Light Bringer (The Young Ancients: Second Cycle Book 2) (24 page)

"Captain Canton? Do you need
me? I can be at the docks in... Fifteen minutes." He looked ready to move
if the order came, but Dareg simply shook his head.

"I just need to confirm who
you are. I have Lyone here?"

He handed the device over, which
got a chuckle from the handheld.

"Good thinking. I was
worried that you were just going to take my word for things. I should have known
you were smarter than that."

Lyone took a breath, and then did
something. Dareg didn't know what, but it involved her eyes becoming totally
black. The inner iris growing until her eyes were nothing but that. After a
moment, she nodded.

"He has the right physical
and vocal characteristics. I can't vouch for him not having been taken over, or
bribed against us somehow. He is a Forten warrior however, they aren't known
for trading sides easily. Even if they're wrong, or their leaders are."

"I love you, too, mech-head.
Did you get a report on what Dareg here did? He took a group of civilians to an
outer planet, using a
jump device
. If we can, we should get him to try
going further than that. I'd love to get back to the fleet without spending
seven years in stasis. Our little gates only take us about twenty miles."
He yawned, and rubbed his eyes a bit.

Lyone just nodded.

"I'd yell at you for giving
that all away, but he's
already
taken a craft to the fleet, and back.
They even greeted some of the Ysidril without starting a war or running away,
screaming. None of the other pilots seem to be able to do that yet, however.
Dareg Canton was damaged in the fight with the Adversaries here. You heard
about that?" She spoke as if the man on the other end might be dense,
which wasn't the case as far as Dare knew. He'd only been hard working and
intelligent the whole time.

"I did, of course. I got a
copy of the eye witness report.
That
was a boon. I
didn't
know
that Captain Canton had been on site for it. He was fit for duty however, so it
seems that he's healed enough for at least light tasks. Are there plans for
more trips to the fleet? Is that why there's a rush on to get facilities ready
for visitors on Mars?"

Lyone actually seemed baffled
there, not having heard that part before. Because clearly, these people didn't
share most of what they knew, even if it was pretty safe to do so. That spoke
of mistrust, but she'd mentioned some of that. The three groups weren't always easy
with one another, even though they'd thrown in to fight the Adversaries.

So Dareg answered, instead of
making things more tense between the two aliens.

"In part. I also need to
find a home for Karina and I to live in. We'll probably be on the Martian Circle
most of the time, but a city there, on Mars, that can sustain life isn't a
horrible option. I
was
thinking that getting room for a few million
people wouldn't be a horrid idea. Some of the wizards have already agreed to
help. Alyssa Baker has a new city she wants to try out. It will make one
underground. Taman has some radiation units that will fix that portion of
things for us. There was more, but I haven't thought much about it for a week
or so." Then he shrugged, not caring too much if it didn't mean anything.

Lyone let her head come up, and
then tilted it. Slowly. Like it had meaning that Dare just didn't know. He had
to guess that Lenn would, however.

"That's kinder than I would
have figured for a greeting. I don't know about trips however. There and back?
I had asked before, but then there was a problem, and that made getting things
done harder."

Dareg could really see that one.

"Pretty much what the word
problem
means. Um, sure. We can go in a few days? Just a quick trip however. I can get
you there, and then come back for you when you want? Right now... Well, I need
to get to bed soon, or we could go now."

It really wouldn't take him that
long. The biggest drawback was trying to land or get an airlock on the other
side of things. They didn't have a way to communicate directly.

Sara moved a bit, and put her arm
over his shoulders, like a person that was trying to claim ownership. That
could
have been something else of course. Maybe even just her thinking of him as a
little brother, or however she put that kind of thing in her head. It certainly
wasn't her saying she wanted him in bed.

"Sam, do you have some
lights, or something simple that Dare here can practice copying? He hasn't done
it before, but he can. I'm going to walk him over how to do it tonight, so he
can give it a try in the morning."

That got the man to scramble in
his desk, opening a drawer without speaking first. Then he started putting
things on the surface in front of him. A lot of them were on metal bits, though
half of them were on stone. It made a tidy pile, which he stared down at,
closing the things with a soft sound that wasn't a real thud.

"These. Get copies of all of
them, in stone, then we can work up to something harder? You're taking the
first part of this? Tim said he was going to be doing it, but everyone is so
busy right now." He shook his head, and locked eyes with Dare. "I
know that isn't fair, but if we all work together we can do it. More to the
point,
you
can do it."

The line of conversation was
making him uneasy.

"Um, just because Tor can do
it, and is my father..." It was hard to explain that he wasn't his father.
It was a thing that he'd never really had to think about a lot before.

Sara snorted at him, crossed her
arms and winked almost all at one time.

"No. I'm not saying you can
do it because of that. There are real signs, and there have been, though. I
told you that being able to hide the door on one of Tam's pod houses was hard?
I tried it, and it's at least as difficult as
making
a healing amulet.
Yes, it takes less time, but if you have the focus, and can act outside of
yourself, you
can
do it. From what I've heard about your ability to use
a jump ship, you have the needed creativity. Between those two things, you
should be able to do new, full builds
today
if you wanted. It's not fair
really, since everyone else had to work harder than that to make things
function, but that just means we can expect more from you. No pressure. Just,
you get what we're saying, don't take six years to learn what you should be
doing in the next weeks."

