“FROM SPACE, the heart-world of the Adepts is truly a beautiful sight. I count myself fortunate that I have lived to experience this day.”
In his flagship orbiting above Galcen Prime, Grand Admiral Theio syn-Ricte sus-Airaalin paced back and forth before the row of viewports overlooking the blue and green planet below. The autoscribe pinned to his collar caught the words as he spoke and stored them for inclusion in his next report to the no-longer-hidden Resurgency on Eraasi.
sus-Airaalin was a lean, wiry man—not tall, by the standards of the Adept-worlds, but above average for an Eraasian of the old stock—with black hair going prematurely grey. He wore plain brown fatigues tucked into leather boots, with shoulder and collar insignia of dull metal. Nothing about him glittered or caught the light; even the short ebony staff clipped to his belt had only the simplest of silver binding.
He continued talking to the autoscribe. “We have come this far successfully, after breaking through the artificial barrier at the Gap Between—successfully, but not without cost, in ships and in time. We can ill afford to lose more of either.”
Frowning, he glanced over at the twin chronometers set into the bulkhead between the viewports. One chronometer gave the elapsed time since the operation began; the other showed how far ahead or behind schedule they had fallen. At the moment they were behind, and uncomfortably so. Resistance at the Gap had proved stronger than expected, forcing the warfleet to spend valuable minutes in breaking through the screen of enemy ships, minutes which had become hours in the transit.
“With respect to our goal of achieving total surprise: such a result has not been possible. I mean no ill-reflection upon the Circles; our Mages have given of themselves without stinting. Hyperspeed communications among the Adept-worlds were interdicted on schedule as we were promised, and have not yet resumed. Nevertheless—and I will remind all of you that I warned the Resurgency of this before!—at least one ship broke through and carried the warning to Prime.” sus-Airaalin frowned again, remembering how Galcen’s inadequate home-defense forces had been waiting for the warfleet at the dropout point. More delay . . . the handful of vessels had held off the attack on their planet by more hours, and worse, had kept the jump points out of his hands long enough for couriers from Prime and South Polar to launch and make the jump into hyper.
“We have always counted time as our friend, but with the assault on the Gap it has become in one stroke our enemy. The Circles cannot suppress hyperspeed communications much longer, even if I should call upon them for the ultimate sacrifice, and news of the attack on Galcen Prime is undoubtedly spreading throughout the Adept-worlds at the speed of a fast ship.
“We must, therefore, bring the heart-system under control by whatever means necessary, and carry the attack to the enemy forces while they remain scattered and headless. Divided, they cannot equal the strength of our fleet; but should they ever recover themselves enough to unite against us, I can make no promises concerning our further success.”
The vacuum-tight doors to the observation gallery sighed open to let in a messenger. sus-Airaalin thumbed off the autoscribe and turned away from the viewports to receive the newcomer with proper courtesy.
The messenger saluted. “Admiral, our forces on the ground report that Galcen Prime is now secure, and the major regional centers are coming under control. Fighting is continued but sporadic, and local defenses are weak.”
“Very good. My compliments to our commanders, and to the troopers. Has General Metadi been identified?”
“No word on that, sir.”
“Find him,” ordered sus-Airaalin. “If he’s out of our hands, he’s dangerous. And if somebody tells you he’s dead, see the body for yourself.”
“Yes, sir.”
An alarm bell started ringing, its tocsin running on in counterpoint beneath the annunciator’s repeated warning: “Unknown fighters, inbound . . . unknown fighters, inbound . . . unknown fighters . . . ”
The Grand Admiral stiffened.
Metadi, he thought for an instant, and felt a moment of profound apprehension before the true nature of the attacking force made itself felt to his extended senses. Not Jos Metadi’s troops, but those of the other, greater enemy.
Ransome. The Adept Master. The Breaker of Circles.
Theio syn-Ricte sus-Airaalin unhooked the silver-and-ebony staff from his belt, and felt the unseen fire running up and down its length. There had been no particular happiness for him in smashing through the barrier at the Gap Between Worlds, or in taking out the system ships in Galcen nearspace—but Errec Ransome was an enemy it would be a pleasure to destroy.
