The Plasma Shadow

  Chapter ∩

  As predicted, there was absolutely nothing nearby when Nemesis dropped out of warp the morning after leaving the vortex. Ruggles Girx had not given them much information, and this was as close as they were going to come to matching the location he had described. Mirana had reasoned that if Trelan Thendrak had given the location simply based on constellations in the sky, the coordinates could not have been very specific anyway, so it was reasonable to hope that they might be able to repeat Thendrak’s actions from here. Still, now that they were no longer moving and had nothing else to do, Ned was a little worried about their chances.

  “Here we are,” Mirana said, breaking the silence.

  Ned bit his lip, pondering. “We have to assume that Thendrak used the Plasma to guide him to wherever it was he went. Let’s drop the Shadow field and see if I can sense something.”

  Mirana’s eyes shifted focus as she reached out to remove her power from the ship’s Plasmic transducer, and Ned reached out with his own power to probe the ether around him. “There’s definitely nothing odd here. I’m not sure how far out I can reliably sense things, but…” He pushed outward with his senses, focusing past the ship’s hull to the emptiness beyond. It did feel truly empty; as he had experienced before, the Plasma had only a very tenuous presence in open space. “I think the ship is distracting me,” he said finally. “There’s so much more going on here than outside.”

  “You want to spacewalk?”

  “I don’t know, floating around might just disorient me. Maybe if I fly out there in my fighter.”

  Mirana shrugged “Can’t hurt.”

  Ned hurried down the corridor to the launch bay and climbed aboard his fighter. He lifted it off the deck and out into space, already feeling a little disoriented at the lack of any frame of reference. He put some distance between himself and Nemesis, then locked his position with respect to the larger ship. Again he closed his eyes and reached out, and this time he could sense the ether a little more clearly. He sat there for some time, searching. “The Plasma is definitely moving,” he said finally over the com link. “Like a faint breeze, I guess. Are we… stopped?”

  Ablithra Erjflonger’s voice came back, “We’re drifting in phase space. Do you need to lock velocity to something?”

  Ned had not really decided what he was looking for, so instead of answering he poked around at his fighter’s controls. He had learned on his first journey with Smardwurst that most starcraft could match velocity with any of several targets, such as planet, a main ship, or an enemy fighter. The positional readouts would then give speeds and distances relative to that target. Ned did a cartographic scan of the region of space and picked a nearby star to lock position with. The eddies in the Plasmic either shuddered a bit as his ship started drifting in a different direction, but soon he regained a sense of the general movement.

  “It’s coming from over there,” he said, pointing. “Just a second.” It took some fumbling with the controls, but he managed to chart a course in the general direction of where the Plasma seemed to be flowing from. He forwarded the data to Nemesis. “I think we should take readings like this from a few locations some distance apart and see if we can triangulate an origin.”

  “Good idea,” Mirana replied back. “No sense re-docking each time; you head where you need to, and we’ll follow when you’re ready.”

  “Okay.” The idea of warping off into space was a little unnerving, but he had done it before. Of course, at the time he had been heading home, not into emptiness, and he had known there were no other ships in the area that he might encounter. Still, Nemesis could catch up to him quickly if anything went wrong, so he plotted a course several degrees to the right and above the direction he had plotted previously. He went to warp one and stayed there for a minute or so, still a little unsettled by the fact that the starfield hardly shifted even though he was traveling faster than anyone on Earth ever had. Finally he dropped out of warp again and closed his eyes. There was definitely movement, and he tried to point his fighter in the direction it was coming from. Again he plotted a course, and while the two lines did not quite intersect in three dimensions, they definitely suggested a general direction to search. The lines did not approach each other for several light years, though, and he did not really want to spend hours cruising around in his fighter when the fastest ship in the Empire was just seconds away. He opened long-range channel to Nemesis. “I think it’s working,” he said. “But we need to jump farther ahead than I can get to quickly. Do you mind picking me up?”

  Nemesis was there in seconds, and over the next several minutes Mirana took Ned to five more locations, each time gaining a new heading that helped to surround what seemed to be the source of the Plasma flow. “I think we’re almost there,” he called to Mirana as he headed out of the landing bay for yet another reading. “What do we do when we reach the center? The sensors would pick something up if there were anything there, wouldn’t they?”

  “Girx said he didn’t see anything even when he was right on top of it. But it can’t be a coincidence that you’re sensing Plasma flowing from somewhere. Let’s just get there.”

