Hard Magic gc-1

by Larry Correia

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because UBF made a fortune selling the design to the Imperium," the accountant replied. "That's one of ours. I'm afraid your grandfather didn't really worry about the embargo."

  "Weapons?" Lance asked hesitantly.

  "Unknown. We just provided the basic hull, and they worked out the rest, but probably at least equivalent to a Great War battleship, and it has a hold that can fit, depending on the size, a whole bunch of planes."

  Lance scratched his beard. "Define bunch, Mr. Chandler."

  "Forty or fifty."

  "That nice pirate captain has two," Faye pointed out. "Now, I'm not an expert or nothing, but that doesn't seem quite fair."

  Francis bit his lip. If it had still just been a rescue mission, he would have called it off. It didn't make sense to trade a bunch of lives for one, even though they'd probably have to knock Dan out first and tie him down, but this was too big now. The Geo-Tel was on that thing. "Call the Marauder. Warn them and get their ETA. The battleship won't be able to shoot at us if we're tethered to the Tokugawa."

  Lance looked at him slyly. "You're sounding more like a captain already, kid. You want the hat back?"

  "Not after it's been on your smelly head." FS Bulldog Marauder Captain Southunder put the mirror down. The news had been grim. In twenty minutes they'd break the edge of the storm. Sullivan held on to the wall of the stateroom as the dirigible was slammed back and forth by the wind. The creaking and flapping was making him nervous. It would really not be fair if they crashed before they even had the chance to get shot down.

  "Two ships, which also means that the crew of the flagship will be reinforced with more men…" Southunder said slowly.

  Not to mention Madi, who was probably capable of killing all of them by himself, but he didn't bring that up. Dealing with his brother was personal business. "What are you going to tell your crew?" Sullivan asked. They were pirates after all, and mutiny was a distinct possibility.

  Southunder smiled. "Why, the truth, of course." He stood and walked from the room, not seeming to notice that the entire place was swaying violently back and forth and rattling like they were about to fly apart at any second. "Remember how I was talking about loyalty? Let's see if I was right, because I've already been wrong far too much for one day."

  "I hope you ain't on a roll…" Sullivan muttered as he followed.

  Most of the Marauder's crew had assembled in the little galley. They were a motley bunch of toughs, armed to the teeth, outside the law, perfectly adjusted to killing, and they were about to be asked to go on a deadly mission to help a bunch of folks who not only didn't care about them, didn't even know they existed.

  Southunder stopped at the front of the room. Sullivan was expecting some big display, maybe a pep talk, like the kind General Roosevelt had given them before Second Somme. Fat lot of good that had done. Instead, Southunder sat on the end of a table and folded his arms. He didn't even raise his voice. "Well, boys, I've got bad news. We've got two Imperium ships. Both of them are bigger and have more guns than we do, with probably ten times the crew. There's probably going to be several Iron Guards on board, not to mention ninjas, and who knows what other kinds of terrible blood magic."

  "What's the bad news?" Barns asked jokingly.

  "One of the ships is a Kaga, which means that it is ringed in 37mm long-range cannons and a main ten inch gun. Rumor is that they might even have a Peace Ray. If that don't get us, the host of biplanes piloted by fanatics probably will. I won't lie. Our odds of survival are about none." He was completely honest.

  "So we're running?" a muscular Polynesian with tattoos all over his face asked.

  "No, Mr. Paonga, we're not. Because aboard one of those ships is a superweapon that is about to destroy a quarter of the United States, and once it falls, then the rest of the world will surrender. The Chairman will rule the world and everyone like us will be extinct within a year, tops. This job isn't about the loot, crew, I'm asking you to do this because it's the right thing to do. Stick with me and I'll do everything I can to make sure we make it through."

  "This is madness," said the badly scarred Ken.

  "I'd take volunteers, but we're either all in, or all out. There's no time to drop anyone off. We either fight together, or we run, and if we run, you'll have to kill me first. I can't promise we'll live, but we'll die free men, and our great-grandkids will tell stories about the bravery that goes on tonight."

