By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 (6 page)

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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3
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Power.
It moved strongly here, in the complex artificial patterns that betrayed the presence of Magework.
Sorcery
, the Adepts called such uses of power—their own strength came from riding the flow of the universe, rather than from manipulating it. Llannat had found the room oppressive enough at first to make her physically ill.
Time had changed all that. Now she moved with ease among the wrought and knotted threads of the Professor’s long-ago workings. Sometimes she seemed to glimpse fragments of a greater—and still unfinished—design.
Silver cords
, she thought.
Underneath everything, the silver cords tie it all together. If you dare, you can reach out and touch them. Work with them. Change the way things are, and the way that things might be.
The moment of insight frightened her. If Master Ransome knew what she was doing these days, and how she was doing it, he would surely declare her a sorcerer and a traitor and an enemy of the Guild.
He’s wrong. I know I haven’t done anything to betray the Republic, and I don’t think I’m working against the Guild
… .
In her mind Llannat seemed to hear her own voice reciting the Adept’s vows, as she had spoken them before Master Ransome himself at the Retreat.
“ … to speak truth, to do right, to seek always the greater good … .”
She shook her head.
Nothing in there about loyalty to anything. In the healer’s oath, yes; in my commissioning oath, oh yes; but I haven’t broken either one of those.
Magework, on the other hand …
Llannat forced the thought aside. Gradually, her mind grew still again, and she waited, not thinking, until she became the question she had come to this place to ask.
 
As soon as LeSoit reached the ’
Hammer
’s cockpit—with Captain Yevil close behind him—he started working the safety webbing of the pilot’s seat into place with one hand. With the other hand he snatched up the comm and flipped it to the Port Control link.
“Portmaster, this is
Warhammer
. Berthing assignment no longer required. Request permission to lift ship.”
“Negative,
Warhammer
. Permission to lift denied. Report with your entire crew to the portmaster’s office.”
“Unable to comply. Request permiss—”
The sudden tug of a tractor beam cut him off in midword. The ’
Hammer
began to lurch and sway on her landing legs as the beam—normally used to assist a vessel into its assigned berth—kept on pulling the ship downward.
On the other side of the cockpit, Yevil was already strapping herself down into the copilot’s seat. “Guess they don’t want us to leave.”
“We knew that already,” LeSoit said. He picked up the comm link again. “Portmaster, this is
Warhammer
. Release your tractor beam and open the bay. I’m leaving.”
“Negative,
Warhammer
. Come to the office.”
LeSoit could feel the strength members of the ’
Hammer
’s frame vibrating under the tractor beam’s relentless pull. He keyed on the link again.
“Portmaster,
Warhammer
. You have five seconds to release me. Four. Three. Two. One. Out.”
He reached for the main control console and pulled on the forward nullgravs. The ’
Hammer
should have tilted toward the vertical in preparation for lift-off, but nothing happened—only the steady throb of overstressed metal, hovering just below the threshold of audibility.
“They have the entire Suivan grid to draw on,” said Yevil. “All we’ve got is ship’s power.”
“I’ll give them ship’s power, all right.” LeSoit hit the console again—first main power, and then, with a tremendous deep-throated roar, the heavy realspace engines. Power that should have driven
Warhammer
’s mass up to near-lightspeed from the bottom of a gravity well poured out of the ship’s engines into the confined space, turning the deckplates of the bay to slag beneath them. All over the console, warning lights burned red. “This is it—either we shake apart fighting their beam, or we burn it out and break free.”
“Energy guns!” Yevil shouted at him over the racket of the engines. “That’s what they’ll do. They’ll bring in energy guns and take us out right here.”
“Not if they don’t want to lose half of Suivi when we blow,” LeSoit shouted back. “The hell with all of them. Max power, override.”
The noise of the ’
Hammer
’s engines rose in a bellowing, many-voiced crescendo. Yevil swore.
“Are you trying to kill us both?”
“The Domina gave me the signal to lift ship. We’re lifting.”
“What about the goddamn
dome
?”
“Hell with the dome. We mass more than it does. Let Suivi worry about it after we’re gone.”
Then the docking bay tractors went off.
Warhammer
tilted back on her nullgravs with neck-snapping speed, hurtling upward and smashing through the closed dome of the docking bay. Loss-of-pressure alarms shrilled and whurrped, and the damage-control panel lit up in a matrix of red and amber lights.
Warhammer
kept on driving upward.
“Lost integrity in number-one hold,” LeSoit recited as he turned switches all over the panel. “Lost integrity in number two. Closing airtight doors to maintain pressure in critical areas. Commencing jump run
now
.”
 
