By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 (28 page)
Read By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 Online
Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald
His aide shook her head. “Just shot up all the hi-comms nodes, plus everything on the surface that looked like it might have a Mage ID. Then they jumped.”
“That sounds like the General, all right.” Gil found that he was smiling as well. “Our courier didn’t happen to pick up the General’s next port of call out of the bridge-to-bridge chatter, did he?”
“Sorry, no.”
“That’s like Metadi. He’s a cagey one—knows that the Mages probably got all our codes when they took Prime Base. How about his jump path?”
Jhunnei was grinning outright. “Gyffer. Just like the Mages.”
“You know,” Gil said after a moment, “deciding where we should go next just got a whole lot easier.”
“Head where the fighting is, eh, Commodore?”
“That’s what we joined up for, Lieutenant. And Gyffer’s arming ships—if we can beat the Mages into the system, maybe we can sell off those weapons and engine parts we brought back from this last cruise. Never hurts to make a little money.”
The comm link on Gil’s desk beeped at him. He keyed it on. “Commodore Gil here.”
“Message from Waycross Inspace Control.”
Gil tensed. The duty officer was supposed to handle any messages from Inspace as long as the ’
Pavo
was maintaining orbit.
Either the CDO is slacking off, or we’ve. got something serious.
Pavo
was maintaining orbit.
Either the CDO is slacking off, or we’ve. got something serious.
In either case, though, it wasn’t the fault of the comms tech on the other end of the link. The CDO could be dealt with later; meanwhile, it was Inspace’s turn.
“What’s their problem?” Gil asked.
“A starpilot claiming to be Beka Rosselin-Metadi just entered the system with eight ships,” said the comms tech. “Inspace wants to know if you’ll vouch for her.”
“Eight ships,” said Gil thoughtfully. “I wonder where she picked them up … . Is the lead vessel in the formation an old
Libra
-class armed freighter?”
Libra
-class armed freighter?”
A pause on the comm link, and then, “Sensor profile of lead vessel makes it a
Libra
-class.”
Libra
-class.”
“Tell Inspace I’ll vouch for her, and ask her to call on me as soon as possible. We need to talk.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
There was another, longer pause. Then the comms tech came back on, sounding apologetic this time. “Inspace says that the Domina told them quote inform Baronet D’Rugier that if calls are to be made, he shall call on the Domina of Entibor aboard her vessel unquote.”
Gil closed his eyes and sighed. “That’s her, all right. Tell Inspace not to worry, I’ll contact her again later. Gil out.” He keyed off the link and turned around in his chair to look at his aide. “Jhunnei, we have a problem, and I don’t have anyone to blame but myself for setting it up.”
“What kind of problem, sir?”
“The worst kind,” said Gil. “Protocol. As planetary nobility goes, the Domina of Entibor outranks an Ovredisan baronet any day of the week. But Entibor gave up its direct authority over the Space Force back in the last war, when Jos Metadi was bringing all the planetary fleets under one command.”
“Ah,” Jhunnei said. “And neither one of you can afford to take second place, either—not so long as people like Captain Merro are watching and figuring the odds.”
The scraps of broken metal drifted in the cold of space, each piece in its separate direction, as the fury of the Gyfferan energy guns had sundered them. To the sensors of Gyfferan Local Defense Force Cruiser #97, they barely registered at all.
The 97’s tactical action officer glanced at the cruiser’s main battle tank—now empty except for the eight blue dots of the Fast-Response Task Force, arrayed in an open lozenge with the 97 at its center. Then he double-checked the sensor screen.
“The area seems to be clear of hostile units, sir,” he reported to the captain. “Two non-Gyfferan units engaged; two destroyed. No messages sent from either ship—none that we intercepted, anyway.”
The captain nodded. “Quick and easy. Too damned quick and easy. Their main force is still out here somewhere.”
The TAO pulled thoughtfully at his earlobe and stared at the dots in the battle tank.
“Maybe the warfleet hasn’t shown up yet,” he said. “What if our scoutship read the sensors wrong, and there were only those two ships to start with?”
