Chapter 42: Drones

The next morning, I checked with JJ as to where Doug and his ships were.

They were still one day out. The front ships had stopped, but the others were still spread out and slowly catching up to them. JJ said that three of the smaller ships were missing. They hadn’t broadcast during the night, and she was having trouble locating them with the shields they had.

I decided that since many of my dinner companions were now indisposed including Sable, that Daniel, Crystal and I would go for a joy ride in Xia.

Bron had indicated the day before, that if I needed any new crystals I should go and help myself from the cavern they had here. Daniel and I had happily collected a heap of them after dinner. I gave a good portion of them to Cora to give to the spouses of the indisposed Bulls, to charge for me.

When she brought them to me at breakfast, I was amazed at the difference in them. “It’s just as well those rooms are sound proof,” I commented.

Cora chuckled, “Oh yeah. There would have been a lot of grunting, groaning and screaming going on last night and this morning. It has been at least ten years since any of the Bulls have carried a child. Bron asked them to keep the numbers down for the diner, so they each brought only their dames. I don’t think they will be that unhappy to have a child to them.”

I had noticed that the spouses who they had brought with them were obviously much loved. Going by the crystals, the Bulls had also been much loved during the night. I’d be surprised if they weren’t all pregnant by this morning.

By the time that we broke up the party after dinner, the pheromones and odours in the room had become potent. Crystal had to work hard to get me settled down I can tell you. If it weren’t for the fact that I had a tight control of my bodily functions, I would have come into season too.

I was surprised to find that Daniel hadn’t. He grinned when we met with the spouses for a very late breakfast. He said Pip did. His happiness suggested that he didn’t muck about after helping me, and that my daughter was resting and cussing him. Crystal was delighted.

The afflicted had to stay confined for at least a day until the potency wore off enough that they could join us again. I could see a lot of other gleeful faces around the table and soon learnt that all of the Bulls and Sable were in the same state as Pip. Sable’s joke about the population explosion had been proven as a fact.

Xia had some great systems installed and even had drones that she could release that would hover over anything we wanted and track it for me. I placed light bending spells on them so they would appear invisible to the naked eye and not reflect any light to attract attention to themselves.

We flew high over where JJ said the ships were and released a dozen drones. They would search for the shield pattern we programmed into them and any other anomaly they found. We stayed aloft for a couple of hours tracking the ships.

In that time, the four largest ships and four of the smaller ones had finally joined forces. We picked up where one of the trailing ships had peeled off and headed north. We also found the other three ships had headed to the Nut Islands. They must have changed direction as soon as they were out of sight of the other ships the night before as they had a good head start.

At first, we thought they might be making a flanking move, but for all the time we watched them they kept their course true, and they were going as fast as they were able, to take them away from the other ships.

It seemed that not everyone in Doug’s camp was happy with his leadership. Now that we had located the ships, I assigned a drone to each. Xia said that with the new crystals I had put in them, they could stay active almost indefinitely with a bit of sunlight to top them up.

I got the one over one of the largest ship to get closer, and it activated its audio sensors. It carefully penetrated the shield, and we watched for any reactions on the ship to its presence, but they seemed oblivious to it.

One of the spells detected the aura of magical items, and we were soon able to pick out who was who. The drone had settled on the beam or to those who know sailing terms, the yard that held the square main sail.

It was obvious one of the shorter men was not happy, and he was demanding to know where the rest of his ships were. I guessed this was Doug. The young woman who stood beside him had my interest. She seemed to have the stronger aura, and I suspected she was more talented than her counterpart was, even though he wore the Queen’s items.

One of the men started arguing that they were on a fool’s errand and that their strongest weather mage was missing. She flicked her hand out at the man, and he grabbed his throat. He started choking, and he clawed at her arm and even drew blood, but she held him effortlessly.

He was quite red in the face before she released him. I was wondering if she would. The man wore High Mage items, yet she had penetrated his item’s personal shield as if it didn’t exist. I determined that she was the most dangerous person on the ship. I contacted Luke and asked him about her.

He said that she was his much older brother Dave’s daughter. Gia was a bloodthirsty piece, and he and Matte had taken great care to stay out of her way. They were glad that their father had put them in charge of the other fleets, as Gia was bloody scary.

He mentioned that Storm had helped them change the shield over the island and hoped that she couldn’t penetrate it or I’d have to come to their rescue. They didn’t want her back. I passed on that Storm said a repair spell would also help, as that was how Ulu had stopped the cannonballs from Matte’s ships.

