The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds (32 page)

Read The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds Online

Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

BOOK: The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds
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Year 1128 E. R.
 
BEYOND THE FARTHER EDGE: SUS-PELEDAEN SHIP
RAIN-ON-DARK-WATER
UNKNOWN ENTIBORAN SHIP
 
T
y felt the deck plates shudder beneath his feet. “What—?”
“It’s the grapnels,” said Spiru. “They’ve caught.”
Kalan added, “If you’ve got any luck for us, now’s the time to pass it along.”
“Luck …” Ty put his hands over his eyes to shut out the lights and distractions of the muster bay. The Circle’s
eiran
ran somewhere nearby—he felt them, like cables running through the bulkheads, or through the steel of the deck. But the cables weren’t strong enough; there wasn’t enough power coming through them to give the boarding party what they needed. Not yet—
“Ty?” asked Kalan nervously.
“Luck,” he repeated. “We’ve begun a working. Soon there will be luck.”
The
Rain
shuddered again as he spoke.
“Positive hull contact,” said Spiru. “We’ll be going across any minute now.”
At the same time, Izar shouted, “Fast deploy boarding tunnel! Let’s move, people!
Ty heard a metallic groaning followed by a heavy
clunk.
That had to be the tunnel, fastening on and settling into position … the
eiran
extended in that direction, stretching out toward the other ship.
“Are you coming, or not?” Spiru demanded. “Because we’re going to be moving out in another couple of seconds.”
“Luck,” said Ty for a third time. The cords of his own eiran were part of the Circle’s larger cable, and where he went, the working would follow. “Yes, I’m coming.”
He took his hands from his eyes in time to see the first two ranks of boarders swinging into the open mouth of the tunnel at a trot. Spiru and Kalan entered with the third rank a few seconds later, and Ty was with them. The tunnel was dark, lit only by amber battle-lanterns, and the hatch at the far end had no shape to it that Ty understood. The boarders drew up in their ranks again before it, temporarily thwarted.
“It’s an airlock,” said Kalan. “No external controls, though—some—body must have skimped on the design. Now they’re going to lose the whole thing.”
“I sure hope they’re ready for this,” Spiru said nervously. “If the inner door on their side isn’t closed, we’re all going to get sent to the star-road by the wind.”
“Stand by to blow the door,” ordered Izar a moment later, and a crewmember whose voice Ty didn’t recognize said, “Door coming up.”
A brief, silent flash of light came from the hatch, Ty felt a shivering in the soles of his feet, and the hatch was open. A puff of air flowed out from the newly opened space, bringing with it tiny fragments of plastic and metal floating in a cloud of smoke.
“What do you see?” Izar demanded.
“We’ve got light,” said the crewmember who had spoken earlier. “And the inner door is still intact.”
“Right. Formation, in the lock. Overpressure the tunnel from our side.”
The boarding party moved forward again and took station inside the lock. They stood in three ranks, their pikes grounded, with each crew member positioned half an arm’s length from the people to either side and a full arm’s length from the person in front.
“They can’t say we didn’t do them right and honor,” Spiru commented under his breath as Izar and another crew member huddled over the controls of the inner door.
Kalan said something in reply, but Ty didn’t catch the words. He was concentrating on the work going on up ahead of them. That inner door had to open soon, or else the boarding party would force it open with more of the white explosive. Ty was fairly certain that this would not be good—either for the
Rain
or for the ship they were trying to board.
Luck,
he thought.
The luck of the Circle, coming through me to the door and convincing it to open. Opening it … now.
Lights came on above the inner door, a row of them, one at a time. Red … red … red … red … green. Izar stepped forward, pike at the challenge position. And the door slid open.
Light poured out of the opening—boiling, hot-colored light that wrapped itself around Izar and the whole front rank behind him, burning and blackening whatever it touched. The air was full of the smells of ozone and cooking meat.
Ty lay where he had fallen, half under Spiru and Kalan where they had thrown themselves down as the first rank of boarders fell.
Garrod was right
, he thought, as he drew a choking breath.
There is no order on this side of the gap. Only pure, untouched chaos. Evil.
The weight on top of him lessened; he pushed himself up with his hands until he could look ahead. Spiru and Kalan were crouching like sprinters, their pikes in their hands.
“They shouldn’t have done that,” Spiru said. His voice sounded quavery and unnatural behind the dark plastic of his hardmask.
“No,” said Kalan. “Ty—are you with us?”
No order, only chaos
. “Yes.”
“Then on three, on my count, we’re going in.”
 
