Valterion: The Space/Arch? Mage

Chapter 80: Fast Travel

Location: Magicon Empire; Valterion Duchy; Valterion System; VS Maxima

Adrian leads me to another room right next to the bridge. It looks like an office with a big desk in the middle. Another door at the far end leads to another room. If this is his office, beyond must be his cabin. He walks right past the office desk and the other door opens. It shows a big living room. I guess, I was right.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get comfortable. I’d like to get to know you.”

He jumps onto one of the couches and I do the same with the one opposite. “Sooo, hi… I’m Sara,” I say with a wink.

“Dude,” he snorts. “That I can find out on my own. What else is there? I mean, I missed twenty years of your life…. There has to be something.”

“Sure, there is, but the only thing I know about you is that you almost look like Dad, and you have a big ass starship… So how about you start?”

He makes an awkward expression and moves a hand through his very short hair. “Oops, you’re right… I thought Mom already told you about me.”

“Nope, all I know is that your name is Adrian and that you are OLD. Mom had to leave early, so I improvised a bit to get to you. I guess she will be quite surprised when she finds Clara missing.”

“Oh, she’ll love S-57,” Clara chimes in, and I hear the smirk in her voice.

“Hey, I’m not that old… Not even a hundred yet. What’s this all about though? I feel like I’m missing a lot of context… Who is S-57 and how did you manage to convince Clara to join you?”

“Well, I recently had a big power-up, and S-57 is my first AI. He’s only rated for Novices though, so he’s pretty much useless for me now. Maja, my other AI left for military training, which left me pretty much screwed. Then Clara offered to help and here I am.”

Adrian shakes his head. “I feel like I’m still missing a lot… How can your AI leave for military training?”

“Oh, you are!” I laugh. “It’s all part of my story, but now it’s your turn. Who is Adrian Valterion?”

He leans back. “Fine, but don’t think I let you get away with only telling me so much.”

I chuckle and wink while letting a bit of my power leak out into the surrounding air. I quickly have to reign it in, as it feels like I opened the floodgates. This is nothing like the weak field of magic, I was able to create back in the Estriduros Republic to recover from longer jumps. “You can try.”

Adrain’s eyes almost pop out of his head. “What the hell?? What’s this? Upper end of Master?”

I shrug. “Something like that, but I’m not telling yet.”

“Ahh, come on… Fine, what do you want to know?”

With a big grin, I answer him. “Everything, of course!”

He barks a short laugh. “Alright, we’ve got the time… The trip is going to take a while. You have to tell me about this so-called republic before we arrive though. I’m not going in blind.”

When I nod, he takes another breath and starts telling me about himself.

It’s funny, he is a lot stiffer than Mom and Dad. But he’s also been part of the military since he graduated from RMA at thirty. So maybe that’s the reason. He was always the competitive type though. Convinced Mom to get him a disguise and he worked his way up through the military ranks. Only when he reached the pinnacle and got command of this beauty of a ship here, the VS Maxima, he revealed his true identity. It caused a bit of an uproar with the top brass, but the bonds he formed with his crew are invaluable.

I respect him a lot for that. Doing so takes balls. From what Maja told me, she and I are being trained to take command right away.

Adrian also took another quite controversial way. He refuses to get any power enhancements from others, and his original Space core advanced completely without enhancements. He says, he wants to earn his own power, either naturally, or with his own money, just like he did in the military. Much to Doctor Philipps’ frustration, he also convinced him to get both additional cores before reaching Master with his Space core, slowing his progression even further. But he persisted and is now a Master Space Mage and Senior in A&D and Utility.

That’s the moment when I decide to interrupt him and tell him that I’m something like an Archmage…

“Hold on a moment. How did you manage to convince Doc Philipps to do that? He almost jumped at my neck when I told him that I had a Junior Utility core next to my weird Junior Space core?”

