So, I talked with the mental projection of Chayyiel for another minute or so to get all the information I could (not that she had all that much, considering the living version hadn’t thought that she would need to program her mind-self with the full set of data on that) before sending my consciousness back out. As soon as I did, I found myself sitting against a large rock. No, wait, it wasn’t a rock. It was Cerberus, laying down behind me. His nearest head turned to look at me with an anxious whine as he felt me move.

“I’m okay, boy,” I assured him while turning to rub his heads fondly. “Thanks for giving me something to lean against while I had my little meeting.”

“A meeting, hmm?” That was Gaia, who stood next to Percy a few feet away. Her curious gaze was taking me in. “You have some sort of telepathic connection with a partner you haven’t mentioned yet?” There was a very slight challenge in her voice, but something about it didn’t really seem like she was actually suspicious or anything. This was a deliberate tone she was taking just to see how I would react and what I might do. Of course, if I hadn’t known the future Gaia so well, I probably would have believed that she was annoyed about that whole thing. As it was, it made me curious about what part of what she had just seen would make her want to press me like that. I knew she couldn’t think I was possessed by a Seosten. She didn’t even know about the Seosten yet, and wouldn’t find out until a couple months into my first year.

Also, was it just me or was it kind of ridiculous that the people who were trying to oppose the Seosten domination of Earth had decided not to recruit the woman who had been put in charge of the school those same Seosten were using to brainwash the humans, and who had already demonstrated that she was on the side not killing every Alter in sight? Not to mention the fact that she had to be one of if not the strongest technomancer on the planet, which you would think might be useful against a potential alien armada. Yes, some of them had some understandable bad history with her, but still! Bringing Gaia into the fold at the very least after the Fomorian invasion had been repelled would have been a good idea. Hell, tell her the truth once Mom’s rebellion was underway, if you had to wait that long. She had already been doing everything she could to help surreptitiously guide Crossroads Boschers who could be helped, as well as creating an entire underground railroad system to funnel innocent Alters away from danger whenever possible. And she had done all of that off faulty information. If she had known the full truth about what she was dealing with, who knew what she could’ve done and how many more she could have helped?

Okay, yeah, now probably really wasn’t the time to get into all that. Especially after I had just basically zoned out for a few minutes on them as it was. So, I shook that off and focused. “Something like that. Let’s just say I have a very knowledgeable friend who can contact me now and then to share information. Not a lot, and not all the time, but when it’s really important. And this–” Reaching out, I touched the sash around Cerberus’s middle head. “–is very important.” My mouth opened to explain more, only to stop short. Fuck. What was I supposed to actually say? The full story got into the whole Seosten thing, and I couldn’t tell her that much. Obviously, it would be entirely too much information for what she was supposed to know. I had to give the general idea without telling her enough to change things. This was going to take a bit of finesse.

So, after a quick moment of thought, I carefully explained that there was an alien empire out there somewhere in space and that at one point, one of their leaders had objected to the way they treated people who weren’t their own species. So he had brought all the aliens that he could to one world and used a powerful spell to make it invisible to everyone else. But there had been another ship nearby that was accidentally caught on the edge of the spell, and now it and its crew were repeatedly erased from the memories of everyone they interacted with. And now we had this sash, which could only have come from that ship, somehow.

Taking that in, Gaia considered for a moment. “I don’t suppose it’s possible that the pirate vessel we have been tracking–”

“It is not the same ship,” Percy insisted. “I don’t know the Pale Ship story well enough to recognize that sash, but I know it wasn’t a Mesganian medium freighter, let alone a modified one. It was much larger. But…” She paused, tilting her head from one side to the other. “Maybe they found and raided it? Or found an old supply cache. Or interacted with them in some way. Maybe the Pale Ship fought them and that sash was left behind. Oooh, maybe one of the Pale People left their own ship and has been living with the pirates in secret for years since these people can never remember them, and they just dropped the sash somewhere onboard! Or–”

“Yeah, there’s a few options,” I agreed with a slight grimace. “But right now we just need to get there and save Millersby. I don’t know what else is going on, or what we might be walking into.” And, I didn’t voice it, but I was afraid of what this whole thing might be leading to. Obviously, I hadn’t seen any warning signs from Ehn telling me not to press any further with this yet. So I had to assume that it was okay to keep going and that I wasn’t about to irrevocably change the future. Or maybe I was and Ehn was fine with that. I had to consider that option too. But… but… fuck. I just had to keep going for now and hope things worked out well enough.

To that end, I gently thanked Cerberus for holding onto the sash for us and asked him to keep it safe, just in case we needed to do something with it later. Hell, just having something from the Pale Ship might end up being useful at some point.

Then, once all three of his heads gave a low yet firm woof of agreement, I turned back to Gaia and Percy. “Okay, now we keep going. Um, Gaia, I don’t suppose we’re close enough for you to feel the ship yet?” I knew she had a pretty impressive range with that power, but I wasn’t sure how much practice she had with it yet. It wasn’t like she’d had that many opportunities to practice with it up to this point. At least not on this scale.

