Read The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds Online

Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald

The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds (29 page)

BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
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She landed in a compact crouch a few feet away from him. Together, they surveyed the interior of the hunting preserve. The ground inside was considerably lower than the street beyond the wall—too far down, thought Ari, even for him to jump. About the Adept, he wasn’t sure.
None of the hunting preserve’s tall Darvelline conifers grew within reach of the wall. The Rolny’s groundskeepers had seen to that. One tree, though, grew closer than the rest. Ari smiled to himself and drew his feet up under him. Gauging the distance, he leaped for the tree trunk.
He caught it, and slid down until his boots hit a branch that felt solid enough to take him. Turning back toward Llannat, he held out an arm in her direction. She nodded, and sprang forward and down from her crouched position to catch his extended hand. For a brief and disquieting moment, he felt no awareness of supporting her weight before she settled onto the branch beside him.
Without a word, he climbed down the conifer, and she followed. They lay still in the underbrush while the sun came over the horizon and the forest grew brighter around them. As soon as they had enough light to work with, Ari nodded to Llannat and stood up, unslinging his heavy energy lance and shrugging his backpack into position.
Using the skills that Ferrda had taught him, he faded from tree to tree until at least fifty yards separated him from Llannat. He pulled a set of earphones out of the backpack and settled them onto his head, placed the sun ahead and to his left and the wall to his back, and began to drift toward the house.
Morning wore on, and the air grew warmer. He kept up his gradual stalk through the woods of the Rolny’s hunting preserve, alternating long periods of immobility in the cover of shadow or underbrush with quick, silent crossings of open ground. Somewhere off to his right, he knew that Llannat Hyfid was doing much the same.
By the time the sun was nearing its zenith, he’d started to sweat.
Good thing robots don’t have noses,
he thought.
Unless they’ve come up with a model that can run tests on the fly for particle concentration in parts per million … let’s not think about that, shall we?
He heard a crackling in the underbrush. Not Llannat—the Adept hadn’t made a sound since the hunt began. An animal?
His ears caught the faint squeak of metal on metal, and he tensed. Not an animal. First contact.
A black-painted security robot floated on its nullgravs across the sun-dappled ground between the trees. The robot’s sensor pod rotated as it moved. The Quincunx man had been right: this wasn’t one of your call-the-guards robots, or even an immobilize-and-capture model. This was a true hunter/killer, with blunt boxes of armor-piercing and anti-air modules showing under its sensor pod.
He heard a clicking sound from the far side of the glade.
That’ll be Llannat,
he thought, as the robot began floating toward the sound. His headset came to life, interpreting the signal the robot was sending.
“This is FY eight-six. Grid Posit seven three eight eight five five. Suspicious noise. Investigating.”
Ari raised the energy lance in his hand, took aim at the base of the sensor/command pod, and fired. A shower of sparks fell from the base of the sensor pod; the robot continued forward until a tree checked its progress.
Llannat stepped around from behind the tree and stood next to the robot. Ari took one of the Professor’s little boxes out of his backpack, and punched FY86 and 738855 into the command transmitter he wore on one wrist. He caught Llannat’s eye; she nodded, and switched the robot off as he switched the box on.
The robot sank to the ground. Over his headset, Ari heard the decoy’s transmission: “This is FY eight six. Grid Posit seven three eight eight five five. Investigation complete. Situation normal. Resuming patrol.”
One down, six to go.
Ari resumed his quiet walk toward the house.
 
Seven down
, thought Llannat some time later, as the last of the hunter/killer robots sank to the forest floor.
And that’s all of them.
She looked back toward Ari, but he’d vanished once more among the trees. It was amazing, she thought, how close the big Galcenian came to not being there at all. If she stretched out her awareness to catch the patterns of power at work in the hunting preserve, she could sense him—but only as a quiet, slow-moving presence, like a Selvaur on the hunt.
She continued her own progress, effacing herself as Master Ransome’s apprentice Owen Rosselin-Metadi had taught her to do. She was good at it—not in Owen’s class, but good—and unless the Rolny had an Adept-level sensitive working Security for him, nobody was going to notice a small, almost negligible figure in a black coverall making her way from one patch of shadow to the next.
The hair rose on the back of her neck—
threat
, her Adept-trained senses whispered,
menace
—and seconds-later a human in camouflage clothing walked into her field of vision. Like Ari, he carried an energy lance and a comm link, but he was noisy. His movements were those of a city dweller, untrained for work in the deep woods; his footsteps and breathing echoed in the quiet of the hunting preserve.
Nobody mentioned live guards,
she thought.
Now what?
