Tech Mage: The Magitech Chronicles Book 1

by Chris Fox

  For several moments Aran rocked back and forth, trying to decide what to do. Every instinct screamed that he needed to flee before Yorrak did the same to him. But fleeing would only guarantee he lost.

  Aran tightened his grip around his spellblade, gliding toward Yorrak. He reached for the lightning he’d used on the demons, and the magic responded. This time, though, the power felt…different. More layered.

  Purple lightning crackled from his palm, surging down the blade. Aran eyed it in wonder, realizing it must be a mingling of the power he’d already possessed, and this new void magic that he’d acquired.

  He rammed the blade into Yorrak’s back, right above the fourth vertebra. The sword bit eagerly into the mage, its recent catalization making it hungry to be used. The blade wanted to kill.

  The violet energy rippled through the mage’s body, and he twitched and thrashed. Smoke rose from his eye sockets and mouth as the void lightning completed its work. The charred stench of human flesh billowed out from his armor.

  Aran blinked, struggling to grasp the power of what he’d done.

  “That was truly impressive,” Nara said, with a low whistle. He looked up to find her aiming her spellpistol in his direction. “There’s no way our mutiny would have succeeded without you. You’re going to make a wonderful apprentice, assuming you’re smart enough to drop that sword and come with us.”

  Behind her, all four of her companions were pilfering armor and weaponry from the dead guards. There was no way Aran was going to overcome them all. He didn’t trust Nara, but he didn’t have a better choice. He dropped his sword.

  Nara waved her spellpistol at her closest supporter. “Go pick that up, and grab the spellhammer the other slave dropped. We’ll give the sword back to Aran when we’re sure he’s not going to do anything stupid. Let’s go.”

  They started back for the ship, two of them dragging Yorrak’s still-smoking body. Aran wasn’t surprised. The mage’s armor, the ruby in his eye socket, and his gauntlet were all of nearly incalculable worth—certainly more than he was.

  Aran sighed, bending to scoop up the hedgehog. It peered up at him suspiciously, growling.

  “Hey man, don’t blame me.” He tucked the wriggling hedgehog into his pouch, and started for the ramp leading back into the starship.

  6

  Ship

  “Move,” one of the tech mages growled, shoving Aran from behind.

  Aran stumbled forward, catching himself against the rusting railing. All the rage, all the impotent frustration, the inability to control his circumstances, Aran channeled it all. His elbow shot back, smashing the man’s nose; he scythed out a leg, shattering his captor’s knee. His armor might stop a round, but the joints offered little protection.

  The thug cried out, seizing his broken leg in both hands as he tumbled to the catwalk. Aran glanced over the side of the railing, judging a leap back into the cargo hold they’d deployed from. He was about to jump when he caught a bright flash out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Nara discharging her spellpistol. The pale grey bolt took him in the chest, and ripples of energy crackled over his entire body. Wherever the energy passed, he went numb.

  “That’s better,” Nara said pleasantly. She approached, stopping in front of him. “The paralysis will last several minutes—assuming we let you live that long.”

  Aran thrashed inside the confines of his own mind, struggling desperately to force his body to move. It refused. He couldn’t so much as twitch his fingers, putting him completely at Nara’s mercy. It was somehow even more horrid than the lack of an identity. Not only could he not remember who he was…he couldn’t even control his own body.

  He let out a low keening wail, all his traitorous body would allow. In that moment, he’d gladly trade his life for Nara’s. If only he could move.

  “Oh, we’re definitely not letting him live,” snapped the man whose leg Aran had broken. “We’re going to jettison him as soon as we leave this infernal place.”

  “Don’t be hasty, Vash,” Nara said. “He could be worth a lot of coin, maybe enough to overhaul the ship.”

  The other three captors seemed undecided.

  Nara turned from Aran, addressing her crew. “We have the ship, but we don’t have the funds to run it.”