  There was a tiny voice from the back of the room. "I not have babies yet. Like to have babies someday." Lady Origami squeezed between the burly men. She had neatly folded a piece of rice paper into an intricate shape. She tossed it into the air, and the miniature blimp almost seemed like it would fly, but it burst into magical flame and was consumed instantly. "But only babies I make be from Imperium rapers if Chairman win. I fight with captain."

  "I didn't join to prove I'm brave. I joined to make money…" Parker said, but then he smiled. "And to kill some Imperium. I'm in."

  One by one the pirates added their assent. The last to speak was the young American, Barns. "Do I get to take a Raptor out and die in a glorious dogfight?"

  "Yes," Southunder answered.

  Barns grinned. "I wouldn't miss it."

  Southunder nodded calmly. "Let's go murder some Imperium dogs then. Every. Last. One."

  "EVERY LAST ONE!" All the pirates shouted together.

  Sullivan followed Southunder back into the hall, figuring he could learn a thing or two about leadership from this man. "You didn't tell them that the Chairman himself would be on board…"

  Southunder gave him a sad little smile. "They're brave, Sullivan, not suicidal."

  Chapter 24

  The Imperials have a war cry. Tennoheika Banzai. It means something about the emperor ruling for ten thousand years. The emperor is a puppet, but the soldiers meant it when they bellowed it at the tops of their lungs. Their Actives would often charge numerically superior, entrenched positions, with complete disregard for their own lives, confident in the rightness of their cause. Banzai!

  – Captain John J. Pershing

  Army Observation Report on the taking of Vladivostok, 1905 San Francisco, California John Moses Browning was sitting up in bed. His chest still ached from the gunshot that had left him crushed and bruised, but he could certainly call his new, lightweight, woven-armor vest a success. He was getting far too old for this business. The UBF company Healer had stuck with his parting promise to Francis and had Mended him, but not nearly all the way, just enough to keep him from dying, the rotten weasel.

  He had listened to Southunder's message along with most of the Grimnoir in the world. He knew Southunder well, so he knew that the man spoke the truth. Many thought that he had been run out of the Society because of his rashness in dealing with the enemy, but Browning suspected it had been more because of his outspoken loyalty to Pershing's cause to take the fight to the enemy, rather than to skulk in the shadows.

  Something about that magic conversation had left him unsettled. He'd had a notebook in his pocket, as was his custom. It had been retained with his other things at the hospital, and he had sent for it. When the nurse had brought it, he had turned immediately to the last few pages, where he had carefully copied down the mad scribblings that Jake Sullivan had drawn on the mansion walls after his brief death.

  He had never seen the Power represented as a single cohesive entity before, yet it made sense. His mind had always been attuned to making pieces fit together in perfect harmony, and this was no different. Given sufficient time, he had no doubt that a map could be made of where every single individual magical ability originated, and if that corresponding geometric shape could be drawn correctly, then those energies could be harnessed. It was exciting, but it would have to be a younger man's work, because he had no doubt that it would take a lifetime, and he'd been living on borrowed time for too long now.

  But it was for another reason he'd turned to Sullivan's map. It was the interrelatio
n of the various Powers. He'd long held suspicions that a sufficiently powerful Active could blur the borders between their own abilities into those areas that traditionally belonged to others. Sullivan was a perfect example of this, having moved beyond just altering gravity into the related fields of mass and density. If this new hypothesis was correct, then it was possible that with sufficient knowledge, any Active could do this, which was extremely exciting, but once again, not his purpose.

  The Power's complete body seemed to be two overlaid triangles. Sullivan's drawing was two-dimensional, so that was all Browning had to work with. The bottom triangle was how the Power interacted with the physical world, the top triangle was how it interacted with the living world. The two combined into one great mass in the middle. Overall, it looked a bit like the Star of David. The physical triangle's three points were gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear forces; the governing laws of the universe. Each of the Active magics that influenced physical realities was connected to coordinates within those areas.

