Dance of Destinies (The Galactic Mage Series Book 5) (21 page)

“So …?” he said. “What’s going on? Where are they? Altin and Orli, are they out? Do you know where they are on the alien ship? It’s a big ship. Is anyone going in there to get them? A hostage negotiator? Some diplomats? A body recovery team? What?”

The diviner kept her eyes on the Queen.

The Queen traced a half circle in the air with the end of her scepter, the end of which came finally to rest, pointing at Guildmaster Meste. The cessation of the scepter’s motion coincided with the lifting of the royal eyebrows.

“We are not prepared to send anyone in just yet,” the guildmaster diviner said.

Roberto looked from her to the Queen. That was obviously one of those truths that were still lies. He looked to Deeqa next, who, with the barest motion, shrugged.

“So whose blood is that?” he asked. He turned and pointed to Envette’s robes. “Did something happen that you guys don’t want to tell me about?” He turned back to the Queen. “Look, I’m not totally calling BS here, but … come on. I’m not an idiot. There’s a whole crapton you aren’t telling me. How about some truth, here, eh?”

“Some situations are delicate, Captain,” said the Queen. “But I give you this assurance: your friends—our friends—are still alive. Are they not, Guildmaster?”

“They are,” said the young diviner. At least that truth didn’t sound so much like it was hanging by the neck.

“You’ve seen them?” Roberto asked.

“I have.”

“Like for real? Or in … you know, the spooky mind stuff?” He wriggled his fingers in the air around his head.

She looked at him for the first time, genuine empathy in her eyes. “The spooky stuff. It’s what I do. But Guildmaster Alphonde there has seen them too, with scrying spells and far sight. That is as good as with the naked eye.” She tipped her head backward to indicate the guildmaster standing behind her.

Roberto turned back to face the one-eyed old man.

He nodded that it was true. “I’ve seen them,” he said.

Roberto turned back. That was good news at least. “And how about the hole the aliens are digging? How close are they to Yellow Fire? Have they dug him up yet? How long until they set off the explosives we wired down there with all of that? Is he even still alive?”

“He is alive,” Cypher Meste replied.

“Your answers are getting short again,” Roberto said.

“You asked for truth,” said the Queen.

Roberto stifled his next outburst, snuffing it to a low rumble in his chest. Once contained, he went on. “I just want to know how deep the hole is. I can’t get any data on it. Are they through? I need to know how much time we have, in case what Deeqa told you about the wormhole is right.”

Cypher Meste looked the question to the Queen, who nodded, saying, “Tell him.”

“Not yet.”

“How soon?”

“Four days. Five at most.”

“So when are you guys going to make your move? Are you going to rush in and save Yellow Fire at the last minute? Are you waiting on something?”

Nobody said anything. Roberto watched them. His eyes narrowed as he started shaking his head. “Then what? You can’t wait till they go in. It’s all wired to blow. If they mess with the heart chamber, they might set off the ….” His voiced tailed off, and his mouth dropped open. “Oh my God.” He looked, eyes wide, to Deeqa, then back. “You
are
waiting. That’s it, isn’t it? General Pewter or someone on Earth is waiting to push the button and blow it all up once the aliens get down there, aren’t they? That’s been the plan all along! Nobody wanted Yellow Fire back to life anyway. That’s what all this awkward short-sentences stuff is, isn’t it?”

“Military strategy is not the role of a merchant ship captain, Captain,” said the Queen. “Speculate as you will, but I’ve answered your questions, and I’ve done so despite your hotheadedness. I should think you will be grateful now, and have faith that I am doing everything that can be done in the face of an unusual and unanticipated alien threat.”

“
Merchant
ship captain?” Roberto stared up at her, incredulous. “Is that all I am?”

“What was it that you thought you were doing, Captain? Do I need to get you a dictionary? Now move along. I have other matters to attend, and I’m sure you would prefer it—as would your friends Sir Altin and Lady Meade—if we returned these three wizards to
Citadel
so that they might continue their work.”

Roberto started to say something, but Deeqa put a cool hand on his arm again. He was calm enough to bite the comment back. “Yes, Your Majesty.” He had to say it through clenched teeth.

“Have faith, Captain. Do your part. You don’t see all the pieces on the board just yet. We need money, good man. We need lots of it. For reasons I am not going to explain. Just do what you have agreed to do. Do your work, and I’ll do mine. If everyone stays on course, it will all come out fine in the long run. Won’t it, Guildmaster Meste?” She looked to the V-class diviner, who nodded but did not look Roberto in the eyes.

Chapter 21

O
rli started when the loud pop sounded near her ear. She winced, and one eye closed reflexively. She had time to look up at the alien with its ass end pointed at her and realize the pop hadn’t come from it. She turned and saw Altin standing there. His eyes were closed. He drew in a breath. A splatty liquid sound erupted with a whoosh from the alien just as a furnace seemed to open up right above her.

Altin had cast a fireball, launched at the alien’s bulbous body like a meteor. She squinted in the glare of it, unable to help but watch. It all happened so fast she didn’t even have time to hope it incinerated her captor. She merely witnessed.

The fireball appeared to strike the alien full on, but in the half second after, Orli realized the flames were wrapped around some form of shield. Then the fiery tongues of yellow and orange blew back at her on the wind. She turned her head away, reflexively trying to cover her face with her arms but unable to for being stretched taut by the alien’s tentacles. The fire washed over her. It was almost like lying in Taot’s breath the day the dragon blew its fire over Calico Castle’s walls. Friendly fire, in the most literal of senses. Again.

