Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) by John Daulton Read Free Book Online

in a sad, resigned sort of way, as if he’d just discovered some essential missing detail. “You almost had me.”
    “What?” Altin gasped. “What now?”
    Doctor Singh handed the tablet back to him, rising from his seat. He said nothing more and simply walked away.
    Altin frowned at his back and then looked down into the image on the tablet screen. At Citadel . Which had just seconds before appeared.

Chapter 5
    “C all them off,” Altin shouted into the green clump of stones, the patch of them glowing dimly, surrounded by the yellow crystals that filled the rest of the narrow chamber that was the heart of Blue Fire. He shouted straight into them, his red-flushed face leaning near, for he’d gone himself, straight there in his rage. Not just thoughts, but physicality for this confrontation. “Call them back right now, or I will see that you are destroyed, just like you should have been.” He was nearly breathless with the rush of his anger as he sent every last ounce of his emotions out in the wake of his words. All the rage, the terror—both for Orli and for what amounted to just about everyone—and, most of all, the sense of gullibility and guilt. “How could you?” he roared at her. “ You were the one who went on and on and on about betrayal. About truth that is not truth. And now look at you. Look what you have done. All of that was emptiness and lies.”
    She sent back the sense of absolute bewilderment. Terror of her own. Terror of him. Her incredulity at how Orli Love had become so suddenly filled with hate. Hate for Blue Fire.
    “Don’t spread that offal on my plate,” he snarled in response. He pushed images of the combat taking place in the space around planet Earth up at her through his memories. He shoved them at her as if they were mud and he was smearing it, jamming it into her loathsome, lying face. “What are you?” he shouted. “What kind of duplicitous monster could do such a thing? You used our love against us, against everyone. That is the very soul of evil!”
    He forced himself to calm. Closed his eyes, regulated his breathing.
    More calmly, he repeated his earlier threat. “I will kill you if you do not call them back. Call off the attack.”
    Not mine , she sent. It came upon a sense of otherness.
    “Just do it. No more vagaries. No excuses. Call them off, and do it now.”
    Not mine , she repeated in his thoughts.
    “What do you mean, ‘not mine?’ How stupid do you think I am?”
    Not mine. Other.
    “There are no others. You are the others. There is only you. You told us so yourself. No others. Just poor sad Blue Fire floating out here all alone with the memories of a dead star to comfort her in between bouts of genocide.”
    Not mine. Other. Truth.
    “You don’t know what truth is.”
    Love is truth. Altin Love truth of love. Orli Love hate hate of Altin Love.
    “I don’t have time for riddles anymore. They are going to kill Orli because you lied. Now call them off, or planet Earth will not be the only planet with no life on it when this is done. You have my Truth on that.”
    He filled then with a sense of her fear. Not fear of him. Not even fear of death. Simply fear. It was as if he could feel her trembling in a way that, for some reason, struck him in the same way Pernie had trembled in his arms when he’d rescued her from the orcs. It was a childlike terror, a helpless, lonely, inconsolable sense of dread in the face of something out of one’s control.
    The rational part of Altin’s mind tried to fight it off. He knew now that she could convince him that any emotion was real. That was her best weapon. Making truth out of lies. She did it in a way that made falsehood feel in a whole-bodied way to be true.
    “I don’t believe you,” he said.
    “Then I must die.”
    That startled him. It was real. Actual sound. The sound came as an approximation of a voice, barely discernible as one, but one all the same. And it was loud. Cavernously so. It was as if thunder