Bryce

Bryce, we need a concealment spell, and we need it now.

I sat up in bed as I received the message from Sora. Thea grumbled some sort of complaint before rolling over and pulling the blanket tighter around herself. I didn’t blame her for not waking up.

Her mana had taken a while to regenerate after the fight in Kai’s domain. But once it had, she was hit hard with mana sickness. It was possible that we were reaching the upper limits of what her body could withstand. It was something I was interested in studying if we ever got the time to do it safely.

What’s going on? I sent the reply as I stood up and started casting. If whatever was happening had been important enough for Sora to wake me up in the middle of the night, then it was worth acting before I got an answer.

A ship just appeared on the edge of our scanners. They’re registered as belonging to Legion and it looks like they’re returning from the research base. We’ll be passing them in a few minutes if you’d like to meet me on the bridge to get a closer look. I nodded to myself as I received Sora’s message, but was too focused on casting to send a reply.

We had been traveling through real-space for about a day and a half, which left us around halfway to Doctor Phaylex’s research facility. We should have already reached our maximum speed and would have to start decelerating soon. Just another thing you didn’t have to worry about in the Aether.

The Fury wasn’t designed for this type of travel, a fact that Samira had reminded me of in vivid and long-winded detail. We could travel in the Aether nearly indefinitely, with the only limitation being the amount of food we could store, and that was because we were equipped with an Aether converter.

The converter turned Aether into fuel for our reactor, which then powered the engines along with the rest of the ship. But there was no Aether in real-space. Which meant we’d need to rely on our fuel reserves, and we didn’t have much in the way of capacity.

Samira had pushed our reserves to the limit in plotting this course, which didn’t leave us with much leeway to deal with unexpected Legion ships.

I finished casting the concealment spell and gently kissed the still sleeping Thea before making my way to the bridge.

Sora and Ithnaa were already there, and the djinn was wearing what looked like one of Sora’s robes. She had taken to sleeping in the navigator’s cabin near the bridge along with them. Which was a development, since Sora had never bothered to sleep in that room before. They had just used it to store their clothes and slept on the dining room table in their fox form, much to Thea’s annoyance.

“Hey captain, sorry to wake you,” Sora greeted me while leaning over the console.

“It’s not a problem. What’s the situation?”

“I’m not sure,” they answered. “The other ship slowed once we got into their scanning range, but sped up again a few moments later. Presumably because your spell finished.”

“How much would they have been able to see?” I asked.

“No idea, but probably not much,” Sora answered. “Our scanners are pretty much top of the line and all we got was their registration at this distance.”

“And you’re sure that it was a Legion ship?” I asked.

“We’re in Legion space, on our way to a secret Legion research facility, and their registration was Legion.” Sora shrugged. “They were probably just dropping off supplies. I can’t imagine it’s all that easy to get groceries out here.”

“Fair enough.” I was getting a weird feeling, but couldn’t exactly explain it. So, I just shrugged it off. “I’m probably just paranoid from the whole situation with Varlin. I’ll keep the spell up for a couple of hours just to be safe. Let me know if anything else comes up.”

I started to leave, but Ithnaa caught my attention. “Captain, I’m going to teleport off the ship in the morning to reach out to an old contact and I’ll probably be gone for about a day. I’ll need to leave a marker here so that I can get back, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t dispel it.”

I had been impressed by the djinn’s ability to teleport. Spacial magic was incredibly complex, and this was the first time I’d ever met somebody with an innate ability to cast it like she could. The fact that she could do it over vast distances like she had just casually described was doubly impressive.

“How noticeable is the marker?” I asked.

“The spell you have active now would conceal it, even to me.” She explained. “Otherwise, if somebody knew what to look for, then they’d probably be able to find it.”

I wasn't exactly excited about the idea of having something like that aboard the ship, so I was reluctant to agree. But maybe there was some way we could compromise. “Do you have the marker active yet?”

“Not yet,” Ithnaa replied. “I was planning on asking you about it first, a concept that is rather novel to me.”