Luke was delighted with this information and said they would go and add it to the island’s shield and the ships. If they’d had it on them before, Storm probably wouldn’t have damaged them so badly. I had to chuckle as I wondered how effective the spell would have been against Storm’s lighting, as I knew it could affect shield spells.

My attention was brought back to the deck of the ship. Doug screamed at the men that he wanted a bloody storm directed at the island and he wanted it now. I was wondering at his state of his mind. Matte had said he was crazy and I now believed him.

We watched as the men grouped together and started a spell to form a storm. I detected where it was directed, we moved my ship to the spot and I countered the spell. Then Doug and Gia joined them to strengthen the new spell, but I had little trouble countering it too.

They tried three more times but to no avail. Before we had left Green Island, we had peppered the hull of my shuttle with some of the new crystals. I’d also added a spell that let me use the power of the ship to redirect any spells I wanted to wherever I wanted them to go. It could also suck up magic directed towards the shuttle and the crystals absorbed the energy.

Storm had mentioned they planned to use a storm to wreak havoc on the island. With my ship being in the vicinity, it was sucking up their magic. I said aloud, “I’m surprised with how little magic they seem to be generating for so many.”

“It’s because their boxes are damaged,” Crystal said. I looked at her, and she added, “When a plague came to my island the first time I was there, I could barely heal one person to my consorts’ five. I thought it was because I was such a bad wizard.”

“It was only later that I realised that with my entity not helping me, I just couldn’t do the level of spells that I believed I could, without my new consorts helping me. When Sable put the High Mage items on me, I knew the difference. I was as powerful as I’d been before.”

“Why did Doug come here and not try to take out Storm?” Daniel asked.

“Because of his decad. What’s the bet he believes the rumours about Bron?” Crystal said.

“What rumours?” I had to ask.

Crystal grinned. “While I’ve been hanging around in Greco and with Sable, I heard a lot of rumours about Bron. You see when he went to Lime Island Rose told them that he was the Lord Bull Bron Horn, to impress the locals.”

“When he got to Weston, he took out their bad King and he got the Lord Wizard’s Book of Laws to change the laws for him and open up new land that hadn’t been used in centuries. They didn’t have a High Mage or any higher wizards, so they believed he was the Lord Wizard.”

“When he turned up in Greco to help Storm with the contaminated ships, the way he and the other wizards deferred to Bron, the locals just thought the old Lord Wizard was helping out the new Wizards. Then Storm adopts the Law Book. They all think he is just complying with Bron’s wishes.”

“Wouldn’t that make Storm the obvious target?” Daniel asked for me.

“It would except everyone knows Bron doesn’t have a decad. He has never given out bling higher than a High Mage’s, and that was to his son Sable and his sister Sandy. The Bulls all wear lesser items,” Crystal said.

“Hum, so taking out Bron would prove to Doug he can take out a Lord Wizard. The other two fleets were to distract Storm from helping Bron and possibly even weaken his decad if they were successful,” I surmised.

“Most likely, I get the impression he didn’t fully trust his sons either,” Crystal added.

“Well he did have a good reason, as they weren’t playing his game,” I replied.

“Unless they are very good actors,” Crystal added.

Daniel shook his head, “No, Storm is a good judge of character. He was a teacher, and he can read people. I watched him a lot when we were in Unna. He had known before I did that I didn’t love Olivia enough and that Ashley did.”

“When I finally threw in the towel he didn’t question me and simply got me out of there. He knew how to get Pip and me together, and I’ve seen how he reads other people. Wait until you meet the people in Iron Hills. Plus the boxes won’t stay with a bad wizard once they are fixed, or if a better candidate comes along.”

“Then why did mine stay with me so long? I did a lot of bad things that I’m not proud of,” Crystal asked.

Daniel smiled at his mother, “Because, he knew you weren’t a bad person. Just a person trying to deal with bad situations the best way you could. Plus with him being sick, he let you down. Sable said the entity was so busy feeling sorry for itself that it wasn’t until he tried to heal the entity that it realised it had been your worse enemy.”

I hugged Crystal, “Sweetie, if you were such a bad person why did my paramour’s box and then my magnate’s box, both wish to go to you? It wasn’t just because I wanted you after I saw you. At our level, they truly must believe you’re a force of good.”

