The shields held.
Unfortunately, only a handful of mages and priests remained. The portions of the wall where they were stationed were protected, but the Dolgars’ green balls of energy took a heavy toll at the undefended spots along the wall. Scores of defenders died, but those remaining stayed firm in their resolve. They were part of the Circle. They wouldn’t run.
Chapter 29 – Shuttle Fighters
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A hammering in Richard’s head pulled him out of the quicksand of unconsciousness into which he’d fallen. He was back in the land of the living with one helluva headache. He sensed Power from his self-healing reserve working overtime to repair damage to his head, but couldn’t remember how he’d been hurt.
A sound drew Richard’s attention. Singing? The words spoke of war and carnage, then courage and sacrifice overcoming certain defeat. He wanted to open his eyes to see the source of the singing, but his head hurt too much. A few more seconds. Then I’ll open my eyes, but not yet.
Since he couldn’t see, Richard reached out with his passive scan. He sensed an intricate weave of lines of energy encompassing the entire city. He didn’t need anyone to tell him it was the Circle.
She did it, Richard thought. Somehow, she did it.
Hope surged in Richard’s heart, but only for a moment. He sensed those around him with his passive scan. A life form only a couple of meters away was dying. Richard recognized the frequency of the life form. The frequency was that of Tia.
Forcing his eyes open, Richard looked around. Emerald stood with her eyes closed as if lost in a trance. Chancee stood near her using a large, wooden shield to protect her smaller friend from incoming arrows and crossbow bolts. The other wizard scouts stood at the wall. He sensed lines of Power stretching out from them to form defensive shields. Streams of green energy splattered against their shields, but they held.
Richard looked lower down. He spotted Matthew cradling Tia’s head in his lap while he stroked her hair. He was crying. A metal quarrel protruded from Tia’s neck. Blood was everywhere.
Reaching out with his mind, Richard wrapped Power from his healing reserve around Tia’s injury. He imagined how her neck was now and compared it with how it should be. At the same time, he wrapped Power from his regular reserve around the crossbow bolt. He made it shimmer as he shifted the piece of metal into the void. As soon as the quarrel was in the void, he used telekinesis to pull it free of the teenager’s neck, then dropped the dimensional shift the moment it was clear. The piece of metal fell to the stone floor with a clang. Blood spurted from the open wound. Richard pulled half of his healing Power back into himself. A sharp pain stabbed into his neck. Blood spurted into the air. He tried to breathe but choked on his own blood. Once Tia’s injury was fully replicated on his own body, Richard sensed his healing Power repairing the damage to Tia’s neck. It was done quickly. He heard Tia groan and say something.
Richard started to lose consciousness again, but the roar of engines drew him back to the real world. He opened his eyes just as one of the Dolgar fighters flew past with a second one close on its heels.
He heard Emerald speaking. “We can’t take another pass like that. The Circle’s holding. The people won’t run, but the Dolgars’ flying machines are taking their toll. Our people are dying, and the orcs are scaling the city walls in several places.”
Holding his hand to his neck, Richard forced himself to stand. He was weak from loss of blood. His self-heal was working to restore him to DNA baseline, but he needed a few more seconds. In the meantime, he leaned against the wall for support. He noticed Myers and Emerald looking at him suspiciously as he stood. Memories of the hunger and what he’d almost done flooded Richard’s mind.
From the looks of the other wizard scouts and the teenagers, Richard didn’t think they knew. However, he had no doubt the dwarf and Myers knew all too well. He’d almost killed them all.
“Rick,” said Matthew as he held Tia’s hand. He had a strange look on his face. “Thanks. I thought I’d lost her.”
Richard ignored the teenager and looked upward. The Dolgar fighters were making a hard turn as they prepared to line up for another strafing run. A quick glance along the wall confirmed Emerald’s words. Lines of orcs were streaming onto the battlements from two siege towers. Other orcs were climbing long ladders at several points along the wall. The city’s defenders were fighting bravely, but they would soon be outnumbered.
