Chapter 1

James looked at his Mad to read the message and then at Dusty, in disbelief.

“Dusty, what have you stirred up now?” he asked. He wasn’t really surprised by the new orders, not when it came to Dusty. He suspected the innocent sounding questions that Dusty had asked him the week before was now not so innocent.

He had hoped it was going to be a quiet day but now he would be spending it packing. The message informed him that they were being reassigned and were to be aboard the spaceship Striker-1 by 15:00 hours for further instructions. Their shuttle to the Armstrong Space Station would be leaving at 14:00 hours.

“Hey! It wasn’t my fault! Well, it’s not all my fault anyway. You can blame Colonel Charles, Sheikh Rashid and your dad too. They are the ones who believe the smugglers have changed their operations since we shut them down on the Moon. We are now sure they commit piracy of the settlement ships and slavery of the settlers going to Terra,” Dusty replied.

“Yes, but only after you kept investigating them,” James shot back.

“Well, how was I to know that the database that Troikas Incorporated let me have access to was going to be such a treasure trove. I know we can’t use a lot of what I get from it in a Court of Law, but it sure helps me ferret out ways to get to these people legally,” Dusty informed him as she started collecting up the breakfast dishes.

James rose to help her, “I still don’t know why Ambassador Watson let you use it let alone told you about it.”

Dusty shrugged, “He just handed me the Mads and said his daughter-in-law thought I might find it useful, like I told you before. You have to admit we have got a lot of use out of it and our new Mads.”

“True, we have. The Ambassador having an Empress Wizard for a daughter-in-law sure has its advantages. I’d like to meet her one of these days,” James replied as he met Dusty in the kitchen and placed his dishes in the sink before starting the water to rinse them.

Dusty gave him a look and after putting the dishes down on the benchtop, she fronted up to him. She gripped his buns and pulled him close so that she rubbed against the front of his body and replied, “What, one redhead not enough for you?”

James groaned softly as she rubbed. In the two and half years they had been together, he still reacted the same way he had from the first time he had seen Dusty walk into her father’s Police Station in North Queensland. In the way of reply, he said, “You have seen the size of Sean, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Dusty replied with a dreamy sigh as she rubbed him again.

James chortled and then kissed her hard for stirring him up. Dusty was more than happy to return the kiss. Since she had given in and gone out with James, she had never regretted it. James had become her anchor and she loved him more than life itself. He was her voice of reason. His love and unflappable support often humbled her.

James finally reigned in his senses and gently pushed her back a little so he could look at her face. “So what little plan did you and the Colonel cook up for me to go along with?”

Dusty wasn’t sure James was going to like it but they couldn’t think of any other way for them to find out more about the new operation unless they got more personally involved. He had a fear of jumping through space but since the company that made most of the ships these days had been brought out by Troikas Incorporated a few years before, the starships were a lot safer.

Being stationed on the Moon had been fun. So much had happened in the near two years they had been there. When the Starship Fortune had come back just before Christmas of ‘95, it was as if a bomb had been dropped on the Earth. Not only had the crew found a planet that people could go to; they had found two.

The first planet had people on it and it was controlled by Wizards, true, magic-wielding Wizards. The people of Earth were in for an even greater shock. The people who lived on Utopia were from the myths and legends of Earth. They had gone to Utopia from Earth around 500BC, via a device called a transportation portal.

The people of Utopia resembled pixies, dwarfs, elves and faeries. One race, the Burgis, looked not much different to humans but they tended to be a little shorter than the average human was and they were inclined to have dark completions and smaller, rounder ears.

Another race resembled the mythical Faye but they were much taller and broader of shoulder, more towards the end of the scale for the tallest of humans. It was said they were the remnants of a race called Giants by some or the Granteli by others.

They had not grown as tall on Utopia as Earth’s legends indicated because its gravity was slightly higher than Earth’s. Over the centuries, they had bred with their cousin race, the elves or Genteli as they called themselves. Both races were long-lived and they didn’t appear to age at the same rate as humans did.

The Genteli were slimmer of build and similar in height to the Burgis people. They tended to have pointier ears like their cousin races, pale pink skin and their purple eyes were noticeably larger than those of humans. They also had hair shades that went from pale pinks to dark purples with the odd redhead or blonde thrown in.

The Pixies were called the Pix race and the dwarfs were better known as the Prols. These were the two oldest races. The Genteli and Grandteli were the Pixs’ younger cousin races and the Burgis were related to the Prols. The Pix aged into the middle of their second century like their younger races, the Burgis were similar to humans. The Prol aged a little faster, they were considered very old if they got to seventy years of age.