I wasn’t sure if I should credit the consideration to her or Sora. But either way, I appreciated it. “Could you show me what you’re planning?”

“Absolutely.” Ithnaa materialized a small platinum coin before handing it to me. “I have a few dozen of those spread across the network in places I like to frequent. This one is inactive, but the spell is already there.”

I took a few moments to cast an identification spell on the coin and was surprised at the simplicity of it. If I understood the spell correctly, then once activated, it would allow her to scry into the room where the coin was located, regardless of distance.

Even a basic concealment spell would hide the coin, but otherwise it would be a simple matter to track.

I made a slight adjustment to the mana flow in the coin before tossing it back to the djinn. “You’re welcome to activate it now, and I appreciate you asking.”

“Of course, captain.” She smiled at me, but switched to a frown after activating the coin. “What did you do to it?”

“I’ve attached a concealment spell that has a built-in exception for your mana,” I explained. “You’ll be able to find it easily enough, but I doubt anybody else would. Not unless they’re physically holding the coin and know identification magic.”

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“That is incredibly useful.” Ithnaa was busy inspecting the coin. “Is that something you could teach me?”

“It’s possible, but depends on how much you’ve already studied magic.” Teaching innate casters new spells was difficult, even if the spell was related to their talent, and if it wasn’t related then it was all but impossible.

The only exception was if they had a good understanding of the fundamentals of magic and if they knew how to apply those fundamentals to their own situation. Since each natural caster’s mana functioned differently, it made it so there was no universal solution. It also made it really hard to make a living as a professor of arcane magic, but that was a different problem altogether.

“I’ve studied some,” Ithnaa said. “But likely not enough. I’ll take a look at your alterations to my coin and seek you out if I have questions. Is that acceptable?” She added the final question as an afterthought, which made me smile. The djinn was clearly not used to asking for permission, but she was trying and that was enough for now.

“That’s acceptable, and if you’re able to figure it out, then I’d be more than happy to teach you a few more things.”

