by Frank Morin
Unless he could find a way to cheat.
His team members staggered under the onslaught he’d just slipped through, and the enemy Spitters focused on trying to yank their feet out from under them. Two of his Spitters had fallen to that ploy, quickly dragged away from their support, swarmed under by enemy Boulders who were clashing with the Crushers all around, and killed.
Momentarily free of the attack, Ivor did not turn back to aid his team. They had but seconds before the ten enemies targeting them would overwhelm them, but seconds was more than enough.
Ivor tapped basalt. He shot across the distance to the attacking Spitters, surprising them by the change in tactics. Two of them moved to meet him, swelling with granite power, but he sped past so fast they barely had time to catch his meteor hammer in the face.
He’d practiced heavily with the wonderful Grandurian weapon all winter and easily cracked the two Spitters’ skulls as he sped past. They toppled senseless, maybe killed, but definitely out of the fighting. Four more Spitters turned their attention on him, but Ivor was already gone.
As he banked back around to rejoin his team, he seized some of the water saturating the air and hurled tiny shards of ice at the faces of the Spitters attacking his team. Most of them deflected the new attack, but one woman screamed as an ice dagger pierced her eye.
The distraction gave his embattled team the chance to refocus and strike back at the enemy, throwing them onto the defensive in turn. Ivor used the opening to seize the two Spitters he’d knocked out, as well as the injured, screaming woman, with bands of water and hurl them backward thirty yards.
Erich promptly clobbered the screaming woman, and one of his Crusher teams swarmed the others, quickly shackling them and shoving their custom purging tonic down their throats. If the men awoke, they’d vomit and purge any remaining soapstone from their system.
Back with his team, Ivor melded his water senses with theirs. They had already intertwined their wills, forming a latticework of power that was incredibly hard to deflect, and were using it to batter at the seven enemy Spitters, whose unity had dissolved under the unexpected barrage. Ivor wove his will in with his team, and together they hurled water and ice at their enemies from every side.
They might be on the defensive, but the enemies were well trained, and they drew upon their sculpted stones for the power needed to deflect the new onslaught. Ivor muttered a curse. Any other group would have fallen.
The speakstone attached to his collar spoke in a voice he didn’t recognize. “General Ivor, word from Lady Jean. The rods are in place, and three generator towers are at your five o’clock. At your command, they are ready to engage.”
Ivor smiled and gripped one of his teammates’ shoulders. She was a tall, blonde Grandurian who was singing boisterously as she fought. Ivor shouted, “Keep pressing the advantage. I’ll be back. Get ready for the strum distraction.”
She nodded, not taking her eyes from the enemy Spitters. Ivor turned to his right, confident they could hold for a moment. They had to. He sensed more enemy reinforcements coming. They needed an advantage, or the enemy numbers would grow too large, and they’d lose all hope.
The generator towers offered that hope.
The rest of Ivor’s strike force, broken in to five-man squads, were all engaging larger enemy companies. They fought well, but he sensed their growing fear as the enemy slowly, inexorably drove them back into each other.
“Hold on! Strum is on the way,” he shouted, but couldn’t stop to help.
Fifty yards south of where his teams were locked in battle, just beyond the ring of Crusher teams fighting enemy support troops, he spotted the huge Thunder Towers. One group of the battle mechanicals, with a small number of ground troops and mobile speedslings, was being heavily assaulted on all sides by a full company of enemy Boulders, with a few tertiaries embedded.
Ivor couldn’t afford to let those Thunder Towers get destroyed. So he switched to granite and threw himself into the air with a blast of water. The enemy Spitters cheered as he soared away. No doubt they misinterpreted the move, thinking he was abandoning his strike force to certain destruction.
Good. They’d grow overconfident and make stupid choices.
Ivor easily cleared the battling Crushers, and even managed to spray ice across the face of one Sentry giving them trouble. That distraction cost the man his freedom as he was overrun, beaten unconscious, and stripped of his power stone.
