by Chris Fox
“Yup.” Crewes redoubled his pace, pulling a half step ahead of her. “And you’re wondering how we’re going to get off the vessel when that happens.”
“Yeah…”
“Let’s focus on the engines. I’m sure the captain has a plan to get us off.” And Crewes did believe that the captain had just such a plan. He just left out that the plan probably only included getting Thalas off, not the rest of the company. That part fell squarely on Crewes. “I know that ain’t exactly reassuring, but I’ve learned that we need to compartmentalize. One crisis at a time.”
Crewes slowed as they reached the end of the aft corridor, which dumped them into a wide, three-level room. Each level was separated by metal grating, and below them all lay the gigantic spelldrive that powered the vessel.
There wasn’t a single corpse in the room, which puzzled Crewes. Maybe hitting the engines had been smarter than he’d thought.
“Contact!” Bord yelled, though the warning was ruined by his voice having gone about three octaves higher than if he’d been kicked in the nads.
Crewes scanned the room again, and finally spotted what Bord had. Three winged forms prowled the lowest level. He twitched his fingers, and sent a missive directly to the captain. “Sir, we’ve got enforcers. Three of ‘em. This ain’t gonna be pretty.”
6
Enforcers
Crewes waited for Thalas to arrive before deploying, and the entire corridor was lined with tech mages, stretching off into the distance. It was a vulnerable position he didn’t much like, but he wasn’t stupid enough to rush enforcers on their own turf. Not without someone like the captain to lead the fight.
“I will draw their fire.” Thalas extended a hand and a hole appeared in reality. He placed his spellrifle inside, then closed the void pocket. Thalas slowly drew his spellblade, which began to shine with its own inner light. “Once they have committed to attacking me, have the entire company fire. Even enforcers cannot stand against that kind of magical assault.”
Crewes stared at the blade in awe. The golden energy infusing it came directly from Shaya. It was, quite literally, a holy weapon of the Shayan people. His people might be just some backwater colony, but even they respected that kind of sacred power.
Thalas’s spellarmor accelerated down the stairwell, and he snapped the wrist of his free hand down in a sudden chopping motion. A blue-white spellshield sprang up, arcane sigils slowly rotating around a glowing nimbus of power.
One of the winged shapes leapt up from the darkness, propelled on powerful legs and supported by swift beats of its wings. The light of the captain’s blade illuminated monstrous reptilian features, those slitted eyes fixed hatefully on the captain.
The creature was easily three meters tall, but unlike the Wyrms it resembled, it relied on conventional arms and armor. It wore midnight armor over everything but the wings and face, and Crewes knew that only capitalizing on those vulnerabilities would give them a chance.
The enforcer raised a spellcannon, and fired a gob of hellish green goo. The acid bolt ate through the metal grating separating the next floor, and would have caught the captain in the face had Thalas not swept his spellshield up to deflect the blow. The acid splashed across another section of grating, which smoked and hissed as it rapidly dissolved.
Two more acid bolts shot from the darkness. The first went wide, but the second slammed into Thalas’s side. His armor began to bubble, and the silvery metal ran like wax in the sun.
“That’s our cue. Move, people!” Crewes fired his thrusters, and leapt over the section of the grating that the acid had eaten away. He fired his cannon in a hasty hip shot, splattering the darkness below with hunks of lava.
Most of it went wide, but the bright orange glow banished the darkness, revealing the last two enforcers. That allowed the rest of the company to take aim, and that was bad news for the poor Krox. A hail of bolts came from a dozen rifles: fire bolts, life bolts, and even a void bolt.
The hail of magical death streaked into all three enforcers, and the two on the ground level collapsed with agonized shrieks. The last enforcer, the one who’d attacked the captain, raised a wing and shielded himself from the bolts. They peppered his wing, destroying it utterly. But the rest of the beast was fine.
It leapt upwards and sucked in a deep breath.
“Take cover!” Crewes roared. He could only watch as the enforcer drew even with the third level, its hateful eyes settling on the unarmored tech mages.
