War Mage Chronicles- Part One

by Charles R Case

  Sara glanced at the crew behind Bok, and was surprised to see that they were just fine with his thinking this way of their leadership. What he is saying is tantamount to treason. She looked over her shoulder at Grimms, who had an eyebrow raised, obviously as shocked by the Teifen’s words as she was.

  She turned back to the grand admiral. "Why are you telling me this? Wouldn't we already know this tale?"

  Bok flashed his teeth in a tight smile. "That's the thing, Captain Sonders. I don't think you would know all of this. I think you and your people are not the same humans we have been told about for all these millennia. Those humans would have ravaged us the first chance they had. Now, you have the advantage, but here we are, still talking. We don't have you on sensors. You could destroy my ship before we even knew what was happening, if that video is true; which I believe it is."

  Sara smirked, she couldn't help it. "A softer, kinder humanity?"

  Bok smirked himself. "Kinder, perhaps. Not softer. In all the histories, there was never an account of the kind of destructive power you showed us in that video. If anything, you are more powerful than your predecessors.

  "I want to make an arrangement with you, War Mage."

  Sara smiled. "I am willing to speak with my people on your behalf."

  He shook his head. "No. I do not know your people, but I do know you. I will make my arrangement with you.

  "I am the Grand Admiral of this sector. With the governor now dead, I am also the governing body. For as long as I am in control of this sector, I promise not to attack you or your allies, the Elif, unless attacked first. There is more than enough that needs my attention with the pressing attacks of the Galvox; from the reports I am receiving throughout the empire, the attacks are happening everywhere. If what you say about the Vitas is true, and they have joined forces with the Galvox, then that would explain the Galvox’s sudden domination in the rest of the empire. As far as I am concerned, the war with the Elif is over."

  Sara gave a half smile. This next part was going to determine if it was a good deal or not. "And what do you want from us in this agreement?"

  "A favor," he said simply. "It will not entail you betraying your people or attacking your allies. All I ask is that you be willing to fight to save innocent lives if at all possible."

  Holy shit, that's just vague enough to be an actual deal with the devil, Sara thought, looking at the admiral’s red skin and tiny horns. She glanced over her shoulder at Grimms. He was tight-lipped, and gave her a shrug; this was her call.

  If I agree, the war is over. But it sounds like the war is over anyway, with the Galvox attacking their flank. However, I can guarantee there won't be any more attacks if I take the deal.

  "Will you return all the slaves you've taken from the Elif?" she asked, suddenly remembering the captives boarding the Raven during the video.

  He gave a frown of disgust. "I do not condone the taking of slaves; that was the governor’s hobby... The people under my command know such actions would lead to their death. Slavery is a symptom of the monsters the governors have become. I will do as you ask. In addition, there are several planets being contested on the Teifen-Elif boarder; we will abandon those as a sign of goodwill."

  So now it's the end of the war and the liberation of several planets... this keeps getting better.

  "Okay, Grand Admiral. You have a deal."

  Bok gave his first warm smile. "Good. Let your people know of this agreement. We will hold our end as long as they do the same."

  "I think they will be more than happy to hear that, Grand Admiral Bok," Sara said with a nod of her head.

  "I hope they are. Communications will be sent to the Elif outlining this treaty. I will speak with you soon, War Mage Sonders," he said, then tilted his head in consideration. "I hope I am right about humanity abandoning their monstrous persona, for all our sakes."

  The call was cut, returning the image on the screen to the view of the Teifen armada. Sara noted that there were still ships warping in at a steady rate. The full armada was numbered in the several thousand by this point.

  She didn't say a word. Instead, she brought up her viewing bubble and selected the Effrit system. "Cora, let's have maximum warp. We need to let the Elif know what just happened."

  "Aye, ma'am. Warp in three, two, one."

  The image of thousands of Teifen ships shrank down to a pinprick, and slowly began to expand.

  "I guess we won the war?" Connors said to the silent bridge.

