by Chris Fox
“You’re not carrying a spellpistol?” I asked even as I patted mine. I figured she might still be getting used to having spells.
“Nah.” She shook her head. “I don’t really understand it well enough to use it yet. I trust tech. I’m going to stick to what I know. I’ll take the magical strength buff though. That part of fire is pretty cool.”
“Captain,” Seket called from the doorway. He still wore his golden armor, sans the helmet. “I’m out of spells, and my armor is heavily damaged. I will accompany you back to the core, but even with the Maker’s blessing I’m not sure how much use I’ll be.”
“You’ve done enough.” I nodded. “I’ve got another job for you in any case. The minister is staying here, and I need someone to fly the ship. Stand by to lift off. As soon as Vee gives us a course I’ll pass it along.”
“Thank you, Captain.” Seket saluted with fist over heart, then trotted off toward the bridge.
“You want me to do what now?” Vee’s head came up from where it had been resting against a bulkhead, and her eyes opened. She still clutched a pile of grenades in her lap, like a child might a doll while sleeping.
“Here’s my thinking,” I explained, praying that my idea made sense. “The cores are going to be difficult to reach, but they must be close to the areas where they operate. The longer the conduit, the more runes have to be maintained. The cannon is probably connected to one of the cores, and I bet if we can get in that barrel, then we can find a maintenance hatch or something that will lead directly to it. That’s where you come in. We need to figure out where the cores are, and how to get there.”
“Hmm.” Vee twirled the end of her ponytail around one finger as she considered that. “That sort of information isn’t going to be public. Miri, do you know anything about the cores that we don’t?”
Miri had fallen asleep against a bulkhead, her mouth open and emitting faint snores. At the sound of her name the PSA lurched awake and blinked at Vee. “Hmm? You need fashion advice? Finally.”
“Miri,” Vee repeated patiently, though a vein throbbed near her temple. “Do you know anything about how to reach the cores that power the cannon?”
“I know that maintenance crews work it daily. Dozens of maintenance crews.” She rose with a stretch, suddenly full of energy like a toddler after a nap. Maybe Inurans needed less sleep. “If we want to reach a core, those areas will be flagged as restricted. We might have to blow open a few doors, but it looks like we’re not hurting for explosives.”
“No,” Briff confirmed, “but it does look like we’re running out of raw materials for non-organic schematics. Plastics, metals, several types of magic, and a few other materials I don’t recognize are at critical levels.”
“We’ll deal with that once we get back. Has anyone seen the minister?” I inspected the crack down my HUD, and noted that it was smaller than it had been. I hoped a lot more time passed before I got shot again.
“She’s asleep.” Vee rolled her neck, then donned her helmet. “I gave her a sedative. She should sleep until morning…no matter what happens.”
I appreciated the gesture, especially from Vee who came from a culture that favored pragmatism over mercy or sentiment. If it came to the worst and wights got on the ship she wouldn’t feel a thing.
“Briff, you’re on point until we reach the core, then you’re in charge of carrying the thing back.” I nodded at Rava next. “You’re floating. Be where you can do the most damage, but focus on keeping them off our backs. Vee, I know you’re running close to dry. Stay out of combat if you can. We need you to disconnect the core when we reach it. Miri, you’ve lived up to your end of the deal. We’d love to have you along, but if you want to stay with the ship I’ll pay you for the run and we can call it there.”
Miri planted a shapely leg on a cargo drum and slammed a magazine home in her spellpistol, one of the fancy Mk VII’s that could fire both conventional rounds and spells. “If you were serious about having me in the crew? I’m in it until we’re done. Lurker girl needs someone looking out for her on this op. Let’s make that me, so you can do your job. I keep her safe, and you can focus.”
“We’d love to have you.” I nodded at Rava. “Miri, meet my sister, Rava. Rava, this is Miri. She’s a personal shopping assistant, and right now I need to acquire a life core.”