“Summon the others,” he told the messenger. “Tell them to meet me in the meditation room. We have work to do.”
The passenger compartment of RSF Naversey was an awkward place in which to hold a debriefing, especially with the four survivors from Ebannha’s boarding craft added to the those already aboard. On the other hand, Naversey had air pressure and shipboard gravity, which meant that everyone could dispense with their p-suits and magnetic-soled footgear.
Llannat sat at Lieutenant Vinhalyn’s right, her staff lying across her lap. She’d had to leave the weapon behind for her suited expedition into the Deathwing; she hadn’t realized how much its absence had upset her until she had come back.
I’m going to have to think about that. But not now.
She looked across the central aisle of the passenger compartment at Ensign Tammas Cantrel, seated on the foot end of an acceleration couch. The ensign was a painfully young man, with dark circles under his eyes and lines on his face that had no business being there. A stubble of beard on his jaw made an awkward contrast with what must have once been a prized and carefully tended mustache.
“ . . . so nobody was answering us on the hi-comms,” he said, “and after a while we decided that if we wanted to make it home we were going to have to use the Deathwing. We were tracing systems on the main engines when you folks showed up.”
“Tracing systems?” said Llannat.
Cantrel nodded. He was holding on to a mug of hot cha’a with both hands as if it were a lifeline. “Engineering by feel, more or less. We knew what a hyperdrive is supposed to do, and we knew—the chief knows, anyway—how the drives on our ships do it. So we were trying to figure out if the Mages got their ships into hyperspace the same way we do; and if they did, we were going to make their engines take us there.”
E’Patu and Rethiel, the two warrant officers who’d come with Naversey, looked at each other. “You know,” said E’Patu, “working blind like could have killed the lot of you.”
“I know,” said Cantrel. He took another swallow of his cha’a. “But even at one-eighth rations we only had a couple of months before we starved to death. I figured this way we could at least die trying.”
“Under the circumstances,” said Lieutenant Vinhalyn, “I think I would have done the same thing.”
Llannat took a deep breath. “I think we still ought to.”
The others—both Naversey’s original complement and the boarding party off Ebannha—looked at her with varying degrees of surprise. She took a firm grip on her staff and continued.
“There’s a war out there. The Mageworlders have broken through the Net. I don’t know where they were heading—”
“Galcen,” put in Govantic, the data specialist. “I’ll bet it was Galcen. With hi-comms down, they’ve got surprise—and they aren’t going to waste it on the small stuff.”
“A good point,” Vinhalyn said. “Mistress Hyfid?”
“Right,” she said. “With things in the shape they’re in, we can’t just drop out of hyper over Prime and expect the Space Force to be waiting. Not in an unarmed courier. But with the Deathwing, we can fight if we have to.”
“We’d have people from both sides shooting at us,” said Lury, the senior medic. “Not a real good idea.”
“With the Deathwing we could shoot back,” Llannat countered. “And we could bring Naversey and the Pan-class along for escort.”
“It’d be an interesting job,” said E’Patu. “Dangerous as hell, though. The safe move would be to transfer everybody to Naversey and jump for some point closer in.”
“No,” said Llannat. Her persistence was starting to surprise even her; but she was in the grip of a new and pressing certainty. “Not in an unarmed ship when there’s a war going on. We’d get shot to pieces the moment we dropped out of hyper. I say we ought to take the Deathwing.”
Govantic was starting to look interested. “It’d be fun, all right—I’ve only gotten a chance to play with Magebuilt comp systems once before, and that was a ground-based setup that got left behind on Ophel after the War.”
“Archaic Magebuilt battle and navigation systems,” promised Llannat. “More fun than a twelve-hour session of Deathworld in a holovid arcade . . . and Lieutenant Vinhalyn reads Eraasian. If the old-time Mageworlders put instruction manuals on their ships, he can translate them for us. We won’t be working blind at all.”
It was three hours after leaving the Retreat in the aircar that General Ochemet saw the first signs of dirtside fighting. All morning the incongruously bright sky had been laced with the contrails of atmospheric fighters weaving about high above Master Ransome’s low-flying craft, but this was the first time Ochemet had spotted something that he could make out with his bare eyes.