Ivor landed right next to one of the Thunder Towers, and wished he’d brought along better hearing protection. Up close, the huge, tracked vehicle loomed over everyone. The entire vehicle rocked as its many launch tubes rained destruction across a fifty yard circle of ground on every side. Inside the blocky, steel-glass housing, the crew worked at a feverish pace to keep all the launch tubes loaded and aimed at enemy forces.
Different-sized tubes spewed hornets, pedra’s spittle, and bombs at a frantic rate, pummeling the enemy and holding back entire companies. The sound was deafening. The air was laden with smoke, the scent of blood, and the oddly citrus smell of a nearby pile of pedra’s spittle. That pile of pink foam was slowly moving as the Boulders trapped within fought to break free. By the time they did, the fighting would be over.
The fighting was a wild melee of bash fighting, elemental fury, and mechanical insanity. Ivor spotted the sergeant in charge, pushed through the ranks of speedsling operators working together to shred a dozen Boulders, and grabbed the man’s shoulder.
The sergeant, a tall fellow with black hair, who spun, fist raised, but he recognized Ivor and his snarl turned into a smile. Leaning close, he shouted, “Good to see you, General! Can you help?”
Ivor nodded, then pointed to the left where he spied one of the tall rods, embedded in the earth about twenty yards away. “I’ll help clear a path. Get the generators in position over there. It’s time to add some spark to the fight.”
The man grinned and moved off, shouting orders so loud he must have a quartzite affinity, or a really loud speakstone. Ivor turned back to the fighting and joined the fray with a vengeance, targeting enemy Petralists with water and ice, hitting hard and fast, giving his forces time to press them back. He squashed a momentary sense of loss he felt when he instinctively reached for marble, but felt no response. Intermingling his elemental affinities was a deeply ingrained habit, and the lack of fire left him feeling slightly off balance.
He couldn’t think of that, and instead embraced water as deeply as he could, immersing himself in its indomitable, steady strength. Within seconds, he helped clear a path forward, and the sergeant ordered the charge. All together, they rushed the surprised enemies, pushing through, disabling or cutting down resistance, until the first Thunder Tower reached the rod. One of the drivers jumped out and clamped a cable to it, while drivers of the other two used their cables to clamp the three Thunder Towers together.
Ivor raised his mini-hub, turned it to the central command line and said calmly, “Initiating Strum in ten seconds. Advise all units to brace.”
“Roger, General. Ten seconds,” Admiral Forfar himself responded.
Ivor hoped they got the word out in time. He gestured to the sergeant and raised both hands, fingers spread. “Ten seconds!”
The man nodded and passed the word.
Ten seconds later, all three Thunder Towers activated their Varvakin generators, carried aboard in shielded housings. Each was designed to unleash every bit of their energy in a single, overwhelming blast. The air crackled and smelled like hot metal, and all of Ivor’s hair stood straight up. Blue-white lightning exploded from the nearby rod and shot out to the three closest rods.
One was positioned farther north, one more to the west, and one due south, each about thirty yards away. That worked extremely well as the shimmering, deadly current ripped across the battlefield from one rod to another, right through all personnel hapless enough to be standing in the way.
Every soldier had been issued a tiny piece of blind coal, embedded in
their collar, with orders to activate them as soon as they received the order, or sensed the strum barrage beginning.
The enemy weren’t so lucky. As the lightning rippled across the battlefield, earth blackened and soldiers fell, some screaming while others simply twitched in wordless agony. At the same time, that strum blast created a brief but powerful magnis field that snatched weapons out of soldiers’ hands, yanked helmets off their heads, or dragged them across the ground by their armor.
That brief, but powerful current also struck several of the Spitters, and from them up into the water of the shield. The entire shield dome temporarily glowed with brilliant light, creating a conduit to every other Spitter participating in the shield.