“Your sister?” Miri offered hand to Rava, who shook it firmly. “Guess I want to stay on her good side. You keep me alive, and we’re going to be great friends. I’ll take you shopping.”
“Great. Show me something badass in leather. Shall we?” Rava nodded at the ramp, which had begun to descend.
Vee glowered after them both, of course. I couldn’t blame her.
It meant the sector to me that they were bantering when I knew damned well everyone had passed exhaustion hours ago. We weren’t just out of spells. We were physically pushing our limits. Rava and Briff were more fresh, but not that much more. We’d be relying heavily on them.
“Wait, where’s Kurz?” I spun around and realized I hadn’t seen him since I’d re-boarded.
“Still asleep.” Briff shrugged, and his wings pressed up against his back in what I’d come to know as what-did-briff-do. “Should I have woken him?”
“No, you did great.” I mentally calculated how long it would take us to reach the cannon. “Go ahead and wake him now though. Tell him to be ready in five. We’re going to want everything he can bring to the table. Tell him to bring his best stuff.”
And by stuff I meant souls. That was easier for me to accept before I’d become aware of these necromancers. I still didn’t even know what they called themselves. Necros? Whoever they were, they’d made terrible house guests on the trade moon so far.
There I went again trying to ignore my guilt about Kurz. He wasn’t a necromancer in the sense that he didn’t practice the greater path of binding souls, but he did see them as a power source. And, now that it had become clear that the Inura’s Grace had been a sham, I wondered if the soulcatchers had been nothing but dupes serving the necromancers. A way to bring victims in.
If it came down to the last O2 tank, would Kurz fight with us? I wanted to think so, but that wasn’t something I could afford to just take for granted.
“Jerek!” Vee wore one of those smiles that made me look right past Miri without a second glance. “I’ve found the right access port, I think. Work orders are in a public Quantum database. We can enter a maintenance hatch, and it’s a short crawl into the main chamber. From there we follow the cables straight to the core.”
“That sounds way too simple.” I shook my head. “I’m not buying it. There’s going to be crazy buzzsaw droids, or undead exes, or something else that will suck to deal with.”
“Well I know where to go at least.” Her smiled faded a tick. “I’ll upload the coordinates to Seket.”
“Standing by,” Seket’s voice crackled over the comm. I hadn’t even seen him leave the cargo hold. Or had I? I couldn’t remember any more. Should I take some stims? No, that seemed like a bad idea. I couldn’t afford to crash in the middle of fleeing with the core.
The ship’s drive rumbled to life, and I patched my HUD into external sensors so I could see as we whipped around the trade moon. The cannon’s barrel needed some sort of word beyond gargantuan, and suggested the moon was compensating for something. Maybe it had wanted to be a planet.
We flew directly down the barrel. All the way down. The ship dropped lower and lower as the chrome walls whipped by. There was no chance the cannon would fire, but I still closed my eyes and prayed to the Maker. I promptly stopped when I realized Inura might actually hear that prayer. Awkward. I was used to the Maker being an abstract, not an underpowered navel-gazing has-been.
The Remora slowed outside a three-meter circular corridor leading to thick door with a panel strapped to the outside. “Let’s move out, people. We have work to do.”
An awful buzz came from above, and a dozen attack drones hummed toward the Remo
ra. Each carried a plasma cannon, and they fired almost as one, a stream of star-stuff, the conventional kind, slamming into the aft side in a shower of debris that tore past the wards and left deep furrows in the hull.
“Go! GO!” I roared.
17
The drones swarmed around the Remora, but wards quickly sprang up around the freighter, blunting their assault. Seket could handle it.
I turned back to the console where Vee crouched, and stifled the urge to peer over her shoulder and offer advice. Exhaustion pulsed in me like a living thing, but on the plus side, I’d passed the point where my body wanted sleep.
Now I just wanted to curl up somewhere and drool. No, strike that. Just curl up. Drooling sounded like a lot of effort.
BEEP! The console chimed, and the thick black door slid into the wall like an iris exposing the pupil of a dark god.
