Диана Дуэйн: Games Wizards Play

Wouldn’t argue , Lissa said. Since we don’t have time.

From his position across the crater came a familiar voice: Ronan. Five minutes , he said.

Sweat started popping out all over Kit. The other team was dead quiet, which suggested that they had some sort of solution to what was going on and were about to implement it. You think they know what you know? he said privately to Lissa.

I’m not sure , Lissa said. Couldn’t get a clear reading until that last one came real close.

And you’re sure of your results?

Pretty sure. If you want me to make absolutely certain, why not stand up and see if you can attract another?

Pass! Kit said.

Four minutes thirty . . . said Ronan.

The hair stood up on the back of Kit’s neck at the thought of what would start breaking loose in four minutes, that being the best-case estimate for when the alien force would push past their defensive perimeter and get at the base on the far side of the crater. The place was full of civilians, none of whom were going to be terribly prepared to be overrun by aliens. And Kit wasn’t sure whether whatever the other team was working on was going to make a difference— So we have to do something. Change the equation somehow. If not ours, then theirs—

The idea hit him completely without warning, and there was no time to waste mulling it over to see if it was too stupid to suggest. How about this? Kit said to Lissa. Those tamping fields on the missiles they haven’t launched yet . . . what do you think would happen if they went off prematurely?

What, you mean if we tried to make them complete their squeeze cycle early and blow? No way, that’d take more power than we’ve both got—

No. I mean, what if the squeeze-fields shut off. Went away —

There was a long pause. Then, Ooooo , Lissa said, with the appreciative and anticipatory sound of someone about to open a particularly nice present.

Kit grinned. Can you build the spell in about a minute?

A much shorter pause this time. Got an off-the-rack solution that’ll work if I tweak it right.

Great! Set it up. I’ll feed you power.

Lissa went quiet. Kit pushed himself farther up and peered over the rim of the crater again—the bottom of a landscape overarched by the hard black sky of Moon-based day, the stars washed out by sunglare and the shifting, situational glitter of still-suspended moondust that had been kicked up too high and hard to come down yet. The alien war machines that had been shooting at his group were now stalking and rolling far closer to Kit’s position across the rubble-strewn basin at the nameless crater’s bottom—a stretch of lunar terrain that had been fairly smooth and uncratered until the machines’ arrival via rogue worldgate a few hours ago and their meeting with the two wizardly teams that had been sent out to stop them. Problem is, two teams were never going to be enough , Kit thought. Guess I should be grateful Neets couldn’t get free for this—

Three minutes , Ronan said, sounding grim.

You guys got anything? said Matt, from his team’s site on the other side of the crater. He sounded freaked, but not so much so that Kit couldn’t hear the beginnings of a note of triumph in his voice. They do have something , Kit thought. Only question is how fatal it’s going to be, and who to—

For the moment Kit didn’t answer. Liss—?!

Just a few seconds more!

Kit swallowed. Matt , he said, this might be a good time to store some last words . . .

The silence on the other side had an unnerved quality to it; a wizard could do a lot with his or her last words. But then Lissa whispered, Ready for you.

The crack-shattered dirt under Kit’s nose came alive with a small, remote segment of the spell diagram she’d just constructed—a two-foot-wide circle packed full of closely written lines of light, hovering just above the moondust. Kit hurriedly checked the curves and curls of his name in the Speech to make sure that Lissa had transcribed it correctly, then took a deep breath and slapped his right hand down into the middle of the spell diagram, in the receptor/connector area she’d left open for him, and spoke the agreed confirmation word in the Speech. In the next instant he felt the power leap out of him and flow into Lissa’s spell as she said its final word and turned it loose. Then Kit flopped down on his chest again, limp as a wrung-out rag.

Last words? Matt said.

After letting all that power go, Kit was too weak to do much but grin in anticipation. Don’t count your chickens . . . ! he said.

And a second later the crater came alive with a scatter of explosions that made the previous missile impacts look small and stingy by comparison. Kit peered over the crater rim again, being very careful—because suddenly the neighboring vacuum wasn’t just full of dust, but also of rocks and twisted pieces of shiny metal rocketing away from multiple explosion centers in the crater.

Kit took a couple more breaths and started to feel a little recovered from the stress of doing a heavy powerfeed without much prep. Or maybe it’s just seeing the results . . . ! he thought. Can I stand up without falling down? He pushed himself up onto hands and knees and then stood, staggering only a bit. Since his personal force shield was hardened against radiation as well as mere physical impacts, he wasn’t worried about standing up to see how those nuclear explosions were playing out in vacuum and one-sixth g. Even without air to carry what would have been the deafening multiple roars of their detonation, the effect was still impressive. Nine giant dust-streaked glow-inside balloons were now scattered around the crater in various stages of expansion and glaring brightness, each one growing and roiling like something alive, burning and angry. As Kit watched them, something shiny hit him about chest-high. His shield flared, dissipating the impact’s energy, and the thing that had hit him bounced down into the moondust at his feet. He peered down and saw that it was the pointy end of some kind of mechanical claw, twisted out of shape and molten at the edges, the metal still bubbling and exhaling vapor into the vacuum.

Behind him, standing up in her own crater, Lissa was fist-punching the air, or where the air would normally have been, and hooting with delight. From the team on the other side, the silence held for only a few more moments: then the groaning started. “What the heck was that? ” “What did they do?? ”

And possibly most satisfying, the complaints were followed by a low chuckle from the scenario designer. Okay , Ronan said, intervention’s complete at fourteen oh five local, and that’s a clear win for Kit and Lissa. Let’s get everyone together over at Mid-Hipparchus for the debrief, and let the dust here settle . . .

Kit said the four or five words in the Speech that reclaimed the air inside his outer shield into compressed storage, then the half-sentence that killed his outer force field. Off across the big crater he’d been peering into, the simulated nuclear explosions were being decommissioned—the dust that had been the only physically real thing about them now snowing gently back down onto the lunar surface. Shortly, even if any other people besides wizards had been up on the Moon right now, there would be no sign that anything unusual had happened here.

Kit carefully bounced up the slope behind him to where Lissa had just killed her own outer force bubble, this making it a lot easier to jump around in triumph without interference. Lissa might look somewhat tall and gangly under normal circumstances, but up here in the low gravity her bouncing acquired an unusual grace that made it seem like second nature—an effect assisted by the orange jumpsuit she always wore to these sessions, which made her resemble an escaped astronaut. Her short fair hair crackled and stood up a little with static as she bounced and waved her arms in the air.