The Galactic Mage (35 page)

That was when Taot let out a mighty roar the likes of which Altin had never heard from him before, a roar so loud Altin had to clutch his ears. He looked up in time to see the dragon climbing up onto the parapet, stretching the whole of his body and reaching out with both front feet to lean against the shield, extended to his fullest length. His hind legs flexed as he raised himself, his back claws gripping the stone powerfully, crushing the granite edges and raining crumbles of rock down onto Altin’s head. The enormous reptile craned his sinuous neck upward towards the top of the dome and began spraying it with iron-melting fire. His head darted up and back, snuffling and snorting along the surface of the shield, sometimes nipping at the spot’s protruding tubes, sometimes nipping at the air around him. He roared again and played another jet of dragon’s flame all around the shield for what felt to Altin like an eternity. He had no idea the dragon could breathe so long a single breath. The furious dragon sprayed flames everywhere, alternating back and forth between dousing the shield and blasting into the empty air with an endless-seeming spew of volcanic heat. The beast was furious and to Altin his frenzy seemed random, even mad, despite considerable focus on the tubes that were sticking through the shield, which suggested he knew what was happening. And by the gods, the racket he was making was louder than a thousand beating drums.

Altin, even forty feet below, had to cower from the heat as Taot seemed to have utterly lost his mind. The dragon moved around the battlements, shuffling his forelegs along the inner surface of the shield as his head continued snaking up and down, darting everywhere, bobbing and spraying flames at the gods-knew-what. Altin cringed and felt the heat beginning to singe his hair as his dragon apparently went completely mad.

After several minutes of Taot’s fire storm, the temperature beneath the Polar’s dome became unbearable. Altin was forced to lie down and wriggle beneath Lady Synthia’s enchanted vines, hoping that the lingering magic would give him some protection from the heat. He sent the dragon a mental shout, admonishing him to stop, but Taot was completely beyond control.

The dragon went on like that for several long minutes, leaving Altin cowering beneath an insulating blanket of fire-resistant vines that actually began to steam. He wondered if this time he really was going to die. It seemed ironic really, to come this far into space only to be killed by the dragon Tytamon had told him he never should have tamed.

Finally, however, the roaring and the flames came abruptly to a halt. The tower stopped trembling and a molten silence was in the air. Altin lay beneath the vines for several moments before he even dared to move. But eventually, tentatively, he poked his head out from his groping green concealment and had a look around. The air was hard to breathe, so hot it hurt his lungs, and, frankly, felt as if he’d come near to the point of having been cooked alive. But Taot was no longer standing on the wall.

Altin looked up and saw that the giant coconut had detached itself and was flitting back out amongst the other spots, all of which were still attacking what remained of the group of armored ships. Maybe Taot had scared the thing away.

He couldn’t watch and ponder long, however, for the grass growing up amongst the ivy— the normal, unenchanted grass—was smoldering around him, and with a yelp of pain he realized that his robe had caught fire somewhere near his knee. He quickly snuffed it out, and as he did, he noticed that the hair on his arms had blackened and that some had gone to ash. Taot had gotten very close to going too far.

He felt around and finally found the Liquefying Stone and replaced it in its cloth within the bowl. Then, with the absence of the monstrous coconut, he teleported himself back up into his rooms. Once there, he climbed the stairs to the battlements cautiously, peering out to see if Taot had regained possession of his wits. He found the dragon curled up against the wall again, panting loudly and sounding like twenty bellows being pumped at once, apparently having exhausted himself with the incendiary episode.

Altin probed him with a thought and retrieved a sense of satisfaction from the dragon’s weary mind. Whatever it was, the dragon was convinced that some kind of threat was past, though the sense of what the dragon tried to convey made no sense to Altin’s mind at all.

“Well, that was close,” Altin said, cautiously stepping out into the open floor. “You almost roasted me alive.” As it was, the space inside the Polar’s shield was like an oven now. He decided that having a dragon with him in space was probably not a good idea and vowed to take Taot home as soon as this battle could be won.

And win it he and his snake-ship allies would, for there weren’t that many of the ball shaped monsters left now that all was nearly said and done. Once Altin merged two more, and the furthest ship took out the smallest one. With those destroyed, the three that remained moved quietly away. Apparently they’d had enough. Altin watched them until they were gone from sight, the giant one the last to disappear. He hoped that they’d given up completely and were headed now for home, but he suspected they were not. Nonetheless, it was with jubilation that he watched them fade into the night. Victory was theirs.