  "For now. Unfortunately, we just learned who the real enemy was in this ancient war," Sara said, frowning in worry.

  "The Vitas?" Mezner guessed.

  The captain shook her head. "Humanity."

  Chapter 34

  Sara flopped onto her back on her bed and let out a long sigh. Alister hopped up beside her and sat down next to her head. He looked at her with a raised eyebrow, but she didn't move. She was too tired. After they had gone to warp, she had helped Boon, Baxter, and his men toss the broken and disabled bots out through the hole in the hull. The metal bodies flashed and sparked when they hit the warp bubble before being sucked out into the Aether. They had kept one bot, and locked it down with strapping material in case it came back to life.

  After that, they’d begun to work on repairing the holes in the ship. They brought large printed pieces of hull and spot welded them in place, letting the nanobots do the fine work. In the span of a few hours, they had the Raven back into some semblance of fighting shape, but there was still a long way to go.

  Alister reached out a paw and tapped Sara on the forehead, making her eyes snap open. "Huh? What is it, Alister?"

  "Merow," he said, cocking his head to the side.

  She twisted to the side so she was looking at him, and raised an eyebrow. "What does that mean?"

  The little black cat rolled his eyes, then lifted a paw and opened his mouth. He mimed stuffing something into his gaping maw.

  "Oh, right, sorry. I wasn't thinking of food," she said, as her stomach rumbled and growled, calling her a liar. She smirked. "I'll have something brought up. I'm far too tired to stumble down to the cafeteria."

  Alister shrugged as if to say, ‘Whatever, as long as there's food’, and yawned.

  This made Sara yawn, which made Alister yawn again.

  "Sop hooing at," she said through her second yawn. She then smacked her lips and blinked away the sleep before getting out of bed and sending a message to the cooks.

  "It will be up in just a few minutes, ma'am," the cheerful private on the other end of the comm told her.

  "Thank you," Sara replied before closing the channel and undoing the neck closure of her battlesuit. She pulled the garment open and began shimmying out of it. When she finally kicked the suit off her bare feet and shuffled to the closet, she noticed Alister trying to remove his own suit.

  "Here, let me get that for you," she said, coming and sitting naked on the bed.

  He lifted his chin like a child having his shirt buttoned, and she undid the clasp there, letting the material relax enough that she could pull it off him. He popped out of the black material and shook himself from head to toe, nearly falling over in his attempt to get his fur to lay the right way. Small clumps stood on end from when they had pulled the suit on in a rush during their initial flight from the Vitas.

  "Sorry about that. I'll try and be more careful with your fur in the future," she said, doing her best to help him lay it down flat again.

  He shrugged again. "Merp."

  "Yeah, I know it was a tense time, but I still need to look out for you," she apologized again.

  He reached out a paw and put it on her bare leg. "Merow," he said, confirming it was no big deal.

  "Thanks, buddy."

  There was a knock at her door, "Come in," she called out.

  The door slid open right about the time she remembered she was still naked.

  "Oh, shit," she heard a female voice say.

  Why do I keep doing this? Clothes, Sara. Peo
ple wear clothes.

  She turned to see Boon standing with two trays of food balanced in her hands. Silva was on her shoulder, her wide-eyed expression a mirror of Boon's. Sara then made eye contact with the private who happened to be passing by her open door. The private, for his part, turned red and looked away immediately.

  Great, add one more to the 'I've Seen the Captain Naked' club.

  "Shut the door!" she barked to the wide-eyed Boon.

  Poor Boon didn't know what to do, and started for the table to put the trays down, but turned to the door after a step, her hands still full.

  Eventually, Boon set one of the trays on the ground and slapped the button to close the door. By that time, three more people had passed by, and every one of them had turned bright red before pretending they hadn't seen anything.

  "Uh, sorry? Why did you tell me to come in if you were naked?" Boon said rather loudly as she faced the door and looked up at the ceiling.