  “Yorrak was rich,” a short, severe woman protested. “If we can find his stash, we might have enough credits to retire.”

  “I kept the man’s bed, remember?” Nara snapped, her eyes blazing. “Yorrak was not rich. Trust me, he liked his toys far too much to stash much in the way of currency. There’s money, but likely no more than a handful of dragon scales. No, right now Aran here is our prime currency. We can sell him and the weapons we took from Yorrak.”

  The hedgehog growled, wriggling inside Aran’s makeshift belt pouch. Nara glanced down at it suspiciously, then back up at Aran. She smiled. “You saved the poor fool Yorrak ’morphed. You may as well put him out of his misery. Finding a true mage powerful enough to dispel it will be expensive, and as you’ve heard we’re not exactly flush with resources.” She waved her hand and the numbness dissolved.

  Aran blinked at her. “You’re releasing me?”

  “You’re releasing him?” Vash asked, still cradling his leg. “After what he did to me?”

  “You started the fight, you fool,” Nara snapped, scowling down at him. “If you poke a Wyrm, expect it to eat your vessel.”

  “What about my leg?” Vash growled, staring hatefully at Aran.

  “Yorrak kept a stash of life ointment,” Nara offered. “I know where. We can use that to get you walking, and maybe the limp will remind you to be smarter.” Two of the other crew laughed at that. Vash was on the verge of saying something, but Nara stared him down. “Legga, Firk, carry him to the infirmary.”

  “What about him?” The severe woman nodded pointedly in Aran’s direction. “It will be just the two of us on the bridge. Are you sure keeping him loose is a good idea?”

  Aran decided to call her Scowly.

  “Oh, we’ll be fine,” Nara said, directing a predatory grin at Aran. “The spell I used earlier is still active. If he misbehaves, I’ll simply paralyze him again. I can jerk him about like a puppet.”

  “All right,” Scowly said, warily. She started up the catwalk, then disappeared through a small hatch.

  Nara gestured at Aran to do the same, so he followed. She walked several paces behind him, her hand within easy reach of her sidearm. Aran didn’t recognize the sigils on the barrel, but he’d already seen her dish out some serious spells. He didn’t need any further encouragement.

  He threaded up the catwalk, ducking through the hatch into a room that strummed a chord in his subconscious. This was a battle bridge. He knew that instinctively, though he’d never been in this room before, at least so far as he knew.

  A wide scry-screen hung on the far wall, opposite where the pilots were supposed to stand. At the moment it showed an empty star field. He looked back at Nara to find her staring quizzically at him.

  “You recognize this place?” Nara asked. She raised an eyebrow. “A mind wipe often leaves traces, but its hard predicting which bits will remain.”

  “That’s a matrix. You use that to control the ship,” Aran said, nodding toward three concentric rings spinning slowly around each other. They were large enough for a person to stand inside them, and each ring was covered with dozens of faintly glowing sigils.

  The smallest ring was gold, the next silver, and the largest appeared to be bronze. Each had the same repeating sigils, but they were so much gibberish. He could feel the power emanating from them, though. A simple steel stabilizing ring stood at about waist height, with a break in the side to allow a pilot to enter.

  “Our matrix also allows me to control our weapons. Normally I would have a defensive matrix as well, but the sigils that control it burned out.”

  “Won’t that mean we’re defenseless if we have to fight?” Aran moved to inspect the matrix, stretching out a hand. A
subsonic hum came from the device, and the sigil nearest his hand brightened.

  “We just have to get in the first shot,” Nara said, shrugging. She stepped into the rings, which somehow avoided striking her as she entered. They flared around her, creating a nimbus of multicolored light. “I doubt we’ll run into any trouble. We’re way outside the Confederacy. Only slavers bother to make the trip out here.”

  Aran nodded, turning his attention back to the scry-screen on the far wall. They were moving toward a planet, in a wide orbit. The ship shuddered, and they picked up speed.

