Star Mage Saga Books 4 - 6 by J.J. Green

Author:J.J. Green [Green, J.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: J.J. Green
Published: 2020-10-23T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

THE TIME HAD FINALLY come. Carina faced the open, empty Deep Sleep capsule. She was alone on an upper tier in the chamber except for one of the Black Dog’s medics, who sat at the entrance, interface in hand, checking the list of who was to enter stasis that day.

Never in her life had she undergone anything resembling Deep Sleep. She hadn’t even had an operation or any other medical procedure—Nai Nai had warned her to avoid splicers at all costs, fearful that they might investigate her genome and discover something odd and unique to mages. From that moment onward, she would be on the slippery slope to captivity and enslavement, or torture, if she refused to ‘perform’.

The fact that one of Mezban’s soldiers had already died didn’t help her feelings of trepidation. The man had been entirely normal and healthy, yet the capsule had signaled he was passing away. Though the medics got him out and treated him in record time, nothing had worked. He’d never woken up; never knew he was dying. Perhaps that was for the best.

She looked around the chamber. The capsules in the lower tiers were already filled with mercs, many of whom had entered stasis soon after the voyage began. Cadwallader had entered his, too, leaving Atoi in charge, and so had Carina’s brothers and sisters.

She remembered the farewells of her siblings with painful clarity.

The previous months of rarely even seeing her brothers and sisters, let alone interacting with them, had been difficult to endure. She’d thought her years of living alone on the street as a child had accustomed her to a solitary life, and that was probably true, but when it came to her siblings, she’d found being apart from them torturous.

She’d missed them all deeply, and every night she’d worried about their welfare, rarely getting more than a few hours’ sleep. Yet after the embarrassing incident with Parthenia, she’d ceased questioning the wisdom of her self-imposed separation.

There was no doubt in her mind that she was bad news for her brothers and sisters.

Yet when she’d encountered them all again outside the Deep Sleep chamber, the difficulties of the past eight months had faded to nothing. Faced with the prospect of never seeing each other again, they had clung to each other as tightly as if the hull had breached and depressurization was trying to rip them apart.

Except for Parthenia. She’d stood away from her siblings as they’d each hugged goodbye, glowering.

Now, they were all nestled in stasis chambers like baby birds in translucent eggs. She hoped to the stars she would see them all again. Perhaps she could still find a better way forward with them, once they woke up.

Five years from now.

Their capsules had been programmed to wake them up five years hence. After that, she and her family would live out several months aboard the ship before entering Deep Sleep again.

At the meeting where the rota had been decided, Cadwallader had suggested dividing the mages into two groups

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