Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) Read online

  The Queen, as did the rest in the room, looked up into the space above the conduit’s place in the center of the room. As one, they gazed into the illusion that the one-eyed seers guildmaster, Master Alfonde, maintained through the images relayed to him by a seer-telepath from atop Citadel. The image portrayed the view of the space, the empty space, beyond Citadel where the Earth ships had just been. The vacancy so displayed confirmed that, in fact, the fleet ships were now gone. “Nicely done, Sir Altin,” continued the Queen. “Please tell Blue Fire that we appreciate her assistance in sending those people home.”

  “She knows,” said Altin as he blinked away the awe that still hung upon him. He was not sure he could ever grow accustomed to the magnitude of Blue Fire’s power. She was so vast, her reach so far, her abilities so completely outstripping anything the wizards of Prosperion knew. In helping her send the Earth ships home, Altin felt like a barnacle on a whale’s belly, shouting directions to it for how it might swim across the sea but otherwise just along for the ride. He’d guided her magic to the seeing stone Conduit Huzzledorf and his team had cast in place in the space above planet Earth in what had been only a matter of hours before, but beyond that, he’d done little more. Still, it was done, and regardless of how small he felt by comparison, the spell had worked. The fleet folks were home. They would be angry, Captain Asad for sure, but they were home. That’s what their people wanted, and, well, more importantly, that’s what the War Queen required. And he couldn’t blame her. The order to knock Altin out and lock him up in an anti-magic cell was not a smart move on the part of the fleet, at least not as far as Her Majesty was concerned. While he could understand it from their perspective, well, he could see it from the perspective of the Queen even more clearly—especially since he’d been the one in the cell, not to mention the one with the lump on the back of his head.

  “Show me Earth. Show me where they went,” demanded the Queen. “I want to see what they are doing now.” She gazed down at the wrinkled figure of Master Alfonde, who sat on one of the eight stools ringing the conduit at the center of Citadel’s crimson-clad concert hall, two seats from where Altin stood. “Get me to the conduit’s seeing stone, or get me on one of their ships … what is taking you so long!”

  After a few moments’ exchange between Master Alfonde and the conduit, the image in the air above the conduit shifted to one depicting planet Earth, a huge round vision of it that filled the chamber with a gentle blue light. For most in the room, this was the first time they had ever seen it. Altin had seen it recently, guided to it by the conduit’s seeing stone, and of course there was the conduit himself. He and his team of teleporters had actually been there once, in orbit anyway, if briefly, gone on the orders of the Queen and helped with the distance by High Priestess Maul. Those few had seen this new and inhabited world, but for all the rest, this was a first, a unique experience that quite deserved the gasps and murmurs of appreciation the blue-marbled beauty inspired.

  “It’s lovely,” said Aderbury staring up at it, his mouth slightly agape. “I don’t suppose I will ever get tired of seeing new worlds like that. It is truly a great time to be alive.”

  “It might be lovely if it weren’t entirely infested with blanks,” said the marchioness.

  “Indeed,” said the Queen, ignoring the main thrust of the comment in favor of its lesser but just as true implications. “They are rather limited by their reliance on machines.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Altin said, staring up at the globe like the rest. He thought of Orli being there and hoped she was happy that she was home. He hoped she had recovered from her injuries, the mysterious injuries of spirit that he blamed himself for. Maybe now she could find peace. He knew it wouldn’t be easy for her, but he knew she would. Their love had been poisoned by Thadius, and he knew he would never get it back, especially not after she found that it was Altin who had guided the cast that sent her people home, thrown them back to Earth as it were, and without so much as a homing lizard note to tell them what was about to come.

  He would find her and explain, of course. He would try. He could only hope that somehow they could recover the love that they had lost. But he knew it would never be. He had for consolation only the knowledge that at least now she was safe. That was what mattered most.

  “What are all those bright flashes?” Aderbury asked. “Over there, on the right side.”