Looking down on the road below, he saw a column of armored fighting vehicles strung out like the beads of a broken necklace. Black smoke poured from their hatches, and here and there in the dirt around them lay small crumpled figures.
A mile or two farther on beyond the wreckage, Ochemet saw another line of armored vehicles approaching from the other direction. He didn’t recognize the design, which meant they weren’t anything the Republic had available on Galcen. The unfamiliar vehicles came on in open skirmishing order, infantry mixed among the armor, making their way at an easy walking pace away from Prime.
The Mageworlders have got the cities, Ochemet realized. Now they’re moving out to secure the countryside.
It wasn’t going to be hard. He didn’t like the thought, but he knew it was true. Galcen had always relied on the Space Force for defense, and the Space Force had counted on the efficiency of the Republic’s hyperspace communications, the links and relays that transferred messages in seconds between the outplanets and the Central Worlds. That wide-spread, multiply redundant system had been the cornerstone of all their strategic planning—a technical achievement that allowed the Space Force to patrol a vast collection of worlds and still muster in strength at a trouble spot.
We never counted on losing hi-comms, Ochemet thought unhappily. Nobody in the high command had ever devised a theoretical way to break a system that had so many relay stations and backups and alternate routing patterns. Eventually, the idea had been given up as impossible. But the Mageworlders had somehow managed to do it.
If we still had our communications grid working, the fleets from Khesat and Wrysten would have shown up last night sometime, and the out-sector forces would be rolling in right about now.
Instead, Galcen’s in flames and nobody outside the system knows it.
He looked again at the advancing column of Mageworlds fighting vehicles. The aircar had to be plainly visible from the ground; they were well out of the mountains, with nothing for a backdrop but the clear blue sky.
“Why aren’t they shooting at us?” Ochemet wondered aloud.
Ransome didn’t bother turning his head. “They aren’t shooting at us because they aren’t seeing us. Be quiet. I need to concentrate.”
They flew on toward Prime. The sun climbed in the sky, and the columns of smoke on the horizon grew closer.
Grand Admiral Theio syn-Ricte sus-Airaalin knelt in the quiet of the meditation room, among the other eight of his Circle. Like them, he wore the mask and the hooded robe, hiding his uniform and his badges of rank. In this one compartment of the great flagship, outside power and position no longer mattered. sus-Airaalin had been First of his Circle long before the Resurgency found him and made him the commander of their secret warfleet.
Before military office and authority had come to him, his lifelong struggle had been solely to keep the heritage of the Circles alive. He’d made enemies enough that way, those who didn’t care if they wore chains as long as their beds were soft—and others who would have turned the broken Circles into mere political tools, using the Mages as spies and assassins, no better than Adepts.
In the end, he had won: without the efforts of the Circles, the warfleet could never have broken through the barrier at the Gap and gone on to take Galcen Prime. And on this ship, at least, a Mage-Circle functioned as Circles had done in the old days: guiding the attack, providing their fighters with support where support was needed, luck where luck was needed, comfort where comfort was needed.
Here among his own people sus-Airaalin felt the most at home, even during combat. The details of tactics he left to those who were trained in such things, the younger sons and daughters of families with a tradition of service.
It had taken a generation for the Resurgency to bring them together—all the ones who had been clever enough or lucky enough to escape the killing time. Finding teachers for them had taken almost as long. Of those who understood the military arts or possessed the skills of space-flight, only a handful had survived the great purges at the end of the War. From Raamet to Eraasi, the family didn’t exist that hadn’t seen one or more of its members taken away by the Adept-worlders, never to return.
And what had happened to the Circles . . . it hurt sus-Airaalin yet to remember. He hoped that now, after his victory, he could persuade the Resurgency to have mercy.
Or else we are no better than our enemies, he thought, and I have worked all my life for nothing.
A hand grasped his shoulder, shaking him back to present awareness. He opened his eyes.
“Who dares—?” he began, but then he felt the messenger’s burden of news pressing against his own spirit, and he understood. He rose to his feet.
