Worldship Files: Cityships

by Erik Schubach

  The silver traces of magic glowed brightly around the entire mammoth blast sphere, highlighting runes and spellwork so fine it could only have been made by the Queens of Fairie. Then the huge door rumbled open.

  I looked inside, then back at the Megolith-Suit. I smirked and climbed up the suit and slid in. As soon as I settled in, the cockpit reconfigured for my size as neural contacts connected all around my armor.

  I clenched my fist and the suit mimicked the motion. I just thought about it and the damaged weapon jettisoned. The up-time read only five minutes. The systems had just come back online, likely after an EMP shutdown. The auxiliary weapons systems were down, probably fried when the main weapon had. I stood and felt ten feet tall and powerful.

  I slammed a giant metal fist into the other metal hand and said, “I can work with this.” With a thought, the cockpit sealed. And I started moving forward on thrusters. It was as simple as thinking about it. I smirked, Titania's panties, I was piloting a Megolith!

  We started forward as three men stepped out from behind one of the nearby vehicles, their heavy projectile weapons starting to spin up. Graz growled out in a cold tone, “Go, Knith, stop Richter, I got these steaming piles of fairy droppings.”

  I just inclined my head as the suit did the same, then the thrusters fired, moving me swiftly inside toward the next blast door as the screams started. I didn't look back.

  Chapter 14 – Birthright

  Door after door I had to open the cockpit access door to play a note on the harmonica. And I finally reached the inner blast door and inhaled a shaky breath, wincing from the sharp ache from my ribs that it caused. This was it. I played the note, then sealed the cockpit, clenching my fists in anticipation.

  I flew to the relative ceiling, using the door for cover for as long as I could, and when it was halfway open, I had the Megolith-Suit swoop down and through the opening, its chest sparking on the deck plates. The shocked looks on the Outliers faces that were standing in front of the blast door, with the barrels of their heavy guns already spinning, told me that a Megolith was the last thing they expected to come through the doors.

  That second of surprise was all I needed as I swung both arms forward, the suit's arms taking up a third of the entire opening as they slammed into the two men, shattering their weapons and sending the two men flying through the space to hit a console with a wet sounding impact followed by a spray of sparks.

  “Hello, boys.”

  Mother was feeding me multiple views of the room from every angle, and bile rose in my throat. Everyone in Flight control had been slaughtered. From the guards at the door to the central core and K'Infinitum, to the Elvish Captain of the Leviathan, Prince J'Verris. The bastards had actually beheaded him.

  I had to look away.

  An oddly detached part of my mind was noting how Graz would be the first to point out that I had to work on my smack talk as half the Outliers remaining in the room, swinging weapons toward me were female.

  I realized that I had somehow moved past rage to a place that scared the living hells out of me. I was to a point of calm and clarity. My mind pushed all emotion aside, knowing it could get me killed if I let it in. What was left? Well, what was left was a calculated killing machine that the Brigade has forged me into over the last two and a half decades. And I was about to bring the pain.

  Richter, who was dragging a bloodied and beaten Minotaur in Enforcer armor through the air toward the inner door, was almost frothing at the mouth as he was screaming, “You! I should have killed you on the Underhill! Kill her now!” He was going to use the Megolith pilot to open the door.

  My answer was not in words as the massive battle suit's feet magnetized and the room shook as I contacted the deck then charged the group who moved between me and him. Projectiles were ricocheting off the armor, and one heavier single-shot weapon that looked to almost knocking the woman holding it tore through the armor of the left arm. I realized it was a grenade launcher and she was readying another.

  I leapt and cleared most of the group and just as I passed over her, fired the maneuvering thrusts in the shoulders of the suit and came down on her... well I came down on her like a two-ton Megolith, cutting her scream short as she realized this was her end.

