Danae lowered her pistol. “Why didn’t you just fling ’em against a wall or something?” she inquired, pulling off her balaclava. “That would have been much easier.”
“No argument here,” Jeremy agreed, examining the console. The quarter-circle arc of a cylinder, just wide enough for a Guado’s armspan, stood waist-high with a sharply beveled upper surface, which was covered in variable-display control panels. A variegated array of oblong displays hovered in the gravitic field projected from the console’s upper arc, minus a gap left of center where Danae had pulled one out. Even given the Guado predilection for counterintuitive functionality, Jeremy supposed there must be a control for the containment cell fields — but with so many illegible labels, how was he supposed to find it, let alone operate it? He shook his head. “Would Samus mind doing the honors?”
“Sure.” They swapped places at the console. Jeremy began shlepping the five unconscious Guado over to a corner, one by one. Danae left Samus negotiating an uplink into the console, went to relieve a guard of his holster. “So, why didn’t you?”
“Why didn’t I what?” he grunted.
“Push the guards around, you big bully you.”
Jeremy lowered a Guado to the floor. “For the same reason I’m hauling these guys around bodily,” Jeremy said. “When I try to touch living objects … there’s nothing there for me.”
Danae blinked. “Living objects —?”
“Yup. Animals, plants, sentients, you name it. It eats and reproduces, I can’t do a thing to it.”
“So — their uniforms,” Danae suggested, taking a different tack. “You could grab their uniforms.”
“Believe me, I tried. You saw how well that worked.”
“Huh. But you pulled me over that console not five minutes ago. Explain that.”
Jeremy didn’t, giving Danae time to strap on the holster. She looked up to see him gazing down at the pile of Guado, the corner of his mouth quirked into half a grin. “Hellooo.”
“Knee-jerk reaction,” he admitted. “I wasn’t even really sure it would work. What have you got on your belt, anyway?”
Danae put a gloved hand to the small of her back. Clipped to her belt was a spool of carbon-fiber cord, stored in a sturdy plastic case. “Rappelling cord.”
“Ah. Perfect for tying these guys up. May I?”
The mage unclipped the object in question and held it out at arm’s length, her gloved fingers curled loosely around it. “Here you go. A’h!” she intoned warningly at his first step in her direction. “Take it.”
Suppressing a glower, Jeremy lifted a hand and mimed picking up an object. Nothing happened, except that Danae said, “Hmm.” With a huff of exasperation, he took another step toward her, meaning to retrieve the spool physically; Danae opened her fingers, presenting it open-handed. Jeremy’s hand shot out again, yanking the case off her palm and sending it smacking into his.
“Funny.”
“Sorry. I have a theory: it could be Spengler interference.”
Jeremy shook his head slowly, briefly closing his eyes. “Bioelectric fields, extraplanar entities, sunspots … Spengler interference.” Jeremy blew a short, irritated raspberry.
“That first one comes close. Have you ever heard of the Spengler index?”
“No.” But he regretted snapping at her the instant that syllable left his tongue.
His abrupt tone made her hesitate, but she plunged ahead anyway. “I’ll explain it to you sometime,” the mage offered.
Jeremy’s shoulders twitched. “You do that,” he said, his tone losing its chill. Indicating with his chin the iPalm on the console, he inquired, “How’s Samus getting along?”
“I … don’t know,” Danae informed him, seeing the construct’s graphical avatar shrug her power-armored shoulders and shake her helmeted head. “She seems to be at a loss here.”
“I wish I could say I was surprised.” Jeremy, muttering imprecations about Guado so-called programming so-called standards, finished immobilizing the five unconscious guards, strode over to the console, skimmed the lines of data on Danae’s iPad display. A suffixed comment quirked the corner of his mouth. “No worries, Samus. That’s better than I could have done. Care to try your hand at a different kind of lock?” he suggested to the visored image on the iPad, jabbing a thumb at the cell block’s exit hatch.
MY PLEASURE_ displayed along the lower edge of the screen, replaced by DATA TRANSFER READY!_ Jeremy dug out his own iPad, a simple, unaugmented unit compared to the one hosting the electronic construct. One shielded data burst later, Jeremy had a copy of all the control structures Samus had been able to figure out, leaving her free to attend to more urgent matters. Jeremy just had time to see the thumbs-up she flashed at him as Danae picked up the iPad. On her way down the corridor, the mage noted that the cells were numbered. The Guado’s prisoners, apparently scattered randomly among the two dozen cells, gazed out at her as she walked by, she trying to give them reassuring looks in return. On her way past cell number four, a thumping and a plaintive whine caught her attention. In that cell she found a muscular cinnamon-furred beast well over two meters in height, tipped in bronze, a mane of dreadlocks falling to his elbows, the ragged remains of his bright green prisoner uniform wrapped around his waist. He loomed just inside the doorway, watching her with eyes like polished sapphires.
