Authors: Vincent Trigili
“But I thought – ” once more her sentence trailed off.
Grandmaster Vydor smiled. “You remember that my wife, who sits on the Wizards’ Council, is a master spiritualist, right? She would have loved to lead this corps herself, but she is needed for too many other tasks already, so I persuaded her not to. Until God blessed us with you, Spectra, we had no one that could administer that training.”
She tried again to speak, but her voice failed. After a steadying breath, she asked, “Are you really saying that Dusty and I can train all these spiritualists with the full support of the Wizard Kingdom?”
“The council is fully behind me and both of you. There may be some prejudice to work through among the transplants from Korshalemia and those whom they influence, but yes - you have our full support.”
“I don’t understand,” she said quietly. “I saw so clearly that we would have to stand alone.”
“Did you?” asked Grandmaster Vydor softly. “I have some experience with visions, and they are rarely as clear as we wish them to be.”
“Shea,” started Spectra. “Shea knew somehow. She knew all along.”
“Oh?” asked Grandmaster Vydor. “Perhaps she is better at seeing the future than either of us, then. I always enjoy my visits with you two, but I must get back. I have risked staying away too long, and it would not do for any of our other enemies to find my post empty.”
“Please send my love to Master Kellyn and the others,” said Spectra. I had never before heard her use those words with respect to Master Kellyn.
Grandmaster Vydor blessed us and left, and Spectra fell into my arms and sobbed long and hard. I could barely make out her words through the tears. “I almost threw it all away!” she cried. I held her until we fell asleep there in my office.
The morning after Grandmaster Vydor’s visit, Spectra, Greymere, Kymberly, Shea and I met in my office to plan our attack on the station. We were parked, cloaked, on the exterior surface of the station, and as far as we could tell no one had detected us.
“Dusty,” said Greymere, “I can slip onto the station alone and get the data, but if you want me to train Saraphym, this would be a good time to bring her. As far as I can tell the station is not on high alert, and its power signature suggests only a normal crew complement. That should make the data extraction easy and safe.”
“Are you sure you can pull this off?” I asked.
“I won’t know until I try, but going by what we have seen so far it should be simple,” he said.
“What about destroying the station?” asked Kymberly.
“That will be harder. This station is newer than the others we have visited, and the captain might have a failsafe that we can’t bypass,” he said. “The Empire added a deadlock failsafe after an attacking force had exploited the weakness which I was planning to exploit, but they had not completed the retrofitting of all the stations before the collapse. I was hoping this station would be from the same generation as the last one so I could be sure, but no such luck.”
“We can always use our antimatter,” I said.
“Yes, but without a supply to replenish our stockpile, I am not sure we should,” stated Greymere.
“Replenishing it will not be a problem anymore,” I said. “It will still take considerable time, but our supply is secure.”
“Oh?” he asked.
“I think this would be a good time to make my latest announcement,” I said. “Nemesis, please broadcast what I am about to say throughout the ship.”
“Sure, Master!” he said.
“Attention, everyone! As you know, we had a visit from Grandmaster Vydor yesterday, and he stayed until late. I have some great news to report as a result of his visit. First, he wants everyone here to know that he is very impressed with the progress you are making and that he is proud of each and every one of you. Second, he has officially sanctioned our operation and promoted me to head of the new Wizard Spirit Corps. That’s right: our kind or magic is no longer banned by the Wizard Kingdom!” I paused a moment to let that sink in. “The only limitations on our movements are that we must adhere to the wizard code and that no one is allowed to train the spiritualist line outside of our ranks.” When I had finished speaking, I told Nemesis to stop broadcasting.
“Well!” said Kymberly. “We don’t have to break away from the Kingdom?”
“Nope!” said Spectra. “Our family is standing with us! All the way!”
“That’s wonderful! I hardly know what to say,” said Kymberly.
Shea leaned back with a smile on her face. She had the look of someone who was trying not to say “I told you so.”
Once the celebration had died down, Greymere said, “Given that new information, I suggest we move directly to Plan B and use the antimatter. While Saraphym and I are over there, you could send teams to remove the warheads from the missiles and plant them around the station. I am sure Nemesis can work out the best placement for the explosives.”
“I would like to see one warhead placed directly inside the biological containment labs, just to be sure,” said Shea. “And that one should be placed by a human, just in case.”
“What is our risk of exposure to these viruses?” I asked.
“High, if we are discovered. It would be the easiest way for them to defend the station from us; just flood the corridors with all the viruses and wait for us to die,” said Greymere.
“That would not be very effective,” said Shea. “If all the viruses are similar to the one that struck the Cathratinairians, then they have a very long dormant period. You would all die, certainly, but it would be years from now.”
“Still, they could use it as a deterrent,” said Spectra. “Maybe it would be best if Greymere goes over alone to get the data, and after he returns we send humans to plant the explosives. That would reduce our risk of exposure.”
“No, I think that shouldn’t be necessary,” said Shea. “Even if we send over only humans, they could still flood the station with the viruses and then our humans would become carriers of the viruses. I still think it is highly unlikely they would do that. Once their viruses are out, they would risk losing their stockpile and have to grow more.”
“If they do release the viruses, how do we counter that threat?” asked Kymberly.
“Spirit Walk,” said Spectra.
“What do you mean?” asked Greymere.
“Everyone who goes over will be in their full armor, so they will not be directly exposed but their armor will be. If we have reason to suspect they have been exposed, we can bring them back via the Spirit Realm. There the viruses will be harmless, and we can take the time needed to sterilize their armor before returning them to the Nemesis,” said Spectra. “A trip to the Spirit Realm could be dangerous for the trainees, but if they are exposed it will be their best chance.”
“It would be foolish for them to release the viruses. I do not see a reason to worry, but if anything does happen, we can contain it safely in sickbay,” said Shea.