Daniel then added, “Sable also felt that you were a good person. That’s why he helped you even though he didn’t have to. He has to be pretty good at reading people too, for him to get a Queens box, mum.”

Crystal chuckled, “All right, all right, even my entity is ganging up on me.”

Daniel and I laughed with her. We smiled at each other and knew that in time she would believe us. The soft smile when she rubbed her tummy warmed both our hearts.

I loved that Daniel thought so highly of his mother even though he had been left to fend for himself when she disappeared. I guess it said a lot about him too. Knowing that he loved Pip didn’t hurt either. I’d watched how he treated Pip and knew that she would come first only to his mother in his heart.

I looked back at the screens to see what was happening on the deck. Most of the mages were exhausted, and others were serving them drinks and food. Doug seemed exhausted, very stressed and confused. Gia didn’t look any different and sat on a barrel picking her fingernails with a rather nasty looking knife.

She was a cool customer I decided. I wondered if she was psychopathic. She didn’t seem the least bit perturbed that the spells didn’t work. I decided that she was simply waiting for what Doug decided to do next. She looked at him several times but kept picking her nails with the same bland expression on her face.

One of the mages, the one who had complained before, said something I didn’t quite get. Gia heard him though. “Shit!” I exclaimed as I jumped in my seat. I was shocked when the knife suddenly appeared sticking out of the man’s throat. He gurgled as his blood ran down his chest and he collapsed to the deck.

“Gia!” Doug exclaimed tiredly. “Must you play with that accursed knife,” he complained as the other mages scuttled as far from the man, who now lay dead on the deck, as they could get.

I even heard one of mages whimper when Gia nonchalantly strolled past him to retrieve her knife. She pulled it from the man and wiped it on his clothes. She then touched the body, and it desiccated and then disintegrated before my eyes.

She hooked his clothes with her knife and tossed them towards the side of the ship. The man’s ashes flew from them and coated any who were downwind of her. She chuckled as those who wore the ashes frantically dusted themselves off.

One man ran to the side of the ship and retched violently, and I wanted to join him. This only made her laugh louder and Doug joined her with a scary little giggle.

“They are two very sick people,” I said in disgust and horror.

“Fucking psycho’s,” Daniel said in revulsion, and we could only agree with him.

“How did her knife do that?” Crystal asked.

The only two ways I knew of to disrupt a shield were electrically and with hydrazine. I then thought about her actions. Why did she have to touch the man? I felt she had strong magical powers, but I was beginning to suspect they were limited in some way.

She hadn’t added a lot more power to the spells, and she had been in contact with Doug, as if he was just using her to draw power from. She should have the powers of a High Wizard at least, but she didn’t seem to have much more than a novice.

I looked at Crystal and then back at Gia. “The knife, I think it is coated in hydrazine. That’s why Doug called it an accursed knife, and it could penetrate the mage’s shield. She handles it so the hydrazine could be on her hands too,” I finally said.

“Ewe,” Crystal said in disgust.

“I agree with mum, that stuff is nasty. Sean said it has exotic particles in it. It’s as lethal to a magician as radiation poisoning is to any normal person. We did learn that having a lot of charged crystals on us reduced its effects. Her items must be expending a lot of energy to just try and keep her in good health,” Daniel said.

“Yes, that would explain why she doesn’t have enough magic to do more than rudimentary spells. If they haven’t learnt the trick of keeping a lot of crystals on their person, then it would be reduced like they had been for Crystal,” I replied thoughtfully.

“She is still bloody dangerous, but I doubt her personal shield works really well, either,” I surmised.

“Or Doug’s,” Crystal added. I looked at her in surprise. She said, “Well she touches him, he must be as infected as she is, if she has the stuff on her hands.”

“True,” I replied. I thought about all of the hydrazine in the atmosphere on Torus. Why didn’t it seem to affect my people? I’d not had trouble with using magic. “Xia?” I said aloud.

“Yes, Mikal,” she replied.

“Can you test for hydrazine?” I asked.

“Yes, I have detectors aboard in case we have a leak, why?”

“Did you detect any of it on or in me when I came aboard?” I asked.

“No Mikal, should I have?” she asked me.

“We had it in the atmosphere on Torus. I had been investigating if the levels had dropped when I had my accident. Mage Davin indicated that my samples said that it was still in the atmosphere, but it had reduced significantly since all the volcanic activity started again. However, Zara didn’t mention me being infected.”

“How did your people behave and did you get sick a lot?” she asked me.