The enforcer loosed a torrent of white death, and the tendrils of mist flowed deep into the ranks of the tech mages. It moved with purpose, flowing into ears, nostrils, or mouths. Crewes made eye contact with a kid from Yanthara, who eyed him helplessly until the light suddenly faded from those eyes.
The body twitched, and then lay still. Crewes was torn. He could kill the enforcer, or torch the bodies of the slain. If he didn’t take care of those corpses, they’d rise, and start killing the rest of the company. He had no idea what the right decision was, and the captain wasn’t exactly handing out orders.
Crewes chose the men. He aimed his spellcannon at the cluster of bodies—there were at least a dozen, probably more—and unleashed a wave of liquid flame. The superheated flames clung to the bodies, igniting them instantly. They burned with feverish intensity, and moments later were little more than ash.
The heat burned away the tears.
He turned back to the enforcer, ready for his fair share of justice, but the captain had already taken matters into his own hand. Thalas glided toward the beast, moving like a dancer. He dodged around a hasty tail slash, and thrust his sword with incredible precision. The tip caught the enforcer just under the earhole, sliding through scaly hide, bone, and finally brain matter.
An explosion of light washed out from the blade, and Crewes winced as he blinked away spots. His vision cleared in time to see the enforcer’s body impact on the floor, not far from the spelldrive.
Thalas leapt after it, landing gracefully near the drive. He looked up at Crewes with his mirrored faceplate. “Get the men to the airlock we entered through. I will see that this vessel never makes planetfall.”
“Sir, only one mage in ten has the kind of magic that will let them fly.” He took a step closer to the edge of the corroded metal. “There has to be something we can do, sir.”
“You have your orders, Sergeant.” Thalas turned back to the spelldrive and began attaching some sort of gold disk with sigils all over it.
Crewes took a long, slow breath. There weren’t any good choices, but he had to make one. He turned back to the corridor they’d come from. “Let’s move, people. Double time.”
Twenty-five or so ragged survivors sprinted after him as Crewes led them back toward the airlock. They’d nearly reached it when they heard a high-pitched whine behind them. It grew louder and more intense, then the entire ship shook violently.
The turbulence stopped, and suddenly the vessel was in freefall. Mages were slammed into the ceiling, and those without the benefit of spellarmor, which was most of them, cried out in pain as bones broke.
Crewes fired his thrusters, and rolled away from the ceiling. He braced himself against a wall, and surveyed the company. This was the worst kind of triage. He could only carry one person, maybe two. Everyone else was going to die.
Crewes spotted Kezia’s spellarmor, which had been scored across the chest by an acid bolt. She clung to Bord, holding his armored form against her chest. That made up his mind. He fired his thrusters again, zipping over to them. “Come on. We need to get the depths out of here, before this thing impacts!”
He seized Kezia in his right hand, and Bord in his left. Crewes poured more fire magic into the thrusters, and strained to carry them both up the corridor. They rebounded off a wall, and he nearly lost Bord, but Crewes somehow tightened his grip. There was no way he was losing anyone else.
They burst into the room they’d entered, and Crewes poured his dwindling magical reserves into the suit. He ha
uled all three of them out of the hole, then rolled to the right to dodge an antenna as the vessel spun away from them.
It plummeted rapidly past, leaving them hovering in the sky over a densely packed city. Crewes estimated no more than thirty seconds before the carrier hit. Thirty seconds until the rest of the company died. All of them.
A single armored figure burst from the hull, Captain Thalas’s armor gleaming in the sun as he flew from the doomed enemy vessel.
“If there were any justice in the world, that fooker wouldn’t have made it,” Bord snapped.
“Stow that shit, Private,” Crewes snapped back. “That ‘fooker’ is your commanding officer.” He hated that he had to be the guy to defend a dicksock like Thalas, but it was his job to defend the rank, not the person attached to it.
Crewes glanced up, and his mouth fell open. “’Sides, looks like we’ve got bigger problems.”
The Hunter was engaged in a slugfest with the same Wyrm that had followed them into battle, and it didn’t look like things were going well for their side.