“Prepare a shuttle,” he told the messenger. “I have to go down to the surface.”
Errec Ransome grounded the aircar on a strip of concrete near the Space Force Headquarters at Galcen Prime. The sky overhead had gone from a sharp-edged midday blue to the softer, blurrier colors of twilight, but the invisibility that had protected them during the flight still seemed to be working. A ground trooper in an unfamiliar brown uniform—a Mageworlder, Ochemet presumed—hurried past them without reacting, only a few feet away.
Ransome retrieved his staff from the clips that held it and opened the door of the aircar. Ochemet put out a hand to stop him. “I think it’s time you told me where we’re going.”
The Adept Master shook his head. “I follow the patterns of the universe,” he said. “Sometimes I can see where they lead, and sometimes not.”
Ochemet looked at the headquarters building, its windows broken by explosives and its elegant walls pitted by blaster-fire. In the marble-paved plaza out front, amid the splashing fountains and expressive monumental statuary that had brought its architect galaxy-wide acclaim, troopers in blast-armor stood guard over several hundred men and women in Space Force uniform, lined up in rows with their hands on top of their heads.
Prisoners, Ochemet thought, and the realization filled him with bitterness.
“I suppose this is what happens when you don’t know where you’re going,” he said to Ransome. “Or did you see it and keep on following your damned patterns anyway?”
Ransome’s mouth tightened. “You don’t know enough to understand your own questions, General. Stay quiet if you don’t want to get us both captured.”
Ochemet and Ransome entered the headquarters building in silence, stepping through the wreckage of the blasted-open doors and past the half-buried body of a guard. Inside, they walked up the long, curving ramp to the upper level of the grand rotunda. The lifts that should have taken them higher were dead, sliding doors frozen halfway open on empty shafts. At a gesture from Ransome, Ochemet led the way to the emergency stairs, tucked out of sight behind a pierced metal screen and a full-sized Khesatan ilyral tree in a marble tub. A bolt from an energy lance had burned away half the screen, but the ilyral remained incongruously green and healthy.
Somebody had found the stairs already and taken out the lock with another energy bolt. But the fighting at Prime was long over. Ransome and Ochemet climbed all the way to the top levels of the headquarters building without passing anyone.
Once out of the stairwell and into the office blocks, they saw more of the men and women in unfamiliar brown fatigues: the strangers were shorter than Space Force troopers, on the average, and tended toward dark hair and pale skin. Most of them looked tired; none of them noticed the two intruders, one in the Republic’s uniform and one in Adept’s black.
The General and Ransome passed the open door of Ochemet’s office. The room was unlighted and empty, but otherwise it looked just as Ochemet had left it the day before. Clearly the Mageworlders hadn’t bothered searching there yet. They’d get to it soon enough, though; Captain Gremyl’s much smaller cubicle, only a few doors down, already had three of them, one sorting through the hardcopy and physical files while the other two conferred in quiet, alien voices over the desk comp.
Ochemet held up a hand. “Wait,” he said—only the movement of the word, without voice.
Ransome frowned, but stayed.
Ochemet went on through the door into his office. If the room hadn’t been disturbed, there should be a fully-charged blaster in the lower right-hand drawer of his desk. General Metadi had always insisted that his senior officers keep sidearms within easy reach. At one point Ochemet had considered the order unnecessary, not to mention somewhat paranoid, but no longer.
The desk was on emergency self-power, but it answered to his ID scan. As soon as the lock clicked over he pulled the drawer open and took out the blaster. He felt marginally better once he had the weapon in hand.
The top of his desk held the usual pile of printout flimsies—he’d left a stack behind unread when he’d hurried off to the Retreat, and more messages and paperwork had accumulated while he was gone. He tucked the blaster in his belt and started riffling through the messages, looking in vain for any hint of preparation for the Mageworlds attack. Near the bottom of the stack, he found a sheet tagged “Personal for CO,” with a time-stamp only minutes after his departure. It was a situation report from one of the nearspace patrol ships. He broke the seal and read through the message in silence and growing dismay:
Vessel identifying itself as RMV Warhammer, captain identifying herself as Beka Rosselin-Metadi, reports that the Net is broken, hi-comms are down, and a Mageworlds warfleet is inbound. Request instructions.
