by Chris Fox
Rifles and staves came up, and about forty defenders stood against uncountable spiders. Every last one of us was armed with fire magic, and overlapping spells filled the hold.
The hot scent of ozone billowed out around me as I added my own spells to the mix. Every spell killed hundreds or even thousands of spiders, but still they continued to advance, continued to force their way closer to the Remora.
Our lines tightened, and we fell back until our backs were pressed against the ship’s hull. The flurry of spells from our ranks never slackened, and fireballs or jets of voidflame carved rents in the enemies’ living skin.
And then, just like that, the spiders receded. They pulled back into the corridors, and the screeching ceased.
“They let us live,” I muttered, utterly perplexed. “Why? It makes no sense.”
“Maybe we finally killed enough of them?” Rava asked.
“No,” Kurz supplied. A grim, cruel smile dominated his features, and he’d focused it on the retreating spiders. “They sense the arrival of their destruction, and are fleeing to avoid it. Every soul on this level has come to the urn, and they are hungry. We would do well to flee. Quickly. We have bare minutes before the wights begin to explore. When they do…we are not far from the urn.”
“Briff,” I called as I scanned the crowd in search of him. There he was. “Take Cinaka and her hatchlings, and watch the corridor where the urn is. Be ready to fall back if you have to.”
I spun and glanced at the dozen or so arachnidrakes clustered near the Remora’s now ivory hull. They were all staring back. I strode over, and tried to figure out which was in charge. “Kek gave me this staff. Kithik, its name is. Which of you will take it up, and speak for your comrade?”
One of the drakes scuttled forward, a female who was smaller than the rest, but that the others gave a healthy berth to. She dipped her many-eyed face down, and extended two clawed hands to take the eight-eyed staff.
“I am called Lawl,” she chittered as she took up the staff. “I will speak for Kek, and will honor his memory by wielding the great Kithik.”
I handed the staff across. The relic hunting scavenger in me screamed that I should keep or sell it, but Kek had literally given his life to save us. The staff belonged with someone who would honor his legacy and speak for his people.
“Thank you, Lawl.” I turned back to the Remora. “I’m going to find my way inside. I’d like you and your people with me when I do.”
“Of course, friend Jerek.” She delivered a surprisingly graceful standing bow. “We stand ready in case the vessel contains a threat.”
I moved to the Remora’s airlock, and noted that the placement of the ramp was identical, though the alloy differed. It exuded a faint magic, as did the entire vessel.
I marched up the ramp and studied the keypad next to the door. It was nearly identical to the one outside the weapons locker where I’d obtained the Heka Aten armor what seemed a lifetime ago, but the sigils were all fresh and pristine.
Did I have time to flame read before the wights arrived?
My hand came up of its own accord, and began tapping sigils. There were five, and I tried to memorize the sequence. Part of the prophecy spell maybe? I couldn’t begin to understand everything at play here, which I found maddening.
Everything had a reason. Everything. Someone had constructed that spell, and obviously had thought to impart the door code.
The airlock door hissed open, and revealed the very same cargo hold where I’d first shot Vee with a dream bolt, back when she’d been lurker girl.
This time a single figure in gleaming golden spellarmor stood in the center of the room. He held a massive spellshield in one hand, and a wicked chopping blade in the other.
He did not seem happy to see me.
Interlude V
Field Marshal Bortel had mortgaged his soul, and it wasn’t even clear what he’d really received in the deal, other than that fancy title.
He rolled his vape pen between his fingers, and watched as his carrier approached the Word of Xal. This would be the deed history remembered him for, if it remembered him at all. They’d damn him for this, yet there wasn’t any way clear of it.
If he betrayed the Inurans, then his breach of contract would ensure he never worked again, and that he was stripped of all assets, and likely jailed or executed. It wouldn’t be pretty, and the worst part? It wouldn’t save even a single one of those damned kids.
