Renegade on Kara: The Great Basin Chapter 1 Challenged to a Duel
Going on the run from spell casting AIs, dragons and a nearly all powerful state isn't easy, even on a world with an infinite surface.
A high-pitched female voice interrupted him, “I can’t believe anyone that takes as long as you to finish his midterm project can possibly be rated a better spell-crafter than I.”
Roger lost track of his spell’s grammar and organization. Blood roared in his ears; rage flushed his cheeks. He stood and faced his tormentor, knocking his chair over.
He didn’t care. She had gone too far this time.
Standing in his dorm room door, her hands on her hips, wearing nothing but a muted paint job, was Roger’s classmate, the loud, obnoxious, red-headed, Lynn Ramm.
“Damn you, Lynn,” he roared out at her. “I practically had the spell grammar worked out!”
Her smirking face showed how little his rage affected her. “Awe, did the poor baby lose his concentration because he left his door open?”
No one on this floor closed their door unless gone, or needing privacy because of company. Everyone at the University knew, never interrupt a mage working at his desk.
The bitch had seen him working, then decided to interrupt him, again. He had been so close to solving it. This was it. He had had enough.
“Fine, you want your damn duel. You can have it. Stakes, loser is slave to the winner when not studying for the rest of the school year.”
“Make it six months past graduation,” she countered, her voice sassy and arrogant.
“What?”
“After midterm, we are both going to be busting our asses and have little time for anything else. So, to fix that, slavery last for six-month past graduation.”
“Fine.”
Lynn’s expression became arrogant and condescending. She gave her, I’m superior, grin, that Roger often saw cross her face. “I’m going to love this hotshot.”
“Get your battlecloak and meet me at the tram station.”
Her face froze; her voice became sharp and high. “Wait a moment, no one said anything about battlecloaks.”
“If I’m dueling, then it will be a serious duel, utterly serious.” Roger patted his hanging from the back of his chair. “What’s wrong? Couldn’t make a good one?”
Anger now filling her voice, “I will make you eat those words. Tram station, one hour.”
She turned and stormed down the hall.
What in the hell had he just gotten himself into?
He didn’t have time for this. His last two projects must be getting to him if he let Lynn goad him into a duel.
She excelled at getting people to duel her, despite duels being illegal. She had goaded everyone ranked higher than her in the Magnus program into duels and beat them except Roger. It was her way of saying; I don’t care what the University says, I am the better mage.
Roger opened his closet and pulled out some clothes. Unlike most places, the express trams didn’t allow nudity.
He chose coveralls, then tucked them into his knee-high boots. Both the coveralls and boots he had made, then enchanted himself. After that, he put on his floor-length battlecloak. Like half of the university seniors, he wore it every time he left his room. Often, it, and a magic paint job, was all he wore. Before making it, he commonly wore a cloak with environmental controls. Now his battlecloak had that function.
Finally, he strapped on his mage sword and looked in the mirror. A touch of magic arranged his finger-length brown hair, then set the spell that would slowly shift the hues of his clothes as he moved. One more spell checked to insure nothing on him was made by another person that could be used against him. Only then did he pick up his e-reader and wallet and put them in a pouch so he could set them aside before leaving the technology zone.
***
The massive terminal had dozens of different boarding gates for trams headed in the direction they were going. He cast a spell to find out which gate she was at.
She wasn’t there.
He cast a stronger location spell and found her still ten minutes away. Using his e-reader and asking the net where she was would be less work than a spell, but would call attention to the fact that he had no implants or nanites to access the net. People would guess he was a Magus student because students in that program could not have nanites or implants. Magus students entered labs daily that prevented the technology field from entering.
Entering such a lab, or leaving the technology zone, with nanites means an agonizing death. Those nanites broke down into highly toxic substances.
He hated calling attention to his Magus student status. Last year, he would have had to use the e-reader to order his ticket. Now he focused on the ticket board, then used his magic.
His e-reader vibrated.
A smile broke out on his face, and he didn’t even bother to check it. It would be the notification of his account being deducted.
As Roger had booked passages for both, she would have received the notification too. Custom dictated that the duelist rode together to the duel. If you could not face your opponent for that entire trip, you had no business dueling them was how that rule worked. Of course, when it first went into effect, you could duel within a two-hour ride. Not any more.
Roger let out a sigh. It would be a long trip.