7
Extraction
Voria struggled to keep the Krox carrier between her and the very large, very angry Wyrm. Unfortunately, it was both faster and more maneuverable than she was. The Wyrm came up over the carrier, and began sketching arcane sigils.
She recognized fire and void, and quickly prepared a counterspell. Voria poured most of her reserve of spirit, knowing that if she allowed this spell to connect, the Wyrm Hunter might not survive. The counterspell zipped from the Hunter’s spellcannon, flying unerringly toward the gathering energies near the Wyrm’s outstretched claws.
Nothing happened. The counterspell connected, but simply dissolved. The Wyrm calmly finished its casting, adding a final void sigil. Only in that moment did Voria realize what the Wyrm was casting. Very few spells existed that could not be countered, and the most powerful was a bolt of disintegration.
A crackling area of negative space—a total absence of light, heat, and matter—shot toward the Hunter. Voria twisted the ship hard to port, bracing herself against the stabilizing ring as the ship moved.
The disintegrate slammed into the aft side of the ship, and whatever it touched simply ceased to exist. There was no explosion, no secondary damage. Just a ten-meter hole coring her ship. As she watched, that hole punched through the corner of the bridge, very nearly taking the offensive matrix with it. It continued past her, punching through the roof of the vessel and allowing a deafening rush of wind in from the upper atmosphere.
The temperature dropped thirty degrees in two seconds, and Voria’s teeth chattered furiously as she raised a trembling hand. She sketched a water sigil, tracing the blue energy into existence as she built the spell. Voria added a bright white air sigil, then another water. Black spots danced in her vision as she aimed the spell, then flung it at the hole in the ceiling.
A bubble of air burst into existence, quickly followed by a sheen of ice. The spell sealed the hole, taking the deafening wind with it. Voria took in a grateful breath, and then turned back to the scry-screen, which had narrowly survived the disintegrate.
She desperately sought the Wyrm, knowing that it could finish her off and there was little she could do about it. By herself she wasn’t strong enough to cast a disintegrate, which was the only way she knew of to stop a Wyrm of this age.
Then she caught sight of a small cloud of specks glittering in the sun as they burst from the hull of the carrier. Thalas and his company, she hoped. She kept scanning, and finally realized why the Wyrm hadn’t finished her.
It had reversed course and flew desperately toward the carrier. The creature must have realized that the vessel was doomed. To her immense shock, the Wyrm seized the carrier with all four clawed legs, and flapped its wings furiously. The carrier’s fall slowed. Then stopped.
“Blast it.” She needed to deal with that Wyrm, and quickly, before it could safely set down that vessel.
She looked back to the cloud of specks, and guided the Hunter in that direction. Sure enough, those specks rocketed in her direction. Voria brought the Hunter smoothly around and angled the upper cargo bay—the only functional one after the disintegrate—toward the arriving tech mages.
Thalas led the pack, and at least one other figure followed on a plume of flame. She zoomed in the scry-screen and couldn’t help but smile. Somehow, Crewes was carrying two more tech mages. That man continued to impress her.
Voria shifted the scry-screen back to the enemy Wyrm, which was thankfully occupied carrying the enemy vessel. It would take several minutes to safely make planetfall, which made this a race. She took long, slow breaths, and forced herself to wait.
An eternity and a half later, Thalas sprinted onto the bridge, followed by Crewes and the two tech mages he’d saved. She had no idea who either was, as both still wore their helmets.
“Crewes, take offense. Thalas, I need you on defense.” She maneuvered the Hunter closer to their target, affording an excellent view of their opponent. Until now, she hadn’t demonstrated any offensive magic, and it was her hope that the dragon assumed she had none.
Thalas removed his helm and set it carefully on the deck as he slipped into the defensive matrix. Crewes pulled his off as well, but tossed it to the side as he hurried into the offensive matrix.
“Gentlemen, we are going to attempt to cast a level five spell,” she explained calmly. “If we succeed, we save that city. If we fail, well, these people’s deaths are on us.”
“I have no idea what that is,” Crewes offered with a shake of his head. “Just tell me what you need me to do, Major.”
