They just needed to hold each other together.
How had I not seen it before?
I’d been embarrassingly close and yet laughably far from what now seemed so blindingly obvious. I’d toyed with the idea of a rune that would draw energy from the heat absorber rune in order to hold its fellow runes empowered. An empowerment rune. Simple. But then what would keep the empowerment rune empowered? Another empowerment rune? And what would keep that one going? Another empowerment rune, and another, and another after that. Runes all the way down to infinity.
Unless they reciprocated.
Then, feasibly, you’d only need the two. Two empowerment runes feeding on the energy of their shared heat absorber, all holding one another together in an infinite loop, as long as there was energy to be had.
I wanted to slap myself for not having seen it sooner.
The only question was whether I could properly Express these empowerment runes to start with. But that was hardly a question at all. This was the answer. I knew it was. Which meant it was only a matter of willpower now.
I stood there for a long while, adrift in a world of runes and energies, sinking into the Expression mindset, soaking in every detail of how I felt whenever I empowered a rune, and how I would pass that function on to another entity. It might’ve been a solid ten minutes of silence before I was ready to try. Maybe more. I couldn’t have said. To his credit, Johnny seemed to have impressed the importance of the moment on the guards and was waiting patiently, offering his silent support.
Finally, when I was sure I had the headspace right and all the requisite links in order, I opened myself to the energy around me and poured my will into the first rune. Pleasant electric tingles buzzed through my head and chest. I waited until I was sure the first rune was set, holding the empowerment headspace firm all the while, then repeated the process for the second rune. Finally, apprehension thickening, I empowered the heat-absorbing power rune as I had a hundred times before.
Nothing happened.
For an awful second, my hope teetered, threatening to plunge. Then I remembered I still needed to empower the actual cloaking field rune. I allowed myself a minute to calm my mind. Assuming the empowerment runes worked, it wouldn’t matter how long the next part took.
Finally, I finished and opened my eyes. “Okay.”
Johnny let out a breath that sounded like it might’ve been pent up for the past half hour. “Holy scud, man. For the record, it’s pretty damn creepy how still you get when you’re doing your thing.”
I turned and almost laughed at the gaping faces of the two guards peering through the door slit, heads bobbing in agreement. Then my attention shifted back to more important matters.
The wall was growing cool to the touch.
That alone didn’t mean anything, I told myself as I reached out, heart thundering, sweeping my senses across the cell, through the wall, and—
There.
A blank edge.
A wall that even my extended senses couldn’t pass.
“Did we win?” Johnny asked, watching me intently.
“I’m not…”
I reflexively reached to dial off my own cloaking pendant, thinking for a second that it must surely be the edge of my own cloak I was feeling. Then I remembered my cloaking pendant was gone.
With trembling fingers, I touched the cool permacrete wall and reached out again. Across the cell, through the wall, and…
Nothing.
“It… It’s working.”
Johnny clapped his hands and thrust them victoriously into the air. “Scud yeah, it’s working, you magical bastard!” His eyes widened as he remembered something, and he woke his palmlight, swiping furiously. “We’re telling Freya.”
I shook my head. “No, wait. It’s only been a minute. It might still…”
I didn’t even want to say the words for some irrational fear they might send malignant ripples through the universe and bring about the undoing of my happy little runes. I just wanted it to be over. I needed to know that this was the answer and that moving forward from here was only a matter of repeating the familiar. But I couldn’t be sure. Not yet.
Johnny opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened. Closed. Finally, he nodded and resigned himself to pacing around the room. I sat on the cot, going over and over what I’d done, making sure the feeling of the empowerment headspace was firmly lodged in my memory.
Five minutes passed.
“Hal…”
Ten minutes. Fifteen.
The cloak didn’t fade.
I rose to my feet. “Call her. Tell her…”
Johnny clapped a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve got it, buddy. Give your brain a few minutes’ rest.”
I shook my head. “No, I need to keep going. Need to make sure I really have it.” I looked around the cell, noting the supreme lack of materials available for getting started.
I needed to get out of there—back to my quarters, or at least to somewhere I could get the supplies I’d need. Forget Auckus and his bogus trials. It didn’t matter anymore what he was playing at. He wasn’t going to stop me. No one was going to stop me. Least of all a gropping locked door.
In hindsight, it would’ve been smart to wait to see what Johnny kicked up with Glenbark, or at least to inform him—and maybe even the guards outside—of my intentions.
Charged as I was in that moment, though, I was simply satisfied I managed to resist the urge to blast the cell door off its reinforced hinges. Not that my restraint meant much to the guards when I telekinetically killed the locking mechanisms and swung the door open. They both skittered back from the door, riot guns raised, one of them spewing a stream of alerts into his earpiece even as Johnny muttered a string of curses behind me.
“Stay right there!” one guard shouted, brandishing his riot gun.
“He just opened the door,” the other was growling at whoever was on the receiving end. “Yes, send gropping backup!”
