by Chris Fox
“You’re in pain.” She leaned closer, and I saw…compassion? It was genuinely rare enough that I was surprised to see it. She raised one of those rough hands and placed it against my knee. “I can feel it, pulsing. May I?”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure I could manage speaking.
Golden light flared around her palm as she pressed it against the sheet over my knee. The magic flowed through her hand, through the armor, and into me.
I’d seen life magic used on holo. Everyone had. But very few of us had ever experienced its use. Life magic was rare, rare stuff, and only a few thousand mages across Kemet possessed it. There was a reason these people had gone to such lengths to keep this woman alive and working. By contrast there were tens of thousands of void mages, the next most rare.
For an instant I saw divinity. The universe was laid bare, while conscious thought was stripped away. There was no experiencer, only the experience. I became everything, and everything became me. One seamless whole.
Then the light passed, and I found myself blinking. The pain had receded to manageable levels, and none of it came from my leg. As far as my body was concerned, that knee was right as rain.
Vee’s eyes fluttered weakly, then she shook her head as if to clear it. “It takes a lot out of me. I can try again later, if you like. Your shoulder must be troubling you.”
“I’d appreciate that.” I gently pushed back the blanket, and swung my legs over the bed to the floor. I ached something awful, but I was human enough to get back to work. “I’m grateful for what you just did. I’ll let Briff take you back to your brother, but I might have some questions later. I’m going to get together with my crew to discuss the situation, and then we’ll probably bring you in so we can all have a say.”
If I had my way, both Vee and her brother would join our ragtag group. I had a feeling we were all going to need each other in the days ahead.
19
I waited until Briff had disappeared down the ramp into the brig before I headed to the mess and paged everyone through the intercom. That meant that both Vee and her as yet unnamed brother would hear, which is exactly what I wanted.
“All crew, report to the mess, please. We’re taking off now, and should be in orbit soon.” I released the button, then pressed it again. “We need to get our bearings, people. If there are people you care about, start figuring out where they are.”
There was a lot to sort out, and it still wasn’t clear what order that should be done in. Vee had added a new wrinkle. If the lurkers were being controlled by someone, and had been for years, then was that somehow connected to the comet? My mom, and through her the prime minister, needed to know that.
I sat down and massaged my shoulder with my free hand. It ached something awful, and I did not deal at all well with pain. Having your world come apart did tend to put minor aches in perspective, though.
“Hey, kid.” Rava offered a nonchalant nod as she entered the mess and dropped down at the table opposite me. “You look like the depths just spit you back out, and that’s an improvement, sadly. I’ve been waiting to hear the story. How did you take out that cybernut? He had more chrome than my father and me put together. Not sure I would have come out on top.”
I shuddered as my mind drifted back. The aroma of cooked flesh overpowered the present, and I suppressed a gag. I couldn’t unsee the exact moment his cybernetic eyes had powered down as the brain that gave them purpose ceased to exist.
“It could have gone either way,” I admitted. I looked up to meet her gaze, and found her smiling at me. She seemed like she was waiting for me to continue, so I did. “My armor can use the limbs as thrusters. He thought I was disarmed, because I’d lost my pistol. He was going to finish me slowly, I think. I caught him off guard and…ended it.”
It didn’t sound terribly heroic, but she gave an approving nod. She kicked both booted feet up on top of the table, and leaned back until the chair creaked. “Not bad. Better than I expected, to be honest. My dad does not have a very high opinion of you.”
“For good reason,” Arcan snarled from the doorway. The dour old man stomped into the room, shoved Rava’s feet off the table, then dropped into the discolored plastic seat next to her. “You got lucky, kid, and we all know it.” His cyber-eyes whirred as he focused on me, trying to get me to break first.
I knew a power struggle was coming. It would start with logic, and I planned to keep it there rather than escalating.
“Are you sitting inside the ship I promised?” I asked, quietly, not because I thought it sounded badass, but rather because I was exhausted and couldn’t manage much else.