  I spun on the others. Mother had plots for nine hostiles in my vision so I could track them all as they circled me. I lashed out and sent a man slamming into the bulkhead. A red alarm icon bloomed and I spun to see a man raising a tube to his shoulder and before I could react, he pulled the trigger and a small rocket came shooting directly at my chest. I spun away, too late and then my ears were ringing as an explosion tore armor from the suit, setting off multiple systems failure alarms and damage reports scrolling in my head up.

  So that's what they had used that destroyed a canon and left all that chemical explosive residue. I grabbed what looked to be the wreckage of a chair beside me and threw it at the man as he was sliding another of those rockets into the tube. It hit him hard, one of the mangled chair legs tearing through his vac-suit and his gut like it were tissue paper. He gasped as he spun toward the main displays thirty feet above the chair leg sticking out his back.

  I was about to leap up to avoid the incoming fire when Richter hissed out, “EMP grenades you idiots! She'll be defenseless! They all rely on their superior tech, but without it they are nothing.”

  Three Outliers released their weapons to let them drift off and pulled those Titania be damned grenades out. My mind shot back to the image of the other Megolith pilot, how they had trapped him in his suit and just chewed a hole through the suit and him with their projectile weapons.

  I shouted, “Mother!” And the access door jettisoned and the thrusters fired just as the three grenades went off. I had closed my eyes so the flash didn't temporarily blind me. Then I yanked myself through the opening down toward the deck, in my now unpowered armor.

  They had gone overboard with the EMPs since the entire Flight Control Center was powered down. Only the emergency Fae-Light fixtures illuminated the space. Which meant Mother couldn't help me anymore until the systems rebooted, I was on my own.

  Just before I hit the deck, I reached my boots and grabbed the manual bolts and shoved down, moving the magnets down. Then I hit the deck and the mag-boots engaged. Thank the foresight of the engineers to install the emergency manual controls in Brigade issue SAs just in case of suit failure. Though I'm sure they never anticipated having to use them this way after an EMP attack.

  My legs took the impact since my servos were inoperable and I had to take a knee and slap the deck with my hands to absorb some of the kinetic energy. Then I looked up and smiled cruelly as they all just looked at me as I said through gritted teeth, “I don't need any tech to take out the trash.”

  Then I stood from my improvised three-point stance and charged them as Righter roared, “Shoot her!”

  All the years of sparring with Enforcers of stronger and faster races have honed my own reflexes, and those same years of hand to hand combat drills had honed my skills and made them second nature, almost reflexive. I unleashed the weapon that the Brigade forged me into as muscle memory kicked in, in that odd calm I was still feeling.

  They were spraying their weapons at me, but they weren't used to combat in a zero-G environment as the recoil from their weapons was pushing them back, causing them to overcompensate, compromising their aim.

  My hands went to my hips and I drew my twin batons and snicked them out to full length as I closed the distance. A few projectiles struck, reminding me of my own injuries as I winced, but I didn't have time to let them slow me down.

  I was spinning and kicking and striking out with the batons. Disarming first and disabling second. One woman was grabbing the discarded grenade launcher as I clotheslined a man and leapt at the bulkhead behind him then pushed off with all my better than normal Human strength and spun toward the woman, my fist cocked.

  Just before she slammed a grenade into the weapo
n, I reached her, and I used all my momentum behind the best right hook I had ever thrown. That detached portion of my mind admired the woman's jaw distending then snapping before she was sent tumbling through the space. Then it noted that was about a nine-point five, half a point taken off for lack of witty taunt as the blow landed.

  I dragged my toes until the magnets pulled me back to the deck, and I turned just to blurt out, “Argh,” as something blew through the muscles of my left leg. A lucky shot had found a seam in the armor. Those joints were armored too when the suit was powered, but in power failure mode, this armor was like standard-issue Scatter Armor with articulation points, meaning seams and weak points.

  I glanced around and realized that there was only one Outlier standing beside Richter. He was grinning as I dragged my leg behind me, blood globules spreading in the air. I prepared to dive aside when he pulled the trigger again... but nothing happened. He stared down at the weapon in horror, then grabbed it like a club and started for me.