“Oh yeah, he jumped me as well, but in the end, I managed to convince him. He has a weakness for VIP Gravity Ball tickets,” Adrian replies with a wink. “Hold on, we’re at the wormhole. Give me a second.”

He closes his eyes and a second later I feel a space bubble move over me. He’s doing it from here? Wow. Curiously, I reach out with my Space Sense. The Maxima is bigger than the size limits I learned of at the Mage Academy. I notice some pieces of Magitech along the hull which emit a faint feeling of Space magic, but Adrian’s bubble ignores them and continues to encompass the ship. When the bubble closes and we enter the wormhole, it clicks, and I remember: No size limits for Masters!

Adrian opens his eyes again. “Alright, I can manage the travel in the background. Where was I? Ah, right, Doc Philipps. So yeah, I bribed him and got my cores, but you said you are a dual Mage as well? Double Junior, impressive that you managed to get onto the Maxima with that.” He stops and looks at me again. “Wait, the aura earlier… How did you do that with Junior cores?”

“Well, I guess it’s my turn now to tell you a bit. My kidnappers put an Artifact around my core. It suppressed all my power, but it wasn’t enough, and I registered as a Novice Space Mage in the Estriduros Republic. Over the years, it advanced to Junior, and I got a Utility core along the way. When Doc Philipps discovered the Artifact and removed it, my Space core exploded with power and devoured the Utility one.” I flash him a big grin. “So here I am, the first pseudo-Archmage in existence.”

He jumps up and almost fumbles the Wormhole Navigation spell. His AI must be hard at work, as a second later everything smooths out again. That was close! “Are you fucking serious?” He calls out. “This is insane!”

I grin. “Yeah, I’m serious, but you have to keep that to yourself. Mom and Dad want to protect me. If anyone asks, I’m a Master in Space and Junior in Utility.”

He nods. “Got it. So with you at Master, we could speed up the trip by a lot. You can teleport a ship this size, right?”

I shrug in response. “Dunno, I’ve never really tested my new core. It all happened pretty recently. I’m also still learning the Starship Jump spell, but I should be ready in a few days with Clara’s help. I’ve only used Wormhole Navigation so far and only with much smaller ships. But I can give it a try at the next wormhole.”

“Sure, I hadn’t planned on using any more wormholes after this one, but I can have Reggie include a few along the way. With you using them while I and Kira rest, that’s still a boost in our travel time.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Who’s Reggie and Kira?”

“Oh, right. Reggie is my AI, but he’s currently hard at work as I almost fumbled the jump.” Then he blushes. “Kira, uh, I mean Lieutenant Lopes is the second Space Mage in my crew. I can introduce you later if you’d like.”

“Sure, so Lieutenant Lopes, is there something I should know?” I ask with a wink, and he blushes even further.

He shakes his head. “No, nothing at all. She’s just my colleague.” That doesn’t sound convincing at all…

Anyway, Adrian finishes navigating us through the wormhole while we continue to talk and a little bit later, I feel another source of Space magic envelop the ship. I ignore it, as this is probably Kira’s doing. The bubble closes, power surges and we are somewhere else.

When Adrian finishes talking about himself, I tell him a bit of my story. First my youth with Thomas, then the Academy, and meeting with my friends. Then I continue and tell him pretty much what I told everyone else when I recruited them for my crew. I leave the part with the Worldender Ship out, but everything else is fair game. Luckily, Adrian isn’t holding a spell anymore, as he completely loses it when I mention my time on Earth. This causes me to laugh a lot at his expense.

When I finish, I ask him for a tour of the ship, but he says he has to jump again and shows me my cabin instead. He tells me not to leave it for now because of protocol or something and leaves. I sit down on the bed and talk a bit with Clara. Half an hour later a soldier knocks at my door and brings me a tray of food. I thank him and dig in. It’s good, but not the best. After that, I lie down to sleep. Let’s hope I don’t have to stay here all the time. That would suck!

