The Galactic Mage (26 page)

Back on the battlements, back in the total darkness of the night, he spun round until he spotted the black spot way off to the left and somewhat down below, although it was circling the tower in an odd and oblong way. But, despite the new looping-round tactic, it was growing larger again, returning for another pass. He would not have time to cast the Combat Hop, but the Luminous Aura was an easy thing to do. So, as the spot came on at its incredible pace, he muttered the words and cast the glowing aura upon its charging mass. As soon as the spell took effect, Altin could see it much more clearly as it moved.

It turned out to be a large brown ball of rather rough looking material that reminded him of a coconut without the hair, organic looking and perhaps no tougher than a block of wood. As it rushed in, he saw it open up a portion of its surface and emit a long chunk of something that was obviously very hard given the mighty blow that it struck upon the Polar’s shield a moment after the release. The tower was rocked to its foundations again, and Altin watched as the coconut chased down its projectile and reclaimed it into itself, presumably to be used for yet another pass.

“So that’s how it works,” Altin said aloud. “Well, we’ll just see about that.” He planted his feet firmly beneath him and waited for the next attack, easily tracking the coconut now thanks to the Luminous Aura spell—and despite the very unnerving round and round flight pattern that the spot was using now. In fact, as the spot moved farther away, it became harder and harder to see, and by the time it was small enough to be considered walnut-sized again, the circular movements were taking it completely out of view. It was as if it were orbiting his tower around the vertical axis for some inexplicable reason.

That’s when it occurred to Altin that he’d released the stasis spell.

“Of course!” he cried, and quickly muttered the word that would fix the tower back in place. Immediately after, the coconut no longer seemed to whirl about the tower, although it was now out of Altin’s view. He felt the next impact as it struck the stone at the base of Altin’s tower. He suddenly wondered if he’d cut deep enough into the granite at Mt. Pernolde’s base to hold off such a monstrous blow. His foundation was either going to be a strength or weakness here, and he was now in the unfortunate position of having to find out which would be the case. It was not a pleasant thought.

“All right, these harpoon things need to stop,” he said as he watched the coconut nearly disappear above him against the stars. He began the chant that would add the Combat Hop to his shield, hoping he had time to get it off. He met with an ambiguity that made his incantation flounder in his mouth. He had to release the spell midway through, which filled his head with a burst of light, and nearly knocked him to the floor. Incomplete magic was a dangerous and painful thing.

The problem was, casting the spell required he specify from what, precisely, the tower was supposed to hop away. Apparently, he did not “precisely” know what the spot was throwing at him. He tried again, this time struggling to define the object in terms that would activate the spell. Meanwhile, the giant coconut got off another shot.

This impact did knock him to the floor and the disruption of the magic once again blasted his mind with an explosive burst of light, blinding him for a moment and leaving him gasping on the floor. The aggressive brown ball hit the tower twice more before Altin was able to raise himself from the flagstones, and when he did, he could smell smoke coming from down below. He guessed that the candle had fallen to the floor again, and he cursed himself for having twice put it back in the same unstable spot.

He glanced up and saw the coconut coming back for another shot. His hand went reflexively to the amulet around his neck. He could just run away; his room was on fire, and this thing was beating his tower to death.

But he couldn’t do it. He would rather die.

He stood up, nearly passing out with the effort and stared defiantly as the brown ball came on. He braced his hands against the wall and waited for the impact to shake him to the ground, staring intensely at the spot and intent on watching its missile every instant that he could. It came, he watched, and then he was knocked to his knees despite his grip on the parapet. But then he rose, immediately, and began to cast the Combat Hop again. He knew enough to get it done now; he’d watched it very close. He closed his eyes and drew the mana to him, gathering it round into a ball of his own, then rupturing it into a thousand tiny threads that snaked out like rays emitted from an invisible star, each one a potential path for the tower to take. Some went far, perhaps a half a measure, others only forty paces or so. Most were somewhere in between. And then he locked the spell on the idea of what he’d watched just pound into his tower, on the idea of a long, stony-looking shaft emitted from a large and charging ball flying through the night. Once that was done, he cast the center of the magic’s core, the essence of the spell from which all potential hops were born, into the Polar’s shield, watching it as the mana permeated the energies encapsulating his tower and mingled with the threads of the stasis spell. He hoped his impression of the spot’s weapon was good enough to work.

