Zenith Rising

Marta stared into hazel eyes which looked young in her father’s wind-worn face. There was no patronization in those eyes, no looming fatherly need to keep his daughter out of harm’s way. Alastair knew his daughter too well for that. He knew what she was capable of. Those eyes showed only love, admiration, and bottomless gratitude.

“You would do this? But the council has left us…”

“The Council is blind and old. I know where hope lies.” The features of her proud tanned face softened into a smile, and she reached out to trace the wrinkles that years of cold wind had etched into his face. He had dreamed of this for years. It had been his greatest passion; the desire to surpass their world and reach into greater space. This was not the time he would have hoped to reach for his dream, but the fire of excitement flickered in his eyes just the same. “I could never let you go with your back unguarded, dad.”

“Will you be alone?”

“I asked for volunteers. My whole wing remains with me.”

A technician shouted from above them; it was time. Everything was as ready as it could be. Alastair pulled his daughter close. “Thank you, Marta. I hope that you and your warriors are not needed.”

She squeezed him tighter, trying to feel some warmth through his heavy suit and her tight flying leathers. “If we are, though, you know that nothing will break through. We will keep the enemy off of you.”

They stepped back from each other. Both had to prepare to take to the air.

“Fly like a dragon, Marta.”

“You too, dad.”

The rest went unspoken; they read it in each other’s eyes. She smiled, stepped back onto the lift, and rose to the airfields high overhead.

Alastair turned and gripped the railing of the catwalk that ran the circumference of the pit, midway up its walls. Overhead, inside the massive hangar, great winches creaked slowly, pulling his life’s work from the silo. The cockpit was already clear of the pit. At his eye level, the acute delta-shaped fuselage was already giving way to the bulge of the battery housings and the titanic focusing coils at its bottom as the ship rose past him. It had been a struggle, but he had managed it, gotten the entire dream forged into reality precisely per his design specs. His proving hour would come very soon.

Too soon. It’s just not ready. Not right! He would never have tried to launch the Zenith so soon. It had just been completed. He’d had no time for any real tests. There was so much they could not be sure of with this craft, but they were still putting their hopes on it.

But he had no choice. It was now, or never. Absolutely never.

A distant boom rattled the silo and the hangar overhead. His workers shouted and scrambled to steady the swaying Zenith. Many stared at the winches hanging from the hangar’s ceiling, praying that their binds held. One split cable or snapped bolt could end everything. The entire operation was rushed, jury-rigged.

The sound of the bomb’s explosion still echoed. Alastair growled and punched his fist down onto the railing. Damn them! The aliens, the Zdir, were getting closer. They did not have long before their operation was found out. They had to get airborne quickly. But as he looked up at his creation swinging overhead, he could not ignore the feeling that it just wasn’t ready.

Ledger stepped up next to him and joined in quietly watching as the rocket was hauled into place. Alastair had never much liked the younger man; he was too impudent and full of himself, like life was just a huge melodrama and he was playing the lead. He didn’t trust the way the man had come from nowhere and risen so quickly to fame. Nonetheless, the renowned astronomer’s radical theories and insight had helped his project immensely. Alastair never knew how he did it, but the man had been a font of revolutionary ideas that set the astronomical community on its head. Time and again something from Ledger’s publications had set Alastair’s thoughts free from snags he had hit while designing the Zenith.

“That’s it?” Ledger pointed up at the Zenith. Alastair nodded, his grey hair sweeping with the motion to obscure his leathery face for a moment. Ledger dropped his hand and gave the rocket a second look. “It’s so… tiny. So much smaller than the two Risers.”

I’m sure you’re used to grander vessels, lad. But this is all this world is capable of, now. Shortly after the first Zdir fell from the sky and began wreaking havoc, Ledger had shown up at Alastair’s door, meeting him face-to-face for the first time. He’d come with a stunning confession of his true past. He’d also brought a medium-sized chest whose contents had glimmered nicely. At the time Alastair was unsure if he believed Ledger’s story, but as an under-funded researcher he understood the chest; it was far more than the Council of Engineers had ever granted his project. Construction had moved quite swiftly after that, even despite the growing demands of the war that was spreading over their world. In the few months since then, he’d found reason to trust the rest of Ledger’s story, amazing as it seemed. It certainly explained his career.

“It has to be small, to make the journey. This is a proving flight. If we make it, and if your promise holds true, then my world may survive long enough to make larger, grander ships.”

Overhead, the workers were preparing to couple the Zenith to the great Risers. Teams of lumbering golems hauled on thick cables pinched in their stone fists to pull the twin airships to the rocket, closing on it like great claws. Inside the two airships technicians operated the clamps, reaching them out from the sides of the Risers to mate with the coupling points of the Zenith. Once the connection locked the hangar filled with the hum of mana-powered engines warming up. “All clear” was shouted throughout the vast space, and the cables were snapped clear of the Zenith. Inside the bulky airships the clamp housings rotated, and the delta-shaped rocket tipped forward until it was parallel with the Risers, looking like an arrowhead sandwiched between two mallet heads.

To Ledger, it looked nothing like anything that was ever meant to fly. But, then again, neither did any of the aircraft he’d seen floating through the skies of Tethlo.

Alastair clapped a gloved hand on the astronomer’s shoulder. “That’s our cue, lad. Time for us all to see how well we can keep our promises.”

Ledger nodded and smiled, half-nervous and half-thrilled. “Aye. Time to shoot for the moon.”

X X X

Marta stood in the shadow of her sky fighter, smelling failure and doom on the wind. She could feel it in her bones; the creeping threat of Tethlo’s fall. The Zdir were too strong and were moving too swiftly. Every day more of them appeared around their sun and sent their vile soldiers down onto her world. She was a sourcerer, a person bound in both body and spirit to the soul of her world. Like a nag growing and gnawing at the back of her mind, she could feel her Gaia growing afraid.

The Zdir had arrived months ago in just one tiny ship. They had landed far to the south, in a nation with very little magic. No more than twenty of the scaly, centauroid creatures had emerged, decked in metal armor and armed with strange weapons; humming scythes and cannons which spewed fire and lightning rather than solid shot. They’d run amok, but other nations had sent aid to stop the strange invaders. Eventually they’d slaughtered the soldiers to a man.

Then, a few weeks later, they’d come again, landing in a different place and in greater numbers. Reinforcements followed. Slowly more and more of the aliens arrived. For a time they were isolated threats; scattered beachheads which were quickly repelled. But then they claimed one solid position, then another. More of them still came, now falling from the sky in great ravaging hordes, and their invasion was spreading over the world. Whole nations had already fallen.

They had learned from captured Zdir that they were a scattered race who had lost their own homeworld. They now lived among the stars, preying on other races. They were mere pirates. Like a thief presented with a major heist, the first ship to stumble onto Tethlo had sent out a call for their brethren to come and join the pillaging.

They were winning now, too. They’d brought in devastating weapons; airborne and terrestrial juggernauts which were scouring the nations of Tethlo, knocking aside armies, heroes and sourcerers like mere pests.