If only they’d connected a dozen Thunder Tower generators. The three produced a staggering amount of damage, but by the time the current dispersed everywhere, it struck few strongly enough to kill. Still, it shook limbs and temporarily severed connections to affinities. The entire watery dome collapsed, splashing down over the battlefield, sweeping hundreds of soldiers off their feet and creating a muddy mess that made it difficult for both Spitters and Sentries to wield their powers.
Ivor didn’t wait. As soon as the lightning passed him, he deactivated blind coal and hurled himself back toward his teams. With so much water falling, the entire world seemed alive to his soapstone senses. He seized some of the water and hurled it in a blizzard of icy shards down toward the hundred Spitters ringing his embattled strike teams.
Few of the Spitters were disabled, but many of them were distracted. Some managed to deflect his ice away, but not all. Others tapped granite and withstood the barrage with stone-hardened skin, but he struck down at least ten of them, leaving them prone or screaming.
That was a good start, but not nearly enough. Ivor landed next to his original team and shouted, “Charge!”
Erich and the Crushers were also taking advantage of the temporary distraction of their opponents, swarming over enemy Petralists and beating them down with brutal savagery. Ivor wasn’t about to let them have all the fun. He switched to basalt and fracked, leading his team in a rush before the enemy recovered. He whipped out the meteor hammer again and embraced the thrill of battle.
This time, he’d crack twenty skulls.
47
Of Course Bad Guys Cheat
Student Eighteen sped down the main street of Lossit, her fracked legs blurring from Mariora’s affinity. The well-maintained buildings were looking decidedly battered after her summoned creatures had burst free, but Eystri had already calculated that rebuilding could be completed within three months, as long as the fighting did not damage things worse.
“There he is!” Dedenia shouted, and the entire sisterhood focused on their one Varvakin sister. Connor and the others hadn’t met her yet, and luckily Fyodor had not recognized her in their few interactions.
Sure enough, as they shot into the next intersection, General Aonghus erupted from the street to their left, sword already sweeping toward their neck as he closed at phenomenal velocity.
He was very good. They’d chased him into the streets after ensuring their summoned creatures would defeat his horde. Their Mhortair teams were still fighting the enemy Spitters and Sentries, who had managed the remarkable feat of joining forces. Rosslyn was a gifted leader, but the Mhortair would defeat them. Aonghus had rejoined the fight with crushing walls of earth that Ennlin had deflected, and they’d focused on him as the greatest threat.
They’d sparred with Aonghus using all their elemental affinities, crisscrossing the small town in the dangerous running battle. Their ability to mix multiple elements at the same time, plus their experience battling Connor, allowed them to hold their own against Aonghus’ greater slate strength. He was proving one of the few tertiary Petralists with a deep mastery over his primary affinity. In fact, he seemed to enjoy the challenge.
So did she.
Student Eighteen caught his blade on one of her short swords, and while Mariora pulled them into a hard turn, several of the ladies struck with a blade of mixed elements. Aonghus tried to deflect it with a spear of earth, but they punched through, striking him a glancing blow on the torso. It knocked him off course, right at one of the nearby buildings.
Any other Strider would have crashed, unable to skid to a halt or turn fast enough. A really experienced Sentry might have turned the earth beneath him to change course without even having to turn.
Aonghus leaned all the way over, going horizontal as he ran up onto the wall, blurred down the building, and jumped off the other side. He didn’t even slow, and waved a cocky salute as he flashed away down the main street.
“Under other circumstances, I’d love to get to know that man better,” Cacilia remarked as they crossed to the next main street and banked to the right to give chase.
“Stay focused,” Aifric said. “He’s not nearly as interesting as Kilian.”
Cacilia laughed. “Point for Aifric. Once this girl sets her sights on what she wants, nothing gets in her way.”
Dedenia interrupted the banter.” The general, he is turning into road to intercept again.”
“Good.” Student Eighteen was not about to give him the chance to simply strike and flee again. She didn’t want to waste the entire battle tied down with one opponent, even if he was the most dangerous man in the army. Time to ratchet up the challenge a notch or two.