Richard didn’t have much time. As the last of the damage to his neck healed, he said a silent prayer of thanks that acquired injuries from others always healed faster than direct damage. He looked around. The others were still looking at him as if awaiting orders. Richard decided to give them some. He had a plan. Whatever Myers and the dwarf thought about him, he could deal with later. Everyone’s first priority had to be to take out those fighter-shuttles.
“Jerad, Trinity,” Richard said. “Take out those two siege towers.”
“What about the fighters?” said Jerad.
“The rest of us will handle them,” Richard said. “You worry about those towers.”
Jerad knew how to take orders as well as give them. With a nod of his head, he took off running toward the nearest tower with Trinity close at his side.
Richard pointed at the two teenagers. Tia was covered in blood, but alert and functional. “Could you fly those fighters if we got the two of you onboard?”
Ever since the Defiant had acquired a magic-based fighter to replace one of its zippers, both Tia and Matthew had been taking turns training in the new dragon-fighter. Tia had even tried to teach Richard the ways of the magic spacecraft, but he’d proved as proficient at flying the fighter as he was at driving heavy cats. In other words, he could barely keep it airborne. The teenagers, on the other hand, had become quite good at it. What little Comstar and the other ex-Dragar slaves hadn’t been able to tell them, the teenagers figured out on their own. Richard hoped their skills with the Defiant’s dragon-fighter would transfer to the shuttles flying overhead.
Without hesitation, Tia answered, “Yeah, we could fly those things, but how would we get inside?”
A look of understanding came over Myers. “A dimensional shift.”
Richard nodded his head. “That’s right. You take Matt and I’ll take Tia.”
Myers shook his head. “No. We’d never make it. We’d use so much Power levitating up there we wouldn’t have enough to do a shift. It’s a fool’s errand. I won’t risk Matt.”
“I’ll take the risk,” said Matthew.
“Well, I won’t,” said Myers with a note of finality in his voice.
The shuttles had completed their turn and were starting their attack run.
“Telsa, Tam,” Richard said. “Can you handle the levitation? Just get us close to those fighters, and we’ll do the rest.”
Without taking time to answer, Tam wrapped Power around Tia and him. Telsa did the same to Myers and Matthew. Since Myers didn’t knock Telsa’s Power away, Richard assumed it meant his brother was agreeing to his plan.
Tia and Richard began rising into the air. So did Myers and Matthew.
Matthew yelled, “What do we do once we take control of the shuttle?”
Before Richard could reply, Tia answered Matthew’s question. “We kill every orc we can get in our gunsights.”
Richard had always thought Tia was a little on the bloodthirsty side. He was suddenly thankful he wasn’t an orc.
It was a strange feeling being hoisted into the air while depending on someone else’s Power to do the job, but Richard knew he’d made the right decision. Although the fighters were approaching rapidly, the distance was still too great for him to have levitated there on his own. He realized Myers had been right. They would’ve run out of Power before they’d gotten halfway there.
Both of the Dragar fighter-shuttles began firing. Richard threw up a defensive shield. Several balls of green magic glanced off the shield. Although his defensive shield was Power
hungry, Richard had no intention of dropping it. The Dragars had apparently spotted them and were concentrating their fire on them instead of the city wall.
Tia leaned over and shouted into Richard’s ear. “Are you sure you can shift us out of the void in the right spot?”
It was a valid question. The shuttle was traveling fast, and Richard didn’t have his battle computer to help. He didn’t bother answering the teenager’s question because she’d know one way or the other soon enough.
Richard noted his Power reserve was at seventy-two percent and dropping rapidly. The fighters were firing a steady stream of energy at both his brother and his shields. The Dragar pilots weren’t deviating from their course.
“They’re going to ram us,” shouted Tia.
Richard wrapped both Tia and himself with Power. He shifted into the void and dropped his defensive shield to conserve Power. He felt Tam’s telekinesis fall away as well. He was in the void. She wasn’t.
