I retrieved a blank book from storage and started writing down my observations from what I felt as quickly as I could. I had theories. I needed to formulate some tests. Carefully! More notes. What was that function I read about? I was going to have to prepare completely new functions. I paused for a moment when the second bus lifted and took MacNeal away.

  This could go so badly. I had to do this cautiously.

  Ashley and Allegro just watched me write. I pulled out my codex to check if I had the functions I needed. Nope. I put it back into storage. This was going to be completely new ground for me. Switching back to the tome, I started a flowchart of what I needed the new functions to do. I was going to have to break this down into six functions. No, seven. I kept writing.

  “Can you slow down?” asked Allegro. “I can’t follow what you are doing.”

  “Yeah Kos, you are looking a little maniacal there.” prompted Ashley.

  “Let me.. No, this is going need.. Give me one minute… nine functions. I need to get this down while it is fresh. Twelve functions. This one needs to break here and over there… Fifteen functions.” I continued charting what I needed to do.

  “Is she alright?” asked Allegro.

  “I’ve never seen her like this.” informed Ashley.

  I almost didn’t even notice the small craft landing. When it got close enough for me to feel it too, I snapped the book closed and focused on it with everything I had in me. There, there, there… and three more… six distinct points where the power was coming from. The power abruptly cut off. I returned to my books. I hadn’t even lost any mana from the Minor Working I was using to write in my tomes. The bleed from the vehicles had completely replenished my lost mana.

  “Kos, you need to put this on.” Ashley handed me an oversized and floppy garment. She pulled me away from my books to usher me onto the bus. The windows had blacked out while I wasn’t looking. Allegro followed us up the steps on the nose of the bus with my books in her arms.

  “Just get everything on in the right place and the closures fastened and then any of the physical buttons on the suit will adjust it to fit.” said Allegro as she put my books down in one of the seats by the door. I did so, putting my tail into the baggy sleeve obviously designed for it, and everything constricted until it was snug.

  They had evidently put additional insulation in the tail sleeve so it didn’t make me look like a rat. Once that was done, I could feel the other small craft lifting. I bolted back down the steps to get as close to it as I could as it raised into the air. Ashley and Allegro chased after me to hold me back from trying to touch the side of the large pod before it got too high for me to reach. I hardly even noted that the marines had stripped down right in the airfield to put their own suits on.

  As the small craft flew away, I turned to look at Ashley, who had turned to put her hands over Allegro's eyes, although she was getting quite the show herself from all the Marines.

  “Everyone on the bus, we are leaving.” declared the Captain.

  The team went from chaotic to mission ready in what seemed like half a second. They didn’t even lose any of the playing cards. The first four stormed the bus like they were taking it from terrorists. The next six managed to somehow herd me, Ashley, and Allegro onto the bus without quite touching us. The final six covered the rear and boarded the bus last. No equipment was left behind.

  I returned to my books with my fresh observations. This new function would do this part, leading into the next three functions, those would split another seven ways for the next part, those would loop and those would chain, and those would cascade. Nope, rework that part. Then… Ashley grabbed my head and pointed it at her face.

  “Kos, you need to take a breath.” When my eyes tracked down to my books she slapped me.

  “Sorry.” she said. And then slapped me again.

  “Do I have your attention now?”

  I touched my cheek where she had hit me twice.

  “You hit like small child.” I warned her. “Shall I demonstrate hit like mean it?”

  “No! I just needed to break your focus. You can go back to that manic mad scientist bullshit when we are not GOING INTO SPACE.” she turned my head to point it out the window, which had gone transparent again.

  Clouds. And now the clouds were below us.

  I am sure I said something. I am positive words came out of my mouth over the next ten minutes as the sky got dark. The bus was probably making a record of it all. But I can’t recount anything between seeing the clouds and being carried off of the bus and into a comfortable room with lots of seats.

  It took several more minutes for me to collect myself, I think. At some point I noticed that someone had brought my books off of the bus so I vanished them all back into storage.

  “Ah, there she is.” snarked Ashley. She adjusted her holster, which she had strapped on around her shoulders without the coat she normally covered it with. Looking around I saw the whole team fully equipped with pistols and carbines. Two of them had machine guns. Most of them were looking at me.

  “What?” I sulked. “Say mean thing, I dare. Break all of you. Small pieces.”

  “It was really kind of adorable, Twelve.” she told me.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “What you call me?”

  “Your moons. Kos and Api. One and Two.” Allegro reminded me.

  “That take away from wonder of night sky. Name have meaning!”

  “Too late, Twelve. You are stuck with it now.” said Sgt Kerns. “We don’t make the rules.”

  Looking around, I saw to my horror that he was right. All the Marines were shrugging or nodding.

