Galactic Mage 4: Alien Arrivals Read online

  In keeping with the mix-and-match quality of the boot’s dual-planet technological design and asymmetry, inside the basement there could be found an equally assorted variety of equipment and personages, the lot of which came from locations across Prosperion and Earth, making it, therefore, an assemblage from across the galaxy.

  At one end of the rectangular chamber was a square stone construct, which looked as if Altin had ordered a small cottage built into the corner of the space, but it was not. It was a clean room, a teleportation chamber five paces square and complete with the standard small wooden door and two-way window for placing signets and hourglasses, should the need arise. It was a thing obviously and entirely of Prosperion.

  And as if intending to make things as disparate as possible, in the other corner at that same end of the room was another box, barely a quarter the size of the clean room, which was made of plastic back on Earth. One end of this large crate was open, and inside was a bulky metal contraption that Altin had been told was a “diesel generator,” which didn’t mean anything to him in either language yet. The Earth men who’d placed it there had attached the big black-and-red-painted monstrosity to the walls via a connection that met with all that gray tubing Master Sambua had called “electrical conduit” and buried in the tower walls. In addition, it had also been attached to a spout in the wall, which the engineer had promised would “pipe out the exhaust.” It was all in the service of providing electricity, Master Sambua had promised, again joking about Orli’s supposed need to have some way to do her hair.

  Altin’s protests about the effects of magic on technology had been dismissed in regards to that machine, and Master Sambua had explained that if the effects of ambient magic did not interrupt a communications badge beyond the occasional static surge, they would likely do nothing to that generator at all. “Think of it as the mechanical equivalent of a donkey or a mule,” the engineer had said. “Old-school efficiency at its best … just in case. And besides, you have solar backup and batteries. You’re as powered up as you could want to be. It’s just clunky.”

  Altin didn’t mind if it was clunky, but he was determined not to rely on it in times of dire need. Still, he could not complain about the possibility that, on those occasions when Orli thought it necessary or useful, she could have electricity.

  The center of the room was filled with racks and rows of shelves, all bolted to the ceiling and floor, and all braced together with cross members that were also bolted tightly in a network of stability. Each had a set of iron grates, sturdy as gates, with heavy latches to close them tight. It was as if the designers expected the tower and its contents to endure considerable instability. Altin wasn’t sure if that was optimism or an indictment of his power. He thought it might be evidence as to their thoughts about his chances for long-term success. His tower had been a heap of stone when the builders saw it for the first time.

  Either way, he had already filled up the largest share of the shelves with a vast supply of spell reagents and devices for various alchemies. The rest were filled with Orli’s things. She had ropes and wires and batteries. Canisters, cables, and containers of various sizes. She’d filled up one rack with spacesuits, two apiece for him and her, and several others in sizes to fit her father, Roberto, the Queen, and a spectrum of other visitors. She’d told Altin that “he did not want to know how much they cost,” and that had been the end of it. He didn’t care anyway. She knew better than he did what sort of thing they needed in that arena.

  She’d filled another whole rack with nothing but assorted Earth weaponry, which had actually made Altin nervous. Not that he was opposed to having it, but given how much trouble her own lost laser had caused in Crown City last year, he was concerned about keeping it secure. Had the Queen’s assassin not located the man who’d purchased Orli’s missing blaster on the black market, who knew what kind of trouble might have come? And yet she’d loaded his tower up with even heavier weapons, the big ones like the soldiers used. Still, in a way, it wasn’t technically much different than the rack of swords, bows, and crossbows he’d had set into the wall between the clean room and the generator, so he could hardly tell her not to add them to their supplies.

  The remaining portion of the basement, a roughly thirty-by-thirty space at the “toe end” of the boot, was left open. For now it housed only three vehicles, one of which was an electric thing on fat black balloon “tires,” over which Altin was corrected for having called “wheels.” It had no roof and four seats, and Orli told him it was a “rover” not a “wagon,” and assured him it was state of the art. The other two vehicles were really small gravity sleds, more for moving cargo than conveyance, but with a good horse and harness, they’d do quite nicely as lorries any day.

  The remainder of the space was open, left that way by design in anticipation of the unanticipated, including such apparatuses as the disassembled parts of the water saw.

  And that was why they were here. This was the next part of the mission. They were ready to begin setting up for the final transplant of Yellow Fire’s heart into the old heart chamber of the slain Red Fire.

  After a few experiments had been done, Altin’s initial test with Aderbury’s “Gorbon Glassblower’s Cotton Meld” spell had proven that it did work on Liquefying Stone. He’d had to take off his ring in order to control the mana flow through the crystals as they were, but that was the only real limitation. While wearing the ring, he kept popping the crystals, bursting them like glass. Without it, however, he could do it fine, and his fears about drawing too much mana with that much Liquefying Stone around were unwarranted. It seemed that in Yellow Fire’s dormant state, the crystals around his heart did nothing to affect the mana flow. Despite casting in contact with a network of millions of them, Altin had had no trouble at all. He’d even practiced on the incision Doctor Singh was making, merging some of the cut closed. The spell Aderbury had given him worked perfectly. So with that evidence, he was confident he could meld the heart stone into place on Red Fire as well.