  Sure enough, looking more closely at the vast glowing ball filling the center of the room, there was a distinct pattern of light play. Altin had noticed and dismissed it as lightning at first. He’d seen lightning in the clouds above Prosperion a few times from a vantage upon Luria, Prosperion’s bright red moon. But this seemed different. “Run out to it,” he demanded, preempting even the Queen in his urgency.

  Master Alfonde, a brilliant U-ranked seer, sent the image careening toward the area where the lights flashed, and soon the audience in the concert hall found themselves spectators of a most horrifying scene.

  A huge battle was being waged in the space above Earth. There were spaceships everywhere, some of the design the Prosperions were familiar with and others that looked nothing like the ships that had just been teleported back, though all were clearly the product of Earth technology. All in all, there were far more ships than they’d ever seen before, far more than they’d ever suspected might have been created by such unmagical means. There were thousands upon thousands of them, some of them absolutely enormous, dwarfing the ships that were like those they knew, while others, most of the others actually, were far smaller, some seeming tiny by comparison, like aphids moving around a meadow amongst the lumbering bulks of mastodons. But all of them sent out beams of light, the “laser” light they called it, some red, some blue, some violet. The scene was thick with the striping motion of missiles shooting outwards into space as well, each of them directed at the most horrifying revelation of all, the recognition of which brought gasps of horror from everyone in the room: there were Hostiles everywhere. Far more Hostiles than there were Earth ships.

  A huge expanse of space above the embattled planet was absolutely filled with Hostile orbs. Tens of thousands of them at least, hundreds of thousands perhaps. It was impossible to count. In places, they hung so closely together, in such numbers, that at first, as the seer’s vision was moving toward the fight, it began to look as if a haze of smoke was covering huge areas of the globe.

  The nearer the seeing spell got, however, the more and more clear it became. Earth was under attack by an incredible number of Hostiles, an invading force so much larger than anything anyone in the concert hall had ever considered possible that it took a full two minutes before anyone spoke. When someone did, when Her Majesty finally turned to Altin, as did everyone else in the room, there was only one thought in every mind: What have we done?

  “Sir Altin,” demanded the Queen, and the quality of her voice made it clear she was passing the blame on to him, “how did you not know this Blue Fire of yours intended such treachery. Could you not see it when you were joined with her in casting the spell?”

  “I …. I ….”

  “Yes, I—I, indeed. What have you gotten us into, Sir Altin? Have we all been duped so seriously as this?”

  There was nothing Altin could say. He was stunned beyond speech. There had never been anything in Blue Fire’s manner that had suggested she was capable of such utter betrayal. She was the one who could hardly even grapple with the concept of “truth that was not truth.” And yet, here they were now, all of them, witnessing the grandest act of betrayal in all of history.

  And worse, he’d just sent Orli into that.

  He stepped quickly to Madame Kenouvier, the teleporters guildmaster, and held out his hand. “Give me your fast-cast amulet,” he demanded.

  She huffed in her surprise. “What?”

  “Give it to me, now. Aderbury, I need yours too.”

  Aderbury pulled his off immediately and handed it over, questions in his yes, but no hesitation in t
he delivery. Altin put it over his head as he swung back to the guildmaster and reached for her amulet again. “I said, now!”

  “Sir Altin,” began the Queen as the fleshy guildmaster continued to stammer with indignity over Altin’s dictatorial tone. Altin reached down and grasped the sapphire pendant from where it nestled in the woman’s corpulent bosom and snatched it off with a jerk. Then, without the least utterance or gesture, he was gone, leaving Her Majesty to stare into the empty space of his departure, her mouth slightly agape. “Not even so much as a by-your-leave. We shall see about that.”

  “He will have gone off to save the girl again,” remarked Madame Kenouvier, looking up at her monarch while she fingered the stinging area at the back of her neck where the chain had snapped.

  “Indeed,” said the Queen. She said nothing else, however, instead staring into the image and looking, at least for the span of a hundred heartbeats or more, completely at a loss. They all did, all stared, all completely bewildered by what they saw. It was some time before anyone had the nerve to speak. When it came, it could hardly be said to help.

  “It appears Her Royal Majesty has rather grossly underestimated our enemies,” said the marchioness. “And her own influence. Again.”