She cast about once again for Ari’s presence. For a moment she couldn’t sense him anywhere, and came close to panic. Then she felt a faint reflection of the familiar, rock-steady aura, and traced it to a stand of berry bushes off to her left.
Once she had him located, she could see him. His aura intensified suddenly—he’d spotted her in turn. She raised her eyebrows and projected strong inquiry.
He wasn’t as receptive as Jessan, who could pick up subvocals, but something seemed to get through. He made a “go on forward” gesture with one hand. She nodded and let herself become even more inobtrusive than before, then slipped past the guard like an unheeded thought. When she looked back at the berry bushes, Ari was gone.
Still self-effaced, she moved on toward their goal. The trees began to thin out; she could glimpse bits of manicured lawn ahead, and then something grey and rectangular that turned out to be a concrete blockhouse.
Her neck prickled again.
That wasn’t on the plans.
The grass was clipped short around the blockhouse for a greater distance than a man could cover in a rush. She let her mind become still, until she had no more presence than a patch of shadow on the landscape, then crossed the open area to flatten herself against the concrete wall. Ari joined her a few seconds later.
She looked up at him. “I don’t like this,” she murmured, backing the thread of sound with subvocal projection. As long as he could hear anything at all, he should be keeping open enough for meanings to get through—and his hearing, she knew, was acute. “I think I’ll go in and see what’s there.”
Without waiting for a reply, she glanced around the corner of the blockhouse. A uniformed man was approaching the squat concrete building from the direction of the Lodge. Good, she thought, and drifted out shadow-fashion in a curving path that finished behind the newcomer. She closed in to follow a pace behind him, matching him step for step and motion for motion—becoming, as her masters had taught her, a shadow indeed.
The man reached the blockhouse door, and tapped out a sequence of keypresses on the cipher lock. The door slid open. He stepped in, turning to look back the way he had come. Still a shadow, she pivoted around and back with him.
Satisfied that all was clear, the man toggled the door shut after him and continued on down a short corridor to a second, open door. This time, one of his shadows stayed behind.
From her position near the main entrance, Llannat watched the man enter what looked like some sort of control room. She could glimpse security monitors and readout panels, plus another uniformed Darvelline already on watch. She moved up to the inner door and listened.
“How’s it going?” she heard the newcomer say.
“No change. We know they’re inside—the robots have been switched slicker than anything—but they haven’t reached the live guards yet. I just got done talking to post six, and he says nothing’s gotten past.”
Llannat peeked around the corner. The two men lounged at ease in front of a bank of monitors showing views of the house and grounds.
“What do you think’s going on?” asked the first one.
The second shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a drill of some sort.”
“I’ve never seen a drill like this,” the first guard said dubiously: “Especially not with shoot-to-kill orders.”
“I don’t make the rules,” the second man said. “I just follow them. What’s going on up at the Lodge?”
“They’re about ready to head out. He’s going to make for the Citadel.”
This sounds bad
, thought Llannat, and risked looking further into the control room. From the new angle, she could see what had been hidden before: ID flatpix, five of them, blown up to life size and tacked to the wall above the monitors.
The Professor. Beka Rosselin-Metadi. Nyls Jessan. Ari. And herself.
 
L
LANNAT STARED at the row of pictured faces.
We’ve been sold out.
The breath caught in her throat, almost choking her.
Don’t panic,
she told herself.
Just get out of sight before one of those guards turns around.
She faded back around the corner of the open door. Away from the evidence of betrayal, her breathing eased a little.
That’s better. Now get out of here and warn Ari
.
She made her way down the short hall to the blockhouse entrance. When she got there, her heart sank: the exit door was locked, with a cipher-lock keypad set into the wall next to the jamb.
What’s the odds,
she asked herself,
that it’s the same code to get out as to get in?
Shrugging, she punched in the sequence that had opened the door from the other side. The door remained shut.
No joy,
she thought, with resignation—and then the door’s numeric display started flashing off and on. “Incorrect access code, report to key operator,” bleated the annunciator. “Repeat, incorrect access code, report to key operator.”
Oh, no. Now I’ll have to do something really fancy.
Llannat turned her back on the babbling cipher lock, ran forward a few steps to get momentum, and jumped for the ceiling.
Several seconds later, one of the two guards came out of the monitor room and headed toward the blockhouse door.
So this is what the world looks like to a spider
, thought Llannat, as the guard walked down the hall beneath her. The Adept held herself suspended above the hallway with her back snug against the low ceiling, kept up by the pressure of her hands against the wall in front of her and the pressure of her Space Force standard issue boots against the wall behind. From that precarious vantage point, she watched the guard punch in a sequence of numbers on the keypad of the cipher lock. The annunciator’s yammering voice fell silent.
