The pilot, p.31
The Pilot, page 31
The door would never close when it was pockmarked with burned holes and warped by heat, so he couldn’t go to Subspace, but it wasn’t time for that yet. He had to get off the planet first.
Zykaros gave a ragged sigh that echoed through his ship. “You always acted like you owned me, Vallenar. You should die with the knowledge that your only power was what mortals believed you had.”
Benri’s autopilot was bringing him back up the tunnel leading up the mountain, so he didn’t have to fly the ship himself, but he still didn’t have the attention to spare for the World Spirit’s words.
He was chanting.
Cloning an entire starship wasn’t as trivial for him as it would have been for his son, but he should be able to manage something.
Alarms blared and he glanced to the monitors. A massive hand had formed from the darkness, a hand made of twisted iron and steel that resembled something the Iron Legion might have created.
Benri focused on his incantation. He had other protections.
The hand slammed into his shield, but protective sigils flashed at the impact. Spells he’d bought to reinforce his standard starship shield.
A second swat came in and brought the stability down to thirty percent, but Benri was at the end of the tunnel. The spot of daylight at the top was his ticket to freedom.
It winked out as he approached. The mountain closed overhead.
Benri continued his chanting as his starship blasted for the wall of rock and steel. New enchantments flared to life in the nose of the ship, forming a shape like a drill.
Though this wasn’t one of his major clones, he’d still set this body up with plenty of purchased magic. No sense in being stingy when it came to the safety of one of his own selves.
Aetheric sigils sharpened into a magical forcefield around the ship, which punched through the mountain and emerged into open atmosphere in a surge of broken stones.
The hand didn’t follow.
Alarms screamed all around him, but the cloud of smog surrounding Zykaros was like a comforting blanket to him. If he got out of the World Spirit’s reach, he could be sure to accomplish his objective.
Which wasn’t necessarily survival.
Clouds opened like eyelids, revealing two spots of ember-colored light. Zykaros glared down at him and focused.
Finally, Benri finished his spell.
A black-and-white decoy ship flashed into existence in front of him, so when orange beams emerged from the World Spirit’s eyes, only the copy was destroyed. He flew around the attack, punching through the clouds and emerging into the upper atmosphere.
He was still within Zykaros’ orbit, so it was a risky time to try a spell, but Benri felt he could wait no longer. He placed his hand on a nearby stone tablet, which lit white as it connected to the Aether.
His memories were transmitted to the original.
There were other ways for him to transfer memories, and usually such a transmission happened automatically when a clone was destroyed. But this was faster, more secure, and—he hoped—would take place before Zykaros could intercept it.
The spell shone and shivered in the Aether…then resolved successfully.
Benri sank into the pilot’s chair as he emerged in the night of space. He let a shaky smile form.
What was left of his shield was keeping his atmospheric generator stable, so the door gaping open didn’t immediately eject him from the starship. It wasn’t secure by a long shot, but he’d bought himself enough time to fix it.
And Solstice had made a dangerous enemy.
Once the original version of Benri Vallenar knew what had happened, he could tell the galaxy. If they wanted to use their tame Iron King, they would have to ask his permission.
The moment the thought occurred to him, a spark of red-gold fire kindled in the middle of his ship.
His ship, which was protected by top-level magical protection. The World Spirit clearly didn’t care.
The fire burned a circle in midair, from which the tall, faceless projection of Fathom crawled.
It was still injured from their previous battle, sporting dozens of wounds all leaking golden light, but it strode out of its transport spell without hesitation.
Benri raised his gun, but it was swatted out of his grip in the same action that broke his hand.
The next swipe took off his head.
Several sectors away, the real Benri snapped up from his desk work as he received a packet of memories from another version of himself.
The knowledge was jumbled for a moment, causing him some confusion, but the general message was clear.
Solstice had betrayed him.
“Let’s put this on hold,” Benri said, interrupting the Planetary Governor of Syrillia before he abruptly ended the call.
He started another call immediately, tapping it out on his console to his most trusted mage division. He needed as much magical protection as he could get.
Teranon’s weathered face appeared in a square at the corner of Benri’s vision, projected in his ocular implant. “Did we lose a clone?” the wizard asked immediately.
“Solstice is backed by the World Spirit of Fathom,” Benri said immediately. “Probably others as well. This is a violation of the Treaty of Immortals, not to mention governmental interference regulations when it comes to an attempt on my life.”
Teranon wiped a hand across weary eyes and sighed. “And what do you need from us?”
“I’m getting off-planet right now, and I need comprehensive spell coverage. Forget everything else and get me to a colony.”
“I’m calling my people now,” Teranon said, typing on his console beyond the border of the screen. “Do you have proof? A World Spirit attempting an assassination is a major breach of the Treaty.”
Benri was halfway to his personal starship dock, where his pilot was warming up the engines. He pulled a mantle on and began checking his protection spells, which were much more comprehensive than the ones on his clone.