“The most important part of this mission is that database, so we make no overt moves until Greymere secures the data,” I said. “Greymere, I want you and Saraphym to go over now and get that data. Nemesis, keep a watch on our region; monitor all communications, and let us know if anyone comes in. We still have Jashier, whoever he is, out there to worry about.”
After leaving the meeting with Master Dusty, I called Saraphym and arranged to meet her at the airlock.
“Oh, Greymere! Did you hear Master Dusty’s announcement?” asked Saraphym as I arrived.
I chuckled. “You know, you are supposed to refer to me as ‘master’, now.”
“Sure, but did you hear?” She was practically dancing while trying to pull on her armor.
“Yes, it was broadcast to the entire ship, all at once,” I said.
She dropped the parts of her armor she had not yet put on and ran over to embrace me, then started to try to dance with me. I let her continue to bounce for a few moments, then gripped both of her shoulders and restrained her. “Yes, it is very exciting, but we have a mission to accomplish and no idea how much time we have to do it in. An entire race is depending on us. I need you to focus.”
“Of course!” She danced back to her armor and resumed her attempt to put it on. Eventually she succeeded and looked my way. “Wait a minute! How come you have dark green armor?”
“It’s all that is available right now. Trade with Korshalemia has more or less ended, so a local made this set. It is not as nice as yours but it will do. Now, if you’re ready, we need to move out.”
She bowed deeply with a grandiose flourish. “Yes,
Master.
”
I smiled, shook my head and guided her towards the airlock. “Okay, it’s time to be serious.”
We flew through space and entered the station through the exhaust port as usual.
“Okay, we’ll stick to the maintenance shafts as much as we can. We’re looking for exposed cabling that I can tap into. As long as we are not seen, this should be an easy in-and-out mission.”
“Yeah, right. Like that’s possible,”
she sent.
I didn’t have a good comeback for that, so I just led her through the corridors until we found what we were looking for: an unimportant equipment storeroom with enough room for us to comfortably hide and access through a wall panel to the cabling. I opened the maintenance panel, connected the datapad and started my attack scripts.
“This will take a couple of hours.”
“So do we go hide somewhere?”
she asked.
“Not this time,”
I sent.
“We will stay right here. If we are discovered, we will grab what we have and run. This data is too important to risk not getting what we can.”
We talked about nothing much for a while, then she asked,
“Why do you think they changed their minds?”
“Who?”
I asked.
“The Wizards’ Council,”
she sent.
“Oh, you mean about the spiritual corps?”
I replied.
“Yes. I mean, the whole time we were in the Academy we were told over and over that spiritualist powers were evil and never to use them. Now it appears that a complete reversal of that position has taken place.”
“I am new to this Kingdom, so I don’t know if I can answer that
,
”
I sent.
“Not even a guess?”
she asked.
“Well, I suspect that Grandmaster Vydor was never really against it and that there were other factors at play,”
I sent.
“Maybe. So, now that you’re a big, important boss, what happens next?”
she asked.
“Next?”
I asked.
“After this mission, what is to become of us?”
she asked.
“I assume we will be given a new assignment –”
Before I could continue, the station’s alarms began to sound.
“Did you trip something?”
she asked.
“No, that’s the general battle alarm. They only sound that when under attack,”
I sent to her, and then I tried to reach Dusty.
“Master, what’s going on out there? The station just went on high alert.”
“Jashier’s fleet is approaching,”
he sent.
“It looks like they
have just jumped to a rally point and are grouping to attack.”
“How is that possible? They should have been crushed at the last station
,
”
I sent.
“No idea, but this fleet is even larger than the one he had the last time we saw him,”
he sent.
“It seems we were correct in thinking that we would be racing him to take this station.”
“We need more time to get this database,”
I sent.
“Keep working, but be ready to pull out rapidly if the situation deteriorates,”
he sent.
“Master, going by their last attack, they will send in boarders shortly after their approach. That will complicate things, but it might give us the distraction we need in order to escape.”
With the station on high alert, moving around undetected would be much harder, but they would have much bigger things to worry about than a couple of extra people running around.
“If something happens, just escape into space and we will track you down later. We will stay cloaked inside the station’s shields as long as we can,”
he sent.
“Understood, Master,”
I sent back.
“So what is our plan?”
Saraphym sent to me.
“To survive, and hopefully bring this data with us. For the moment, we continue to sit tight,”
I sent.
I was regretting my decision to have the datapad compress and then encrypt the information that we were stealing, as it made the theft take much longer. As we waited, our position became less and less safe due to all the troops running around nearby. Our hiding place should be completely ignored during an attack, but when it came time to move out we could be in trouble.
The datapad flashed a message stating it was complete. I unhooked it and slipped it into the deepest pocket inside my armor. Then I connected a second datapad that I had brought for just this purpose.
“Do we still need to download more?”
Saraphym asked.
I resealed the hatch that was covering the connections and jammed the locking mechanism.
“No, this one is Plan B. It will sleep for a little while, and when it wakes up it will send a program that will propagate itself through their database and destroy any data it can find.”
“Good idea, but why the delay?”
she asked.
“Because, unlike copying data, this will definitely set off alarms and I want to be long gone when that happens
,
”
I sent.
“Now we just need to get off the station with this data.”
We slipped back into the hall as the alarm changed from that of station alert to intruder alert.
“Great,”
I groaned.
“What do we do now?”
she asked.
“I doubt if that alarm is because of us, but even if it is our plan is the same: find the closest exit and jump into space,”
I sent.
We slowly moved through the station, avoiding the patrols as much as we could, but soon we were trapped. There was a team of defenders being pushed back, but the intruders were in front of us and reinforcements were coming up behind us.