Renegade on Kara: The Great Basin Chapter 1 Challenged to a Duel

Going on the run from spell casting AIs, dragon mounted police and a nearly all powerful state isn't easy, even on a world with an infinite surface. Roger has little choice if he's to keep his magic

“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,” the grating woman’s voice interrupted him.

Roger’s train of thought shattered, and the spell’s grammar and organization were shoved out of his mind. Blood roared in his ears; rage flushed his cheeks as he stood and faced his tormentor, knocking his chair over. Hours of focus ruin! She had gone too far this time.

“Damn you, Lynn,” he roared out at the redhead standing in his doorway wearing nothing but body paint. “I practically had the spell grammar worked out!”

“Awe, did the poor baby lose his concentration because he left his door open?” she responded, her smirk show how little cared about his fury.

His anger grew. 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. And he’d been so close to solving it.

“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,” he snarled at her.

“Make it six months past graduation,” she countered, her voice sassy and arrogant.

“What?” he asked in confusion.

Her smirk grew. “After midterm, we are both going to be busting our asses and have little time for anything else. So, to fix that, slavery lasts for six-month past graduation.”

“Fine.”

Her infuriating tone became even more condescending. “I’m going to love this hotshot.”

Roger made his own voice cold. “Get your battlecloak and meet me at the tram station.”

Her face froze. “Wait a moment, no one said anything about battlecloaks,” Her voice squeaked.

Finally, he had rattled her back. “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?”

Voice filled with anger, she replied, “I will make you eat those words. Tram station, one hour,” 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. Roger opened his closet and pulled out some clothes. Unlike most places, the express trams didn’t allow nudity.

***

Too many people crowded the massive terminal and its dozens of different boarding gates. 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, as the lab they worked in destroyed them.

He hated calling attention to his Magus student status by using an E-reader. Last year, he would have to. Now he focused on the ticket board, then used a spell he created this semester.

His e-reader vibrated. He smiled, not bothering to check it. It would be the notification of his account being deducted.

As Roger had booked passages for both. Lynn 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 anymore.

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.

A shiver ran down his spine at that thought. Traumatic injuries, even death, are very real possibilities, even though duels are supposed to be non-fatal. Should either happen, then banning from the university was the least of your problems.

He did not look forward to facing Lynn for sixteen hours in a tram car. But getting out of the computers monitored the magic field, in the technology zone took forever. They’d been expanding it for over a thousand years.

She arrived.

Like Roger, she had dressed as required. Gone was her paint job. Now, magically illuminated splotches of color roamed over 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.” Like a third of the people that made them, except to class, he always picked his up walking out of his dorm.

“No, this is a magical duel, not a sword fight. Bringing my sword would have been a waste and proved nothing.”

Not that she would have had a chance with a blade. Roger could teach the classes she took in both blade and martial arts.

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 him. 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. But no sooner than he thought that, the tram was slowing to a different platform in the same terminal.

The tram door slid open again and people took those empty compartments. None were filled up, but not one person had been assigned to join them in theirs either. He pulled out his reader and checked the stops for their car. Only four, including theirs, the first one, nine hours 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 on the route.

She reclined her seat, opened her E-reader, and made a point of ignoring him. That suited him to perfection.

With his seat fully upright, he entered his focus concentration trance. It looks like meditation, but it isn’t. Most Magus and Magi students considered it something only lesser mages learned. Even among the lower ranked Mage students at The University, less than two percent learned 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. Others disagreed.

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 who managed to qualify 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 deadliest of magics. 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, opponents would not see its protections since she’d designed the first layer 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, too. 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. From everything he could see was a step she didn’t take unless forced. Roger moved to examine her core spells.

He got a surprise, again.

Luck as any other factor was why 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. She was good, and he had been underestimating her all these years. Without a doubt, she would beat him if he made a single mistake.

***

Four hours had passed by the time he finished examining that battle cloak and ended his trance. As far as Roger could tell, Lynn was engrossed in her E-reader and had been since they left. Instead of using his e-reader to order he pushed the button on the chair summoning the tramcar AI.

When the small round robot arrived, Lynn closed her E-reader and ordered dinner too, all without saying a word to Roger.

Mouthwatering aroma of the fresh-baked bread, cabbage, pie, and Spanish rice filled the tramcar long before the food arrived. As those smells crept through the car, 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.

***

The odious smell of the sea assaulted Roger’s nostrils as he stepped out of the tram, even in the station. Though half the University students love the Kara seas, he avoided them. Salty water and fish smells made Roger’s nose wrinkle. Lynn led the way outside like this was her home, and ordered the auto cab a specific dock.

The smell grew worse and the open air cab headed that way

But 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. “Hi, I am Captain John Hicks, welcome aboard.”