With the spell in place, he let the mana go just in time to brace as the coconut was letting lose its shaft again. He grabbed the wall and prepared to take another hit. But then the stony harpoon was gone, as if it had vanished in the night. Altin let out a whoop of glee. Combat Hop had worked. And just in the nick of time. He spun and watched as the coconut chased its weapon down. He allowed himself a smile.

The Combat Hop spell was a bit disorienting at first. Every time the coconut came at him and released its brutal battering ram, the tower leapt away, sliding randomly and instantly down one of Altin’s enchanted mana threads. After each pass, he had to search out where the coconut had gone again, as it could be literally anywhere in relationship to his new locale. But that was a small price to pay. The coconut could no longer beat upon his shield.

He cursed at it as it came in for yet another pass, and made a rude gesture with his fist. But Combat Hop had bought him time. Time to go put out the fire before it got too big in his bedroom down below.

He ran downstairs and saw that his rug was engulfed in knee-high flames, and the legs of his table were now beginning to burn as well. I’m sure hard on furniture, he thought as he tried to conjure a small cloud of rain. It was a simple version of the spell he’d used several months back when the ivy had caught fire, but, small as he tried to make it, it didn’t do the job. It wasn’t a total failure; he got a bit of rain puttering from wisps of clouds that were more mist than cumulus and that tried to form near the ceiling of his room. But what came was such an abysmally small amount of water that it hardly reduced the flames at all. He should have known. There wasn’t enough moisture in the air beneath his relatively tiny dome to conjure a storm of any size. He recast the spell, channeling directly at his scrying basin and the pitcher on his dresser across the room. This time it worked, and at once the fire was put out, filling his room with steam and whorls of stinking yellow smoke. The rug was wolf pelt and the smell of burnt hair was going to be in everything for a while. He fought back a gag and went upstairs.

The spot was zooming in for yet another shot and Altin chuckled as its projectile went harmlessly past, the Combat Hop moving him a hundred paces to the side. “Nice try,” he taunted as the spot went off and reclaimed its missile yet again.

It zoomed in once more, but, unexpectedly, it stopped and hovered some considerable distance away, appearing roughly the size of a peach, or perhaps a croquet ball. And there it stayed, as if watching him, perhaps recognizing that it couldn’t hit Altin with its heavy beams of stone.

Given a moment’s thought, Altin decided to send a fireball on its way to test out his theory about the spot being no more resilient than a block of wood. He was about to cast one as large as he possibly could when he found that there were insufficient elements near enough to him for him to get it done in the volume his mental image specified. The fire spell was suffering from the same problem he’d had with the rain spell. Apparently, magic had to be worked a bit differently out in space. He would have to modify much of what he thought he knew. But he had an idea.

He restarted the fireball spell, this time running a mana stream all the way back to Naotatica, figuring on borrowing elements from its fiery core as the answer to his need. At least the empty planet would be good for something, he thought. Drawing from so far away took him quite a long time to do, and as he did it, he realized that perhaps next time the Liquefying Stone would be a better choice for this particular type of spell. However, he had the source he needed already fixed in his mythothalamus, so he worked the spell as it was.

The fires deep inside Naotatica were incredibly hot, and Altin could actually feel the essence of the heat within his mind as he had never done before. Even drawing molten stuff from the heart of a volcano was nothing compared to this. It was thrilling to think he had access to such incredible power. He gathered up enough of it to fill a manor house and attached it to the mana string. Then he let it go, using the distance of three months’ teleports to speed his fireball on its way.

The transfer from Naotatica into the space a few hundred paces to Altin’s left was instantaneous, and the white-hot fireball went streaking towards the aggressive spot. The effect was almost blinding the fireball was so bright, and were it not for the screening effect of the Polar’s shield, Altin felt it might actually have cost him his sight. He watched in awe as the giant ball of incredible heat closed on the coconut hovering out amongst the stars; Altin was certain that nothing could take that kind of heat. But the coconut moved easily out of the way. As if it had Combat Hop as well.

