Dying World

by Chris Fox

  “Hey, Briff,” I yelled across the mess. He and Rava glanced up from the conversation they’d been having on the far side of the mess. Kurz was sitting with them, though he didn’t seem to be contributing much. I ordered the helmet to slither off my face so he could see my smile. “I’ve got a plan I think you’re really going to love, and you get to be the linchpin. We’re about to take this ship back from these bastards.”

  27

  The beauty of being captain, I found, was that you could just issue orders. I didn’t have to explain the plan beyond telling Briff his part. I’d be doing the rest. So I assembled our ragtag squad at the base of the ramp in a rough line.

  Briff stood in the center, his wings still shredded, but tail held proud. He cradled his spellcannon in both arms, and rested the butt unapologetically atop his belly.

  Rava stood to his right. She’d fetched a sniper rifle from somewhere, something with a big caliber from the look of it. She’d only have to use it if something went wrong, but something going wrong was sort of our thing and I wanted us covered.

  My dad floated on his hoverchair with a basic spellpistol cradled in both hands. I’d never seen him look uncomfortable, and he scrubbed a hand through his thinning hair as he looked around the hangar. He’d come, though, and hadn’t questioned any of my orders.

  Vee and Kurz looked the most relaxed. Kurz had wrapped a bandolier of vials over his shoulder, and each contained, if I understood correctly, a soul. How or why those were useful wasn’t clear, but hopefully he surprised me.

  Vee had a spellpistol belted to one thigh, and now carried one of Arcan’s assault rifles. Being a mage, that meant we weren’t making full use of her talents, but we didn’t have another spellrifle to give her unless we wanted to ask the Inurans very nicely if they’d give us back what we’d lost in the crash.

  It would have to do.

  “Okay, let’s move out. Vee, I want you on point, and I’ll back you up.” I moved into position next to her. “Kurz, follow a few meters behind us with Rava, and Briff will bring up the rear.”

  Vee started up the corridor and raised the hand with the bracelet, which flared briefly. A tiny white globe zipped playfully into the air over her head and raced up the corridor.

  It illuminated a dozen meters in all directions, but the light was soft enough not to blind. Handy.

  I admired the way Vee walked, both in the way a dirty mind might conjure and in a professional sense. She kept the rifle cradled loosely in both hands. It was ready to be brought up, but easy to carry until it was needed. Her head also scanned the corridor ceaselessly in exactly the kind of way I’d seen my father do when he ran point.

  “Where were you trained?” I asked quietly. We had a few minutes walk, so I figured why not.

  She glanced at me in clear confusion, and didn’t speak for several more meters. Finally Vee glanced over her shoulder, at her brother, I realized, then back at me. “We do not speak of the Maker’s Covenant with outsiders. My brother has already pressed the boundaries of what is permissible, and will likely face judgement if the elders learn what he has done.”

  I found myself smiling at her scandalized expression. “I was just working up to asking you out for coffee, not stealing state secrets. If you can’t share your past, that’s fine. I just feel like we have a lot of common ground.”

  “Is this really the right time to initiate courtship?”

  “Uh, we’re going to be dead in twenty minutes if this doesn’t work.” I raised an eyebrow in her direction. She hadn’t relented. “Okay, fine, no more mating displays.”

  “Until after the op.” She gave me something approaching a smile, then quickened her pace.

  Was that flirting? Man, I was bad at this.

  We continued in relative silence, which was broken by Rava and Briff retelling their comp stomp stories. That meant a lot, I think. They weren’t focusing on Arcan’s death. They were ready to fight. To get some payback.

  My father, on the other hand, looked increasingly nervous the closer we came. I realized it might be a problem, and that it was my job to deal with it.

  I trotted up alongside Vee. “I’m going to go talk to my father for a bit. Keep moving.”

  She nodded and did as I asked, the soft glow staining her hair into smoldering flame, which added to her ferocity.

  I slowed my pace until my father drew even, then nodded in his direction. He nodded back while eyeing me suspiciously.