The man turned and started back down the hallway. Llannat’s muscles trembled with the effort of maintaining her position, but she didn’t dare try floating on the currents of power while keeping herself unseen. The most she could do was to sneak in a little help every few seconds … just enough to keep her arms and legs from giving way, nothing anybody would notice.
The guard stopped and glanced upward.
Llannat forced her mind into the self-effacing patterns of calm and tranquility.
The ceiling,
she thought.
All you notice is the ceiling.
The guard shook his head as if to clear it, and walked on forward until he was directly beneath her. “Nothing down here,” he called toward the control room, “and the door’s locked. What do you think we ought to do?”
The voice from the control room sounded resigned. “The way things are today, we don’t have much choice. We’ll have to call in a Class Two Contact Alert.”
I don’t like the sound of that
, thought Llannat. She relaxed the pressure of her hands and feet, letting herself drop from the ceiling onto the shoulders of the unsuspecting guard. His knees buckled, and he hit the concrete floor with Llannat on top of him. She rolled with the fall, and drove the heel of her hand upward into his chin as soon as her arm came clear.
The guard went limp. Llannat came to her feet in a fighting crouch, gripping her staff with both hands. She took a step into the next room.
Inside the control room, the second guard let out a yell and grabbed for his blaster. Llannat struck out at him with her staff, a clumsy swashing stroke that nevertheless connected with the guard’s weapon. The bolt went wild as the heavy blaster flew through the air and clunked to the floor out of reach.
Disarmed, the man stared at her. She fixed his eyes with her own and projected
Don’t move!
with all the power at her command. He stared for a few seconds longer, then spun around and reached for a switch on the main control panel.
Enough!
she thought, and swung the staff against his skull.
 
Ari lay on the close-mown ground next to the blockhouse wall. He still held the energy lance in one hand, but he’d removed the bulky, now-useless earphones and stowed them in the backpack. From time to time he inched forward to peer around the corner at the door through which Llannat had entered.
She’s been gone too long,
he thought.
Something’s up.
Without warning, a burst of green light flashed around the edges of the doorway, and the panels grated halfway apart. Llannat’s head and shoulders appeared in the opening.
“Ari—get in here! We have big trouble!”
He scrambled to his feet and sprinted for the door, scraping sideways through the narrow aperture. In the close atmosphere of the blockhouse he recognized the sharp smell of air ionized by a blaster. A man lay flat on his back in the short passage, stirring like a sleeper trying to wake. Ari strode past him to the control room, and took in the banks of monitors, the row of flatpix posted on the wall, and the body sprawled across the control panel.
“Death and damnation—what happened in here?”
“Your precious contact sold us out,” she said. “We’ve been walking into a trap the whole time.”
“I can see that,” said Ari. “Right now, we need some answers, quick.”
Llannat’s eyes went to the guard lying out in the hallway. “I don’t know if I—”
Ari shook his head. “We haven’t got time for the subtle stuff.” He shrugged off the backpack and slung the energy lance out of the way across his shoulders. “Be ready to back me up.”
The Adept raised the blaster she’d taken from the unconscious guard and moved away a few steps to provide cover. Ari pulled his own blaster—one of Beka’s old government-surplus models, but good enough for a man who wasn’t planning on making a career out of jobs like this—and stepped out into the hall.
He went down on one knee beside the guard. Taking the man’s earlobe between forefinger and thumbnail, he gave the flesh a savage twist. The guard’s eyes opened and focused on Ari’s face. Ari grabbed a fistful of the man’s shirtfront and surged to his feet, pulling the smaller man along with him and slamming him up against the wall.
The Darvelline’s boots dangled a good foot and a half above the floor. Ari shoved the muzzle of his blaster into the man’s belly just above the gleaming belt buckle.
“All right, you,” Ari said. “Talk. Where’s Nivome?”
“Up at the Lodge,” gasped the Darvelline. His eyes went from Ari to Llannat and back again. “Who
are
you guys?”
“Fool!” roared Ari. “Don’t you recognize Black Brok, Terror of the Spaceways, and his Sinister Sidekick Serina?” Behind him, he could hear Llannat stifling a half-hysterical giggle. He ignored her. “Nivome’s in the Lodge—where?”
“Garage,” said the guard. “Getting ready to go.”
Ari gave the man a one-handed shake. The Darvelline’s head swung forward and then hit the wall with a thud. “Go where?”
“Citadel.”
“He’s telling the truth, Brok,” Llannat said. “Take a look at the monitors.”
Still holding the Darvelline at arm’s length against the wall, Ari glanced into the control room. In the farthest monitor to the left, he could make out the image of a long, armored hovercar pulling out through a wide garage door. A pack of armed outriders in blast-resistant vests and helmets formed up their hoverbikes on the vehicle as the car moved forward.
