“There’s no time for anything else.”
Scar swallowed hard. “If you survive this, I’ll bust your balls so bad you’ll wish that dragon had killed you too.”
The dragon reached the exit.
“Is that a yes?” Malice shouted.
“Armageddon approved!”
Two rockets blasted out of the Hell Burner canons and hit the belly of the beast and everything turned black.
CHAPTER 5
Mage Marshal Malice woke up in a hospital bay. He forced his fuzzy eyesight to focus on the tall, slim woman wearing an eye patch and an expression that seemed like she wanted to kill him.
“Star Marshal?” he said, surprised at how weak his voice sounded.
“Do you have any idea the cost of the damage you inflicted?”
He sat up, “Would that be the damage you authorized?”
“Remember what I told you?”
“Just tell me my wife and child are OK?”
“Oh they’re fine,” Scar said. “Thanks to your quick thinking and reckless abandon.”
He glanced around, “Where are they?”
“Someplace you’ll never see them.”
“What the fuck?”
“You mean to say ‘What the fuck Star Marshall Scar’, don’t you?”
“I guess my profanity spell virus flared up.” He swallowed hard. “Am I under arrest?”
“Worse.”
He glanced at his blistered hands. His head felt like a lead balloon. His chin hit his chest. “I realize I put you in an impossible position, Star Marshal. If I’m going to prison I’d like the record to show given a chance to change everything I did, I’d do it all again. Exactly the same.”
Star Marshal Scar snorted. “That’s why I have to make a public example of you, Malice. You understand that the news channels, hell, the entire media is calling for your head? Everyone from the loony love-a-dragon mob, to the hard-liner dragon-genocide gang. And you handed your head on a silver platter to them. What in hell made you want to donate a dragon egg to a high school? Once the egg was out in the open, didn’t you think its mother would track the Magic Dust scent?”
He shrugged. “I assumed the dragon eggs were stolen from the Nec Void under the nose of the Wydra. After all, where else would they get eggs from? I never for a moment imagined an adult dragon would be able to escape the Void. Less that it could travel all the way here.”
“The implications are worrying,” Scar agreed. “Nonetheless, the temptation to give the people your head is overwhelming.”
He swallowed. “May I be permitted a final goodbye to Kate and Charlotte?”
“No, you may not.”
He felt his hands ball into fists. “For fuck’s sake, does my service record mean nothing to you, Scar?”
“It means everything,” she said. “That’s why I’m making a special example of you. Sentencing you to the worse thing you can imagine.”
“Death by magic torture?”
“What?” Scar let a sardonic smile escape across her face. “For you, far worse. I’m sentencing you to the position of Acting Chief Marshal at Sheriff Town Academy.”
“You want me to be a teacher?”
“I want you to teach every orphan we recruit off the streets of Earth how to find the razor edge balance between justice and ethics. Knowledge you seem sorely lacking in, Malice.”
He nodded with reluctant acceptance. Not as a man grateful for his life to be spared. But as a man offered purgatory for his soul.
“In the heat of the moment, it’s an impossible ask,” Malice said. “There is no right decision. Only the one way I can live with.”
“And that,” Scar said, “is what you shall teach your recruits. One by one. In person. Face to face. The hard way. That way you’ll remember every face, every name of every recruit you send out across the galaxy to die. Just like I do.”
He nodded. “Book me a flight for two.”
“Two?”
“I’ve a recruit to take home,” he said. “A rookie. Name of Klop.”
As Scar took her leave, she said, “Maybe there is hope for you yet, Malice.”
THE END
Tech Warlock (Star Coven Book 3)
All Star Coven books may be read and enjoyed in any order.
Read now for FREE with Amazon Kindle Unlimited.
Mage Marshal Malice is called in to recover a dozen stolen dragon eggs before they hatch. He teams up with Night Fear. What could possibly go wrong?
**Please note: one or more characters are inflicted with a profanity curse and exhibit highly contagious symptoms that are occasionally hilarious and inventive.
Star Coven
All Star Coven books may be read and enjoyed in any order.
Read now for FREE with Amazon Kindle Unlimited.
One man against the most powerful clan of magical assassins in the galaxy. What could possibly go wrong?
When Mage Marshal Wolff discovers his estranged daughter is to be inducted into the outlawed Star Coven, he knows he will do anything to save her.
But to save his daughter means entering the Nec Void. The last area of unbridled chaos magic. A forbidden zone, jealously guarded by the Wyrdra and punishable by death.
Can he save her life without starting a galactic war?
**Please note: one or more characters are inflicted with a profanity curse and exhibit highly contagious symptoms that are occasionally hilarious and inventive.
AGI
The countdown begins.
Our planet nears extinction and the deadline approaches for the launch of the final ship in the mass emigration to Mars.
Eight hours until the last ship.
No one wants to be among the unlucky ones left behind.
What happens to the rest of us?
If Lieutenant Arc of the Rogue Android Rehabilitation Division fails to discover why an android murdered four humans, he will never see his family again.
Read now for FREE with Amazon Kindle Unlimited.
Genesis Invasion Trilogy
"You have sixty minutes to find it, steal it and bring it to us, or… she dies."
With news of an alien armada heading toward Earth, the world descends into panic. Alex Caine and his wife Sarah flee Rome on the first flight home to be with their family.
At thirty thousand feet aboard a plane traveling home, Alex discovers his wife Sarah is missing. No one believes she boarded the plane with him.
He searches the entire plane, but Sarah is nowhere to be found.
Then he gets the cellphone call that will change his life forever: You have sixty minutes to find it, steal it and bring it to us, or… she dies.
The Genesis Invasion Trilogy includes the books: Genesis Gene, Genesis Child and Genesis Revelations.
Valiant (Jurassic War Universe book 1)
FEAR THE FRONTIER. FIGHT FOR FREEDOM.
One man’s obsession to save his family collides with an ancient alien civilization’s secret agenda and threatens Earth’s fragile galactic peace.
The passengers and crew of a galactic cruise ship mysteriously vanish. Ten thousand citizens of Earth.
Without warning.
Without a trace.
Pushing the fragile peace between the four major alien civilizations to the brink of war.
For Commander Zen Dax of Earth’s United Space Fleet it’s personal. Solving the mystery may lead him to his missing wife and son. Or bring destruction upon humanity.
Standing in the way of his desperate plan to save them is a galaxy of conspirators, assassins, spies, saboteurs, killer robots, lethal renegade smugglers, merciless alien factions, and even Dax’s grizzled captain of USF warship Valiant.
To save his family, can Dax convince his captain and the crew of Valiant to defy their masters and risk a galactic war to find the truth?
The Asteroid Thief (Jurassic War Universe book 2)
The first killer in space is fear. The second is one of her crew. In the race to terraform Mar
s, the winner takes all, but time is running out!
To save her kidnapped daughter’s life, Argo’s first officer Delta Blair must steal the most valuable asteroid in the galaxy. To save Earth’s population from war and famine, Space Fleet’s undercover agent Zen Dax must protect that asteroid with his life.
But someone on mining ship Argo is killing the crew one-by-one and unless Delta and Zen can team up to solve the murders, they will be next.
Thank you for reading this book.
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Mage Marshal (Star Coven Book 2) Page 3
