Light Bringer (The Young Ancients: Second Cycle Book 2) (2 page)

It meant going all the way back
inside, and digging for the device in the gold box that was near the window on
the right hand side of the thing, near the small brown chair he never used.

Then, sighing, he also got his
jump ship out, and re-secured his tiny castle, walking slowly toward the
landing areas after that. It wasn't physically hard as much as he didn't
feel
like doing anything. Hopefully that would shake itself off with more food,
because there was no real choice in the matter. No matter what, he
had
to get things going. The fate of the world might depend on it.

Which was about as scary a
thought as Dare could have managed at the moment, he decided. That the world
surviving might be down to him, even if only in a tiny portion, was daunting.

It didn't take long, about six
minutes, for him to set up, and climb into his large black vessel. The amulet
itself was tiny, being about the size of a gold coin, but magic often worked
that way. You activated it, and things happened that didn't seem possible to a
reasonable mind. Settling into the captain's chair, he looked out the large
shield window, then rose about fifty feet in the air, using the small control
unit, which fit his hand perfectly. Right now it looked like a stone that
floated in the air. Turning it very slowly, the ship spun in place. There were
two other ships there, but neither of them seemed to be doing anything, so he
looked up, saw it was clear, and left.

That meant going up about two
thousand feet, and heading to the west, about ten miles, before heading
straight up. Into space itself. As that happened he glanced at the port, which
was mainly made of tan focus stone. Earth and soil compressed by magic into
what was essentially glass. More building had been taking place, which was nice
to see, given that he hadn't been around to order that kind of thing. Neither
had Erid. Whoever was on that had clearly put the labor in however, since most
of the magical palaces they'd been using had been replaced already, with
decently large looking focus stone construction.

They were all tan, except that
the roof tops had been painted somehow, so they were in purple and gold. The
king's colors. Given that he was in charge of Noram,
and
a great person,
Dare approved of that. Especially if it meant he didn't have to pay for the
land taxes. The space port was exempt from that, but the buildings were just
outside the boundary of what that actually was, officially. At least he thought
that was the case. It could be that King Richard didn't care, as long as the place
was used to get the ships and people in, and not as a way to put coin in
someone else's pockets.

He kept climbing, the ship moving
quickly, but not even close to full speed. Dareg wasn't up to doing that at the
moment. Not that it felt like anything to do, but the three extra ounces of
pulling his right hand would have to do in order to get that to happen just
didn't seem worth the three minutes he might have saved. So five minutes later
he was able to take the craft into a fairly high orbit. That placed it well
below the satellite layer. There were thousands of the things floating in
space, he'd heard, but they were so small he'd yet to hit one. That he knew
about. The whole ship was built of shield material, so he might not notice it
if he had. No one had come, or called, to scream at him over it, so he figured
that if nothing else he'd done it and gotten away with the destruction of the
things. Space was pretty big, so it was probably just that no such collision
had taken place yet.

Circling the world like that,
looking at the big blue oceans, and the green and brown landscape, as well as
the clouds, and occasional flashes of lightning, he yawned. Not that the view
wasn't impressive. It truly
was
. New enough to still engage him, even.
He was just sleepy. Stretching, he pulled his communications device from his
right hand tunic pocket, and stared at it for a long time. So long that his
mind wandered and he realized after a while that he was dreaming of having
roast chicken, instead of doing anything useful.

Without stopping to consider it,
he brought up Queen Tiera's name and touched the glowing sigil, to connect with
her. Nothing happened. That was the first time he'd seen that one, at least
with her, so considered worrying. Just as he was about to tap the thing off and
try someone else, her face appeared. Looking pale and lovely, like always, but
also...
Annoyed
.

"
Yes
?" She
barked the word and didn't even glance at the screen, clearly busy reading
something off to the side. "This had better not be about the transport, or
I swear I'm going to scream at you. Just so you know. I'm
trying
to find
some way to get you there. I
promise
."

Dareg tilted his head, trying to
care about what she was saying, and failing. Still, you didn't have to have the
emotions to fake being a nice person really. That was something that Tiera
seemed to be missing at the moment.

"Heading where?"

Again, she didn't look at him, or
seem to recognize his voice. Given it was kind of sullen, he understood that.

"Saturn? For the science
trip? Isn't that why you called?" She still didn't so much as raise her
eyes.

He froze for a second. That had
been set up by Princess Karina, really. Before the big fight. A way to distract
the Austrans from the fact that he was the bastard child of Tor. Not that they
believed that, which was the issue. No amount of proof was going to show that
to be true to them either, he bet.

For half a second he nearly
gasped, since it seemed to him to be incredibly insane to be worried about a
free trip for some science folk, after that huge battle. The thing there was
that it
hadn't
really been that, not for anyone else. For him it was
life changing, and maybe for a hundred other people around the world it was big,
but he had to bet that most people hadn't even been told that anything had
taken place at all, other than an attack. Maybe not even that, in Austra. There
hadn't been any of their people in the room at the time after all, so no losses
had taken place for them.

Most of the world really would be
like that, too. Tiera knew, of course. Of the people there half of them had
been related to her, so it made sense. There wasn't much to do about it
however, which he'd been working out for himself. Hence... Her setting up that
trip that had been promised.

"Oh, good. I was afraid
they'd go without me. I can do the pickup for that whenever they're ready. I
need to pick up some water if we're going to spend the night." The ship
could make air, and even food, but it needed something to work with. It could
use human waste, and
would
, if the trip was too long, but a lot of
people seemed squeamish about eating former human waste.