“No, we rarely got sick. The new people who didn’t have magical abilities got the usual ailments but we magical people didn’t get sick. I also didn’t notice anyone behaving oddly, well not like Gia and Doug anyway,” I said.

Crystal giggled, “You’re a cockroach.”

“Pardon?” I said. I knew what a cockroach was, they were one of the first horrid insects that Torus had let loose on the planet when she started terraforming, I had a particular dislike of them for some reason. I hate seagulls and crows too.

Daniel said, “There is an old myth that cockroaches can survive high levels of radiation and even adapt to it so they would outlive us if we exploded nuclear bombs on Earth.”

“Ah! I see, because I was born on a world where that type of radiation was normal it doesn’t bother me. Is that what you’re trying to say?” I said.

Xia answered, “It is interesting that Zara chose shifter genes for your people. It was a magically created gene. It was designed for our people so they could live on planets that had harsher atmospheres and gravities varying from the primary planets.”

“It was later found to be a parasitic gene, as it tends to infect magical people if they copulate with a shifter. It was considered an evolutionary method of survival at its conception. When the gene was created, Keltria was going through an exploration phase.”

“That was near on half a million years ago. It has just as likely mutated over time, but Keltria was technologically stagnant when the sun was sabotaged. So I don’t have any data on its evolution for the last hundred thousand years at least.”

Crystal chuckled, “Well I can attest to the genes ability to infect magical people. That was how Daniel was infected. He started out a normal human baby. Scared the hell out of me when he was born with horns on his head and webbed fingers.”

“Tory said I spent many hours playing with my different forms before I was born,” I replied with a grin.

“Would I have infected any of the males I had sex with on earth before I came back here?” Crystal suddenly asked with a worried frown.

Xia answered, “You had a Pix Wizard’s box. If they had magical abilities, it is more than possible. Many Keltrian people carry the gene but can’t or don’t know that they can shift. In the case of many non-shifter born males, they are a carrier and strengthen the gene if they mate with a female shifter.”

“For some reason, a mutation I suppose, most children born male from a shifter don’t pass on the gene or shift form. It tends to work best on the female form. Male born shifters who can shift and can pass on the gene are rare.”

“One male can impregnate many females, many times,” I said. “It could be why the gene uses them as a carrier in non-shifters and why shifters like to join with males of this type. Women produce the progeny.”

“A woman who can shift gender is even better. Even on my planet, we had only had two children other than me who were born as male shifters before I left. Only about a quarter of the shifters preferred male form for daily life.”

Daniel chuckled, “Geez mum, we probably infected half of Australia before we left earth. You did it for twelve years, and I did it for the next five. Not to mention my six years on Harmony.”

Crystal scowled and said, “That’s not funny, Daniel.”

“Why? How many people have you two screwed?” I asked.

Daniel looked at his mother, and she at him and they both started laughing. I got the impression that I probably shouldn’t have asked that question. I knew I’d collected a large number to my tally in my time, even with my regular girls.

From snippets of conversation at Nickel City, I got the impression that Daniel had been free with his favours and with both sexes before he met Pip, he also carried the mutated gene like me. I guessed that Crystal needing a magical fix on a magically starved world would have collected a sizeable number as well.

I looked back at the screens.

Not much was happening when I first looked.

They were finished eating, and Doug wanted them to have one more go at forming a storm. Reluctantly after much prodding, and a scowl from Gia, they agreed and formed up. It was the most, lacklustre effort, I’ve ever seen. Doug collapsed back onto the barrel he had been sitting on and told the men to go back to their ships.

They were so exhausted that they couldn’t blink and got Doug’s crew to drop boats for them. I suspected not much more was going to happen today. They would all need at least a night’s rest to recharge. It was still only early afternoon, but Doug had no hope of getting them back before morning.

I called up JJ and asked her to monitor the ships. She reported that the other four ships were still heading to the Nut Islands. They hadn’t deviated since we had been here. She had detected a small village on one of the larger islands and suggested that it might be a haven.

I wasn’t really worried about them. JJ could now monitor them, and it would give Luke and Matte something to do to hunt them down if they became problems. There was not much point having a Navy if they had nothing to do.

I relayed this message to Storm, and he chuckled and agreed. JJ gave him the coordinates, the ships names and the Captain’s names. Storm agreed to pass it onto Matte, as he was closer. He’d found new Captains for his four biggest ships and was sending the others home. Storm had left him with the High Mage boxes for his Captains.