“Doing reconnaissance work ahead of the main force? No, I don’t think so. I’d say our scout picked up the whole fleet, but they spotted him on his way through. So now they’ve gone and jumped elsewhere.”
The TAO looked glum. “This sector’s got an awful lot of elsewhere to hide in, sir.”
“That’s why we’re here,” said the captain. “Put more scouts out. Expanding-globe search pattern. If there’s an uncharted blob of space dust out here I want it listed. Meanwhile, prepare recon in force—in cylinder of columns, form up.”
Inside the 97’s main battle tank, the blue dots shifted their positions.
“Where are we heading?” asked the TAO.
“Look,” said the captain.
He left the command ehair and stepped over to the tank. A few quick commands through the keyboard, and the image in the tank changed. One at a time the sun, the planets, and the larger moons of the Gyfferan system—actually, the yellow, orange, and brown dots that represented them—winked into view inside the tank. The ships of the task force dwindled to a single blue dot. At the bottom of the tank, out of the way of the glowing dots, a row of small letters read, DISPLAY NOT TO SCALE.
The captain pointed to the blue dot that was the Task Force. “As you can see here, this spot is aligned with Gyffer’s equator.” He indicated another spot inside the tank. “Now I want to check what might be waiting at this distance out, aligned with Gyffer’s north and south poles.”
The TAO frowned at the diagram. “You really think that the Mages would pick someplace that obvious to hide in?”
“Why not? It’s easy to find and easy to remember. If they don’t want to keep losing people, that’s important. Thanks to the Republic, whatever the Mages may or may not have, they don’t have a hell of a lot of experience working warfleets in vacuum. They’ll make mistakes that anyone who went to the first year at the war college would instinctively avoid. That’s our advantage, and it’s a big one.”
“Understood, sir.” The TAO paused. “Will we be leaving a ship here to guard this point? The Mages may come back to look for stragglers.”
“Let them,” said the captain. “We aren’t going to win this war by picking off ships one by one, not as long as Gyffer has a fleet big enough to take on the whole Mage force.”
He turned to the 97’s communications tech. “Pass a signal to the fleet: form on me, string-of-pearls operations, two-second dropouts, on line from here to coordinates six-twenty-three, five-niner-seven, zero, zero, four.”
“Signal being passed now,” said the comms tech.
“Very well,” the captain said. “Commence operations. All units, synchronize, on my mark, commence run-to-jump. Mark.”
“Commencing run-to-jump,” the TAO said.
“Roger,” said the sensor tech, as the 97 blipped into hyperspace for a two-second count. “Full scan on dropout.”
“Dropout,” said the TAO. “Sensors?”
“Empty.”
“Commencing run-to-jump.”
“Roger. Full scan on dropout.”
The 97 and the rest of the Fast-Response Task Force continued on their way, searching through Gyfferan space in a skein of tiny jumps and drops—the interminable, nausea-inducing microjumps that made scouting and reconnaissance such an exhausting, mind-deadening task.
Grand Admiral sus-Airaalin laid the message tablet down on his desk. “Whatever happened to our ships at the dropout point,” he said to Mid-Commander Taleion, “it happened before they could send out a second message. But I don’t think we need to speculate very long concerning their fate.”
“No, my lord,” Taleion said. “It appears that the Gyfferans have begun conducting reconnaissance in force.”
“Yes. But we can’t keep on finding their units the hard way, Mael. Send to all units: deploy scoutship detachments in expanding-globe formation.”
“Yes, my lord.” Taleion made a note on his own tablet. “Anything else?”
The Grand Admiral considered for a moment. “Yes. Also to all units: maintain tetrahedral attack formation; set jump coordinates to halve our distance in to Gyffer. Prepare to jump on my command.”
“It’s risky,” said Taleion. “We may get caught between two parts of the Gyfferan fleet.”
“I don’t think we’ve seen their main force yet, Mael. But no matter. Send a courier to Infabede. Tell Vallant that payday is here, and it’s time for him to earn his promotion.”
Taleion’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t quite take your meaning.”
“Let Vallant’s renegades hunt down the Local Defense Forces operating in Gyfferan farspace,” sus-Airaalin said. “It was not for amusement’s sake that the Resurgency bought and paid for him, after all.”