Sure enough, the woman closed her eyes focused, her brow furrowing briefly before opening them to shake her head. “No, I can sense weapons and some power generators, but nothing that would be an entire vessel. It’s possible the ship has already left again.” She pointed straight up toward the sky. “It could have come back here, made landfall, then departed on its way to another world.”

Wincing, I replied, “Well, if they did, let’s hope they left Millersby behind. I don’t think this is the sort of adventure we can go offworld with.”

“Are you certain?” There was a hint of mischievousness in the future headmistress’s voice and expression. “I have always wanted to see another world.”

Oh boy, there was so much I could say to that, so much I wanted to say to it. But I had to restrain myself. Now really wasn’t the time to start teasing Gaia with hints about what she would eventually be involved with. Actually, there was no good time for that. Instead, I cleared my throat and nodded. “Yeah, well, let’s see what we run into here.” And with that, I started to move out again. My squad of ghosts scouted ahead, scanning every inch of ground for more traps. But there were very few. It seemed like the pirates had depended largely on the front line of alarm spells along with their lookouts. Maybe that meant we were getting close and they didn’t want their own people to keep constantly setting off alarms that were right next to their base.

On the way, I let Gaia move ahead a bit and drifted out of her sight, spreading out to ‘check for anything useful.’ Once it was safe enough, I brought out the ghosts who had taken care of the watchtower people. As soon as I touched them, they delivered the powers they had absorbed from those kills, making my aura flare up while I stumbled just a bit. Too bad Tabbris wasn’t here to help me–wait, she might not be here, but Percy was.

So, still making sure Gaia wasn’t watching (I had a couple ghosts keeping an eye on her), I got Percy to possess me for a moment so she could tell me what I picked up. Which, as it turned out, was a couple minor strength increases that wouldn’t really do much, the ability to change the color of anything within fifteen feet, another power that allowed me to transmit anything I saw or heard (or both) to anyone I had looked at within the past hour, and finally the ability to shift the weight of two different objects within my line of sight between one another as much as I wanted. I could make one object take on the full weight of both while the other was as light as a feather, shift them equally, or anything in between. It ‘only’ worked for objects up to about two tons or so, but still. It sounded pretty useful.

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Finally, several of my ghosts located what had to be the right area. There was a huge furrow, about three hundred feet across, forty feet deep, and probably over a mile long stretching off into the distance. It looked like a large ship had crashed hard and went skidding across the ground. When I described that to Percy, she said it didn’t sound like the sort of impression a Mesganian medium freighter would give. It was too wide and deep.

“There is… something else, Jacob,” Gaia confirmed softly, gazing off into the distance along the path the crashing ship had taken. “Bits and pieces. I believe whatever came down here has broken apart into many small parts as it went sliding along the ground. There are bits of it scattered and buried throughout the entire length of the ditch.”

Biting my lip, I took another look along that massive ditch in the distance. We were up on a sort of hill, with a wide field below us leading right up to the furrow along the ground that stretched off out of sight. Here and there, I could see small tents that were set up on the edges, clearly meant to blend in with the surroundings. It looked like they didn’t want to be spotted. “Salvage,” I suddenly murmured aloud as the realization came. “They’re pirates, right? Well, if some big ship landed here or, you know, crashed, then maybe they’re here to salvage bits of the ship or the cargo. Both, probably. And it must be something important if they’re going through all this trouble. I mean, they’ve got watchtowers and alarm spells and traps and all that set up all around this place, and their tents are camouflaged. I bet the ship only comes in to pick up what they’ve found so far and then leaves to avoid drawing the wrong sort of attention here.”

My eyes narrowed into a squint. “Yeah, whatever came down with that ship has to be pretty important. Either it’s powerful or valuable or both. But that still doesn’t explain why they took Millersby when he wasn’t anywhere near this–”

As soon as I said it, I was correcting myself. “Wait, no, that actually totally explains it.”

Percy watched me curiously. “Does it?”

I glanced toward Gaia, who simply raised an eyebrow while waiting for me to continue. From her expression, I couldn’t tell if she didn’t understand yet, or if she just wanted to hear me say it. Though to be fair, I could say the same thing about Percy. Maybe they were both just giving me a chance to put words to what they had already figured out.

So, I gave a quick nod. “Yes, if they’re so worried about keeping things secret, they probably freaked out when they saw him on the edge of the lake. I bet they went to pick up water, probably for these guys here, and didn’t see anybody because he was down in his cave. So they came down, decloaked or whatever, then as they were doing it, he came out and saw them. They were afraid that, whoever he was, he’d tell people about the ship he saw, so they took him. They didn’t kill him right then and there because they didn’t want to leave a body up there to be found. Or maybe they thought he might know more than he did. Maybe they thought he was part of a group that was trying to find them or something. Either way, they needed more information about who he was and where he came from. So they took him out of there.”