  It took a few more jumps, but soon the ethereal flow was so strong that Ned could sense it from inside Nemesis, so he returned to the pricom for the last few readings.

  “There,” he said, pointing. “We should be able to reach it on graviton drive.”

  “I’m reengaging the Shadow drive,” Mirana said.

  Ablithra flicked her controls, and Nemesis started forward. Ned adjusted the heading a few times, then abruptly told her to stop. “It’s just a few meters away… there.” Already focusing his power outside the ship, Ned brought the Plasma into normal space in a glowing ball out in front of the ship. It showed up as a clear beacon on the viewscreen. “Fly to that point.” Nemesis reached the spot quickly and kept moving, and then all of a sudden the starfield was replaced by a white light so intense that the pricom crew had to dim the viewscreen. They looked around nervously, but Mirana just stared straight ahead. Ned thought he knew how she felt; there were probably answers up ahead, but there could just as possibly be a fleet of enemy ships, or some other kind of trap. But the light faded before Ned could ponder that for long, and empty space returned.

  “Weird,” Ned said as he probed the ether around him. Several inquisitive eyes turned to him. “The Plasma is flowing back toward the vortex, but it’s not coming from a particular spot anymore. It’s just… more intense, I guess. It’s like it’s a high-pressure fluid in this part of space, and the vortex is a release valve.”

  “Where are we?” Mirana asked, but Bortis was already scanning.

  “We’re… really far away. I guess that was another vortex. There’s a star system up ahead, but it’s pretty isolated – nothing else within a few days’ travel, even for us. There’s… one planet orbing the star.” He brought up a map on a side viewscreen, showing their position as well beyond explored Anacronian space.

  “Let’s check it out, then.”

  Another quick jump through hyperspace brought them in view of the planet Bortis had mentioned.

  “The planet is tiny,” Jenzo reported. “It must have a really dense interior though, because the surface gravity is about standard. There’s one continent, mostly forested. I’m not reading any technology at all, but there is some kind of electromagnetic disturbance near the mountains there.”

  He brought the location up on the screen, and Mirana stepped forward, as if to get a better look. “Just trees and rocks and a river or two. You’re not detecting anything generating it?”

  “No. The center of the disturbance is about here.” A red dot appeared on the map view, indicating an area where the trees ran up against a cliff face. A circle appeared around the dot, indicating the reach of the energy field. “There’s a good landing spot a short distance away, outside the disturbance.”

  Ned frowned. “What kind of a ‘disturbance’ are we talking about? Some kind of a securit
y device?”

  “Or a beacon,” Kalru offered. “It makes it pretty clear where to go. Either that or a decoy, I guess.”

  “The field could interfere with electronic equipment,” Jenzo said. “We could probably find a way to shield against it.”

  “No,” Mirana said. “I say we play along. Ned?”

  “That should be fine. I’ll go in first, and if the Plasma doesn’t have to protect me, you can follow.”

  “Great,” Mirana said, looking a little excited. “Let’s get packed. Looks like the hike should take about an hour, but no sense going in unprepared.” She left the pricom, motioning Ned to follow. “You know about packing for outdoor trips, right? Dress in layers, carry essentials like food, knife…”

  “I didn’t exactly pack when I came.”

  “There’s standard equipment in your room.” Mirana disappeared behind her own door, and Ned hurried onward to pack whatever he could find. He rummaged around the closet and found shorts, boots, and a jacket that looked and felt like leather but was much lighter. A nearby locker contained a small backpack preloaded with several supplies, although many of them were electronic, and it seemed those would be useless. Ned had to assume that Mirana was planning to go in without their battle armor, which seemed fine, although Ned would have felt a little more comfortable knowing whether it could at least materialize inside of the electromagnetic disturbance field they were heading for. He was pretty sure Mirana would be done packing before him, though, so he gathered his things quickly and hurried to the launch bay.

  Mirana was standing near Nightsong, carrying a pack similar to Ned’s and wearing a belt with several large pockets attached. She was talking with Jenzo and gesturing at various parts of the ship, apparently doing some kind of a preflight check. In the well-lit bay, Ned now noticed that the fighter’s hull appeared almost soft; whatever material covered it muted the light rather than reflecting it like Ned’s own fighter did. He looked over at the blue fighter resting not far away and smirked. He had a feeling he knew how the following conversation would go.

