Walk Like a Magician Read online

  Walk Like a Magician

  Black Ocean: Mercy for Hire

  J. S. Morin

  Magical Scrivener Press

  Copyright © 2018 J.S. Morin

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

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  www.magicalscrivener.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Ordering Information: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.

  J.S. Morin — First Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-64355-027-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  Walk Like a Magician

  According to publicly available maps, this was the place. Javion IV only had one major settlement, so it wasn’t a matter of having the wrong city. Yet when Esper arrived at the Brackleston Youth Fitness Center with Kubu, Tiffany, and Wesley in tow, it certainly felt as if they’d taken a wrong turn.

  The colony had the look of a core world slum with buildings and traffic management signals in disrepair, a haze of smog in the sky. Yet even restaurants whose facades hinted that health inspections didn’t count among the local customs at least kept a sign over the door.

  “There used to be a sign,” Tiffany pointed out, glancing from her datapad to the gray wall splotched with illegible graffiti. She turned the screen to show Esper the resemblance the place bore to the latest update on the omni. And when she squinted, she could make out the faded spot from whence the sign shown on the datapad had been torn.

  Wesley cracked his knuckles. “We’re not giving up that easy, are we?”

  It was a setup. The actor turned freelance hero hadn’t believed a word of it but still tossed softballs for a hammy one-liner. If Esper didn’t play along, he’d keep trying. With a sigh, she supplied the requisite answer. “Of course not. Let’s head in and see what’s left.”

  The door didn’t open. Black and scuffed, the screen of the door alarm didn’t show any sign of sensing their attempts at input. Wesley scratched at the door’s edge for a handhold by which to force it.

  “Stand back,” Tiffany said with a voice that still needed practice with carrying authority. She closed her eyes and crossed her palms before her. Spreading her hands slowly, she spoke aloud, “Open, says me.”

  Nothing happened.

  Esper stepped forward and whispered in her ear, “Try patefio.”

  Tiffany lifted her chin and pretended that Esper hadn’t just pulled a Cyrano de Bergerac on her. Raising her hands once more, she repeated the gesture. “Patefio, says me.” Nothing happened. “Ah, fuck it. Who’s got the plasma torch?”

  “That would be yours truly,” Wesley said, sauntering forward and unslinging his pack. “Don’t worry, squirt. Keep trying, and one day you’ll be able to talk to doors.”

  As the plasma torch flared on, Wesley stared through a pair of goggles as he traced a bubbling red line in the steel.

  No one cared. This dead-end street stood deserted. Overcast skies blotted out the class-M star beyond, but it was technically midday. None of them were dressed for skulking. Javion IV was just a colony that had given up. If no one had looted this place, it was because no one had gotten around to it yet. Most of the buildings up and down the street couldn’t say the same.

  Once he’d made a hole, Wesley retrieved a pry bar from his pack. One quick tug dragged the door open far enough that he could grab the side and slide it the rest of the way by hand.

  Beyond, it appeared as if someone had vacuumed the contents out of the building. It wasn’t as if the Brackleston Youth Fitness Center lay empty. Not quite, anyway. But what remained behind had the look of flotsam of less value than the trouble of hauling it off.

  The reception desk was still there, but someone had pried out the computer consoles, leaving open wounds in the plasticized surface. One wheel of a rolling chair remained where once a receptionist might have manned this post. Simple printed signs on the walls pointed out directions for Cardiovascular, Studios 1-12, Pools A and B, Staff Offices, Strength Training, Neurokinetics, and Guest Rooms.

  Esper cupped a hand over her mouth as she considered. Where might clues have been left? According to the data crystal Yomin had decoded for them, this had been an active recruiting hub for the Cult of Ra right up until the moment that data had been uploaded. After that… well, the fate of the place was the current mystery.

  “Should we split up?” Wesley asked.

  “Stop that!” Tiffany snapped. “No stupid holovid ideas. You agreed.”

  Wesley looked taken aback. “But there’s no one here. What’s the harm?”

  “Said the guy just before the ninja zombies clawed their way out of the walls or gene-modded snakes slithered up from the washroom toilets or—”

  “Say no more,” Wesley cut her off with a palm raised in surrender. “I’ll be shitting standing up from now on, thanks to that vivid image.”

  “Kubu,” Esper said, trying to avert another of their innumerable derailments. “Can you smell anyone else here?”

  “Nope.”

  That was that. “Fine. Let’s split up. Kubu, take the guest rooms and pool. Tiffany, search the cardio and class studios. Wesley, the neurokinetics and weight rooms. I’ll search the offices.”

  Well-marked signs sent them all off on their various errands. As Esper climbed a wide set of squared-spiral stairs, she considered that this place might once have been a haven for the young men and women of Javion IV. An industrial hub well past its prime, the colony was a den of gangs and addictions of all sorts. There were just too few legitimate careers available in-system, and the population shrank by the year.

  How appealing it must have sounded when a slick-talking charlatan of a priest offered a purpose in life.

  Runaways and disaffected youths had long been preferred targets of cult recruiting.