“Wurrrr rwoh,” said the Wookiee.
Danae gave him a blank look. “Um, what?”
“‘Get me out,’” Jeremy translated, having heard, from the other end of the corridor. His hands shuttled from gravlocked iPad holokeyboard to recalcitrant console panels, his lips making sound-shapes that seemed to go along with his hand motions.
“You speak Wookiee?”
“Shyriiwook.”
“Whatever!”
“Yes, and much to my regret, not Guado,” Jeremy snapped. Danae glared at him, then turned to the Wookiee.
“OK, well, believe me, we’re trying.” She shook her head and was turning to go when the Wookiee thumped the bulkhead again once, hard, and repeated,
“Wurrrr rwoh.” Danae detected a slight change in emphasis this time.
“I told you, we’re tryin’,” she grated, reining in her exasperation.
Jeremy said, “Sorry, Danae.” She turned a sharp look on him. “I misinterpreted the first time. I should have said, ‘Get me out first’ — emphasis on ‘me’.”
“Oh? Special, are you?”
The sapphire eyes narrowed. “Hurrgrrrrah hawrh aarrrrah.”
“‘I am an engineer, I may be able to help,’” Jeremy supplied dutifully. “What luck! He’d have a sight better idea what to do here than I.”
“OK, so … how the hell do I let him outta there?”
“I’m still trying to figure that out,” Jeremy answered distractedly.
“I was talking to myself.”
“Oh.”
Several moments passed in silence. “Do you think these seals have individual power supplies?”
“Hah! Sorry,” Jeremy replied, “I mean, this is Guado engineering you’re talking about, after all. Guess it wouldn’t hurt to look.”
“Yeah, okay.” She opened her spellplate. After a moment’s thought, she scribed Matter, flanked by Quantify and Qualify. The Analyze Object rune remained glowing on the wall after she retracted her spellplate. After a moment, the rune swirled into a glowing dot that streaked into the bridge of her nose. Her head jerked back slightly, her eyes cutting to the doorsill. “Well, whaddaya know.” A converter embedded in the floor just outside the threshold regulated power to the seal. They must be maintained from the deck below, since she could see no obvious covers or hatches in the floor — but it should be easy enough to short out with a Surge rune. Danae scribed Increase and Energy, considered for a moment, dismissed the Increase glyph and rescribed a lighter version; if that wasn’t sufficient to blow the converter, she could always try again with an incrementally heavier glyph.
She knelt at the doorsill, spellplate at the ready, and took a moment to brace herself for the inevitable tingling buzz that accompanied Surging an electrical system. A slow exhalation, then she decisively jabbed her spellplate into the sill. She didn’t get a chance to yank back her hand — it suddenly felt frozen, as if it had become stuck to the floor. Arcs of yellow energy snapped and spat between her hand and the seal itself while the slowly cascading sine accelerated to a frenzied thrashing, growing so thick it nearly filled the opening. Jeremy noticed the too-bright, nearly blinding yellow illumination flooding the cell block along with the rising pitch of a dynamo overloading —
He looked up in time to see the seal detonate in a blast of yellow sparks. Danae flew back as if she’d been hammered in the sternum. To make matters worse, she was flung right into the energized seal of the cell across from the Wookiee’s. There was a huge SNAP. Danae cried out and fell over, yellow mist curling off her arms and shoulders.
“Danae!” Jeremy screamed, vaulting over the console, kicking displays hither and yon, landing at a dead run. Although he’d started at the other end of the corridor and behind a console, he was at Danae’s side, balaclava in fist, barely two seconds after the Wookiee. With great care, the Wookiee rolled her over, cradling her head in one huge hand. Jeremy, kneeling beside her, cried again, “Danae!”
“Ow, fucking shit,” the mage replied vehemently. “Guess how many times I’m doing that again.”
“Don’t worry, it worked,” Jeremy informed her, half laughing with relief.
“Oh good,” Danae said. “Excuse me while I pass out, then.” But she didn’t. Her left arm hurt almost unbearably; the skin felt pretty much crisped beneath the fabric of her jersey. She could move the limb, but she definitely didn’t want to. Something in the way the Guado built their systems had made it backsurge when she overloaded the converter, she noted, filing it under the “Things I Found Out the Hard Way” category.
“Hey.”
Jeremy’s head snapped up. The speaker rapped on the bulkhead beside the threshold to direct his attention. Jeremy met his gaze through the sulfurous energy sine. The Daspadi, a massively muscled armadillo-like creature with gray skin and coppery armor plates, indicated Danae with his snout. “I can help her,” he said.
“All right. Bring her over here,” Jeremy instructed the Wookiee. The Daspadi shook his head.
“The seal will absorb my magic,” he said.
“Super. Um —” Jeremy vaguely ostended the Wookiee’s muzzle.
The Wookiee, correctly interpreting the gesture, obliged by giving his name.
