Guardsman Read online

  Q hunched forward and clutched her head, shaking.

  Rael winced in sympathy and pulled the handles of her dimensional bag out of her pocket. Fished out a cold bottle of Boost—electrolytes and sugar, designed to replenish a person’s energy after mental labor.

  “Q?” The witch twitched at the cold bottle pressed into her hands. “Drink.”

  Q slugged half of it, stopped to breathe. "Rael? Oh, of course the Oners sent you. Dammit, Rael, I can't track them. They took Xen. He’s hurt and they took him. I can’t trace them. It was a powered gate, and . . .”

  “From here?”

  “Yes. They opened the gate in the plaza right there.” Q fought to steady her breathing.

  Rael could feel her, trying to calm her panic, looked at her parents both sitting cross-legged on the ground.

  Q took another deep breath as she sat up and forced herself to relax. Rael listened in mentally as Q reached for the electric blue of the inbetween.

  :: The powered gate was coming from that direction, but collapsed before I could trace it all the way to its source. It was coming from a greater distance than I could see. ::

  Her father’s magnification pulled back, further back, and the little universe sheets shrinking down to bright dots. Clustering, clouds of fireflies, and strings between, like branches holding up clusters of bright leaves, all leading back to the trunk of basic, unicellular life.

  :: That’s very different from how I see the Multiverse. :: Q tried to look, to see which direction the gate had come from. Failed.

  :: Show me how you see it. :: Wolf was calm . . . but that deep power that had always been there was roiling very close under the surface.

  Q withdrew a bit, and looked out at the crystal of the Multiverse. The flaws and cracks that separated the major events . . . where they were, and where the gate had been. Across one crack and further. Her Dad reached through her vision to tag a universe, a second, then withdrew.

  :: Did you see the gate go this far? ::

  :: Yes it stretched much further . . . and then it was gone. ::

  Her mother’s worry leaked, was firmly repressed. :: Extrapolate. Gates wiggle around, but with a general area to search, to watch for their next gate opening, we should be able to find them. ::

  Q followed her line further, across another crack . . .

  Rael fell out of contact. Damn. How far did "They" reach? And who are "They?"

  She stood up and listened to the voices around her, people telling each other what they’d seen. Looked back at the Disco people and caught Lon's eye.

  “There was a circular rug, ten meter diameter, metallic copper colored, and as we saw, definitely an electrical conductor. A little fat guy on a fancy throne, six tall skinny guys on guard.” Lon’s firm clear voice. “It popped out of nowhere, no visible gate. The guards, three on each side, stepped off the rug to the side, like a ceremonial guard. Xen walked up to the rug and spoke, introduced himself.

  “The man replied in English, very accented. ‘You may approach.’ He said.”

  Rael looked around. “So of course Xen stepped on the rug.”

  Lon nodded. “‘Are you the leader of the people who destroyed a world?’ he said. Xen asked if he meant the destruction of Helios, or the prior destruction by Helios. And the guy just nodded. ‘You destroyed a world.’ He thumped his staff, grounded the haft and aimed the top at Xen. The rug fibers stretched up a bit, and zap! Xen collapsed. The guards stepped back on the rug and the whole thing disappeared.”

  Q nodded. “Xen was alive when they left. I would have felt him die.”

  Rael looked at the empty circle of pavement. And he’d better still be alive, or I’m going to kill every single one of them!

  Marooned is scheduled for fall 2019.

  Other Titles by Pam Uphoff

  Wine of the Gods Series:

  Outcasts and Gods

  Exiles and Gods (Three Novellas)

  The Black Goats

  Explorers

  Spy Wars

  One Alone

  Comet Fall

  A Taste of Wine (Seven Tales)

  Dark Lady

  Growing Up Magic (Four Novellas)

  Young Warriors

  God of Assassins

  Heirs of Crown and Spear

  The Fiend

  Empire of the One

  Warriors of the One

  Dancer

  Earth Gate

  Mages at Large

  Triplets

  Sea Wolves

  Bad Karma

  Dark Side of the Moon

  Cascades

  Olympian

  Embassy

  Rael

  On the Run

  God of the Sun

  Cannibal World

  No Confidence

  Pure Poison

  Flying

  Last Merge

  Nowhere Man

  Black Point Clan

  External Relations

  Meet the Family

  Children of a Foreign God

  Lucky Dave

  A Prophetable Dimension

  Mall Santa

  Saturday Night

  The Directorate Series:

  Directorate School

  A Tale of Three Interns

  Trouble in Paradise

  First Posting

  Surveillance

  Fort Dinosaur

  Shadow Zone

  Project Dystopia

  Fractured Loyalties

  Cooking Hot

  The Boy

  One Love

  A Warrior’s Art

  Scrambled

  The Lawyers of Mars

  Fancy Free

  Time Loop

  In the Rift

  Writing as Zoey Ivers

  YA Cyberpunk Adventures:

  The Barton Street Gym

  Chicago

  Atlantis+

  Fantasy:

  Demi God