Word had come through minutes ago, from a courier flying along the ley line. The aliens had broken through the defenses of mighty Siilahr. The tremor which had shook the earth around them was of one of the aliens’ mighty bombs erasing half of the enchanted city. Marta scanned the horizon with her telescope, gaping at the deadly glow. The lights of Siilahr had always been visible from the Engineer’s stronghold on the Broken Coast as a glow on the horizon, but not like this. This light was redder, the light of a city in flames.

“Damn them!” She snapped the telescope shit and seethed, staring at the glow with her own two eyes. Siilahr had been their greatest hope, the greatest stronghold of magic for thousands of miles, a city that had turned aside centuries of invasions, from barbarians to demons to fleets of airships from rival nations. She should be there! She should be aloft, slicing Tristar, her sky fighter, through their ranks, tearing them from the sky with cursed slugs from her cannons and bolts of raging mana from her fingertips. She clenched her fist and restrained herself from jumping into the cockpit and flying off into the fire. I’d be wasting my life, to no gain. I’d be leaving father unprotected.

She couldn’t do that. She’d known Siilahr would fall. She’d fought the aliens enough to know that the Tangonian capital would not hold them back. That was why she had remained to protect her father; with him lay their only real hope in salvation.

Claxons blared, calling her and her wingmen out of their private thoughts and preparations. She rushed across the field with the other pilots and leaned over the railing to gaze down the sheer face of the Broken Coast. Halfway between them and the raging sea below, the sun was glinting off of the leading edge of the Zenith Riser as it emerged from the giant opening in the cliff face. The Engineers lived in dwellings on the top of the cliff, but their labs and factories were all housed in the mammoth caverns below the ground.

The ship moved free of the cave and rose up toward them, looking stranger than any craft they’d ever seen. The Risers had almost no habitable space; their cigar-shaped bulks only contained small cockpits at the bow and cramped service passages along their lengths. All the rest of their bulk was taken up by banks of batteries, mana tap arrays, and giant focusing coils. Bulging structures running the length of their dorsal edges held purposes beyond the imaginations of Marta and her fellow fighter pilots.

Embraced between the two workhorse airships was the Zenith itself. Looking on it took her breath away. Like the Risers, the ship was little more than banks of batteries and focusing coils, with a tiny chamber in the nose, barely big enough to hold three men cozily. Even through all the worry and dread, she felt wonder creeping through. There was Tethlo’s first spaceship, her own father’s life-long dream made real. Soon, if the Zenith proved true, her kind would reach not just into the air, but beyond the borders of their own world. She was deeply envious of the two people would accompany her father up beyond the sky, higher than even she could fly.

But now is not the time for jealousy. There’s only room for one pilot. Those two need to be there. We are all going to be tested in these next few hours. But, if we all pass, I swear I’ll be at the helm of the next ship to reach for the stars!

The Zenith Riser climbed into the air, slow and majestic. As it passed them, a pilot waved from the cockpit of the nearest of the Risers. They all waved back, raising a cheer of hope as the giant ship rose above them and drifted off toward the ley line that thrummed high above, invisible but flanked by floating markers. It would take an hour for the ship to reach the proper coordinates, and then the real test of her father’s brainchild would begin, as the ship pushed itself up and away from the highest of the ley lines they knew, through open air, cut off from the sustaining power of their planet’s energy. It was a border no one else had ever crossed, though many had died trying.

Marta watched it drift away for a moment more, feeling in her bones an echo of the ripples the ship caused as it patched into the ley line and began tapping the planetary power to keep itself aloft and refill its batteries. Then she shouted to the other pilots, urging them on into their own sky fighters. Now that the Zenith Riser was aloft, it was their task to make sure it stayed that way.

X X X

Ledger sat in the backseat of the three-man cockpit of the Zenith, struggling to get comfortable in his bulging leather spacesuit. Is this how it was for the first astronauts? Crammed into ungainly suits and strapped into vehicles that weren’t exactly guaranteed to work right?

As he squirmed in his suit, he accidentally kicked the box secured in webbing under his seat. He winced. He knew that, nestled in the cushioning foam and shielded by the box’s thick plastic casing, no mere kick could harm the communicator inside. Still, each jar and shake unnerved him. If the device broke any more…

He’d taken the Tethlo Assignment expecting new experiences. He was an evaluation agent slipped onto this world by the Department of Interstellar Relations: Imminent Prospects Division. The union often took it upon itself to guard under-developed worlds from the nastier inhabitants of space, so that young civilizations could grow into the galactic community. His report would determine whether or not the Union granted the world protectorate status. All of this was, of course, to happen without their knowledge; the natives were to know nothing of alien life until they made it into space on their own. That was the first and oldest rule in the book of Interstellar Relations Law; a race was only to come into the galactic community when it was ready and able.

In the eleven years he’d spent incognito among these people, his expectations for strangeness had been fulfilled, with interest. He’d never imagined he’d get dumped down onto a world whose inhabitants practiced… Well, in his reports he called it “manipulation of planetary energy fields,” but he and the natives called it magic. Honest freaking magic! It wasn’t just the machines that tapped the mana of the ley lines; a trained mage within a ley line could draw on the power directly, channel and shape it to his own will. Summon flames to their hands, lift boulders… And then there were the sourcerers; a rarer type of Tethlan. They shared some sort of direct lint to the planet’s power; they could summon it when and where they pleased, without having to worry about proximity to the ley lines which webbed over the planet’s surface. They were, themselves, fonts of Tethlo’s mana.

I doubt anyone even believes my reports.

He’d settled in well enough, making a name for himself as an Astronomical Theoretician. It had been a good cover; every few weeks he’d pick some long-known fact of astrophysics and present it to the natives as his own theory. He was always careful never to tell them anything they couldn’t soon figure out on their own. This had given him plenty of time to pursue his true study; the Tethlans themselves.

Blending in with the population had been easier than he had ever suspected. Satellite photography had shown them to be humanoid, but his own experience had shown him that they were, as far as he could tell, human. He’d studied tomes of anatomy and what they knew of physiology, and couldn’t find a thing listed that he didn’t have in his own body, including the appendix. Parallel evolution was the answer he suggested in his reports, but it seemed too much of a coincidence for him. A simple DNA test would doubtless have set him at ease, but no such capability existed among the natives.

Coming up with alternative theories had kept him up for many nights. They were too well-established to be any sort of lost colony; Terrans had only been in space for a few centuries, and Tethlan history reached back for thousands of years. Their civilization was actually older than Earth’s. It couldn’t be the other way around either, with Earth being one of their lost colonies, since he was sitting in their first spaceship.

Finally he’d resolved to let that be a mystery for someone else to unravel. If Terran history and society were to be turned upside-down, it certainly wasn’t going to be him who did it; he had a magical world to enjoy living on. It had been eleven years in neverland, living among people who lived lives his own people only knew in their wildest childhood dreams. The world had become his home, in a way no other world of the Union ever had.

Then the Zdir had mucked everything up. They had never passed anywhere near Union space, but they had heard rumors of their type filter through the territories of fringe races. It was expected that the Union would have to tangle with them one day, but they had not worried themselves with the issue. The Zdir would be a nuisance, but never a threat, to the might of the Terran Union and their allies.