  “You’re worried about me,” he accused as he raised his free hand to scrub his stubble. “I don’t blame you. Not sure I still have this in me, kid.”

  I eyed him and tried to determine what the root cause was. I couldn’t, so I asked. “So you can’t hit targets?”

  “No, my aim is good, I think. Not as fast as it used to be, but I’m a good shot.” He looked down at his pistol in disgust. “I will admit that this piece of garbage is part of the problem.”

  “If my plan works,” I pointed out, “then it won’t matter. You can pick up Ariela from whichever Inuran took her as a trophy. And if not, I’m sure they’ve got plenty of nice spellpistols to choose from.”

  My dad barked a short laugh, then shook his head as we continued up the corridor. “I never thought I’d be back at it, but now that I am I can’t remember why I ever left it. I should have gone out with a gun in my hand a long time ago. Thank you for giving me a chance to do that. Whatever happens, I’m proud of you, son.”

  He zoomed a little closer, and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. My father was hugging me. A hug he’d initiated.

  “Are you crying?” My dad demanded. He zoomed back like he’d been stung.

  “No.” And I totally wasn’t. Okay, I totally was, but I, like…hid it. Okay, I didn’t hide it. I was positive Vee’d seen, and probably her hawk-eyed brother had too.

  Rava and Briff were still chatting, of course. I was going to have to separate those two during ops. Assuming we survived this one.

  “We’re getting close,” Vee called softly from the head of the column.

  I nodded at my dad, then willed the helmet to slither over my face. The HUD sprang up, and confirmed that none of the red dots had moved. They were dug in, ready to ambush anything that approached through the same corridor we’d used before.

  “Guardian,” I called, then paused until the hologram appeared in my HUD. “There you are. Do you have a first name?”

  “As a mortal I was designated Kemet, Admiral of the Vagrant Fleet.” The hatchling stepped forward and thumped his holographic staff against the ground, which sent up a spray of illusionary sparks.

  “Wait, Kemet as in the name of our planet?” I blinked at the hologram, and made some connections.

  “Possibly.” The hatchling shrugged, then fluffed his wings. “I do not know your history, though I can tell you of mine, if you require.”

  “Later,” I promised, and meant it. I was going to spend so many hours picking this guy’s brain. “For now, let’s initiate my requested changes. Increased gravity in specified sections of the ship, then I’d like access to any internal cameras.”

  That last part had just come to me, and I was glad it had. I hadn’t really considered how I was going to confirm that our plan had even worked.

  “Immediately.” Kemet tapped the staff again, and more sparks flared. It was like a punctuation mark. I kind of liked it.

  A moment later my HUD flickered and an image appeared. It showed the room we’d fought in, which still bore scars from the combat. The remains of the rover were right where we’d left them, though if Arcan was dead, they’d definitely removed the body.

  The Inuran troops were arrayed in a horseshoe formation behind barricades. Trios of snipers waited in the corners of the room, all focused on that one point.

  A deep subsonic thrum pulsed through the room, and as it rippled over the defenders they simply collapsed to the deck. Every part of their body lay pinned however they fell, and not a single defender rose.

  I began
counting under my breath, and waited until I’d reached a hundred before taking another action. Not a single defender had reached their feet.

  “This feels way too easy,” I admitted, then turned back to the rest of the squad. “I can’t see any problems though. Briff, you’re up.”

  “A moment,” Kurz called. He approached the hatchling, though he didn’t look up from the deck. Then, in an instant, his entire demeanor changed. His posture straightened, and he rose to his considerable height. His eyes flared with a sharp sapphire light, the same that had come from Vee’s bracelet. He carefully withdrew one of the vials from the bandolier, this one a sickly green color, then crushed it in his hand.

  The smoke boiled out and coalesced into the same warrior we’d killed with the rover, though she now wore spectral versions of her armor and weapons.

  Kurz raised a hand and pointed at the corridor ahead of him. “Steal the breath from any man in that room bearing this sigil on his armor, save the commanding officer.” He indicated the Inuran logo on the spellpistol belted to his side.