Sam looked at her cross eyed and
then laughed.

"Fair enough. So here, load
your pockets. Give those back when you're done. Tomorrow evening?"

Sara squeezed his shoulders and
moved toward the desk still holding him, dragging him along. The mechanical
people just smiled, like it was slightly boring but normal enough.

Lyone tilted her head.

"So we can take that trip in
two days, if you need tomorrow to learn this skill set? It really is useful for
a lot of things, even if it doesn't work directly against the Adversaries,
yet."

There was a cough from the
handheld, which sounded a bit disbelieving.

"Are you going to be able to
pick me up here, or should I use the new transport service to get to you there?
That's handy, I have to say. There are daily trips down there from here
now."

He thought about it, and finally
nodded.

"I'll come get you, and
anyone else going? That way I can get the people from here on board first. Call
it nine in the morning Noram Capital time?" He glanced at the two with
him, and wondered if other people would be coming. If so, it would let them see
who was out and about.

Spying on them. Not that he
didn't get the idea. They just couldn't trust that the people of Earth were
their friends yet. Mainly because they probably weren't yet. They had a common
enemy, but
most
didn't know that at all. The raw truth was that if Lyone
and her friends were found out just then, a lot of them would be attacked, at
the very least.

Though if they tried to blend in
a little more instead of testing everyone, they might actually not be in that
much danger. There was almost no difference between these two and say, anyone
else he might have seen, day to day. True, they were supposed to be machines,
but there was no way to tell if that was the real case.

Sara clapped once.

"All right. You have the
time schedule? Lenn? Can you make it then?"

"I'll be at the main docks.
Out." The handheld went dead suddenly.

That got the thing handed back to
him. It was done efficiently, without pause of note. Like she knew that the
device was about to be silent, even before it had happened. Most people had
small gaps in what they did. Dareg did, he knew. This machine person probably
did, but at that moment there was no sign of it.

Sara reached out with both hands,
got the amulets and tiles, none of them with strings on them, and handed them
all over to Dare.

"Pockets are in order, if
you're walking home. Sam and I need to get to the palace." She looked at
the machine people and smiled gently. "We need to talk about you behind
your back. You understand?"

Brice, the man, screwed his face
up a bit. It was comical, in effect, and probably meant to be.

"Oh, sure. That's what we're
going to be doing when we get back to the fleet. It will all be about how fat
your behind looks and how horrible Sam's haircut is." He grinned suddenly,
which was disarming.

Dare nodded however, getting the
real idea.

"Or more likely, about how
you can say
that
in front of these people and get no more than a frown
in return? Not that either of them did that. Testing us is part of why you all
came, isn't it? I suppose that has to keep going on?" Because throwing in
with them didn't make them all good people. That didn't follow at all. It just
meant that they were smart enough to realize that having help with a very
powerful enemy made sense.

Lyone gave him a steady look,
breathing deeply, as if trying to stay relaxed.

"Yes. I imagine you'll need
to do the same with my people, when you get there? I'll suggest a selected
group be provided for that?"

He shook his head but tried not
to roll his eyes at her.

"That makes no sense. I kind
of need to meet people at
random
for that. That, or walk into your
version of a prison and find the lowest of your society and ask them what they
think on the matter? I mean,
any
group can seem good if they can put up
a King Richard or Prime Minister Foley as their example." He meant it, and
Lyone made a face.

"That
isn't
untrue. I
can't tell you how to get that done however. If I did, it would end up steering
what you found out, which would, naturally,
have
to be suspect."

It was a simple fact. It took a
few moments for him to make enough pockets to hold all the various magics that
he'd been loaned. Not that he knew how to get copies made of them really.

Sara nodded, then bowed to the
room.

"I'll meet you at the
palace, Sam? I'll leave from Dareg's. We need to go over things."

Then, with an unsubtle tug, she
started him toward the door. The hallway they went through looked very
different now, but it was the same space that he'd gone to after the big fight.
An image of his friend, Bill, hitting him thousands of times, all at once, smeared
across his mind suddenly. He froze, missing a step as it happened.

Sara took his arm, preventing him
from falling flat on his face.

"Okay there, Dare?"

"I remembered the fight.
With Bill and Straughan? The... It's so hard to explain what the whole thing
was like. A smear of things all taking place at one time. I don't have a good
way of explaining it."

"Right. That seems to be
everyone. Even Timon can't do it. He tried to tell me what it was like, but his
recall of it is no better than yours. My guess is that we simply don't have a
way to talk about it, making it hard to categorize in our heads."

That made sense to him. Rather
than talk about that, or how he felt, which wasn't what he wanted to do at the
moment, Sara suddenly started saying strange things. Ones that almost didn't
make sense.

"If you quiet your mind well
enough, and focus on any given object, without using words or images in your
head, you can feel it. Even at a distance."

That got him to nod a bit, since
he'd noticed that kind of effect before. With Tor guiding him, and a few times
on his own, after that.

"I... Think I know that one.
Yes."

"Good! Do that, and feel a
single amulet in your hand. It doesn't have to be held, or even on your body or
near it, but most people find that easiest at first. Feel its pattern, then
hold that, and concentrate on another piece of metal, or stone, passing the
field over to it. The harder an object is the more difficult it is to get it to
take a field." She shrugged then as they walked quickly, toward his little
pod house. There was no one else around at the moment, not even a single ship
in port.