The Grand Admiral contemplated his desk top for a moment, then went on. “Purely between us, Mael, it would not displease me if the Gyfferans proved clever enough to take Valiant down with them. He was a traitor once, and such a man is likely to be a traitor again if it serves his need. In the long run, we are better off without him.”
GYFFERAN FARSPACE:
SWORD-OF-THE-DAWNINFABEDE SECTOR: UDC
FEZRISOND
“I
THINK,” said Gil, “that I’ve figured it out.”
THINK,” said Gil, “that I’ve figured it out.”
Lieutenant Jhunnei glanced up from the cargo inventory they’d been working on over mugs of cha‘a in the ’
Pavo’s
wardroom. “Figured what out, Commodore?”
Pavo’s
wardroom. “Figured what out, Commodore?”
“The solution to our current impasse.”
“You mean with the Domina?”
“As opposed to all our other problems,” Gil said. “Yes. What we need here is neutral ground—some place that isn’t either my ship or hers, and some kind of arrangement that won’t let either one of us claim all the prestige.”
Jhunnei looked interested. “What kind of arrangement?”
“A party,” said Gil. “As formal a one as possible.”
“A party, sir? In the middle of a war?”
“No better time for it,” Gil said. “I learned that particular lesson from the Republic’s ambassador to Ophel—you were there that night, remember? The best way to get word out to the bad guys that you think you’re going to win is to show them that you don’t even care. A party.”
Jhunnei cleared the inventory from her clipboard with a stroke of her stylus and started a new page. “A party it is, then, Commodore. Whom do we invite?”
Gil thought for a moment. “The Domina of Lost Entibor will be the guest of honor, of course; we’ll be presenting all the other guests to her. That should balance out the prestige equation well enough to keep everybody satisfied. And all the others: the Domina’s entourage, for starters, and the captains or designated representatives of all her ships plus all of ours, plus all their guests and escorts—”
Jhunnei had been plying her stylus vigorously as he spoke. Now she paused. “We’re looking at a couple of hundred warm bodies already, Commodore. I don’t believe the ’Pavo’s got any space big enough that isn’t already full of cargo.”
“I was thinking of holding it dirtside,” Gil said. “Neutral ground, like I said. Find us a place, Lieutenant, and make the arrangements.”
“I’ll give you the final guest list for approval as soon as I’ve got it drawn up,” his aide said imperturbably. “Anything special I need to know before I start?”
Gil pondered briefly. “I’m fond of little cakes with nut toppings … if there’s anybody in Waycross who can make them, see that they make enough. And be certain the punch is fairly weak; I don’t want anybody to get drunk and start looking for trouble. We’ve got enough of it out there looking for us.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll get right on it.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant. That will be all.”
Gil sat back in his chair and sighed. He’d done his best to do a Jos Metadi imitation, from back in the days when he’d been the aide who was expected to do the impossible flawlessly on short notice. Well, Jhunnei would make out fine. Good training for a good officer.
He turned back to studying the cargo manifests of the vessels in his informal flotilla, showing exactly what they’d collected on their first Mageworlds sortie. The list was fairly grim to look upon—very little of high resale value outside of a few specialized areas. He could probably unload some of the weapons and hyperdrive parts at Gyffer, but it was looking more and more like he’d have to fight his way into the system first.
One problem at a time,
he told himself.
Beka Rosselin-Metadi first, because she’s right here. Then Gyffer, and the General, and that damned cargo. Then the Mages.
he told himself.
Beka Rosselin-Metadi first, because she’s right here. Then Gyffer, and the General, and that damned cargo. Then the Mages.
One problem at a time.
Several days after the Gyfferan Local Defense Force’s first abortive contact with the Mage warfleet, the summons came. Llannat Hyfid once again found herself walking with Lieutenant Vinhalyn into a shielded basement room at the LDF headquarters.
The headquarters building was a massive block of grey stone, with a stepped and columned façade in the same Late Archaic style as the nearby State House. Llannat found it almost physically oppressive. Its weight bore down on her in a way that the even older and heavier architecture of the Adepts’ Retreat never had. She wondered if the difference lay in the natures of the two buildings, or in the mutability of the universe—or in her.
