Chapter 12

It was a meeting with the full Council in attendance, accompanied by the ambassadors from the various allied Earths. They were gathered to hear what Mage Roxanne had to report on what we’d discovered on the Orc worlds. They were there in person, rather than have a mailed or memory crystalled version. Essentially, she was there to answer questions, as were the rest of us, and there were some nervous Mages in our party who had never faced the Council before.

“So, progress has been made in all aspects of the studies you were asked to undertake?” Mage Julia asked after an initial introduction by Roxanne.

“Yes, Mage Julia. Although a lot more work needs to be done; for all we can do a basic scan of an Orc or Orc controlled creature, we are struggling to actually read one or control it, so different is their physiological and neurological core matrix. We understand much of their technology, even if it’s not suitable for use by ourselves or the other races of the alliance. We have also developed counters for much of their weaponry, though I personally suspect we have not seen a fraction of what they can bring to the field.”

“Why would that be? It is a newly conquered world after all.”

“Our consensus is that the Akhhlognuisi were not considered to be a great challenge, though we have yet to make a base scan of a higher leader other than a Land-boss, the equivalent of a very junior lieutenant.”

“Your mission was to observe, was it not?” Mage Clarence asked with a slight sneer.

“Within certain limits, yes, Mage Clarence.” Roxanne politely replied.

“So why did you take it upon yourself to attack the Orcs when they clearly did not know you were there observing them.”

“You wish me to ignore genocide, Mage Clarence?”

“There is no evidence the Orcs would have killed these creatures until after you interfered!”

“As they had killed off nearly a billion of them before we’d arrived, I suspect you’re mistaken.”

“Yet you chose to endanger our people to aid others not an ally? I think you took it upon yourself to run roughshod over your orders, Mage Roxanne, and not for the first time either!” he thundered, no doubt trying to make a point, but frankly looking merely pompous.

“The Fae Calvagh would not permit our people to stand by whilst sentient beings were in danger of being wiped out,” Ambassador Jolint of the Fae interjected.

“I would never have put them in a position in which they felt they had to ask, Ambassador,” Roxanne replied with a formal nod.

“If the Sidhe wish to go about rescuing lesser races, that is no concern of yours, Mage Roxanne, nor grounds for ignoring your orders!” Clarence sneered, being doubly insulting by calling the Fae ‘Sidhe’ a name they now held in disgust.

“Again, I will not stand by and permit genocide. Particularly as I had the means to prevent it. Nor do I along with the Fae, Veda and Azurans see the Akhhlognuisi as a lesser race.”

“You endangered this mission with your hubris, as I suspected you would. You’re far too much of a loose cannon, Roxanne.”

“I fail to see how I endangered the mission. If anything, our presence forced the Orcs to bring more of their creatures into the field for us to study.”

“Indeed you did Mage Roxanne,” Mage Cixi acknowledged. “Three of which we wouldn’t have seen had you not shown compassion and intervened.”

“Nevertheless, I have studied the mission orders and parameters and Mage Roxanne was clearly in breach of them by intervening and endangering her staff!” Clarence sneered, clearly hoping to stir some trouble.

“Granted I stepped outside the boundaries of my orders to remain undetected,” Roxanne shrugged. “However, those orders, I believe, were superseded by the overall mission ethos of assisting the Akhhlognuisi if we could. The Orcs did not begin aggressive patrolling until after the Seer scan, which, as we had suspected, they detected. Hence, they already knew they were being observed. I then sent teams out into the field to remove the Akhhlognuisi non-combatants from the Orcs and we succeeded in doing this despite one Orc patrol coming close to discovering us. I then used my discretion to wipe out this patrol as they may have witnessed something they should not. As it stands, the Orcs know they are being observed, but have as yet no idea who we are, where we are from or indeed even what we look like.”

“Yes, you by far exceeded our expectations, Mage Roxanne,” Mage Sofya acknowledged. “It was very well done indeed.”

“She endangered the entire mission!” Clarence almost shrieked.

“Only if clues were left behind, Clarence,” Mage Cixi retorted. “And we know they weren’t, our people are competent to say the least.”

“Pah! Pure luck, nothing else!” he snorted. “We need someone in charge who will not take such reckless risks.”

“I cannot think of anyone better qualified. I cannot see Roxanne’s peers, the Bureau heads, doing any different,” Mage Zola interjected.

“I would be willing to oversee this mission, to prevent its breakdown into chaos,” Clarence offered.

“I see no need for change,” Mage Rowenna almost laughed in his face, as there was no way those in the Council who knew of Loegrian space were going to let Clarence anywhere near it.

“I do. All I see are the various miscreants who were at the root of all the casualties of the Mage wars acting out their folly yet again against another power, one who would probably have ignored us if we had not intervened against it!”

“I’m sorry, but is this ... Mage of the opinion that the Daoine Sidhe would have just gone away if you, the allied Earths, had ignored them?” Ambassador Jolint enquired.

“Indeed he is, Ambassador,” Simon replied.

“And you call yourselves the Council of the Wise?”

“There are exceptions to every rule, Ambassador,” Sofya replied with a chuckle.

“Yes, but one rarely runs into a living example,” Jolint replied, looking amazed as Clarence fumed.