  The specter, or ghost, or whatever it was, nodded once, then flowed up the hallway.

  “She’s, like, not going to attack me, is she?” Briff asked as he shifted from scaly foot to scaly foot.

  “Quite the opposite,” Kurz assured the hatchling. He blinked a few times and the sapphire disappeared from his eyes. “She will do most of your work for you. For all intents and purposes, she will stop their hearts, one by one. Briff will be free to make his way to the commander, who should be wearing armor like Jerek’s.”

  I didn’t like the specter or the way being around it made me feel, and I was glad it had departed. Its use made me eye Kurz in a new light. I’d never encountered magic like his, and if it existed on Kemet, I’d never seen it in a holo or historical tome.

  “You heard the man, Briff. Should be safe. We have a job to do. Find the person in the armor like mine, and bring them back here, dead or alive.” If we obtained another suit that would dramatically increase our chances of survival, and who knew what other powers someone else could unlock?

  Briff started up the corridor, and I followed him on the internal cameras. Briff passed the ranks of prone Inuran soldiers, and instead continued up the corridor to the door leading to the bridge.

  It opened at the hatchling’s approach, which seemed odd until I remembered the systems a level 2 had access to. They couldn’t even lock the doors. They didn’t have any more power than we did, despite having been here for days, weeks, or even months.

  Briff walked into the bridge, and the image shifted to show him in the new room. That bridge contained, thank the maker, a recognizable spell matrix, which is what we used to magically power ships.

  The device was made from three concentric rings. The first was forged from gold, the second silver, and the third bronze. Each ring rotated around the mage in the matrix, who had a stabilizing ring at waist height in case the ship takes a hit. Each ring was covered in sigils corresponding to the Circle of Eight, and by tapping them a mage can cast spells through the vessel itself.

  Amazing.

  Briff lumbered over to a figure in familiar Heka Aten armor who lay prone at the foot of the matrix. Eight guards lay scattered about the room in what would have been a perfect ambush pattern.

  The hatchling crossed the last few meters, and then carefully picked up the commanding officer.

  As he began to return, I caught a flash of green smoke rising from the mouth of one of the guards. It flowed into the next, exactly as Kurz had ordered.

  I shivered, unable to savor the victory.

  28

  Briff dumped the commander’s armored body unceremoniously at my feet. The entire squad had him covered, and I knew from experience that while the Heka Aten armor is cool…it doesn’t make you invincible.

  “Take the helmet off,” I ordered as I jerked my pistol in her direction. “Make no sudden movements.”

  The helmet slithered from a handsome angular face framed by coifed platinum hair, and I got to observe the process from the opposite side for the first time.

  That classic Inuran beauty was marred though, by a face made for sneers.

  It wasn’t sneering now. The blood vessels in both eyes had popped into a ghastly scarlet, and a trickle of dark scarlet blood leaked from one nostril. Gravity can be a real bitch.

  “H-how did you manage to control the sh-ship’s weapons?” He clutched at his chest, and I wondered how much damage the increased gravity had done. Part of me felt bad, though I didn’t know why I should have.

  I leaned in close, and tried to look menacing. He had to recognize my armor, and with my faceplate up maybe I even managed intimidating. “You’re a little late for that information to be useful.”

  “Still,” the Inuran rasped, “I wish to know. I do not understand how you bested us. Who are you? Did Voria send you?”

  “Maybe.” I had no idea who this Voria was, and filed that away for later. I leaned in a bit closer. “Why haven’t you taken control of the ship?”

  The man sneered, this time at himself. “I am weak. I was afraid to do what must be done, and sent underlings instead. They failed, and I squandered my chance. Now, please, tell me. Who are you? I cannot be told prior to my demise?”

  I leaned back, and considered the question. Vee shifted behind me, which gave me an idea as to the next question I wanted answered. “How long have you been manipulating the lurkers?”

  “Why does that mat—”

  I impressed myself with how quickly I cocked the gauntlet into a firing position. The man’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve puzzled out how to use the armor as a weapon, haven’t you?”