GYFFERAN FARSPACE:
NIGHT’S-BEAUTIFUL-DAUGHTER
SUIVI POINT: ENTERTAINMENT DISTRICT; RESISTANCE HEADQUARTERS
NAMMERIN: NAMPORT
 
R
SF
SELSYN-BILAI
waited in the darkness between the stars. With hyperspace communications down hard all over the galaxy, and Admiral Vallant claiming Infabede Sector in defiance of the Republic, no word had come out of Galcen Prime for over two weeks—no instructions from headquarters to continue prosecuting the war, or to surrender.
Not that Jos Metadi intended the latter. Chance might have brought the Commanding General of the Space Force to this remote area of space; but chance had also provided him with a ship. The
Selsyn
was only a glorified cargo vessel that in better days had spent her time ferrying supplies from Prime Base to Infabede, but at the time of the war’s outbreak she had been the temporary home of a fully-armed company of Planetary Infantry and a pair of long-range reconnaissance craft.
“Damn, but it gripes me to leave you on this one,” General Metadi said to the commander of the infantry detachment.
“There’s no help for it,” Captain Tyche said. The Planetary Infantry officer checked the charge on his blaster and slipped it into the molded-plastic holster of his light battle armor. His troopers, already boarding their recon craft in the docking bay, would be wearing heavier gear, hardshell p-suits with integral weaponry that could take out vehicles and knock down walls. “If you get killed, then it’s all over for us. But as long as you’re safe, even if we lose the battle—”
“—the war goes on,” Metadi finished for him. The General, his aide, and the det commander had gathered in the office of the
Selsyn’
s late CO for a final conference before the ship dropped out of hyperspace. “I know. I agree. It was my idea. But I don’t have to like it.”
“Console yourself, sir,” said Commander Quetaya. Rosel Quetaya was a trimly built woman with a loose cap of black curls and dramatic rose-and-ivory coloring—but Metadi had chosen his aide for other reasons than her looks. “You could still die bloody in hand-to-hand. No guarantees.”
“That thought will have to keep me warm,” Metadi said. He began to pace about the cramped compartment. “All right, Tyche, we’re going to drop out at the rendezvous point in less than an hour. Keep those recons inside our sensor shadow for as long as you can. If there’s anything out there waiting for us, assume it’s one of Vallant’s pickup ships and commence your attack. Meanwhile, I will remove this vessel to a safe location and await your signal. If you don’t make it … well, that’ll be my problem, not yours.”
“Too true, General. I wouldn’t want to trade you for it, either.” Tyche looked thoughtful. “What about any loyalists that might be mixed in with Vallant’s people? It’d be a pity to lose them.”
Quetaya nodded. “If we want to make up a fleet, we’ll need all the crews we can get.”
“Don’t worry about it right now,” said Metadi. “Concentrate on taking that first ship. After the smoke clears, we can think about sorting out the survivors.”
“I’d sure like to have an Adept on hand for that part,” Quetaya said. “For the sorting, I mean.”
“No you don’t,” Metadi told her. “Every time I’ve had to work with Adepts, it’s complicated things beyond belief.”
Quetaya looked curious. “I thought your copilot on the old
Warhammer
was an Adept.”
“He was,” said Metadi. “Trust me, Commander. I’m speaking from experience.”
The
Selsyn
’s intraship comm system clicked on. “Dropout from hyperspace in ten minutes,” a voice blared. “I say again, dropout from hyperspace in ten minutes. All hands take your assigned positions.”
“That’s me, sir,” Tyche said. “I have to get down to the docking bay and join my troopers.”
The infantry captain saluted, turned, and headed off at something close to a run. Metadi and Quetaya watched him leave.
“There goes a good man,” the General said after a moment. “I hope we see him again.”
 
