The Gem Lords

The Battle of the Portal - Part 2

    Thomas was as good as his word and remained by Lirenna's side for hours, holding her cold hand and staring anxiously into her deathly pale face, but Timothy was also as good as his and when he decided that the wizard had been there long enough he persuaded him to get some sleep. It took all the power of his clerical soothing voice to do it, but finally Thomas nodded reluctantly and climbed into the bed beside hers. Timothy brought him a cup of Lydian tea into which he'd quietly stirred a few medicinal herbs, and the wizard was asleep in minutes.

     The moment he awoke he was sitting by her side again, and wouldn't even have eaten unless one of the other clerics had brought his breakfast to him. He remained there for hour after hour, speaking to the demi shae as if he could restore her to health by the power of his voice, and he was there the next day as well, and the day after. That day was particularly hard on the wizard, because somewhere ahead of them the portal was opening, providing a passage back to their universe and the presence of the Gods, but they were still millions of miles away from it. They would have to wait for its next opening, ninety seven hours later, and Thomas knew that those four days would be agony for him.

     The Captain had ordered that the Jules Verne head into space in a different direction than towards the portal, in order to lead the Garusian ships away from it. He had hoped that they would be able to lose the pursuing ships and then make their way to the portal unseen.

     The Garusian ships seemed able to track them no matter how far ahead of them they drew, though, and the Captain was forced to make a hard decision. They could continue to draw the Garusian ships away from the portal, in which case they would eventually be caught and surrounded, and against the number of ships that the Garusians could send against them, they would eventually be destroyed. The entire crew captured or killed. That was a choice Strong was prepared to make, in order to protect his homeworld, but maybe it wouldn't be necessary. They now knew that the Garusians knew about the portal, and that they occasionally sent a ship through it. If they were going to discover the planet Tharia, they would have found it a long time ago.

     He would still have kept the Garusians from knowing that they'd come from beyond the portal if he could, but he no longer thought the secret was worth sacrificing his entire crew for. He gave the order, therefore, and the Ship of Space turned to head directly for the portal.

     Three days later the Jules Verne arrived at the region of space where they thought the portal would open, but the beacons they’d left behind to mark the spot were nowhere to be found and they spent several fraught hours searching for them, spiraling outwards in a three dimensional search pattern while the Garusian warships drew steadily closer. Almost the whole day went by and the bridge crew began to despair, imagining the portal suddenly opening a million miles away and only having twelve minutes to fight their way through enemy ships to reach it, but then Camilla Ling, a cleric of Nebo, God of justice, her pretty face hidden by the Helm of farsensing, shouted that she’d found it and Strong shouted orders to the Orbmaster to take the ship in that direction. Fifteen minutes later the ship came to a halt in space. A perfectly ordinary region of space with nothing in it to reveal that it was in any way special.

     “We are now, as far as I can tell, in the spot where the portal will open,” Karog told the Captain. “Two hours from now.”

     Strong nodded. “Orbmaster, The moment it opens, take us through,” he commanded. “Don’t wait for the order, just take us through immediately.”

     The shae on duty in the orb room sent back an acknowledgement and then everyone on the bridge turned their attention to the view in the scrying mirror. It showed a fleet of Garusian ships approaching fast, spread out in a broad line, three of them a little way ahead, the rest a little way behind.