Dueling was illegal. If caught, it would get you suspended for a term and barred from many professions and places. Three such incursions would get you tossed out of the University and banned from all other higher learning institutions here on the Kara colony of University and most other Kara colonies. Even one complaint could get you suspended for a year and on restrictions when you came back.
That is, if no one is injured.
Traumatic injuries and even death are possibilities, though duels are supposed to be non-fatal. Should either happen, then banning from the university is the least of your problems.
Technology zone computers monitored the magic field, tracking all magic for illegal use. If a duel started anywhere in the technology zone, the AIs knew about it and who took part, and contacted the dragon-mounted police. At over a thousand years old, the technology zone of the Kara Colony of University was enormous. He would be stuck facing Lynn for sixteen hours.
She arrived.
Like Roger, she had dressed as required. Gone also was her paint job. Now, magically illuminated splotches of color roamed over her leather pants, shirtless vest, mid-thigh battlecloak, and sandals.
She sneered, “Your mage sword? Really?”
“Since you didn’t bring yours, I won’t draw it.”
In a physical fight, with or without weapons, she was no match for him. Unlike Roger, who had a passion for martial arts since he was twelve, she started her martial arts in her junior year of high school as all advanced magic students are required to and resented all the time she wasted in that class.
“No, this is a magical duel, not a sword fight. Bringing my sword would have been a waste and proved nothing.”
With a dramatic but useless flip of her cloak, she turned and led the way to the tram gate.
***
The faux window showing the tram pulling away from the platform with only the two of them aboard surprised Roger. You never felt the inertia-controlled trams start to move but leaving this empty was unusual.
It tempted him to move to one of the three other six-person compartments instead of sitting with Lynn. No sooner than he thought that, then the tram was slowing to a different platform in the terminal.
Within minutes, all three compartments had people in them, though none were full, but none had joined them in theirs. He pulled out his reader and checked the stops for their car. Only four, including theirs, the fist one, nine house from now. Each compartment was a different stop, he deduced. That meant only Lynn and he were on for the entire trip to the last stop.
She reclined her seat, opened her E-reader, and made a point of ignoring him. That suited Roger to perfection.
With his seat fully upright, he entered his focus concentration trance. It looks like meditation, but it isn’t. All students at the University; Mage, Magi, or Magnus, learn meditation. Students learned meditation in junior high or high school. Any high school teaching magic well enough to get students into The University, had meditation classes at least twice a day.
Focused concentration is something entirely different. Most Magus and Magi students considered it something only lesser mages learned. Even among the Mage students at The University, less than two percent bothered to develop it, though it was more common, and even taught at other institutions of higher learning. Several of his instructors told Roger his use of it slowed down his development, though others disagreed with that statement.
It gave him an advantage now. Far from clearing his mind to prepare for the upcoming duel, he focused his mind on a single task: understanding Lynn’s shields and her magic and she would assume it to be meditation.
He started with where their two shields touched, halfway between them. These, the lightest shields, existed on the thinnest of power. Their primary purpose is sensing magic around a person and defining their area of influence.
Right on that edge, Roger tasted her magic. Unless a loved one or family, the taste of someone’s magic is always sour. Hers was no different.
Most mages keep any emotional flavor out of the outer shield. He found none in hers. Not that he expected to. Any high school kid qualified to enter the most difficult magic school in existence should be able to keep emotional flavors from their shields.
He found the first of her shield’s dead zones, its holes. Everyone has dead zones in their outer shield. It is the nature of this kind of low-power shield. He found several more. Instead of peering deeper, Roger flexed his shield the slightest amount and watched her shield react.
The urge to grin threatened to break his focused concentration.
Three obvious dead zones were fake, alarms to let her know someone probed her. She was one devious bitch. Roger backed away carefully from her shields, never letting on he knew about her booby-trap.
His battlecloak was in his lap, hers on the seat beside her. That is where he moved his focus next. While in no way safe to probe, being outside her main shields it was not quite as dangerous and would tell him much about her magic.
At first look, it was a near-perfect mage level battlecloak. Even sitting next to her, it interfaced with her personal shields seamlessly. That interface was even better than Roger’s. Those shields were perfect Mage shields, great Magi but not Magus level shields by any stretch.
This meant it was another trap, another deception.
Roger’s touch became as delicate as when he handled the most deadly of powers. He slipped past that shield. Even half expecting it, he still came close to setting off an alarm from the second set of shields she had hidden behind the first.