Jolene had already bought out his underlings. His officers belonged to her, and if he wouldn’t obey she’d simply remove him and give someone else the command. That’s what he kept telling himself anyway.
It was still his mouth giving voice to the orders.
“Take us in slow,” he ordered the black-robed mage in the spell matrix that piloted his ship. She wasn’t enlisted in the traditional sense, but the monastic void mage was the best pilot he’d found. He turned to his comm officer, who possessed fire magic, but also a degree in engineering. She was proficient with it all. “Deploy screens of fighters around the ship, just in case. I want two legions to head for the Word’s bridge. The other eight will fan out through the ship, and isolate the target area. No one gets in or out of the cargo hold containing Highspire. Once it is isolated they are to await further orders.”
He leaned back in his chair and enjoyed a long draw from the vape pen. He held the vapor in his lungs, and then exhaled a cloud of sweet swelling mist. Brief euphoria raced through him, and for a fraction of a second he forgot who and what he’d allowed himself to become.
Then it all came rushing back. He sat there, powerless, as the scry-screen displaying a cutaway of Word’s interior began to update. They were using the very maps the students themselves had created, which still only covered about forty percent of the ship. The parts closest to cargo bays or to the bridge.
Smart kids would take their chances that the parts of the ship that hadn’t been explored. The rest, the vast majority, would flee back to a place where they felt safe. Officers would make for the bridge.
The rest would head to Highspire, which had somehow been saved and placed in a massive cargo hold. Bortel silently thanked whoever had been responsible for that bit, the saving of these kids.
It was a pity that the move had only bought them an extra few days of life. More a pity that he was the one bringing about their deaths. Yet he didn’t see any way out of the mess he’d landed himself in.
As if on schedule the scry-screen chimed with an incoming missive. There was only one person who would call him moments after an operation had begun. One person who thought distracting a commander during the battle a fine idea.
“Matron Jolene.” Bortel inclined his head in a polite nod, then savored another pull on his pen. Gods, but he hated this monster of a woman. How he wished someone would bring her to justice. Someone would eventually, and he just wished he was there to see it when it happened. “Combat has begun. Splitting my attention may be counterproductive. How may I help you?”
“You can deliver me the Word of Xal,” Jolene snapped. Her eyes flashed in anger, and her nostrils flared. It was like dealing with a toddler just before nap time. “I want no dithering. I want no backsliding. Kill them, Bortel. Kill them all. No witnesses. It’s more than my neck on the line here.”
Defiance swelled in his chest, and pride, because her words proved that she knew nothing about him. She believed fear of legal reprisal to be what motivated him. She knew nothing of duty, or honor, or a lord’s responsibility to their vassals.
“Of course, Matron.” He bowed his head deferentially. “I’ll follow your orders to the letter. Not a single occupant of the Word of Xal will survive.”
Was it wishful thinking to hope that the Inuran Trade Moon, or the confederacy, or someone was monitoring this? That they were hearing the matron issue the order that would damn her career? Fantasy or not, he gave it fuel and used it for warmth.
“Excellent.” Her eyes narrowed. “Get it done quickly. My flame
readers tell me that they cannot accurately predict the outcome of today’s events, and that shouldn’t be possible. Your victory should be swift and total. The only possibility I can think of is your disloyalty.”
“Ah hah.” He drew on the pen again, and this time really took his time before finally exhaling. “So in all your years in a position of power, with all the enemies you’ve made, with all the people and gods who want these ships…my disloyalty is the only possibility you can think of?”
Her face drained of blood, and Bortel knew he’d signed his own death warrant. That was the last time she’d allow him to embarrass her, and they both knew it. She needed him exactly as long as it took to finish the op, and then whatever contingency she had to tie up his loose end would be utilized.
“I will leave you to your operation, Field Marshal.” She inclined her head in the barest of nods. “No, on second thought, I don’t believe I will. What kind of commander leads from the rear? I want you on that ship, Bortel. Get onto the Word and take the bridge.”
