Sovereign mage, p.26
Sovereign Mage, page 26
Sometimes that ended up crossing off a lot of space, because the size of the dimensional adjacency was a real mixed bag, with some being restricted to a single ten-mile grid point, and others sprawling over a hundred-mile line. Some were blobs, though with the grid it was hard to tell the exact shape. Callum had the vague idea that he was seeing some higher-level geometry projected down onto the Earth’s surface, but it followed no rhyme or reason that he could see.
He kept a close eye out for any other dimensional weak points like he’d seen with the dragonlands portal, especially whenever he found something horrible on the other side, though he didn’t find any. If there was a portal world just waiting to open up somewhere in North America, it probably would have already. As the database filled up, Callum felt like he was engaging in nuclear proliferation all by his lonesome. Though it worked in the exact reverse manner: the more portal worlds there were, the less dangerous ownership of them was.
While he was busy with that, Lucy was dealing with surveillance. He hadn’t bothered to look over any of the feed that they’d gotten from the couple of drones he’d stashed in House Janry’s walls, but he’d activated the portals every so often for her. It was a bit of a risk, since not only was there intermittent jamming going on that threatened the stability of the portal, but it was always possible someone would simply notice the active connection. The spatial enchantment wasn’t very large or obvious, against the background of enchantments in the House grounds, but it also wasn’t supposed to be there.
She was also helping Hargrave, Taisen, and Felicia take care of the GAR branch offices; all the little places in cities across the world. Lucy had a whole list of them, and combat mages and fae were far more suitable for dealing with them. Though there wasn’t all that much infrastructure, relative to GAR, nor all that many branches considering the worldwide scope of GAR. The teleportation network centralizing everything was a real boon there.
They weren’t closing the buildings down, though, let alone destroying them. Instead they were being used as springboards for the Alliance’s own transport system and the physical part of the brand new supernatural digital marketplace. The conversions and property ownership and all that sort of thing was a logistical nightmare that Callum was more than happy to leave to others. He barely had enough time for his family after taking care of all the portal world exploration.
He was busy, but there was a sense of operating under a deadline. After the summit, not only did everyone who was clearly committed to the Earth Alliance’s way of doing things need their portal worlds, but all of Janry’s people had time to collaborate. In all, he had about a week’s worth of quiet before the rest of the world intruded.
“They’re totally setting up something nasty,” Lucy reported, which came as no surprise at all. “Apparently they’ve gone off to the Deep Wilds to set up a staging camp.”
“I hope someone tracked them,” Callum said with a frown. If he’d been aware it was happening he probably could have done so, but he’d been busy.
“Chester’s on it,” Lucy said. “Speaking of which, he wanted to know when you’d be ready to move the Deep Wilds portal.”
“Oh, damn, I totally forgot,” Callum said, putting aside the drone feed. He’d nearly forgotten about it since it’d been over a week and he hadn’t heard anything. “I can do that now. Go ahead and put him on the line.”
“Already got him!” Lucy said cheerfully, and Callum’s VoIP program chimed. He pulled it up and found himself looking at Chester in his war-form. Which was interesting, because that meant that he had dispensed with the usual glamour that fixed it so cameras didn’t see eight foot tall, bipedal, furred predators.
“Mister Wells,” Chester said. “That was prompt.”
“Honestly, I should have brought it up earlier,” Callum said. “Just too many things on my mind, I guess. Where did you want me to put it?”
“We’ve got a bolthole up in the mountains that will work. Have to hide it from magicals and mundanes, you know. Even when we’re out in the open, that’s just too vulnerable.” Chester sighed, leaning back in the very comfortable-looking oversized chair. “I’m thinking we may end up putting it out in the middle of the ocean, on an oil rig or the like, eventually.”
“I’d suggest the moon, but you kind of need the mana on Earth,” Callum said. “Ocean floor, maybe? Nice thing about portals, you don’t need to worry about the supply chain.”
“Not a bad idea,” Chester admitted. “I have some people who can probably make the pressure vessels for it. But for now, the mountain place.”
“Sure, just take a drone there,” Callum said, doublechecking to see if there was already one over in Chester’s Deep Wilds facility. There was. “Do you have official control over the portal? Both ends of the portal, even? I mean, it’s going to be just as vulnerable from the Deep Wilds side.”
“The Deep Wilds side is protected by some allied Houses.” Chester didn’t seem concerned. “They don’t want to lose access to Earth. Perhaps if and when they decide to move to their own portal world, but until then, only Earth-side needs to be secured. Nominally, it’s been ceded over, but I expect some resistance anyway. Obstructionism, at least.”
“Should be fun,” Callum said dryly, groping through all the various drones in the nexus to figure out which one was where. While having sufficient enchanting material was a definite upside, he was far beyond his ability to keep track of things without a spreadsheet, not to mention having to refresh and replace the moon-side enchantments as they wore out. It took him several minutes, but eventually he had the proper drones isolated.
The Deep Wilds portal was equipped in much the same way as the Night Lands portal had been. It was in the middle of some wilderness in Norway, with a protective fortress around the actual portal and a gate room to control passage in and out. Something which all the personal portals he’d supplied to Chester and other Houses rendered entirely moot. Even before then, Duvall’s portal network had made any control of the actual dimensional connection somewhat redundant.