“No, he just popped the damn lock and went,” Johnny was saying behind me. “Well he didn’t ask my permission, sir!”
I held my hands up in peace, the ex-legionnaire part of my brain catching up to the part that was ready to do anything to save Elise and reminding it that breaking out of a brig cell was not just a casual misdemeanor.
“I’m not going to hurt anyone,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “I just need to get back to my quarters, right now. I’m not exaggerating when I say it could be the turning point of this war.”
The guards traded an uncertain look, but then the one who’d called for backup hardened his resolve when the sound of approaching boot steps filled the hallway. “I don’t care if Alpha himself vouches for you. You’re not leaving until I see that detainment order dismissed.”
This time, it was putting the two guards through the wall that I had to resist. But restraint or not, I didn’t have time for this. I fumed, teetering on the edge of making another less-than-advisable move.
Johnny slid past me before I could, no longer talking and hands clearly raised in surrender.
“Stand down, boys,” he said, holding something on his palmlight out to each of them in turn. “We’ve got a gropping planet to save.”
37
Mindsafe
And like that, within the hour, Mission Mindsafe became a base-wide priority on Haven. Not that many people actually understood what we were really up to. I can’t imagine what wild rumors would be circulating by morning—the High General herself, dismissing General Auckus’ detainment order on the Demon of Divinity only to retreat with me, her servitor, and Alpha knew who else to my quarters under armed guard. All of us cooped up through the night, a full-service support staff sweeping in and out of the room with everything from meals to odd assortments of tools and supplies.
I was almost looking forward to hearing what stories they dreamt up.
Glenbark had suggested we move to a larger, more team-friendly space, but I’d resisted—in part because I hadn’t wanted to waste the tim
e in moving. But it was more than that. These quarters weren’t much, but they were the closest thing I had to familiar. The closest link I had to time spent with Elise on Haven, twined in one another’s arms. It helped. And given that I was the one who required absolute focus, no one had argued too much with my choice of locale.
The cloaking pendants themselves quickly evolved in design throughout the first several iterations. For one thing, they’d ceased being pendants once we’d discussed the most efficient way to produce the most cloaks in the shortest time. Now, they were simply small lightsteel disks whose runes were being etched and shuttled over from one of the engineering buildings orders of magnitude faster than I could actually empower them.
Also in the name of efficiency, we’d agreed there was no real need to worry about range adjustments, especially not when the men using them wouldn’t be able to actually tell what the effective coverage was. Until we had the time and leisure to think of a way to calibrate some kind of range scale, we agreed a standard radius of roughly forty yards would suffice—large enough to cover a good number of legionnaires, and small enough to require an enemy to get fairly close to those legionnaires to wreak any telepathic havoc.
Once I’d actually gotten a feel for empowering the cloak to within a specific range, we realized a few additional details, the first and most dramatic being that a cloak with a forty yard radius required about eight times more energy than mine did when it was fully extended—and growing quite frosty—around twenty yards. Enough energy that we were worried the frigid lightsteel disks might become too brittle and that sticking them in pockets and packs might even lead to problems with frostbite and hypothermia. It would’ve been a risk we were willing to take, considering. But then Johnny asked why we didn’t just stick a heater with each disk.
Hence the cloaking pack was born.
The only remaining problem, as far as I could see, was that the runework was draining me far more quickly than I’d expected. At first, there’d been thinking and talking from one cloak to the next. But now, with our assembly line more or less worked out, I was becoming the clear limiting step. By the time I’d finished my sixth cloaking pack, my head was already starting to spin.
There came a solution for that too, though I was hesitant to call the development lucky, or even favorable.
“What about the other Seekers?” Glenbark asked when it became apparent the pauses were growing longer and more frequent.
I looked at her, hesitant to even consider the idea. She already knew about Siren’s betrayal—and apparent escape, given that no one had seen her on Haven since. Where that left Four’s and Eight’s allegiances, I honestly didn’t know. But more importantly…
“I’m pretty sure they don’t know the first thing about runework.”
“How quickly could you teach them?”
I half-wanted to ask her how quickly she imagined she could teach a common legionnaire to exude her indomitable air of command and run a sprawling network of Legion bases, but I decided it might not be a fair comparison. I honestly had no idea if—and if so, how—Four and Eight might be able to accelerate our production. I was more worried about whether or not they were involved in whatever Siren and Auckus might be up to.
I looked warily around the living room, feeling a bit paranoid as I scanned over the few legionnaires and servitors who were sorting out our supplies and assembling more packs for empowerment. But grop it. Half the world was trying to kill me, and now they had Elise. There was no such thing as paranoia anymore.
I stood and gestured to the bedroom. Johnny and Glenbark followed me without argument.
“Aside from Franco,” I said quietly when we were alone, “I’m not sure we can trust anyone outside of this room.”
“I’m not asking you to trust them, Haldin.”