“Yes, yes I am.” Arcan delivered a cruel smile, and slowly drew the automatic pistol belted to his thigh, the conventional slug-throwing kind. “Rava, guard the door. The kid and I are going to make a new deal. Play it smart, kid. You can’t take me.”
Briff had chosen that exact instant to return. The mess had a higher ceiling than the quarters I’d been in, which meant he could stand at his full height, and consequently spent a lot of time here. Never mind that it was where we kept the food.
Rava had drawn her pistol, but was still staring at her father in confusion. That gave me a moment. Just a single moment in which to act. I drew it out, which I hoped would give Briff time to get up to speed.
“You know what, Arcan?” I offered nonchalantly, without rising from the table. I tried to play off the gun in my face, and the exhaustion helped me do that. A small part of me was okay with being shot, because it meant I could go back to sleep. Even if it was the more permanent kind. “You miscalculated on two fronts.”
“Oh, really?” Arcan rolled his cyber-eyes. “Why don’t you educate me then, kid? Draw from that vast pool of experience you don’t have.”
“I can’t help but notice,” I began, making sure I caught Briff’s attention. His slitted eyes fixed on me. “…that you don’t have a lot of respect for my team’s heavy. That’s understandable. You’ve never seen him in action. See, the thing is, if you knew Briff like I do, you’d know that the gun is aimed in the wrong direction.”
Arcan snorted a laugh. “Yeah, fatty over there is going to do what, exactly? Rava’s got him covered.”
That wasn’t precisely true. The cybered merc could get her pistol up, but indecision had her in a vice. I could tell she wanted to back her father, but there was a high likelihood she’d hesitate during the critical moment. Especially if I nudged her a little.
“That’s the second thing.” I tried to imitate Arcan’s derisive laugh, but failed. I just sounded like a bad villain in a cheap cartoon. “See, I don’t think Rava knows who her real father is. I don’t think she realizes I’m her brother. If you’re counting on familial ties, well, I’ve got more in common with her than you do.”
It was a huge bomb to drop, one that I wasn’t certain was even true. If I was wrong, it was a depths of a gamble, but it was all I could think of in the moment.
It worked.
Rava gaped at me, her pistol held loosely near her waist. “Is—are you—there’s no way.”
“Ask your ‘dad’, not me.” I nodded at Arcan, and Rava turned that questioning gaze in his direction.
Now.
“Briff,” I snapped, with full arena urgency. “Overrun. Now.”
Briff is many things. He’s slow to deliberate. He’s soft-spoken, and not nearly as confident as a dragon should be. But he’s got amazing muscle memory.
A dragon’s wings are covered by a layer of super-dense scales that make steel look like tin, and if held close to the body act as a second layer of protection. Briff had spent over ten thousand hours playing a game where this was one of his favorite maneuvers.
The hatchling launched himself at Arcan, and even used his tail to push off the deck for additional momentum. Arcan managed to bring his pistol up, and the roar was deafening. The round ricocheted off Briff’s scaly wing, leaving it completely unmarred.
Then Briff’s much larger, and much, much
heavier body crashed into Arcan. The hatchling carried the older man into the wall with bone-crushing force, and pinned him against the steel under his scaly bulk. “You got any more jokes you want to make about my weight, old man? Imma get comfortable, I think.”
Briff moved into a better position to crush Arcan into the wall, and Arcan gave an agonized squeak.
Rava started to laugh. It was a cleaner version of Arcan’s laugh, with none of the malice. She gasped in lungfuls of air as she pointed down at Arcan, tears streaming from her eyes as his predicament became clear.
“Y-you spend so much time,” she wheezed, “talking about how much better you are than anyone. You mocked the kid, maybe my brother, but he came through. You mocked Dag, maybe my real father, which explains a depths of a lot, and he came through. You mocked the hatchling, and hey, look—Briff came through, too.”
She wiped a tear away as the laughter finally subsided.