Like that wasn't what dirt was,
never seemed to occur to most.

Saying that finally got his
youthful looking Aunt to shift her focus.

"Dare? I hadn't heard
anything about you so figured you were still recuperating. You look... Decent.
How do you feel?" Real concern crossed her face, as she stared at him.

He yawned, covering his mouth
with his free right hand, while staring back at her. She seemed fine as well.
Considering several of her close friends had recently died, that was important
to note. It would impact her, even if she hadn't been part of the fight
herself.

"Tired. Constantly. I doubt
that will change for a while. I managed to build up enough for the healing
amulet to work without killing me, so I'm back to work now. You know about all
of it?" For the life of him he couldn't remember if she'd
been
there or not.

That bothered him for a moment.
From the report, at least if what he'd written was all true, she hadn't been in
the actual fight. That didn't mean she hadn't been at Sam Builder's however, at
the time.

"Tim told me all of it. The
general consensus for right now is that we need to prepare, and be watchful.
Which means-" She stopped and looked up, as someone spoke to her from
across the room, wherever she was.

Her voice was a bit less pleasant
then, but didn't seem upset.

"Dare? Sorry to dodge out on
you, but something came up here. I can get my secretary to set that up in
Austra for you? Prime Minister Foley hid that you were injured by having his
people arrange the science crew taking the trip. Twenty strong. Is that all
right with you? They plan to do live coverage of it all, I think. You have
contacts in the Austran media, so I'll let you handle that portion. Sorry, got
to run. Later!" She was moving at the end, and jogging, so whatever was
going on seemed to be important.

He forced a smile, sitting alone
on the bridge of his space craft. Then he tried to work out what she'd meant,
by him having media contacts. That didn't take him too long, since he really did.
More to the point it was easy to work out who to get in touch with, knowing
only four people that fit that bill.

So he found the right name, and
tapped it into being, wondering if it would be a while for the man to notice
his device was buzzing at him. It really didn't though, a face showing up
instantly.

A sleepy man, with pale tan skin,
and a mustache.

"Tomas Early, how may I help
you?" He spoke well, his voice only a little clogged from sleep. He was in
a light shirt, that seemed to be all one piece, and from the darkness
surrounding the device, had truly been out, even if the fellow had picked up
instantly. That took skill. One that Dareg doubted he'd ever really have. If he
was woken suddenly like that, he tended to flail around, trying to make sure
there were no rats on him.

"Hi, Tomas. This is Dareg
Canton? We met a little over a month ago, at the return ceremony?" It was
just possible that the man wouldn't recognize him, since it had been a bit and
they'd only hung around for a single day. One that had been filled with many
far more interesting people than him. Plus he had a better than decent beard
now, which was far fuller than most fourteen year olds could have managed.

"Oh! Hello! I was planning
to call and dun you for inside information for a news report in a few days.
You're involved in that Saturn trip, aren't you?" He waited, as if that
hadn't
been announced. That was probably him being most polite, for an Austran media
fellow.

"Piloting for it. That was
why I called. I managed to open up a spot for a news team to do the live feed,
and wanted to know if you and the others wanted in on that? If so, we need to work
out what you'll need for it. You had a lot of..." He had to stop, and
focus, to recall what the devices had been called. "Cameras with you last
time? The handhelds can get pictures and send them back from Saturn with no
problem, but the picture wasn't very good, compared to being there. Too narrow,
though the colors were right." He'd seen it, so knew that to be true.

Karen Derring had looked it up
and shown him and some of the others. Thinking of her hurt for a second. Mainly
because it was damned sad that she wasn't still with them. Even if he hadn't
known her well.

Tom nodded, smiling hugely.

"
We
get in on that?
I... Thank you for thinking of us. Are you sure you wouldn't want someone more important?
Syslink Forty-Three isn't exactly a top five channel. Not even a top five
hundred, to be honest. Though I suppose that everyone else would need help with
the gear, as well, so there's that. Still, you could get a more famous face to
be there with you." There was real humility in the words, which given the
man was from Austra, meant something. They were kind of big into self promotion
most of the time.

So either the man didn't want to
risk going into space, or he really thought that having a lot of people
watching them was important to Dare for some reason. It was almost certainly
the last one, and the
why
came to him before he even spoke. It was
important to Tomas, so he just assumed that Dareg would feel the same way.

"Ummmm. No? Thank you? If
you are willing to come, it would be a huge favor to me. I really don't want to
be grilled for several days straight about how I can't
possibly
be Tor
Baker's boy, if possible. There are some things..." He yawned, which got
Tom to do it too, laughing.

Then the Austran yawned again.

"It's late here. Two in the
morning. I... Can set that up in the morning? We'll need at least three cameras
that can transfer data back like a handheld. I don't know if anyone makes
anything like that. Is that possible?"

It was, in theory. The satellites
were basically that, after all.
He
didn't have any just laying around,
as it turned out, but he nodded.

"I might be able to get
something that will work. Let me... I need to talk to some people. Can you get
the others, do you think? Jan, Cyra and Nimbus?" He didn't know their
schedules, or if they really even worked with the man day to day. After a bit
the man smiled, nodding.

"They should be available.
If not, we have other people, but I think I see your method here. You want to
control the flow of information, using known resources. Clever. I'll do that,
if you can get us something better than a handheld to show the splendor of
Saturn with?"