  Glaciers have formed in warmer climates than the one that came upon the concert hall just then. Had the Queen not been so out of sorts by the unraveling events, she might have done something dire, but, perhaps for the marchioness’ sake, it was better that the Queen’s mind was awhirl with other thoughts. Just the same, the admonition had more than venom in its tone. “You forget by whose whim you keep those lands your father once held, Marchioness. Now is not the time to press me.”

  “You forget whose conscripts will be needed when Captain Andru’s hundred thousand orcs arrive. Another symptom of your fine rule, My Queen.” Contempt sprayed like cobra spit from the smirking slits of her eyes. “I press what others think silently.”

  “Take the crown if you think you can. I invite it. Join with them if you like. Join the orcs and Hostiles and come against me all together. See what it gets you. But speak one more seditious word in my presence, and you’ll lie bleeding at my feet in the span of my next breath. Test my influence in that.” No doubt could be held about the truth of it. It gleamed like the bright edge of a newly sharpened blade upon the teeth made visible by her snarl.

  The smug defiance did not leave the marchioness’ expression, but she curtsied her compliance with a glance at the elf standing nearby. Everyone present knew this exchange could never be undone.

  “For now,” said the Queen, “I think that Sir Altin’s inclination is the one we must emulate. It seems we’ve sent our Earth friends into a nasty strait, and, guilty as we are, unfortunate as that guilt is, we must now at least go and try to help.”

  “They will fire upon us the moment we arrive,” remarked Aderbury. “We’ll be fighting two enemies at once.”

  “They are not our enemies,” corrected the Queen, her voice stern and her countenance severe, “and even if they were, what kind of people would we be to leave them to a fate like that?” She pointed up at the mass of flashing lights, streaking lasers and dive-bombing Hostile orbs. “We are obligated by honor to help them. And, as you may recall, Blue Fire’s peop—the Hostiles take no prisoners. If we don’t help them, this will be the end of the Earth people for good. All of them, and by our mistake.”

  The taut quality of the marchioness’ face made it clear she wanted to point out that they were obligated by her mistake, the errors of the Queen, but she knew better than to speak it now. But apart from her, nods from around the room confirmed that most agreed with the need to lend a hand.

  “All right then,” said the Queen. “Master Aderbury, in the absence of Sir Altin, it is your charge to get it done.” She turned to the conduit. “See to it, Master Conduit. It is up to the two of you to fix this thing.”

  “Yes, My Queen,” they replied in unison, though Aderbury found himself looking to the conduit with more than a little trepidation and surprise.

  The conduit sent him back a rather wicked looking grin, his teeth shining bright and his wild ring of wispy white hair giving him an aspect of insanity. “This will be fun. It’s what we’ve been training for!”

  “Well, get on with it,” said the Queen. “I’ve got a war at home to fight, but I’ll expect regular reports.” With that and a glance at Madame Kenouvier that conveyed an unspoken command, the Queen, the elf and the marchioness were sent back to Prosperion, leaving the rest of those aboard Citadel to figure out how to save planet Earth from what appeared to be the high probability of its demise.

  Chapter 3

  “Holy shit,” said Roberto as he rolled the shuttle onto its side and only barely avoided a long shaft of stone sent like a missile from one of the Hostile orbs swooping past. He wasn’t sure which orb the shaft had come from, and in fact, he wasn’t even sure it had been aimed at him at all, given that he had just come off a swing around the starboard side of one of the Northern Trade Alliance’s new Juggernaut-class star cruisers. The ship was a monstrosity that dwarfed the Aspect on the same scale that Roberto himself might dwarf a slice of sandwich meat. And meat was what they—Roberto, Captain Asad and Orli, the latter drugged unconscious and strapped to a gurney in the back—were going to be if he let another one of those rocky shafts get that close again. Worse, he also had to hope that in dodging Hostile projectiles, he didn’t fly into a laser beam, which was a real and significant threat, and one that had him convinced that half the idiots on Earth had been assigned to weapons posts on some of these ships in lieu of actual trained officers. “Why are these morons shooting at them?” he asked, though mainly rhetorically. He knew the smaller ships didn’t have the power for a gravitational pulse big enough to crush the orbs.