  Doctor Singh was only a few days away from being finished with the cuts. With that done, all that was left to do was to complete the extraction of the dormant heart, and the matter of a day or two to process the cavity. Once they’d done that, they could create the template that would guide the water saw, making the placement of Yellow Fire’s heart into Red Fire’s vacant heart chamber a perfect fit. And that was why Altin had brought himself and his team to Red Fire.

  Professor Bryant was in attendance with the young brothers, Rabin and Prakesh, and the three of them were loading up the gravity sleds as Altin and Orli arrived.

  “We’re there, then?” the professor asked, making a show of lifting a particularly heavy crate the moment that Orli walked in. He turned sideways and pushed his arm against the corner of the crate so that his barely average-sized bicep would be squeezed to better effect against the plastic lid. “So I guess you need me now.” He winked and set the crate down on the sled, slowly, presenting his backside in a way that he clearly thought was appealing. It was such an unnatural movement, so glaringly contrived, that Orli couldn’t help but look. Which, of course, the professor caught her at. He smiled and winked. “That’s right. Get a look before the enviro-suit covers it up.”

  Orli pursed her lips, and her eyes bugged a little bit, but she managed not to laugh. Altin was already on his way to the teleportation chamber, opening the door, so he didn’t see a thing. He’d seen enough in the weeks prior, however, and his only comment to her on it had been that he could hardly blame the man. “I made quite a fool of myself trying to impress you too, as I recall.”

  So, beyond the occasional rush of the professor to help her lift items she could have carried one-handed to the sled, they soon had the test and measurement equipment loaded and pushed into the stone box of the clean room.

  “Ready to go?” Altin asked, once everyone was inside.

  “This isn’t going to scramble my parts or anything, is it?” Rabin couldn’t help but ask
. The whites of his eyes were more than just visible in his face, and they seemed to glow in the dim light of the big stone box once Altin closed the door.

  “You’ve already been through it once, dumbass,” Prakesh reminded him. “What do you think we just did? What do you think those TGS guys did to the Glistening Lady back at Neptune when we left from the Amphitrite depot?”

  To which the other twin nodded gratefully. “Oh, yeah. I forgot about Amphitrite. It’s different when you’re on a ship that is inside that big black box. Now we don’t have a ship, so it’s creepier.”

  “Now you have a spacesuit. Duh,” his brother pointed out.

  “Don’t worry,” Orli said in kinder tones. “You do get used to it right away. I mean, there’s nothing to really get used to. That’s what you get used to. Nothing. It’s the best way to travel really.”

  “Well,” said Rabin, still not sounding convinced, “from what I heard, the only reason they built this tower is because the last one came apart during a teleport.” He looked nervous then, and turned to Altin apologetically. “No offense, of course, Sir Altin. It’s just what I heard.”

  Altin nodded. “It’s true. But it was an accident based on a problem we already knew we had. We were too far from Prosperion, and I was unconscious. Orli had to use a fast-cast amulet to get us out. Just like the ones I’ve given all of you. But, unlike the ones you wear, the one I had was not made for the distance we had gone. There wasn’t enough mana in it, though luckily for us both, only by just a tiny bit.”

  The older brother, by six minutes, looked to the younger and smiled triumphantly. “See?” he said.

  Rabin looked marginally mollified. He couldn’t get at his amulet, though, given that it was buried inside his spacesuit helmet like everyone else’s was, but he unconsciously raised his gloved hand to the joint where his helmet would clip into place anyway. He smiled. It was better hearing it from the Galactic Mage than his brother, he supposed.

  “All right, let’s get the lids on you guys,” Orli said. “Check your partners.” She helped Altin get his locked on and waited until she heard it pressurize before putting on her own. She let Altin check the settings, just as she’d shown him how to do, but the professor came over and double-checked because “what can a Prosperion know?”

  Orli grinned at Altin through the rounded glass as the professor made a great fuss about checking her thoroughly front and back. Altin’s smile was as amused as hers. The poor fellow. A totally sanctioned opportunity to look her over thoroughly, with Altin approving as he watched, and yet, for it all, the view was muddled completely by the bulky mass of the spacesuit.

  When it was confirmed that everyone was buttoned up and airtight, Altin wiggled his gloved fingers toward Orli and asked her for a glow stick. He’d found that the little crackling chemical lights were fabulous devices for seeing into dark places like the one they were headed for.

  He teleported it to where he remembered being before, the place on the massive cavern floor where he’d nearly died, and followed the cast with a seeing spell. Even in the dim green light cast by the glow stick, he could see the dark stains where he had lost a considerable amount of blood.

  He followed the light to the edges of the jumble where the section of the wall had collapsed after the mining charges Orli planted had gone off. He couldn’t quite see up into the huge opening she’d blasted out, but he could trace its outer edges well enough to know he likely couldn’t fit the teleportation chamber inside.