No one spoke. We all knew our jobs. Rava trotted in first, closely followed by Miri. Kurz surprised me by going next. I hung back with Vee, and didn’t need to glance behind me to know that Briff would be bringing up the rear.
Seket was amazing, but I vastly preferred having the hatchling watching my back. Briff and I had been a team for almost five years now, and friends long before that. I’d barely come up to his waist when we’d first met.
Most of the kids had been afraid of him, but I really enjoyed hanging out because long after the other kids started getting into sports or holo games, we were still playing make believe with dice and a few battered Spellcasting & Starships books.
I’d die for that scaly bundle of teeth, no questions.
We advanced up a narrow corridor, which spilled into a room filled with treasure and happiness. I’m lying. It was FUBAR, ancient Terran for screwed, though we can’t trace the origin of the word.
A long cable about three meters thick extended from just beneath us out into a vast gulf of empty space. When I say vast…the interior of the planet was partially hollow and I could see for hundreds of kilometers.
Our cable snaked out to one of many free-floating structures, with a pair of maintenance doors and no other sign of entry. Flocks of drones swirled through the vast cavern, but none seemed to have noted our arrival.
“Be careful,” Vee called as she took point on the cable. “This thing is pretty stable, but it will start to sway if we’re all on it at the same time. Keep maybe ten meters between each of us, and don’t walk too quickly. Especially you, Briff.”
“Okay.” His wings sagged.
“It’s just that you’re carrying a spellcannon,” Vee pointed out, though it didn’t seem to help. She gave a shrug, and started up the cable.
Rava came next, then Miri. I waited until a gap opened, then trotted onto the cable. Could I summon enough void to make the armor fly if I toppled off? I honestly didn’t know. My kingdom for some mana beer and a cot.
The cable’s slow sway didn’t deter me, and I picked a careful path, though I did hesitate when Briff stepped onto the cable behind me. The swaying worsened, and I flung my arms out for stability.
My eyes focused on the next step as I picked a path forward, and tried not to worry about what might go wrong. I couldn’t really control it. I could only get through it as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Several tense minutes later the cable began sloping upward again, indicating that we’d passed the midway point. We’d all found a rhythm now, and the swaying seemed manageable. Enough that I risked a few glances around us.
The closest swarm of drones lay so distant I couldn’t make out more than specks. Presumably they had orders, or a patrol route, and were unlikely to meddle with something this far away.
A glance at our route showed Vee reaching the structure housing the core. Now that we were closer I could see its muted blaze through the polarized windows on the structure. More than that I could feel the power of it, the majesty. We were seeing the essence of the universe, a primal magic that transcended any singular god. Pure life…harnessed to power this moon.
“This is amazing.” Vee pressed her hands up against the window. “It will take me a few minutes to hack the door, then a few more to disconnect the core. We need to be careful. If I make a mistake and the casing cracks? All of us are probably vaporized, though we’ll die knowing we’re freeing the Maker’s essence.”
I hadn’t asked her where she stood on the whole Inura/Aruni thing. I didn’t really know where I stood, and my faith wasn’t invested in the outcome like hers was.
“We trust you, Vee. Everyone else, keep down and alert us if you see something headed our way.”
I took my own advice, and crept to the far side of the structure. It wasn’t that I didn’t badly want to inspect the Inuran tech. I did. But I also wanted to live, and I needed to do my job and let Vee do hers. It sucked not getting to do the fun stuff anymore.
When we were done maybe I could look into turning in my adulting membership card. Probably not.
“Contact,” I whispered into the comms.
A swarm of drones were moving on a zigzag course that would take them alarmingly close to our platform.
I reached into my pocket, and fished out a magazine of explosive rounds. I only had two, because I’d stocked up on salt rounds. Brilliant. How the depths did I keep bringing the wrong ammo? This is why I prefer spells.
The magazine slammed home, and I brought the pistol up in time to sight down the barrel at the lead drone. I stroked the trigger, and it kicked violently, as a high velocity hunk of explosive love slammed into the drone’s central casing.