“Right, I can do it whenever.” Callum scribbled the drone numbers down in his notebook.
“Give me a few hours. I’ll want to get everyone together for this,” Chester said. Callum nodded, taking a break so he’d be at full vis for the transfer. With all the practice he was better than he used to be, and the vis crystals meant that he could do extra-large teleports without knocking himself out, but something as big as a dimensional portal was still no small strain.
One of Chester’s people carried one of the drones through a portal frame, ending up somewhere in the Rockies, while Callum put on his cloak. After having seen the strange fae connection between Earth and the Night Lands, he had to assume Faerie had tendrils everywhere and he wouldn’t put it past someone to try and sabotage the effort.
It did occur to him that by moving the portal, he was effectively granting Chester sovereignty over Earth’s shifters. Anyone not part of the de facto Earth Alliance could still use private portals, that was true, but there was a certain legitimacy from having control of the main portal. Besides, it wasn’t likely that many people outside of the Earth Alliance actually had private portal connections to the Deep Wilds. Especially with GAR disassembled.
Chester and five of his Wolfpack walked through to the Earth-side portal room, all of them big and bulky in war-form, and Chester beckoned to the mages on duty at the guard post. Callum braced for some sort of fight to break out, but apparently the agreements held for once and it just took some conversation. Shortly afterward the shifters wrestled the crossing ramp out of the portal itself, leaving it clear.
“Ready,” Chester said. “Move it.”
“Roger that,” Callum said, and reached out to wrap the big dimensional portal in a teleportation framework. Holding the teleport box stable against the massive mana flow took a lot of work, but he only had to hold it long enough to tap his vis crystals and shift the entire space over to the miniature fortress in the Rockies. He could see Chester relax as the portal vanished, before suddenly laughing.
“Could we get a ride back?” Chester asked, eyeing the place where the portal had been.
“Absolutely.”
Chapter 17 – Consolidation
Federal Agent Larry Johnson still wasn’t sure what to think of the prison. It wasn’t exactly the usual concrete cell block, and he and his fellow agents weren’t being treated badly, but it was definitely a prison. The claim that the walls were for their protection was, of course, not to be trusted, but after seeing the outside of the compound he had to admit it wasn’t entirely nonsense.
Some people still hadn’t admitted to themselves that they weren’t on earth, and that their captors weren’t human. There was some insistence that the whole thing was one big psyop, but Larry didn’t think it something on that scale was possible. The sky was wrong, the smells were wrong, the massive animals outside the walls were all too real, and the so-called shifters were definitely real. The ease with which they could handle even ex-Marines was sobering.
The outside courtyard of the walled compound was large enough and nice enough, and for lack of much else to do Larry was throwing a football around with some of the guys. A couple of the shifters were watching, eight-foot-tall wolf-men, who probably weren’t participating because they’d have to treat the federal agents like children. He threw the ball and then turned to look as a group of shifters emerged from the building that had to be the command center.
The weird part was that there was no way in there. Or rather, nothing visible, since it was composed entirely of flat, blank walls. Shifters seemed to just emerge from nowhere in particular along a section of wall, and vanish there just the same. It was strange and eye-hurting but it sure happened, and even when he’d managed to sneak over there he hadn’t been able to spot anything. Normally only one or two shifters at a time went through the invisible doorway but this time it was a whole group, and one of them looked to be very much in charge.
The football game ground to a halt as the big white-furred shifter approached, followed by several people who were obviously guards. Not that he seemed to need guards — Larry could tell just by the way the boss walked that he was a dangerous beast. Coupled with the insane strength and speed that the shifters had demonstrated, he was pretty sure the leader had nothing to fear from anything short of artillery.
“Mister Johnson,” the big shifter said, in a rumble like an idling tank. “Your time here is nearly at an end.”
“Yes, sir?” Larry said, trying to ignore the potentially dire implications of that statement.
“Come with me,” the shifter said, and Larry glanced at the other agents, gave them a sign, and trailed after the wolf-man. It was clear they weren’t quite wolves, so not exactly a mythical werewolf, but close enough to play one on television. Fortunately it didn’t seem they were man-eaters. Larry was led off to one of the smaller side buildings, a log cabin type construction. Once inside, the shifter waved to a normal human-sized chair in the living room while taking an oversized one for himself.
“My name,” the shifter said, “is Alpha Chester. Yes, the very same Chester Frederickson that you were being aimed at. I’m sure you’ve realized by now that there was something more at play than just a tax issue.”
“Yeah, no kidding.” The instructions had come from the top, but after seeing the weirdness that was in play, that didn’t really mean anything. He could add two and two together just fine.
“While you have no reason to believe me, the explanation is that your people were being used as a weapon by other supernatural interests against me.” Before Larry’s very eyes the big shifter – Chester – shimmered and changed, suddenly appearing human. One of the other shifters entered the room with a six-pack, tossing one beer to Chester and another to Larry, who caught it reflexively.
“Okay, and we’re here because of secrecy reasons?” The beer was just an ordinary domestic brand, so he shrugged and cracked it, hearing the hiss of carbonation.