This shield was every bit what you would expect from a Magus. In battle, under full power, her opponent would not see its protections because much of the first layer she had designed to hide them. Duelists would waste time and power attacking perceived weaknesses that didn’t exist. No doubt her personal shields worked in a similar fashion presenting false weaknesses to attack. He gave that shield a careful examination before moving on to the inner shield.
She had a damn good inner shield. Yet, some things were missing. Looking for those missing things, he found where she had hidden a second inner shield.
This one put all the others to shame. Her other duelist likely never knew it was even there until it was too late. The array of protections she had built into it made it a masterful work of art.
It also explained why she didn’t get more difficult projects. Everywhere Roger saw protections, she could combine into more efficient protections. Designing in ten spells takes a lot of effort, but taking those ten and crafting three spells capable of doing everything those ten did took excruciatingly more time and work. It was a step she didn’t take unless forced. Roger moved to examine her core spells.
He got a surprise, again.
It was as much luck as any other factor that he didn’t set off her alarms then. She had built an additional layer just as impressive, hidden just in front of her core layer.
She was one cunning bitch.
Much of the layer above was, so you didn’t suspect this layer. As impressive as the one above had been, this one had far more and better designed spells. It took dedication to create something as impressive as the above shield, mainly as a decoy to hide this one. The construction of this, including symbologies he did not know, proved beyond any doubt she was a Magus, the elite of the elite.
***
Since they had been on their way for four hours by the time he finished examining that shield, he ended his trance. As far as Roger could tell, Lynn was engrossed in her E-reader and had been since they left. A button on the chair summoned the tram AI.
When the small round robot arrived, Lynn closed her E-reader and ordered dinner too, all without saying a word to Roger.
The mouthwatering aroma of the fresh-baked bread, cabbage, pie, and Spanish rice arrived long before the food did. As those smells crept into the tramcar, other compartments summoned the AI and placed orders.
As he ate, Roger contemplated everything he had learned. Getting past her battlecloak protection would be a challenge if she got it fully active.
It was an impressive battlecloak, one she had designed to win duels. His own was a different beast altogether. Hers, she designed for people that play by the rules. His, he designed to kill the people trying to kill him, people that don’t play by any rules. Hers was like a thick high wall, his own a fast-flowing river.
For all those protections built-in, Roger felt that he could take her in time. It would take a lot of effort and power, but he could breach those shields. So could at least eight others she had duel.
So why had she won? Had the others been unwilling to risk the spells that would have won?
This was a real possibility. If someone gauged the strength of her shields wrong, they could blast through them and her.
How many of the duels had she won because people wouldn’t risk hitting her hard enough to win?
Yet, there were holes in those shields, big ones. She hadn’t worked in any protections against the illegal spells.
Were all such defenses in her personal shields? That didn’t make sense.
Did she believe she was talented enough to counter them as people cast them? This was more realistic, but still foolish.
Or did she, in truth, think no one would use one?
They were on the illegal list because people used them, and they were easy to learn and cast. Roger had deduced how to cast all one hundred and eleven of them back in high school. Building in counters to twelve of them in his Battlecloak brought NewGate security checking into it. The police computer flagged him as casting them.
Maybe he just missed them. Surely someone who left the technology zone often would build protections against these; though it would take an audacious person to use one against a University mage.
Did she have a level of defense still hidden? Roger needed another look, plus she incorporated symbologies in her battlecloak he still didn’t understand.
Each handed their trays back to the AI. She made herself comfortable for a nap and was soon asleep. Roger adjusted the overhead vent to blow more cool clean air into his face and resumed his focus concentration.
***
Exiting the tram, the odious smell of the sea assaulted Roger’s nostrils. Though half the University students love the Kara seas, salty water and fish smells made Roger’s nose wrinkle. Lynn led the way to the auto cab and directed it to the dock.
The smell grew worse.
He grinned seeing the thirteen-meter sloop the cab delivered them to, the Island Dream. It was an identical replica of the Island Dream from a twenty-second-century video series about a smuggler. The captain climbed from the cabin, looking just like the show’s star, a smuggler captain from Jamaica.
As Roger followed Lynn to the dock, the captain jumped from his boat to the dock. “Hi, I am Captain John Hicks, welcome aboard.”
Roger busted out laughing. That was the opening line on the theme song from that old video series, even though he didn’t quite have the accent down.
