As the gremlin king stalked toward him, Gabrian held the orb aloft, revealing it once more, and then he whispered so Malgore would not hear him, “Abrea hur gatas su timel.”
Open the gates of time.
The orb shimmered more spectacularly, seeming to vibrate in his palm. It glowed gold, then crimson, then amethyst, then emerald, then sapphire
—
passing through every color in the spectrum and back again, faster and faster, seeming to blink in different colors until time began to slow.
Malgore seemed to realize too late what was happening. He began to run faster toward the relic, but his stride was slowed by the grasping hands of time itself. Gabrian watched the gremlin king extend his staff, and he caught a flash of the king's intent in his mind's eye. The orb began floating slowly toward Malgore, and Gabrian watched with a dispassionate air, appreciating the irony. In his lust for the relic, Malgore didn't seem to notice that Gabrian wasn't fighting to keep it. As the relic grew farther from Gabrian, time began to assume its normal pace, yet Malgore's every movement quickly sped up to the point that he became a blur.
Gabrian smiled as the relic touched Malgore's palm. In that instant, Gabrian began to weave a protective spell around himself: “Ur sefensa asha mershalah.” The air shimmered before him, and he watched through a gauzy curtain as the orb in Malgore's hand grew white hot. Soon the orb was so bright that it was painful to look at. The gremlin king screeched in pain and dropped the orb, whereupon it melted into the ice at his feet. Suddenly the orb let out a dazzling flash of light, and all the world went white. Gabrian heard an explosive
bang
accompanied by the gremlin king screeching again, and then he felt a massive force pressing against his protective shield, draining his strength to the point of exhaustion.
Malgore's screeching died abruptly, swallowed by a ringing silence. Gabrian slumped and leaned heavily on his staff. He blinked his eyes, yet still found he couldn't see. “Eja seera!” His sight cleared, but it was hard to tell at first, for all he saw was a swirling portal of darkness, black as a starless night. Then he looked around and saw the splintered remains of tree trunks and branches raining from the sky to land in a bald crater of hard-packed dirt. Gabrian stood upon a mound of dirt which rose like an island from the center of that crater. Were it not for his magical force field he would not have survived the blast. Gabrian stared deeply into the swirling darkness before him, trying to see beyond it to where Malgore and his dragon mount had been, but he could see nothing, and the portal seemed to stretch out forever to either side, looming above him as a great, black wall.
Gabrian was just about to speak the ancient words that would close the portal when there came a distant roar. For a moment Gabrian feared it was Malgore's dragon, having somehow escaped the blast. He looked up, but even as he did so, he caught a flicker of movement, and his gaze arrowed in on the portal, just in time to see a monstrous shape leaping out of the infinite darkness on tongues of crimson flame. Gabrian hear a giant
boom!
as though thunder had suddenly split the sky, and then he felt himself picked up and thrown by a gust of wind so powerful that he was like a leaf, twisting and turning as he fell, arms flailing and stomach clawing for his throat. He was dimly aware of the sound of trees shattering once more, and of a deafening, scraping roar like a thousand wagons rolling down a gravel road all at the same time. As he fell, Gabrian whispered a spell to protect himself from the impact, but in the time it took for him to reach ground, the spell had weakened, and his already exhausted strength had all but failed. He felt a solid jolt go through his back, his head carried backward by inertia until it hit the obstacle with a violent
crack!
And he knew no more.
Aurelius pushed the throttles past their stops and winced at the resultant whine and slightly unstable shudder which grumbled out of the
Halcyon Courier's
engines. A flash of orange light zapped past his cockpit, and Aurelius jumped with a jolt of adrenaline as the SISE (Sound in Space Emulator) blared to life with a sharp buzzing noise that dopplered quickly in and out of hearing.
He hadn't realized that the patrollers were so close. A quick look at his sensors confirmed the worst. They were gaining on him. Aurelius gritted his teeth and cursed under his breath. He couldn't outrun ISS interceptors. Another buzzing sound, and then his ship shook with an impact and the SISE registered a sizzling noise like water boiling over onto a hotplate.
Aurelius stomped on the port rudder pedal and flipped the flight stick to the same side, throwing his ship into a spiraling barrel roll. The stars spun in a dizzying diamond swirl just as brilliant beams of hot orange plasma began buzzing past all around him. The intermittent flashes of light illuminated the dark interior of the cockpit, casting Aurelius’s features into sharp relief. Another couple of shots sizzled off his shields, leaving the
Halcyon Courier
shivering in space. A warning tone screeched, drawing Aurelius’s attention to his overloaded aft shields. Then a three note melody of beeps issued from the comm and a blinking red light appeared. They were hailing him—for the third time.
Probably trying to get me to surrender now that they have me at a disadvantage.