He busted out laughing. That was the opening line and moves before 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 Roger. “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 labs taught them better. They put those and their E-readers in the boxes. Those boxes changed back into pelicans and flew to roost on top of the building the computer had flown into. There looked to be over a dozen pelicans up there. Were any real birds?

Lynn climbed the short rope ladder like an old hand. Dubious of it, Roger followed and the captain after him.

Once aboard, 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.”

Going down three steps, Roger was relieved Lynn was staying on deck.

As the ride became smooth the moment he stepped 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 as he was finishing up his examination of one of those devices, “About to cross out of the technology zone.”

Had it been an hour already? He 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. Cotton, linen, wool, silk, and leather were common garments, though all such organics required spells, not to rot.

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 man live.

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 cloak.

He poured himself a cup of the coffee and went back out on deck.

His spell worked. The seasickness didn’t return.

***

Jelco Island was small, less than five hundred meters across, and uninhabited. Without Captain Hicks’ help, Roger would’ve never spotted it, even with mage sight. He should have brought his mage goggles as Lynn had but wasn’t used to leaving the technology zone.

As the boat drew closer, Roger saw signs that someone planned to move here as soon as the technology field expanded this far. Massive stone pillars created with magic reached out into the sea, awaiting someone to put in a large dock. A tiny wooden dock sat next to those large pillars, and it was for that small dock the Island Dream made.

It dawned on him that this far from the mainland, the fish smell wasn’t so bad. With a spell for motion sickness worked into his battle cloak and another for smell, sailing might be a worthwhile holiday to take. From what he understood, without the Coriolis force concentrating energy, storms were much milder on Kara than on planets.

Still meters from the dock, Captain Hicks dropped the sail. As they coasted in, slowing, he moved to the front of the boat and picked up the ball of line there and threw it at the dock.

Roger smiled. The Captain had made a perfect toss, not having to use magic to get it there.

The line came alive and tied itself to the dock post. It thickened, growing shorter, and pulling the boat to the dock. By the time it pulled in the boat, the yarn size line was as thick as his thumb.

Captain Hicks grabbed a case and then jumped. Landing on his feet, he turned and called, “All ashore going ashore,” sounding exactly like the video, getting that accent down pat this time.

Lynn gave him a smirk, then stepped off, landing lightly on the small dock.

A sour taste filling his mouth, he got off the boat with more care. Letting her goad him into this had to be the dumbest thing he ever did. Yet, he was committed.

Captain Hicks’s case unfolded into a table with an hourglass on it. He set a bright green stone on the table next to the hourglass. “You wait until the sand runs out to start the duel. The sand starts falling when I untie the Island Dream. The stone to summon me is on the table. You damage my table, it gets added to your bill.” Then he gave them both a nod. The smile he had had on since Roger met him gone, he turned and made haste for his boat.

Only then did Roger understand, Hicks didn’t care for duelist.

With a touch of magic, Roger made the sand flow together and create a throne-like chair. He sat down facing the table and Lynn.

With the smirk on her face growing, Lynn copied him on the other side.

The hourglass sand began falling as she took her seat.

Watching that sand fall, Roger realized Lynn might not survive his battlecloak’s opening attack. He believed her shields and her battlecloak shield combined could handle what his would dish out, but he wasn’t entirely sure. It was as lethal as he could make it.

Stop it, he commanded himself. These doubts will lose this duel. Five students, and most of the teachers, he felt, could handle it. He reminded himself that she had beaten all five of those students.

She brought up her battlecloak.

His fear and indecision vanished. No more sour taste in his mouth. His pulse no longer thundered in his ears. Sweat no longer chilled his spine. Total calm settled over him.

Without fear clouding his mind, he became certain he would win, and lined up six of the illegal spells to cast one after the other as his start. If she had a layer of defenses he had not found, those would trigger them.

The sand reached half empty.

Lynn stood, entering the calmness she had when dealing with the deadliest of magics. If she could turn the illegal spells and handle his battle cloak, then Roger was in for one hell of a fight.

Lynn was no pushover, but if she grasped magic as well as Roger, she would never have made her battle cloak like that. Nor would so much of her shielding rely on trickery. Looking into her eyes, Roger saw no fear, only self-confidence.

He shifted his eyes back to the dwindling sand, feeling the way her battlecloak was deforming the flow of magic around them.

That was sloppy and another avenue of attack. Even at its most active, his did not deform the magic flow beyond its own shield.

Moments of sand remained in the hourglass when Roger stood

Lynn raised her own personal shields to their highest level.

Roger didn’t. He’d designed his personal shields and his battlecloak shields both to stay on standby and snap into place fast, and she would not see them active until the duel began.

A few grains of sand remained in the hourglass, and he spoke. “I hope you survive my battlecloak going active in emergency mode.”