To the Tethlans, however, they were doom. True, they had some mighty weaponry; fantastic spells, anti-aircraft capability, even mechs in the form of their bespelled golems. But they had never designed anything to protect them from invasion. They were just lucky that the invasion had so far been conducted by fielding armies with dropships, with some small-scale orbital-to-surface weaponry; if the Zdir had actually possessed any decent planetary bombardment weapons the Tethlans would not have stood a chance.

Ledger had hidden his small shuttle away in the woods behind his modest palace outside of Siilahr. (Rising to become Tethlo’s most renowned and revolutionary scientific thinker had made him just a little rich and famous. Since his ground-breaking theories were all results of about five minutes spent poking through his shuttle’s databanks, he had a lot of grant money left over. This also was left out of the reports to the Union.) Before the Zdir sent their first wave of brigands down onto the southern continent, they had managed to pick up the spaceship’s energy signature. Then they had blasted if from space with a precision orbit-to-surface missile; thus was he stranded on the planet. The shockwave from the blast shook his home while he was transmitting an update report, and toppled no small number of heavy tomes onto his delicate communicator; thus was he cut off from the FTL relay beacon hidden on the moon and the rest of the civilized galaxy. The shockwave had also knocked his large bronze trophy for scientific achievement onto his head; thus was he rendered very cranky indeed.

His fingers tried to clench into tight fists, but failed in the bulky gloves. I’ll show those disgusting, scaly sons-of-bitches! If this creaking tub makes it, I’ll bring the whole fleet down on their…

The sound of Heleta’s sharp young voice brought him out of his vengeful reverie. “We’ve reached ascent coordinates.” The harness pressed into Ledger’s chest as the ship slowed to a full stop. Now it and the escorting fighters hovered above the world, supported by the levitation fields generated by their mana engines. As long as they remained in a ley line, they could remain aloft indefinitely. “We’re at the highest point of this ley line, approximately seventeen miles above the surface. It’ll be about twenty minutes before the batteries have recharged.” She turned around to face Ledger. “So, spaceman, think your gizmo will work from here?”

Ledger shook his head in frustration. “Not a chance. Like I said before, I patched it up as best I could, but it’s still underpowered. Can’t break the atmosphere anymore.”

She shrugged. “Does it hurt to try? You might as well do something while we wait.” Her eyebrow arched at just the angle that meant “you’re now supposed to recognize that I’m smarter than you.”

The communicator’s battery was good for at least another ten years, and he had a spare in the box with it, anyway. He returned her shrug, petulantly, but reached for the box. Damned whiz-kid, thinks she knows everything.

He had to respect Heleta. She was a prodigy, highly competent as both an Engineer and as a Mage. If something broke, she could fix it. If a spell came unwoven, she could re-cast it. That was why she was here; she was perfectly suited to work out the bugs of this mana-powered rocket as they came up. Alastair was in the pilot’s seat by right that the whole project was his. Ledger was along only because he was the only person who knew which buttons to push on the communicator. At twenty-two, she was fifteen years his junior, but he still took the backseat to her.

Still, does she have to rub it in? He resisted the urge to tell her that the way she kept tilted her chin up only served to emphasize how big the nostrils of her upturned nose were. And that huge nose ring didn’t help. He’d never really gotten into the habit of acting like an adult, himself; that was doubtless the true reason behind their enmity. We’ve got to keep peace. We’ve got to do this, call in the cavalry, so I can go home and get back to my nice, comfy life.

The screen of the communicator blinked at him. Searching… Searching… No signal. He flipped it off and snapped the lid shut. “Nothing. Like I said, it can’t reach the beacon on Tran’s Eye.” That was Tethlo’s green moon, currently a sliver rising over the horizon.

Alastair twisted to glare at them. “Cut the chatter on my ship. Heleta, there’s a problem with the balloons in the port Riser. Go lend a hand.”

“Aye, cap’n!”

Ledger sneered as she scrambled over him and out the hatch, then climbed into her seat to could look out the porthole. He didn’t have any of his own in the third chair. Outside the window he saw the dorsal structure of the starboard Riser split open. Tightly folded fabric spilled out, growing and twisting as fans pumped in a mixture of air and compressed gases. The writhing heaps swelled and took shape into four massive balloons, each half-again as big as a Riser tipped on end.

Many people had tried flying as high as they could before; all of them had found, instead, a quick way down. The next level of ley lines was too far away; their batteries had all run out of juice before reaching the mark. The idea behind the Zenith Riser was that keeping the air in the balloon’s hot took far less mana than it did to power the levitation coils. The balloons weren’t big enough to lift the ship on their own, but they would lighten the load enough for them to bridge the gap before the batteries drained.

“Alastair?”

“Hmm…?” The old man was so intent on watching the process and making sure his design worked smoothly that he had been only dimly aware of the Terran.

“Why didn’t you just make the balloons bigger? Then we could float all the way up.”

Alastair tore his eyes away from the porthole and glared at Ledger like he had said something insane. Then he remembered that the faux astronomer had not spent the past weeks haggling with workers and suppliers and jury-rigging design modifications to make no end of completely impossible things happen. Alastair sighed, shrugged, and turned his hard, clear eyes back out the porthole. “Such a balloon would have been immense, but we could have done it, given enough time and money. We ran out of both. We’ll have to just pray that these take enough of a load off of the engines.”

Now that he actually was crammed into another race’s first, untested spaceship, all the uncertainties and calls for prayer were worrying him. “How do you even know there is a web up there? What if we climb all the way, and find nothing? What then?”

“Then we have only a short trip back down.”

Ledger’s blood momentarily froze. “What?”

The old hard man remained stoic for a moment. Then he actually smiled, which was even more unnerving. “You’ll fall for anything, won’t you?” He chuckled, “A few decades ago a couple of sourcerers attempted the flight. They didn’t make it, but they survived the trip home, and got closer than anyone else ever had; close enough to feel the high web. Since then we’ve made ley-tracers powerful enough to map it out. It’s about fifty miles higher than this one, quite near the edge of the atmosphere. Don’t worry, little spaceman, we’ll slide straight up into one.”

Ledger’s heartbeat was returning to stable. It skipped when the Tethlan muttered, “If we can make the crossing…”

“What? What do you mean ‘If’? Don’t you know? ”

Alastair sneered. Alien or not, he didn’t imagine he’d ever be very fond of Ledger. “Look, Ledger, this isn’t exactly the best time for a scientific endeavor. We’re in the middle of a war! There are risks involved. I designed the Zenith to work, but I don’t know that it will. My daughter has remained behind to guard us because she believes in this mission, not because she knows we’ll succeed. We’re all doing this because we hope you can call for help, but we don’t have any guarantee. Even if you do, there’s no guarantee they’ll come.”

Ledger inspected his gloves and tried to figure out if he was hurt, angry, or confused. He realized that he was scared. “They’ll come. They have to.” It came out as a whisper. Silently he admitted that the statement was, in fact, just another hope. What they were doing was uncertain, unsafe. There were no guarantees in this endeavor, just hope.