“Thalas, pour every bit of your remaining void energy into the vessel. Crewes, we need all of your fire. Every scrap of it.” Voria tapped void on all three of the rings, then repeated the sequence with fire. “I’ll be adding some of each myself.”
“By the goddess.” Thalas eyed her as if she were mad. “You’re attempting a disintegrate. With this type of battle damage, we could come apart. You have no idea if we’ll survive. We have a responsibility to get this vessel back to our lines.” His eyes blazed, and his face twisted into an ugly caricature of itself. “I went along with your mad plan. But we have failed, Captain. Some of your people still live, and more importantly, this vessel lives. We have a duty. Don’t make me relieve you, please.”
“Captain Thalas.” Voria kept her tone firm, her words crisp. “Pour your magic into this vessel. We are a Confederate warship with the enemy in our sights. Millions of citizens of Ternus—a member state in the Confederacy, I might add—are depending on us right now. Do you want to be the man remembered for flying away without trying?”
He stared at her silently for several tense moments, then finally dropped his gaze. “Fine.” He punched a void sigil, then another. “But our fate is on you.”
Crewes began a similar sequence, and Voria added more of her own magic to the growing spell. The Hunter’s hull began to shake, and a low, subsonic pulse grew just beyond the edge of hearing. She could feel the Hunter’s bones creaking, and knew she was asking a lot of the old girl.
Voria focused on the scry-screen and took careful aim. She zoomed in on the dragon’s back, where the wings met. “Right about there should suffice, I think.” She looked to Sergeant Crewes, who eyed her expectantly. “You may fire when ready, Sergeant.”
“My pleasure.” Crewes gave a dark smile as he touched the final fire sigil. The shaking grew infinitely worse, until the cannon bucked and a bolt identical to the one the dragon had used streaked from their vessel.
The crackling negative energy slammed into the Wyrm’s back. Scales, bone, and sinew simply ceased to exist. Both wings fluttered free, and the Wyrm went from attempting to save the vessel to clinging to it for dear life. It and the carrier entered sudden freefall and would reach terminal velocity before impact.
Voria tapped a spirit sigil, and her finger hovered over a void, waiting.
Thalas blinked at her in surprise. “What are
you doing? The Wyrm is done for.”
Voria continued to add magic to the matrix. “Never underestimate a Wyrm’s ingenuity where their own survival is concerned.”
Sure enough, the Wyrm raised a clawed hand and began sketching sigils. The first was, as she’d hoped, a void. Voria completed her counterspell, and flung it at the dragon. It sped toward the gathering sigils, slamming into them in an explosion of mana fragments.
A moment later, the dragon’s form was obscured as it twisted underneath the carrier, just in time for both to slam into a mountainside. A titanic fountain of dust and debris mushroomed into the air, obscuring her sight of both the Wyrm and the vessel. A heartbeat later, the cloud was joined by an expanding fireball, which left little mystery about the fate of their opponents.
“We did it.” Voria could scarcely believe it. She turned a proud smile at her second, and noted that even Thalas’s usually sour expression had softened into a grim smile.
“Indeed. We’ve done as you’ve asked. Respectfully, it’s past time we returned to the fleet.”
“Of course.” She nodded gratefully at Thalas. They’d done what they came for, and it was time to join the fleet in their final defense of this place. The order would no doubt come soon for them to evacuate the system, and when that came they couldn’t afford to be caught off by themselves.
“Sir?” Crewes asked quietly.
She faced the dark-skinned man, struck by the sudden compassion in those eyes. They shone with unshed tears, perhaps for the loss of his men. “What is it, Sergeant?”
“We just received a distress missive from Admiral Davies.”
Whatever it was must be bad. “Put it up, Sergeant.”
A thick haze of smoke covered the image of the bridge that had suddenly appeared on the scry-screen. Davies clutched at an expanding pool of blood soaking through his olive uniform. His face had gone ashen, but still carried the same determination. “You’ve done something amazing today, Major. Thank you for that.” A terminal behind him exploded, and he tumbled off screen for a moment. His battered form reappeared a moment later.