Gaia looked that way, a thoughtful expression crossing her face before she quietly noted, “If all that is true, then he should hopefully still be alive. But is he down there somewhere, or did they take him up to wherever their star vessel has gone?”

The latter suggestion made me wince. “If they took him into space I don’t think we have a chance of finding him. Let’s hope he’s still down here. Maybe they didn’t want to let him see anymore than they have to. Right now we just need to figure out where they’d be keeping him if he is down here. We can’t just go in hot and attack them straight on. We don’t know where he or any other hostages are, and if things get too hot, they might just… do something drastic. We have to be careful. I’ll send the ghosts in to scout things out.”

“Yes,” Gaia murmured thoughtfully. “And once we have a better idea of how everything is arranged, I think I have an idea of my own about how our friends down there might be… handled properly without endangering anyone else.” Her slight smirk made me do a slight doubletake. She was definitely amused by whatever plan she had come up with. Which wasn’t that surprising given everything I knew, but I wasn’t really accustomed to being privy to seeing it. Last year… in the future–damn it–she was Avalon’s mother, the headmistress, this untouchable force of nature. But more than that, she was an authority figure who was always in control, an incredible woman who was serene and thoughtful and, well, more than human. More than mortal. Seeing that smirk and hearing the amusement in her voice at whatever she had thought of made her even more of a real person to me. Well, that wasn’t even the right word. She’d always been real, of course. But it made her… more of a person.

Shaking that off, I watched her curiously. “Something you want to share with the class?”

“Oh don’t tell me I’ve become a schoolteacher,” she immediately shot back, her eyes snapping to me seemingly by reflex. “I’ve no interest in shepherding a herd of small children through their awkward and ungrateful years and–no, do not answer that.” I could see even more deep curiosity. She really did want to hear about the future, but was holding herself back. “I have traveled through time myself, though only forward. I know the dangers it can hold. As much as I might want to know where I end up in the year you come from… it’s a very bad idea.”

“It’s okay,” I managed, keeping my voice as casual as possible, “it’s just a saying anyway. It just means could you tell the rest of us what you’re thinking?”

“Ah. Perhaps I’m a little on edge,” Gaia admitted. “It’s not every day I interact with someone like you. Or see something like this.” She turned to look at the massive ditch and what was now more clearly a salvage operation. “Send your ghosts out to get the lay of the land, and I’ll tell you my plan.” Once more, her gaze flickered with amusement. “These pirates, if they’re anything like their ocean-based brethren, must be superstitious. I believe we can do something useful with that.”

********

Having ghosts really was incredibly useful, especially right now. Well, okay, they’d proven to be useful plenty of times before. But now they did so all over again. I kept them invisible and intangible, sending several dozen all the way up through the ditch. They went into every tent, eavesdropped on conversations, searched through anything they could find that was out of sight, and in general collected all the information they could. We were right about the whole crashed ship thing. At the far end of the furrow lay what looked like about one fourth of the once bigger vessel that had been torn apart pretty badly. Whether that was from breaking up on its way down, or from large pieces of it simply snapping off as it slid along the ground, we didn’t know. But either way, the largest chunk of what was left was resting against the edge of a steep cliff. Another few feet and it would’ve gone straight over and probably exploded at the bottom.

These pirates-turned-salvage experts were carefully examining literally every part of the ground it had slid along. They were definitely searching for something specific, judging by what they kept saying to each other about how valuable whatever it was would be and how badly the boss wanted it located. There were some complaints about how long it had already taken, but those were quickly silenced by warnings of how this same boss would react if they heard that sort of talk and how he would sic his pets on them given any excuse. He didn’t exactly sound like someone who took criticism very well.

We also heard enough to realize that they were keeping Millersby on the remains of the ship itself. Unfortunately, my ghosts couldn’t get close enough to check that out. There was a magical forcefield around the thing that was keeping everyone, even intangible spirits, out. I even tried teleporting over there myself to no avail. They had some sort of protection field guarding against transportation powers like that. Because of course they did. And Gaia wasn’t close enough to do something about it yet. She would’ve been in the future, but this was… yeah, she was still a bit too young here. It wasn’t like she’d had a lot of chances to stretch her power at this point. But that was okay. If this plan of ours worked, they would be lowering that shield at least long enough for people inside to come out and see what the hell was going on. That would give my ghosts time to slip in and locate the missing man, if nothing else.

“Okay,” I noted, looking over at Gaia. “I’ve got my people in place. How about you?”

Her eyes were closed, but she gave a slight nod. “Yes. I’ve found plenty of small pieces of technology throughout the path of the crashed ship. And I have control of the weapons they carry.”

“Good,” I couldn’t help but smile in a way that was probably quite similar to the smirk she’d had earlier when she first thought of this plan.

“Let’s start scaring the shit out of some pirates.”