The fate of the world was resting on their shoulders; two native pioneers and one scared alien. Ledger was finally starting to feel the weight of the burden.

He sat quiet, lost in his own past, while Alastair barked orders through the voice tube. He ran through his own memories, recalling all the people he’d been, on all the different worlds. He’d worn many acts in his life, and thrown them aside. But here, on this magical world, he’d found an act he didn’t want to give up. His home was below, waiting for him to return to it. His friends and the life he had built were at risk. Everyone was waiting, hoping for them to bring in help against this terrible enemy.

Ledger was surprised to find that, despite his fear, his resolve was hardening. He’d never known much fear. He wasn’t used to uncertain situations. He was startled at the way he was reacting. He was frightened, but he was going to do everything he could, anyway. If hope was all they had to go on, then that would have to be enough. He allowed himself a little self-satisfied smile.

A few minutes later the balloons were filled and the batteries were at full charge. The focusing coils thrummed, and the Zenith Riser lurched up, much lighter thanks to the balloons. The levitation engines were running only at quarter-power, but they were still rising as quickly as they would normally have under full thrust.

Heleta returned, heralded by a blast of cold air as she opened the hatch, and scrambled into her seat and began delivering her report. She and Alastair were soon bouncing technical jargon back and forth at each other in what was bound to be a very long discussion.

Ledger stared at the twin brown buns of Heleta’s tightly braided hair and felt his smile slowly fade. Resolved or not, it was going to be a long, slow rise through fifty miles of empty air.

X X X

Tristar hovered, with mana taps wide open, high above the northern reaches of the Tangonian empire. The other fighters strung out before and after it only emphasized the craft’s sleek design. The other fighters were mass-produced craft, made for magic-less pilots. They were forced to be bulky and uninspiring to accommodate their mana batteries. Tristar glimmered among them. It had been hand-made by a master craftsman, sleek and thin and deadly agile. Its taps allowed it to cruise along the ley lines, but there were no batteries to mar its bladelike contours. As soon as it left the embrace of the ley lines all of the power required to keep it aloft came directly from its sourcerer pilot.

Marta gazed up at the Zenith Riser. It was so far above that she could barely make out any details of its shape anymore. She lowered her glass and looked with her own eyes; now it was just the merest speck, pushing up and away from her. She checked her timepiece, then snapped it shut with nervous fingers. They should be close now, but she had no way of knowing.

He’s so vulnerable up there. So fragile.

If one of the Zdir craft happened to come near enough to notice the vessel, she was sure they’d shoot first, and then stop to wonder what they’d demolished. And whatever they used for a power source, it had nothing to do with mana. The aliens were not bound to the ley lines like the natives. If they chose to climb up to the Zenith Riser and pluck it from the sky, she could not stop them. Or perhaps one of their ships out in space would pass overhead and swat it down. They had weapons that could do that.

Marta shuddered. It wasn’t even worth thinking about.

She stood up in the open cockpit of her personal fighter and looked down at the world spread below her. She pulled her jacket tight to guard her from the cold, thin air and hooked her feet through loops to keep from being torn out by the howling winds. Below her were the rolling Brazen Plains that fed Tangonia. Great wide highways crisscrossed the land, following the pathways of the terrestrial ley lines. The Clan Mountains darkened the northeastern horizon, crowned by the towering Five Peaks. To the northeast the Tildatch spread off far past the horizon. The dark forest marked the edge of Tangonia, and of man’s dominion. She turned about. To the south…

To the south black smoke rose in a thick column and spread out to smudge the sky. To the south Siilahr, capital of Tangonia, burned. Man’s greatest city on this side of the planet had been taken out with one shot. Her connection with Gaia allowed her to feel, in a small way, the pain of those fires burning into the earth, consuming lives

In the name of Gaia, I hope father was right in thinking he could make it to the high web. And I hope that daft astronomer can live up to his promises. If not, then we’re doomed, all of us.

A light flashing in her eyes snapped her out of her daze. A pilot flying next to her was flashing her with his signal mirror and pointing animatedly up. She couldn’t tell if his shouts were inspired by dread or excitement; the cold wind whipped his words away. She snapped her telescope up, found the ship, and smiled. There were three flares, falling, each billowing green smoke. A thrill ran down her spine and rippled through her body like a summer storm. They’ve done it! They’ve reached the high web! He’d overcome the unknown, climbed higher than any Tethlan had before. She couldn’t help but laugh out loud; given an hour to recharge, her father would go higher still, up beyond the final embrace of their mother world. Pilots up and down the line were pumping their fists in the air and cheering; they couldn’t hear each other, but the elation was understood by all.

Only days before she had feared seeing the entire land going up in flames, along with the other nations of the world. It had seemed like that was the only possible end as the aliens swept over the nations of their world. Now there was a glimmer of hope in her heart, a feeling that rains may yet come to put out the fires. She wished that some of that hope would spread into the presence that always hovered at the back of her mind; her connection to the spirit that lived at the heart of the world. But Gaia had grown taciturn in the recent weeks of the conflict; the fear and pain of all the world was effecting it more than one woman’s hope could.

Some time later movement to the southwest caught her eye. She brought up her glass again, and all the warmth fled. A military convoy was moving away from the Engineers’ stronghold; massive landships packed with soldiers and armed golems. They were plowing along the road that led from the broken coast to Siilahr to bring aid to the fighting that must still rage in the city. A scout wagon was rushing back up the road at full throttle towards them. He had launched three smoke-signals into the air; red-black-red.

Hostiles approaching!

The “hostiles” overtook the scout before it reached the convoy and slagged it with a single shot. There were two of them; bulbous crimson spike-encrusted vehicles that kept aloft using some ungodly power source. The landships had barely had time to uncover their cannons before the twin ships were on them, piercing them with bolts of fire that burned like suns and rockets that dug through armor and destroyed the landships from within. Soldiers inside died without ever getting the chance to fire off a shot in their defense. Golems were blasted to slag, their ballistae and cannons silent.

Once again Marta had to keep herself from rushing off into the fray. Alone, she’d be torn to pieces between the two marauding Zdir. The other pilots could reach them with enough power left for a short fight, but they would not be able to make it back. They could not leave the Zenith Riser unguarded.

Marta snarled. She cursed and clenched her glass so tight it threatened to shatter. But she did not give the order to attack. She and her men just drifted, watching their comrades die, and hoped they weren’t spotted.

It was over quickly. The once-proud armored landships were now silent, immobile monuments to the might of the Zdir. Smoke billowed from a thousand melt-edged holes in their thick armor. Very few blackened soldiers were running and crawling from the heaps. They did not survive the mopping-up. The two devilish ships circled their kill a few times, looking for anything else that would be fun to shoot at. Finding nothing, they stopped and hovered, as if conferring their next move. Marta knew that that was exactly what was going on. The alien ships turned toward the Broken coast. Then they stopped again. Dread wrapped its icy fingers around her heart.

The two ships turned toward them and accelerated. Dread clenched its fist.