  “I go back to what was doing. Maybe forget disrespect.” I removed my tome from storage again and went back to plotting my experiment. After a minute I spiked my book to the ground, making sure it slipped back into storage before it left my hand. I had lost my thought process. Now I was going to have to read all my notes to remember where I was at.

  “I need punch something now.” I looked around. All the Marines very carefully did not look at me. Turning my attention to Ashley, I was surprised when she actually stepped back.

  “You mistrust, Ashley? You never feel pain from me.”

  “That is true, but you have been… off. At least, since you saw the bus.”

  “Bus Magic.”

  “It most certainly is not.” disagreed Allegro.

  “Room magic.” I waved around vaguely.

  “Again, hard no.” countered Allegro vehemently.

  “Not know what magic do yet, but it right… there.” I pointed to where I could feel the power. “And there, and there.”

  “Kos-Api is accurately pointing to the nodes of the Mass simulators.” came the bus’s voice, this time from all around the room.

  “They leak.”

  “I’ll pass that on to the engineers, but I don’t know what they will do about a support ticket that says “The gravity systems aren’t properly shielded and radiate magical energy everywhere.”

  “Planning experiments now.”

  “You do that. All of you can do whatever for the evening, we will have the imaging systems running continuously. If you do anything magical maybe we can capture something interesting.”

  Allegro headed back into the bus.

  “Are you not staying?” asked Ashley.

  “I work for a princess, and my Prima has things that need doing while she is otherwise occupied.” she answered, and the bus door closed behind her.

  “Well, I guess we get to stare out the window this evening. Hey, is that Madagascar?”

  I alternated between looking out the window and continuing my planning. It was a very short time before a metal man came in with two carts full of food.

  “This is actually pretty good!” remarked Ashley. “Who would have thought that space aliens would be good cooks.”

  “We have been in your back yard for a very long time, Special Agent Robins, and we have seen all of your cooking shows. Some very small number of us were quite good at cooking when we spent some time among you.”

  “I never told you all my name!”

  “Ms. Robins, you are being imaged by our best medical scanners. The ID card you are carrying in proximity to your 8th rib on the left side is clearly visible in three dimensions.”

  That got an embarrassed sputter from her.

  The evening proceeded the same, with me picking up the ideas I had dropped and the Marines taking turns being bored.

  That evening I devised three Minor Workings to test that I had formulated the first of my functions properly. The second Working failed, so I checked my work, made an adjustment and tried again. All three Workings performed properly this time, which meant to all observers they did nothing.

  “Your nervous system did some rather interesting things right there, as well as your circulatory system. Was that magic?” asked the voice.

  “Yes-no. Yes magic, but do nothing. Verify work.”

  “Can I see something that does do something?” asked the voice.

  “Can you make magic machines run hard? Also, I need adjust power on Working so not break room.” I asked.

  “Yes, let me know when you are ready.”

  This caught the attention of Ashley and the Marines, who all stopped what they were doing to watch.

  I quickly adjusted the scaling on my lightning spell.

  “Put leftover on floor for target. Also, ask now; room protect from electric?”

  “Yes, it should be fine.”

  “All protect eye and ear. This still very powerful.”

  I pulled my staff out of storage and set myself. The voice did whatever it was going to do and the Aether in the area peaked. Quickly chanting the invocation for mana writing, I started scribing the circle to funnel Aether into my Grimoire for the reduced version of Lightning Strike. The Grimoire quick-cast two dozen more spell circles into existence stacked tightly in sequence with the first and the Working was complete.

  The air instantly ionized between the origin point in the middle of the room and the pear on the floor and with a blinding flash and snap of electrical discharge the pear exploded.

  “I’ll clean that up and the inconvenience was well worth the display. Thank you.”

  “Did you get anything with those scanners of yours?” asked Ashley.

  “No, but that in itself was also educational.”

  In the morning another bus arrived and it took us back down to the Marine base.

  I finished my notes on the ride down. I could still feel the power pouring off of several parts of the bus that I couldn’t see, but there was nothing more I could do about it. I had my plan, I just needed to construct and test fourteen more completely new functions before I could make it work. Also, I had to take the Asvab tomorrow, so I still needed to study. The magical testing could wait.

  In the morning Ashley took me in my incognito outfit of an oversized beanie cap and long skirt to the testing place on base. The math was easy. The mechanical and electrical portions were harder. Machines weren’t used much where I came from and I wasn’t used to seeing illustrations showing their function. I had taken enough practice tests to recognise everything though, and I was sure I did reasonably well.

  The Marine recruiter thought so too because when he saw the scores he tried very hard to get me to go to his office. Ashley had to show him her badge to make him relent.

  “You should talk to Mia before you talk to anyone about a military service contract.” Ashley reminded me. “The recruiters don’t have your best interests in mind.”

  “I expected to talk at her this night on telephone. She know how make sure I get to be corpse-man with Mars-Sock.”

  “Pretending to be bad at English is your favorite joke, isn’t it?”