“Name’s Naz,” he said. “Naz Finch. They call me Magic Dust Fincher. Remember that name. It’s the name of the man who killed you. But I can’t rightly tell the story of how the Gulag gang outwitted two Mage Marshals until we know your names.”
Malice glanced at Klop’s head and his shocked expression. “The rookie was Mage Marshall Klop. A better man in death than you’ll ever be in life.”
“Klop?” Bannon said. “As in the sound a head makes when it bounces down my loading bay ramp? Klop-Klop-Klop!”
Naz giggled hysterically. “Nice one, boss. So we got the runt’s name. What’s yours, big guy?”
Elvira Hex walked over to Malice. “It’s loser,” she said. “Mage Marshal Loser.” She grabbed at Malice’s balls and squeezed. He felt the nanobots in his armor try to compensate for the pressure. “I’ll say this much, he’s got balls of steel.”
Malice let a sardonic smile slither across his face. “I’m the one Mage Marshal you should never piss off,” Malice said.
Bannon complained he didn’t like Malice’s blood staining his beard. He realised Malice and let him tumble to the ground.
Bannon glanced at Elvira and said, “Finish him off.”
Malice leapt up. He slapped Elvira’s hand away and stepped with lightning speed into Naz. He grabbed at the barrel of his Curse Maker and twisted it out of Naz’s hand.
He rammed the barrel up Naz’s nose and said, “Curse Maker, Execute.”
The Curse maker confirmed its command.
Naz ripped off his eye patch and revealed a black diamond eyeball. It was constructed of intense compacted Magic Dust forged in dragon flame and attracted to twisted minds. Malice knew it was capable of mind manipulation spells.
He felt his gun arm drop at Naz’s suggestion. “You don’t want to kill me.”
Malice felt himself powerless to resist the suggestion, “I don’t want to kill you.”
Naz stared at Malice. Forging a powerful, unbreakable mind-bond. “You want to end your own life.”
Malice knew his armor’s shoulder pads were infused with a rejuventation spell and with the help of trillions of nanobots would automatically rebuild. But he feared not fast enough.
He heard himself say, “I want to kill myself.”
Naz appeared to salivate as he said, “Place your Curse Maker in your mouth and pull the trigger.”
Malice felt sweat trickle down his forehead and pour into his eyes. Against his will, he felt his Curse Maker barrel slide into his mouth. His trigger finger twitched.
“Do it, Marshall,” Naz said. “Squeeze the trigger.”
Malice squeezed the trigger.
CHAPTER 3
“Warning,” the Curse Maker’s speech synthesizer announced, “suicide not permitted. Unauthorized action denied.”
Naz blinked. Malice felt the mind-bond snap. He rammed the barrel of the Curse Maker into the black diamond eye.
“Curse Maker, Quarantine web.”
The Curse Maker confirmed the order and Malice squeezed the trigger. A blue glowing spelltech bullet slammed into Naz’s face. A glittering web spell crawled over Naz’s entire body, cocooning him.
Malice turned the Curse Maker on Elvira. Her flaming sword sliced through the air and hurled the Curse Maker out of Malice’s hand.
Malice’s armor announced, “Dragonhed Defense System rebuilt. Weaponizing.”
His Dragonheads automatically turned to face Elvira and each blasted out a single jet of blue spell-flame. She parried the flames and reflected them back into Malice’s visor. He staggered back, temporarily blinded as his visor struggled to douse the flames.
“So who are you, Mage Marshall Steel Balls?” she asked and slashed her blade at him.
Seeing only shadows, he sensed the glowing outline of her flame-blade as it arced toward him. He caught the blade between the fingers of his armored gloves. Felt it burning through the armor.
“I’m many things,” Malice said and snapped the blade. “Most of all, I’m the man who’s pissed off he’s missing his daughter’s birthday.”
Elvira gasped. Malice punched her in the face, sending her reeling.
Malice’s Dragonheads fired twin quarantine webs at Elvira and ensnared her in a glowing green cocoon.
Malice’s vision began to return. He turned on Bannon. The Krittafrak spat at his visor.
