The Wizard of Karres

The sergeant came at a run, Blythe rifle at the ready. 'Sir.' He took in the scene and realized that he wasn't being called to arrest anyone, or shoot it out with a dangerous criminal. He lowered the barrel of the rifle.

'Round up your men and get them back onto the Malorn. At the double.'

'But the search!' protested the ISS man. 'The witches must have done this.'

'That's enough of that rubbish!' snapped the commodore. 'Move, Micher, before I leave you behind. I'm not abandoning my new command for the ISS's bit of spite. Besides, if these so-called witches can put my air recycler out of order, then I certainly don't want to fight with them.'

Unfortunately, the sergeant had left open the door leading to the next cabin. As they passed by in the corridor, Pausert got another scent of sunlight and the sound of violets. He glanced in and saw that the little vatch was here—and was playing light-shift with the Leewit's head. Making it look like she was wearing an Imperial crown . . .

Even more unfortunately, the commodore had glanced through the floor also. Fleser stopped in his tracks.

'That enough fooling around, my little lady!' said Pausert sternly. He shouldered the commodore aside and stalked into the cabin, obscuring Fleser's view. 'That thing is supposed to stay out of sight.'

Pausert readied his klatha hooks for the little brute. Even if he couldn't catch it, he could maybe squelch it long enough . . .

Behind him, he heard the commodore mutter something. It sounded like '—glad I don't have to deal with the spoiled—' Fleser's heavy footsteps led away down the corridor.

Pausert sighed with relief. Alas, his klatha hooks once again seemed to be able to nothing worse than reduce the little vatch to giggles.

A few moments later the outer locks clanged. When Captain Pausert arrived back in the control room, the communicator beebled insistently.

The commodore's red face was glaring at him. 'Damnation, Pausert. Can you deflect your guns?'

'Oh. Yes, certainly. Good luck, Commodore.'

After Pausert deflected the guns, he saw that the vatchy patch of darkness was now above the coffee dispenser in the control room.

What was it going to do this time? He began the klatha-reach. It darted away.

I've got to go, Big Dream Thing. But I'll be back! Back . . . Baaaack . . . 

That was really not what he needed to hear. But at least he could see in the screens that the Imperial flotilla was receding. Quite rapidly, in fact.

* * *

'I hope,' he said to the indentation on the couch, 'that you'll give them back their piece of air recycler. That was cruel. I think you frightened the commodore out of ten years of life. Being stuck in deep space without air is enough to terrify anyone.'

'I've teleported it back already. When they try it again it'll be working. And it served them right. You told some awful fibs.'

He tried to look innocent. 'Just false suggestions. The commodore fooled himself.'

Goth laughed. 'Just so long as the Leewit doesn't find out she was supposed to have imperial blood. She's already impossible!'

'Just like that little vatch.' He grimaced. That had been a near thing. And the vatch hadn't even been trying to create mischief. It had said it would be back; without a doubt it would return at the worst possible moment.

Goth appeared out of no-shape. 'They're hunting for us pretty hard, Captain,' she said seriously.

'Yes. It's not what Threbus led to me expect.'

'I guess this must be more important than they told us,' said Goth, biting a strand of hair.

The captain took it gently out of her mouth. 'I guess you're right, girl. And I don't like being kept in the dark.'

The Leewit and the grik-dog trotted into the control room. Pul was looking even more sour-faced than usual.

'My legs are still stiff,' growled the grik-dog. 'Posture like that's unnatural.'

'You complain?' sneered the Leewit. 'Try holding yourself up sometime, pretending you're a third your real size. I'm the one had to do all the work. Fatso.'

* * *

'That information,' said the Nartheby Sprite, making a small moue and wrinkling her foxy brows, 'is available strictly on a need-to-know basis. And I don't think you need to know, Captain.'

'Well, I beg to disagree!' snapped Pausert. 'And as the captain of this ship—'

Pausert felt something close on his leg. Just firmly, but with a hint of immense unused strength. 'Shall I gnaw his leg off, Hantis?' asked the grik-dog out of the corner of his mouth.

'Do that and I'll swing you around my head by your tail, Pul,' said Goth, crossly. 'The captain has to know what he's dealing with, Hantis. Even if you don't tell him everything, you have to tell him something.'

The Nartheby Sprite laughed musically, and twitched her long, pointed ears. 'Very well. To save my Pul's tail and the captain's leg, I will tell you some of it. Not all of it, mind. I can't. There is a mind-block so I don't remember parts of it, and won't until I speak to the Empress. It can't even be tortured out of me.'

'We grik-dogs bite people who swing us by the tail,' gruffed Pul. He had, however, released the captain's leg. And the look he gave Goth was a tad uneasy.

'Let's just have the story,' said the captain peaceably.

'But it goes no further than you and Goth, understand? We don't want to cause alarm and panic. That would serve them better than us.'

'I give you my word.'

'Very well.' She sat down, arranged her graceful legs, and began. 'My kind are the last remnant of an old, old civilization. Nartheby is our home-world where almost all of our kind now live, but once we roamed widely, even to your Yarthe itself. There are stories about our people visiting—although as you were a young and developing culture we largely left you alone. Then we were afflicted by a plague. It wrecked our culture, our colonies and our star travel. We only saved ourselves by retreating to Nartheby and destroying any ships that came near our world, for a period of five centuries. Then it appeared that the danger was over. But the only Sprites that survived were on Nartheby.' She pinched her fine nostrils. 'Now . . . The plague has resurfaced. It is spreading, fast, through the Empire.'

Pausert and Goth stared at her. The captain was the first to find his tongue. 'But . . . Surely we shouldn't be keeping it a secret? We should be quarantining the infected areas.'

Hantis had always seemed to be smiling. Now, as she shook her head, she just looked sad. 'It's not that kind of plague, Captain. That's what we thought it was too, at first. It's an invasion. The invaders are just very small. Although we've never determined their exact nature, they are at least partly klatha creatures and seem to have a collective mind. They attack the way a plague would, but they're intelligent. They invade a host, breed billions of operatives, and then take over their hosts and control them. No quarantine can stop an intelligent disease.'

'Does Karres know of this?' asked Goth.

Hantis nodded. 'Yes. That's why they've gone into hiding. There are no Karres witches out in the Empire at all right now. Except those on this ship.'

'But why?' demanded Pausert. 'Why have they just run off and left us to deal with this?'

Hantis shook her head. 'They haven't. But they have to be very careful. The Nanite plague feeds on and uses klatha energy. Klatha energies are also the only way to fight them. That makes Karres and her witches the greatest danger in human space to the Nanites. They've been trying to get Karres destroyed. So Karres is preparing a number of defenses—but after the fight with the Worm World they're pretty battered.'

Goth nodded. 'Threbus and Maleen both kind of hinted at this. So what is it you have to do, Hantis?'

'Yes,' agreed Pausert. 'Why is getting you to the Empress Haile so important?'