Using his own telekinesis, Richard reversed direction to match the nearest fighter’s speed. He noted his Power reserve again. He was at forty-eight percent. He slowed his speed to allow the fighter to catch up. The fighter continued its fire, but the green balls of energy passed through Tia and Richard. They were in the void. The green energy wasn’t.
The windscreen of the fighter grew larger until Richard could make out the reptilian faces of the two pilots. He slowed a little more. They passed through the skin of the ship into a clear space a few meters across. He dropped his dimensional shift and telekinesis at the same time. They fell the hands-breath to the floor, Richard thought his battle computer would’ve been proud of him. His timing was perfect.
Richard’s self-congratulation was short-lived. He heard Tia shout a warning and a split second later, a large, hairy hand grabbed him by the neck and threw him toward the bulkhead. Fortunately, he still had Power wrapped around him. Using the same Power, he levitated to a stop before hitting the wall.
Spinning around, Richard saw a four-armed creature covered in hair with two outstretched arms. The hand of a third arm was fumbling at a hand blaster of some type stuck in a holster on its belt. Three more of the hairy creatures were in the process of rising out of their seats only a few meters away at the rear of the shuttle.
Thargs, Richard thought. The hairy creatures were the bully boys of the reptilian Dragars.
In a blur of motion so fast he surprised even himself, Richard pulled his short sword from its scabbard and sliced the throat of the charging Tharg. He barely had time to notice the look of surprise on its face before he was kicking a second one in the chest and knocking it back into its chair.
Reaching out with his mind, Richard sensed the location of another Tharg’s heart and pulled with his telekinesis. The Tharg roared but didn’t fall. Richard sensed the beat of a second heart on the other side of the creature’s chest. He wrapped it with Power and twisted hard. This time the Tharg fell.
The fourth Tharg grabbed a rifle out of a side rack and got off three rounds in rapid succession before Richard was able to throw his dagger into the creature’s eye. The fourth Tharg fell to the floor unmoving. Unfortunately, two of the rifle rounds caught Richard in the right side of his chest. He also fell to the floor alongside the dead Thargs. He tried to rise, but couldn’t. The pain was too great. He sensed his self-heal wrapping around the wounds and sealing the flesh together. He feared his healing would be too late. There was still another Tharg and two Dragar pilots to deal with. Richard tensed his muscles in anticipation of either the Tharg or the pilots shooting holes in him with their sidearms.
No shots came.
The pain in Richard’s chest eased enough for him to open his eyes. Something rolled past him on the floor. It was grayish in color. Richard did his best to focus on the object. It was a head. It was a Dragar head.
Shifting his gaze to the front of the fighter-shuttle, Richard saw a headless Dragar corpse in the copilot’s seat. Tia occupied the pilot’s position. The bloody body of another Dragar was on the floor beside her.
She’s good, Richard thought. She might even be better than Liz.
“You’re lucky,” said a squeaky voice to Richard’s right.
Looking in the direction of the voice, he noticed a young gnome strapped to a chair at the back of the shuttle. The gnome appeared to be imprisoned in the seat. A leather-like collar was around his neck. Blood trickled out of his nose and down one side of his mouth.
When the gnome saw Richard looking at him, he pointed at the far side of the shuttle as best he could with his chin. “One of the shots from that Tharg’s rifle ricocheted off the wall and took out the last Tharg.”
Since his wounds were nearly healed, Richard leveraged himself up on his hands and knees. He looked in the direction indicated by the gnome. A Tharg was slumped in its chair. A finger-sized hole in the center of its forehead told its fate.
The shuttle banked hard.
Richard was knocked back down. The fall reminded him of his mission.
The battle, Richard thought.
Jumping to his feet, Richard ran the few steps to the front of the fighter-shuttle. Tia was just completing her turn and lining up on a formation of orcs.
The teenager must have sensed him beside her. “I can fly the ship, but I can’t figure out the gun controls. They’re different than the ones in the dragon-fighter we have on the Defiant.”
