Starbreaker: Volume 4, page 15
“Get us clear of Glamrock, and we can find someplace local to touch down and make plans,” Hector told him from his customary perch on the console. There was still a tension lingering as they all waited to see if they could get out of orbit without a fight.
They made a circuitous journey, following the wind and clouds in their swirl around the planet, gaining height so slowly that Sylvas felt like they were standing still at times until finally, as far from the planetary base as they could get, they broke through into the upper atmosphere and caught sight of freedom. At once, his senses expanded, and at once, the Consortium ships in their docile orbit around the planet all suddenly started to move.
“Just what you don’t want to see,” Hector grumbled. “Alright, kids. How good is your ship-to-ship combat?”
Kaya and Malachai looked askance to each other, which was all the answer Hector needed. “Never done it before? Don’t worry, it’s just like killing people face to face, just farther away. You’ll get the hang of it in no time.”
Even at this distance, Sylvas could sense the mounting magical power gathering around the intercepting ships. It wouldn’t matter if they were shooting to kill or simply trying to stop the Folly from escaping; with so many simultaneous offensive spells being cast, their destruction would be pretty much inevitable.
“I can jump us out,” Sylvas called over his shoulder as the others started readying themselves for battle.
“Then what?” Hector rolled his shoulders as if he were about to physically wrestle with the ships chasing them. “They follow, and we have the fight somewhere else?”
“Then I move faster than they can follow. They’re reliant on etherium to make their jumps, and casting takes them time. I can outpace them. Jump us around a few times to lose the tail.”
Hector was looking at him curiously. “You didn’t seem reluctant to bust some heads down on the planet, so what’s changed?”
Sylvas ignored the question, the gathering spells of the enemy on the periphery of his perception sizzling away and ready to cast. “Can I do it?”
“Don’t ask me, kid. You’re the pilot.” He crossed his arms. “Can you do it?”
Sylvas couldn’t help but grin.
They punched through into null-space at the same moment the Consortium spells were cast at them, not along the direct line that they had been headed out of orbit, but sideways, the tear out of reality forming off the starboard side, and Sylvas’ will flinging them sideways into it instead of allowing momentum to guide them forward. Mira frantically searched star-charts to find them a safe, close place to emerge and set up their next jump. As the portal through into null-space snapped shut behind them, there was the briefest flash of light as all the spells cast after them collided and combusted, silent in the vacuum of space.
They burst back through into the universe in the midst of a swirling nebula of electric blue, so dazzling Sylvas had to close his eyes against it. He was already casting again, setting up their next jump but spinning the ship as it emerged to point in a different direction on every axis.
The next jump was longer. A whole thirty seconds in null-space before they emerged halfway back towards Glamrock, albeit a good few light years off their original course. The ship was still in a wild spin, flipping around and around in a way that would have made anyone on board violently sick if they could feel it. Sylvas could feel it, of course, with his nervous system plugged into the ship’s sensory array, but by this point in his career as a gravity mage, having every direction changing up on him constantly was his new normal.
This third and final jump was significantly longer than the previous two, and he pushed for more speed than he had in the others. Up until now, they had maintained some of the original deception that the ship was simply very well made and wasn’t being flown by a gravity affinity mage. Anyone pursuing them would have been surprised at the rapid jumps, but it was still within the realms of possibility. With this final jump that their pursuers would never see, he went far beyond the realms of possibility and pushed himself to the limits of his ability, firing off all the spells bound to the engines while pushing with all his will to maximize their speed, even before casting the final teleportation through null-space. They were moving so fast that there was a thump throughout the entire ship as they left reality, and all the forces working against them disappeared.
“I’m taking us out into deep space for now, picking a random spot. From there, we can start trying to narrow down where the Consortium base is situated.”
Hector nodded at the logic of it while still staring intently at the readouts on his console. “I think your hop, skip, and jump worked. I’m not seeing any sign of pursuit.”
Sylvas didn’t feel any pride in what he’d just done. Not really. “The spellforms degrade pretty fast. If you aren’t right on top of them, the chances of following someone through aren’t good. Besides, all their spells hitting at the same time we left would have made a real mess of the trail.”
Hector had turned now, and the others were sheepishly returning from their battle stations. “What would Plan B have been?”
Sylvas played through the different options in his mind. A gravity shear surrounding the ship, diving into the enemy formation. “I’d probably have done something to disrupt our trail myself.”
Hector’s brows had furrowed. “And if they still followed?”
“I’d have taken us someplace more hostile than a nebula and left them to deal with it.”
There was a long pause in the rapid-fire exchange during which Malachai and Kaya once again found themselves looking sideways at one another.
Hector’s frown persisted. “I thought they trained you as soldiers. Why isn’t fighting your first answer?”
“Because fighting would show our hand.” Sylvas spoke, but it was the carefully selected wording that Mira provided him, whispered in his brain. “It would let everyone know what we were capable of. It might tell the Consortium who we are and that we’re after them.”
Hector stared at him just a moment longer than was necessary, and Sylvas wondered if he’d slipped up, if something in the cadence of his answer hadn’t sounded enough like him. Then the moment passed, and Hector turned away. “It was the right call. No point killing people just for the sake of it.”