He turned and let out a whoop, jumping up and down and thrusting his fists into the air as he gave a cheer in the direction of the nearest ship. “We did it,” he yelled at them. “Look at them run!”

Chapter
36

“A
ll right, someone tell me that I’m actually seeing this,” said Roberto staring at the screen. “Tell me I’m seeing some dude in a dress dancing on a castle. Either I’m seeing that or I got battle fatigue or something.”

“You’re seeing it,” said Captain Asad. “We all are.” He too seemed reluctant to take what the monitor showed at face value. “Pewter, you getting a reading on that?”

“No, sir, not a thing,” she said, not exactly lying. She hadn’t had the presence of mind to try. “Let me give it another sweep.”

Captain Asad shook his head as he watched the man in the medieval tower jumping up and down and shouting silently in the cold of space. “I’m not buying it,” the captain muttered beneath his breath.

“I’m just glad it’s not only me,” said Roberto. He paused then added, “And just to make sure we’re all perfectly clear on this, that is a dragon with him right?”

“Yes,” confirmed the captain. “Or something that looks like one.”

“Assorted stone, sir,” reported Orli after a sensor pass. “Mostly granite with some limestone too. Various others. Organic life. He’s real by this thing.” She indicated the console with a turn of her hand. “The dragon too. It all reads real.”

Roberto snorted. “As if you’d know what a
real
dragon looked like on a scanner grid.”

“Says reptile to me,” she responded a bit defensively. “And that’s as close as I need to get.”

“Quiet, both of you,” said the captain. “It’s obviously a Hostile trick. They’ve already proven that they are capable of guile, and there’s far too much granite going on out here for this to be a coincidence.”

“What kind of trick includes blowing up half your own ships, or orbs, or whatever the hell they are?” Roberto asked.

“They may not value life the way we do. They may not even be alive. The deaths could be part of the ruse. This might be a holographic trap.”

“Why the man and the tower then?” Roberto did not sound particularly convinced.

“Maybe,” suggested Orli, “they’re trying to create a setting that they think will make us feel at ease. You know, give us a little slice of home.”

Roberto shook his head as he continued staring at the screen. “If that’s what they think Earth is like, they need to update their files.”

“That may be exactly what we’re seeing here,” said the captain. “This might be the impression they got from us, taken from some ancient television show beamed out a long time ago.”

“Or,” put in Roberto, “maybe the feudal age was the last time the orbs flew past the Earth.” He was mostly kidding and expected the captain to cut him off with a curt remark.

“That’s possible too. In any case, keep an eye on him. If whatever he was doing to the orbs is real, he could just as easily do the same to us.”

Orli punched up the zoom on the monitor and stared deeply into the image on the screen, studying the tousle-haired man who was apparently delighted with something as he leapt about. “I don’t think so,” she said after watching him for a while. “He doesn’t look like the type.”

A distant quality in her voice caused them both to turn on her and Roberto to crook his head as he squinted into her face. He spent a moment scrutinizing her and then he laughed. “Oh shit,” he said at last. “We got a hormone alert. Don’t tell me you’re into him somehow.” He studied her a second longer as she gazed into the monitor on the wall. “Good God. You are.” He laughed again. “You realize he’s wearing a dress, right?”

Orli blushed, but ignored the thrust of Roberto’s remark. “Just look at him. Come on. You’re a people guy. Does he really look like the kind of person that’s going to… blow us up?”

“Well, I’m not willing to trust your intuition,” said the captain, “regardless of how he appears. He may look like some kind of medieval man, but the fact is, he’s more likely an aspect of the Hostiles’ plan. They didn’t wipe out the entire populace of Andalia, a planet as technologically capable as are we ourselves, without being gifted in trickery. Levi, lasers locked on that tower, and hair-trigger, you got that? If he so much as blinks the wrong way, blow him straight to hell.”

“Yes, sir,” Roberto said and punched the targeting coordinates in. The tower wouldn’t stand a chance. Although quietly inside, Roberto hoped that Orli was right. He’d never had to kill a man before, and he didn’t want that dude in the tower to be the first, even if he was wearing a stupid looking dress.

“Pewter, what’s the status on the orbs?” demanded the captain. “How far have they gone?”