“It is my sincere belief that we could have come to an agreement with the Daoine Sidhe and Queen Oonagh,” Clarence stated getting more than a few looks of disbelief.

“Only if you were to submit to being her supper that night,” Jolint scoffed. “The Daoine Sidhe believed they were superior to all beings and meant to rule them. Many of our recalcitrant Daoine Sidhe still do, though they are greatly in a minority now amongst the Fae. Their idea of an agreement was that you unconditionally surrendered to their rule and submitted to their abuses without complaint.”

As this came from a Fae who once considered himself a ‘Daoine Sidhe’ (ruling class) of Tír na nÓg this was a classic slapdown of Clarence’s muddled thinking and for the moment he chose to say nothing else on the subject.

“Have you made any progress in understanding this sled creature, Betsy?” Mage Rutu asked into the silence.

“Communication is going well, however we have yet to find a way to give her full control over her flight abilities and control over her destiny,” Mage Xi responded. “Mage Benjamin has thankfully been able to restore her sanity ... somewhat and get her suicidal tendencies under control.”

“Another foolish and worthless endeavour,” Clarence sneered. “One that almost got a precious resource killed.”

“They didn’t remotely come that close,” I chuckled, seeing an answering grin from many of the Mages present.

“Betsy is an important test subject for us. The way she’s been constructed is how the Orcs have gone about doing it with others and it would be useful to find a means to restore control to the higher neural functions should it come to open conflict,” Xi continued.

“How could this help?” Sofya asked frowning.

“Most of them are suicidal and in despair, though unable to self-terminate. Most would want to die, taking out their oppressors with them, we believe.”

“Oh ... oh yes, I see.”

“Do we have a table of organisation for the Orc ranks yet?” Mage Liang asked.

“Up to Higher Adept, yes. we believe so. Though there may be a lot of sub-branches we are not aware of yet. We are certain that there is a Senior Adept above Higher Adept, but how far above, we simply do not know and will be part of our studies when we move onto Craachan, a fully occupied Orc world,” Roxanne replied.

“What are your intentions for Nansack?”

“We believe we have a way to get at the meteor that disrupted the Higher Powers abilities. We intend to destroy it and see how the Higher Powers react. We may even be able to return the Akhhlognuisi to their home and under far greater protection.”

“A most interesting and worthy goal,” Liang nodded.

“Are you mad?” spluttered Clarence. “We do not under any circumstances interfere with Higher Powers and for good reason!”

“We aren’t interfering with the Higher Powers, Mage Clarence,” Roxanne responded mildly. “Merely freeing them from their bondage.”

“We do not know how they will react! They may kill all alien life on the planet!”

“They aren’t stupid, Mage Clarence,” Roxanne replied, more or less implying that Clarence was.

“We should not have gone there!”

“And have them come here in a thousand years’ time?”

“You do not know that!”

“I’d rather be wrong my way, than yours,” Roxanne replied getting murmurs of agreement from the council.

“You may have doomed us!”

“Like we doomed ourselves with the Daoine Sidhe, according to Mage Hermes?”

“Mage Hermes no longer believes this and regrets his earlier position, Roxanne,” Mage Sofya added softly.

“Nevertheless, this fool maintains Hermes earlier position and will not acknowledge the mistakes of the past.”

“Are you calling me a fool, Mage Roxanne?” Clarence hissed.

“A slip of the tongue.”

“A slip!”

“Yes, I meant moron.”

“I challenge this ... this lesser Mage, to a duel for impugning my honour!” Clarence snarled.

“Challenge denied,” Simon Magus’ voice penetrated the silence.

“Why? Mage Simon.”

“Because you serve a purpose here, one that I would be loath to lose.”

I saw Clarence puff himself up with pride at Simon’s intervention, though I suspected that he did not understand that he was the example that Simon regarded as the antithesis of all that the Council should be, hence anything he was against, was probably the right thing to do.

“Speak with care in future, Mage Roxanne. Politeness costs nothing,” Simon gave her a stern warning, ameliorated somewhat by his sparkling eyes.

“Of course, Mage Simon. I forgot my and Mage Clarence’s place,” she replied, clearly with difficulty in hiding a grin. “I apologise for insulting you, Mage Clarence.”

“Just have a care in future,” he sniffed.

“What of Orc basic technology?” Ambassador Kordanta of Murias asked.

“They have the ability to form gravity repellors for flight and shielding. They use a variety of electronic devices for scanning as well as forming portals for travel and the like. All these we understand and can to a greater or lesser degree counter. The main difference, and where we struggle, is where they adapt biotechnology into the mix for command and control. Somehow, they’ve found ways to graft living neural tissue onto various objects such as their weapons, sleds, doors and security. They can also, it appears, adapt themselves and any creatures they use to perform a variety of additional tasks, such as for hunting, both normal and magical, as well as for security purposes. See the annex on the creatures we named waargs, eviscerators and Omniscients. We have noted that they can adapt themselves into becoming at least a waarg ... possibly as a punishment. There are also other creatures we’ve noted but been unable to scan who appear to be investigators in digging out evidence, and others who appear to be used for data communication,” Brianna explained at length.