Rift in the Races Read online

  The Galactic Mage Series

  Book 1: The Galactic Mage

  Book 2: Rift in the Races

  Book 3: Hostiles (coming 2013)

  John Daulton

  www.DaultonBooks.com

  John Daulton

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  RIFT IN THE RACES

  Book Two: The Galactic Mage Series

  The phrase “The Galactic Mage” is the trademark of John Daulton.

  Copyright © 2012 John Daulton

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9849457-5-7 (Paperback)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9849457-6-4 (Kindle ebook)

  Cover art by Cris Ortega

  Interior layout by Fernando Soria

  DEDICATION

  For Grandma Bobbie.

  Chapter 1

  “Sir Altin, when are you going to pick the crew for Citadel, and do you expect to be choosing any more students to go along?” The young man—whose name Altin could not recall despite the semester being nearly done—leaned forward, his eyes hopeful and his mouth open just enough to hint at the answer he hoped to receive.

  “Just Altin,” Altin replied, looking up to where the youth sat at the back of the cavernous auditorium, up where the ancient oaken beams were set into the university’s stone wall and where spiders crept silently about in shadows nearly as old as Crown City itself. “I’ve told you people a thousand times, Sir makes me feel like I should be clanking about in plate armor, or at the very least be half a thousand years old.” Even ten months later, he still hadn’t gotten used to the title the Queen had bestowed upon him the night of the Royal Earth Ball. It felt pretentious. And he didn’t like the attention that it brought—of which teaching this class was, indirectly, a part.

  “Right. Altin,” said the nameless youth before returning immediately to his point. “So, will you be taking any of us?”

  And there it was, right out in the open. Again. The question perched upon a hundred-and-sixty-two sets of expectant eyebrows, all raised with the hope that they decorated the forehead of the student who would be fortunate enough to get a spot aboard Citadel, the first space fortress in what was to become the Queen’s new Royal Space Armada. Citadel would be finished very soon, and they all knew there weren’t many positions left, if there were any left at all.

  “Probably not,” said Altin, kicking the hopes of an entire class in the stomach with just one blunt reply. It wasn’t intentional. He just had no patience for delicacy anymore. They’d been hounding him since the semester began. Just like the students in last semester’s class had hounded him. “And I’m not even sure if I will be picking the rest of the crew. At least not alone. Her Majesty has a very active part in it now.” He paused long enough to watch all the eyebrows drooping back to where they’d been before hope had set them on high.

  He was not oblivious to the excitement the Royal Space Program had ignited across Kurr. He of all people understood. He’d lived on that enthusiasm for over a decade, ultimately driven by it to develop the magical space travel techniques he now taught. He still lived on it. Frankly, that was the problem. His love of space was being stifled by this infernal teaching assignment. “Fill my space fortresses with space mages,” the Queen had ordered him. “You are the Galactic Mage and that is your job.” The irony of it made him want to kick something. Imagine, the Galactic Mage, the first wizard on the moon, the first beyond the solar system, and here he was, spending all his time since those monumental achievements stuffed into King Perfort’s University like some dusty old relic. He understood that his discovery was historic, that his work needed to be shared, but he felt like the Queen had put him away too soon, yanked him off the beach of newfound inter-stellar land before he’d had time to plant Her Majesty’s flag. It was vexing beyond endurance, and he had no intention of doing another semester after this. He was going to confront the Queen—delicately, of course, and obviously, after this course was done.

  He looked at the hourglass on the desk. A quarter of an hour to go. Too early to let them out. He would have done it anyway, but he always got dirty looks from the other professors when he did that—the clamor of his students in the hallways caused students in other classes to lose focus and start shifting about in anticipation of release themselves.

  A glance into his notes showed that he still hadn’t covered the last bit about protective shielding. He really should go over it. It was something they would need to know. And besides, he reminded himself, he would be seeing Orli soon. The first time in two weeks. He could hardly wait. Granted, he had to give the Citadel tour first, but after that, she was all his. He could endure anything for that. So, with effort, he forced himself back to the last part of the day’s lecture.

  “All right, returning to the matter of shielding,” he said, looking up into the crowded lecture hall once more, “can anyone tell me what the most likely avenue of entrance was for the Hostile that attacked and penetrated my Polar Piton’s Perfect Parabolic Protection shield after I had teleported my tower deep into space?”

  Several arms shot up around the room as if an orchard of five-fingered trees had sprouted from the auditorium seats, but before Altin could call on anyone, a young woman in the front row shouted out, “Solidity—the element of stone.” Her answer erupted with such urgency that a casual observer might have thought lives were at stake. The trees all wilted away at the sound of her voice, as they always did when this particular individual beat the rest to the academic punch.

  Altin turned to the assertive coed, the one student whose name he had no trouble remembering. She looked exultant in the aftermath of her reply. Tribbey Redquill. Sharp as a poignard. The young Miss Redquill was Altin’s top student, though something of a handful to rein in. Without a concerted effort on his part to keep her quiet, no other student would ever get a chance to speak. She always had the right answer, and always had it first. Normally such a thing was commendable in students, and it was certainly the case that no other student Altin had was as devoted to her studies as was Miss Redquill. But it wasn’t just that she rather stepped on the other students’ opportunities with her assertiveness that troubled him. While he appreciated her rigor, sometimes her acuity was the basis of questions that put him on the spot. Often, if the truth be told.

