The Sac'a'rith (32 page)

“Wait, she is gone now. She was here, but has suddenly left the range of my visibility,” he said.

“You mean, she’s entered jump space?” asked Crivreen.

“Yes, that would do it,” said Ragnar.

“Byron, can you get the destinations of any ships that just left?” asked Crivreen.

“Yes, just a moment,” he said.

There was a flurry of activity among the three of them, and then they had some star charts on the screen and were debating routes. I knew they had it under control and I needed to clear my head, so I wandered off and into Narcion’s room. I sat on his bed and just looked at the curtain he had hung up. It spoke of a more peaceful place, filled with living, natural things. I wondered where it was, and if I would ever get to go there. It was a different forest from the place where I had found his home, but beyond that I had no idea where it was.

In front of me was the chest we had brought back from his home in the forest. I presumed that that place had now been destroyed, and it was likely that this was all that remained of his previous life. I wondered what it would be like to move there and be away from all of this, to run among the trees and be free, with the rich air flowing through my lungs and the sounds of the forest filling my ears. Oh, to be there, to call that home sounded good right then.

“Zah’rak,” said Ragnar gently. He must have slipped in while I was lost in thought.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Crivreen says he knows where the female magus is going next. They want to follow and try to catch her before she starts casting,” he said. “Look, I know losing Narcion has been very hard on you, but I wanted to tell you that you’re doing a great job leading this team. I am proud to be a member of it.”

“Thanks,” I said as I stood and headed back to the ship’s mess hall where everyone had been making plans. “Have we worked out yet why someone is making her do this?”

“No, it will be a while before we have a breakthrough there; it might not matter, though, if we can reach her,” said Agent Byron.

“What are you planning?” I asked.

“If we are successful in freeing her, she may turn on her former master and help us. In that case, she can take us to wherever Narcion is,” said Crivreen.

“But to do that, we need to leave now,” said Agent Byron.

“Crivreen, fly after her then, and I will catch up after we are underway,” I said.

“Will do!” he said and hurried off.

“Just bear in mind that we must try to help her. She is not the enemy,” I said forcefully.

“We will,” said Ragnar. “The problem will be finding out what her master is using to control her. If it is something we can’t counter … ”

“Then we keep her locked up or something until we can kill her master,” I said. I could not stand to see the pain in her eyes. It brought back too many memories.

Ragnar smiled and said, “We will do everything we can.”

“I have looked through the images and I am of the opinion that she has an implant behind her left ear that functions like a standard slave collar,” said Agent Byron.

“I have heard of such a device. It can exert a much greater range of punishment and control over its victim, and it is extremely expensive. Only the richest of masters obtain them for their slaves. It’s also much more permanent than a collar,” I said.

“Maybe not,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“If it is a legal implant, then I should have access to the override codes,” he said. “If it is not, then we can take her to the hospital station and see what they can do for her. That is about the only place I can think of that might be willing to help her.”

We spent the next week chasing her down. She could not have known we were tailing her, but she had a head start and was going somewhere in a hurry. Crivreen was sure it was a secret military base that he had been told contained experimental weapons and was not marked on any chart.

While we traveled, I attempted to learn how to enchant weapons. First, I tried making a leather cover for a knife as I had done for the armor, but that had no effect. It did, however, serve to enchant the sheath for the blade, though I was not sure what good that would do; at least the knife would always fit snugly now.

While I worked on that, Ragnar taught Crivreen how to make wands out of the sticks he had bought. Ragnar explained that any magus would be able to use the wands Crivreen made to cast lightning bolts. I could not wait to try one, but before I had the chance we caught up with our prey.

“There, that hauler is the one she was on,” said Crivreen.

The hauler was adrift in space without even running lights on. It was floating near a starbase whose configuration I did not recognize. “Looks dead,” I said. “Is she still on it?”

“No,” said Ragnar. “I believe she is on that station.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“That is MA-15, a top-secret, maximum-security military outpost,” said Agent Byron. “I alerted them that she was coming. There is no way she could have gained access to it.”

“Yet she is on it,” said Ragnar.

“Can we contact the station?” I asked.

Agent Byron tried to open a channel to them, using his encryption codes. “They are not responding, and I suspect they never will.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“That hauler is floating too close to the station. If the station was operating normally, the hauler would have been destroyed for violating secure space,” he said.

Darkness. Everywhere was darkness. It was so dark I could not even tell if my eyes were open or closed. I could not hear anything, smell anything, or sense anything at all. Just darkness. I struggled to remember who I was, and how I had got there, but all I could remember was a skeletal hand wrapping around my face and pulling me back. That hand had sent ice through my veins and paralyzed me.

I tried to form thoughts, but they were slow in coming. Eventually I started to have a vague awareness that I had a body. I slowly moved my arm up to my head, but something was around my head; something hard. Armor: I was wearing armor. Memories slowly started flowing back. I was on a station behind Narcion, using my blasters to shoot skeleton attackers.
Felix, my name is Felix!
I thought to myself. My mind felt as if it was slowly and painfully rebooting.

I activated the controls on my armor and the internal display came on. It took me a while to remember how to read the displays, but once I did I was able to determine that my armor was in good condition, and my own vital statistics were slowly returning to normal.

Ten days! Almost two weeks since I was last conscious
, I thought to myself after reading the displays. Then the hunger pains hit me. The armor could keep me hydrated, but there had only been a couple of days’ worth of nutrients for the armor to have intravenously given me while I was out cold.

First, figure out if you’re alone, then find food and water,
I thought to myself. I turned on the armor’s communication systems and swept through all the frequencies, but found nothing.