“Only my word, but that should be enough for an investigation,” Benri said. He hauled open the exterior door and raised his voice to speak over the wind, which was kicked up by the hover-plates of his ship. “Just get me off the planet alive! If I could send out a message, so could they!”
Teranon scratched his head and sighed. “And we have no way of telling who they have in their pocket. At least, you don’t.”
His resigned tone was the same as usual, but his words caught Benri’s attention.
Just before a cold pain slashed across his throat.
He glanced down with numb fascination to see blood spilling down his neck. Over his mantle, which had failed to activate.
A shimmering dagger withdrew, held by a woman in the Vallenar Corporation uniform. Nila, he realized. He hadn’t seen her since he’d outed her as a Solstice agent.
And there she carried an enchanted dagger, invested with power by someone who knew his defenses specifically.
Expressionlessly, Nila wiped the blood on his mantle as he fell to his knees.
“You shouldn’t have called me, Ben,” Teranon sighed.
The call ended.
As the world dimmed, Benri reached for his console. Only one person could help him. Only one person he knew could work a miracle.
Varic’s contact appeared on his console screen before Nila tore it away and tossed it aside.
Benri extended his hand powerlessly for the console, desperate for one last hope.
His sight faded, and he saw nothing more.
…until a few minutes later, when Benri sat up with a gasp in a long-term stasis chamber.
He slammed his palms against the inner glass of the pod, which was already opening as it detected his consciousness.
Lights in the room began to brighten automatically, revealing a luxuriously furnished basement.
“Welcome back, Mister Vallenar,” a neutral AI voice said.
Benri pulled IVs from his arms and disentangled himself from the various patches, pouches, tubes, and straps that sustained him in stasis.
His final memories streamed into him chaotically, but they were complete. As far as he knew, anyway.
That last clone had been hypnotized to believe it was the original. It would even leave a body, thanks to some Aethertech enhancements. Teranon hadn’t been aware of this life-saving measure, though keeping it from him had been nothing but paranoia on Benri’s part.
Not too much paranoia, as it turned out.
Benri boiled with hatred. They had all underestimated him. He would have his revenge.
But…maybe revenge could wait.
He was weak from long-term stasis and still shaking from his final memories. Solstice was a group of World Spirits.
When he thought of that, he considered that maybe he should leave this one to Varic.
In the meantime, he would enjoy being dead.
THIRTY-NINE
A network of gold lights stretched all over our map of the galaxy as I maintained my pathfinding spells.
Mell leaned back in her chair to look at me through the holographic map. “I have a theory.”
I nodded to her without breaking my incantation, though I lowered my voice to a whisper so she could speak over me.
“There is no Solstice,” she said. “Everyone thinks there is, so they all pretend, but there’s not really some secret society out there that started everything.”
I interrupted my chant for a moment to respond. “What’s the difference?”
“Well…” Mell pulled out a piece of candy from her pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. “I guess there isn’t one. Somebody gave the orders. And we found their location half an hour ago.”
I waved a hand impatiently. She’d been trying to get me to ask what she’d found, but I wanted to finish my spell and examine its results first.
The magic would resolve the same no matter what assumptions I made, but I might read it wrong if I let her influence me.
I was maintaining a complex bit of navigational magic, though not necessarily a powerful one. My pathfinding spells were tracing all our leads—everyone who had been ordered to cause trouble for us all over the galaxy, plus all the shipments and orders we’d tracked to Solstice—and looking for overlap between them.
I couldn’t track Solstice directly, since their magical protections were too good. But this gave me a sort of magical radar that let me do it indirectly.
The gold lines and points of light shifted and shimmered all over the representation of the galaxy until they finally converged into a gold haze that covered one system in particular.
“The Zykaros system,” I said at last. I drummed my fingers on my thigh. “Huh. Isn’t that where Omega’s from?”
Horizon shimmered into existence next to me and inclined her horned head. “Zykaros Prime is indeed my Pilot’s home planet. Should I call him here?”
I shook my head. “Let’s keep him out of it until we need him. At least it isn’t Fathom.”
I was a little surprised, honestly. Fathom was the heart of Solstice’s power, so I’d expected my spells to lead me somewhere in that system. Zykaros was only a sector away, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch, but it did make me wonder.
Why was Solstice contacting its agents through a different planet? Why not call them straight from Fathom?
Had Fathom always been a decoy?
Mell craned her head backwards over her chair and glared at me upside-down. “I could have told you it was Zykaros thirty minutes ago.”
“This way, we double-checked each other,” I responded.
“Her Highness had to withdraw one of her agents in the Galactic Union to track down a lead,” Mell went on. “Sola’s friend died. She’s been working day and night to dig up everything she can, and I’ve had Nova-Bots logging every shipment going into the system. But all you had to do was…magic.”
I’d explained the truth to her before, but that misconception about magic always rubbed me the wrong way. “Without all those leads, I wouldn’t have known where to direct the spells. Besides, it took me just as long as it took you.”
“A half-hour longer.”
“See? And these were very difficult to cast, too. Most wizards couldn’t have done it without an extensive ritual.”