  It was the top triangle that had been more mysterious to Sullivan. This one appeared to interact with life, with three points ending in the biological, the mental, and then into one that Sullivan had left as a question mark, but that Browning's personal belief system logically attributed to the spiritual.

  The coordinates in the middle were where Actives that seemed to overlap the two areas came from. Healers were such, near the middle, and Sullivan had gotten a good look at the geometric structures there that Browning had long erroneously thought of as stylized archaic letters. Healers operated in the realm between physical and electromagnetic. The other areas around that had also been mapped into their coherent pieces by Sullivan's fevered hand, and the close cousin to the Healer was the Pale Horse. They inhabited bordering areas. Both bent the laws of biology and matter to their will. One for good, one for ill.

  And if one were to reason that a sufficiently strong Active, such as a Heavy, could wander into fields such as mass and density, then why couldn't he assume that a sufficiently strong Healer could wander slightly into the area of causing disease? Or even more important to the particular question haunting him… Could a sufficiently strong Pale Horse drift across the boundary and masquerade as a weak Healer?

  They had never found the man that had cursed Pershing. Oh, how they'd looked. They'd torn the world apart, overturning every rock but they'd never found the Imperium villain. But what if they'd been looking in the wrong place all along?

  Browning summoned a nurse and sent for a runner. Even under a different identity, he was still a man of great means and resources. When the errand boy arrived he requested for him to travel to a bank to a specific safety deposit box to retrieve something for him.

  The boy returned an hour later and gave Browning a wrapped package. He tipped the boy generously, sent him on his way, and then removed the Colt M1911 from the box. He loaded it with a seven-round magazine of 230-grain,.45-caliber ammunition, all of which had been designed by his hand, put the safety on, and placed the gun beneath his pillow. Then he activated his ring and called for the nearest Grimnoir to come to his aid.

  There were only two other Grimnoir in the area, both oath-bound to respond, and whichever one came, they had some explaining to do. UBF Tempest Francis was so nervous he could barely think. By hugging the clouds, they had gotten within half a mile of the Tokugawa. Both vessels headed due west, but the Tempest was traveling twice as fast. They would be attacking from above. The Marauder would be coming in from the left. Was that port? Whatever, south, he corrected himself. He had to try to remember to think in nautical terms. The other battleship was half a mile ahead of the flagship and they were trying to orient their approach so that the flagship blocked its shot.

  "We've been spotted!" the driver shouted. "Searchlights." And as soon as he said that, a perfect white beam flashed across the window bubble, highlighting the crew's taut faces and clenched teeth.

  "Weatherman, draw in the storm. Helm, full speed ahead!" Lance shouted. "Bounce this son of a bitch off their top deck if you have to, but get us down there now!"

  Sparks rose from the still distant Tokugawa and Francis realized in an abstract way that those were giant tracer bullets heading right for them.

  Faye was standing off to the side, shotgun over her shoulder, scowling, waiting for something. "You got it, Faye?" Lance asked quickly.

  "Not yet… Almost…" She had her eyes closed.

  "Wait, what are you doing?" Francis asked. "You're not going to-"

  "Got it." Faye opened her grey eyes and disappeared.

  By herself? "Damn it, Lance!" Francis shouted.

  The front window shattered in a spray of glass. Sparks shot from the radio console as the tracers screamed past his head. Bullets puckered through the walls and the driver screamed in pain and lurched away from the controls. Foam from the torn seat blew around in the new wind like a snow flurry. Lance immediately shrugged into the chair and kept them on course. "It ain't like she's any safer here, kid," he said. Imperium flagship Tokugawa Faye hit the deck ten feet from the gunners. They were so focused on the blimp heading their way that they never even saw her coming. She tucked the shotgun butt tight into her shoulder pocket and welded her cheek to the stock just like she'd been taught. She lined the gold bead at the end of the barrel with the soldier's head and pulled the trigger.

  The shotgun really kicked hard, and the muzzle rose, but she still saw his head pretty much pop open all over the place. The Browning shotgun was nice because you didn't have to do anything but pull the trigger and it just kept cycling itself. She brought the gun back down and shot the other one in the back.