He grinned at Roger; his fake accent vanished. “Ah, a man who actually saw the show.” He turned and waved his hand at the boat. “Being a sailor, and with my name, I couldn’t resist even if it was a corny show.” Looking at Lynn as if he recognized her, “Jelco Island? Day trip?”
She nodded.
“You’re in luck. Tech buoys go active next week, extending the technology zone another ten kilometers. Jelco Island, the last coastal island outside the technology zone around here, will be in a technology field then. You’ll need find another place for duels when that happens.”
So their captain knew about the illegal duels.
“This is the last one. I graduate this semester and have offers on several newer colonies, but I’ll let others know.”
He turned back to me. “Jelco Island is an hour outside the technology zone, almost two hours from here. I’ll leave you my call stone, but you don’t start your duel until you give me half an hour to clear the area. You don’t call me in six hours, I call on a dragon rider and let him investigate. If I come back and someone is dead, I call in a dragon rider and let him sort it out. Someone having an injury that requires medical attention, and I call in a dragon rider to get you to shore and you get to explain it to him. Clear?”
“Clear,” said Lynn.
The Captain waited.
Roger realized he was expected to answer. “Clear,” he repeated. The main character in that show would do that, he remembered.
Captain Hicks handed Lynn his computer. She thumb-printed something, then passed it to Roger.
It displayed a day sailing charter with rules and charges. It said nothing concerning a duel or the island stop. Roger thumb-printed it, then felt his E-reader notifying him of the charge against his account. He handed it back to the Captain.
When he closed the computer, it shape-changed into a parrot that flew to an office at the end of the dock. Two pelicans flew back and shape-changed into small boxes. The shape-changing devices were a nice touch.
“Place anything you don’t want leaving a technology zone in the boxes, then lock them with your thumbprints.”
As University students, Lynn and Roger carried few things in their pockets they couldn’t take from a technology zone. A few mistakes walking into no tech rooms taught them better. They put those and their E-readers in the boxes. The boxes turned back into pelicans and flew to roost on top of the building the computer had flown into. There looked to be over a dozen up there.
All three climbed up the short ladder to the deck; Lynn first, then Roger, followed by the captain. Captain John Hicks waved his hand. The lines untied themselves from the boat and curled themselves on the dock.
Roger’s stomach heaved as he fought to keep dinner down.
The captain eyed him, then said, “Go on down into the cabin. It spelled for a smoother ride.”
Lynn didn’t follow him down to his relief.
As the ride became smooth from inside the cabin, his stomach quieted. Part of that may have been the cabin also had spells to keep the smell of the sea out. It smelled of a flowering meadow. With Roger’s stomach now calm, the cabin intrigued him. It looked like the one from the show too, or at least what Roger remembered of it from watching a two-day marathon of Island Hopper with friends in high school. There were differences.
This ship left the technology zone so had no metal, plastic, or electronics, but Captain Hicks came close to a late-twentieth-century private sailing vessel with magical replacements. The ceramic magical coffee maker and oven looked amazingly like the coffee maker and microwave from the show. Hicks was creative and possessed excellent attention to detail. Most of the enchantments in here tasted of him. Not University level, but close.
Hicks’s voice, magically enhanced, called down, “About to cross out of the technology zone.”
Roger stopped looking around and sat down. Years ago, he had left the technology zone a few times where the barrier ended on land, not the sea. Leaving differs greatly from closing the lab room door that will block technology fields. The zone of fall-off is not quite ten meters deep.
Roger hated the gradual change, but others preferred it over entering a no technology room and the abrupt change when the door closes. Sound became less crisp, vision became blurred as the laws of physics from the third universe stopped reaching into Kara.
Few artificial fibers survive leaving the technology zone. The ones that do, don’t make comfortable clothes in technology zones. Cotton, linen, wool, silk, and leather were common garments among edge dwellers, university students, and everyone that lived beyond the technology zone. All such organics required spells, because on Kara, they rotted too fast to be useful.
Roger checked his buttons, zippers, and such just like he did entering no tech rooms. These ceramics often cracked and broke as the laws of physics of the third universe lost sway despite the spells people used to stabilize them. These materials were far less durable here than in any other universe make could live in.
He had never needed a spell for motion sickness before, so didn’t have one ready. Nevertheless, took him only minutes to devise one and then integrate it into his coveralls.
He poured himself a cup of the coffee and went back out on deck.
His spell worked. The seasickness didn’t return.