He raised an eyebrow, but managed to stow what he’d been about to say. “You want me to leave a tactically secure command post so that I can observe combat directly?”
“You heard me.” The missive went dark, and Bortel gave a bitter laugh. He noted the covert glance from his pilot, but ignored her. She could think what she wanted, and her judgement was nowhere near as harsh as his own.
“Let the boarding commander know that I’ll be joining him shortly.” Bortel enjoyed a final draw from his pen, then placed it in his breast pocket. He considered donning his armor, but why? The best possible scenario was that some enemy sniper found a way to end him. He could die in the line of duty never having broken faith with an employer.
It wasn’t much. But it was the only currency hope came in right now.
21
What do you say to a man who has, theoretically, just been yanked ten millennia through time? Did he know? Did he think he was still in the past? Had his master prepared him?
I stepped into the hold, and noted how similar it appeared to the ship I knew, though this reflection hadn’t been ravaged by time.
“I’m Jerek,” I explained. My hand rested on my sidearm, but I didn’t draw. “I’m going to explain the situation as—”
“You are going to get off my ship, you mean.” The deck rang as the paladin took a step forward, and his chopping blade began to radiate a brilliance that would have blinded me if not for my helmet. His shield blazed in an identical fashion, adding to the radiance. “I don’t know how you got the door open, or even how I ended up back on this ship, but I do know I’m not letting some random pirates claim my vessel. Last chance. Leave, or die.”
“That’s not really an option right—”
The paladin glided across the deck like a master duelist. His sword came down in a tight arc that would have bisected me had I still been standing there.
I may not have been the sector’s best fighter, but I was quick, and if I excelled at anything it was running away. I blinked behind the paladin. Up came my pistol, and I shot him in the back of the helmet with a dream bolt. He started to turn, so I did it again.
He did not seem impressed.
The paladin lunged with his shield, which I hadn’t expected to be used as a weapon. It knocked my pistol out of my hand, and sent me tumbling across the deck into the wall. Several yellow spots flared on the armor’s paper doll, and of course my new paladin buddy was now standing defiantly between me and my pistol.
That left his back to the ramp, though. Rava sprinted silently up to the paladin’s rear with vibroclaws extended from both wrists. Somehow, at the last possible moment, the paladin’s boot came up and caught Rava in the gut. The kick arrested her momentum, hurled her to the deck, and sent her sliding into the opposite wall with an audible crack of bone.
Rava cried out, then lay crumpled where she’d fallen.
“You hurt Rava!” Briff bellowed as the enraged hatchling entered the cargo bay. He charged the paladin, who set to receive it with his shield.
Briff is canny, though, and the dragon’s tail lashed around one of the paladin’s ankles. He yanked the armored opponent into the air, then dashed him helmet first against the wall. The armor crunched, and the paladin grunted, but seemed otherwise unharmed.
The paladin’s blade came around, almost too fast to track, and sheared through Briff’s tail. My friend loosed an agonized shriek, just in time for Cinaka to crest the ramp and see the deed.
The cinder-hatchling’s spellcannon came up, and she lobbed a ball of superheated rock into the paladin’s back. The spell slammed him into the wall with an explosion of flaming magma that coated the rear of his armor, but he rebounded off and quickly recovered his footing, apparently no worse for the wear despite the sizzling tendrils clogging the hold with smoke.
“Are there more of you? This isn’t a proper party yet.” He twirled his blade and backed slowly up against a wall. “Who’s next?”
“I am. “ Kurz strode up the ramp and into the hold, holding no weapon and apparently unconcerned about the combat. “You are one of the Maker’s paladins?”
The paladin hesitated, and studied the soulcatcher as if he recognized him for what he was. His entire demeanor shifted.
“I am sorry. I did not know.” The paladin sheathed his blade, then dropped to one knee before Kurz. “Honor to serve, soulcatcher. I don’t recognize your garb. Which vessel do you hail from? Can you tell me how I arrived here, and why? Last I remember…Soulcatcher Patra and I were in the core of the Word of Xal.”