  “Don’t you think it would be better to take my fighter? You know, it having two seats and all.”

  “What are you going to do if we’re attacked? Fight off attackers while focusing your shield? Move over so I can take the controls?”

  “I’ve we’re optimizing for the chance of attack, we really should be going down there with both fighters, plus armor. How long would it take Nemesis to catch up with us if something goes wrong?”

  Mirana frowned. “Fine,” she said, to Ned’s surprise. He was expecting a snarky addition along the lines of “Just don’t crash,” but Mirana walked over to his fighter without another word. Actually, she looked a little distracted. Ned followed after her, reaching down to his waist to signal the fighter to lower both seats to the shuttle bay deck. For what felt like the hundredth time today, Ned lifted his fighter off the deck and flew through the opening doors and into space.

  Flying down through the atmosphere was a little unnerving. The inertial dampers on his fighter spared him the extra force he would normally feel from his seat at such a high acceleration, but the sight of the distant ocean and mountains zooming toward him was a little dizzying. He tried to focus on his instruments, guiding the fighter toward the spot Bortis had sent him, making sure not to get too close before slowing down. Soon the forest was close enough to make out individual trees, and Ned slowed, looking for the landing spot. “Now let’s just see if I can descend without smashing any trees,” he mused.

  “Want to know a trick?”

  He looked back in surprise, then realized he had better keep his eyes forward. “Sure,” he said. For some reason the offer for advice from Mirana seemed out of the ordinary.

  “Flip upside-down. Then you can keep the trees above you and see your landing spot.”

  Ned smiled. It was a weird idea, one that would never work on Earth. But the fighter’s graviton thrusters would work just as well inverted, so he nudged the attitude control to the side in a slow roll. The ship’s artificial gravity kept him from feeling upside down, which made it all that much more odd when the trees rotated around and started passing above him. He dropped altitude, effectively rising toward the branches, and skimmed their tops until he could make out the clearing ahead. When he could see the flat, grassy area directly above him, he flipped the fighter back over and landed it.

  “Not bad,” Mirana said. Smiling, Ned lowered the cockpit and stepped out into the warm, midmorning air. The familiar sounds of birds chirping and leaves rustling made their way out to them from the trees, and there was no visible sign of the energy field they had detected from Nemesis.

  Mirana was looking at a handheld scanner. “The barrier is right up there.” She pointed to a sort of natural path leading into a thin stand of trees. She started walking, and Ned followed. Mirana stopped a short distance into the trees. “It’s here,” she announced. Still there was no sound or sight to mark the barrier, although there was definitely something.

  “I think this barrier is generated by the Plasma somehow. I can feel it up ahead.”

  “Not surprising, all things considered.”

  “Do you think that scanner will blow up or something if you carry it in? There’s more electronic stuff in my pack…”

  Mirana smiled and handed Ned the device, then motioned forward with a mock bow. Ned smiled too as he jogged forward, half expecting the scanner to explode in his hand. Instead, it simply went dead as he passed on of the trees. He could sense the presence of the energy field around him by the way it disturbed the ether, but he sensed no other effects. He stopped and offered the scanner back to Mirana, who caught up with Ned without any disastrous effects either. She took the scanner and tucked it into a side pocket on her backpack. “Who knows? Maybe it will start working again later.” She started forward again, and Ned kept pace. He was just about to ask her if she knew where she was going – realizing at the same time that he probably should have thought of this sooner – when she pulled out a map and compass from another pouch and started looking at them.

  Again, Ned was surprised. “You have a paper map? And a compass that works on an alien planet?”

  “It’s not exactly paper; it’s markable fabric. And we calibrated the compass based on the planet’s magnetic field. This isn’t the first time I’ve needed to get around without detectable equipment, believe it or not.”

  The trees closed around them quickly as they climbed gradually into the foothills, but while there was no actual path to follow, the trees and rocks always seemed to leave a spot open in the direction they wanted to go. Ned found the whole experience very pleasant, not only because of the good weather and relaxing scenery but because of how much it reminded him of exploring the woods near his home when he was younger. But what surprised him was how happy Mirana seemed. As they walked, it was like Ned could see the cynicism and rough façade fall away with each step. He wanted to say something, but at the same time he knew that, while Mirana’s trips through the woods had also started in her youth, those memories would undoubtedly be linked to the less pleasant ones that had followed. Eventually, though, Ned found that the silence between them was becoming a major frustration, so he decided to try starting a conversation.