She dropped down into her seat and slammed Tristar’s canopy shut. She tightened her gloves, clipped her breathing mask in place, and wrapped her hands around familiar controls. Dear ship, it’s time to spread your wings. It was an old prayer, a silly superstition she’d never managed to shake. Tristar had served her well before, and she hoped it would flipped a switch which released three red flares; the battle signal. The soldiers knew what they were to do; hold positions until they are in range, then attack. Protect the Zenith Riser at all costs.

It did not take long for the aliens to reach them. They came roaring up, their engines screaming, and began filling the skies with fire.

Marta and the other Engineer pilots broke, dodging fire, and swarmed around the enemy. Tethlan technology was not nearly as advanced as that of the Zdir, but it was incredibly different. That gave them an edge of their own. The aliens lashed out with plasma cannons and rockets. The Tethlans returned with shots of their own. Cannons shaped raw mana into telekinetic spells that propelled cursed slugs out of the barrels at sound-breaking speeds. Pilots locked on with attraction spells and loosed rockets which twisted like living creatures to reach the marked destinations.

Marta twisted through it all, an ace among aces. Nothing touched her, and every shot she loosed met its mark. She gave all she had, hoping to wear down the energy shielding to get at the craft within.

The others were not faring so well. Half of her force had already been reduced to black streaks of smoke, falling back to the ground. She knew from experience that they were just warming up. She pulled through a twisting swerve and lined up one of the juggernauts in her sights. You will not have another! She unleashed a full salvo, firing all four cannons at once directly into the thin armor between the alien’s roaring engines. Each spinning, diamond-tipped slug hit and burrowed deep into the ship. Each slug had been cursed with a lightning spell; her personal signature. The ship lurched as the slugs unleashed raw electricity into its innards. The engines stuttered and failed as the ship’s circuitry fused. Its antigravity fields collapsed, and the ship spiraled down to a planet that was eager to crush it.

Her triumphant bellow caught in her throat. She’d killed one, but the other had broken through. It was going full speed, tearing away from them and the lay line, angling up toward the helpless ship high above.

Father!

“After him!” The other pilots could not hear her, but she knew they understood anyway. Some were already ahead of her. They understood the meaning of “at all costs”

They thrusted up and away from the ley line, pouring everything into their engines to catch up to the fleeing enemy. If they didn’t catch it soon, then they would never get a second chance. Marta knew it was only a matter of time before their batteries failed, and they left her alone. She had no way of knowing how much longer she’d last, but eventually she would fall as well.

She knew all this, and she didn’t care. All of her will was focused on pouring her magic into the circuits of Tristar, giving life to the engines that pushed her up beyond the boundaries of safety. She kept her eyes locked on the hulking alien ship and begged for more power.

Just a little more… just a little more power, and he’s mine… Gaia help me, grant me just a little more…

X X X

They were hanging, frozen, like a soap bubble in a new world. Heleta stood on the extended boom from the starboard Riser and clung to the handholds on the outside of the Zenith. She felt utterly and completely alone, beyond the reach of everything she knew except for this tiny ship and the few souls on board. Thin air pulled at her, gently urging her to step into the open and experience the freedom of the birds. The world was so far below her feet that she could see its curvature, like it was trying to pull still further away from her. Above her, the sky faded to black. It was midday, but she could count the stars. Tran’s Eye was almost directly overhead, a green scythe blade bigger and more vivid than she had ever seen it before.

The air up here was so thin that they all had to breathe bottled oxygen through masks. They had to seal themselves in the bulky suits because any exposed skin risked instant frostbite. They couldn’t pressurize and heat any of the cabins yet because she and the four technicians in the Risers were scurrying about like mad tinkering with a thousand little things that had gone wrong with the machine.

There was a slight problem. They’d reached the high web well enough; it had only been slightly higher than expected. They’d cheered and elated and gave thanks to every god they knew, and a few they invented on the spot. Then they’d realized that this ley line was different from the ones they knew. It was sparse, weak, more spread out. It was still strong enough to hold them aloft and refill their drained batteries, but it was going to take twice as long as they expected.

In the meantime, she and the crew had made themselves busy preparing for the launch. The booms had been extended to their full length, pushing the Risers away from the Zenith. Then they had rotated ninety degrees to point the rocked straight up away from the planet.

Then they had had to haul the balloons in to protect them from the launch. the Zenith’s engines did not propel by burning anything. Instead they were programmed to turn raw mana into a sustained pushing force using a stored telekinetic spell. The two focusing coils directed the pushing force and amplified it to preposterous volumes. As the Zenith launched, the backwash of kinetic force would shred the balloons if they were still deployed, and the Risers would need them to get back home.

It should have been a simple, automatic process, But they didn’t deflate properly, so someone ad been forced to strap themselves to the upper hull, pry the backup valve open, and pray the blast didn’t knock them off of the ship and out into emptiness. The ballons had to be winched in as they deflated so that they didn’t collapse onto the Riser and snag. Of course, that didn’t work right either; they didn’t fold properly, as they’d been designed to, and kept wrapping around the axle of the winch. So someone had had to stand on top of the airships and guide the massive, collapsing balloons onto their spools, all the while trying not to get themselves snagged in the billowing fabric.

Despite all that, they’d still managed to get the eight balloons stowed and the launch rig ready before the batteries finished charging.

Heleta was now completely exhausted, drenched in sweat inside her stuffy suit, and she stunk. Moreover, the facemask was pinching her nose ring in the most painful way. All she wanted to do now was crawl into her chair in the Zenith and sleep through the rest of the mission. If something else went wrong, Alastair could send Ledger out to help the crew.

The horror of that notion caught up to her. No, no. That inept alien would only manage to send us home the quick and painful way. I’ll just hope nothing else goes wrong that the techs can’t fix themselves. Out of habit she reached up to touch her lucky nose ring. Her thickly-swathed finger managed only to nudge the mask so that the ring twisted into an even more painful position. Shit… I think I’m bleeding. I’ll try not to read that as a sign.

X X X

The waiting had gone on for far too long. It seemed like he’d been stuck, flopped on his back in the back seat with nothing to do for hours. His watch said it hadn’t even been one. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t have been for the long, dull climb it took to get here. It was easy to feel brave and resolute when something was happening. Since they’d reached the high web, ledger had only felt… useless. He’d offered to help, but there was really nothing he could do; he didn’t know the first thing about this kind of mana-based technology. He could have helped with the balloons, but Alastair refused to let him expose himself to risk when he was the only one who knew how to operate the communicator. So he’d sat, and waited, absently listening to Alastair bark orders through the voice tube. Half of it he couldn’t follow, but it sounded like, at last, they were approaching launch time.

God how I miss the comfort of a real, civilized spaceship. How did I ever get roped into making another race’s history? And to think, he’d passed up taking a plush position on the Kelltrizzi homeworld to go off adventure-seeking on this primitive world. I can’t believe I actually like this backwater rock.

The hatch opened behind him, letting a blast of bitter air. Heleta crawled over him, making sure to use him as a stepladder, and settled into her seat. She and Alastair touched helmets and conferred briefly. Then he flicked on the voice tube and his sagacious voice manifested inside all of their helmets. “Riser crews, report.”

