by Chris Fox
“I do.” I nodded. Vee sobbed beside me.
“In exchange for this covenant,” Nara intoned, “thrice per day you may call upon me, and I will provide you with the miracle weaken. Prove yourself in my service, and more miracles will follow.”
Electric power flowed from Nara’s hand into me, and the fibers ran up my arm and into my chest, until they wrapped around the heart. There was a smothering moment when I couldn’t breathe, then the effect passed, and Nara lowered her hand.
“It is done.” She gestured at the deck. “Go ahead. See what you’ve purchased.”
“What have you done?” Vee whispered, tears running from both eyes. “I respected you…and now…”
“And now nothing,” Kurz snapped. The soulcatcher grabbed his sister by the shoulder and spun her to face him. “What better choice can the captain make? If he does nothing we all die. All of us. He is doing this for you. For me. For hatchlings he doesn’t know.”
“It’s a fair bargain.” Seket nodded in what I took for approval. “I don’t know who this goddess is, but if she’s delivered the power to save us, then I laud her.”
I ignored the squabbling and knelt in the center of the deck. There just wasn’t enough time. I placed one gloved hand against the deck. “How do I activate it?”
“That’s up to you.” Nara opened her void pocket and withdrew her helmet, which she sealed over her face with a hiss. “Some people add a phrase, and always use it. Some people merely think about it. I’m not picky. Whatever works for you. I’m going to Highspire. I may not be able to help, but at least I can observe.”
“Thank you, Nara.” I bowed in what I hoped was an appropriate way, and since I was already kneeling it looked like I was genuflecting. You can imagine how much Vee loved that.
I straightened, then placed my hand against the deck again. “Weaken.”
Entropy, raw entropy, rolled out of my chest and into my hand. It leaked into the deck and everywhere it touched, lines of corrosive rust appeared. They ate through the deck as if centuries in the rain were passing, and not a few seconds.
After a few more moments the deck collapsed under my weight, and I plummeted to the next level.
Interlude VII
Crewes inspected the action on his new spellcannon, and smiled at the satisfying kthunk as the heavy weapon chambered an explosive shell. The cannon used the exact same rounds as a hovertank, and was far too massive for any mortal, even the ones who didn’t skip leg day.
But then he wasn’t mortal anymore.
It was hard to accept the changes, even months after the fact. His whole body had been replaced with magma, basically, making him more like Frit than a normal human. Just the thought of her drew a scowl, though time had stolen too much of the anger. Now he was just angry out of habit.
The Talon’s scry-screen flashed with an incoming missive, and he nodded to accept it. The screen filled with a familiar freckled face, topped by a mop of red hair. Pickus blinked owlishly, and Crewes couldn’t help but chuckle.
“What’s up, Pickus? You only call when Voria needs something crisped.” He slung his cannon over one shoulder, and glanced down when Neeko’s furry form pressed up against his leg.
He dropped his free hand to pet the ghost leopard. She was the only creature whose poop he’d ever clean up, but since she was also a set of living armor it was totally worth it. Plus she kept his feet warm at night, something a normal cat wouldn’t survive.
“We need something crisped. Or rather, we need to prevent some people from getting crisped.” Pickus pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. That could have been fixed with either cyberware or magic, but the kid had never done so for some reason. “Jolene’s found a new way to cause trouble. The government of Kemet contacted us asking for aid. They claim she blew up their planet, and are trying to steal ancient ships that rival the First Spellship. Some kids are pinned in a cargo hold. I’m sending a scrying now. You have permission to use terminal force, though if you can capture or route the Inurans that’s fine too.”
“I can arrange that, but Rhea’s visiting her father on Virkon.” Crewes face split into a gigantic grin. “You know, I probably shouldn’t go alone. This is official confederate business, right? So it would be okay for me to invite another government to send a representative?”
The blood drained from Pickus’s face. “Fine. Please don’t blow up the ship. That’s all I ask. Keep the kids alive.”
“Oh, please.” Crewes waved dismissively at the screen. “I’m great with kids. Kids love me. Look what happened to the last kids I fostered.”