Llannat Hyfid knelt within the white circle in the black room. All around her the air system hummed, and the thousand tiny sounds of a living ship filled the darkened chamber.
At length she sighed and rose to her feet. Meditating had eased her tension, but the question she had brought with her into the black-walled chamber remained unanswered. Perhaps something waiting for her on the
Daughter
’s bridge would have meaning, if there was, indeed, any meaning to be found at all.
The door to the corridor opened as she approached. Llannat stepped through it, and into a room that she had never seen before.
She was standing in a Space Force office; she’d been in enough of those to recognize the layout and the furnishings. The battered metal desk: stock issue. The integrated wall calendar, with planetary days in black and Galcenian days superimposed in red: stock issue. The clock on the wall, also a Standard-and-Local: yet more stock issue. Even the floor wax smelled like the kind used in every Space Force installation from Galcen to Spiral’s End.
But the office wasn’t any one of the dozens that she’d used or visited in the course of her career in the Med Service. The window behind the desk opened on an unfamiliar vista—a landing field where the late-afternoon sun glanced off the tall spires of grounded ships—and the man behind the desk wasn’t a Space Force officer. He was a lean, tawny-haired young man in a dockworker’s shapeless coverall, sitting back with his feet up on the careful stacks of Space Force standard-issue forms and documents.
She knew him. Beka Rosselin-Metadi’s brother had been a senior apprentice and a teacher at the Retreat during her time there, though he’d never claimed Mastery or taken Adept’s vows.
“Owen!” she said.
He didn’t seem surprised by her arrival. He nodded toward a door in the far wall—an old-style wooden door with a latch and hinges, out of place in the familiar office setting. “What you’re after is in through there.”
Llannat hesitated for a moment. Then she walked across the room and put her hand on the latch.
“We’ll meet again,” Owen’s voice came from behind her. “And then—who can say?”
She turned the latch and pushed the door open. This time, no standard Space Force room awaited her, nor the deckplates and bulkheads of
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter
. Instead, a narrow hallway stretched out ahead of her into the dark.
And behind her, as well. The office room was gone now, leaving her alone in the impenetrable blackness.
Light
, she thought.
I need light.
She unclipped the staff from her belt and let the power of the universe flow and focus through its ebony length. There was a moment of warmth, and then she stood in the center of a nimbus of emerald light. She looked about her, and saw that she stood on a rough pavement of dry-laid flagstone, with walls of cut and fitted stone to either side.
Llannat walked on. The narrow passage began to turn through a series of corners and bends, until at last she stood before another door, this one even older than the first, of rough wood with hinges of wrought metal. No latch or doorknob, either; nothing but a heavy ring of twisted iron. She lifted the ring and pulled.
The door opened, and she was in another room—one that had a floor of blond wood in elaborate parquetry, and for its far wall a row of windows, tall and casemented, like a curtain of glass. Beyond the windowpanes the sun was rising over distant hills, filling the whole space with a ruddy light. From the forest outside the chamber came a clamor of birds.
A long table of carved openwork in the center of the room held a tray of bright fruit in colors that echoed the flowers on the trees outside. A man sat on one of the delicately made chairs at the table, a decanter and a single goblet of amber fluid standing before him on a silver tray.
He rose, and turned. It was the Professor, dressed in severe black, holding in his hand a silver-bound ebony staff—the same one that Llannat carried now. She saw his gaze move from her hand up to her face.
“Greetings,” he said. “So you were the one, after all.”
“But you’re dead!” Llannat exclaimed before she could help herself, and felt her skin grow warm with embarrassment.
“A fate we all share, one day or another,” the Professor replied with his gentle smile. Llannat realized, belatedly, that they were both speaking Court Entiboran—a language she had never taken the trouble to learn.
Somewhere in the near distance an alarm began to shrill, breaking up the golden morning with its high, incessant clamor. The Professor looked over his shoulder toward the perfect blue of the sky beyond the window.
“For some,” he said, “the day will arrive sooner than they expected. It has begun. Come with me.”
He walked past her, through the door by which she had entered. This time, when she followed him, the door led to yet a third room, as rich and sumptuous as the one before. This one had a dark wood floor, and paneled walls hung with heavy tapestries. A massive stone fireplace filled most of the far end of the room, but the hearth was clean-swept and empty.
The Professor went to the fireplace and pointed with his staff at one of the stones of the hearth. It was not rough-finished like the others, but polished, and carved with the arms of House Rosselin and of Entibor.
“Look and remember,” he said. “All times and places meet where the power of the universe does not extend. Some have called me a traitor. Others may call you the same. But you and I, we will know the truth.”
All through his speech, the distant alarm bell continued to ring. Llannat opened her mouth to ask what it meant—
—and found herself once more in the black room of
Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter
, kneeling in the center of the white circle, with the Professor’s last words finding somber echoes within her own mind, and the warning bell for final approach into Gyffer sounding in the corridor outside.
The answer she had been seeking came to her, late and—now that she’d found it—unwelcome.
Sorcery, she thought.
That’s what I did when I gave the order to jump for Gyfferan space: I reached out like a Magelord and changed a part of the universe, because there’s something waiting for me on Gyffer that I need to find, if I’m going to make the future turn out like it ought to … .
Her breath caught.
Or maybe like the Professor thought that it ought to, five hundred years ago.
 
Captain Amyas Faramon—until recently of the Space Force, now of the Infabede Unified Defense Command under Admiral Vallant—was inspecting one of the starboard gun nacelles on the
Veratina
when his recognition signal sounded.
He left the gunnery officer and the junior supply officer in whose company he had been making the inspection and keyed on the bulkhead-mounted comm link. “Captain.”
“Pickets report contact exiting hyper,” the voice at the other end said. “TAO requests your presence.”
Faramon clicked the key twice by ’way of acknowledgment and turned to his inspecting party. “Carry on without me, gentles. I expect your report at midday.”
The gunnery officer gave a quick nod. “Sir.”
By the time the captain had reached
Veratina
’s Combat Information Center, the track of the unknown had already been laid in and plotted. Faramon joined the tactical action officer at the main battle tank.
“What do you have?” he asked.
The big holovid display in the middle of CIC would normally be showing a three-dimensional representation of whatever action was going on. At the moment, though, hi-comms remained erratic all over the Infabede sector, limiting real-time updates to what the ’
Tina
’s own sensors could pick up. Lightspeed communications from the picket ships provided the rest of the necessary data—all of it, however, subject to time lag.
The TAO pointed at a blue dot in the tank, one of several representing small UDC vessels doing picket duty in the area. “
Fleyde
, here, reported the dropout, and got us the initial track via lightspeed comms. Current position of the unknown extrapolated to here.”
The red dot that marked an Unknown/Hostile vessel was flashing on and off to indicate a projection not yet confirmed in real time. Faramon studied the display for a few seconds.

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