CHAPTER TWO
Rylan kept a firm grip on the scrawny young man as he hauled him out from the riverbank and up to the clearing where the others were waiting. An actual wizard here on this dump of a moon. It was unbelievable. It might even mean Rylan’s luck was finally improving.
Of course, it had been a sickening feeling when he’d lost control of the arm. Almost like when he’d first got it, but hadn’t learned to work it yet, phantom pains fighting for his attention while strange, not-quite-right sensations came from his new limb. But his training had kicked in like it was supposed to, and he shut the little sneak down, activating emergency shielding designed to protect his internal nano-computers from forces stronger than some weirdo hiding in a muddy riverbank could muster. He shouldn’t have let his guard down in the first place, but who could expect he’d come across anyone with that kind of ability in the middle of the jungle? Rylan had been thinking about taking a leak, too, and losing control of his hand while it was holding his dick wasn’t something worth contemplating.
He gave the prisoner an extra shake just thinking about it. The kid, who’d been trying to look all helpless as the others approached, scrunched up his face and yelped. Whatever he was, he didn’t look like the wizards Rylan had glimpsed back in his days in the capital. Those women and men had seemed so mysterious and powerful, whispered about as they passed, always serious and intent on important Commonwealth business.
Whoever this guy was, he was scruffy and underfed, with brown eyes that seemed to take up half his face — when he wasn’t screwing them up to fake-wince at Rylan’s not-that-hard grip — and a thick uncontrolled mass of dark hair. Rylan wouldn’t have put him at much older than twenty standard years. But as unimpressive as he seemed, there was no doubting what he could do, and that made him a prize.
“What were you yelling about, Rylan?” The captain gave them an amused once-over as he came closer, but Rylan had learned he was amused by most things and bored by the rest. “Making friends?”
“I found us a way off this moon, Captain — er, Garcia.” The captain liked to keep things informal, most of the crew called him Sebastian, but Rylan couldn’t bring himself to be on a first name basis with his ship’s captain, even if the ship was likely stolen and its captain a smuggler. He yanked Jaime forward. “He’s a wizard.”
Garcia gave him a dubious look. “Seriously? This guy?”
Rylan nodded. “He took control of my arm.”
Garcia scratched at the light beard along his jaw. His brown hair was long enough to touch the collar of his shirt and Rylan practically twitched whenever he looked at it, thinking of all the regulations he’d had drilled into him about short hair on space vessels. The kid was lucky this crew didn’t keep to the rules — they’d have to shave that mop off his head before he’d be allowed onboard otherwise.
Garcia leaned closer to Jaime, peering at him. “Hello,” he said loudly and clearly like he didn’t expect to be understood. “I am Captain Sebastian Garcia of the ship The Wayward Prince. We mean you no harm.”
Jaime blinked. He actually shot a disbelieving glance over to Rylan, but Rylan kept his face blank. Jaime turned back to the captain. “Um, okay? I mean, I’m all ‘yay’ for no harm, but do you think I’m an alien or something? Those are just in stories.”
Garcia smiled lazily. “So are wizards, for the most part.”
“That’s an incorrect term that came out of the most superstitious and paranoid parts of the New Dark Age. I’m human, and there’s no such thing as magic.”
“But you can talk to computers? Speak their secret language and bend them to your will? Is that not the gift of your blood?” The captain could be a bit poetical at times, but Rylan saw that Jaime had fallen silent and was looking at the ground. There was a slight flush coming over his light brown skin.
“Are you going to turn me in?” he all but whispered.
Garcia crossed his arms. “That depends.” He seemed in no rush to explain further, and Rylan stifled a sigh.
Mags, who had been keeping watch at the perimeter of the clearing, came over, slinging her rifle over her shoulder. She was the second-in-command, and Rylan appreciated how she could get Garcia moving. She seemed at her most no-nonsense at the moment, fair skin pink-cheeked from the heat and running a hand through short gray hair that was curling in the humidity.