“You think you’re something special? You Mage Marshals are all scared little boys and girls in tin suits. I’ll show you special,” Bannon said as the tattoos on his arms began to glow red. His arms grew a dozen feet longer and coiled around Malice like a boa constrictor, crushing his armor.
“They call me, Bannon ‘Snake Arms’ Gulag,” he said and stood so close to Malice his beard scratched Malice’s nose as a hundred Fairy-lice leapt onto Malice’s face. “Now tell me what’s so special about a Mage Marshal?”
Malice felt the carnivorous fairy-lice biting the flesh of his nose, lips and ears.
Malice fought against the lack of oxygen in his brain as his ribs crushed his lungs. He grimaced and growled, “A Mage Marshall’s no mere boy or girl. He’s an eight year old orphan facing starvation on the streets and plucked from the brink for his bloody minded will to survive. His cunning. His tenacity.
“And then for a decade that street orphan’s trained in the art and science of combat. Trained to be an expert in a thousand of the galaxy’s toughest martial arts. Then they train the recruit’s mind. Immerse him in anti-magic law. Train his observation skills. His debating skills. Create an analytical mind of white-hot razor sharp steel that slashes and burns through the quagmire of bureaucracy. Finally, they take his spirit, forged in the blast furnace of adversity and doused in civilization’s milk of destiny. Making him fit to be judge, jury and executioner.
“Who am I?”
Malice head-butted Bannon, forcing the Krittafrak to stumble backwards. His snakelike arms relaxed a little. Barely enough for Malice to breathe.
But Malice saw this as his only chance. He lunged forward and sank his teeth into Bannon’s nose. Biting through to the bone. Twisting his head from side to side like a frenzied Rottweiler feasting on a dinosaur bone.
Bannon howled. He pulled back his arms to defend himself. Giving Malice just what he needed. He spat out the tip of Bannon’s nose into the Krittafrak’s face and said, “I’m Mage Marshall Malice, you motherfucker!”
Malice drove his steel-capped boot into Bannon’s balls and felled the fat blue motherfucker to his knees. “And you’re under arrest!”
Malice ignored his visor reporting the medical damage to his body. He didn’t need it to count his broken ribs. Or the fractures in his skull. He felt the armor suit’s nanobots go to work on repairing his skin and bones as he gasped for one excruciating breath after another.
Bannon Gulag whimpered and glanced up over Malice’s shoulders. Inexplicably, he began to laugh. A winged shadow drifted over the ground.
“Mage Marshal Malice,” Bannon said, “there’s one thing you didn’t mention.”
“What?”
“You’re toast.”
Malice spun around and glanced up as a torrent of flames shot through the air and engulfed him. The beat of a dragon wing crashed into Malice and hurled him through the air. Malice somersaulted along the ground. Called out for his Curse Maker, hoping its call-fetch spell would send it to him.
He felt the Curse Maker materializing in his hand. He aimed it at the dragon, “Curse Maker, Quarantine web.”
He squeezed the trigger as the dark shadow engulfed him.
A spelltech bullet soared out of the barrel and exploded, forming a web around the dragon. It constricted around the wings and plucked the beast out of the air.
Malice waited, covering the dragon and the remaining Gulag gang with his Curse Maker until backup arrived.
He stared at Klop’s head and felt the anger rise. He limped over to the quarantine web bubble and stared at the eyes of the dragon. He despised the cunning intelligence they con
tained and aimed his Curse Maker.
A tiny buzzing news-drone flew down at him. “Get away,” he ordered. “You’re in a restricted zone. Punishable by five years’ imprisonment.”
The news-drone buzzed away.
“Your kind is an abomination,” he said to the dragon. “Curse Maker, Execute.”
The dragon opened its jaws wide and spoke, mimicking Klop’s voice perfectly. “Help me, Marshal, I’m trapped. Help me.”
Malice couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He hesitated. His gun arm lowered. “Klop?”
“Yes, Marshall, it’s me, Klop. This dragon cast a soul-web spell and trapped my spirit when I died. Let it go and it promises to free me!”
Malice fought back his bile and shook his head, “No, it’s a cheap magic trick. An illusion.”