  From what Altin had gathered from the fleet officers who had been assigned to teach classes here at King Perfort’s University—courses lumped under the broad new category called Earth Studies—he was not the only one Miss Redquill cornered in that way. Her combined and growing knowledge of both Earth science and magic theory made her an imposing pupil, a new breed of student, really, and one that was especially difficult for a conscripted instructor like poor Sir Altin Meade. She regularly asked him questions like “Can antimatter be moved safely within a standard teleportation spell?” and “Do the fleet’s plasma shields meld with Heat Blast and the other high-energy magic wards?”

  How in the nine hells would Altin possibly know such things? These kids were the ones taking the classes from the visiting fleet officers, not him. Which irked him, sometimes more than it should. But not so much that he didn’t recognize the nature of the change that had commenced in the ten months since the Earth fleet had first arrived at Prosperion. Since that first encounter, the bringing together of Altin’s people with those of another world—humans just like those peopling Prosperion, no less—a whole new era had been ushered in. It was an amazing time to be alive. But he felt like he was missing it. He should be at the leading edge, following up on his invention of magical space travel, back out there, not down here behind the lines training the recruits.

&n
bsp; He realized his mind was wandering again. He should have let the class leave early.

  “Correct,” he said instead, acknowledging that Tribbey’s reply was, as always, correct. Preempting her next response, however, he asked, “Can anyone besides Miss Redquill tell me why the element of stone was the most likely point of access for the Hostile and how that problem might be eliminated in the future?”

  Up sprang the orchard again.

  “You,” said Altin, pointing to an emaciated-looking young fellow in a center row.

  “Caulfin, Sir Altin. Caulfin Sunderhusk.” This was the only student who still kept to Altin’s first-week request that the class give their names before speaking—an unsuccessful mnemonic suggested by one of Sir Altin’s professorial peers.

  “Yes, Caulfin. Go on. What is the reason?”

  “Stone is the most stable element in the shield. An enemy given time to lie on the shield, like that Hostile did to you, can find that element and modulate the cadence of a spell to worm through it. Like an earthworm or a dire-mole.”

  “Right,” said Altin. “So what would you do to prevent it?”

  “I would modify the spell’s tactile rhythms to include variations of a wider number of elements, including temperature variants to bring in matter normally found as liquid and even gas.” Caulfin looked very happy with his response when he was done, but then suddenly added, “Gas at extremely high PSI, of course,” as if he’d missed something obvious.

  “I see Miss Redquill is not the only one who’s been paying attention to the science lessons put on by our friends from planet Earth. Nicely done, Mr. Sunderhusk.” Caulfin’s elation shone like polished silver at that. The fact that Altin had no idea what PSI meant only proved that his time as a teacher had tarnished beyond saving.

  “Thank you, Sir Altin,” glowed the grinning young man.

  Altin almost corrected him on the title but realized it was pointless. He glanced to the hourglass on his desk. Only a few minutes left. He could let them go soon. That much closer to his time with Orli tonight. The anticipation was excruciating.

  “All right, does anyone have anything to add to that?” He hoped they didn’t.

  They didn’t. Well, except Tribbey Redquill, of course. Her hand waved alone, a solitary limb in an orchard where all the trees were closing notebooks and reaching for satchels lying beneath their roots. They had obviously caught him looking at the hourglass again and took it as a sign. A few students shot threatening looks down at Tribbey Redquill when they saw her waving that know-it-all branch around, but most had already brought their homing lizards out and begun writing notes to friends, parents or sweethearts on bits of parchment pulled from pockets, pouches or packs.

  “No one besides Miss Redquill, then?” said Altin, trying not to make it sound like what it was.

  Most made an effort not to look at him. The note writers didn’t care. They were already lost in the oblivion of their correspondence, though most were respectful enough to try to hide the fact. He could tell what they were doing by the contortions of their bodies, their shoulders askew and, as often as not, their lower jaws working and lower lips being chewed upon while they tried to write upon the unstable surfaces of their laps.

  He shook his head. “Very well then. Miss Redquill, we’ll have to save it for next time. Class dismissed.”

  He felt a little bad about doing it to her, but he was tired. It had been a long day, and a long semester. And, frankly, most of this time was a waste. They all wanted to be on Citadel, sure, but only a few of them wanted it bad enough to work for it. Like Tribbey did. Like he had. He’d worked for it long and hard, years of failed attempts to reach the moon, pink Luria, before he finally succeded and teleported there. There and beyond. And he wanted to go back out. He wanted to find the Hostiles, and he wanted to do it before the Hostiles found them. The bulk of the Earth fleet, now ten months underway and bent on taking the war to the Hostile world, was still going to be a long time in getting to where they thought the Hostiles were. Four years and a few months to go before they got there. Far too long for Altin’s sense of security—and that assumed the Earth people had even chosen the right star. Orli admitted to him that they had no idea if the solar system the fleet ships were heading to was the right one. Altin was not going to wait that long to find out if they had guessed right. No way.