  “You seem pretty experienced at this,” he noted when she stopped for a moment to compare the map to the mountain tops visible above the tree line.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” She was still smiling, which was a good sign. “I don’t get away from the whole starship-and-city scene very often. It’s nice to be somewhere where there’s nothing to hide from.”

  “I know what you mean. The problems we face kind of fall into perspective when you’re surrounded by something that’s just there, and has been for hundreds of years, and will still be there long after we leave.”

  She looked down and shook her head, as if trying to hide from her own smile. “Come on,” she said. “It’s not much farther.”

  Even though she
had shut down his attempt at a conversation, Ned could not help but feel like he had scored some friendship points. He had talked to Mirana about something that had not made her angry or frustrated or concerned. It was something, anyway. He realized that it was a little silly for him to even care, but, he told himself that Mirana was an interesting person, and so it made sense to go to some effort to get to know her. As they walked, Ned found himself looking over at her just to see the expression on her face; even the bounce of her ponytail seemed inordinately interesting. He knew she would not approve of that sentiment, but since “not much farther” turned out to still be in progress several minutes later, Ned decided to try again.

  “So, what do you do when you’re not off investigating something or fighting a battle?”

  She looked at him as if his question made no sense. “That’s been pretty much my life for the last several years.”

  “But you must have a few minutes here and there in-between ‘missions.’ Do you read? Listen to music?”

  “I read up on economic trends and illegal activities.”

  “I’m starting to think it might be best if I just left you here for a few weeks while I go on alone.”

  “Ha. Not if you want to…”

  Stay alive, Ned finished for her. Oops. They were back to the war that would be starting soon, if it hadn’t already.

  “I train,” she said, surprising Ned out of his bout of regret. “You know, for combat. It’s relaxing, focusing my energy into something that makes me stronger and lets me be ready for whatever’s coming up.”

  “Makes sense. I guess I should do that too, although I doubt I’d be able to get good quickly enough to matter. Not if my piloting skills are any indication.”

  “You have different skills,” Mirana said, again surprising him with her openness. “You see into a world no one else seems to understand, and you find ways to make that matter. You find the strength to face challenges most people would run away from.”

  “Well, thank you. That… actually means a lot coming from someone who could seriously take out anyone in the galaxy.”

  “Yes, well, some would argue that a skill that’s misused is worse than no skill at all.”

  “You haven’t misused your skills. You’ve just been trying to do the work of an army and a government all by yourself. You can’t expect everything to turn out perfectly.”

  Mirana seemed satisfied with his answer, but she made no further comment. Soon Ned could hear the splashing of water ahead. Ned had noticed blue lines crisscrossing Mirana’s map, but so far they had crossed only small streams. The sound made him thirsty, and took a drink from his canteen. The sound became louder as they walked, and through the trees Ned could see the mountain wall rising out of the forest nearby.

  “Right over here,” Mirana announced, then pushed ahead through a break in some dense bushes. Ned followed her and saw the source of the water.

  The trees continued only a short distance before the ground dropped sharply into a shallow pool, which was fed by a waterfall tumbling down over a short cliff, the first in several more steps leading farther up into the rock behind it. The rock of the cliff face completely encircled the pool except for the spot where they stood and where the pool emptied into a stream that disappeared into the woods. The pool was small enough that they could have walked around it easily, but the water reached right to the cliff face.

  “The exact center of the energy field is just ahead,” Mirana said, studying the map with a furrowed brow. “It could be up higher, or it could be inside the mountain. We could go back into the trees and search the rock for a cave…”

  “The waterfall,” Ned said.

  “What about it?”

  “I bet it’s a door.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Well, first of all, everyone who’s ever played a video game knows that there’s always something behind a waterfall.” He paused for the obligatory glare. “And second, the Plasma doesn’t feel quite as… ‘dense’ over there.”

  Mirana rubbed her chin. “The water seems to fall right up against the rock, but I guess it’s worth a shot. You have swimwear, right?”