“All clear, Cap’n.” came back from each ship.

“Good. All’s clear aboard Zenith. Seal and pressurize cabins. And by the Gods, get your heaters on.”

It wasn’t soon enough before they stowed their helmets and masks under the seats and took the gloves off. Heleta winced and gingerly twisted her gaudy nose ring back into place. The skin around it was pink and swollen. “Those damn masks hurt like a bitch!”

“Why didn’t you just take the ugly thing out first?”

She twisted around to give him the eyebrow again. “Because it’s my good luck charm stupid. What, did you want me to fall off the airship?”

Ledger sputtered. He cut off his knee-jerk reply of “Yeah.” before it escaped. Then he had to hold back a comment about idiotic superstitions; on Tethlo, charms and superstitions weren’t exactly silly.

Alastair filled the awkward silence. “It’s a totem of the religion she follows, Ledger. Frankly, I’m glad she wore it; we need all the help we can get.”

Heleta sneered and stuck out her tongue.

Ledger took in a breath and slowly let it out. Even after eleven years, these people were strange to him; by Tethlan standards, Alastair was realistic, sensible, and analytical, never one to put superstition over reason. But of course, magic and the supernatural were active participants in Tethlan science.

Their grey-haired leader tapped a guage and spoke into the voice tube. “Batteries nearly full; I estimate five minutes until launch.”

“Copy Cap’n. Shall we unlock the clamps?”

“Might as well.”

A deep metallic thunk reverberated up from each side of the Zenith.

Shit! What was that? Ledger looked at the other two; they didn’t seem bothered. He sighed and settled back into his seat, struggling to find that one comfortable position he’d only just found.

“Captain! Bogey approaching from below!”

Ledger nearly choked.

“What’s the ETA?”

“Looks like… two minutes at best, sir.”

“Shit!” For a few tense seconds Alastair nearly radiated frustration. Then he brought the tube back to his mouth. “Risers, abort. Prepare for –”

“Negative, Cap’n.”

“What?”

What? thought Ledger. Why not?

“Port Riser will not abort.”

“Starboard Riser remains.”

“Crew, we’re not at full charge yet. We can’t make it without –” The old engineer was cut off again by a deep humming that filled the cabin and set Ledger’s hair on end. Alastair lowered the voice tube and muttered a soft curse.

“What? What’s that sound?”

Heleta whispered back to him, “The Risers have diverted their own power to refill our batteries quicker.” For the first time she didn’t sound petulant, just sad and awed.

A pilot of one of the Risers spoke again, his voice quiet but strong. “He’s already got us, Captain. We could never escape one of them. But you can. And you must.”

Alastair’s voice was just as soft, but not as firm. He quaked with barely contained respect and sorrow. “Gods… Get your parachutes on. You’ve got to try. Please…”

“Aye Captain, we will.”

“Whatever happens… I’m not a priest but… Whatever happens, I know Gaia will give you all a hero’s welcome.”

“Thank you, Captain. I has been an honor.”

Ledger had never been in combat. He didn’t know what to think, or what to feel. All he could do was sit, mute and numb, and watch Heleta as she peered through her starboard porthole at the airship below. She said nothing, but occasionally a tear fell free to splatter on his shoulder.

“Risers, our batteries are full. We’re launching.”

“Gaia protect you, Zenith.”

Alastair eased the throttle forward, and the humming below them crescendoed up as mana flowed from the batteries, through rune-encrusted spell stones, and into the hearts of the primary focusing coils. The sound swelled through notes that set Ledger’s teeth grinding. He closed his eyes and gripped his armrests as the Zenith shook like a waking giant.

“Just a few moments to warm the engines up,” said Alastair. “Just a few moments, and we’ll blast away from here.”

X X X

Marta had never felt so drained. She had never pushed herself or her fighter so hard before. The others had long since fallen away, forced to parachute free or attempt to glide back into the ley line. She’d chased the alien straight up, tapping everything she had to keep Tristar airborne. For a long time she’d paced him, but never closed the gap. Now he was climbing away, and she was falling; not just falling behind, but falling inside. She was losing consciousness, her body was unable to provide the magic she begged of it.

Soon… soon it’ll be all over. I’ll slip away from the agony and fall back to Gaia. Her grip on the control stick was loosening. Fatigue gripped her to the bone. Her eyes were growing heavy, closing until the Zdir ship was nothing but a vague blur growing smaller. I did all I could, but it was not enough…

“No!” Marta forced her eyes back open. She tightened her grip and brought the distant ship back into her crosshairs. Other sourcerers failed to make the crossing, but I will not! I can’t! I promised dad I’d guard his back!

She took a deep breath and steadied her mind. Her power was diminishing. The Tristar was falling behind, its engines slowing as her mana faded. She reached into the back of her mind, the center of her spirit, and touched the presence there. It was her connection, the source of her power. Gaia, both Mother and Father of her vibrant world.

Please wake up. Please, I need more.

Her hands were shaking now. Her nerves were failing, misfiring from fatigue.

Please!

There was no answer. This Gaia was old, and had faced many threats in its time, but never anything like this. There had never been such fear and sorrow among its people. It was afraid.

Marta reached in further, traveling through the spiritual link she shared with her world. Her mental self was nearly crushed by the presence, the sheer immensity of the spirit which birthed all spirits on Tethlo, but she refused to fold. The power she needed was there, a million times over. But the Great Spirit was holding back, cowed by the fear it felt emanating from its billions of other children.

You must give me the power. Wake up! Answer me or we all will die! If it was possible to spiritually grab a Gaia by the shirtfront and slap it across the face like a shell-shocked soldier, then Marta did just that. YOU WILL DIE!

Far below her, Tethlo shook. A minor quake rippled across the entire globe. Ley lines shuddered and dimmed momentarily. Every Tethlan, from single-celled to sentient, paused. Every thinking creature, from worms to the world’s three sentient species, thought they heard a voice crying in the back of their minds.

That voice was an echo of the cry which tore from Marta’s throat. Power filled her soul, more power than any human was ever meant to hold. Ripples of agony and ecstasy warred along her nerves. The magical force, the life-blood of Gaia, burst inside her like a supernova, and kept coming.

The connection did something it never had before, for any sourcerer Marta had heard of; it quaked, and Gaia spoke inside her mind.

“I AM SORRY, OFFSPRING. IT IS TOO MUCH, I KNOW.”

She burned. Every nerve twitched within a private bonfire. The voice nearly crushed her spirit into nothing, nearly drove her mad. The magical force surged within her, so strong she was sure she would split open and the golden light would tear her and Tristar from the sky. No… it is necessary. Please, though... Please help me. Stay with me.

The spirit did not know what to do, at first; it was like a fly asking a human to help preen its wings. But it felt Marta’s desire, and followed. They gripped the familiar curve of the control stick. They reined the power in, shaped it, ushered it through their arms and into the sky-fighter. The focusing coils came into new life, churning out power beyond any they’d ever harnessed. And then there was more. A force wrapped around Tristar, crackling in colors beyond the rainbow. It was as if Gaia’s hand slid under the little fighter and pushed up into the sky.