“Please, Marshal. Help me. Let it go. Or I’ll be trapped forever.”
“If you’re Klop’s spirit, what’s my name?”
“Marshall, it’s me Klop!”
Malice brought up his gun arm.
“For the last time, what’s my name?”
“Please, Marshall. Let it go and I’ll be free.”
“My name’s Malice.” He squeezed the trigger.
A medic team and a dozen Mage Marshals arrived. As the Mage Marshal clean-up squad took care of the dragon and the Gulags, Malice asked them to send Klop’s remains back to the academy.
“You ought to get checked out, Malice,” a medic told him.
“No time,” he said and climbed back onto his Mage Master. “Got a birthday gift to buy.” He hesitated. “Can you make one of those eggs dormant,” he asked one of the techs from the Mage Marshal magic-science squad.
“Sure, why?”
“I need a favor.”
CHAPTER 4
Malice had one of the dragon eggs made dormant by a science-magic spell and delivered by a drone to his daughter’s school gates. He dispatched a party messenger robot dressed as a baby dragon in leather lederhosen to sing a happy birthday song, while performing an old English folk dance with tiny bells tied to the ends of wooden sticks. Which it used to beat its own head to the tune of Happy Birthday To You.
At least that was what the Artificial Intelligence that monitored his daughter’s preferences recommended. Malice was less certain.
The messenger was instructed to explain that the dragon egg was a donation from the Mage Marshal Service for the school’s science research. He received a reply from Principal Maglan of Blue Horizon High School, Alpha Four, declining his offer to the science department. But accepting it as a donation for their ethics classes.
This puzzled him. Using a voice command, he instructed the skinphone grafted to the back of one hand to call his wife, Kate. She wasn’t picking up.
On his Mage Master Malice zipped along Blue Horizon’s six lane internal highway. He marveled at the stars and planets beyond the ten feet thick steel-glass high-impact walls. The glass walls read his retina at high speed and charged his toll in mandatory holographic commercials speeding along the glass walls and struggling to keep up with him.
A news feed flash scrolled across the impact walls. It showed a Mage Marshall executing a newborn dragon.
That damn news-drone.
Malice figured he’d been scooped by a freelance camera-drone operated by an anonymous free-hacker rebel. Whatever the explanation, it meant trouble. Sure enough, Kate called back.
Her pretty face scowled and her intense blue eyes offered nothing but contempt as her holographic projection appeared on the handlebars of his Mage Master. In the background of the holographic video, a crowd of protesters chanted pro-life dragon slogans.
“Up with dragons, down with Marshals!”
“Let dragons live, let Marshals die!”
“Stop anti-magic barbarism!”
His favorite was, as chanted by his own daughter. “Eat shit, Marshal Malice!”
He sighed and asked, “Kate, what the hell?”
“John, I could say the same to you.”
“I was doing my job.”
“You didn’t need to kill it,” Kate said. “We all saw it. You humiliated Charlotte in front of her friends. Now she’s going to make you pay.”
“How’d they organize so fast?” he asked.
“Social media’s on steroids these days,” she said. “There’s an app for everything. I think she used ‘Protest’ or ‘Rebel-me’ or ‘Rebel-us’ or—”
“I get the point. Nomination for Father of the year award escapes me yet again.”
“That’s the least of it, John,” Kate said. “You’ve widened an already huge gulf between you and Charlotte.”
“How so?”
“I can’t believe you need to ask that, John. Can’t you see your way of thinking belongs to the days of the Magic War? In peacetime your attitude’s antiquated. The Marshals should be sponsoring programs to preserve the dragons, not eradicate them. God knows that whelp’s mother must be distraught.”
“Kate, they’re born killers. They see you as food, or worse, as slaves for—”
“See what I mean. Don’t let Charlotte catch you talking like that.”
The noise from the crowd grew louder and drowned out her voice.
“Where are you?” he asked.
She stepped aside and allowed the revolving Silver Star around a pair of dragon wings that symbolized the regional headquarters of the Mage Marshal Service to come into view.
He swallowed hard, “Oh shit! I’m on my way. Don’t get arrested.”