Kurz raised an eyebrow in my direction, as if seeking direction. The implication was clear. If we deceived him he’d be pliant and easy to manipulate. But was that really how I wanted to start off this relationship?
“Tell him the truth,” I ordered. I holstered my weapon. “He deserves to know where and when he is, and how he got here. If we play straight with him, hopefully he’ll do the same with us. I want to know why he speaks modern galactic common if he’s stepping out of the distant past. And I have a bunch of other questions. He’s not going to answer them unless we start with his.”
“Very well.” Kurz licked his lips, and glanced back at the ramp. “In about ninety seconds a tide of wights will find us, enter the hold, and kill us all, so excuse me for being brief. You are ten millennia in the future. The world you know is gone. We came to this place in the Remora, but our version of it. Old and decrepit. While on this ship we were given a prophecy scale, which told us how to retrieve this ship from the past. We were meant to find you. Now, can we go? Captain Jerek will be happy to answer any questions once we are safely away.”
“Ten millennia in the future?” The paladin rose instantly to his feet, and his blade flicked out like a viper until the very tip rested against Kurz’s throat. “Are you really a soulcatcher? Do you even know what that means? Inura’s blood flows in my veins, human. Show me that it flows in yours as well.”
Kurz paled. At first I thought the paladin was going to cut him, and literally check his blood. Then I realized he must mean some sort of magic that made soulcatchers what they are.
“I do not carry the Maker’s blood. Not directly. That has been lost to all but a few.” He slowly raised a hand, palm out, and pressed the paladin’s blade away from his throat. “My sister does, however. Vee, show him your magic.”
Vee blinked, obviously surprised to find herself the object of everyone’s attention. She moved slowly to the paladin, and raised one trembling hand to her brother’s neck, which glistened with a thin line of blood where the blade had grazed the skin.
Vee’s bracelet flared and soft golden light washed over the wound. The flesh knit shut and Kurz gave a relieved exhalation of breath as the magic washed through him.
The paladin relaxed, then re-sheathed his blade.
An awful keening came from the hangar outside the ship, and it was closing quickly. The paladin gave a joyous laugh. “You were not lying. You used an urn. You c
alled down wights on this place. What could you possibly have faced to justify such a thing? Well, so be it. I will trust you until we are away. If you have a pilot, and if you really know this ship, then you will have no trouble taking us out. I will deal with the wights.”
“Okay, I’m on it. Vee, can you see to Rava? She’s in bad shape. Oh, and one more thing. Do you have a name?” I paused long enough for the paladin to give it.
“Seket,” he said, though his attention was already on the ramp as he once more drew his blade.
The name started a couple wheels turning in my head. The minister’s ship was called the Lance of Seket. Was there a connection, and if so how? He’d been trapped in the past. Had someone else passed the name on somehow? Gah, so many questions I didn’t have time to answer.
I turned from the paladin and sprinted for the bridge. Either Seket could do what he said he could, and keep those wights at bay, or he couldn’t.
And, just as critically, either I could figure out how to pilot this ship using a matrix, or we were about to join the wights. That’s the best part of being killed by them…if they slay you, then you rise as one. The death that keeps on giving.
The original Remora wasn’t much different from my version, though everything was newer and nicer…and there were a lot more rooms. How extra quarters and cargo holds fit in the same space could only be explained through a sizable void pocket. Or several. They must have been ripped out of the Remora long before I’d inherited her.
I sprinted onto a totally alien bridge. Not a single part of it was the same as my ship. Gone were the navcom station and the pilot’s seat. Gone were most of the instruments.
In their place lay two identical consoles, each facing an enormous scry-screen. Between them stood a spell matrix not unlike the one I’d seen on the bridge of both the Flame of Knowledge and the Word of Xal.