Okay, now visual,
I told myself and activated night vision on my visor, which used an infrared light to illuminate the area. I left it on its lowest setting in order to reduce the chance of someone seeing it. It revealed very little.

When I attempted to sit up, I felt the ground move under me. It was soft and slippery. Much against my will, I looked down and found myself on top of a pile of bodies. Fortunately, my stomach was completely empty; otherwise I might have lost its contents.
Hold it together, Felix,
I chided myself. I was eternally grateful then for the filters on my suit preventing me from smelling the pile of decaying bodies around me.

Looking around the area, I determined that I was in a large pit partly filled with bodies in various states of decay.
Wonderful, a mass grave.

I could not get my footing in order to stand, but I did have a clear line of sight to what looked like a ramp going up one wall, so I teleported to it. Once there, I needed the wall for support. I was weak from lack of food and from lying around for so long. I risked turning up the power on my IR lamp. That allowed me to see more of where I was, and I spotted some rats running around. My blasters were gone, but I could still manage to cast. A few mage bolts later and I had supper.

I had lived on the run for long enough to know how to cook and eat rats to survive. It seemed that wherever there were people you could find small rodents feasting on their leftovers. They were not the tastiest of creatures, but I needed to get my strength back if I was to get out of this grave. After a small meal of rat-meat, I fell asleep for a few hours.

When I awoke again, I ate more rats and then began my climb out of the grave. It was slow going, but my strength was returning. Eventually I climbed out of the pit and found myself in a large, unlit room. Gravity, temperature, and atmosphere were all consistent with my being on a planet, but deep underground.

I set my armor’s communication system to passively auto-scan, looking for communications from anyone, but nothing came up. Wherever I was, I must have been a very great distance from any civilization not to find any broadcasts at all.

I wandered for a full day until I found a supply of water. It was a large lake in a room that appeared to be carved out specifically to store water. I risked setting up an emergency lamp to give me enough light to remove my armor, clean its filters, rinse my heavily soiled clothes, and replenish its fresh water supply from the lake. I knew it would not be the cleanest water, but I was not in a position to be choos
y. I would need to find a source of power soon to recharge the armor.

A mass grave, and a room to store water. Someone must have made this place, so there must be a way out,
I said to myself. Using the emergency light, I looked around for signs that people had come through and eventually found what appeared to be a well-worn path. Using the gyroscope in my armor I determined which way was uphill and headed in that direction.

Sleep, food, and water had gone a long way to restoring my strength and clarity of thought. I had to assume I was not in a safe place, so broadcasting a cry for help would not be advisable, but I desperately wanted to know if Crivreen and the others had made it. I could only presume we had lost the station.

After several hours of walking, I was finally on the surface of the planet. Judging by the sun, it was near midday when I emerged. The mouth of the cave was in the side of a mountain, at the end of a trail that led into a forest. “First order of business: hunt, make camp, and deploy the solar cells to recharge my armor,” I mumbled to myself.

Once again, using mage bolts, I was able to kill some small creatures and eat. I found a secluded clearing off the beaten trail and made a camp. I took off my armor, set it to recharge and decided to spend the day there.

For two days I traveled down the road before finding anyone. Eventually I came upon a small outpost. As I approached, an old man came out and said, “Howdy, stranger.”

“Hello!” I said. “I appear to be lost. Can you tell me where I am?”

“This is Outpost Thirteen. Where were you trying to get to?” he asked.

“I am not sure. What planet is this?” I asked.

“You really are lost. Come inside, and we can talk over a good, stiff drink,” he said.

There were several other men and women in the outpost. All of them appeared to be scientists or researchers of some kind. They allowed me to, or more correctly insisted that I should, go into a bathroom to wash and change into the clean clothes they provided. Once that was done, I left my armor with their robotic cleaning crew and joined them for dinner. Again the question came up that I did not want to answer.

“Where were you trying to get to?” they asked.

“Well, I am not sure; my memory is a little fuzzy. I was on a space station, something hit me, and then I woke up in a cave near here,” I said. I hoped that was enough information to stop them from prying further. “I would really like to get back. Where is the nearest spaceport?”

The elderly man who had originally greeted me was named Symon, and he appeared to be their leader. “In a few days a supply ship will stop by and you can hitch a ride with them, but until then you are stuck here,” said Symon.

“There has not been a ship out this way in a month,” said an older female, who went by the name of Sarah. “How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know, but I only woke up three days ago,” I said. “Look, I really don’t know where I am or how I got here. Can you tell me where we are?”

Sarah looked very skeptical, but Symon pulled up a star chart and said, “You are here. This is a remote laboratory where we test things that cannot be tested on inhabited planets.”

“That is a long way from home,” I said quietly.

“We are a long way from everywhere,” said Sarah.

“If you are going to stay with us, there is work to do. I don’t expect you will have any useful training, but … ” he started.

“Actually,” I said, cutting him off, “I noticed that some of your robotic equipment needs attention. I can take care of that for you.”

“Really?” asked Symon, who was obviously surprised.

“Yes, I have level three training,” I said. There were five levels of training, but as a civilian level three was as high as I could get.

“Excellent, then you can at least earn your keep,” said Sarah.

For three days I put in fourteen-hour shifts working on their equipment. It really did need a lot of work. Apparently no one with any training had ever come to the outpost to work on the equipment. I did not recognize most of their gear, and had no idea what they were working on, but fortunately their equipment followed the typical pattern closely enough for me to figure out what to do.

When the day came for me to hitch a ride on their supply hauler, Sarah said, “Well, I still don’t think you can be trusted, but we will miss your skill around here,” and then she left.

Symon laughed. “Pay her no heed. Good luck, and may the Emperor bless your travels!”