“What do you want me to do with him, Jer?” Briff hauled Arcan up by the scruff of his neck as the merc’s feet twitched futilely beneath him
I knelt and retrieved Arcan’s gun, which had been lost in the scuffle. I offered it butt first to Rava. “Take him down to the brig, and put him as far from the others as you can.”
Rava accepted the pistol, and slipped it into her belt. She folded her arms and gave her father a disappointed look. “You earned this. I’ll try to get them to go easy on you, but it’s an uphill battle. You know that.”
“We aren’t going to kill him,” I countered immediately. “He gambled and lost, that’s all. We’ll hold onto him until we can get things sorted.”
“Jer, you’re going to want to see this!” My dad came zooming into the room on his hoverchair. He paused in the doorway for a moment when he took in the situation with Briff holding Arcan midair, and a million questions burned in his eyes. Apparently whatever this was trumped it in importance, because he ignored the situation in favor of telling me what he’d found. “You remember War Leader Bortel? Apparently he’s gotten himself a full Inuran battle carrier with an empty hold, and is offering to take people off world. The bastard’s turning the whole thing into a game. Survival of the fittest. Come on, you need to see this before we make any decisions.”
“Then we should all see it.” I nodded at the scry-screen on the wall. “Get the broadcast up, but wait for Briff to get back after he throws your buddy Arcan into a cell. Let’s see what Bortel is about, and how it impacts us.”
20
It didn’t take Briff long to return from the Remora’s surprisingly full brig. I waited for him to be seated in the dragon-sized chair installed in the corner, then nodded at my father to play the broadcast. I’d have preferred to view it on my own, but there wasn’t time for that. There was never enough time.
Briff sat next to Rava, who elbowed him playfully in the ribs. I caught a whisper, which under other circumstances probably would have made me smile.
“Hey, let’s hang later.” Rava grinned mischievously up at the hatchling. “Comp stomp! We can blow up some lower ranked teams to get our footing.”
My father’s chair whirred over the pair like the fabled Sword of Damocles, a legendary Terran deity. Dag scowled down at them, judging them and finding both wanting.
“You scrubs just don’t get it,” my dad snapped, his rage taking me back a step. I hadn’t realized he’d had that much fire in him, but then I realized to whom he was directing it. A daughter whose safety he feared for. “Our world is coming apart. Watch.”
He stabbed the button on the holoscreen, and a 3D representation of Kemet sprang up above the device. The world had split through the core, and was slowly breaking into several moon-sized pieces. That wouldn’t be apparent to the people on the surface—not yet, other than maybe noticing slightly lighter gravity and some strange weather. Plus the endless quakes of course.
A refined officer’s disembodied head appeared on the holo above the world. His face was vaguely familiar, but I didn’t place the man until Briff spoke.
“Hey,” the hatchling rumbled as he stabbed a claw towards the holo. “That’s Bortel. He’s in tight with the Inurans. He sponsors more teams than any other war leader, and I hear he just cut some sort of deal for—”
“Shhhhhh,” my father interrupted, his glare suppressing whatever Briff had been about to say.
Bortel steepled long fingers, several of which were adorned with enchanted golden rings. Gaudy stuff, but potent. His short dark hair had been slicked back, and shone under the lights. It lent him a dignified air, though to many it would come across as old-fashioned.
“You all know me,” Bortel began as he used one hand to stroke a thick black goatee, artfully tinged with grey at the very ends. “I get more and better contracts than any war leader in this sector.”
His manner, his clothing, it was all old south, even if our culture had lost the original meaning. Something from ancient terra that signified dignity and hospitality, both qualities mercs wanted to be known for, even if they didn’t possess them.
“Now I’ve got a full Inuran battle carrier,” Bortel continued, though he paused dramatically to take a draw from an ornate vape pen before continuing. “It’s got an empty hold. Bunks. Chow. What I need are mages. Deadly mages. To that end I’ve got a proposition. By tomorrow morning most of this planet will be a memory. A day after that there won’t be a piece large enough to stand on. You want off? Here’s the deal.”