  Esper arrived at the offices of the fitness center to find exactly what she’d feared: nothing.

  If the reception area had been ransacked, the offices of the cultists in charge had been hosed down and DNA scrubbed prior to evacuation. She checked six offices, finding everyone from the director of community relations to daycare coordinator had utterly obliterated any record of having existed inside the walls of those offices.

  Shaking her head in disgust, she took the back stairs to catch up with the rest of the crew. She met Wesley as he poked around the remains of the strength training facilities. Unlike the offices, much of the bulky, intentionally massive equipment had been left behind.

  He grinned sheepishly when Esper approached. “I seem to have taken a wrong turn. The cardio room was mismarked.” He stood over an old-fashioned weightlifting bench. “I can’t find the gravimetric resistance room.”

  Esper stood at a twenty-kilo bar perched across a pair of U-shaped supports. It had two twenty-kilo steel weight plates slid onto one end and a single plate on the other. Wesley had removed the safety clip from that side and held the remaining plate in one hand like a paper fan. When she grasped the bar and gave a heave, it barely rattled in the supports. She’d have needed proper form and maybe a warm-up before trying in earnest to lift it.

  Nevertheless, she’d proven to herself that it was for real. “This is the weight room.”

  “Well, there’s nothing here that might give a clue what the Cult of Ra was doing here other than exercising.” He spun the plate atop one finger like a basketball.

  Tiffany reported in shortly thereafter. “Zippity-nada. Place is clean enough to cast on a real estate stream.”

  Kubu came back, head hung low.

  “Why are you wet?” Esper asked, unable to overlook the spiky fur still damp despite an obvious attempt to shake dry.

  “There wasn’t anything in the pool,” Kubu reported guiltily. “I think maybe they’re playing an April Fool’s joke on us.”

  “That was yesterday,” Esper pointed out, arching an eyebrow. “And I’m still trying to get all the toothsoap out of my shoe.”

  Kubu snickered softly.

  “This is bullshit,” Tiffany declared. “There’s no way these guys processed payments for room and board twelve days ago and paid their rent ten days ago.”

  Wesley flipped the weight plate idly like a coin. Catching it only to flip it again repeatedly. “Someone knew we were coming.”

  “Fucking duh,” Tiffany shot back.

  Still flipping the plate, Wesley shrugged. “Sometimes the obvious answer is the right one. No need to overthink this.”

  “Or underthink it,” Tiffany snapped. “If they knew we were coming, this place could have been booby-trapped all to shit and back. We need to figure out how they guessed where we’d come after them.”

  “Guilty conscience,” Wesley said, flipping t
he plate higher as he grew agitated. “For all we know, they cleared out every den of deceit, every lair of lies, every hideaway of hellish horrors from here to the eyndar space and—”

  “Stop playing with that thing before you drop it and break someone’s foot!” Esper shouted. Wesley hastily tossed the twenty-kilo plate like a Bernoulli Effect disc to crash into a full-wall mirror. “Can’t you see what’s happened? We got mentioned in the Nefertari police reports. We’re traveling public starlines under our real names. They’re simply tracking our movements over the stupid omni.” She huffed, then checked with Tiffany. “That works, right?”

  Tiffany nodded glumly. “Yeah. That’d do it.”

  Wesley pinched his chin between thumb and forefinger. “But we can’t travel under other names without becoming the very thing we’re trying to fight: criminals.”

  With a delicate snort, Tiffany pointed out the obvious dissonance. “We just cut our way into an abandoned building with a plasma torch. We’re good guys but still criminals.”

  “Point taken, squirt.”

  Slumping onto one of the weight benches, Esper said to the group, “Heroes can’t run around the galaxy taking the hoverbus.”

  Bowling pins toppled. By Esper’s count, five of them. She marked Tiffany’s score on the glass with a grease pencil, and the projection showed on a simple, overhead screen. Lights, mirrors, and flat white surfaces, this wizard-friendly alley knew its patrons.

  Situated just two blocks from their hotel, Esper had suggested the trip after their fruitless raid of the Cult of Ra here on Javion.

  “I suck at this,” Tiffany groused, skating back to the seats on her slick-soled rental shoes. “I can’t aim the ball, and I can’t cheat it.”

  Kubu sighed. “At least you’re allowed to bowl…” Lakeview Lanes didn’t have shoes that fit a megalodog—nor did they have a view of any lake, for that matter.

  Wesley took one of the black resin balls in hand, fingers too thick to fit in the holes. Stepping toward the line, he pitched it underhand like a softball. The ball reached the pins in a high-speed skid after making the first half of its journey as a low-altitude hovercruiser.

  The ball struck dead center on the lead pin, but the ricochets amongst the pins resulted in the two corner pins remaining. Still, his eight pins were better than Tiffany’s five.

  Esper marked the score and added the one pin Wesley knocked over on his subsequent roll. He then bowled another frame, scoring seven more before his turn ended.

  The mechanical pinsetter racked Tiffany up again. She glared icicles at her opponent as they crossed paths.

