by Tao Wong
In another corner, a Master Summoner floats in space, beings magical and horrific forming around him and launching themselves at the attacking ships. Dragons and Titans, space-jellyfish, and a creature so horrific even my mind blanks of all but tendrils, suction cups, and mouths. So many mouths. They form in space and cross the distance to their prey in a flash, tearing at and being torn apart in a brutal display of violence.
The Inner Crew has come, and their very presence and their high-Level Skills make a difference. We cut through the fleet, many of the weaker ships falling as the damage apportioned to them exceeds their abilities to survive. Even the Dimensional Silencers see their shields fail, their regeneration rates insufficient under the renewed assault. That being said, the Silencers have multiple levels of armoring and some of the strongest Classers backing them up. All the while, in the screaming, twisting, stomach-lurching mass of combat, our men, our ships fall too. The Master Classers are spending Mana as if there’s no tomorrow—but the fleet is huge and our initial sally is slowing down.
“Guys. They’re in the stations,” Harry’s voice breaks my analysis of the fight. We left the reporter behind, his own Skills insufficient for what we expect to come. If anyone can survive the upcoming purge if we lose, it would be him. But only if he’s on the station. Not that that stopped him from arguing with us. “They’re pushing us back. Fast.”
My mouth dries, and for a moment, memories of slaughter and the smell, the taste of defeat fills my mouth. The second ring stations are falling and I know why. Most of us ground pounder Master Classes are out here. Some of the larger ships are too big for us to take out individually, but there’s nothing stopping a boarding party from getting onboard, bypassing shields and other defenses with Skills, and destroying everything from their engines to their guns. Hackers can take down their system, making ships nothing more than floating hunks of metal. Nannite swarms can eat away at struts on the inside. But to keep these people alive, our best ground pounders are necessary. And that leaves the second ring vulnerable.
“Stay safe,” I tell him.
“You too.”
“We’re here,” Dornalor growls even as we spin, lights flickering on and off as an EMP burst nearly shreds our electronics. “But they found us. Whatever you’re going to do, get it done fast.”
“Feh’ral—” I say, only to realize that the Librarian is already in the mess hall.
He spins slowly, marking us with his eyes. Then reality twists and bucks as the Librarian pits his ability against the pair of Dimensional Silencers that cover this area. My innards squeeze, bones twist, and flesh warps as two opposing forces contest within my body. Pain, all-encompassing pain, wraps its insidious, uncaring arms around me. And then, the world shifts.
And we find ourselves in the battleship’s library.
***
No one’s here. Who would stay in the library, a resting space, in the midst of a battle? That gives us the few seconds we need to reorient ourselves, deal with organs that are out of place and nerves that continue to fire as they insist they’re somewhere else. In some cases, they’re right. It takes seconds for the last of the Dimensional Smoother’s effects to disappear, for our bodies to firmly adjust to this reality. In the meantime, I smell space, taste data slates, and feel the void on my skin.
“Everyone up?” I croak.
Mikito gives me a curt nod while Bolo cracks his neck. It’s only Ali who looks green, his body fading in and out of this reality.
“I might need a bit, boy-o. There’s interference on this ship itself…” Ali says, his voice fading in and out as he speaks. “All Knowledge is Not Lost was never meant to be used on others, especially not like this.”
Too true. But one of the advantages of a Legendary Skill is that the user can adjust the parameters, shift it around to make it work within the sense of the Skill itself even if it did not follow the initial rules. So sending a trio of Master Classers to a library that he had no access to was something the Librarian could do, even if it was a stretch to his Skill.
“Ready?” I say, looking at each of the others.
A quick check shows that the doppelgangers, the Second Skin, and the Utility Bot are still doing their job, making it seem as if we’re fighting out there. It’s one reason we didn’t send the Librarian—his presence is so great that there’s no way they’d not locate him immediately. Even sending us is a bit of a gamble, but we’re hoping it’s a winning one. The next step in the plan is enacted by the twisting of a ring around my finger, a tap on the wrist from Mikito, and a touch of an earring with Bolo. The form might be different, but the effects are the same.