She tapped at her console a few times and brought the orbs up on the left half of the main screen. It took a moment for the distances to come up. “Eight hundred kilometers and holding, sir.”

“I didn’t figure they were going to run away. What’s the status on our remaining ships?”

Orli took a few minutes to gather all the data, but the other two ships were doing well enough, having taken no damage that couldn’t be fixed despite the long and heated fight. But the
Vaunted Angel
and the
Beijing
were both destroyed. Only one escape pod had made it out, and that carrying only three. Doctor Singh was seeing to them now. Bravo, Delta and Echo squadrons were still on their way, Bravo and Delta still mostly two days out. But help was on the way. Hopefully, this time their reinforcements would arrive more quickly than the Hostiles’ did. Only time would tell.

But for now there was little left to do but watch the man in the tower, who had, after a few moments of celebratory dancing, gone still and now stood studying them; and did so for quite some time. They could see his lips moving as he looked up at them. “Dude’s loco en la cabeza,” Roberto said, tapping himself on the side of his head. “Check him out talking to himself like that.”

“I talk to myself,” Orli said.

“Kind of makes my point, doesn’t it?”

“Shut up,” she said through a smile. “Besides, he could be talking to the dragon.”

“I swear to God, if that dragon starts talking back, I’m out of here.”

“Now what’s he doing?” she asked.

They watched as the man in the robes closed his eyes and began to sway rhythmically, snaking his arms from high to low as if tracing a column of hourglasses stacked one upon the next.

“I think he thinks you’re hot,” said Roberto. “Check him out.” He repeated the man’s curvaceous gestures but a great deal more emphatically as if describing the outline of a buxom woman to his buddies at a bar.

“Shut up,” she repeated. She looked down at her modest bosom and laughed. “I wish I was built like that.”

“Me too,” he said.

“Shut up.”

“Never.”

“Both of you shut up,” said the captain, looking up from a damage assessment report.

They each had to hide grins as the tension of battle began to drain from them, leaving giddiness in its place. Besides, seeing that tower out there was the highlight of nearly eleven years—at least for now, before it revealed itself to be some form of insanity or turned out to be a Hostile trick.

The man in the tower continued to speak and sway for a moment more before clapping his hands together once and bringing the dance abruptly to a halt. He stood motionless then, his eyes still closed and his hands reaching absently to the stone wall before him for support. He didn’t move for a very long time. Seeing him like that made Orli uncomfortable. She felt vulnerable, and she wasn’t sure if it was for him or for her. “What’s he doing?” she asked after nearly seven minutes of the odd behavior.

“How should I know,” said Roberto. “He’s a whack-job in a dress. What do you expect?”

“It’s a robe, not a dress, and how do you know he’s a whack-job?”

“Have you even been watching this?”

Orli did not respond, and they sat and watched the man for another four minutes, after which he abruptly opened his eyes and stepped away from the wall. He waved. He looked right at them and waved, a sure movement, as if he was certain that they were watching him.

Orli had to stop herself from waving back. “Hi, castle man,” she said under her breath.

Roberto laughed. “You’re pathetic.”

Orli looked innocent. “What?”

“A whole fleet full of men, not one good enough for you, and then some guy in a dress shows up and bam, you’re ready for Camelot. And I thought I needed therapy.”

“You do. And it’s not that. He’s just very… interesting.”

Roberto snickered. “I bet.”

The man on the tower waved again then seemed to hesitate. He bit his lower lip and glanced about as if searching for something nearby. He stopped and looked back up at them, raising a hand, this time indicating the number one.

“One what?” Roberto said, squinting as if somehow that might help him to better understand, unaware that he’d become as immersed in what was happening as his friend beside him was.

The man repeated the “one” gesture and followed it by presenting the palm of his hand as if wanting them to stop.

“He’s telling us to wait,” said Orli. “He’s going somewhere I think.”

And he did, for he turned immediately and ran down into the tower, out of view.

“Arm the lasers,” the captain ordered. “Arm them now.”

“They’re armed, sir,” Roberto answered, snapping out of the hypnotic trance that watching the medieval man had come to be. He moved his hand towards the key that would set the lasers off.

“Captain,” Orli nearly gushed, “he told us to wait. He obviously means no threat.”

“That or he needs a moment before he does something I don’t want to see.” The captain wasn’t taking any risks.