She turned and pointed at a drone lowering a dragon egg into the center of the crowd, which by now was some ten thousand strong. People gathered around the egg and began to chant, “Praise the life within, don’t kill it.”
Malice accelerated to maximize speed. He arrived a few minutes later and forced the angry crowd to part for his Mage Master. Chicken eggs smashed on his windshield. One caught his visor and dribbled down it in a green slime.
Charlotte had climbed onto the top of the ten-foot high egg and was chanting a slogan, “Life to dragons, death to Marshals.” And, “Help dragons hide, not genocide!”
She got the crowd chanting along. They held aloft holographic banners that looped a clip from the news feed. A close up of Malice standing over the dead whelp and saying, “My name is Malice!”
Star Marshal Scar’s holograph appeared on his console. Her one good eye stared through him, “Malice, what the fuck? Sort this!”
Her holograph dissolved.
This was all he needed to cap the perfect day. “Great, I get to arrest my daughter on her birthday!”
An urgent Mage Marshal Service incoming call appeared on his airbike’s console screen. “All Mage Marshals be on the lookout for a full grown adult female dragon. Thought to be hunting for her unborn young.”
A huge winged shadow glided over the heads of the crowd. Inducing a cacophony of screams like rows of tumbling dominoes.
Malice twisted in his saddle and glanced up at a red winged adult with a wingspan of two hundred feet.
“Crap!”
The dragon swooped on the egg.
Malice wanted to fire both Mage Seeker missiles, but was terrified the explosion would kill half the crowd, Charlotte, and Kate.
He aimed his Curse Maker at the dragon, “Curse Maker, Quarantine web, full spread.”
The Curse Maker confirmed the selection and Malice squeezed the trigger.
A blue glowing spelltech bullet blasted out of the barrel and slammed into the dragon. A vast web rapidly ensnared the beast’s wings.
The dragon raged against the web-spell. Kate climbed over protesters’ heads and reached out for Charlotte just as the dragon engulfed them.
The dragon opened its jaws wide. Sparks ignited in its mouth and around its nostrils. It unleashed a hurricane of fire over the web.
Torching the crowd below.
Malice felt the flames incinerate his armor. A dousing spell smothered the flames on his body.
The d
ragon settled on the egg, clutching it in its vast claws and freeing its wings, scattering the burning fragments of webbing, it soared into the air.
Malice accelerated his Mage Master into the air. He chased after the dragon, propelled by Charlotte and Kate’s screams.
They hung from the dragon’s jaws, and Malice realized the adult dragon was keeping them alive to provide its offspring with fresh meat.
The dragon soared and seemed to be heading for a loading bay.
The bay was two miles high and wide. The exit shield was a buckled and broken mess dripping with dragon plasma fire. Bodies were strewn all along the flight path. Bouncing up and down as the artificial gravity struggled to cope with the breech.
At the rate of flight, in less than a minute, his wife and daughter would pass through the launch doors and be in open space. For now, it seemed, the dragon was protecting them with a dragon-magic air bubble.
But for how long?
He knew he couldn’t follow them out into open space where there was no air to breathe and the temperature would freeze a human in seconds. They were five hundred meters from the exit. He had one chance to save them or watch them die.
He aimed his Curse Maker at Kate and Charlotte, “Curse Maker, Survival bubble.”
A blue spelltech bullet blasted out of the barrel and exploded. It showered his wife and daughter with sparkling tentacles that smothered them and sealed them in a bubble.”
The dragon continued its flight. Two hundred meters from the exit.
Malice took the biggest risk of his life. “Mage Master, Armageddon mode, target that motherfucking dragon.”
His Mage Master announced, “Armageddon mode kill rate one half mile. Suicide not authorized.”
The dragon continued its flight. A hundred meters from the icy death of space.
Malice dialed Star Marshal Scar. Her holographic image appeared on his airbike’s console.
She glared at him, “Malice, why have I got an Armageddon missile request on my desk?”
He pointed at his wife and daughter as the dragon continued its flight. Fifty meters from the exit.
Scar glanced at the dragon. “Holy magic shit, Malice, you have got to be joking.”
Mage Marshal (Star Coven Book 2) Page 2