Her eyes widened. “You.”

Sand ran out, and all hell broke loose with her as the focus.

One moment Roger’s battle cloak was at standby, the next in attack mode.

Confident that countering his battlecloak’s attack would occupy Lynn, Roger began casting William Stevenson’s Enslavement Spell.

He saw Lynn recognize it, and her eyes widened. Yet, she could not take time and concentration from defending from his battlecloak’s attack. His spell slid right past every defense she had. There was no additional layer with more defenses. He had to admire her control. At no time did she panic.

Less than three seconds after the last particle of sand dropped, Roger stopped his cloak from attacking, less than a tenth of its full attack cycle completed.

“Freeze,” he commanded her

She froze.

Something was wrong. Her expression, the feel of her magic, this was not of someone who just lost a duel. Why?

“Drop your shields.”

With even more defiance in her expression, she did, and Roger read her mind. It took all his self-control not to kill her. Without her shields, it would be so simple.

“Damn you, Lynn!”

Roger, give up and remove this spell. I’ve won. Either now, or when someone scans me, you will be banished from Kara forever. Your life is over, her thoughts pounded into him.

Rage filled him. Her mind was clear and focused on one central idea. The moment the spell was lifted she was going to contact the police and have him arrested. The worst that could happen to her for dueling was expulsion from the university and a ban from government jobs. But for using that spell, she could have him removed from Kara with no possibility of returning.

He would never touch magic again.

He couldn’t just kill her. One scan of him and they would know it wasn’t a dueling accident but murder. Even using William Stevenson’s Enslavement Spell on Captain Hicks to prevent him from calling the police; if he killed her, it would only be a temporary measure. Sooner or later, the absence would trigger at least a computer record scan. The two of them leaving together and only him returning would be noted, flagged, and investigated. That is, if no one scanned Captain Hicks before then.

No, killing her and bespelling the captain wasn’t the answer. They both must return to the University. That decided, he acted before he could no longer resist the temptation to kill her.

“You won’t talk to me unless necessary, but you will do nothing whatsoever to draw attention to the fact you have a slave spell on you. You may move and restore your shields, but leave a small crack I can enter them through. Then summon our ride.”

Lynn brought up her shields and left a tiny crack fulfilling the letter, but not the spirit of the order.

Instead of ordering her to open them more, Roger used everything he had learned about her magic and shields to slip in that crack and widened it himself.

He wasn’t gentle about it, and she screamed and fell to the beach. When the pain cleared, he read fear in her. Not from being hurt, but not understanding how he had exploited such a tiny crack like the one she had left.

Roger cursed himself. He could have beaten her more easily than he had thought. There had been no need to resort to such an illegal spell.

Lynn stood, dusted the sand from her leather pants and vest, then picked up the stone. Doing so turned the table and hourglass back into a case. With a casual flick, she tossed the stone toward the sea. It shot off, and she picked up the case.

Roger hadn’t examined the stone, so he didn’t know what kind it was, but she hadn’t bothered putting a message on it. He slipped back through the crack in her shield, this time, being careful so she didn’t know he was in her mind. The stone needed no instructions on who to find, but sending it blank was a deliberate rudeness on her part. That convinced him he needed to keep an eye on her.

She sat back down in the chair she made with the case in her lap; her fear gone. Roger pulled back out of her shields.

He needed a way out of this mess. He had at most weeks before someone discovered the spell on her. The University checked staff and students regularly for this and other coercion spells. Any suspicious or out-of-the-ordinary behavior resulted in additional checks.

He kept coming back to her statement that his life was over, either now, or when someone at the University found out. In a way, the duel wasn’t over. It won’t be until after the spell is removed. Unless he figured something out, she won then.

It was that fact that kept her mocking him with thoughts and posture.

The temptation to kill her almost got the better of him.

A light rain started.

Without mage goggles, on Kara, no one saw rain clouds approaching, even in technology zones. Even the ones he had made didn’t let you see clearly that far, that well. He didn’t know a student that wasn’t a dragon rider who put in the effort to make theirs good enough.

Lynn hadn’t expected the rain either, as the surprised look on her face showed.

He cast a rain shield.

Lynn didn’t.

Roger peeked behind her shields and saw her waiting for him to order her to.

“You are purposely doing things to show your anger at me and cause problems. I order you to stop that at once.”

Her rain shield came.

Twenty minutes later, the Island Dream appeared out of the rain.

Captain John Hick had other concerns occupying him. For reasons Roger didn’t grasp, Karian rains made sailing much more difficult and putting a rain shield around the whole boat wasn’t an option. The captain never inquired what happened in their duel, making for port the moment they were aboard.

So what do you think of my world of Kara so far?