  Sara sighed then began to laugh. "Sorry, Alicia. I'm so tired I'm not thinking straight. Give me a second," she said, pushing herself off the bed and opening her closet. She pulled on a pair of yoga pants and a large sweatshirt. "Okay, you can look. I'm decent."

  "You might be clothed, but I doubt you're decent," Boon quipped, stooping to retrieve the second tray.

  "Har har. How did you open the door with your hands full in the first place?" Sara asked, shuffling to the table.

  "I used a spell to push the button with a shield," she replied, setting down one of the full trays on Sara's side of the table.

  "Why didn't you do that to close it?"

  "Because you were buck ass naked, and I panicked," she said haughtily.

  Sara laughed and pulled a chair out for Alister, who ignored this and jumped directly on the table. He was face-deep in a bowl of beef stew before she could say anything.

  Alicia took the seat opposite Sara, and Silva snaked down her arm to the tabletop and started in on her own bowl of stew.

  "Well, that was a hell of a day," Boon said, as if they were an old married couple talking about work.

  Sara smiled. "Yeah. Didn't think first contact was going to be a thing when I woke up this morning."

  "Not to mention aggressive first contact," Boon said, taking a bite of her roll.

  Sara just nodded and took a bite herself. As soon as the first bite was down, she realized how hungry she was and shoveled a few more bites in before saying anything more.

  "How's Gonders?” she asked after a time. “I know she was down in the fighting, but I didn't see her."

  Boon shrugged. "She's okay. They kept her in the medical bay after Baxter healed her. I think they just wanted her to get some rest. Regrowing an arm takes a lot out of you, even if Aether is used to do it."

  Sara stopped eating, the spoon hovering halfway between the bowl and her mouth. For the first time, she saw the worry etched deep in Boon's face.

  I'm an asshole. I didn't even know Gonders had been hit. My friend is scared, and I hadn't even taken the time to look over the wounded report. When am I going to grow the fuck up, and do my job right?

  "Are you okay?" Boon asked, breaking Sara out of her self-loathing.

  "Oh, yeah. Sorry. I just realized I hadn't known Gonders was that bad off. I feel like shit for not saying something earlier," Sara said, putting the spoon back in the bowl untouched. She hung her head and took a shallow breath.

  "What's wrong?" Boon asked, concern thick in her voice.

  Her concern made Sara feel even worse, and Alister stopped eating when he felt her emotions kick into overdrive. A tear rolled down her nose and hung there a beat before dropping into her lap. She sniffed in surprise, wiping at her wet eyes with the back of her hand.

  "Captain, what's wrong? Are you hurt?" Boon tried again.

  "I don't know what I'm doing, Alicia. I thought this would be easier than it is, but it just keeps piling up. First I find an old spell that shouldn't have worked, then we get shipped off to a colony that's under attack, and I nearly kill my own people when I can’t control my powers. We think the Teifen are the enemy, but now it looks like they're not. The Elif are lying to us, and our own government has me on a shit-list for confronting that little asshole of a prince—who, it turns out, did betray us, but they don't care about that. Oh, no, the only thing that matters is that I scared the little shit into talking. We have to keep the pixies secret, even compelled by magic to do so, so now we can't explain anything important to our own people about the Vitas and why they're here, even though we know quite a bit. And now I've gone and made a deal with the devil. 'A favor', he says. What the fuck does that mean? Who does he think he is, Don Corleone?

  "And to top it all off, my friend's girlfriend lost her arm in a battle on my ship, and I didn't even take the time to look at the damn casualty list to see who was on it. I'm a terrible captain. I put us in danger more than I need to just because I have some justice complex I don't even understand."

  She was crying hard enough that her nose began to run. Snatching a napkin off the tray, she loudly blew her nose.

  "And now I'm sitting here crying like an idiot," she said, wiping her nose again with a sniff.

  A small hand snaked across the table and took Sara's free hand. She looked up and saw Boon smiling at her like she was made of fireworks.