“Asking me to even be in the same room with them is asking me to trust them. This is worse. This”—I waved the lightsteel disk I’d been toying with—“is exactly what those Seekers came here for. And once they have it…”
I trailed off, because even as I said it, I realized it didn’t matter. If making enough cloaks to save Elise in time meant sharing dangerous secrets and exposing my throat to those who might want to slit it, I already knew what I’d do. But even so…
“What I told you about Siren attacking me earlier, sir… that wasn’t the whole story. I think General Auckus sent her, and I’m worried the other two Seekers might still be involved somehow.”
She studied me thoughtfully. “Why do you say that?”
“Auckus was the one who helped Siren access the medica the night she tried to kill me.”
At first, I thought she was trying to process the accusation. But then she nodded. “I know.”
“You…” I glanced at Johnny, wondering if maybe he’d filled her in from the brig or in the past hours, but he looked surprised as well. “You knew?”
Glenbark didn’t shy away from it. “I did. And since coming to Haven, you’ve defied multiple direct orders, violated the conditions of your house arrest, and broke out of a brig cell simply because you felt it prudent in the moment. Do you blame me for expecting you might do something drastic if confronted with this information?”
I opened my mouth to argue, then decided that this, too, was inconsequential next to everything else at the moment. “Fine. You knew. Then you should also know that I think his treachery might run deeper than a few attempts on my life. I don’t know what connections he might have with the other Seekers, and it’s even occurred to me he could be…”
“You think he could be one of them,” Glenbark said.
Hesitantly, I nodded.
To my surprise, she returned the gesture. “I understand. And rest assured, I’ve considered the possibilities quite exhaustively myself. Short of shooting him in the foot to be sure, though, I have no reason to believe Gregor Auckus is a raknoth, or one of their servants. Furthermore, I’m fairly certain he wasn’t behind Siren’s actions tonight.”
“How do you know?”
“Suffice it to say, I’ve had my eye on him. And besides that, the circumstances surrounding her escape strongly point to the theory that she’s working alone. The most likely explanation is that she simply wanted your cloaking pendant, and the attack just so happened to provide the distraction she was looking for.”
I could tell from her tone that she wasn’t any more blind than I was to the fact that her most likely explanation didn’t exactly disprove that Siren might still be working with Four, Eight, and Alpha knew who else in any number of ways. Something told me it wasn’t as simple as a snatch and grab, if for no other reason than that I didn’t really think Four and Eight would’ve remained behind in that case.
“I need to start organizing for an assault,” Glenbark said, shelving the discussion for the time being. “I’m going to have the two Seekers brought here. I urge you to consider employing their aid, assuming they’re willing and capable. Let’s end one war before we start another.”
She seemed to take my silence as an affirmative.
To my surprise, she laid a hand on my shoulder. “Full disclosure? I’m truly sorry about Elise. More sorry than I know how to say. But there’s still hope, Haldin. We’re almost there. Keep at it, no matter what. Give me a hundred of these cloaks, and we’ll do the rest.”
I nodded, and she gave my shoulder a squeeze and turned to leave.
“Full disclosure, sir?”
She turned back to me, waiting.
“I am going to do whatever it takes to get her back. No matter what.”
I didn’t explicitly add that I’d even blast my way out of Haven and go fugitive again if it came to that, but the gravity of her expression told me she understood.
For a long moment, we held stares with uncomfortable intensity. Then she gave a small nod and turned to leave without another word.
Two cloaking packs and about a half hour after Glenbark had left, the ordo prime of our guards, the 51st Boar Company, came in to tell u
s we had two visitors—a swarthy-looking tall guy and some giant lady. Said their names were numbers. He looked surprised and wary when I told him to let them in, but not half as wary as Four looked stepping into the room.
The anger inside me wanted to pounce on that look, like his caution was solely intended to invite my wrath. I couldn’t quite decide if the impassivity on Eight’s face behind him made me more or less angry.
But there was work to be done.
“We heard whispers of sinister happenings in the Demon of Divinity’s barracks,” Four said, looking curiously around at the cloaking pack assembly line before finally meeting my eyes.
“Where’s Six?” I asked.
“Right to business, then,” he muttered, then held his hands up when he saw me tense. “We don’t know where she is, Raish, or what she’s doing. She didn’t consult us before running off on whatever fool errand she’s on. She never does.”
“Convenient…” Johnny murmured from the couch.
“She attacked me while I was trying to save Elise,” I said. “Stole my cloak. Left me stunned on the pavement while those things carried away the woman I love.”
The words sounded oddly flat and emotionless to my ear, but they had their intended effect. Four paled a few shades, though he managed to keep his expression controlled. Eight’s impassive mask broke into a momentary frown.
“Dammit,” Four muttered.
“Where is she?” I asked, unable to keep the edge from my voice. “What would she do now that she has what she wanted?”
The two Seekers exchanged a thoughtful look, and probably a bit of telepathic communication.
“I’m not sure the cloak is what she wanted,” Four finally said. “Not all of it, at least. It’s possible she was even trying to save your girl.”
Demons of Divinity Page 38