He didn't even dare to answer, in case he accidentally said something to incriminate himself. At least this way he could claim he'd never received their order to search his ship. He'd say the comm was broken, and break it with his fist before they boarded him. Plausible deniability.
Oh, it would be easy if he were innocent, but how could an arms dealer be innocent? The Dominion didn't look kindly on gun runners. Clearly they hadn't read their own constitution. Every man or woman supposedly had the right to bear arms, lest their government become an oppressive force in the absence of any possible opposition. But the Dominion was not the seemingly benign force it claimed to be, guaranteeing the rights and privileges of its people, guarding peace across the seven continents of Meridia. No, the Dominion was a bloated monster which grew fat with taxes and defecated regulations, and people deserved to know they still had freedoms worth the paper they were inked upon. At least that’s how he justified arming Freedom to undermine the Dominion from within.
Another
zap
sounded behind him, and Aurelius tried to dodge, but the blast clipped his starboard tail wing. The
Halcyon Courier
shuddered and he heard a groan from its frame, accompanied by a wedge of blackened alloy which came fluttering past his cockpit. Aurelius grimaced and shot a quick glance at the damage report. Only superficial damage. He'd lose some maneuverability in atmosphere, but otherwise his ship was still in one piece. But with the aft shields down, the next hit might be more serious. The comm sounded again with one last chance to surrender.
Aurelius worried his lip as he struggled to think of a way out. He couldn’t outrun the patrols, and he certainly couldn’t lead them straight to Freedom’s headquarters. He either had to turn and fight them, which he likely wouldn’t survive, or . . .
Aurelius’s gaze found a fuzzy patch of gray on the gravidar and he frowned thoughtfully. Trade one certain death for another? He’d prefer to go down fighting, but this way there was a chance—not a good one, but a chance—that he might outmaneuver his pursuit. Breaking out of his barrel roll, Aurelius flipped the stick in the other direction, and then pulled up sharply. A different patch of stars swam into view. Space looked no different, but for the intermittently shining stars that were winking on and off like festive lights.
Asteroids. Without the sun to illuminate them, they were deadly black wraiths, impossible to see except on scanners. Aurelius flicked a switch on his cockpit dash to enable the light amplification overlay. Suddenly space was clouded with craggy rocks, shifting and spinning before him, growing quickly larger in his viewscreen. Orange plasma blasts began zapping past him again, and Aurelius put his ship into a crazy series of maneuvers: stick left, rudder right; stick right, rudder down; stick back, rudder up.
In space the rudder system was composed of maneuvering jets that redirected thrust to one side or the other, thus applying rudder up or down would move his ship straight up or down. In atmosphere, depending whether the ship was capable of true aerodynamic flight, control surfaces were often used instead, and the jets remained as a risky option to suddenly change directions.
Incredibly, Aurelius made it to the edge of the asteroid field without another shot grazing his ship. Now the hard part began. Speeding flecks of pulverized rock flew at him from every side, hissing as they stuck his forward shields. The plasma blasts from the interceptors continued to rain around him, now striking rocks and splitting them open, creating even more of the dangerous debris. Aurelius dodged and weaved through the spinning razor edges of rock, quietly praying that nothing would strike his ship’s unprotected aft. The shields there were just beginning to recover some strength. If he was lucky, he might be able to suffer another plasma blast without damage.
Aurelius felt sweat beading on his forehead as he focused every ounce of his attention in a thousand directions at once. There were too many rocks to watch simultaneously, so he kept an eye on only the nearest ones and relied on his proximity alert sensors to warn him if anything got too close.
Suddenly a splinter of rock the size of a man came spinning out from behind one the size of a house, and Aurelius had no time to move. The rock exploded on his cockpit canopy and the
Halcyon Courier
jolted violently. He had the inertial compensators dialed up to the maximum, but that did nothing to dull the ship’s internal vibrations. A quick glance at his shields told him he couldn’t survive another hit like that. The rock must have been moving at incredible speed.
Aurelius gunned his engines and pulled a sharp turn around the house-sized asteroid. The plasma fire stopped briefly, but gravidar showed his pursuers pulling the same turn close behind him. Aurelius continued through his turn until he’d reversed course 180 degrees, and then he angled for the next biggest rock he could find. A few moments later, plasma began sizzling past once more. It seemed like he could buy time by getting closer to the asteroids.
Reaching the next rock, this one the size of a small planetoid, Aurelius soared in close to the surface and flicked a switch on the dash to enable terrain-following guidance. The surface of the asteroid became overlaid with a shaded green grid pattern which made it easier to see how the terrain curved. When he drew too near to the ridges and rises, sections of the grid began to blink in red, ever more rapidly as he approached, warning him to adjust course.