“They’re demons now,” Pickus pointed out.
Crewes glared hard at the mousy man, though Pickus was one of the few who didn’t find him intimidating. “That don’t make ‘em bad people. You gotta get over this racism, man. It’s the post-godswar era.”
“Did you not catch the part where they were demons?” Pickus rolled his eyes.
“We’ll work on it. I’ll let you know when it’s done, Administrator.” Crewes didn’t even have to tell the Talon. The ship knew to kill the missive, and did. “Okay, Neeko. I’m gonna need you to turn into armor. We’ve got a lunch date.”
The cat purred as she slithered around his legs, then disappeared in an explosion of manly-magenta light, which spun around Crewes’s body in a method that in no way resembled the magical girl transformation from those blasted holos.
“Talon, I got something you’ll like.” Crewes patted the ship’s shiny black wall, and smiled up at him. “I want you to get me Aran on missive.”
The ship’s walls pulsed with fire magic, which Crewes had decided meant the ship was smiling.
Crewes dropped his spellcannon off his shoulder and into both hands so he could be properly menacing, but as the screen lit to show his old friend, Crewes ruined it with a big stupid grin. Damn it.
“Hey, man, whatcha got going on today?” Crewes approached the screen, and slung the barrel back up on his shoulder.
“You know, demon things.” Aran smiled, and despite the midnight skin, his friend and former commander hadn’t changed from the wipe he’d first shepherded through his first battle back on Marid. “Why? What do you have going on?”
Aran rose from a throne cut from bone, and rested a hand on the hilt of Narlifex, a sword that had saved Crewes more than once. The demon prince moved with deadly grace, though his face was all smiles. He wore no spellarmor, and instead had some sort of stupid black tunic and trousers with purple trim. It was like the uniform for some kid gang back in the gutters on Yanthara.
“Listen, man, what you should be doing is shopping, because that getup is embarrassing.” Crewes waved his hand at the screen. “Did I interrupt you from your ballet class and eating yogurt? Come on, man, you’re supposed to be menacing.”
“You’re right.” Aran gave a serious nod, and for once seemed to be listening. “I should totally replace it with a set of pink armor. Then they’ll be terrified. No offense, Neeko.”
A faint mew rolled across the bridge.
“My armor is magenta.” Crewes raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t realize being a demon made you color blind.”
They both started to laugh, and it went on longer than any self-respecting Marine should allow.
“Pickus just called,” Crewes explained in a serious tone. “Jolene’s causing trouble, and some kids are about to get fried. I figured you’re in need of some good PR, being a demon and all. These kids just lost everything. Their whole world. We can’t let ‘em die too. I ain’t never gonna have another day like Starn or Marid.”
“Done. Can you send me the coordinates?” Aran slowly drew Narlifex, and his eyes pulsed with a purple-black energy that terrified Crewes. Now he looked like a proper demon.
Crewes waved at the Talon, who transmitted the destination.
“Meet you there?” Crewes asked.
Aran nodded.
Crewes closed his eyes and focused on the scrying that Pickus had sent. It sh
owed a hangar bay inside a massive ship, dominated by an ancient stepped pyramid that had no right to be there.
Thousands of kids were clustered around the pyramid, and were being pushed back by divisions of hovertanks backed by adult Wyrms. The defenders had a Wyrm too, but the mighty white creature was favoring her right rear leg, and hanging back behind wards.
Crewes envisioned the hangar bay and the Talon’s bridge being the same place. It didn’t make no kinda sense, but that was how it worked anyway. You imagined two places as one, and when you were a god you just magicked yourself there. Nara probably had some charts she could show about it, but Crewes didn’t pay it too much thought.
He appeared in the hangar bay with his helmet already on, and ready to party. First, he needed targets. The kids were being pressed back to the base of the pyramid, which meant that the entire right flank belonged to the enemy.
It was filled with hovertanks, dragons, and other tasty targets. Time for lunch. He wondered how much it would take to break them.
Crewes gathered his legs under him, then leapt over the kids he’d come to save, and kept himself aloft on a plume of superheated flame.