  “Swim?” Ned walked up to the water’s edge and looked into the pool. Mirana was right – it was too deep to wade across, and the water wasn’t any more shallow around the perimeter. “I’m actually not the best swimmer, but…”

  By the time he turned around, Mirana was already down to a light shirt and shorts, both made out of a dark gray, shiny-looking fabric. It was still very modest, especially for swimwear, but it was also flattering enough to make Ned forget to finish his sentence or even to close his mouth. If Mirana noticed, she gave no sign. “Hurry,” she said, and carried her pack and outer clothes over to the bushes to conceal them, then pulled the belt out of the pile and reattached it. Ned quickly shed his jacket, boots, and outer shirt and pants, leaving him in similar shorts and t-shirt. Transferring the Shield Crystal and armor pin from the pants pocket to the shorts was habit for him, and he made the switch quickly, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that even after mastering its power, Ned was still unable to put the Crystal down. The shirt and shorts were a different material from what Mirana was wearing and did not really feel like they were designed for swimming, so Ned thought about ditching the shirt as well. But he decided it was better to err on the side of too much clothing instead of too little. He put his things together in a rough pile and walked back to the pool. Mirana was already waist deep. She motioned for him to follow, then dove in.

  Ned waded as far as he could, carefully watching the pool’s bottom in an attempt to stick to the highest ground possible. He had taken a few swimming lessons, but he had not had many chances to practice, and he knew he was going to look silly as soon as his feet were off the ground. The obvious solution in any other place would have been to engage his armor and simply walk across the bottom, and for all he knew it would work; the armor could withstand repeated laser and missile fire, so it might just shrug off the interference from this strange energy field. But that seemed a little extreme, and he was sure he would not like the response he got from Mirana if he tried it, so finally he just plunged in and flailed across the pool as fast as he could. It actually did not take him long to reach the other side, and when he finally made it to shallow water near the side of the waterfall, he found Mirana lounging patiently against the rock. He managed not to stare too much.

  “It looks like you were right,” she said as he wiped water from his face. “There’s an opening back there.” And with that, she disappeared into the wall of water.

  Ned took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and waded through as well. On the other side he found himself at the start of a long tunnel of tan-colored stone. Light filtered in from behind the falls and at odd intervals ahead, presumably through other openings above. Mirana was shaking out her ponytail; already her clothing seemed dry except for a few drops that beaded on the slick fabric. Ned’s clothing had not absorbed too much either, but he tried to wring it out a little anyway.

  “We made it,” he said, a little excited now that the ordeal was behind him.

  Mirana started forward without a word. The passageway bent a little, and once the sound of the waterfall faded, the only noise was the sound of their wet feet against the cold rock. “Just think,” Mirana said as the passageway wore on. “He was here.” The thought sent a chill through Ned. He looked around furtively, half expecting to be attacked.

  The rock soon changed from natural-looking cave to carefully crafted tunnel, with a flat floor and vertical sides. “It’s like on Palandora,” Ned said to himself, remembering Koral’s old home. And then the tunnel ended, opening abruptly to the left into a circular room with a high, arched ceiling. Again light filtered down from who-knew-where, with a lit area in the center of the room highlighting a pedestal. The pedestal was formed out of the same stone as the floor and walls, with intricate carvings on its base, but the top was bare. Three smaller ped
estals sat against the walls, evenly spaced from each other and from the entrance. Each of these three had a claw-like protrusion on the top, like talons curving upward, with a small slot just below them. Above each of these pedestals the walls were carved with some kind of lettering. This time Mirana waited, watching Ned. He took a deep breath and walked inside.

  There was not much more to see, really. Whatever this room was for, it seemed to have served its purpose. “It’s so… empty,” Mirana said, entering now. She looked disappointed.

  “I’m guessing that these claws held the Crystals,” Ned speculated. “And maybe the activator pins fit into these slots. But if Thendrak already had the Matrix Crystal when he came here, what was the central pedestal for?

  “A keyhole? Look at the floor and walls around the others – I’m thinking maybe they were rotated out from behind the wall.” Ned could see what she meant – there was a faint seam in the floor that curved around each of the pedestals, which continued up the walls and over them.

  “Okay,” Ned said. “So Thendrak comes into the rooms, sees this pedestal, and interacts with it somehow. Three sections of the wall spin around and deliver additional Plasma Crystals, which he takes and later distributes to Rax, Dren, and Ralok.” He paused, not really wanting to voice this next thought. “So what should we learn from this?”

  Mirana was obviously already thinking the same thing; she made no attempt to hide the scowl that was slowly spread across her face. “We can copy the writing on the walls, although there might have been further writing on the other side.” She pulled out her map and flipped it over, then produced some kind of pen and started transcribing the message over one of the Crystals’ pedestals. She did not seem terribly optimistic about the task.

