughtfully. “I did it mostly because humans, almost as much as Cassidians, love their protocols. And to get a job as an engineer, you need an engineering certificate. But I think I already read all of the training books and manuals several times by the time I got the position.”
“Were you on Arcadia for long before getting the job?” Lenah asked, intrigued to get a glimpse into Uz’s past. She didn’t know much beside Uz being kidnapped as an engineer-in-training to go into Starwide Research’s illegal lab.
Uz rubbed her chin. “Three years on the street or doing toxic waste disposal jobs. Then two years in training.”
“Three years?” Lenah asked, wondering how Uz had gotten by for such a long time and realizing what a bubble she hersel
f had grown up in. Her worst worry for years had been how to get to fly a spaceship. Because it was under station in life. What must it have felt like to be an outcast and living in the streets?
“It’s okay, Lenah,” Uz said, giving her a reassuring look. “You don’t need to feel bad for me. Not your fault how you grew up. And you’re a good person. I’m just glad we didn’t meet inside of a Starwide Research laboratory.” She cringed.
Lenah shuddered, then asked. “Are you nervous to be going there now?”
Uz inclined her head. “A bit. But at least I’ll be in charge, you know? That helps a lot.”
Lenah nodded, understanding perfectly. She was experiencing some of the same feelings. Lenah wasn’t thrilled to be going back to Starwide Research and potentially even having to confront her father. Just before blowing up billions of CGC worth of factory. But at least, she wouldn’t be the same clueless Lenah this time.
15 A Syrr Ally
“Are you going to check out the drone?” Lorka almost bounced as he intercepted Lenah in the corridor.
“Um, yes.”
“I’m coming too. I can come, right? Uz told me she got this ancient piece of technology from the Syrr temple. I’m so curious to see it. I love ancient tech. Don’t you?”
“Not particularly, no. I’m more into modern spaceships,” Lenah admitted, grinning at Lorka’s enthusiasm. At least he wasn’t worried what would happen to him now that he had practically united himself with fugitives. Or he was hiding it very well.
They quickly crossed the corridor together and entered the common room where Uz had once again taken over the table for her language-reprogramming project. Earlier, she’d told Lenah that she was ready, and that the drone now spoke fluent G-Standard. But she’d lacked her normal enthusiasm. Lenah was curious to find out why. Had Uz not managed to fix the error from last time? The drone had seemed to be stuck in an odd greeting protocol back then.
“Oh, hey, Lenah. Hey, Lorka,” Uz said as they entered. The drone was hovering in the corner, no longer connected to any cables. It still carried the same disapproving look on its stony features. Maybe that was how Syrr had looked? Their facial expressions might be different from what other races, like humans or Cassidians, found normal. After all, it was rude to judge an alien race by human standards.