Suddenly a plasma burst shattered a blinking cliff in front of him. The resultant flash and cloud of debris nearly blinded him, and he stomped on the bottom rudder, sending his ship straight up to clear whatever remained of the ridge. Debris pounded his shields, but he emerged unscathed from the roiling cloud barely a second later. Over the ridge he saw a range of mountains pocked and furrowed with deep craters and gorges. He swung down into the nearest gorge, the sides of which began blinking red immediately. Distracted by the grid, Aurelius flicked off terrain-following mode, deciding to rely upon his eyes instead. Plasma began raining down all around him. Rather than follow him into the gorge, the interceptors were simply angling their weapons down and firing at him from above. The
Halcyon’s
shields roared as they repelled the hail of debris, then a shot hit home and Aurelius felt a stab of dread as a power regulator exploded, and his ship skipped sideways on a sudden boost from his thrusters. He quickly compensated for the power shift, but he was already jetting toward a looming spire of rock. Aurelius stomped on the bottom rudder and pulled up on the stick, but a second too late. He clipped the spire of rock and it shattered. His ship bucked and twisted, threatening to tumble into an end over end spin, but Aurelius applied rudder and stick counter to the direction of the spin and managed to keep straight.
The gorge curved sharply to the right, and as the turn deepened, Aurelius realized he was going far too fast to make it. He pulled back on the thruster power levers until they were full reverse, but it was too late to correct his momentum. The belly of his ship hit the side of the gorge and skidded along it, shuddering violently as it ripped up clouds of jagged rock. An alert quickly sounded, warning that belly shields were nearly depleted. Then suddenly, the gorge widened out and he was free of the rocks.
The lingering cloud of debris was impossible to see through. Aurelius kept his eyes glued to the penetrating scanners, which rendered the surrounding area in a shaded wireframe. It wasn’t ideal, but at least the ships following him couldn’t see to shoot him.
Suddenly space cleared and Aurelius found himself frowning into a gaping void. He was confused for a brief moment, “Where are the stars?”
And then the void swallowed him, and he realized it must be a tunnel. Quickly flicking on his ship’s external lights, the darkness disappeared in a blinding flash of illumination. Suddenly realizing the reason, Aurelius snapped off the light amplification overlay and the tunnel came into sharp focus. After losing most of its momentum against the craggy walls of the gorge, the
Halcyon
was cruising at a reasonable speed, but still overrunning its lights by a substantial margin, so Aurelius triggered the braking thrusters and clouds of thruster gas billowed out in front of him. Now he was travelling at a more reasonable speed.
As the clouds cleared, Aurelius was startled to find that he saw nothing but a wall of black before him. His ship's lights were being impossibly swallowed by the void; he could see nothing but broad beams of illuminated dust and moisture streaking toward the black. A quick glance as his scanners revealed nothing but blank space ahead of him. Perhaps it was a massive cavern?
The seconds ticked by, but still he could see nothing, and his scanners continued to show a curiously empty space ahead of him. Given the range of his scanners, he began to wonder how big the cavern could possibly be. No asteroid could be that large. Maybe the tunnel went straight through to the other side. But then why couldn’t he see any stars?
Then a brilliant flash of light swallowed Aurelius’s questions, blinding him. The patrollers must have caught up with him. He’d just witnessed his ship exploding. His mind grew foggy, and he felt strangely airy and light as though his ship’s gravity had suddenly failed. Was this what it felt like to be dead? He tried to move, but he felt as though his body were trapped in a viscous fluid—his movements slow and awkward.
In the next instant his ship bucked wildly, and his body resumed obeying his commands. The void briefly gave way to a bright tangle of shapes and colors—gray, brown, and white—which made no sense at all. And then those colors seemed to explode around him, raining down in twisted, broken fragments. The scene was accompanied by a sound like a thousand trees splintering all at once, combined with a tearing roar that vibrated through the deck under his feet. Alarms and sirens wailed in the cockpit, accompanied by curls of acrid smoke, and then a sharp
pop!
sounded as the artificial gravity gave way, and with it . . .
The inertial compensators.
Aurelius’s head snapped forward, his teeth clacking loudly as he fetched up against his emergency seat restraints. A loose object went flying, clipping him in the head, and everything turned to black.
* * *
Drums were beating mercilessly; the air was thick and stifling, making every breath feel like his last. People were shouting somewhere in the distance, an argument of some kind. The accents were strange, but he could understand the words. His eyes were shut as though with glue, leaving everything in terrifying blackness.
“What have I done?”
Cackling laughter.
“You’ve brought me an elder. What a delightful gift, Gabrian. The relic, now, if you please.”
“Come and get it.”
“If you insist.” That voice rose precipitously: “Lashas su hur ciel!”