“I am authorized by the confederacy,” he blasted out over the battlefield, loud enough to draw blood for anyone not wearing head protection, “to stomp the crap out of any mercs stupid enough to be attacking kids. Your action has been declared unlawful, and you got about three seconds to retreat. If you’re not familiar…my name is Crewes. I’m the god who’s about to put a foot up your ass.”
The enemy ranks didn’t seem to pay him much attention. Guess they hadn’t heard of him. Awesome.
“Oh, man,” he purred. “I’ve been waiting to try this.”
Crewes drew on the magic infusing every fiber of his body and mind, and poured in as much as the new cannon would hold. The XalTech Mark XI was a prototype Kazon had sent, bless his rich demonic ass.
Once the barrel began to steam and hiss, and the runes on the sides flared an angry orange, Crewes flung his spell at the nearest platoon of enemy soldiers. They were tech mages. Mercs who should have known better than to assault teenage kids. No sympathy.
The flame cooked them all where they stood, and when it washed away, their blackened armor ran in rivulets along the warped floor…oops. He hadn’t met to harm the ship.
“Nice cannon.” Aran winked into existence next to him in his jogging outfit, or whatever it was war mages wore. He already held Narlifex in one hand, but there was no sign of his spellrifle. “I remember when I still needed guns.”
The demon prince raised a hand, and the division of hovertanks that had been firing at the white Wyrm were all yanked into the air. Aran made a fist, and eight titanic machines crumpled together into a ball of metal that would have fit in his pocket.
“See, now I feel like you’re just showing off.” Crewes turned toward a cluster of black-clad cybered-up mercs that were charging in his direction. “Heh, mage killers. Cute. Got something for ya, boys.”
A river of white flame flowed out of his mouth like the Winds of Hel, and showed the mercs exactly how little their “magic resistant” bones mattered. Mage killers were terrifying back when he was Sergeant Crewes, what felt a lifetime and a half ago.
The air shivered above him and to his delight, which Crewes would never admit publicly, Nara appeared. The demon princess cradled that long-barreled artifact rifle, and grinned down at Crewes. She looked a little odd with horns, which he could glimpse through her armor’s faceplate, but then Crewes wasn’t the one who had to sleep with her. Those things looked awkward. “Hey, Sarge. It’s been a while. Aran’s just too cool to use guns because he’s never landed a headshot. But if we’re going to have a contest I’d be happy to join in. You’re here on confederate business, right? The kid got through?”
“I don’t know about no kid, but yeah someone got through. I gotta invite you to make it official.” Crewes lobbed a conventional tank shell from his rifle just to see what it would do. It detonated over a squad of hatchlings, and ended poorly for three out of the four. “I’m here as a duly appointed representative of the Confederacy. As an agent of a member government, will you assist me in this task?”
“On behalf of Xal, and my pompous boyfriend, Xal’Aran, I accept,” Nara raised Shakti, the rifle, and fired. A tiny marble of black zipped into the midst of the last remaining division of hovertanks. The marble grew slightly, then shrank.
The tanks, Marines near the tanks, the floor panels, and everything else near them was sucked into the micro-singularity that Nara had cast.
That broke them. The enemy started to run, and a rousing cheer went up from the kids around the pyramid.
“Man,” Crewes muttered, a bit dejectedly. “That was over quicker than I thought. Should we go after Jolene?”
“Nah.” Nara deposited her rifle into her void pocket. “The kid who called us in, Jerek, is dealing with the problem. Young, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders. He’s who we’ll have to deal with if we want to acquire this ship, but I have an in with him now.”
“Do we? Want this ship I mean.” Crewes’s former CO peered around him in that distant way he sometimes got that said he was feeling things he could neither sense nor understand. “I can feel this ship’s power, but he doesn’t belong to us. He already serves another. Maybe we can acquire one of the others.”
“You can do your politics crap later.” Crewes gave them a smile, and nodded at the throng of kids that were nervously approaching. “Hey, you wanna go play hero? You guys should do some selfies or something. Gotta work on that PR, I’m telling you.”