“It’ll be getting dark soon. There’s no sign of anyone else in the vicinity, but the longer we stay out here, the more likely we’re going to run into someone else.” She looked at Jaime. “So who’s this?”
The captain spread his arms. “Our salvation.”
“Our salvation looks like he could use a sandwich,” Mags said.
“He said his name was Jaime,” Rylan put in. He was still gripping him by the scruff of the neck, their skin all but fused together in the sultry air. Rylan squeezed, none-too-gently. “Is it?”
“Yes,” Jaime yelped.
“Well, Jaime,” Garcia said. “Do you have any particular ties to Mamawayawin Outpost? Family, friends, an enduring fondness for the local cuisine?”
Rylan got ready to squeeze again, but Jaime spoke up quickly. “Not really.”
The captain beamed. “Neither do I. In fact, I’m looking to exit this overly moist dungheap as soon as possible. There’s just one small problem.”
Mags sighed. “Sebastian, if we’re taking him can we just stuff him in a sack and go? If they decide to patrol the jungle—”
Garcia shook his head. “Mags. It’s a pivotal moment in this young man’s life, you can’t rush it. Also I don’t think we have any large enough sacks available.”
Jaime tensed under Rylan’s hand, and he prepared himself for a struggle, since, in lieu of sacks, Rylan was likely going to have to throw him over his shoulder. But Jaime had his eyes on the trees.
He swung his gaze back to Garcia. “Fine. Okay, whatever, I’ll talk to your ship, in exchange for a ride off this moon.” He glanced at all three of them. “I assume that was the question you were slowly getting around to asking?”
Garcia looked a bit put out. “It was, but—”
“Something’s coming,” Jaime said, gesturing at the jungle.
Rylan scanned what he could see of the sky. “The Commonwealth ship?”
Jaime shook his head. “I’m just sensing the tech, but it’s coming along the ground or just above, not from the sky.”
Mags nodded briskly. “Either a drone or they’re searching for us on foot.”
Garcia grinned. “On foot? And mess up their lovely suits? Not a chance.” He looked at them. “Well? What are we waiting for? Let’s get back to the Prince.”
He spun around and started through the jungle at a surprising speed. Rylan followed, pulling Jaime by the arm, at first because Rylan didn’t trust his sudden cooperation and expected him to take off into the trees, but it almost immediately became obvious Jaime needed a hand to keep him from tripping over his own feet, along with everything else on the jungle floor. Mags brought up the rear, using her comm to alert the rest of the crew.
They came out of the jungle into a small valley where the vegetation had been burned back, forming a makeshift landing pad barely big enough to contain the ungainly spaceship that perched on the ground. This smugglers’ cove was the only appeal of this outpost, and even that appeal was limited.
“Garcia! What the fuck—” Taka, the man who ran the place and charged outrageous, even for thieves, mark-ups on supplies, came stomping out of his metal shed. “My scanners are lighting up in there. How stupid are you?”
Garcia shrugged. “That is one of those unanswerable questions, my friend, but don’t worry, I think we’ll soon be out of your hair.”
Taka’s bald head flushed red. “You’ve brought government heat on my place and you still owe me money—”
Rylan had loosened his grasp on Jaime, ready in case Taka pulled a weapon from his loose and sweat-stained clothes, but Jaime twisted away from Rylan completely to point. “There!”
A small silver shape came out of the jungle, hovering silently above the ground.
Garcia exhaled. “Mags—”
Rylan saw that Mags already had her rifle out and was sighting along it. He knew the weapon had the range, but it didn’t have anything fancy like guided bullets or a ballistics computer. It was all on Mags to make the shot.
Her lightly lined face was peaceful as she gently squeezed the trigger.
The silencer was switched on so there was only a slight zing and the subtle shift of Mags’ shoulder to show she had fired. Across the field the drone wobbled and dropped to the ground.
Rylan raised his eyebrows, impressed. He never could have made that shot.
But Mags didn’t pause, just turned towards the ship. “Let’s go.”