This fire, unlike that day she fought against the orcs, was brief. The wind in the ship blew the flames over her quickly. She could feel her skin dry out, the sweat and the steam slicking her body evaporating instantly. But it was enough to spare her hideous burns.

She turned back to see if Altin was on fire. She dreaded seeing it. He was standing up. He would have been in the heart of the flames, unlike her, lying beneath the worst of it.

But he was not aflame. No, he was in a blob of the goddamn yellow jelly again. Just like when they’d first found themselves aboard the ship.

“Altin!” she called to him. She could see him calling back, through his helmet glass and through the goo. He looked heartbroken. And relieved. She smiled, wanting to comfort him. “Oh, Altin. I love you. We’ll figure it out.”

She saw him say something. She thought he was probably saying the same, trying to reassure her that they would get through this somehow. She saw him say, “I love you.” That was clear. She smiled again. Then he was swearing. She could tell not so much by the recognition of word shapes upon his lips as by the rage in his eyes. It agonized her. He would be blaming himself, wanting to save her. The helplessness would burn him worse than a fireball.

Another alien arrived. It drew itself up over the machine. It reached a tentacle down and moved Altin in his blob aside. It snaked more tentacles up, and once again the machine was lowering down.

The two aliens spent time going through the same processes that the lone alien had, running the machine back and forth over her. Orli was sure they were irradiating her to sterility this time. Machines that big could hardly be delicate enough for human bodies. It just didn’t seem possible.

The aliens flashed their light patterns back and forth, and she decided they had to be communicating in that way, probably talking about her like she were some rat in their lab. They were probably discussing who was going to cut her open or push the pin into her brain. Maybe they were congratulating themselves in anticipation of the accolades they would receive when they got back to their own world: “Why, look here at this new species that we’ve found. This one is a female. Just look at how she reproduces here. And look, a fine primitive brain.” The other aliens would all flash their lights and pat the new heroes of scientific discovery on the bulbs with lots of bulb-patting tentacles. Praise for their new great prize, Orli Pewter of planet Earth. She sighed, then realized she was wrong. At least in that. She would die Orli Meade of Prosperion.

The tentacle holding her right arm let it go, followed by the one holding her left. Then her left leg was free. She started to sit up, wondering if this was it, the moment they were going to drive the probe into her prizewinning rat brain.

It wasn’t.

With a great yank that felt as if it were going to jerk her leg right out of the joint, the aliens threw their prize away. Just like that, Orli was flying through the air.

She flew out over the edge of the machine and out over the grate—it reminded her of a waffle iron. It reminded her of looking down on the redoubts in
Citadel
.

The momentum of the toss carried her fifty yards or more, but soon she was falling down. She tried to expand herself, to catch the wind she’d been thrown into and glide, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t blowing hard enough to hold her up.

So she fell. The grate hurtled up at her. She was going to hit one of those thick protein beams, and that would be it.

She had to dive through one of the openings in the grate.

She angled herself and tried to use the wind that way. The grate grew closer.

She had to pick her target.

She could clear that one, she thought, spying one. Maybe.

No, she’d hit it. The one before instead.

She ducked, dove down, sliced through the air like a hurtling spear.

She made it under the farthest beam framing the square gap, but her heels clipped the lowest edge of it. Pain shot up her legs as she spun from the impact, her head flung up when her feet rebounded off the rough surface. The impact threw her into a sprawling backspin, and right after, she dropped into a blast of wind going in the opposite direction as the current above the grate. It struck her in the chest and straightened her, blowing her back the other way for twenty feet. But she was still falling.

Toward the next grate.

It was barely four hundred yards away.

Three hundred.

Jesus!

She tried to flatten out and slow the fall again. Nope. Not enough to mean anything.

One hundred yards.

Fuck me!

She angled down again, getting a small measure of control over her flight. She calculated which gap she would have to dive through.

That one. No, that one.

The beams seemed to be so much wider than the gaps now.

She shot through the square patch of emptiness cleanly this time. No impact on her heels.

The wind coming the other direction hit her like a bus.

With her head down as it was, the blast rolled her over, bending her at the waist and spinning her wildly. Now she was dropping like a rock. She had to turn, twisting in the air, trying to get her bearings. She was only a hundred feet from the grate.

Shit.

She dove straight down and gauged she was going to get pushed by the wind right into a crossbeam, so she angled at the last second. She nicked her toes on the way through.

A blast of steam hit her as she passed through this time as well, blinding her. Her toes burned like they were in boiling water after grinding down the beam at speed. But she wasn’t thrown off her trajectory, at least not until the switch in air current hit her again, blowing her back the other way. It flipped her over once more, but this time she adjusted more quickly and was soon angling down, plunging toward the next grate with the wind whistling in her ears.

There was a massive piece of machinery in the way.

She spread-eagled as best she could, made a sail of her slender body. A laser beam might have caught as much wind, at least so it seemed.

She tipped herself, yawing her body, trying to catch some help from the wind to blow her over the machine, give her a shot at a gap in the grate beyond it. She wasn’t going to make it. The machine was too big. She was going to hit that thing at 110 miles per hour.

A blur of gray shot past her, just below her. An alien streaking by. Its billow nicked her as it went past, spinning her wildly out of control. She spun and caught a blast of air churned by its passing, which rolled her as she commenced falling again. She hit one of its trailing tentacles—or it hit her, it was impossible to know. She bounced again. The sinuous limb gave beneath her weight, but even so, the blast of pain that followed told her she must have broken a rib. She hit another tentacle right after. God, that hurt. She was spinning wildly now. A third tentacle, barely the tip, whipped up in the wind and smacked her across the back. The welt would be enormous if she lived.