  “I have.” I summoned a bit of fire, enough to make my fist glow white hot. “My patience isn’t infinite. I have a disintegrating planet to deal with. If you aren’t going to answer my questions I have a way around that. Kurz, get over here.”

  The lurker seemed surprised by my sudden attention. He stroked his beard as he crept over, almost a scuttle. His fear seemed directed at the Inuran, and I got the sense it was a personal sort of fear. He knew who this guy was.

  “See those bottles?” I jerked a thumb at the phylacteries in Kurz’s bandolier. “Each one of those is a soul. Earlier you probably saw one of those souls tearing apart your goons.”

  “So you’ve recruited a soulcatcher.” The Inuran rolled his eyes. “How exciting for you. We’ve eliminated all we could find. This one must have kept the practice secret. Always living in fear. Is that the way of it, urchin?”

  I stepped between them and broke their line of sight. The Inuran looked up at me, the sneer firmly in place. So I punched him. Hard.

  I don’t know why I did it. Something broke inside me, a dam holding back all the frustration and anger I’d felt at every bully I’d ever dealt with, or who’d ever victimized my friends. This guy represented them all.

  My fist crashed into his face, and his nose broke with a sickening crack. His bloodshot eyes narrowed into hideous pools, and he snarled wordlessly up at me.

  “You work for Matron Jolene, don’t you?” That was the name my mother had dropped, the Inuran head honcho. It made sense given their weaponry and accents.

  “Of course not.” He gave me a satisfied smile that exposed bloody teeth. “I acted alone. I am not part of any organization. Kill me if you like. Take my soul even. A barbaric act, and one that we put aside generations ago. But then…you are nothing if not barbaric, aren’t you? You don’t even know where your people come from, or who you were.”

  Were there other questions I could be asking? Maybe, but none leapt to mind. This guy had failed to control the ship, so what could he really offer? That meant we didn’t need him.

  “Kurz, you recognize this man, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Kurz whispered. He took a step backwards, and his gaze found the deck, but his voice remained strong. Angry even. “He came to the first ‘clave. He was the one who brought the gear they bribed us with.
He was the one who convinced them all to go along with it.”

  “Well, not all of them, to be sure.” The man seemed very satisfied for himself given his physical condition. “Some refused, but they’ve wisely scuttled from our sight. So long as they haven’t interfered with the Word of Xal, we saw no reason to exterminate them yet.”

  “Yet?” Vee thundered. She lunged at the Inuran and caught him with a vicious backhand that snapped his neck back. “You were going to wipe us all out, weren’t you? Genocide.”

  I recoiled at the slap, and something unpleasant fluttered in my stomach. I hated seeing this kind of wanton violence, much less participating in it, justified or not. Shooting someone was one thing, but inflicting pain…it just felt wrong. I hated what I’d just done with the punch. That didn’t mean I couldn’t be pragmatic though. I’m not stupid. Leaving enemies alive is always a bad idea.

  “Vee, put him out of his misery. I’m going to head for the bridge.” I rose and turned from the Inuran. I knew she’d have no problem dealing with the situation, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be around to see it.

  My father’s hoverchair whirred closer and he delivered a concerned look. “It isn’t easy, ordering your first death. You had to do it. You know that, right?”

  “Yes,” I snapped, hating the truth. “If we let him live, he’s a threat and he could escape. If we let him go, he’s an even bigger threat. We can’t learn anything, so the only smart choice is…”

  “…Hard as scales to make yourself do.” My dad barked a self-deprecating laugh. “I hated it. I hate even seeing it. Better you than me.”

  “Yeah.” I glanced at the bay where we’d increased the gravity, and on the other side where the bridge lay. “I’m going to head in there. Kemet, can you return the gravity to the previous setting?”

  “Of course.” The holo-dragon appeared in my field of view, and I earned another staff sparkle. “Done.”

  I walked through the bay and tried not to look at the bodies all around me. We’d killed them all without mercy or hesitation. Sure, they’d have done the same to us, but I hadn’t had a lifetime to develop those instincts. It hit me harder than I’d thought it might.