  “Worry about the pins,” Esper called out. The little spitfire was competitive. Just having Wesley play was supposed to keep the night lighthearted instead of simply a training session. And by not playing herself, she avoided charges of throwing a match if Tiffany somehow won.

  Because for Esper to have lost, she’d have had to intentionally throw the game.

  Tiffany’s first throw went into the gutter. “BULLSHIT!”

  “Go easy. It takes practice.”

  “She needs lots more practice,” Kubu muttered.

  “When I don’t spin the ball, it doesn’t knock over the pins in back. When I try to spin it, it slides down the fail chute. And don’t get me started on magicking it where it belongs. Universe has me on comm block.”

  It was fine openly discussing the public use of magic. All bowling alleys were accustomed to the occasional group of wizards showing up. The creaky old pinsetters were designed to chug along with a few magical hiccups throughout their workday.

  “Try closing your eyes,” Esper suggested.

  Tiffany balked. “Lol, what? I’m enough of a stim-head out here seeing where I’m throwing.”

  Esper pulled off her boots and joined Tiffany on the lane in her stocking feet. Guiding her protégée by the shoulders, she steered Tiffany to the foul line. “Don’t do the walking up part. Just bend down and roll it. You can even keep your eyes open long enough to aim. But I don’t want you watching it go. Close your eyes, and picture a perfect throw knocking down all the pins.”

  “I don’t have much mental footage to paste in.”

  Esper ushered Tiffany aside and took custody of the bowling ball. “Like this.”

  Working just from muscle memory, Esper launched the ball the length of the lane, curling in a delayed arc as the ball’s spin caught up with its momentum. Striking just to the right of the head pin, there was a satisfying crash as all ten pins fell.

  Tiffany stared Esper down as the pinsetter bustled and the ball returned down a set of rails aside the lane.

  “What?” Esper asked.

  Tiffany’s glare took on an incredulous aspect.

  “Hey, I told you there was a whole bowling league in Esperville. Once you start playing wizards, the magic cancels out. I had to learn to play. Now, scoot. Up to the line, and this time, don’t watch.”

  Esper took her seat and cheered Tiffany on silently. You can do this. It’s not life-and-death. Just nudge that ball half a meter.

  Wesley turned to Kubu as both sat watching Tiffany’s turn. “You getting the feeling they’re trying to rig this game?” he asked just loudly enough that half the alley must have heard them.

  Tiffany bowled. With her back to the seats, Esper couldn’t tell whether she was shutting her eyes, but the girl clenched her fists at her sides as her ball wended its way down the alley.

  With a crash, she struck the head pin and knocked over a total of nine. Only the far-right pin remained. “Wooooooooooooooooo!”

  “Great job!”

  “I don’t know if I did anything but—”

  “You did,” Esper replied quickly. Confidence was everything. Even if she couldn’t be sure, better to err on the side of Tiffany believing in herself. “Congratulations.”

  Tiffany’s subsequent attempt to pick up the spare resulted in a clean miss, but Tiffany brushed the failure aside. She’d lost the string to Wesley even with her late bit of wizardly help—not that either of them cleared a hundred pins for the entire game.

  “We going to talk about finding cult people now?” Kubu asked as Esper grease-penciled the final score for everyone to see.

  Esper sighed. Bowling was so much more straightforward. It posed as wholesome family fun but doubled as a test of willpower with the universe as Tiffany’s true opponent. Solving their problem with the Cult of Ra was multifaceted and daunting. Teaching Tiffany the rudiments of magical self-confidence might have been hard work, but it was the sort of hard work at which she could succeed.

  She set down the grease pencil and stretched in her hard plastic chair. “Fine. Our problem is we have all the intel the cops on Nefertari gathered but none of the resources to pursue it. We’ve got a good team, don’t get me wrong, but only Wesley’s thumbprint for cash. And… I happened to notice you booked us cheaper rooms this time around.”

  Wesley offered a sheepish grin. “I… well, you see… when Arturus was in trouble, I twisted some arms at the studio and got Ira to make a few comms. It was a good bargain for them. Now? Let’s just say I make my residuals from a gaggle of holovids that no one watches. It’s not that—”

  Esper put up a hand. “I’m not complaining. Just making an observation. I’ve stayed at lots worse places than El Gato Silbante in the past few years. But it means we don’t have a black hole of terras to draw on.”

  “Or a starship of our own,” Tiffany added. “I remember leaving Earth. You were all gung-ho outlaw about finding someone who didn’t deserve a ship and stealing it.”

  “That would be nice,” Kubu said. “If someone doesn’t deserve a nice big ship with a Kubu-sized bed and floor-mounted washroom bowl, it would be much better for us to have it.”

  That was it, wasn’t it? They needed a ride around the galaxy that the Cult of Ra couldn’t track by bribing starliner grunts or watching public starports.

  “What about… paying for rides with someone who doesn’t register a flight plan with the ARGO Ministry of Travel? I mean, it only rules out passenger starliners and big-time freight companies. Gotta be plenty of schlubs out there looking to score some cheap terras playing interstellar taxi.”