Location: Red Sun Alliance; Indrina System; VS Maxima

It’s crazy. We only traveled for a week and we’re already in the Red Sun Alliance where I had the encounter with the pirates. It took us with the Stargazer almost two months… Master rank is truly insane. When I tell Adrian about that encounter and how we took them down with our guns, he laughs out loud and the other people in the mess hall look at him in question. Yeah, I’m now allowed to move through the ship, and I even got my tour.

Adrian wipes off some tears and turns to look at the others. “It’s just that my sister here took down a crew of pirates with only defensive spells in her crew and two Armortec cannons.”

That’s another thing I learned during that week of travel: Mom stopped at the ship before it arrived to pick me up and had every crew member swear to keep my existence a secret until she tells them otherwise. She also offered to transport those who didn’t want to another ship, but almost no one took her up on it as they were way too curious. And when I say she swore them to secrecy, I mean that literally. It’s the same spell Mom cast on the prison director and Lieutenant Larsson. And I guess on my friends as well. That’s why Adrian can call me his sister whenever he wants.

I was quite embarrassed when I learned this, as I called him brother with my first appearance without a care in the world. Of course, I channeled my inner actress and told everyone that I knew about the oath all along. Adrian wasn’t fooled of course, as I asked him later on about that spell and finally got my explanation: It’s a weird blend of A&D and Utility magic which results in that they can’t talk about my existence with anyone not on this ship.

Anyway, the crew joins in on Adrian’s laughter and one of them claps me on the shoulder. “That sounds like you had quite the adventure during your travels.”

I flash him a grin. “Oh, you have no idea… Did you know that I even was part of a pirate crew for a short time?”

With that, I tell the crew a few stories about my travels, and everyone has a good time. In the end, it gets quite crowded as more and more people hear about my stories and want to hear them firsthand.

Adrian even had to tell them to get back to work before stations were unmanned. I try to apologize to him for causing that ruckus, but he just waves me off.

Oh, and I met Kira during that week of travel as well. She’s such a nice person. We immediately became friends and I spend most of my time with her when I’m not with Adrian or jumping us through the one or other wormhole. It’s also obvious that Adrian and Kira are more than just colleagues… It’s kinda funny how they think they are successful at hiding it. Everyone aboard knows it, but no one tells them.

Speaking of wormhole travel. The Indrina System is one of those where we are going to use a wormhole. I glance at Adrian. “Should we go to the bridge? It’s almost time for my jump.”

He nods in agreement, and I float our plates to the drop-off point. Then we are off to the bridge.

Location: Dakarti Federation; Gendi System; VS Maxima

Another week later, our trip is already finished. Adrian's final jump leads us right into the Gendi System of the Dakarti Federation. The direct neighbors to the Estriduros Republic. As always, the Maxima sends out information about who she is to avoid panics in the systems we appear in. I don’t know if it's because of the tensions with the Estriduros Republic or if the Dakarti people are just a lot more nervous, but they are the only ones to send out a ship to meet us after our appearance at the edge of the system.

As this was one of our last jumps, I decided to join Adrian on the bridge, so when the

communications officer calls out that the DFS Tilda hails us, I can’t help myself and let out a small snicker.

Adrian glances at me. Over the two weeks, we got to know each other quite well and he doesn’t even have to say something for me to understand that he means something like ‘What is it?’

“I know that ship… I guess, I can say hi to Captain Rogers again? Maybe put some things right… He thinks of me as an Envoy of our family and as I was only a Novice back then, he placed me at a far-off family branch.”

Adrian bursts out laughing. “Oh, I’d pay to see that! Ensign Kurtz, send it over to my console, I’ll take the call myself.” He winks at me. “What I mean is that you take the call, and I laugh my ass off.”

I fake a bit of annoyance and scowl at him. “Fine, but you are going to pay him back for the million he offered me in pity.”

That shuts him up, and I smirk while I take the call.