“Pretty much. But we’re gearing up to dispense with that secrecy.” Chester took a sip of his beer. “We’ve been working to get our house in order first though, because you can just imagine what people would think if there were supernatural groups trying take over governments or siphon funds.”
“Yeah,” Larry agreed. “That’d be a problem.” He took a sip of his own drink, not entirely certain what to think. The pencil-pushers would probably have a lot to say about it, but he was mostly concerned about his own neck, and that of his men. “So why is this all happening now?”
“Mostly, because of The Ghost,” Chester said, with a chuckle. “Supernatural society got a shake-up and this is the fallout. I’ve thought it was coming for years, but he accelerated the process.”
“Who’s The Ghost?” Larry eyed Chester, concerned that actual ghosts were a possibility. Or maybe it was someone who was just as invisible to these people as they had been to him. Someone who could force a bunch of powerful people hidden in plain sight to dance to his tune was quite the threat.
“Someone who got fed up with the way normal people were treated,” Chester said. “Which I personally agree with. That’s why you’re here, and we’re talking.”
“To show you aren’t the bad guys?”
“Something like that,” Chester agreed. “When we get you back to the United States it’ll be nice if you all are read in on the situation already.”
“I’m not exactly high up in the food chain,” Larry said, just stating a fact. “I don’t think I can help you that much.”
“Sadly, you’re going to be,” Chester said with a laugh, and Larry took another long drink of beer. “Since you’re basically engaged in first contact. Most of us are good, law-abiding citizens, but we’re not human and we aren’t even like each other. We’ll try to get you all introduced to the various types before it’s time to open up.”
“Right,” Larry said, skeptical but figuring there would be no harm. “What else is there? Vampires?”
“Ha!” Chester laughed. “Not anymore. The Ghost took care of that.”
“Um.” He hadn’t expected that, and mentally raised the threat level of this Ghost up another notch. “Am I going to meet The Ghost, too?”
“That isn’t likely,” Chester said. “But believe me, he has a vested interest in your safety.”
***
“You don’t need to come yourself — after all, that’s not what you do anyway. But I need The Ghost at my shoulder for this.”
Callum didn’t sigh or frown. He’d brought this on himself, and Felicia’s request was entirely reasonable. It wasn’t like being virtually present was really that onerous a thing, even if he could swear that – magical healing or no – the stress was giving him more gray hairs.
“I suppose it doesn’t hurt that I have a few tricks to cow even the most recalcitrant of fae, either,” he said instead.
“It does not,” Felicia agreed.
“You’re going to have to teach me some of those tricks one day,” Ray observed, leaning into the pickup on the drone Felicia had been gifted. “I’m no slouch, but it’d help if I had more punch than just wind magic.”
“Most of what I do isn’t really reproducible,” Callum said. “But I’ll think about it. There might be something I can pass along.” It was easy enough to say, since he only used spatial magic, and mostly relied on his passive perceptions. A normal wind mage might as well have been another species for all he had in common. “Guess you might as well bring a drone. The bad pennies are okay but drones are more functional.”
“Do we have permission to modify your remote to make it more appropriate? No offense, but they tend toward more toward function than elegance.”
“I don’t mind, so long as it still works,” Callum said. He was sure Lucy would like to know what the new one looked like, too. They were less cobbled together at this point, so there was room to start discussing aesthetics.
“Dominic!” Felicia called, and very shortly a fae entered the relatively small perceptual bubble Callum was keeping around Felicia’s drone. She was residing in the strange fae parallel universe that he’d tracked the vampire through before, which Callum actually approved of. It represented a vector of attack that would have been unmonitored otherwise, and he wasn’t sure it was even possible to collapse the whole thing. Or that it was a good idea to do so. Having an extra, secret, and secure way to get around worked to the advantage of his allies just as much as it had once benefitted his enemies.
“Eure Majestät,” Dominic said, going to one knee. Through Callum’s perceptions he resembled a musclebound gnome more than anything. Felicia responded in the same language, and then handed the drone over to the gnome. Callum nearly kicked himself for thinking that the fae would work like an engineer. Instead of doing something as blasé as unscrewing the housing or breaking out the multimeter, the gnome took it away to a table that formed out of nowhere and began to sing something under his breath.
The liquid fae magic wrapped around and flowed through the drone. It didn’t touch the bad penny enchantment, but the housing and the electronics shifted and warped like they were made of putty. The process wasn’t instantaneous, but it was only a few minutes later that the drone had been changed into a small sphere with ducted turbines rather than quadrotors, the surface covered with a fine filigree that hid the camera protrusions, as well as the microphone and speakers. The decorations finished rippling into shape, forming the House Wells heraldry that Lucy had designed on one side of the drone, with Felicia’s winged cat logo on the other.
It floated into the air of its own accord, without needing to use the motors, which by itself made the device seem more like a fae ornament than a piece of technology. He couldn’t object to its self-propelled nature as it went to hover at Felicia’s shoulder either, since the entire point of that particular drone was to link him with the fae princess. The whole procedure was a reminder of exactly why he wore the cloak. Fae magic was completely unfair.