Daghtree’s Legendary Ring of Deception (Tier I)
A musician, poet, and artist, Daghtree’s fame rose not from his sub-standard works of “art” but his array of seduction Skills from his Heartthrob Artist Class. Due to his increasing infamy, Daghtree commissioned this Legendary ring to change his appearance and continue Leveling. In the end, it is rumored that his indiscretions caught up with the infamous artist and he disappeared from Galactic sources in GCD 9,275.
Effect: Creates a powerful disguise that covers the wearer. The ring comes with six pre-loaded disguises and additional disguises may be added through expansion of charges
Duration: 1 day per charge
Charges: 3
Recharge via ambient Mana: 1 charge per Standard Galactic Unit per week
It’ll take quite a powerful True Seeing Skill to cut through our disguises. These are the best that Spaks could come up with on short notice, and boy, did the Inner Crew bitch about giving up the enchantments. Once I confirm that everyone is ready, I scan the corridor outside and wave us forward, putting the map of the ship’s interiors in front of me. Not to the front of the ship. Not even to the engineering rooms. We’re heading to the center and just a little below, the safest point in this entire damn vessel.
Making our way through the ship is a strange experience. Keeping our heads up, a data slate in hand, we keep moving with purpose and blow past any soldier who looks at us. Bolo stays in the lead and we copy his movements, offering nods and salutes as we go along. Not that there’s much of that going on, what with the ship being at battle stations. We follow Bolo’s lead because the man has more military experience than we do, so he at least knows how to fake it.
As we leave behind another hurrying pair of sailors, I glance at Mikito and drop my voice. “Not much panic here.”
The ship shudders, lights flicker, then things stabilize. The station’s main gun must have fired again, taking out a few more ships but not doing enough to remove this ship’s shield.
“Don’t have to panic when you’re winning,” Mikito replies, her voice wry and cynical.
I snort but have to admit she’s correct. Hell, this ship’s barely seen any damage, the occasional shorted out light and blown fuse notwithstanding. And the sailors we see, they’ve all got that confident swagger of winners. As if winning is just expected.
I push aside the thread of worry, the gnawing snake of concern that sits in my stomach, turning it into my go-to fuel—anger. I remind myself that they started this fight. They came looking for us. Not because we’re pirates, assassins, or killers. Not because we broke the rules, but because someone dared to ask a question. To answer it.
“You might want to stop snarling.”
I smooth out my face but keep my head bowed, letting my eyes fix on the silver-steel floor. Eye the occasional breaks and rivets, which show where the ship was put together. As we trot past pale white lights and swaggering personnel, corridors broken up with navigation stripes of blue and yellow and the occasional green, I remind myself that it’s just a matter of time. Time until we show them how wrong they are.
We make it about halfway to our destination before our cover is blown. Our first indication of a problem is the sudden increase in activity in my minimap, as red dots move at greater speed. The second is when those very same dots disappear, leaving me with a much small
er radius of active scanning. I jerk my head up and open my mouth to voice a warning, only to see Bolo bounding ahead, hammer in hand. A second later, he’s smashed a pair of unlucky sailors into the floor, turning the non-Combatants into lurid red paste.
“Cover blown?” Mikito queries, having turned around to eye the corridor we came from. I could tell her that no one else is showing up, but at this point, I’m not entirely sure I trust my map.
“Yup.”
Bolo hefts his hammer, eyeing the corridor straight ahead. “Plan B?”
“Yes.”
The word is barely out of my mouth before Bolo is charging down the corridor, winding up for his next attack. The hammer is thrown, head impacting the bulkhead before us and going through it and the wall beside it before coming to a rest inside the wall opposite. Bolo jumps through the wall and grabs the poor crewmember who’s still staring at the remains of his arm before Bolo crushes him to the floor and bounds off to collect his hammer. I jog past the corpse, barely giving it more than a glance while Mikito takes the rear.
