“I’ll be fine,” Dakkar said. “See you soon!”
Sato nodded and got up. “I’ll be right outside.” The dragon moved behind him and closed the door.
He stood to the side of the door and waited. Something was digging at the back of his brain. He’d almost suggested canceling the procedure. But why? He knew his instincts had saved his ass many times as a proctor; that was one of the things Minerva had liked about him, and a necessary trait for the job. No details came to mind, so he opened a new file in his Mesh.
The pinplants on steroids known as Mesh were incredible. A billion times more storage and co-processing than pinplants. Light years ahead technologically. They were so powerful, they were borderline ridiculous. He could store five complete copies of the GalNet and have room for every ship design he’d ever made for the Winged Hussars.
In the new file, he began designing the support flyer for Dakkar. With a little luck in the crappy shop on Vestoon, and help from the miniature manufactory he had, he might be able to build a prototype before they got to Azure in a little over a week. It would be a nice going away present for Dakkar.
He’d been standing and working for fifteen minutes when Rick suddenly came on.
<Dakkar, another Wrogul, and a crocodile snake with six legs just came out the back!>
<What?!> Sato blurted. He performed a spin kick and blew the examining room door open. All the tools and instruments were where the dragon had put them. The only things missing were Dakkar, the dragon, Dr. Faust, and the plastic case holding the pinplants was empty.
<Pursue!> Sato said. <Don’t lose sight of them!>
<Already on it,> Rick replied.
When Sato burst out the front door, the Oogar bellowed at him, then cringed and held his jaw. Sato took no notice of the purple ursine, instead scanning the street. He found what he wanted, and a few seconds later, he’d broken into and hotwired the flyer, and its turbines were spinning up. <I’ve got a flyer, give me coordinates,> he commed.
<They’re in a ground car, 122 degrees, heading for the landing area of the starport.>
Sato launched the flyer into the air; its bladed turbines made horrible sounds. They hadn’t been maintaining the magnetic bearings. He prayed it would hold together as he finished climbing and transitioned to horizontal flight far too fast. The vehicle’s top speed was 350 kph. He used his slicer glove on the control interface, and the air speed indicator passed 450 kph. The machine shook like an off-balance washing machine.
Three minutes later, he came up on the coordinates Rick had given him. The Æsir was shielding behind a now ruined cargo transport. The kidnappers were firing a heavy laser at him.
<I’m going to use my shield and make a run at them,> Rick said. The other flyer set down next to a small ship, not much bigger than a cutter, and Sato saw them going inside. The flying Wrogul tank was carrying Dakkar.
<No, hold off. Once they’re airborne, we can use Vestoon to disable them.> Sato had made some improvements to the little ship’s armaments after getting his memory back. Things the kidnappers wouldn’t be expecting.
As the shooting had stopped, Sato set the now-smoking flyer down next to Rick, who was standing and watching the other ship take off.
“What the hell happened?” Rick asked. “Why would one Wrogul kidnap another?”
Sato shook his head. “No idea. Everything was fine, then you called. Dr. Faust made me wait outside. I didn’t hear a struggle or anything.”
“Dr. Faust?” Rick asked over the screaming engines of the kidnappers’ ship.
“The Wrogul went by that name.”
“Faust?” Rick asked again. “The guy in the legend who made a pact with the devil?”
“That’s where I’ve heard it before,” Sato said, then shrugged. “I’m Japanese, I didn’t read a lot of German stuff.” The ship was climbing now, and they were running toward Vestoon, which was grounded nearby.
“You should look at this,” Rick said, and sent Sato an image file. “I got this when they first came out the back.”
It was a movie replaying what Rick had seen. Dakkar was awake and fine, clinging to Dr. Faust’s flyer. As they moved, he looked back at the door they’d just left, and for a single frame, Sato could see Dakkar’s eyes. They didn’t have the familiar blue bar-shaped pupils. Now they were W-shaped, and red.
He looked up at the ship, now about a kilometer up, when it suddenly crackled with lightning and vanished. He stumbled and fell to his knees, eyes wide in utter astonishment. Three seconds later, a thunderous boooom echoed from air filling the vacuum the ship’s disappearance had left.
“What the fuck was that?” Rick asked. “Did it just explode?”
“No,” Sato said. “It jumped into hyperspace.”
“That’s not possible,” Rick said. “Is it?”
“No,” Sato agreed. “Not only can’t you do that in an atmosphere, but that ship was way too small to have hyperspace shunts.”
He remained on his knees for a long time, staring at the spot where his friend had disappeared. Eventually Rick got him up and moving before the authorities showed up to ask difficult questions.
“What do we do now?” Rick asked as they climbed into Vestoon.
“I have no idea,” Sato admitted. “None at all.”
# # # # #
About Mark Wandrey
Living life as a full time RV traveler with his wife Joy, Mark Wandrey is a bestselling author who has been creating new worlds since he was old enough to write. A three-time Dragon Award finalist, Mark has written dozens of books and short stories, and is working on more all the time. A prolific world builder, he created the wildly popular Four Horsemen Universe, as well as the Earth Song series, and Turning Point, a