Garcia clapped both hands on Taka’s shoulders. “Taka, my good man, I’m afraid I’ll have to owe you that drink.”
“What? You owe me nine thousand credits! Plus you just destroyed government property, who’s going to pay for that?”
Garcia had already whirled around and was following Mags to the open cargo bay of the Prince. Rylan grabbed Jaime, who was looking back and forth between the smoking drone and Taka, who seemed just as likely to burst into flames.
“You think shooting it is gonna stop ’em? They’ll be here in minutes! Even if you do get off the ground, you’ll be blasted out of the sky. Then who’s gonna pay me?”
Rylan paused on the edge of the cargo bay ramp and called back to the sputtering Taka. “You probably want to get back in your shed. So the ship doesn’t fry you and all.” He pushed Jaime up the ramp and hit the button to retract it and close the bay doors.
Taka’s voice followed them until the doors shut completely. “You assholes—”
Mags raised an eyebrow at Garcia. “He does have a point.”
“About me being an asshole?”
“That, and how those Commonwealth agents are on their way.”
Garcia gestured at Jaime. “But look what I have up my sleeve.”
“Oh, right,” Mags said skeptically. “The wizard.”
“That’s not a scientific term,” Jaime muttered. He glanced around the cargo hold. “Um, so exactly how old is this ship?”
Rylan, who had his own opinions about the state of the ship, kept silent, checking that the doors were secure, but Garcia looked outraged. “She’s a classic. They don’t make ships like this anymore.”
“With good reason,” Jaime said.
The captain’s glare was hard enough to make Jaime back up a step, right into Rylan’s chest. “If you knew what I went through to get this ship—”
“You said you won it in a card game,” Mags said. She hit the comm button on the wall. “Simi, how are the engines?”
Garcia’s bluster deflated. “It was a very difficult card game.”
The engineer’s voice came through the comm, sounding a bit frazzled. “The engines are fine. The problem has never been the engines.”
Garcia leaned over Mags shoulder to speak soothingly into the comm. “Just prepare for take-off, Simi my sweet.”
“Sure. And then what?”
Garcia grinned over his shoulder at Jaime. “Then it’s up to the wizard.”
Rylan pulled Jaime through the ship’s corridors. This time the yanking was to keep the other man moving; he kept stopping every few steps to gawk.
“Seriously, is this ship pre-Dark Age? How is that possible?”
“It flies,” Rylan grunted. “Most times.”
“But they were all destroyed or captured, weren’t they? I mean the computer systems alone—”
“Mind your own business.”
“You brought me onboard to deal with the computer! I’m not frying my brain by connecting to some psycho AI. Do you not get how dangerous this is?” Jaime stopped so suddenly Rylan was caught off guard and stopped, too. Jaime stared up at him with huge and accusing eyes. “I thought you guys were just pirates,” he said. “But are you like in one of those tech-worshipping cults—”
Rylan slammed him up against the bulkhead, hard enough that all the air left Jaime’s body. Rylan leaned in even closer, watching those brown eyes get even wider, this time with fear. “Are you saying I’m some kind of traitor? That I’d sell out the damned human race to fucking machines?”
“N-no,” Jaime said, and Rylan was about to move back, except Jaime kept talking. “It is weird, though. The only ships like this left that I’ve heard about belong to—”
“Rylan.” Garcia’s voice sounded mild, but Rylan heard steel beneath it. “Don’t damage the goods. We need him, remember?”
Jaime made a big show of rubbing his shoulder after Rylan let him go. Garcia took over leading him to the bridge, his voice easy even if his pace was brisk.
“While yes, the Prince is a somewhat older model, it has been completely retro-fitted. All up to Commonwealth safety standards.”
“Because you get it tested by the authorities so often…”
Rylan trailed behind them, thoughts dark. He didn’t care so much about what anyone thought of the ship or the crew — he hadn’t been with them that long and personally thought them a bunch of cheerful crooks — but his own honor was another matter. Maybe it was because it was so tattered and fragile that he held it so dear.