I am not the person I was. Anyone can see it.
That was part of the problem right there. The meeting she was heading into, at the insistence of both Vinhalyn and the High Command, was going to include at least one Adept from the Gyfferan Guildhouse.
I’ll be lucky if nobody runs out of the room screaming.
Nobody did, of course. Most of the people in the low, windowless room were LDF officers, anyway—one or two she didn’t know, and a couple more from the first conference with the LDF back when
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter
came into port, and at least one woman she remembered from the crowd at the officers’ club on the night of her wedding. The Adept was nobody she’d ever seen before, an ordinary-looking man with a Gyfferan accent, somewhere between her age and Lieutenant Vinhalyn’s. His name, according to the senior LDF officer’s hasty round of introductions, was Master Something-or-other Kemni, and he was the best the local Guildhouse had at doing location fixes.
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter
came into port, and at least one woman she remembered from the crowd at the officers’ club on the night of her wedding. The Adept was nobody she’d ever seen before, an ordinary-looking man with a Gyfferan accent, somewhere between her age and Lieutenant Vinhalyn’s. His name, according to the senior LDF officer’s hasty round of introductions, was Master Something-or-other Kemni, and he was the best the local Guildhouse had at doing location fixes.
“Only in circumscribed areas,” Kemni explained to Llannat. From his voice and expression, he’d been explaining it to the LDF officer for quite a while without much effect. “A few square kilometers, at most. Security assistance and rescue work.”
“You helped find those mountain climbers,” the LDF officer said. “That was more than just a few square kilometers.”
Kemni shook his head. “It wasn’t anything like this.”
“They used Adepts for location fixes in the last war. If it worked then, it’ll work now.”
“I wasn’t around for the last war,” said Kemni. “And I’ve never done any space-rescue work either.”
“Master Kemni has a point,” said Lieutenant Vinhalyn. “That’s why I proposed that Mistress Hyfid join us as well—she has, in fact, done space-rescue work under combat conditions.”
Llannat felt her skin growing warm; she was glad that no one would see the blush of embarrassment.
I pointed at a dot on a monitor screen that I couldn’t even interpret, and I said, ‘Go that way.’ I never expected it to work.
I pointed at a dot on a monitor screen that I couldn’t even interpret, and I said, ‘Go that way.’ I never expected it to work.
But if I hadn’t done it, Tammas Cantrel and his people would still be floating out there somewhere.
“Even better,” the LDF officer said. “She and Master Kemni can check each other’s work, as it were.”
He turned to the big battle tank that dominated the center of the basement room with its multicolored display—the Gyfferan system, this time, in enough detail to include the major asteroids and artificial objects as well as all ten planets and their moons.
“Somewhere in all this,” he said, “there’s a fleet. Our first report, from a scoutship on microjump patrol, put the entire body of the Mageworlds force
here
.”
here
.”
He touched a control. Far out beyond normal system space, at a position parallel to Gyffer’s equator and some twenty degrees above the plane of the ecliptic, a dot of red-for-hostile light flashed on.
“Reconnaissance in force by one of the Fast-Response groups,” he went on, “found and destroyed no more than two Mage units at the reported coordinates. Our question: where are the rest of the Mages?”
Llannat could see the point of the LDF officer’s question. Space—even the relatively small and circumscribed space of a single star system—was big, and keeping out of sight in it was easy, if keeping out of sight was all that you wanted to do. Beka Rosselin-Metadi had brought not one but two ships down onto the very surface of Darvell, in the face of planetary defenses as thorough as Gyffer’s. As long as the commander of the Mageworlds force didn’t intend to be spotted, no ship out of Gyffer was likely to find him.
He doesn’t want us to see his fleet until it’s right on top of us, Llannat thought. He wants Gyffer to be like Galcen, and fold up without a fight.
She looked from Master Kemni to the glowing red dot in the battle tank, and back again. “Should we try it one at a time, or both together?” she asked.
“Together,” Kemni said. “Not linked—it’s too dangerous—but working in parallel.”