Altin gasped. His brows dipped as he concentrated on this new discovery. No. Not a Combat Hop, he thought, for he had actually seen it move. But still, the spot had moved so fast that Altin was convinced that it had used something similar to the spell. “You little mimic-monkey,” he said. “So that’s how you’re going to play?”

His words were tough, but in truth, if a fireball wasn’t going to do the job, he, like the coconut, had no other way to attack his opponent and do it any harm. And so the wait began, neither of them able to strike a decisive blow, or any blow at all, and neither of them going to leave. Altin was damn sure not going to be the first to go. There was absolutely no way he was going to retreat. No way. On that he was resolute. As long as Kettle was back home to fill his box of food, he would stay here until the end of time. No coconut was ever going to scare Altin Meade off like some girl running from a snake. Never.

Chapter
27

O
rli’s twelve hours of rest flew by, and before she knew it she was back in the nightmare taking place in sick bay. Two more patients had gone mad since she’d taken her break, and the first man, the one who had attacked her, was dead. When she walked back into the infirmary, Doctor Singh was sitting at a monitor with Doctor Salvator leaning over his shoulder also staring at the screen. They both saw her come in and nodded a greeting, Doctor Salvator adding, “Ensign Pewter, you might be interested in seeing this.” She beckoned Orli over to the join them at the monitor.

“This is the bacteria causing the disease,” Doctor Singh informed her as Doctor Salvator made room for her to stand behind his chair. “We took this culture and forty more just like it over the last week from members of the crew. We’ve been dosing them with everything we have over the last few days and yet, nothing. It’s definitely an alien species, and it is apparently immune to everything we’ve got.”

Orli could see that there were several bacterial cells visible on the screen, wriggling about in a blue-gray solution that looked in the monitor as if it were aglow. These microorganisms looked remarkably similar to the specimens she had found while working with her spore, and so she said as much.

“Really,” Singh and Salvator said in unison after hearing what she’d found. “So it was the orbs that took out Andalia.” They both nodded as if the last bit of doubt had been eliminated for them regarding the fate of the Andalian populace.

“So, what can you tell us about this bacterium then?” Doctor Singh asked, sounding hopeful. “You’ve had a great deal more time to study it than we have.”

“Well, sadly, I really didn’t start working on it right away, so I’m not that far ahead of you guys at all. But I will tell you that my bacteria came from the fungus.”

They both frowned. “What do you mean?” said Doctor Singh.

“It came from the fungus. Not off the fungus, but
from
it. My original sample was—still is—a fungus. I only saw this bacterium after I tested one of our fungicides on a few of my fungal cells to check its efficacy. That’s when I saw the bacteria. My fungus actually
became
bacteria as a reaction to the fungicide. I bet it’s some kind of alien defense.”

Doctor Singh crunched up his whole face, doubtful. Doctor Salvator didn’t look much more convinced, but she at least made an attempt to hide her reticence.

“I’m serious,” Orli insisted. “I did it twice. And if you map the genome—which I did have the time to do—you might find that it contains genes for not only bacterial traits, but fungal and viral too. Do it, and you’ll see.”

“So you’re telling me that this bacterium has genetic material for three entirely different types of organism, manifests only one at a time, and… can change at will?” asked Doctor Singh. Doctor Salvator was no longer hiding anything in her expression.

“Yes. Instantly. Faster than I could get back to the microscope. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“And you’re sure it’s not just a mask, some kind of camouflage?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

Doctor Singh turned and ordered a nurse to draw new blood samples from several patients to whom they’d been administering antibiotics. He looked back at Orli. “As absurd as it sounds, at this point I’m not putting anything past an alien disease.”

“It’s not really that much of a leap if you consider the source,” Orli put in. “I mean, the orbs seemed to make instantaneous shifts of their exterior depending on what we were throwing at them. Maybe their defenses are change-based, be it ship—orb—armament, or in their germ warfare techniques.”

Doctor Salvator gave a low, short hum, her eyebrows lowered, and her mouth tight, moving laterally on her face in a doubtful way. “There’s a big difference between armor and life forms. I don’t think it’s quite the same thing. Although there is a convenient coincidence, I’ll give you that.”