  So, he moved his sight back to the flattest spot he could find and set the place in his mind. He came out of the spell and turned to Professor Bryant. “All right,” he said. “I’ve got the place set. Are we ready to go down?”

  “Go down?” he said, his voice laden with innuendo. He laughed as he glanced back and forth between Orli and Altin. He was waiting for reactions that he never got. The two brothers nodded that they were ready, both now quietly expectant if not entirely on edge. Orli nodded as well.

  “Wait,” said the professor, all seriousness this time. “One question before we go.”

  “Yes?” asked Altin.

  “How far down are you taking us?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “It’s very far.”

  “Oh, shit,” Orli said to that. “I can’t believe I didn’t even think of it.”

  “That’s what you’re paying me for,” the professor said in a voice that was now low and smooth. He raised an eyebrow and overdid nonchalance.

  “Think of what?” Altin asked.

  “The pressure.” She turned to look at Professor Bryant with widening eyes before she looked back at Altin. “Remember when we were falling down that crevice? The long one, and we just fell and fell for what felt like forever?”

  He nodded, flinching at the memory. “How could I forget?”

  “Well, do you remember how our spacesuits kept stiffening and eventually that alarm went off?”

  Again he nodded.

  “Well, the suits had time to adjust to the pressure. This is going to be instant.”

  Altin’s brow only furrowed for a moment. By the time his brow had unfurrowed, however, Rabin’s and Prakesh’s frown lines were so deep they looked like tire tracks.

  “By Hestra, that’s likely a bad thing to go hopping right into, isn’t it?” Altin said as he noted the twins and their matching chevron-rumpled horror.

  “We can set the suits for it if we know where we’re going,” the professor said. “Orli, do you remember how far down it was?”

  “No. I never looked. Or if I did, I was too busy freaking out to remember it.”

  “Well, I can find out easily enough.” He went to a stack of crates at the back of the chamber and opened one. He pulled out a small plastic case and opened that. There was a device Altin didn’t recognize inside. The professor pressed a button to activate it, then keyed in a few numbers using a number pad that was large enough to accommodate spacesuit gloves. “Depth measure,” he said into it. He waited for a half second, then said, “Record.” He tapped the keys on it twice more and said, “Five seconds,” to some prompt that went unseen or unheard by the rest in the dim little room. When he was done, he closed the device back up inside the case with all its lights still on.

  “Can you send this down there?” he asked Altin as he brought the case to him. “It’s in a box, so it should be fine electronically, right?”

  “Well, it’s a small box, so the relative area around it is rather tight, but it’s likely to be all right. I won’t destroy it, I shouldn’t think.”

  “Well, we’ve got another if you do. ‘Two is one, and one is none,’ as we say in my line of work. You don’t get much done in the field if your only one of anything breaks.”

  “Very reasonable,” Altin said, taking the case from him. “Let’s see what happens then.”

  A moment later, Altin had teleported what was essentially a high-tech plumb line down into the depths of Red Fire. A moment right after that, he brought it back. The professor opened it up and read the measurement, which he followed with a long whistle. “Wow,” he said. “You guys went that far?”

  “H-how far?” asked Rabin in echo of his brother, who actually beat him to it that time.

  “Eighteen point six miles.”

  “Oh, crap,” said the twins, still in unison.

  Watching them react, and even noting the concern in Orli’s pretty blue eyes, Altin suggested, “We could walk, you know. You plan on using your gravity sled to travel up and down the cliff face when we get inside; you said as much yourself. We could just unload it a few extra times along the way and use it ourselves, like one of your ‘elevators,’ for some of the larger drops. Or we could simply bring the other one. We’ve got two, you know.” He even started moving toward the door to get it, but the professor stepped in front of him with a confident smile. He glanced to Orli and winked, giving the slightest nod, eyes slightly narrowed, lips in a tight, nonchalant smile of supreme confidence. “I’ve got it
,” he said as he began setting the controls on Altin’s suit. As he worked the settings, he turned a second time to Orli and winked again. “This is what you pay me for.”

  “We’re all going to die,” said the twins.

  Chapter 29

  The Incredible Spectacularo stood upon the creaking stage, playing to a crowd of six. The small table upon which he’d placed his frayed top hat stood between him and his audience. “Behold,” he said, squinting into the lights and looking to see if the bulbous-nosed man called El Segador was there. It was too bright to tell.

  “Behold,” he said again, forgetting he’d just said it. He reached into the hat, muttering as he did the words to a simple illusion spell. When he pulled his hand out, he held by the ears a white rabbit, which wriggled its nose, fanning its whiskers innocuously. As usual, the audience was not impressed, but then The Incredible Spectacularo flung the illusionary rabbit out into the audience, where it spread its ears and began to flap them like the wings of a bird. This made the people duck and gasp at first, but then laughter followed as the rabbit flew about their heads. The wizard sang into the illusion the gentle air currents of the flapping wings, and the sound of them, and soon the audience was laughing and clapping as the little rabbit did loops and twirls in the air above their heads.