Llannat nodded. “Sounds good. Let’s go.”
Master Kemni walked to the opposite side of the holotank. Llannat stayed where she was. After a few awkward seconds, when nobody seemed to be doing anything, she decided that she ought to try closing her eyes and relaxing, the way she had done aboard the courier ship
Naversey
when she located Tammas Cantrel. She took a series of deep breaths and let her eyelids drift shut.
Naversey
when she located Tammas Cantrel. She took a series of deep breaths and let her eyelids drift shut.
Even with her eyes closed, the display in the battle tank filled her awareness. Time passed, marked by the in-and-out of her own breathing and the slow beat of her pulse, and began to slip. Between one breath and the next, she was floating in a kind of no-space that contained at once the display in the tank before her, and the vast empty reaches of the system itself.
Here in this place, the two were one. She reached out further toward the points of light—the orbital docks and the satellite weapons platforms, the moons and planets and the dark places in between—feeling for those places where the currents of the universe moved with the eddies and surges of active life. The search had gone like this before, the time she had probed the drifting wreckage of the battle at the Net.
But this time … this time she could see the hint, the barest hint, of silver cords winding through the tank.
If I had a mask,
she thought,
I could see them better. Then I could … no. Don’t think like that; not with an Adept standing across from you!
she thought,
I could see them better. Then I could … no. Don’t think like that; not with an Adept standing across from you!
Llannat forced her attention back to the double entity that was the Gyfferan system and the holographic model. She could feel different temperatures in the model, corresponding to something—she didn’t know what—in the star system itself.
But the silver cords—the broken pattern there, all the twists and knots—I’ve seen those before. I saw them on
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter,
when I was watching what the Professor did, five hundred years ago.
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter,
when I was watching what the Professor did, five hundred years ago.
She heard herself telling the LDF officers, “Search here,” and felt her hand rise to point at something in the tank. The cords, the important ones, the ones she had seen before, drifted farther apart. She heard herself saying, “Search here,” and pointing to a different place, and saw them twist. Over and over she pointed to different places, telling the LDF officers where to search, while currents of warmth and freezing cold washed over her, and she watched the cords move.
One last time she spoke and pointed; the warm currents that flowed around her rose and burned like fire; and the silver cords twisted, caught, and wove themselves back into the pattern as she had seen it before, when it reached completion.
So few threads to mend the universe, she thought. But enough, if they are willing.
She opened her eyes. The last “search here” had barely left her mouth—she could still feel the breath of it moving past her lips—and her hand was pointing at the holotank. Master Kemni looked disgruntled; Lieutenant Vinhalyn and the LDF officers looked pleased; and nobody was regarding her with any more suspicion than Adepts got in the normal course of things.
I’m safe,
she thought.
I hope.
she thought.
I hope.
“Is this the first time I spoke?” she asked.
“Yes, Mistress,” one of the LDF officers replied. Already they were busy working with the tactical computers and the navicomps and the bright new lights glowing in the holovid tank.
“Ah,” she said.
Then she staggered, and had to catch herself on a chair before she fell, because the silver cords were back—not just in the tank this time, but in the room around her, like a net, even though her eyes were wide open. Someone else was pulling on the cords, ripping apart the pattern she had mended by her words and actions.
Magework.
The indictment echoed in her mind—but it was not Llannat Hyfid who pronounced it; it was the adversary, the one who kept and guarded the ships on the other side.
Magework and the hand of a Magelord.
“I’ll be damned.”
Slip of printout flimsy in hand, Beka left the
’Hammer’s
empty cockpit behind her and headed for the common room. She was looking for Nyls Jessan—failing him, LeSoit would do—but she didn’t find either one. Instead she almost ran into her brother and Klea Santreny, who were practicing with their staves in the small bit of open space between the dining table and the acceleration couches.
’Hammer’s
empty cockpit behind her and headed for the common room. She was looking for Nyls Jessan—failing him, LeSoit would do—but she didn’t find either one. Instead she almost ran into her brother and Klea Santreny, who were practicing with their staves in the small bit of open space between the dining table and the acceleration couches.
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