  He started to gather up his notes when Tribbey Redquill stopped by his desk, as she always did, on her way out of class. She would not be silenced so easily. “I believe gravity is the most stable element in the shield, Sir Altin,” she said. “I’ve been reading through Polar Piton’s spell very carefully, and if you factor in Earth science descriptions of gravity, which you should, then it must be counted as one of the ‘all aspects of the environment’ Polar Piton wrote about, whether he intended it or not. It must be so, and if so, it certainly answers the questions some of my fleet instructors have in that regard.”

  “A great topic for a paper some day,” he said as he tried to make the tidying of his desk declare the immediacy of his departure. “I’m sure someone will enjoy reading it.”

  “A fascinating adventure you must have had out there,” she said, changing the subject to her real purpose for these visits after every class. “I certainly hope that, if you do decide to take a few students on Citadel, you’ll remember who your top performers are. You do know I am a P-class teleporter don’t you?”

  He looked up and smiled. “Yes, Miss Redquill, you’ve mentioned it several times before.”

  “And a K in Sight.”

  “Yes, Miss Redquill.”

  “All right. I just want to make sure you don’t forget.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  “Well, you do struggle with names.” She walked out then, leaving the insinuation hanging there before he could defend himself. She vanished through the door with a flip of her long brown hair to indicate how pleased she was with herself.

  He couldn’t be annoyed with her. She’d make a fantastic space mage; maybe someday she’d be his replacement as the Queen’s Galactic Mage. She would almost certainly command her own space fortress one day or, if not that, perhaps serve as an officer on a starship for the people from Earth—once they finally got over their fear of magic anyway.

  The remaining students flowed out of the room like grains of sand in the hourglass on his desk, noisy granules of laughter and weekend plans crowding the door and spilling into the ancient hallways of King Perfort’s University.

  When the last of them was gone, Altin went to the nearest window and looked outside. Sunlight twinkled through the leaves of a towering two-hundred-foot black oak growing across the commons lawn. It was barely mid-afternoon. He still had to conduct the tour of Citadel for the fleet officers in a few hours. Orli would be there, which he was happy about, but he couldn’t look forward to the event itself, not with Captain Asad and his hawkish looks and acidic remarks as part of it. Altin did have a strategy for that, though. He was going to make Aderbury do most of the talking. Aderbury was the man in charge of building Citadel, after all. Altin only helped coordinate which enchantments they needed and gave direction to the enchanting teams setting up the runes—that and training the crew, of course.

  Still, he would see her, be near her, and afterwards, he’d have her all to himself. Finally. Two weeks felt like a thousand years when they were apart, which they often were these days.

  Finding time with Orli had become a tactical nightmare ever since the Queen had conceded to the admiral’s request that Orli no longer be treated with ambassadorial grandeur as she had been when the fleet first arrived—an unfortunate consequence of Altin’s having taken her on an unannounced and unapproved all-night dragon ride the night of the Royal Earth Ball. While it was true that Orli was not technically qualified for diplomacy by experience or education anyway, her ambassadorial status was made even more untenable for many by the fact that she had “run off with Altin like a prom queen in heat” as Captain Asad had put it the
day after the dragon flight, which Altin had subsequently learned had the Prosperion equivalent of the captain’s having called her the “harlot of the harvest festival.” That had done nothing to improve the souring relationship between Altin and the Aspect’s commanding officer. Now, ten months later, the captain worked against them constantly, making finding a night like tonight a major victory.

  Altin returned to the desk and packed up his lesson plans, stuffing books and parchment and sheepskin scrolls into a leather case and tossing the whole of it over his shoulder. He was supposed to meet Aderbury to confer with him about the Citadel tour. This was a big deal for his friend, the first showing of Citadel to the fleet. All the captains who had stayed behind when the bulk of the fleet left for the Hostile system would be there. Granted, it wasn’t the official launching of the fortress, but it was the first preview of it for the people from Earth. Aderbury was almost as eager to impress the Earth people as was the Queen. Altin just wanted to be with Orli.

  Chapter 2

  Ensign Orli Pewter tapped the shuttle’s communications console and signaled back to the mining base on Tinpoa, a small, rocky moon orbiting the gas giant Naotatica half a solar system away. “Entering Prosperion’s atmosphere,” she said. “Three minutes to next contact.”

  “Roger, shuttle Six. Three minutes.” The com went black.

  “Shields are up, Captain,” said Lieutenant Roberto Levi sitting next to her. “Entry in seven, six, five, four, three, two … one.”

  At first the view through the windshield didn’t change. The bright blue planet loomed up at them, the massive continent of Kurr spreading out upon it like an enormous green amoeba lounging on a globe, but gradually the glow of heat building against the forward plasma shield obscured the view. At first a flicker of orange flames, it brightened through hues of yellow until finally the planet was lost in the nearly white-hot furnace of atmospheric friction.