Richard was well aware he didn’t think fast. It was one of his shortcomings. Fortunately, he was very good at making snap decisions with very little information. He turned back to look at the gnome.
“Can you fire the ship’s weapons?”
Although the straps restraining the gnome to his chair gave him little movement, he was able to raise his head a little to better reveal the collar around his neck.
“Yes, but I can’t fire them with this thing on. It limits me to maintenance duties.”
Richard liked gnomes. He’d never had one do him dirty. On a wild impulse, he decided to trust this one. Reaching out with his mind, he wrapped Power around the collar. He sensed the collar’s flow of magic. Once he found the keystone to the magic, he looped it back on itself. The magic dissipated into the universe from which it had come. As soon as the magic was gone, Richard snapped the collar with his telekinesis. He did the same to the security straps pinning the gnome to his seat.
The young gnome was obviously not one to let an opportunity go to waste. He was up in a heartbeat and heading toward the front of the shuttle. He stopped only long enough to kick one of the Thargs in the face.
“That’ll teach you to hit someone your own size next time.”
Before Richard could comment, the gnome was next to the copilot’s seat. When he slapped a button on the seat’s armrest, the harness holding the Dragar copilot came loose. The headless corpse fell to the floor. The gnome didn’t even take time to wipe the blood out of the seat. He just sat down and began touching various spots on the console. Part of the windscreen changed to a heads-up display with a translucent bullseye. When the gnome touched another spot on the armrest, the fighter shuddered. Two large, green balls shot into view in front of the ship and tracked toward a siege tower crowded with several hundred orcs. The tower exploded in a blast of green energy. Pieces of wood and orc parts were thrown into the air.
Tia laughed and banked the shuttle hard to the left in a climbing turn. “Nice shootin’, Tex.”
Richard shook his head. He’d made the mistake of letting Tia read his copy of Cute Sayings and Slang of 20th through 21st Century America. He knew she was paying the gnome a compliment. From the perplexed look on the gnome’s face, Richard gathered he hadn’t read the book.
“I’m going to come around for another pass,” said Tia.
The gnome pointed at the armrest on the pilot’s seat. “Push that green button on the front right of your armrest. Your safety’s on. That’s why you couldn’t fire your auto-cannons. When the button turns red, you can pull the trigger on your command
stick to strafe your target.”
After Tia completed her turn, she did as the gnome bid. The button on her armrest turned red.
“Rick,” said Tia. “What about the others? Did they make it? Is Matt alive?”
“They’re fine,” Richard assured her after checking his passive scan. “They’re on the other shuttle. There’s only one other life form on board. Its frequency is similar to our friend here.”
“The name’s Rembis,” said the gnome. “And if you’re telling me the gnome on the other fighter is still alive, her name is Marstis. She’s my sister.”
Richard sensed several balls of energy leave the other shuttle in the direction of a formation of orcs. He couldn’t see the blasts hit, but when the balls of energy disappeared into the center of a formation of orcs, a significant number of the life forms in the formation disappeared as well.
Richard nodded approvingly. “I think Matt just figured out how to fire his weapons.”
Not one to be outdone, Tia lined up on a formation of human mercenaries and released a volley of several hundred green tracers into the massed troops. Discipline in the mercenary unit disintegrated as the human soldiers fled in all directions.
Rembis fired another salvo of green missiles at a second siege tower. It met the same fate as its brethren. The heavy debris fell onto a group of orcs standing in line to climb up the tower. The loss of life was significant.
Tia banked the fighter for another run. If any of the orc soldiers or their magic users were attempting to return fire, it was ineffective. The shuttle-fighter was apparently flying too high and too fast.
“As long as our ammo holds out,” said Tia, “Matt and I can do a number on the orcs outside the wall. Unfortunately, there’s already a lot of orcs on the wall and in the city. We can’t fire on them there. If they get the main gate open, the city will be lost.”
Wizard Rebellion (Intergalactic Wizard Scout Chronicles Book 5) Page 28