Marta would have been terrified. The speed and the power would have driven her over the edge. But Gaia was with her. The spirit of the entire world held her, supported her. She leaned forward, tugging against the straps of her harness, and squinted her eyes with new determination. The speck of the alien ship had been shrinking. Now it grew. Gaia whispered in her ear; “GO, CHILD. FLY AS A DRAGON.”

X X X

Heleta screamed as two spears of fire tore through the starboard Riser from below. Secondary explosions rippled through the ship, and a crackling nimbus of leaking mana grew. The dark blur of a Zdir heavy fighter streaked past. The airship was slipping now, its surviving engines crumbling under the strain forced onto them.

Ledger shook, trying not to collapse over the brink of hysteria. The noise was oppressive, crushing his thoughts down to the merest point. We’re still airborne. We can still… He opened his eyes.

No. We won’t, will we?

The Zdir fighter was a black bulge in the primary viewport, arcing through the sky at the head of a trail of condensing exhaust. It was turning about, lining up for a head-to-head shot.

“No…” Alastair’s voice was gravelly, low. “Not when we were so close.” Ledger had never heard anyone speak like that before. It frightened him, like hearing the last nail hammered into your own coffin.

Two streaks, like flecks of silver, shot from below them and crammed into the ship. Chunks of armor blasted out into the air. The bulky fighter lurched and spiraled out of their field of view. Another took its place, looking to Ledger like a sleek azure and indigo manta ray sheathed in crackling waves of energy.

“Marta!” Ledger couldn’t see Alastair’s face, but he knew there were tears welling in those bright eyes of his.

“But how did—”

Alastair cut Heleta off. “It doesn’t matter. She did. And we’re still here!” The old engineer looked back, meeting Heleta’s eyes, then Ledger’s. A devil of a smile was starting to show through. “Hold on!” He looked forward and rammed the throttle all the way forward.

To ledger, it felt like a mountain range was playing football, and he was the ball.

X X X

Marta guided Tristar through the bucking wash of wind and force as the Zenith rushed past her, pushing her father up to the stars. With so much power, she could move as she wished through the thin air. Nothing could stop her. She slid her fighter about with unhurried grace until the Zdir fighter was back in her sights. It had recovered, and was screaming back, determined not to let its prize get away.

This time you will fail. You will not harm my father. There was no rancor in her thoughts, just pure intent. She had used her last two rounds to get its attention, but that did not matter. With the power Gaia had given her, she did not need cannons or machines for this. Mana flowed over the hull in sinuous coils and jumps, flowing to follow the command of her will. It gathered between the forward canards of the Tristar, which jutted forward like horns, and built into a tiny sun of raw energy. Marta gave the mana a form and a target, and let it loose. The magic leaped free, twisting into a jagged lightning bolt, a column of fire and light and snapping spiritual power. It smashed through shielding and armor, and dug into the soft bits within. They melted, boiled and burst, and the fighter scattered across the sky.

Marta wheeled about, no longer caring about the enemy, and looked to the sky. The Zenith was already gone, not even a glimmer left of it.

She leveled the Tristar out allowed herself a smile. He did it! He’s reached the stars!

The too-loud voice spoke within her mind. “IT IS FINISHED?”

Yes.

“WHAT WILL HAPPEN NOW?”

You know that you are not the only Gaia?

“YES.”

They will call on the children of others to come to help.

“GOOD.” Marta felt the voice ebbing away, growing faint. The burning power was draining out, leaving her tired. Sleep was looming like a tidal wave. “GOOD. I HAVE BEEN LONELY, ALL THIS TIME. SLEEP, CHILD. I WILL BRING YOU HOME.”

Marta closed her eyes, and the Tristar drifted down to Tethlo like a leaf through still air.

X X X

The last traces of blue fell behind, and the Zenith plowed through the final traces of the atmosphere. The engines screamed, blasting a constant stream of pure kinetic force out from their focusing coils. Their speed increased as they climbed higher and Tethlo’s gravity loosened its grip on them.

Ledger didn’t notice. He’d made hundreds of launches in his time, but those had been in gently-rising v-tol spaceplanes or, more recently, brand-new anti-gravity lifts. Both had been climate-controlled and offered an array of in-flight entertainments and cocktails. This was nothing like that; he was being rattled like a paint can in an automatic mixer, and the entire ship was trembling and shuddering with him. He was sure that somewhere an important bolt was shaking loose. His harness seemed ready to snap at any moment. He’d given up trying to think about the sound. All of his effort was bent on an attempt to stop sensory input.

How many times today have I regretted coming? I’ve lost count.

Then there was silence.

Well, comparatively speaking, it’s silent enough. So are we dead? He envisioned the Zenith as a streak of burning bits across the sky. I don’t feel dead… he risked cracking open an eye, then let out an “Ooohhh…” and opened them both.

A wash of fire flowed over the main viewport and past the portholes, crimsoning the light inside. Occasional sparks and flecks danced in hues of blue and purple, streaking away into oblivion. The churning crush of friction heat remained a constant five centimeters away from the skin of the ship.

Mana shielding… I wondered how the old man expected to punch through the outer atmosphere without ceramics of high-grade alloys. Ledger tittered. Even after so long on Tethlo, living in a wonderland of magic still got to him sometimes. I’m flying in a magic bubble!

The wash of radiation abruptly fell away, and Zenith flew like a spearhead out into open void. The stars glimmered in their naked splendor and Tran’s Eye swelled huge and green before them, a vibrant, cratered sickle. It was so clear now that they could make out the rest of the shadowed moon by the absence of the stars it blocked. Tethlo was a glowing blue vastness below them. Only the barest sliver was visible if they craned all the way forward.

Heleta twisted and turned in her seat like she was trying to suck up the entirety of everything through her eyeballs for safekeeping. Her mouth was running non-stop, fully on automatic, fervently trying to put everything into words.

Alastair sat quiet, eyes straight ahead. He had lived long enough, dreaming of this moment, that he knew that there were no words for some experiences. He just sat still, hands lovingly draped over the controls, and let the moment happen. the majesty of the unmasked moon and the unfiltered stars seemed to wash over him, scrubbing away years of trial and pain to reveal the young dreamer’s soul that had driven the scientific mind.

Ledger let them have their moment. He’d seen it all before. Besides, it was his turn to be busy. He held the patch-job communicator cradled in his lap with all the reverence of a holy grail. His heartbeat had sped up to match with the blinking of the standby cursor as the device sought a connection.

Searching… Searching…

C’mon, c’mon…

… … …

I know I fixed you! I may not be able to cast spells, but I sure as hell can operate a pocket-solder.

Signal contacted. Negotiating with host.

“YES!” It really was just a harsh whisper, but it shattered the majesty of the moment with all the brute force of a full-bellied bellow.

Alastair twisted in his seat. Heleta spun around, eyebrow ready, saying something like, “Ahh! What? Damn, man…”

“Signal! I’ve got the beacon!” The way he felt, he could ignore Heleta’s demeaning brow.