That was a close one, darling. You might have had to explain why you actually don’t want to fight.
“One might argue that thinning the ranks of an enemy army was beneficial, actually.” Malachai’s droll tones cut through the tension.
“And it does feel good to kick in some teeth once in a while,” Kaya agreed.
Hector chuckled. “I’m sure there will be plenty of teeth to kick before too long.”
“Particularly if the trade in shikari continues to be brisk.” Malachai called the image of the creatures back up onto the console. “I can’t imagine that we won’t end up having to deal with them eventually.”
Kaya’s face contorted in disgust. “As if eidolons weren’t bad enough.”
Chapter 19
“Null-space is something of a misnomer because it implies that it is a place. A place with nothing in it, but still a place. Rather, null-space is the absence of all things, including all laws of physics, all mass, energy, everything. It is an entire plane of existence at the farthest extent of the dimensional range that is entirely devoid of everything. There have been arguments that it suffered some calamity resulting in its current state, others that it has always existed as the absence of all things, empty on an ontological level, because somewhere there had to be a dimension of nothing. Others have assumed the position that it is not a dimension at all, but instead, it is a step outside of all planes as we know them. A step beyond all of the known laws of all the known realities that have ever been encountered. The truth will, of course, remain a mystery because there are no answers to be found in null-space. For there to be answers, there would have to be something.”
—Going Dark: The Null-Space Paradox, Vestis Cromwull
They lurched back from null-space into reality, Sylvas dragging them to a halt as they burst out of nothingness before they could carry on along their course into yet more nothingness. Just nothingness in a universe where there was at least the option for there to be something. With a sigh, he turned to his friends. “There are almost as many deep-space asteroid fields as there are planets. We might be looking in the right place for the Consortium’s base now, but we’re no closer to actually finding it.”
Hector nodded along. “I think we need to try looking at their supply line.”
“Their supply line?” Sylvas repeated before he could stop himself.
“You only find shikari in a few places, usually around Aion ruins. They lie dormant in a kind of natural stasis until something living comes by, and they revive to start eating.” He pulled up the star maps on the consoles, overlaid the areas that the Consortium was known to operate in, and then overlaid that with a series of pins. “Everywhere Aion remnants have been discovered.”
There were dozens of worlds marked with those pins, within the reach of the Consortium’s operations, and each of them could have been the source of their supplies. When anything Aion was found, whether it was something as complex and compelling as a vault or as little as a discarded scrap of paper, it was reported, filed, and marked, but that was as much information as Hector had available to him, that there was “something” Aion on the world.
“I think we can eliminate any worlds with significant populations,” Malachai suggested. “Word would have gotten out if shikari were discovered there, and the Consortium would be reluctant to operate in plain view.”
“Right.” Hector nodded, and with a few adjustments, the number of pins dropped by about a quarter.
Mira was overlaying this map with the one that was under construction in Sylvas’ mind—the one that had all of the potential places where the Consortium base might have been out in deep space—and it helped eliminate another quarter of the pins. He tweaked the illusion the console was projecting to match what was in his head, and the others glanced his way, then didn’t question it. They trusted in his judgment by this point, and Hector closed his mouth after realizing that there were going to be no other objections.
Six planets remained, so Sylvas highlighted the closest of them. “Shall we start here?”
Hector clapped his hands. “Good a place as any. Wash up before lunch?”
The prospect of his cooking seemed to spark everyone’s interest, but Sylvas didn’t immediately move to join the brawl for the first use of the shower. “I’ll get us underway first.”
Hector shrugged as he headed out. “Alright, but you don’t get fed if you haven’t washed your hands.”
By the time the ship was in null-space, the engines engaged to keep it moving towards its destination, and Sylvas finally forced himself to extricate himself from the circle of control, the others had all washed up and were at work in the makeshift galley. He had to push his way through and tried to keep his amusement from showing on his face as all of Kaya’s mastery of metal had her reduced to a living food processor, chopping ingredients. Malachai had been left to knead some sort of dough by hand, and for whatever reason, whether it was the chillness of his touch or some mistake in the mixing, it seemed to be clinging to his fingers as though it never wanted to leave. The only one who looked genuinely happy was Hector, striding around the kitchen with a towel around his waist. Kaya may also have been slightly happy about that, but she was so irritated with trying to manifest the right combination and movement of blades with her embodiment that she wasn’t even getting to enjoy her eye candy.
A quick scrub to remove the poisons still clinging to his skin and a change of clothes had Sylvas dressed in an identical set of plain black coveralls to the ones he’d just shed. They were so nondescript that they’d manage to cycle all the way around again to being distinctive. It was a problem of owning nothing that he had no clothes other than his uniforms, and with leaving the Ardent, he no longer even had that. He didn’t know where these bodysuits stowed away in one of the drawers in their shared room had come from, only that they didn’t belong to either Kaya or Malachai, so by a process of elimination, they had to be for him.
