Light Bringer (The Young Ancients: Second Cycle Book 2) (20 page)

Even at that, Grainger just
laughed. It was a good, deep sound.

"I'm almost certain that all
of us will be able to publish for decades off this one journey. We should all
consider the merit of moving here for work, once that becomes available. I'm
certain my wife, Honey, will enjoy
that
, but I'm willing to work on
her!"

The mood seemed to be a
combination of happy and serious for a while after that. Dareg looked around
finally, confirmed all the gear was inside, and that everyone had what they
needed.

"Off to Saturn, next then.
We'll be in orbit for six days. We should have a picnic when we get
there." As if to underscore that his stomach growled at him gently. No one
else heard it, saving him from embarrassment.

It took less time to get from
Mars to Saturn than the rest of the trip had. He moved into orbit, and made the
jump in about two minutes. Then settled into what should have been a safe
rotation around the ringed planet. The only problem there was that slowly, over
time, the giant thing pulled on them, even from far away. It was manageable,
but took constant correction. That part was going to be annoying, Dare decided.
It meant they needed to either move away from the thing a good way while he
slept or have someone constantly in the pilot's seat.

He didn't have to order the crew
to get food, and the room changed, so that they could all eat a feast while
looking out the window. Tomas and Grant took turns pointing at things and
speaking in deep, polished voices in the background. Jan kept reading things
from her hand, and gesturing, getting one of the cameras to do what she wanted.
That meant getting the rest of them on at least part of the time.

It was Jan then who came to him,
her voice low, about half an hour into the whole thing.

Her voice was scared and a bit
awed sounding when she spoke.

"Um... The Revered One,
Timon... He wanted to remind you about the Satellites? He's ready to assume
control of them in order to get them into place?"

That got the room to go silent.
At first he figured it was the creepy Austran thing where they all seemed to
have a collective puppy crush on Tim, but at least part of them seemed actually
interested to find out they were getting closer pictures, and would have them
for years.

That meant finding the right
case, which Tomas had control of, and just dumping the things outside. They
could move on their own, after all. It meant they were able to get the first
close ups of the rings. They were brown, yellow and red, with a single line of
blue, going all the way around the planet. The interesting part was, of course,
the three ships that were already there, creating the things.

That pretty much had people in
the room screaming for some reason.

Dareg finally just laughed and
raised his left hand.

"Probably robot ships. Let's
do our own exploration first, then see if they can answer us at all? They look
old, don't they?" Ancient really. They seemed to be made of huge slabs of
polished obsidian. That, or something like focus stone. "I wonder what
they're doing?"

Jan looked at her hand, and
nodded.

"Revered One Timon suggests
they're probably mining? Old world ships that we lost information about?"
That idea got most of the people to calm down at least.

"Not a problem. They
wouldn't
be even if they were aliens though. Not if all they're doing is peacefully
mining, or even just making art. It really is pretty." That came from
Tenet, who seemed to be admiring the view.

That really was an important part
of things however.

Even when one of the satellites
moved to almost touch one of the ring builders, nothing happened. Well, nothing
except a full meal being served. Half the people just grabbed plates, and stood
as they ate, not wanting to risk missing anything. Even if the table had been
set up right there, not ten feet away. Dare used a chair and silverware,
himself. Karina did the same. The view was incredible in every direction. There
were rings, and old ships, as well as happy and excited people hopping around
doing things.

Finally, Grant started to yell
about alien contact.

Nothing had really changed
however, the big ship they were watching just slowly putting out dust as it
passed.

"You know, that might be? I
hadn't thought of it before, but what if they
aren't
ships?" Dare
looked at the large black thing in the distance, using his own eyes. "They
could be animals, right? Made of stone? Or is that stupid?"

Oddly, the collective scientists
just argued about that, with over half suggesting it could be the case, and the
others thinking that was less likely than the things being intelligently driven
craft. Either way, nothing happened as they watched, except a lot of eating, on
his part. Everyone else barely picked at things, though it was
all
delicious.

There was even a delicate tiny
golden cake with a creamy filling for dessert. It was interesting seeing the
frosting on the outside of the thing, and was good. One of the Austran's made
them for everyone, helping out, and playing with the food unit at the same
time. Which was smart. Not that they couldn't have just recycled the things if no
one wanted them.

The first ten hours or so were
taken up getting things in place to spy on the ring makers, and the planet
itself. Then just as he was fading, ready to go to bed again, Dareg figured out
how to get the ship into a stable orbit. It had a control for it, but much like
jumping, it had to be set mentally. A thing that no one had explained to him in
the first place. Probably because the only person that knew about it was Timon.

That meant when he got off to
sleep finally they didn't have to set up a rotation or anything. Half a day
later Karina came to get him, so that he could eat and move around a bit,
instead of just sleeping the whole trip away. Not that he didn't
want
to
do that.

Interestingly, he walked onto his
bridge to find that it was empty, except for him, and oddly enough Jan, from
the media crew.

"Hey! I was just hiding in
here for a bit. Too jazzed to sleep, you know?" She was in her early
twenties or so, and not that pretty, but she did have a nice body and was
better looking without the tattoo on her face. He probably was too, so Dare
didn't mention it. It marked them as being on the same team and all that, so
worked well enough for him.

Her Terry-handheld buzzed, making
an odd sound that his own never had. She didn't even try to answer it, just
reading what someone had clearly written to her.