Alastair grinned. “Then by all means, send your message.”

“Huh? Oh yeah!” He’d been so thrilled he’d momentarily forgotten why. He had his message prepared and stored in the communicator; coded text traveled much quicker through the FTL network than real-time communication would, and it could carry all the priority flags he’d waited his whole career to use. He punched up the file and hit the transmit button.

The communicator said something like “Pop!FZZZzzzz…”

Ledger said nothing; first he was too stunned, then he had to hold back a reply that would have been mainly fist-based and counterproductive.

“What was that?” Heleta kept her eyebrow in check; she knew well enough that Ledger didn’t need any more negative input at the moment.

“It… it sounded like a fuse.” His hands trembled as he fished the screwdriver out of the box. “God, I hope it was just a fuse.” Circuitry glistened up at him. Wires stretched out like entrails as he pried into the communicator’s recesses. Finally the problem glared up at him like an accusing bruised eye; a simple blown fuse. He let out a breath that had penned itself up in his chest.

Alastair whispered, as if afraid too much noise might make things worse. “You can fix it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’ll just take a sec.”

“Hey, what is that?” Heleta had her face pressed against her window. Ledger shoved her out of the way to get a look. A star was rising over the curve of the world, growing brighter.

“That… would be a Zdir spaceship heading our way.”

“Ledger,” said the Engineer.

“Yes?”

“Fix it quickly.”

“Right.”

He flipped over the communicator’s chassis; the convenient spare fuse clips were empty. He rifled through the box; nothing. The little tool pouch held only tools. He peeled back the foam padding, and found nothing but the inside of the casing. “Shit.” He looked around the cockpit. No, stupid. Tethlans had no concept of a fuse, or why one would ever need one.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t have a spare.” He looked around again; in this situation, he didn’t really need a fuse, just something to jump the gap. Anything that could carry current.

Heleta was back at the window. “They’re getting closer.”

That’s the last thing I needed to hear… Then he saw it. Gaudy, yes. Ugly, yes. But pure gold. Perfect. While Heleta watched the enemy bearing down on them, Ledger reached forward and slipped the loop out of her nose.

“Hey! That’s my good luck charm!”

“Then maybe it’ll work.” He tossed the dead fuse aside, mangled the jeweled loop of gold into a horseshoe, and shoved it into the socket. It was just the size for the contacts to pin it in place. He didn’t bother closing up the case, but draped the bits across his lap and flipped the disemboweled thing back on.

Searching… Searching…

“Ledger, any day now.” Alastair’s hands hung nervously over the controls.

“Don’t move! They might not have seen us yet!”

“She’s right, Cap’n. They have trouble tracking your machines, probably because of the power source.”

Searching… Searching…

“I think you’re right. They’re not moving. Like they’re just waiting…”

Searching… Signal contacted. Negotiating with host.

“I’m in!” He called the file up again, amazed that it hadn’t been lost in the short. His finger hesitated for a brief moment over the transmit switch. He was afraid of it happening again. Hell. What will be, will be. He hit the switch.

Computerized incomprehensibility rushed up the screen as the communicator chattered its gossip out into space. On Tran’s Eye the beacon picked up the signal, recoded it into an optic pulse stream, and blasted the laser signal through a pinhole hyperspace portal.

Alastair and Heleta both glared at him expectantly. “Well, did it work?”

A line of optical distortion speared from the Zdir spaceship to the surface of the green moon. A glimmering flash flared up, then winked out. Ledger swallowed hard. “I hope so, because they just roasted the beacon.” He looked down at th active transmitter in his lap, then returned Alastair’s hard gaze. “Um, that thing about them not detecting us…”

“Copy. Hold tight!” He slammed the throttle forward. A high-yield laser tore through the space just vacated and refracted through Tethlo’s upper atmosphere.

They must still be having trouble locking on. We should not have been able to dodge that. He cut the communicator’s power, hoping it would keep them from locking on again.

A pulse from attitude thrusters flipped the Zenith back toward the planet. Ledger held on tight to the contents of his stomach. As the rocket wheeled, Ledger caught sight of two flares cutting away from the distant ship. Missiles. Damn.

The planet was getting bigger in the viewport. The first flecks of heat were pinging across the Zenith’s mana shielding.

“Alastair, what’s the plan?”

“I’ve seen the stars. Now I’m going home.”

Briefly Ledger wondered if they should be worried about things like flight plans, windows, reaching the LZ, whatever. Scraps recalled from elementary history told him that his own race’s pioneers had worried about things like that. Then he realized that the missiles weren’t concerned with those questions. “Nice plan!” He gripped the armrests and shut his eyes as the clanking ship fell back home, blazing with the fire of re-entry.

If nothing else, we succeeded… I think.

X X X

Three days later a massive portal into hyperspace opened. The full might of the Zdir Core Armada pushed through, come to pluck this fresh world from its inhabitants and make it their own. The High Scale sat aboard his throne ship, slavering at the morsel that filled his viewscreen. At last, they had found a new home. For all of time it would be remembered that it was during His reign that the Gods had brought their race to a new world where they would rule over all. His fleet sped forward; nearly two hundred ships, from lightning-slick cruisers to towering carriers and colonial fortresses bore down on the floundering world.

Two minutes later, a series of portals squeezed into the fabric of reality. A fleet of Union ships came through, accompanied by contingents of ships from Kelltrizzi, Mord and dozens of other races. After all, molesting a world that was not even space-faring was a war crime, and they all wanted to be sure that the Code was honored in their region of the Galaxy.

It was a small fleet, the standard compliment sent out for policing actions.

It outnumbered the Zdir three to one.

X X X

In the end, they’d finally elected to let the missiles have the Zenith, and had parachuted back to the ground. Ledger was proud of himself; he’d only broken one bone on landing. It had been a long time since parachuting had been anything but a sport for the criminally insane among Terrans. Now he was trying mightily to get comfortable with a boulder for a pillow and a leg in a splint. Across the campfire, Alastair and Heleta were in deep conference trying to figure out exactly where in the trackless wilderness of the Tildatch they were. They had not seen any sign of intelligent life for three days; no forest folk, no dunbar, and none of the human-type Tethlans. It looked like if they were going to get anywhere, they were going to walk; three people with five legs between them.

The three of them looked up simultaneously, ears perked and eyes wide. A crackling roar was echoing along the valley below them.

“What in the world is that?”

“Zdir?”

Ledger shook his head “no,” and found that tears were welling in his eyes. It was the sweetest symphony, an orchestra that would put the heavenly choir to shame. It was the roar of Terran engines. He pointed, and the two Tethlans looked to where a Union Army troop transport was flying the length of the valley. “Our call went through.”

“That’s a Terran ship?” Heleta’s voice was hushed. For a moment they watched the boxy camouflaged vehicle as it carried on its way.

Ledger snapped up straight and nudged Heleta. “Well, are you gonna shoot up a flare or what? We’ve flown up to space and fallen all the way back. Personally, I’ve taken enough giant leaps for your kind. I’m not walking back if I can help it!”