  He reached me, and faster than he could react as he hauled back to swing, I slammed both fists forward as I dove at him. They connected with his throat. I could hear and feel the cartilage crush under the assault, and I drifted past him as his eyes bulged wide while he grasped his throat, trying to draw in a breath that would never come.

  Then I reached the bulkhead and reached out an arm as I panted and cushioned my arrival. I put my boots on the deck again and inhaled, pushing the pain away, and with it that cold detachment. It terrified me that I had such a cold, detached, and efficient killer living inside of me.

  Then I turned slowly and glared at Richter. He and his Outlier fanatical doctrine had done that to me. They had made me deal out death again. Something I hoped I would never do again. And all that rage, and fear, and revulsion at what they had done fueled me. I bared my teeth at Richter where he stood at the door with the Minotaur as the systems all around us started blinking back to life.

  “Let... him... go... Richter.”

  He shook his head and shoved a small version of the projectile weapons against the Minotaur's neck. “No. My Birthright is just beyond this door. Our cause, the Outlier's cause has come to fruition. We will claim control of the Worldship, of the people of the Worldship and claim what is rightfully ours. We will purge Humanity of the cockroaches that have enslaved them and we will take their place in power for all time. For Humankind!”

  I sighed heavily as I kept walking toward him, dragging my leg, feeling a little faint from loss of blood, but I knew it would pass. My natural accelerated healing has probably already stemmed the bleeding. “I am so sick and tired of crazy people and their supervillain monologues like we are living in some bad mystery wave. This ends one of two ways, Richter, either you surrender your weapon and be bound by law, or you die here, a traitor to all the peoples of the world and the Cityships.”

  He shook his head and yelled at the Minotaur, “Place your hand on the access panel... NOW!”

  He looked at the man with hate and rage, and the big enforcer said to me, his eyes boring into the crazy man, “Take him down, Shade. I won't let him use me to aid in his ethnic cleansing.”

  I started to yell, “No!” at him, but his hand had already shot up, encasing both Richter's hand and the gun and he squeezed hard, causing Richter's finger to pull the trigger... and the Minotaur went limp. I whispered in shock, “No...” He sacrificed himself, but he didn't need to. Richter was beaten.

  I grabbed my MMGs, but they were still dead so I tossed them aside. Then I reached out to a floating body of an Outlier and grabbed the projectile weapon in its hands and swung it toward the Captain before he could gather his wits and aim his at me.

  My finger had already pulled the trigger back halfway when, in an explosion of heated magic tinged with an icy fire, Mab and Titania appeared on either side of the man, grabbing his arms. Mab said to me, “Don't, child,” as she wrenched over a hand, snapping Richter's arm like a twig, his weapon floating away as he screamed in agony.

  For a long eternity, my finger held, instinct telling me that just a hair's breadth more and the weapon would fire. He was in my sights. Titania looked at me too, her eyes filled with sorrow for... me? And I dropped the weapon, watching it float away from me, and then I took a deep breath.

  The man started to struggle again and was about to go into another tirade, but Mab just looked at him and an ice gag covered his mouth.

  They turned away from me and Titania reached out and placed her hand on the access pad. The ribbons of magic shout out across the door again and it started to rise. I asked dumbly as I started limping forward, my voice hoarse, “What are you doing?”

  Mab smiled back at me, chilling me to the bone as she said sweetly, her mannerism like a snake poised to strike, “We're giving him what he wants. The worm wants the Ka'Infinitum? Then the Ka'Infinitum he shall have.”

  With that, the man calmed and madness raged in his wide eyes, a contrast to the calm and reasonable man we had met upon arriving at the Redemption. He was smiling maniacally now, did he think he had won or something? The man didn't realize just how cruel the Queens could be. There's a reason there are so many cautionary tales about them. There were no happy stories about anyone meeting one of the Ladies of the divided courts.