“Ennlin, I want a spike right at his heart,” she said.
“Glad to, but he’ll feel it coming,” she replied.
“Dedenia, see if you can stir up any dust into his eyes.”
Her lips twitched under Dedenia’s smile. “Air is wild today. I think she will help us.”
“Nuzha, grab me some water,” she added as they flashed past the final building before reaching the cross street. It was a seamstress shop, and they caught a brief glimpse of the wares inside. Cacilia breathed, “Oh, I like that dress.”
“I’ll send ice down his throat,” Nuzha promised.
“No. See if you can wrap his fracked joints,” Student Eighteen suggested.
Nuzha laughed.
Then they reached the corner, and Mariora threw them into the turn, banking over hard. Rith called out, “It’s my turn to manage the running game.”
General Aonghus was there, as predicted, and Ennlin’s spike of earth exploded, as expected. He looked confident, his sword extended to try impaling her, although she’d turned the corner faster than he’d expected.
A gust of wind whipped across the street, spraying dirt into the air, but if any struck his eyes, he didn’t react. Student Eighteen swept her short sword toward him, and he easily deflected it, the steel ringing loudly in the empty streets.
He opened his mouth to speak as they both banked hard, bodies straining to make the tight turn within the intersection. Mariora raced them so close past the corners of buildings they nearly scraped the wood. In that second, Nuzha struck. Instead of trying to throw water at his fast-moving form, she instead formed the water right in front of him, letting him do the work for her. Before he could react, he’d already run right into the thin sheet.
The water sprang up, wrapping his legs like lengths of bolo, and the very speed of his fracked legs worked against him. His speed slowed, and he glanced down in surprise.
Nuzha hardened the water to ice.
Aonghus screamed as his fracked joints popped and he toppled, tumbling wildly across the intersection. He smashed right through the wall of a food vendor’s store, scattering vegetables in every direction.
Mariora skidded them to a halt, and Student Eighteen raised a hand in victory. Inside their head, the ladies all cheered. She said, “Well done.”
“Now we go cut out his heart,” Nuzha said eagerly, her hand twitching toward the long, slightly curved dagger on their belt.
“Today, that’s exactly the right sentiment,” Student Eighteen agreed, moving toward the broken wall.
“Even if Aonghus has been gifted a sandstone seconda
ry affinity by the queen, that injury requires several minutes to heal,” Aifric assured them.
Good, but Student Eighteen wouldn’t take chances. Aonghus was a dangerous man, and with his primary affinity out of the picture, he’d no doubt revert to his second. “Eleven, prepare blind coal. Ennlin, shield us and see if he’s tapping slate.”
She tapped chert, wishing for access to serpentinite. She’d love to snatch whatever sounds he was making, and create decoy sounds of their approach for him to target. With chert, she immediately sensed his mood, and paused with a frown.
He was gloating.
“On your guard,” she hissed to the others. “Something is wrong.”
“I’ve got major movement underground,” Ennlin shouted.
Eleven tensed to tap blind coal, and Aifric tapped pumice, but the ground did not rise up to destroy them. After a second, Ennlin cried, “Curds and whey! He’s opening the square and releasing the acid!”
The entire sisterhood emitted a collective gasp, and Student Eighteen understood Aonghus’ devilish purpose instantly. He couldn’t defeat her now, but the best way to gain advantage over an enemy was to strike at something they held dear.
His laughter sounded through the broken wall, followed by, “Come fight me, Mhortair spawn. I’ve heard you assassins will sacrifice all of your people to achieve your objective. How many people do you have left?”
“I’ll kill him,” Hemma snarled, ripping water out of a nearby building and slinging it around the entire building where Aonghus lay injured. The water, hardened like steel, slashed through the walls, and the roof collapsed, smashing the interior flat. Student Eighteen doubted that hurt Aonghus much, but she appreciated the gesture.