The hologram split and the new section showed the Mojave Spaceport, which sat just outside of New Cairo. It was standard fare, and I couldn’t see anything particularly alluring about the port beyond sitting all by itself in the middle of a vast field.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Bortel continued in that drawl, “we are going to replenish the legions one last time. I will take a full ten thousand of you. And I know you will be the very best. How do I know that? Because you’ll be the ones controlling that spaceport when I land at 7 p.m. standard, tomorrow evening. Survive, and you get to work for me. Or die and be forgotten. The choice is yours.”
The transmission ended, and we were left staring at each other. I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard.
My hands tightened around the table, and I wished it was Bortel’s—or whosever he worked for—neck. “It’s certainly convenient that Bortel happens to have a brand new Inuran carrier with an empty hold.”
Rava raised an eyebrow and wore her skepticism openly. “You think Bortel somehow arranged for our planet to be destroyed just so he could pick up some mercs on the cheap?”
“No.” I leaned back in my chair, struggling to relax. I hadn’t put all the pieces together, but I had enough of them that it was starting to make sense. “Someone did, though, and I’m willing to bet that’s who Bortel ultimately reports to. We know that the lurkers were co-opted several years back, if Vee’s word is any good.”
Briff cleared his throat in an inhuman way that exposed rows of razored fangs. He’d probably meant to be polite, but even a polite dragon commanded attention. “The lurker woman doesn’t have any reason to lie. I agree with Jerek. I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”
“Thinking.” My dad gave a snort, but he subsided when I glared at him.
“Anyway,” Briff continued, now sporting a hurt look. “Jerek knew the planet was going to blow before anyone else. So did whoever the lurkers work for. They’re just trying to survive, like we are. Fodder.”
“Scaly has a good eye.” Rava gave an approving nod as she folded her arms and leaned even further back in her chair. “I don’t think the lurker is lying either.”
“Assuming she isn’t,” I jumped in, “then here’s what we know. Someone thinks the Vagrant Fleet is important enough to spend billions of credits outfitting lurkers, all so they could keep scavs and relic hunters away. That same someone knew our world was going to get hit, and quite possibly arranged it themselves.”
“They’re after the old dreadnoughts,” my father realized aloud, his jaw falling o
pen. “Bright lady, I see it now.”
I waved my hand at the holo, and it shifted to show the Vagrant Fleet, which we weren’t all that far away from. Hundreds of hulks floated in a loose orbit, with each mighty dreadnought at the center of its own cloud.
Battle debris still drifted between them millennia after they’d been created. They were trapped by the gravity of the ships, entombed, and one of the worst dangers incoming ships had to deal with.
“The question I’m left asking,” I continued, since no one else had spoken. “What’s so important about derelict hulks that it’s worth all this? They’ve been sitting there all this time, but suddenly now they’re important? What changed? We need more info, and I can think of a place to get it.”
My father’s face drained of blood, and his hoverchair whirred back a pace, almost of its own accord. “You’re going to call her, aren’t you?”
“I am.” I nodded, and offered my best encouraging smile. “Dad, you’re helping to save what’s left of the world. You’ve got the high ground on this one.”
“Maybe.” His chair whirred toward the doorway. “Doesn’t mean I want to look her in the virtual eye again this soon, especially since she’s probably hanging out with my replacement. I’m going to double check the auto-pilot, and see what scans turn up.”
Rava rose to her feet as well, then prodded Briff with a booted foot. “If you don’t have anything better to do…comp stomp?”
Briff lit up like he hadn’t in days, and his wings fluffed behind him as he followed her out of the mess. “What kind of gun do you think I should use? I really like the NTM Cannon. Their stuff is cheap, but its really efficient, and…”
I turned my attention back to the holounit, then adjusted the controls to activate the scry-screen. The holounit was one of the nicest pieces of tech on the Remora, and the few pieces of magitech. At some point someone had ripped out the ancient corvette’s spelldrive and replaced it with a cheap fusion knockoff, but some other owner had thought to install a state-of-the-art holounit. Thank you, weirdly tech-y person.