  They pulled the man through the door. I dragged myself after them, and absently kissed my hand and placed it on the sleek console in Mother's data core as we passed. Then they opened the chamber housing the artifacts of power.

  I paused at the door, bathed in light when they dragged the man inside. I couldn't face the light of creation itself again. It had almost undone me the first time, and I still couldn't comprehend exactly what I had seen and experienced in that room. A sense of self-preservation or more specifically preservation of self wouldn't allow me to proceed any farther. The memory alone had tears flowing down my cheeks.

  They released the man as he stared gape jawed into the light of the artifacts, seeing this small portion of the light of creation, of magic itself. He fell to his knees in whatever false gravity the Queens were providing, and he whispered, “My birthright. I have won...”

  And I could sense what was left of his mind cracking at what he was seeing as he just started to laugh, softly as his skin started flaking away, drifting like ash in a breeze with the waves of magic flowing from the Ka'Infinitum. Then he was just gone before his eerie, disembodied laughter finished echoing off the walls.

  And I felt... nothing.

  Turning, I started back toward the Flight Center as I felt my armor finally start to power up its systems again. I hissed in pain as it clamped down on my leg and synth-skin patches were applied to my wounds. The red ready lights of Mother's cameras started to glow on the walls.

  I hesitated, not looking back when Mab called out to me, “What? No admonition, Knith Shade of Beta-Stack C? No threats of binding us by law?”

  Still not looking back, I said in a flat tone, “The man was dead the moment the Leviathan made contact with the Cityships. You were just the tools he used to commit his suicide.”

  I was met with a few heartbeats of silence, then I felt the surge of Summer magic as they teleported away.

  Staggering, I made my way back into Flight Control and sat against the wall and slid down since my adrenaline had finally crashed on me and I didn't have the strength to move anymore. Mother was in my ear again, causing me to smile, realizing how much I missed her in my head the past few minutes.

  She was babbling things about injuries, help coming, and that the world was secure. I just patted the wall, staring off at nothing as I waited. I was so finished with this day.

  Epilogue

  Delphine checked my armor and I her Mithreal as the Tug started firing reaction thrusters to slow us as we arrived at the Cityships.

  She and Captain Yar's frozen, but still very much alive, bodies had been retrieved from space at the far range of Ready Squadron, they had drifted past the world when the battle be
gan and Mother had them painted with lidar the entire time. And once the Worldship was secure, Myra herself went out on retrieval. It had almost been too late. As it was she had run out of fuel on the way back, and other fighters from the squadron met her halfway to transfer fuel.

  So of course, after they thawed, Delphine and Yar had been the first to volunteer for the liberation boarding party fleet we were sending to the Cityships to root out the rest of the Outlier mutineers.

  I looked out the front windows at the frightening sight of the one hundred and fifty-three ready squadron fighters escorting our ten maintenance tugs on the short journey to the Cityships that were just twenty-four hours from falling into formation beside the Leviathan. We were going to flush out the mutineers and secure the Cityships and their people before any other attacks could be made against the world.

  It still surprised me how quickly Operation Liberation had come together, even while legions of repair crews swarmed the Worldship, and standby crews were assigned to Flight Control. When Rory finally let me out of bed the morning after the battle, all critical systems that were damaged during the attack were operational. The only thing that was going to take weeks or more was all the hull damage and the damage to the sky structure.

  Never in the history of the world had the mammoth isolation gates been extended from the lower bulkhead levels to the overhead sky structure because of a breach in the transparent armor panels in the open space of a ring.

  But Alpha and Beta's rings were the hardest hit, directly over the Summer and Winter palaces. They knew exactly what they were doing, but the biggest failing of the Outliers was that they didn't understand magic, as they have never witnessed it.

  And when Rory brought me home, bypassing Med-Tech, we had to go through some blast seal doors into the section of the ring that should have undergone full decompression, but hadn't. The portion of the honeycomb sky superstructure that had been torn away by the industrial mining lasers, was covered in coherent magic, blue shimmering ice stretching for hundreds of yards.