Horizon smiled angelically down on me. “I appreciate your labors, my Captain.”
Her encouragement didn’t make me feel better.
“Anyway, whoever gives the orders for Solstice is down on Zykaros,” Mell said. She closed one eye and pointed a finger at the haze of gold light that my spell painted on the holographic map. “What are we going to do about it?”
“What would you do?”
Mell squirmed up to a normal sitting position and then spun her chair around. She faced me with her fingers steepled together. “Well, everybody hates us for things we didn’t do.”
“We did some of them!” Horizon reminded brightly.
“Yeah, but they hate us and it isn’t all our fault. I can’t imagine Solstice is going to let us go after pushing us this far. And I think the only one of us who doesn’t want revenge is Raion.”
I hadn’t seen much of Raion since his return from Shadow Ark. He was spending more time with Doctor Cryce and Parryl; I thought they were cooking something up, but I didn’t have time to keep track of everything.
“Does that include you?” I asked Mell.
I wasn’t sure exactly how Mell felt about Solstice. She didn’t seem to mind working against them, but at the same time, she didn’t have much of a personal grudge either.
Mell crunched through her candy with a scowl. “Are you kidding? They’re sending Zenith Devices against us. It’s us or them, and they’ve made that clear. Plus, we have a quest to complete.”
Horizon draped her arms over Mell and squeezed tight. “There is the heroic spirit of my Engineer!”
“We still don’t have much chance of getting to them,” I pointed out. “We’re one step closer, but there’s every chance Zykaros is another dead end.”
Mell shrugged off Horizon and narrowed her eyes at me. “Why are you asking me all this? I thought you were about to go popping heads on Fathom one by one until you got to Solstice.”
I didn’t think I’d shown quite that much hostility, but she wasn’t too far off. “I don’t plan to let them go, but that doesn’t mean I speak for all of you. You can go into hiding while I hunt them down myself if I have to.”
“Yeah, and where am I supposed to go?” Mell asked. She looked surprisingly serious. “I don’t have any friends for Solstice to target, but so what? If you all go off on your vengeance crusade and leave me behind, what do I do? Hide in an asteroid belt building Nova-Bots?”
She paused for a moment. “That doesn’t sound too bad, actually. Well, now that we know I have options, what’s the real plan?”
“Now we do need Omega,” I said. “As far as we can tell, this Oracle of Solstice is on his planet right now. Omega can show us where to start tracking them down.”
Horizon extended herself to almost ten feet tall, adopting a serious expression and tucking her hands behind her back. “We pressure them until they show a weakness. Or so my Commander would say.”
“That’s the idea,” I agreed. “We track the connections we have.”
We’d gone too far to leave Solstice intact, even if I was willing to do it.
Which I was not.
Mell eyed me. “I’m afraid to point out the obvious, but by the time we get the ones we’re after, we might be the most hated crew in the galaxy. Are we okay with that?”
“I don’t care how they remember me as long as they’re alive to do it,” I said.
The civil war that tore the galaxy in half, instigated by the Galactic Union, had claimed uncountable lives. Karoshans and Visiri had been wanted everywhere, and the Subline had come entirely under government control.
If I could stop that from happening, they could hate me as much as they wanted.
“The security coverage is notoriously spotty on Zykaros,” Mell said. “There’s so much industrial traffic in and out of the system that they can’t keep track of everything, so it shouldn’t be too hard to fabricate a shuttle they can’t trace back to us. We’ll head down to the planet in disguise.”
“I can teleport you to the planet from anywhere in the system,” Horizon said.
“Last time we tried that, I was almost overwhelmed by the entire Fathom military,” I pointed out as I idly flipped through the Subline news from Zykaros. “Let’s keep that as our emergency backup. For now, get Omega and the rest of the crew together. We’re hunting an Oracle.”
We met in the heart of the ship, where Horizon grew a table and chairs out of the deck. The six of us sat with our backs to the large stone tablets depicting our role, which towered over us and resonated with ancient magic.
Actually, Raion and Omega sat in the wrong places, so Horizon stealthily swapped the stones behind them to line up properly.
“We tracked Solstice to Zykaros,” I said, as soon as everyone was gathered. Shyrax nodded, Mell sat with arms folded, Sola leaned forward, Raion gave me a thumbs-up, and Omega rolled six extra eyes.
“You’ve outwitted them!” he cried. “Quick, let’s jump on the bait and be eaten! Devoured! Snapped up!”
He turned his hand into a jaw full of razor-sharp fangs and mimed snapping on a fish.
“We believe the figure called the Oracle of Solstice is there right now,” I continued.
“Is that the same person as the Voice?” Sola asked.
“We don’t know.”
“Are we certain this person exists?” Shyrax asked.
“It might be a group of people,” I admitted. “Someone brought a lot of magic and stolen Aethertech to this planet, and it’s the same source who contacted agents about us throughout the galaxy.”
Omega’s eye shone as he looked at me. “And why did they leave such a trail, do you think? Perhaps…a trap?”
“That, or they’re doing something so big that they can’t hide it,” I said.