"My boss. We're supposed to
be running twenty-four hour coverage, but Channel Seventeen is trying to steal
the whole thing. That was... A cluster, you know? Messed up. Really, you should
have offered to sue the government for breach of contract. They really don't
have a right to sell things out from under you like that. No one does."
She started to flag a bit, tired seeming already.

Then, she'd probably been awake
in a stressful condition for over a day.

Dare nodded.

"Do you have a family? A
mother and father, I mean. Not adopted or..." He waved, walking toward the
wall. "Or abandoned like I was?"

That wasn't the real story, but
it was close enough for people that didn't need to know more about him.

"Um, sure. My parents are
still
married
even, so how strange does that make me? They live in
Melby. You... It's been in the news, with you and Tor?" She smiled at him.
"Yes, I picked up that no one in Noram calls him The Tor. That comes from
that sex show he did, about fifteen years ago. Did anyone ever tell you about
that?"

He fought a smile, expecting a
joke, so shook his head and waited for the punch line.

"No? Did he get paid well
for it?"

The girl smiled at that, and then
shook her head.

"It was... Our old Revered
One, our um, Ancient? Brown? He'd been taken prisoner by our Prime Minister.
That was Glost Serge back then. No one even knew it had happened, or the people
would have risen up to save him. Everyone loved Brown. Even as a little kid I
knew that. So, he'd managed to get a secret message out to the Green Man, and
his replacement, Tor. It was kind of confusing, but Serge had this insane
daughter, who wanted to marry Tor. I mean, I don't
blame
her, he's
incredible. Tor was taken prisoner too, after coming to marry her, and then was
ordered to do a live sex show with Brown, because they all thought it would be
funny to humiliate them."

She wasn't the most talented
story teller ever, but it was about at least one person he knew, which helped
keep it a bit more interesting. She brushed at her shoulder length blue and
purple hair, then continued.

"The thing was, no one
suspected that Tor was a wizard. We didn't think magic was real, back then. So
he made this image of him and Brown, doing it? And used that distraction to
escape, on the air, live. You could see him do it, later, in the archives, but
at the time just passing through a wall like he did... That was just thought to
be a glitch. It can happen. Then he ran away, protecting our Revered One. After
that..."

She stopped, and went to the
wall, where the food unit was. She didn't go on until she had a glass of
something pink and bubbly. It smelled a bit like sugar candy. Slightly too
sweet, and without any extra flavor to round it out.

"Then later, Princess Karina
and Alyssa Baker sent in a small army to protect us from the Serge family.
There was a movie that they showed me in school. It was all about how they
secretly snuck in and killed Daria Serge, to save us all."

There was a clearing of a throat
from the doorway. When he glanced over, Karina was there, shaking her head.

"We didn't
really
go
in ourselves. Kolb led them for us. Some of his students and friends went in,
armed with things that Tor had made for them. Daria... She'd murdered a friend
of ours, Ali and me. Yardley. Lilith, that's what Daria called herself, was
trying to force Ali to sign a whore contract to make a little extra coin off of
her. Yardley wouldn't let her, so she was murdered. Then, later, Glost
threatened to destroy Noram with nuclear weapons in order to get her back.
Thankfully he didn't have anything of the kind, and we knew it, but we had to
let her go, to try and save Denno.
He
wrote that play. The one you saw?
Unless they made more than one. It was a joke that he'd come up with really, to
entertain Alyssa and I, as we stumbled around trying to find a way to stop
Daria. It was about her though. Always."

The girl blinked, and made a
small sound that was a bit shocked, then smiled while sucking in air.

"That... Was not actually
covered in school. I got to go on the museum trip too, since I grew up in
Melby. They should probably fix that. Or, I guess not? It's a pretty good story.
I liked the part where you cut off her head."

Karina, who was most often very
polite, nodded.

"
I
liked that part of
the story, too. It was actually David Derring that did it. No one is supposed
to know that however, to protect him. He was just a kid back then, but had made
certain he was in on it. Ali is his sister."

That got Dareg to stop suddenly,
and tilt his head.

"I... Didn't know that. So
Karen Derring..."

"Your aunt. By marriage, not
blood."

He'd heard part of the story, but
it suddenly made more sense now, put together that way.

Some other things did as well,
but he didn't mention them out loud. It was the kind of thing that wasn't his
business, and bringing Jan into it would be even worse.

There had been some events
though, a month before, or slightly more, when David had met with them at the
space port. He'd been dressed up like a High Servant, but
wasn't
one.
Then he very clearly reported, or more accurately set up a time to report, with
Kolb. Not his sister, who had been right there, and was an important immortal.
If Kolb and David had gone to get those evil Austran's, years back, and were
working together, there almost had to have been official sanction for it.

Karen hadn't thought it was
strange that David had wanted to talk to their old weapons instructor alone
either. True, they could have been lovers, or Dave
might
just have hated
his sister, but neither had seemed to be the truth at the time. It was very
telling. Some kind of special unit, that used magic and skill to do the dirty
work of the Royal family.

Not that it mattered, he
realized. They were all going to have to be questioned, carefully, to see if
they had a real and traceable history. Then someone was going to have to check
each tale, carefully. Without them knowing it was going on. Which he had
no
clue how to get done.

Karina went and got a coffee to
help her wake up, and brought him a cup of it as well, being a kind and good
soul, apparently.

Then she settled next to him and
looked out the wall in front of them, which was so clear that not even their
own reflections came back at them. It was like there was simply nothing there.