Doctor Singh nodded, but said nothing. Orli thought that he might be at least considering what she said, but just then a huge racket broke out as two patients managed to reach the neurotic state of the disease simultaneously and began attacking the staff and other patients. One, a dark woman with sunken eyes and gaunt cheeks, began to scream. Nothing articulate, just a high, piercing wail of absolute disconnect. She slapped the cup from the nurse’s hand and spit at her, baring feral teeth, pausing her howl long enough to hiss. She swung towards the bewildered nurse and leapt with a strength a casual observer would not have reckoned her to have, her hospital gown flying open, her legs twisting round to clutch the nurse and bear her to the ground. The other, an older man, threw his tray aside and began tearing the tubes from his arms, gripping them in pale fists that looked arthritic the knuckles bulged so much with the rage behind his grip. He lunged for the patient in the bed next to him, who’d been asleep and had to defend himself despite surprise and pharmacological haze as the deranged patient began strangling him with the clear plastic tubes.

Orli and both doctors ran to help, she and Doctor Salvator pulling the strangler off of his victim, Doctor Singh untangling the screaming woman from the nurse. Several trying minutes ticked by before they got both patients sedated, but at last they did, though silencing them brought little relief, for the entire ward was beginning to show the signs of strain. It would only get worse as increasing numbers of the crew went crazy and ultimately died.

And it did get worse over the course of the next few days. The disease was spreading throughout the ship, and, as people got word of the futility of sick bay, many of them began to closet themselves away even if they manifested early signs of the disease. What was the point of going to sick bay if there was no cure?

There came more and more incidences of crew members appearing unexpectedly, already mad in the last stages of the infection, and attacking one another. What was worse, many of them were attacking critical ship’s systems: one petty officer jettisoned two of the
Aspect’s
four landing craft, and another attempted to blow up the ship’s forward water tanks. That would have been a real disaster, and security forces, at least those few remaining who were able to perform that rigorous of a detail, had been forced to shoot the man. He was the seventh death by that particular means in as many days. By the end of the outbreak’s third week, the ship’s crew was down to half, and of the half that remained, a quarter were showing signs of infection too. And there was no help coming from the rest of the fleet. No other ships were willing to risk their crews on the
Aspect
, not with an alien pathogen on the loose. Rumor had it that the
Aspect’s
name had been unofficially changed to the
Aspect of Death
in mess halls and recreation rooms throughout the fleet—not mockingly, but in a tragic, frightened kind of way.

All but three of the nurses were dead now, and Orli was frequently forced to work in that capacity despite being untrained. The three nurses were doing many of the duties normally saved for the doctor, as Doctor Singh was working tirelessly on developing a cure—standard treatments were completely ineffective, and he felt his time was better spent seeking their salvation than comforting the doomed. This left Orli performing duties far outside her experience and qualification. However, she was doing so with increasing skill and was even becoming something of an expert at sedating mad crew members regardless of their size. Her small frame and runner’s fitness made her quick enough to do it well. She was fast and of the right stature to get inside their flailing limbs and deliver a shot with precision. And she was becoming, with practice, very hard to hit. In fact her reputation in that regard grew over the course of a pair of weeks, and gradually she became the official sedater, being called virtually every time crew members lost their minds.

She reported to the infirmary one shift after an entirely unsatisfying five hours sleep and was greeted by a blinking light on the console that promised to be just such a call. She pressed the key that brought up the face of a very distraught petty officer with a large gash over one eye and sweat glistening on his face. “Duvall just lost it,” he said. “We’ve got him cornered. Security is here, but they said as long as he doesn’t come out and make them shoot his ass, you guys have time to come down and help him out. Hurry though.” She could hear a man’s voice screaming in the background, something about corned beef and a white yoyo with no string.

“Coming,” was all she said and clicked off the monitor. She grabbed the kit with all her syringes and sedatives and, poking her head in to say “hello” and “goodbye” to Doctor Singh, she trotted off.

She’d taken to trotting now. Running only brought the nightmare closer with greater speed. And the outcome was all the same. She’d sedate this one, just like the rest, but it wouldn’t make much difference. He’d still be dead in a few hours. The only thing she was doing was saving the security guys the guilt of having to shoot another one. That’s what this was all about. No need to run. Trotting was just right. Walking made her feel guilty, made her think she’d lost the last remnants of her humanity, but running got her there too fast. As long as she was willing to trot, she could tell herself that she was still concerned, that she was still human and alive, not just waiting for them all to die and end this slow disaster in the emptiness of space.