“Roberto, if you shoot that laser without honestly knowing we’re in danger, I will never speak to you again.”

“Pewter, if you countermand an order of mine again, I will shoot you where you sit. Do you understand me?”

The man came running back up the tower stairs, and Orli’s eyes flitted back and forth from the screen to Roberto’s finger like a bullet caught in a twenty-second ricochet. The man was waving a piece of paper and a feather, and he was sloshing ink across his wrist from a bottle gripped tightly in his fist. He said something again, for they saw his mouth move as he stopped and set the paper down on a disheveled looking table that was sitting near the door.

He flashed a rather boyish grin up at them as he ineffectually wiped at the ink on his arm with the bottom of his robes. His legs were very white, and Orli had to suppress a snicker as she saw that he wasn’t wearing any shoes. How could that man possibly be a threat?

He finished wiping off his arm and then, with another slightly less sheepish grin, he began drawing concentric circles on the paper. He drew three rings, in the center of which he drew a circle about the size of Orli’s palm, which he then filled completely in with ink, having to dip his feather in the ink pot several times to get it done.

“You realize that he’s actually using a feather pen, right?” said Roberto.

“A quill,” she corrected him.

“Whatever. You read too many books.”

“It appears your friend has just drawn himself a target,” said the captain, moving to stand between them both. It was true enough; what the man had just drawn could most easily be described as exactly that. It was just like those projected down in the firing range, only paper and just in black and white—or black and slightly yellow as this particular paper seemed to be.

When he was done, the man held his paper aloft so that they could see it clearly on the screen. “Be ready, Lieutenant, I believe he may be making some kind of threat.”

The man took his paper and set it down in the middle of the floor. He looked up at them and curled his hands inward, touching his fingers to his chest and obviously pointing at himself. He then reached outward, pointing up at them. Then he pointed at himself again. Then back at them. Then he pointed at the paper, at himself, and, oddly, jumped onto the paper. When he was done with his strange ritual, he looked up at them and raised his eyebrows quizzically, as if expecting something now from them.

“What the hell was that?” Roberto asked.

The captain’s answer came deliberately as he worked through the possibilities in his mind. “I think we are to be his target, and he wants us to know that he is planning to stomp us?” He hesitated, but concluded, “That’s what I make of that.”

“Are you kidding me?” Orli said, unable to control her ever-loosening tongue. “He’s saying something about landing on that spot. It’s about the paper, like he wants us to come down on it somehow.”

“Maybe,” Captain Asad allowed. “Just stay alert, Lieutenant. I don’t want you missing our chance because you get caught up in his guessing game. More likely than not, that’s entirely the point of this exercise. And Pewter, keep an eye on those orbs.”

“Yeah, Pewter, the Hostile orbs, not his dreamy greens,” said Roberto.

“Will you stop?”

“You’re the one defending him.”

“I’m the one who’s actually paying attention to what he’s trying to say.”

“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” He snickered again.

“Just shut it.” She was actually annoyed.

“Both of you shut it.”

The man in the tower stared up at them patiently for quite some time, and Orli felt like there really was something they were supposed to do. Without thinking, she flashed a pair of forward docking lights to let him know that they were at least still watching what he did.

“What the hell was that, Pewter?” the captain asked, seeing the movement of her hand.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just letting him know we’re still here.” The captain started to growl, so she added, “You know, so that he knows we’re keeping an eye on him.”

“Some of us more than others,” Roberto goaded, but Orli ignored the remark.

The man turned and took the paper up from the floor and held it out to them, shaking it a couple of times, then placed on the floor again. He took a long step back from it and began beckoning them with exaggerated motions of his arm, every so often pointing invitingly at the paper on the ground.

“See?” said Orli, but they could only watch.

The man seemed to grow impatient after a while and once more took the paper off the ground. He went to the wall and stared up at them again for quite some time. Finally, he nodded as if coming to some conclusion on his own. He held the paper out once more, then, putting it on the wall, he pointed at it, then back at them. He made a spreading gesture with both arms, moving his hands from in to out as if swimming the breast stroke in the air. He moved briefly to a large wooden bucket near the wall, opposite where he stood, and glanced into it for a moment before returning to where he’d set the paper down. Then he closed his eyes and began to say something as his body started to sway. A moment later the paper vanished.