  Ned was starting to feel useless. “Do you have something else to write on? I can help…”

  Mirana passed Ned the pen and fabric with a muttered comment about the cursed energy field that prevented them from just taking a three-dimensional image of the room. As Ned started writing, Mirana began pacing the room, lost in thought, but clearly unsatisfied with everything she was coming up with. There was not much writing, and Ned finished after just a couple of minutes. “Do you want to check this?”

  Mirana shook her head. “We made a mistake,” she said instead. Ned started folding up the map and transcription. “Viper would have destroyed this place if he were worried we might come here and learn something. I can’t believe I thought we’d find something useful. I just couldn’t see the obvious because I had spent so much time on it trying to find something. This isn’t even where Viper gained his power! I was so stupid!” With that, Mirana slammed her fists onto the central pedestal. Her anger erupted around them in the form of black fire, which scattered over the stone as her fists struck it. Ned jumped back in surprise, but when Mirana looked up, he could tell she had come up with something.

  “Step out of the room,” she said. Her voice was quiet, eager. Ned handed her the writing instrument, stuffing the map into a pocket in his shorts as he stepped into the hallway just outside the room. He thought he had an idea of what Mirana was planning. “Be careful,” was all he could say.

  Mirana nodded, then placed her hands on the pedestal, looked down at them, and then vanished. Soon the pedestal itself began to fade, shrinking from top to bottom. Nothing but the same tan stone revealed itself as it disappeared, but Mirana continued expanding the Shadow field. Soon the floor began to vanish in a growing spherical dent. Ned took a step back – he did not think he wanted to know what would happen if the Shadow field touched him. But Mirana stopped the field’s growth as it approached the walls. “Let’s see what’s behind these things,” came her voice form out of nowhere, and then the invisibility field extended into one of the wall pedestals and the wall behind it. There was indeed an empty chamber behind it, although there was no visible apparatus that would have caused the stone to turn. The other two pedestals revealed the same thing. “There must be something left over,” Mirana insisted. “And something has to be generating that disruption field.” Ned knew she was right, but he had been unable to detect a source for it, and he certainly did not sense anything special nearby now.

  “Let’s see what’s down below,” Mirana said, and the Shadow field began revealing deeper layers into the floor.

  “The rock looks like one solid mass,” Ned observed. “That’s not what you’d expect in a mountain, is it?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Mirana agreed. “Incidentally, it’s a little odd standing this far above solid rock. I keep thinking I’m going to fall.”

  Ned smiled, and then he saw something in the ground. “Mirana, wait!”

  There was a glimpse of metal, and then the flash of an explosion. The walls began to shake violently. “Drop the field!” Ned shouted, and instantly Mirana was standing behind the pedestal again, a frightened look evident on her face. Ned sprinted toward her, reaching ahead with the Plasma to wrap a shield around her as the tremors grew. She ran toward him as well, and they reached each other just as the entire room crumbled to dust as the explosion ripped through the mountain in a deafening roar. Shield Plasma erupted all around Ned, and he felt himself spinning out of control as rock and fire hammered into him from all directions, tossing him around like toy. He and Mirana clung desperately to each other; it was all Ned could do to push the Shield Plasma far enough out to keep Mirana inside its protective range as the pair was flung around inside the mass of crumbling stone.

  It seemed like an eternity before the explosion ended, although it could not have lasted more than a few seconds. Ned and Mirana finally came to rest, but the Shield Plasma was still straining against the tons of loose rock that now lay on top of them. Ned was not sure how much room there was to move, but he was afraid to try anyway, since any movement might cause the rocks above to settle even more. But as claustrophobic as it felt, the immediate concern was air. Ned knew that his armor could provide him plenty of air, but he was afraid to activate it, since it might push Mirana out of his protective field. Already he was finding it hard to breathe; speaking was certainly out of the question. He could feel Mirana’s arms struggling weakly, still locked around his chest. She was no doubt in no better condition than he was.

  The only good news was that, now that he was settled in one place, Ned was able to focus on the Plasma outside his shield. There was nothing but rock in all directions, but he began forcing the energy under his control outward and upward, searching for the drop in ethereal density that should mark the surface of the mountain they were in. He had no idea which direction he was facing, so he had to try in every horizontal direction, and soon he was seeing stars. If he blacked out, he knew that the Shield Plasma would collapse inward and focus on protecting only him, and he could not let that happen. If it took too much longer, he would have to risk activating the armor.