The parent races didn’t grow much more than ten to twenty centimetres over a metre high. They had been classed as slave races on Earth and Utopia after their people had forgotten their origins. One of Lee Watson’s first declarations as the Queen Wizard was to set them free.

One other interesting race was the Shifters. They looked similar to the Genteli but could change shape to different animal forms if they absorbed the animals DNA. They were normally born in female form but they could also change gender and were fertile in any of their forms.

Shifters born male were rarely able to change form or gender. They also didn’t pass on the shifting gene unless they were destined to be Wizards. These people also came in a variety of skin and hair shades, and their height depending on which race they breed with.

The last interesting race was the Faeries. They grew to less than half a metre at their tallest. They had dark green hair and pale green toned skin. They could also fly with their cicada shaped, double set of wings.

The Faeries passed on their heritage using racial memories and were magically gifted but not to the same extent as those people in the other races who could wield magic. Not everyone had magical abilities, nor were those who could do magic of equal ability. They also used magical items and gems to increase their abilities.

Several people who had been aboard the Fortune had found magical boxes that contained sets of items, which had been worn by the Wizards of the Keltrian people who had originally come to Earth. Wizards were stronger than Mages and Novices. They were often formed into groups called decads and one was a Lord Wizard. The Lord and the other four Wizards each had an apprentice. Queens and then Empresses were higher again.

The Wizard’s boxes could only be claimed by people that the magical items found acceptable. The people of Earth learnt that the magical items provided people with a conduit to what was said to be the universe’s magical energy. The items were also possessed by a spirit and many religions on Earth denounced the items as the work of the devil.

The people who came back to Earth tried to tell them that far from allowing the wearer of an item to do the work of the devil, the entities prompted the wearer to do good deeds. That it was the evil in the heart of the wearer, which sometimes caused the entity to be suppressed. Unless enslaved they would leave a wrong-doer.

The more items of a magical set that a Mage wore and the more different magical gems the items had the stronger the entity and the abilities of the magic user. Different gems enhanced the wearer’s natural talents. An item or set would only go to a person who had the corresponding talent or talents.

Why this had thrilled Dusty and James was because they had come into possession of such items. Dusty had acquired her magical medallion from a man who was trying to use the magic for evil. The item had left him when Dusty had killed him before he could kill her. Its entity had come to her believing that she would use it for good.

James had acquired his medallion from a woman called Lora, who wore a magical ring. She had told them that the ring she owned was not as powerful as their medallions. She had thought the medallion would go to her next husband but once she met James, she knew it wanted to go to him.

When the scientific mission came back from Utopia, Dusty and James had learnt more about the medallions they wore. They were delighted when they read from a website that the Wizards had set up, that the medallions they owned were commonly worn by people the Utopian’s called Shields. Since they were both former Police Offices and now Military Police for UNSEC, this made perfectly good sense to them.

One thing they had not done was blithely tell the world that some people on Earth already owned magical items like themselves. Even with the excitement of the rest of Earth learning about magic, many magical families on Earth decided that while things were volatile, they would continue to keep a low key and not reveal their secrets.

The other Mages and Wizards were safe on Utopia and Harmony, and the zealots and religious fanatics were on Earth with them. Some of the fanatics were howling for blood and the Mages didn’t want it to be theirs. Quite a few magical people had already moved to the outer colonies in the Sol System.

They had found that in the smaller colonies, using their magic to keep the other people with them safe, while known by a few, was not spoken about outside of the colony. Quite a few people knew they owed their lives to these people. The fact the Mages didn’t wish to hold official positions and just helped who they could was reassuring to the colonists.

It also kept tongues from wagging and the people protected their Mages if they knew of them. These communities knew having them was a good thing and planned to keep things that way. It was dangerous enough living in domes on planets or asteroids with no atmospheres and they considered getting all the help they could get was a good thing.

In many ways, this was why Dusty and James had been happy enough to stay on the Moon for their two-year assignment. They could find plenty of places to practice this new craft and they found plenty of opportunities to use it in ways to assist them to catch criminals without drawing too much attention to themselves.

The day Dusty had bumped into Ambassador Watson had changed things for them. They had both known as soon as they touched that the other wore magical items. He had been on the Moon’s Armstrong Space Station overseeing the loading of goods onto the starship Fortune, for which he was personally responsible.

Dusty and James with their best friends Bindy and Aaron Andrews had been sent to inspect a ship that was reported to have banned items on it. They had been asked to report their findings to the Ambassador since he was on the station and his corporation now owned it.

When the Ambassador handed her the Mads, after she gave him their report, he told her to use them carefully. He gave her the log-in code to a database that had been added to the Mads just for them. He also mentioned that his daughter-in-law, Lee, would be keeping an eye on them.