“You’re sure they’re heading for the Citadel?” he asked.
She nodded. “I heard these two talking about it earlier.”
“Then we’ve got to alert the others before he gets there,” said Ari. He shook the guard one more time and let him drop. The Darvelline slid to the floor and didn’t try to stand up again. “Let’s go.”
“Wait,” said Llannat. Lifting the captured blaster, she put a long burst of scarlet energy into the guts of the control panel. She took out the monitor screens and the comm unit the same way. Last of all, she blasted the rogues’ gallery of betraying flatpix into smoking tatters.
“Good idea,” Ari said.
The Adept gave him a brief smile as she joined him in the hall. “Thanks,” she said. “I thought you’d approve.” She held out the captured blaster. “You’d better take this for now—you’re better than I am at that sort of thing.”
“Right,” said Ari. “Let’s get out of here.”
Holding a blaster in each hand, he turned to where the guard lay huddled against the wall. “If you value your life,” he told the Darvelline, “stay where you are. Come on, Serina—‘Spaceways and Away’!”
Without looking to see if Llannat followed, he headed out the door of the blockhouse and made for the main Lodge. The Adept came up abreast of him after a few steps.
“‘Brok and Serina,’” she said. In spite of everything, she sounded amused.
“It’s all I could think of,” Ari said without breaking stride. He set a good fast pace as the two of them headed for the nearest wing of the low, sprawling complex that was Rolny Lodge. So far, nobody in the main house had reacted to their presence, but he didn’t know how long that bit of luck was going to last.
All we’ve got going for us now is surprise,
he thought, as they rounded the corner of the house,
and not much of that.
The plans had been right about one thing, at least—the garage was right where it should be. The long door through which the hovercar had made its exit earlier was sliding down as Ari and Llannat approached. Ari hit the ground and rolled through the narrowing gap.
He came out of the roll on his knees, firing both blasters. Most of the coverall-clad workers inside the garage headed for shelter among the Lodge’s collection of aircars and hovercars. A few hesitated—until Llannat charged straight at them, staff upraised and the air about her blazing up into a corona of bright green flame.
The unarmed mechanics and controllers scattered as the door at Ari’s back finished its closing cycle with a clang. He fired a few more bolts into the recesses of the garage before he realized that with the exception of himself and Llannat, the parking bay was empty.
Next to him, the Adept stopped. The green aura that had surrounded her flickered and died. “Looks like they all ran out the back.”
“Looks like,” he agreed. “How about giving Beka and Jessan the bad news while we’ve got the chance?”
Llannat pulled the comm link out of the breast pocket of her jacket and switched it on. A high, ear-piercing ululation filled the empty bay. She winced and turned off the link.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Nivome’s got a jammer going someplace on the estate,” said Ari. “Set for our frequency. Just one more thing our friend forgot to tell us. Come on, let’s grab ourselves some transport and get out of here.”
Llannat opened her mouth to say something—what, he never knew. The shrill whooping of a security alarm filled the garage, and a disembodied voice near the ceiling began to recite, “Intruder Alert. Intruder Alert. All hands man your intruder stations.”
The lights in the parking bay went out.
“Damn it,” Ari said. “They’ve cut the power.”
“Don’t move,” said Llannat’s voice a few feet away. Seconds later, a ball of green light appeared above her outstretched hand.
“Not bad,” Ari said. “Can you do something about the main door controls?”
She shook her head. “Not in the time we’ve got. I don’t even know where they are.”
“All right, then. We do it the hard way.”
Ari made his way to a small aircar close to the rolling doors and opened the side hatch. Reaching inside, he felt around on the control panel until he located the landing-light switch. He flipped it on, and powerful beams of white light shot out from the leading edges of the aircar’s stubby wings.
He tossed the spare blaster ahead of him into the cockpit and followed it up with the energy lance. Then he climbed in himself and started checking over the controls by the landing lights’ reflected glow.
He found the starter switch. “Jump aboard,” he told Llannat. “We’re leaving.”
He put the brakes full on, set the fuel mix for full rich, and fired up the jets. The turbines whined as he increased throttle. The aircar began to slide forward despite the brakes.
“Ready to launch,” he said. “Stand by!”
“Wait! I’m not strapped in!”
“Then hold on!”
Ari released the brakes.
The aircar jumped forward. With a shuddering jar, it hit the hangar doors and burst through. The doors wrapped like a tent across the nose of the craft, obscuring the windscreen. Blinded, Ari pushed the aircar’s nose down to maintain ground contact, and felt the craft lurch to starboard as the wreckage of the doors tore free.
BOOK: The Price of the Stars: Book One of Mageworlds
12.12Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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