  Finally he broke free, and he focused all of his attention into the task of creating a tunnel from his position to the open air. When he felt the vortex was fully formed, he was about to push just Mirana through, but entwined as they were, it seemed simpler to risk transporting both of them at once. With one final exertion, he used the last of his strength to transport them through vortex and out of the mountain.

  Ned and Mirana tumbled out of the light and into the air gasping, rolling on the grass as they searched for a solid footing. Mirana was on her feet in an instant, her armor forming on her as she went into an instinctive battle pose. Ned gained his feet and activated his suit as well, then scanned the area, half expecting to see a hoard of something rushing toward him. But there was nothing but the peaceful afternoon they had left behind at the waterfall.

  Mirana sounded more angry than worried or relieved. The generator for the electrical inhibitor field must have been destroyed in the blast, because Mirana immediately contacted the ship. “Ablithra! Is anything out there?”

  “We saw the disruption field vanish and detected a tremor, but nothing else. Should we pick you up?”
/>
  “Stand by.”

  Mirana looked at Ned, the Shadow Master’s menacing visor forcing him to address the tactical situation rather than indulge the sense of relief that was his first instinct. “I don’t sense anything, but then I didn’t before, either. What happened?”

  “A trap, I guess. Maybe Thendrak wanted to make sure no one retraced his steps.”

  “Does that make sense, though? I mean, if that was really a trap for us, it wasn’t a very good one.”

  “It seemed pretty effective to me!”

  “I mean, why make us go to all that trouble to set it off? Why not detonate it based on motion? And why bury it so deep? Any closer and we wouldn’t have had enough time before the place collapsed.”

  “What do you think it was?”

  “I don’t know, but… it’s almost like it was reacting to the Shadow Plasma itself. Either that or the light that filtered down. But why put a light sensor on something buried in solid rock?”

  “You think I broke some sort of circuit? A sensor to prevent Shadow Plasma from affecting the device?”

  “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Interesting. If that’s the case, that would suggest that whoever created the Crystals had a thing against Shadow Masters, even back then.”

  “Well, that’s something, then.”

  Mirana grunted her dissatisfaction, and Ned had to agree; their investigation had not really paid off. “I guess I’ll call my fighter, unless you think there’s more we can do here.”

  “No, let’s get out of here. We’ve wasted too much time already.”

  The fighter reached them quickly, and Mirana had Ned tractor up their hiking gear so they wouldn’t leave behind any unnecessary clues as to what had happened. She did not have to voice the obvious concern – whatever had happened, there was a decent chance that it had alerted someone that they were there.

  Mirana was silent for the short flight back to Nemesis, where she hurried to the pricom with her armor still on except for the helmet. Ned followed her lead and stood silently as the ship passed back through the Vortex into Anacronian space. Then they were back to high warp, and it was only seconds before Bortis’s console beeped, indicating he had a status update from the fleet. When he turned to face Mirana, his face was pale.

  “It’s too late,” he said. “The Vortak have attacked them at Zhentyris. The whole armada is there right now.”

  “Venom!” Mirana cursed, slamming her fist down on empty air this time. “Get us there, now! Any idea how they’re doing?”

  “No,” Bortis replied, shaking his head incredulously. “But there’s an urgent call for us.”

  “We’re at least a day away,” Ablithra reported. “The most we can hope for is to be there for the next battle.”

  Ned felt sick. Of course there was an urgent call. Nemesis had provided a critical advantage in the last two battles StarBlazer had fought, and now it had two Plasma Masters aboard. “We were wrong,” he heard himself say. “We abandoned them.” He looked over at Mirana, knowing that underneath that veil of anger she was feeling the same thing.

  Mirana held his gaze for just an instant, then turned to Ablithra. “We might not be able to help, but we will be darn sure we’re ready for the Vortak when we do face them. Let me know the instant we have more information.” With that, she stormed out of the pricom, leaving Ned alone with the crew and a growing sense of guilt.

  It had seemed like the right reason, Ned rationalized. We were supposed to find out some important secret. It was supposed to make us stronger. This was supposed to help.

  But all the self-justification he could muster failed to dispel what he was feeling. As he stood there, watching the phase-altered starfield fly past far too slowly, Ned found himself thinking about Smardwurst Varlon and the other Anacronian officers he had known. They were probably thinking about him right now. If they were even alive.

  Please, he called out in his mind. Still be alive.