“I’ll look forward to your lessons,” the djinn beamed. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.” I returned her smile. “Now, if you two will excuse me, I’m going back to bed.”

~~~~

We arrived at the research facility around noon, exactly when we planned to. The facility was a small station floating in the middle of an asteroid field. It looked like it would only be able to support maybe a dozen people under normal circumstances, but it was completely dark. There was no life support, and as best as our scans could tell, no power whatsoever.

“Maybe the doctor doesn’t need to breathe?” Thea asked. All of us were crowded on the bridge, looking at the station through the small monitor. Ithnaa had left the day before, exactly as she said she would. Which left the four of us to figure out why the station looked dead.

“There are a few races that don’t need to breathe, so it’s possible.” I mused. “But I would still expect some sort of power consumption.”

“They could be shielded from scans,” Sora added. “I mean, it is a secret research facility, with extra Emphasis on ‘secret’. It would also explain why they aren’t answering our calls.”

“If their shielding was strong enough to block our scanners, then we’d know. Especially from this close,” Samira said.

“Well, if they’re not answering our calls, then I guess we’ll just have to board,” I said.

“You mean you’ll have to board.” Sora frowned. “The EVA suits won’t fit me or Sami, and no life-support means there’s probably no air.”

“Right, remind me to buy a couple of suits that you can wear the next time we’re at a decent port.” I turned to Thea. “Looks like it’s just me and you for now.”

“Sounds like a date.” She smiled, and we made our way down to the deck below. We stopped by the airlock to grab the EVA suits and got dressed on the short flight over.

The shuttle itself didn’t have an airlock. Which meant we would normally have to seal ourselves against the station and rely on their airlock to maintain the atmosphere. But since there was no power, and nobody was answering our calls, we were going to have to let ourselves in.

“Do you think you could get the door?” I asked Thea, and she shook her head.

“Not without melting my suit. This one is all you, princess.”

Summoning my sword, I stepped up and pushed the blade through the station’s sealed door. I had taken to the habit of maintaining the blade spell in the back of my mind so that I could summon it in an emergency. Or if I couldn’t open a door, which was apparently the more common use case.

There was a slight rush of air as the pressure normalized, but it wasn’t massive, which meant the station still had some amount of atmosphere. That was probably a good sign.

I finished cutting a small hole in the door and we both squeezed through into an open airlock. The power was still off, which meant no gravity, but our boots were equipped with magnets which let us walk normally. The air wasn’t flowing, but my implants were registering a breathable atmosphere through my suit’s sensors. We both kept our helmets on just to be safe.

“This doesn’t look too bad,” Thea commented. “Although there’s no welcoming committee.”

“Or anybody at all,” I added. “Do you hear anything?”

“Just the shuttle. There’s nothing coming from the station,” she answered. “It’s a bit eerie.”

“Agreed. Let’s see what’s going on here.” I murmured a short incantation to summon a ball of light and had it float between the two of us. The light extended beyond the airlock door and down the station corridor.

“That’s probably not good,” Thea commented, and I agreed. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting in the airlock, but the corridor was a different story entirely. There were a half-dozen skeletons dead on the floor, along with scorch marks lining the walls.

The skeletons were all dead facing the airlock, which meant they had probably been animated by a Legion necromancer defending the place.

“Let’s see if we can’t find some answers in the control room.” I readied my sword and willed the ball of light to move a few meters in front of us.

The corridor led us to a large open storage area with a number of doors on each wall. There was more evidence of fighting, but no signs of anybody living or dead. Well, besides the skeletons, but those really only counted about as much as the spent ammo casings.

Research stations tended to be set up in an intuitive way or marked with directions for newcomers, usually both. But this wasn’t a normal research station. They wouldn’t be switching out the support crew very often, if ever, so there wasn’t a need to label every door.

It made navigation harder, and there wasn’t really a set path created by the fighting. It seemed like whoever had boarded the station came with enough people to be able to spread out and clear the whole place all at once.

That was bad for any number of reasons, but the immediate problem was that it would be harder for us to find the control room.

“What now, princess?” Thea asked.

“We're near the center of the station, so one of these doors is probably going to be an elevator. We’ll try each one until we find it. Then we just take the shaft to the top deck, which will hopefully be the control room.”

“Alrighty, I’ll start on the right, and you get the left.” We each chose a door and opened it. They had likely all closed as a safety precaution when the power went out, but couldn’t seal. Thea could just pull them open with her bare hands, but I had to use my sword.

She was able to open two for each one I managed. Which was why I was so excited when I was the one to find the elevator.

“Hey babe! It’s over here,” I shouted to Thea as I finished cutting through the door to reveal the shaft. The elevator had stopped a few decks below us, which was going to make this next step a lot easier.

“So, do we just climb up the cable?” Thea asked from beside me.

“Or we release the magnets on our boots and float up there.”

“Oh sure, that sounds a lot easier.” Thea smiled as she pushed herself off the doorframe to float up the shaft. I followed and caught up to her right as she pried open the doors to reveal the room.

“I guess we have some luck left after all.” I floated into the control room and reactivated my boots. A number of consoles were arranged around the center of the room, but were obviously all powered down. I followed the left wall until I found a panel. It took a bit of pulling to get it open. But once I did, I was able to find the backup battery. I activated it, and the consoles sprang to life.

Most stations had a backup power system of some sort in the control room. I learned about it while designing my own research station thirty years ago. It wasn't much but was there so that you could get a message out in the case of power failure.

It would also allow you to access non-critical systems without a password. That was so rescuers could find out what happened in the security logs when they were inevitably too late to save you.

I moved to the center console and immediately started downloading the station files to a secure server back on the ship. While that was happening, I skimmed through the security logs to hopefully get an idea of what had happened.

It didn’t take long for me to figure things out. Or to connect everything back to the ship we passed on the way here.

“Thea, we have to leave. Right now.”