 
The curving flank of the Entiboran ship filled the bridge windows and blocked out the stars.
The vessel’s white-metal hull, blank except for a dull black row of unfamiliar symbols, gave no indication of what might be happening inside. Elaeli and the others on the
Rain’s
bridge listened to the reports coming over the audio pickup from the muster bay, and tried to force them into making sense.
It shouldn’t be taking this long
, she thought. Her fists clenched as she struggled to keep up at least the semblance of a fitting demeanor. She was the pilot, the one whom even the Captain depended upon to bring
Rain-on-Dark-Water
safely into the proper place at the proper distance. It would not do for her to become disturbed.
I put us alongside them clean and smooth … . I swear we didn’t even scratch the enamel once the grapnels locked on … they should have opened up smiling by now.
Captain sus-Mevyan was talking over the audio pickup with the officers on the muster bay auxiliary bridge. “What’s the holdup down there?”
“Somebody didn’t get the word, looks like,” came the reply. “Our boarding party had to blow the outer lock.”
“That’s a dead waste of some pretty maneuvering … are we in yet?”
“Door’s opening-I can see—”
There was a sudden noise, a crescendo of volume and pitch underlaid by a deep hum. The link dropped.
“What
was
that?” demanded sus-Mevyan into the silence that followed. “Communications, get me the muster bay. I want to know what happened, and I want to know it now.”
The audio pickup crackled back to life. “Muster bay here, captain. Whatever hit us, bad—we’ve lost contact with the boarding party. Nothing and nobody coming back.”
“Send a runner down. Let me know what’s happening.”
The Rain gave a sudden, violent shudder. The sensation reminded Elaeli unpleasantly of the throes of a wounded animal.
Energy weapons,
she thought, with a sense of outrage.
They’re hitting us with energy weapons.
“Lost communications with engaged-side forward engineering,” reported the communications specialist. He was pale and sweating, but his voice was calm. Another shudder ran through the ship. “Loss of pressure alarm forward.”
The fleet-apprentice who had brought Elaeli her
uffa
not long before swallowed hard and said, “What’s going on?” in a voice that didn’t quite squeak.
“They’re cheating,” Elaeli told him under her breath.
The communications specialist was still relaying bad news to sus-Mevyan. “No communications with the boarding party, no communications with engineering. Repair parties report hull breached.”
“Muster standby boarding party.”
“Interior communications are all down, Captain.”
Sus-Mevyan’s features hardened. “Bridge crew, secure your stations. Send runners. All hands, muster in the boarding tunnel. Lock all air-tight doors.”
 
 
Arekhon stood in a desolate landscape where blue-grey storm clouds gathered above the peaks and threw the upper slopes into shadow. A cold wind blew down off the highlands to scour the valley below.
He was not alone this time; Vai was with him, partner and adversary in the dance of their working. It had been a long while since he had last tested himself so much, moving at full speed and full strength without holding back—not the crushing, relentless onslaught of a great working, driven by the need for enormous amounts of sheer power, but something far more delicate and complex. They were building an intention, he and Vai, weaving the
eiran
into a sturdy network through the speed and grace of the blows they struck and blocked and struck again.
Vai wore a Mage’s black robes, here in Arekhon’s dream-landscape as well as in the physical world that their bodies still inhabited. She brought her staff around in a snapping blow, and the loose cloth fluttered and swirled around her like wings. Arekhon blocked the blow as it came in, the staves meeting with a resonant percussive outcry of wood against wood. He heard Vai laugh out loud from sheer delight.
Their staves were glowing golden and violet, drawing lines of dazzling color against the dark green of the mountainside and the dark grey of the lowering sky. The
eiran
wove in and out among them, shining like polished metal, making a pattern strong enough to capture the wild luck of the universe and direct it according to their desire. One of the threads had enough power to pull others toward it, and to draw on the luck that Arekhon and Vai were calling up between them.
Ty, Arekhon thought. Once recognized, the younger Mage’s touch was unmistakable. And Ty was—was—
With the boarding party.
Here in the world of his own mind, Arekhon found that the idea of a boarding party was a hollow one—barely a word, with almost nothing behind it to provide a referent. But Ty himself, through his presence in the working, remained vivid and familiar. The luck that the intention had gathered belonged with him.
Ty.
Arekhon feinted at Vai’s head, then struck low, aiming for her leg just above the knee.
With the boarding party.
Vai ignored his feint and moved to block the leg blow coming in. Their staves let loose fiery cascades of sparks in gold and violet, and the sound of wood striking against wood echoed off the mountainsides like thunder.
Luck.
 
 
Shadowy figures moved among the fallen in the darkened airlock of the Entiboran ship. They paced along the line where the front rank of
Rain on Dark Water’
s boarding party had stood, pausing at each of the dark shapes lying crumpled on the deck.
Flashes of light blazed down out of the shadows’ hands. Sometimes the fallen bodies twitched, other times not. Then the shadows moved on.
Ty’s heart pounded. He crouched between Spiru and Kalan, ready to rise and rush forward on Kalan’s word. The wooden grip of his staff felt slick and sweaty in his hand. He remembered, like a glimpse of something from long ago, Delath syn-Arvedan’s practice of wrapping the grip with soft leather—he’d once thought of trying something like that himself but had never done so. Now he wished he had.
The dark figures were coming closer, were almost within reach …
luck, thought Ty, luck that they not notice us … luck that they are slow this time with their mysterious fires … .
“One,” whispered Kalan beside him. “Two. Three.”
Ty pushed himself to his feet and surged forward. Kalan and Spiru were running beside him, with their pikes in their hands and poised to strike. More from instinct than thought, he reached out to grab the wild luck that spun out around all three of them like streamers in the wind.
His staff glowed with luck and power, a hot, incandescent green like the color of life itself, brighter even than the flames the dark figures carried in their hands. When the light from his staff struck the dark ones, they halted for an instant—in fear, or in amazement, or in some kind of recognition, Ty never knew—and that instant was their undoing.
Kalan yelled and slammed his pike into the nearest shadow. Spiru thrust at another, and Ty struck out at that one as it fell.

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