She arrived at the waste materials processing plant a short while later, her heartbeat quickened not by the distance but by the nature of the task she was here to perform. She may have done a lot of these, but they still made her nervous.

The petty officer with the cut on his face, the one who had made the call, met her as she came into the vacuous chamber and pointed in the direction of a large tank hissing steam from a cracked pipe fitting. The pipe, broken during the initial fight with the madman, was one of many that angled up into the labyrinthine array of plumbing that ran through the ceiling above or plunged down through the grated floor into a series of tanks and filters below. The huge room was humid from all the evaporative processes at work and remained so despite the huge vents meant to draw the moisture back into the plant’s hydro-conservation loop. The stench of the waste treatment process was overpowering, and disgust contorted her features as she surveyed the situation with a cursory glance around.

She could see two men, dark silhouettes in the warm fog misting up the room, and gauged by their rigid posture that they were security. She nodded to the petty officer and moved to the closest of the security men. It was Petty Officer Morgan whom she’d been running into more and more over the last few days. She lifted her chin in recognition as she approached.

“Where is he?” she said.

“Yo, Pewter,” he greeted back. “Over there.” He pointed with the end of his rifle.

She squinted, having to peer carefully through the shadows to make out the dark form of a man cowering on the deck behind the giant boiler. He sat on the steel-grate rocking back and forth, thumping his head on the wall behind him and mumbling to himself.

“He got any weapons?” she asked.

“None that we can tell. He was just yelling before, and acting all crazy. Had Tortelli in a choke hold, so I had to shoot him. Got him in the left shoulder, though, not a fatal shot. And he did let Tortelli go.” He tipped his head sideways towards the other security officer covering the corner from the opposite side of the boiler, but didn’t take his eyes off of Duvall. Sensing that he was the object of the conversation, Tortelli nodded back.

“All right, maybe he’s weak from loss of blood,” Orli hoped aloud. “I’ll go get him out.” She took a syringe from her kit and tapped the bubble to the top, clearing it with a squirt. “Wish me luck.”

“Luck,” said Morgan. “I got you covered.”

She crept into the shadows, moving through a partial curtain of steam and slowly towards the man still thumping his head against the wall. Despite being slim, she felt claustrophobic, dwarfed between the two large tanks and having to duck under and step over huge pipes every so often, some nearly two feet thick. Quickness wasn’t going to help her much in here; there was hardly any room to move.

She looked back at Morgan around the curve of the boiler and through the mesh of pipes. He was kneeling and had his rifle pointed at Duvall in case the madman got out of hand. She nodded and pressed on.

When she was close enough that Duvall could hear her over the hissing of steam and the racket of the pipes, she spoke to him in a soothing voice. “Hey, Duvall. Hi. Listen, I’m Ensign Pewter. Orli Pewter. I came down from sick bay, okay? I want to help you if you’ll let me. Is that okay?”

Duvall continued to rock back and forth and thump his head against the wall, the dull sound of flesh and bone on metal joining with the hiss of escaping steam.

Sweat was running down Orli’s face and neck as she moved through the reeking, humid air. She could see that Duvall was soaked from head to toe in sweat and blood as well. The right shoulder of his uniform was almost black with blood, light reflecting off of the wetness, and he looked extremely pale. He’d definitely lost a lot of blood.

“Duvall, can you hear me? Are you listening?”

He made no response, and she moved in closer, hypodermic at the ready, held like a knife poised to stab, palm ready to press the plunger down.

There was a pipe running out of the bottom of the boiler near where Duvall was hunkered down. It came straight out of the tank and disappeared into the wall, two feet off the floor and almost eight inches thick. It was the only thing between her and her goal; Duvall was three feet beyond. Sedating him was going to require that she step over the pipe at the same time she came within the wounded man’s reach. She would have to be quick. She’d seen enough patients in this condition to know that apparent delirium was no impediment to sudden bursts of energy.

“Okay, Duvall, I’m coming to you now, all right? I’m just going to give you a shot to help you, okay? Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you; I promise.”