Plan B. Forget stealth, go hard and fast. Destroy anything in the way. Do as much damage as we can until we reach our goal. The plan is simple. But we’ve got a quarter of a kilometer of decking to go through, a ship filled with enemies, and one Heroic Class Admiral at the end of the line.
Just another day in the Galactic System.
***
“Marines!” Bolo’s voice comes from ahead, almost drowned out by the explosions and screams of surprise.
I don’t blame them. Trying to stop the Dragon Lord is kind of like trying to stop a runaway train with a papier-mâché roadblock. Still, I take the turn with care. Unfortunately, going straight has stopped being an option as the Captain of the Battleship, his Chief Engineer, and the Damage Control personnel have all thrown their Skills against us, reinforcing already tough bulkheads to a ridiculous degree. It’s faster for us to go around and tear through doors rather than walls. Add in the fact that occasional support beams stand in our way and we’re jinking a lot more than we’d like.
Around the corner, the quartet of surviving Marines have their attention split. Two are firing at the still charging back of Bolo, who ignores the attacks, while the other two have their weapons leveled and facing me when I come around the corner. They barely even flinch when my Aura brushes against their senses, Battle Spirits giving them a boost to their resolve. Combined fire from the pair strikes my Soul Shield, tearing at its edges as their Fire Support Skills add cumulative damage from working together. A Blade Strike tears one of them apart, their shared damage mitigation Skill diverting a portion of the damage to his teammates. Not enough to stop his demise, and my return backhand mixed with a Blade Strike finishes off another two. I leave Mikito the last as I take off after Bolo.
“Jump.”
I do, soaring over the decking that gives way a moment later, the rush of hot air filling the corridor as the explosives set beneath the decking drop the floor. I land, grateful once again for the helmet filters that make the world a tasteless, sterile world as poison clouds bloom, brushing against my Soul Shield. I don’t stop, borrowing Ali’s sight to target the Abyssal Chains on the group of marines surging out of the hole, trying to bring their weapons to bear. I lock them down, giving Mikito enough time to wall-run past the platoon, letting her catch up without being bogged down. The compressed air explosion from behind is a telltale signal of Mikito leaving behind tangler grenades to slow their pursuit. We keep running, because the point of the vast majority of these attacks is to slow us down while they consolidate their troops. But it isn’t going to work.
“Whelps. You will not stop me!” Another roar from Bolo, the sound of his hammer striking.
The Dragon Lord appears and disappears as we follow the floating direction arrow. I charge on, throwing Blade Strikes when necessary but always, always running.
When we make the final turn and reach the corridor that will see our target, Bolo’s already stuck in. He’s bleeding from a dozen cuts, even his armor insufficient to ward off the combined attacks of the platoon that was holding the door. But the defensive barriers are down, torn from their very mountings by an oversized hammer. In the midst of the marines and sailors, Bolo is spinning, a whirling dervish of metal and muscle.
“Left!” I call, throwing myself to the right even as I channel a Firestorm into my hand.
Three steps and I unleash the flames, letting it burn my targets who hunker below metal and force shields, sharing the burden of the attack. But my spells are not your everyday spells, and my ability to Penetrate their defenses sends them reeling. Once their shields fail, I’m amongst them, sword switching hands with each strike, trailing blades cutting and stabbing with equal disregard for lives.
Mikito follows along more slowly, allowing the pair of us to deal with the Galactics. The Samurai has her hands full, conjuring defensive berms and forming metallic walls to block off our route as more marines pour in to join the fight.
“Bolo. Door!” I snarl, bisecting a Truinnar marine then booting his bottom half into his friend, sending the woman and the still twitching, spurting corpse skidding across the floor to knock into another.
Blood splashes across my shielding, dripping off and leaving me untouched, free from the warmth. A red thread forms in my hand, shooting across the distance to strike a sailor that’s creeping up on Mikito, and I yank him into my spinning blades. More gore, more body parts showering us all with his vital fluids. Violence, close-in violence, is a gory business—especially when you have superhuman strength.