Imagine my surprise when the drone just exploded. No muss. No fuss. That thing just shattered.
“Nice shot,” Rava called with a grin. “Maybe you can teach me how to shoot later.” She raised her assault rifle, and snapped off a pair of shots with no apparent aim, though I knew cyberware provided her with more telemetry than I’d ever have.
The next two drones exploded in quick succession.
Miri raised her pistol, and offed the next two as if keeping score, though she didn’t say it aloud. Her smirk said all she didn’t.
A sharp high-pitched hum came from behind me, and Briff’s spellcannon kicked. I’d forgotten he still had magic, since he’d been on the ship.
A ball of pure plasma sailed into one drone with so much force it knocked the doomed robot into a companion, which also detonated.
But more drones came. We kept firing, and they kept coming. Eventually one got close enough to fire a plasma cannon at Briff. He set his feet and tail against the deck, and encircled himself with his heavily-armored wings.
The plasma slammed into him, and he slid back several paces, but kept his footing. His wings flared outward, and he lobbed another plasma ball at the offending drone. Scratch other robot.
Then, just like that, the flow ended. We stood there panting, eyeing each other in disbelief. We’d survived, and taken very little damage.
“More will be coming,” Miri promised. “They’ll transmit our location, and identify us as a threat. We need to work quickly, or they may send something really nasty to dissuade us. The Consortium does not play nicely, trust me.”
Vee still knelt next to the panel, though she’d found a way to get it open, and had exposed a variety of runes, which she was now tinkering with.
“I don’t want to rush you, Vee,” I nagged like a man who fears giant robots, or whatever the Inurans sent. “We need to be out of here in the next three minutes.”
“That’s not possible,” she countered. “Figure out a way to hold this platform, because I need more time.”
My shoulders sank. This had officially become the worst day on the job ever. I forced iron right back into my posture, and my shoulders came up as I faced my team.
“You heard the lady. Get into the best position you can to watch this door.” I set my back next to the panel where Vee sat tinkering. “Nothing gets past us. Nothing.
18
The first two minutes or so were great. No Inuran response came
, though all of us knew it would.
Near the end of the second minute Vee gave a triumphant cry, and the door opened. She darted inside to work her magic on the core itself, and I kept watch for trouble.
It came swiftly.
Something twinkled in the distance, and grew larger as it flew in our direction. It passed a cloud of drones, which lent it perspective, and I realized that thing had to be ten or twelve meters tall. It had arms and legs, and a pair of wings…like a giant mechanical hatchling, but more humanoid.
More importantly it carried an appropriately oversized spellrifle, and I really didn’t want to be on the receiving end of it.
“Contact!” I hissed into the comm. “Form up on me. Vee, keep doing your thing. Everyone else, I need a dead mech. Kill that thing.”
“Captain, I do not see how we can inflict any meaningful damage.” Kurz’s statement came as flat facts. “Its resistance will block all spells, and only Briff and I have those, in any case. And your explosive rounds will not be effective.”
“All that’s probably true, but we need to find a weakness if it exists. Think about how to use your resources creatively. What can your souls do?” Dammit, I hated situations like this. “Spread out. Do what we can to distract it until we can figure out a way to stop it. See if we can hit the head with grenades to damage the sensors. Use the structure for cover.”
I hoped its reluctance to damage the core’s storage unit would prevent it from attacking us.
“I’ve got a shot.” Rava dropped to one knee and snapped her rifle to her shoulder. She tracked for several seconds, then the rifle roared and her shoulder jerked back.
One of the two antennae on the mech’s head detonated, and the knight winced, then twisted to bring an arm up and deflect Rava’s next shot.
Miri hefted a grenade, and when the warrior had closed, lunged from cover long enough to lob it toward the mech. Her aim was good, and it exploded against the shoulder, showering the face with shrapnel. Unfortunately, the second antenna survived, as did the optics. This thing was damned tough.