“Maybe I need a social media page. Hey, I’m Aran,” the god whispered mockingly. “Former war hero, currently demon prince. I love long walks in space, translocating, and showing off my hot girlfriend.”
Crewes chuckled as he followed Aran toward the kids. Saving the day never got old.
31
I landed on my feet if you can believe that. Rust rained around me, the last remains of the incredibly resistant deck that had stopped the arachnidrakes and their ritual. It hadn’t stood up to the power of a god, thank…well, thank Nara, I guess.
“Jer, you okay?” Briff called as he leapt into the hole and spread his wings to slow his fall.
The deck shook when he landed, enough that people on the bridge below us might have heard. Hopefully they chalked it up to combat.
“Fine. Better than fine.” I glanced back up at the hole I’d made, and saw my crew clustered around it. “Let’s get everyone down, starting with Kurz. I want to get that Urn in position as soon as possible. Cinaka, do you have any illusionists among your people? Anyone who can make the deck look intact?”
Cinaka leapt gracefully into the hole, and landed nearly soundlessly next to Briff. She fluffed her wings once, then checked the action on her spellrifle. “We’re warriors, not scholars. There are no true mages among my ranks. What of your soulcatcher? Can he not summon some spirit to fulfill this task?”
Kurz dropped down the hole, and I moved instinctively to catch him. It shocked me how light he was, and I set him gently on the deck and waited for Vee.
She allowed me to catch her, though she wouldn’t look me in the face. I guess that was progress. I didn’t know why she feared demons so much, but I was hoping she’d be willing to talk about it…if we lived.
Seket landed in a crouch that sent a boom rolling across the deck, easily louder than Briff’s had been. He rose, and flicked a bit of remaining blood from his blade. “They will respond quickly, I’m sure. How long until the urn is ready, Soulcatcher?”
“Longer if I’m interrupted,” Kurz snapped as he knelt and withdrew the small clay urn from his bandolier. “This must be done precisely, or we will not have enough time to get away.”
“We’ll leave you be. Briff, make sure he isn’t bothered.” I flipped on the unit-wide channel. “Everyone get down to the bottom level and into position. We’re changing the plan on the fly. Originally I wante
d to teleport a bomb onto their bridge, but the bridge is warded. That means we have to cut through the deck, just like I did on the last level. Seket will drop the bomb, and everyone else will lob grenades. We want as much collateral damage as possible. Then we’ll roll the urn into the room and bug out. We want to be back on our ship before the wights overwhelm the Inurans.”
There were nods all around, and since no one seemed to have any questions I just went with it. I moved to the deck, and placed a palm against it. Before using the ability I peered at Kurz, and figured since my helmet was on, it wouldn’t disrupt his concentration.
He carefully dribbled salt in a precise runic pattern until he’d created a perfect ritual circle around the clay urn, so deceptively innocent for a weapon of mass destruction.
I longed to ask him what the salt was for, but interrupting him could have catastrophic results. I focused instead on my task. My fingers were still splayed across the deck, and most of my people were down.
“Weaken,” I murmured, and as before, the deck began to corrode. This time I ran a chronometer in my HUD…five seconds to corrode a two-meter-by-two-meter area.
The power of it was heady, far stronger than any spell I could cast. I just hoped the price wasn’t half as large.
“I am ready, Captain.” Kurz rose from the urn, and slowly removed the cork. “You may consider the urn primed. When I kick it from the ring of salt the spirits will be able to reach it, and it will instantly transform them into wights. All we need do is knock it through the hole after the explosion.”
“Rava.” I nodded to my sister. “She’ll handle it. I want that urn planted up their tailpipe as soon as the flames die down.”
“On it, little bro.” She slung her rifle over her shoulder and took up a position behind Kurz so she could scoop the urn up when needed.
I was about to kick the deck I’d weakened, but hesitated when I saw what was happening around the urn. Two spirits, blue-white wisps, had already found it and were prowling around the edge of the salt ring trying to get inside and reach the urn. How many ghosts were on this ship? Everyone ever killed here, I guess.