  "Sara, you're the best captain I've ever known. All those things you just listed off? Those are the reasons I want to follow you. You do what's right, not what your superiors tell you to do."

  Sara snorted. "Great, now I'm also a bad example of the chain of command."

  Boon laughed. "No, you're a great example of rising to the challenge. You just won back several planets that the Elif have been fighting over for years. You guaranteed their entire race’s safety from the Teifen with a ten-minute conversation. You are a badass. A genuine, take-no-names, fuck-your-laws, I'm-going-to-do-what's-right badass.

  "But what makes you a true hero to me? You took me, your cabin girl, and made me one of the most powerful mages in the galaxy. You introduced me to my friend Silva. And you helped me find something great with an amazing woman.

  "I know you don't read all your reports... You're too busy saving our asses."

  Sara gave a laugh, shooting some snot out of her nose. She quickly wiped her face with the napkin and laughed again, this time along with Boon.

  "Thanks. I think I needed that," she said, her eyes red, but head clear.

  Boon shook her head. "I didn't do anything. Just said what we all know. The pressure on you is incredible. We keep finding ourselves in the middle of everything, and you keep bringing us out on top. I will do whatever I can to help. You can count on it."

  The door slid open, and Baxter came rushing in. He was naked except for a small hand towel he had pressed to his junk, and his body was half-covered in soap bubbles.

  "Are you okay? I felt a spike in your emotions. Did something happen?" he asked, brandishing a back scrubber like a bristly sword.

  Sara and Boon, wide-eyed at his sudden entrance, burst into laughter.

  Baxter's concern immediately turned to annoyance as he lowered the scrub brush. "Ha ha, sorry I was so concerned for your safety," he sulked. This made the two women laugh even harder. He rolled his eyes, then stomped to Sara's bathroom. "I'm going to finish my shower," he grumbled before hitting the button to close the door behind him, cutting of the women’s view of his naked butt.

  It took the two several minutes to laugh off the tension of the previous conversation, but eventually they were both wiping their eyes, calming down.

  Boon looked at the closed door of the bathroom and said, "He really does love you."

  "Why do you say that?" Sara asked.

  "Because the shower room is two decks below us."

  Chapter 35

  The view screen flashed with Aetheric light as the Raven dropped out of warp. Scans of the Elif’s home system flooded in and showed a much different picture than Sara had seen when they left to follow the T
eifen fleet the day before.

  She could see that the fighting had stopped, even though Teifen ships were still warping out. The Elif had created a sort of corridor for the transport ships to travel down so they could be monitored for any sign of aggression.

  "Well, this looks promising," Sara said, and Grimms nodded along with her assessment.

  He turned to Mezner. "Have the communications mage on duty send out the packets. And see if you can't find out why the Catagain never bothered to get back to us when we sent out the distress signal."

  "Aye, sir. The packets are being sent now," Mezner said, holding a finger to her comm. "Ma'am, we're being hailed by the Elif flagship. Admiral Zett is calling personally. Oh! I'm also being hailed by the Catagain."

  Sara sighed. "Put the admiral through, and tell the Catagain they are going to have to wait their turn." She brushed a stray hair back from her forehead and nodded to Mezner.

  The view screen switched to the view of Admiral Zett, his crisp, white uniform nearly glowing in the lights of the flagship’s bridge. His face was tight, as if he were barely holding back rage.

  "Admiral Zett. It is a pleasure to see you again. I see the battle is over?" Sara said pleasantly.

  She swore Zett nearly rolled his eyes. "As if you didn't know that would be the case. It seems while we were here taking back my homeworld, you went off and made a deal with the Teifen. A few hours ago, I received a ceasefire from the grand admiral himself," he said with a slightly clenched jaw.

  "That sounds like a good thing, Admiral. Why am I getting the feeling that you are upset with me?" Sara asked, plastering a smile on her face.

  "You do not have the authority to negotiate on behalf of the Elif empire. You go too far, Mage. There is a way things are done, and they do not include you, unless you are ordered to do your part," he growled.