  “Save it for when we land,” Captain Asad replied. The captain’s hands moved across the controls with familiar ease as he worked the navigator’s panel, helping guide the shuttle on its way down toward Earth’s atmosphere. “Let’s just get there.”

  “What could the director possibly need Orli for that was bad enough to fly through this?” countered Roberto. “This is insane.” He rolled the ship back the other way as a Hostile orb flew by, missing the shuttle by eight and a quarter inches.

  “We have orders, Commander. Just fly.”

  “Flying, sir.” Roberto’s mouth stretched and gaped in turns as he did so. He winced and leaned from side to side in his chair, his body contorting as if he were physically dodging each incoming attack, the arch of his back, the expanse of his teeth somehow in keeping with his ability to pilot them through the chaos of so many thousands of combatants. No amount of training could have prepped him for this, and friendly fire was as much a problem as the enemy’s. After a few more close calls from both, he was not entirely convinced that actually trying to avoid the crisscrossing mayhem was any better than just closing his eyes, hitting the throttle and hoping.

  “Fuck me,” he called out as a stripe of violet light cut through the back third of the shuttle’s starboard landing skid. The length of it tumbled away, heading toward the upper deck of one of the Juggernauts. This expletive was followed by two more repetitions of like profanity as he barely escaped another shot from the same ship only to steer almost directly into the path of a rushing Hostile, which, fortunately—sort of—was on its way to attack another, larger ship. What followed was an endless string of swearing and more than a few utterances of “Holy God, save us” before they finally made it through the swarming melee. But ultimately they did, somehow—miraculously he felt—and he straightened the small ship and brought it into Earth’s lower atmosphere with sweat running down his brow.

  He breathed a long sigh, glancing at Captain Asad, who also made no effort to hide his relief. The captain shook his head and let go a short breath of his own, blowing out tension as he punched up the coordinates for the NTA headquarters at Fort Minot.

  “Fort Minot traffic control,” he said, “t
his is Aspect Shuttle Six inbound with the director’s security package, requesting lock and dock. Over.”

  A brief silence followed before the reply came. “Aspect Shuttle Six, permission granted. Transmit docking code to zero-four-seven-one, lock for pad alpha one-one-seven northwest. Security detail en route. Over.”

  “Roger, Minot traffic control.” He looked to Roberto who tapped in the code that would release control of the ship to the Minot spaceport computer. Roberto nodded when it was done. “Code sent. Over.”

  “Received and verified, Aspect Shuttle Six. Enjoy the ride.” There was a moment of silence, followed by a less official, “And welcome home, Aspect. Over.”

  Captain Asad did not respond, and instead he rose from his seat and went back to where Orli lay. He hawked over her with an expression that suggested she were an axe murderer, a threat at any moment to burst her bindings and mutilate the both of them. He checked the small console at the foot of the gurney, making sure the readings being relayed from the monitors attached to her in various places still showed the figures the nurse had told him to watch for. They did. She was still completely out. He pressed the button that delivered a few more drops of the potent sedative anyway. Despite the nurse’s assurances that she was dosed well enough to get down to the base, he wasn’t taking any chances.

  “Holy shit. Captain, look at this,” said Roberto. The exclamation turned the captain around. “They’re everywhere.”

  The shuttle was just making its way past Winnipeg, west of it and moving very fast but still low and slow enough, given the distance, that Roberto could see a small swarm of Hostiles flitting about the city’s airspace. He zoomed in a video feed and discovered that not only was the air abuzz with them, there were many Hostiles draping themselves over the buildings like wet blankets. He watched one orb fly down and smash into the corner of a tall building, sending a spray of broken glass and busted concrete flying everywhere. Then the orb settled in, at first looking like a scoop of ice cream that had begun to melt down the sides of the structure, but quickly spreading, abandoning its spherical form in favor of stretching over the surface of the glass and concrete more completely. He had no idea what the Hostiles had in mind, but he was sure he wasn’t going to like it when he finally found out.