Knowledge pressed down on Ochemet like a weight, and he closed his eyes. There was time, he thought helplessly. If I’d known, there were things we could have done. There was time.
He looked up, the flimsy crumpling in his hand, to see Ransome beckoning impatiently from the open door. He knew! For a moment he felt like using the blaster on the Adept, but he mastered the urge and followed Ransome once more.
They went down that corridor and then another. Finally Ransome halted before a closed door labeled 44-55 (CUSTODIAL).
“There’s nothing in there but the top-floor cleanup robot and a couple of emergency pushbrooms,” Ochemet protested in a hoarse whisper.
Ransome ignored him and opened the door. Inside was a dark room, far larger than the closet that should have been there, with a white circle painted on the concrete floor. In the circle a group of eight people, masked and hooded in black, knelt facing inward. None of them turned or looked up when the door slid open and Ransome and Ochemet entered.
“Mages?” Ochemet asked in a whisper.
“Yes.”
“What are they doing?”
“It doesn’t matter. They are guilty. Their treason helped to bring down Prime. You have a blaster—kill them now.”
Ochemet lifted the weapon and trained it on the oblivious, kneeling circle. His finger brushed the surface of the firing stud. Then he shook his head and reversed the blaster to hold it out butt-first to Ransome.
“Do it yourself.”
Ransome didn’t reply, or even look at the blaster. The Adept Master stepped away from Ochemet and into the middle of the white circle, brushing past the kneeling figures as if they didn’t exist. He lifted his staff above his head in both hands and closed his eyes.
Blue-green fire began to play around the ends of the staff, and Ochemet felt himself growing cold. The Guild had broken the power of the Magelords after the last war—he’d always known that, and thinking of Entibor and Sapne and Ilarna, he’d been grateful. But now he was seeing how it must have been done. Slowly, inexorably, Master Ransome was calling forth more and more of the blue-green light, drawing on reserves of internal power whose nature and extent Ochemet could scarcely imagine, making ready to deliver a single devastating blow.
Ochemet stepped backward almost unconsciously, moving away into the shadows until his shoulders came up against the concrete wall. He wasn’t certain any longer what he feared: the Mages in the Circle, or the thing that Errec Ransome would do to them.
Time seemed to slow. Ochemet held his breath. He knew that in the next moment Ransome would strike.
Then, in the instant before the gathered energy came smashing down, another figure appeared in the open doorway. This one was also robed and masked in black, but between the hem and the boot tops showed the ubiquitous brown fatigues. He carried a short staff loosely in one gloved hand, and green fire ran up and down the weapon’s length.
“Master Ransome,” the stranger said, in rough but passable Galcenian. “What right have you to dispose of my Circles?”
Ransome brought his staff down before him into a defensive position. The witchfire still writhed and flickered along it, casting eerie shadows onto his set and uncompromising face. “Lord sus-Airaalin. What is mine to protect, I protect by all the means I have.”
The Magelord—Ochemet supposed that this was indeed a Magelord; certainly Ransome seemed to be addressing him as such—inclined his masked head in a grave nod. “So you do. And your name is known for it in the homeworlds. But I do not recall ever giving you the favor of knowing mine.”
“No,” said Ransome. “Nevertheless, I know it.”
Ochemet, pressed back against the wall in the darkness, thought for a moment that sus-Airaalin would demand the source of Ransome’s knowledge. Instead, however, the Magelord strode between two of the kneeling Mages to join Errec Ransome in the center of the white circle.
“Master Ransome,” he said formally, “we are too powerful, you and I, to stand by while others do battle for us. Will you fight me here and now, for the mastery of this Circle and for the possession of the galaxy?”
Ransome smiled without humor. In the blue-green light his features looked pale and haggard.
“No,” he said, “I won’t. I have too much to lose.”
“Then yield,” said sus-Airaalin, and the light died as he took the staff from Errec Ransome’s hands.