“Raagrakyysh, see what you can do with that console, willya?” Raagrakyysh brayed an affirmative. Of the Daspadi, Jeremy asked, “Are you a doctor?”
“More a field medic,” he corrected.
They watched over Danae for a few minutes while Raagrakyysh worked. He did not bother rounding the console to the interface panels, but pried off sections of the shell. The Wookiee knew no more Guado than did Jeremy, but he did know a good deal more electrical engineering theory, and how to apply a certain principle common to almost all electrical systems: find the root circuit and break it! After a few minutes’ work, the remaining sixteen seals fizzled out along with every light on the console.
The Daspadi immediately levered himself through the narrow doorway, grateful for the chance to stretch his arms again. He closed his eyes, gathering energy within himself. A deep inhalation powered a wordless bass chant, a low fundamental overlaid with subtle harmonics. A slow, deliberate gesture with one huge hand, as though he were tossing something up at the ceiling, completed the spell. Coruscating motes of golden light coalesced in the air above Danae and snowed upon her.
She opened her eyes as the pain vanished. “Whoo.” Now her left arm worked properly; she flexed it, opened and closed her hand several times. “That felt good. Thank you, uh,” she paused, craning her neck to meet the Daspadi’s eyes.
“Rand Marks.”
“Rand Marks,” Danae echoed. “But I’m afraid Jeremy and I are about to sink you further into our debt by getting you all the hell out of Dodge.”
Rand, helping her to her feet, sketched a smile and shrugged.
While Danae limped over to the keypad and hooked Samus up, Jeremy, rolling his balaclava into a fat-brimmed watch cap, made a round of the cell block, mentally cataloguing their new charges. Sixteen captives in all, a smorgasbord of species abducted from a dozen different worlds. Humans comprised nearly half of the group, while the other species had no more than one representative; all were strong, healthy males, relatively young — Jeremy considered himself a terrible judge of apparent age in humans, let alone other species, but of the ones he felt he could make a reasonable guess at, most seemed to be (or recently had been) teenagers, except for one he thought barely old enough to be a teenager. In an analytical fit of pique, part of Jeremy’s mind started trying to figure out how all these strong, healthy male specimens, most of them clearly capable of causing some serious damage in a fisticuffs, had been captured without injuring or incapacitating either captors or captives. (Whether the captors had been injured was, for the moment, academic, but Jeremy liked to think none of the prisoners had gone without a struggle.) These thoughts preoccupied him long enough that he went through a couple of introductions by rote; then he realized that he had heard and forgotten two names. Mentally shaking off that morbid train of thought, and somatically backing it up with a shudder, Jeremy turned his attention wholly to learning the erstwhile captives’ names, and doling out reassurances where he could. By the time he got all the way around the cell block and headed back toward Danae, he had gathered a small motley retinue clad in the remains of unflattering lime green prison garb.
Danae, standing at the keypad next to cell one, gave a displeased grunt when she saw the long-awaited results Samus put up on her screen.
“What’s wrong?” Jeremy asked, coming up behind her.
“Oh nothing,” she said with forced casualness. “Hope you don’t have any plans, though, for the next, oh … three to twelve weeks.”
“What are you talking about?” Jeremy peered over her shoulder at the screen. His head bobbed back; his eyebrows scrunched up, then rose as high as they would go. He blinked several times. He looked at Danae, who looked back impassively; then he looked back down at her iPad, reread the results, and went back to looking at Danae. His verdict: “Ouch.”
“Ouch is right,” she agreed. “No offense, Samus, but I think our resident mechanic might be able to work a bit faster than that.” On the screen, Samus’s orange pauldrons slumped, one gauntleted hand passing over her visor in a gesture of exhaustion. Then she made a sharp dismissive gesture with that hand and walked offscreen right. Danae scowled fretfully at her blank iPad for a moment, sighed and turned to Raagrakyysh. “It’s all yours.”
While the Wookiee gleefully pried off the keypad and set to work, Danae joined Jeremy in walking around, gathering introductions. The atrociously ugly garb the Guado had crammed their prisoners into, evidenced by the large number of modifications thereto and discarded articles thereof, was clearly not of the one-size-fits-all variety. Fortunately, none of the erstwhile prisoners were injured; the worst they complained about was of being hungry and tired. Most of them suggested retrieving their confiscated belongings. “If an opportunity comes up, con mucho gusto, but don’t get your hopes up,” Jeremy cautioned. “Your belongings are, by and large, replaceable; your lives are not.” Aside to Danae, he requested, “Could you have Samus snoop around and see if these guys’ stuff has been tossed somewhere? It’ll give the poor girl something to do, probably make her feel better about having had to bash her head against that brick wall the Guado call computer programming. If it’s on the way out, we can probably make a pit stop.” Danae nodded. Intent on her iPad, she missed seeing the dark-skinned, scowling figure crouching in the darkened back of cell nineteen. Jeremy, on the other hand, did see him.