  These men might look different, but they were exactly the same as the ones that had killed her Grandpa, and killing them made her feel good. Justified. There was another big cannon throwing those red sparkle bullets at her friends, so she Traveled over there to give those bad men a piece of her mind. She did that by landing six feet away from the two gunners, blasting them both to bits, and then turning and nailing a third one in the chest who was running up with another can of ammo. He hit the railing, flipped over the side, and a belt of cartridges spilled and rolled out nearly to her feet.

  "Serves you right, jerks!" She shouted at no one in particular. That was it for the guns on the rear end, but there were more popping away on the other side, probably at the nice old pirate's ship, so she pulled shells out of her bandoleer and started shoving them in the shotgun's magazine tube.

  The Tempest screamed by overhead, a giant grey mass that looked sort of like two footballs stuck together with wings. She craned her neck and saw that the loading ramp was already open and Heinrich was hanging out the back end firing a loud gun that seemed to shoot way too fast. She waved, checked her head map, and picked a spot right in the middle of the next gun emplacement.

  Faye Traveled, landed between three surprised young men in black uniforms, realized one was wearing one of those grenade things on his belt, so she reached down, yanked the pin out of it like Mr. Browning had shown her to arm the explosive and Traveled. She reappeared, landing in a crouch, balanced effortlessly on a railing fifty feet away as the soldier panicked, trying to get the grenade out of his pouch, but then it blew up, and bits of sharp wire blew him in half and maimed his two buddies. That gun was quiet and she'd saved ammo! I'm pretty good at this.

  When they had just been here to rescue Jane, her job had been simple-find her friend and get her out-but with the big evil superbomb about to go off, her mission had changed. It was time to cause some trouble. She liked this new mission a lot more. FS Bulldog Marauder "So is this the craziest thing you've ever done, or what?" Barns asked from the pilot's seat of the streamlined Curtiss biplane.

  Sullivan was balanced, holding onto the struts, leather straps anchoring him to the plane so he wouldn't be torn off as soon as they dropped into the open sky. He thought about the question. He had done many things that would be considered crazy. Jumping from a moving airplane onto
a moving dirigible thousands of feet above the ocean was probably near the top of the list.

  The only thing under his boots was a narrow aluminum wing. Under that was nothing but darkness and lightning that seemed to go forever. When Sullivan didn't answer, Barns just kept shouting. It was more like he read his lips over the thunder of the already moving propeller. "Don't worry. Barns is my nickname, short for Barnstormer. Wesley 'Barnstormer' Dalton, best damn pilot you've ever seen."

  I really hope so, Sullivan thought.

  Barns revved the engine, and the whole plane protested against the hooks holding it suspended to the dirigible. Now Sullivan was totally deaf. Barns pulled a tight black mask down to cover his face, and then put on a pair of round aviator's goggles, making him look alien. Since Sullivan was dressed in the exact same manner, with a big black coat, mask, and goggles, they probably matched. Barns stuck out his fist and put his thumb up. Sullivan figured that the thumbs-up was some sort of aviation symbol, but from his reading of classical history, he couldn't remember if that meant the gladiator lived or died. He'd find out in a minute.

  Southunder was driving the Marauder right at the Tokugawa, trying to maneuver in a way that kept the more lightly armed flagship between them and the dreadnought. The Tempest was hitting the topside, so their pom-pom guns were pounding shell after one-pound explosive shell at the side engines. The more they could damage its mobility, the easier it would be to keep using it as a shield. Southunder was using his Power to drag the storm with them, wreaths of lightning crackled around their ship, and the only reason they hadn't exploded yet was Lady Origami.

  Sullivan wasn't sure if he was going to be more scared out there riding on the wing of a biplane, or in here. A red light in the bay above them turned green, and Barns reached up and pulled a lever. The steel claw released and they dropped, screaming, into the night. He closed his eyes tight as his stomach fell through his pelvis and decided that he had his answer. This was definitely worse.