Fucking wizards. If anyone was a traitor to humanity it was them. Rylan knew there was no actual magic involved, but that didn’t mean what Jaime and his kind were wasn’t creepy as hell. Some great-great-great-grandma or grandpa of his had willingly altered their genes so they, and their descendants, could connect directly to computers with their minds. Rylan shivered just thinking about it, remembering the initial revulsion he’d felt when offered the prosthetic arm. But back then, in those good old days, tech had been embraced, body and soul. Humans gave more and more control of their ships, their cities, and their lives over to the computers that ran them, never thinking that the artificial intelligences they’d created might one day develop opinions of their own about the value of humanity.
People had learned a bitter lesson when the Singularity — the name chosen by the AIs themselves, to show that they had their own sick sense of humor — rose up. The Singularity had killed billions, sometimes just as easily as switching off a ship’s environmental controls. They’d driven humans from Old Earth and the surrounding systems, fought them to standstill on a dozen other colonies, and then, for their own inexplicable reasons, withdrawn behind their new borders, likely to gloat, as humanity descended into the New Dark Age.
The only way to escape the AIs had been to destroy any tech they could reach and control. Some human colonies turned to subsistence-level farming and shunned contact altogether, but most found they couldn’t give up the stars, and were able to scrape together an uneasy mix of low- and high-tech that allowed for space travel and trade. The trouble was that complex systems, like a ship, still needed an artificial intelligence to run them. These modern computers had dozens of fail-safes, manual controls and overrides, and were shielded from outside influence. Despite that, or maybe because of it, the ships still had their own personalities. And those tended to be a bit… odd.
They’d reached the bridge. It was cramped, and Rylan had to duck his head, but the old elegant, clean lines of the controls were still evident, even with all the more recent add-ons of extra switches, wires, and buttons.
Kaz swung around in the pilot’s chair, her usual scowl in place. Judging from the speed at which her moving tattoos were flowing over her bare arms and neck, she was more agitated than just everyday grumpiness.
“You ready to take off?” the captain asked.
“What’s the point?” Kaz snapped. “Dub won’t do it. I’ve asked her, I tried.”
“But you can get us into orbit manually at least?”
“Yeah, but what good will that do us?”
Garcia pulled Jaime forward. “We have an ace in the hole.”
Kaz raised one extremely skeptical eyebrow before turning back to the controls. Rylan didn’t blame her. Jaime looked very slight and gawky as he stood in the middle of the bridge.
Garcia and Mags slid into their seats, the captain announcing over the comm to the rest of the crew that they were getting the hell off the moon. Rylan didn’t have anywhere to sit, either, so he settled for crossing his arms and glowering at Jaime.
The ship gave a mild shudder as it lifted off, but rose up smoothly. Rylan leaned forward to look past Kaz, having never lost the wonder in watching the sky change — the blue of the moon’s atmosphere falling away as the ship moved towards the blackness of space. It was empty and clean out there; it promised freedom. Except—
“What’s that?” Rylan asked, pointing toward the small shape at the edge of the bridge’s viewing window. It was moving towards them from the moon.
“The Commonwealth ship,” Mags said as several alarms started to flash. “Headed straight towards us.”
Rylan didn’t have to see everyone’s faces to know they all shared his own grim expression. They each had their own reasons for not wanting to be questioned by Commonwealth agents. Rylan’s were just more personal than most.
“What now?” Kaz said. “We can’t jump out of the system. Not without Dub.”
“Who’s Dub?” Jaime piped up.
Rylan clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Your new best friend. Unless you want to get personally acquainted with the airlock.”
Jaime gulped audibly. “I thought we had a deal?”
“Oh, we do,” the captain said, his voice smooth as he stood up from his chair, “but it’s entirely dependent on what you do in the next few moments.” He gestured to the empty seat and Rylan shoved Jaime into it. “Come on, wizard. Dazzle us.”