Back in the galley, the dough had been untangled from Malachai’s hands, wrapped around whatever Kaya had been diligently blitzing, and was now baking, sending aromas drifting all through the Folly that made Sylvas salivate despite himself. Hector had deployed a seat for him, and they were all back in the same positions as the night before, sipping on some syrupy-looking drink that Malachai seemed to be having some trouble with, judging by his expression.
Hector gave the air a sniff. “Pastries will still be a couple of minutes. Do you have time to eat?”
Mira fed Sylvas the information he needed before he could even ask for it, and he relayed it, minus the word darling. “Seventeen minutes and twenty seconds before we leave null-space.”
Hector stared at him for a second. “You don’t need to double-check that? Look at any readouts?”
Sylvas settled onto his chair. “Nope.”
Glancing at the other two, where they sat complacent, Hector chuckled. “So he’s got some crazy good mental enhancements then?”
“Aye,” Kaya confirmed. “It’s annoying.”
“He makes those things that the rest of us struggle for look effortless, and for this, I doubt I shall ever forgive him.”
“Guess I’ll just have to get used to trusting him.” Hector’s smile looked a little more forced than usual.
Sylvas didn’t really know how to respond to that, so he tried to move on. “I’m wondering if there is anyone else we could contact for information.”
“Nope.” Hector stopped him. “No work talk at the dinner table. This is a place of peace and joy.”
It was Sylvas’ turn to close his mouth.
Hector was quick to alleviate the awkward silence. “So tell me more about what a pain in the ass he is.”
Malachai choked on his drink, but Kaya lit up. “Oh, man, you have no idea!”
Hector may have been given their files with the broad strokes of their careers to date, but the minutiae of their day-to-day lives, and how much of a frustration Sylvas had been to Kaya, had not been included. It was all told with an exasperated but loving tone, as someone might have talked about their pet dog’s misadventures, and it was interrupted by loud guffaws of laughter, and a brief sojourn to retrieve their lunch from the oven, from Hector.
“So then they think we’re married because we have the same surname on the files. I clan him, and they think we’re married.”
Something seemed to dawn on Hector. “Oh! So that’s why Ironfist loves you so much! You’re an honorary dwarf. He was acting like it was one of his own who had found the Covenant, talking about protecting you from the other councilors. I didn’t know where it was coming from.”
“Do I need protection from the councilors?”
“If you’re as much of a workhorse now as you were in the Ardent, then absolutely you do.” Hector paused to bite into his pastry. “The only reward for doing good work is getting more work.”
Sylvas chuckled. “I don’t mind work.”
“You will.” Hector’s grin faltered. “Ironfist wanted me to keep you from getting used up too quickly. So did Dreamweaver… but that’s just because she wants more fighters for when things with the Dominion come to a head.”
“I imagine that the Obsidian Dominion has a great many Covenant mages.” Malachai was working his way through his own pastry with small, measured bites, tasting each one thoroughly before moving on to the next. “I doubt that they’re as concerned about the disruptive influence that teaching people about the process might bring.”
Hector shook his head. “You’d be wrong there. Emperor Blackstar is in charge over there because he’s the most powerful. He doesn’t stay the most powerful by lifting everyone else up to his level.”
Kaya’s brow furrowed. “His whole schtick is saying that the Dominion’s the strongest, and that’s why everyone should join up with him, and he keeps his mages weaker than him?”
Malachai nodded. “The paradox of power in a dictatorship. The alliance of the Empyrean most likely has more collective strength than the Empire could ever muster, but we cannot bring it to bear with the same ease.”
Hector snapped his fingers, trying to remember something. “How did she put it? ‘Ours is the strength of outreaching hands, and theirs that of a clenched fist.’ Or something like that?”
Kaya was gawking at him. “That was a spot-on Elenya Dreamweaver impression.”
“Thanks, I do a good Karst Veilbohr, too. ‘I am most disapproving of the choices you have made. Shame on you. Shame on your family.’”
That one was good enough that even Malachai looked like he was going to laugh at it.
Sorry to interrupt, Mira cut in as the moment hung in the air, her tone a hair away from actually being apologetic. But it’s past time we took a closer look at our heading.
Sylvas sent her a mental acknowledgement and reluctantly swallowed his last mouthful of lunch before rising from his seat. “Back to work.”
“Boo,” Kaya cried with very little real feeling, reaching across to snatch the unfinished pastry off Sylvas’ plate.
Back in the cockpit, Sylvas stepped back into the circle and control of the ship just a few seconds before they arrived at their departure window. He slowed the ship’s engines to nothing, letting momentum carry them forward as he cast the second half of the teleportation spell to bring them back out into reality.
They emerged into a cloud of detritus. Sylvas flung a gravity shear up to protect the ship as soon as he parsed what was going on, but by then, dents had already been knocked into the Folly’s exterior. Dents that would likely have become hull breaches if they’d emerged at the usual speed instead of a crawl. The shear deflected all of the impending doom around them in its usual gentle curvature, but Sylvas still found himself cursing under his breath. There had been no hint anywhere on the star charts that there was any sort of detritus in this system, yet here they were in a vast cloud of it, spiraling out from one of the planets.