The Dragon Lord plants his feet and twists, his hammer growing again as he catches a pair of marines and their guns before he completes his spin, releasing the weapon against the blast doors. Metal bends and warps, but the doors hold. Bolo jerks his hand back and the hammer returns, leaving a deep impression in the buckled entrance as the Dragon Lord readies another strike. Even as the hammer flies back, the doors are reforming, buffing out their own damage.
“No time. My turn,” I say, jumping backward and yanking the marine I’m entangled with into my knee. The red dots in my minimap are no longer a smattering but a flood of red as their people rush us. Even our opponents’ Skills can’t hide the incoming numbers.
I drop the senseless, shattered body and raise my hand, sword aloft. Swords appear all around as I conjure them from thin air, more than ever before. I swing my hand down and Army of One blasts the door and anything in its way to bits. Through the smoking rubble of the door, I see our objective. The flag officer’s command and control room of the flagship battleship The Zulfiqar’s Mercy.
Except as the air clears, the Admiral is not there. Silence descends as we take in his absence, take in our failure. The battle pauses as the marines pull back and ready themselves, and we stand, staring at the quartet of Master Classers who regard us with gloating smiles.
“Did you think your little ruse would work? That we would not know?”
I’m not sure who speaks, the voice metallic and tinny, but it’s derisive, gleeful. Contemptuous.
Chapter 24
Four Master Classers where there should have been one Heroic Admiral, standing in the ruins of the command and control room of the Admiral’s ship. The room itself looks like a smaller version of our own war rooms, except there are a lot more chairs and stations for people to take over running the ship if needed. For all that, it’s empty but for the Master Classers.
Our goal was simple. Kill the Admiral, and suddenly the fleet loses its ability to share damage. It becomes a slug fight, and between Prime Station’s main cannon, the battleships, and the Master Classers, we should have been able to take out at least two Dimensional Smoothers. With two down, we could shift the station and escape the encirclement of the remaining smoothers. If we were lucky, we could take out three and make our lives a lot easier.
That was the plan. Instead, we find ourselves facing four Master Classers, four individuals who have likely been picked to deal with us es
pecially.
“How?” Bolo croaks, staring at the group as he readies his hammer.
“How do you think? Scum like you will always betray one another.” That same voice, laughter in it now.
I ignore the byplay, letting my eyes run over the group, hoping to gather as much information as possible. A lot of that information is from data we’ve pre-gathered, Ali populating information from what we know, information that he’s assigning to the Master Classers, rather than real-time data. It’d be too easy if they didn’t have something to block a read.
First is the Master Class speedster. He’s known, an easy fix. I just have to hit him and he’ll go down. Simple. Right… and I’ve got a few bridges over Vancouver to sell you. The ones that got dropped during the apocalypse.
Devereux Alb, Three Time Winner of the Sisa Cup, Too Fast for Tickets, Butcher of Goblins, Trolls,… (Level 27 Three Winged Messenger) (M)
HP: 1480/1480
MP: 1430/1430
Conditions: Blitzed, Occam’s Route, Slipstream, Future Projections, Lightning Reflexes
Behind, the one that I’m assuming is talking is a birdman. Tin box around its neck gives that same croaky, gloating noise. Flames lick and dance across its frame, its eyes roving over all of us before it fixes on Mikito.
Phortala Lzz, Flame Master, Warrior of the Skies, Droughtbringer, Slayer of the Iyu Sea, … (Level 14 Avatar of Snas the Flame Bringer) (M)
HP: 3110/3110
MP: 2430/2430
Conditions: Flame Warden, Fire Aspected, Haste, Mana Drip, Heat Regeneration
In the corner, in what can only vaguely be called a body, is a floating gas cloud. Except it’s no gas, but a swarm of nannites, so dense it’s given form. In the center, barely able to be seen, is the congealed form of a pixie, her body already subsumed within the swarm, given form only by thought and will. Even as we bicker, I can see tendrils of her swarm reaching for Bolo.