  “You’re making for the umbral shadow.” Aran cocked his head. He wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, only that it was significant.

  “That’s right,” Nara prodded, smiling savagely through the rings. “I waited, and waited. I’ve had the power to kill Yorrak for some time, but there was always a piece missing. I’ve always needed him to power the matrix.”

  “Gravity magic,” Aran said, remembering what she’d said outside the ship. “You needed it to pilot the ship?”

  The sound of the universe tearing knocked Aran to one knee. He clutched at his head and stared wildly at the scry-screen as something terrible lit the blackness outside the ship. A sudden break split the space outside the ship, brittle cracks snaking out around it—a sinkhole in reality. Within those terrible depths lay a hellish glow, somehow worse than the fires of Xal.

  Something in those depths called to him, to the part of Aran that was Xal. Something kindred. He shuddered, but the emotion was short lived.

  “Damn it,” Nara snapped. “A vessel is coming through the Fissure.” She touched a red sigil, then a pink. The scry-screen shimmered, the point of view zooming toward the tiny ship. As the vessel grew, Nara began to mutter under her breath. “Oh-no-oh-no-oh-no,” she whispered, her eyes going wide. “That’s a Confederate warship.”

  The blocky grey battleship’s hull sloped forward like a bird of prey in flight; it was matte black and almost disappeared against the void. A truly terrifying spellcannon jutted from the prow, aimed in their direction. Size was difficult to judge, but he guessed the battleship to be perhaps four hundred meters from bow to stern.

  Scowly stalked up to Nara. “What the depths are they doing out here?” she demanded. “You’ve got to get us out of here. They’ll mind-wipe us, and drop us into their damned Marines. We’ve got to run.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Nara snapped. She turned back to piloting.

  Aran smiled. He had no idea who this Confederacy was, but he doubted they’d look too kindly on illegal slavers. The enemy of his enemy, and all that.

  Besides, how much worse could things really get?

  7

  Voria

  Voria released the breath she’d been holding, relaxing slightly as a crack split the space in front of her vessel. Purple fires lurked along the edges of the Fissure, veining across the sky as the cracks widened and expanded.

  Wyrm Hunter sailed silently through the Fissure and returned to normal space. The Fissure snapped shut in its wake, leaving unbroken space around them. Tension eased across the bridge, with everyone relieved to be outside the claustrophobic darkness of the Umbral Depths.

  They’d entered a system with a single world orbiting a massive orange sun. The world was of no interest, but the Catalyst orbiting it was another matter.

  “Why have we come here, Major?” Captain Thalas growled like a dog barring its teeth. The sour-faced Shayan bore the otherworldly beauty that was the hallmark of their people, but that did little to soften the sting of the man’s overweening arrogance.

  Thalas stood several meters away from her, inside the ship’s defensive matrix, a trio of slowly rotating rings identical to the command matrix she stood in. Each ring was emblazoned with sigils linked to the eight aspects of magic. The sigils were dim now, giving off only a faint glow, but that would change if Wyrm Hunter engaged in battle.

  “We’ve come,” Voria said, “because I received an augury telling me to be here today. This is where we’ll find Kazon.” She studied the floating skull. Demonic horns curled into the darkness, and the cold flames in the eyes gave the dead god the appearance of life. It hovered over a barren blue world. “We don’t know if that place has a Guardian, but the primals will be nasty enough. Demons, I’d wager. Just as well we aren’t docking. Sergeant Crewes, can you give us a better view of the vessel?”

  The scry-screen rippled, the scene shifting from a view of the entire system to a tiny swatch of space. That swatch was dominated by a small cruiser, many of the sigils on its battered hull dark or dying.

  “Uh, she’s unregistered, sir,” Crewes rumbled.

  The sergeant was a dark-skinned bear of a man stuffed into Marine body armor. Under normal circumstances, Crewes would never be on the bridge, but he was the only surviving member of her battalion who could channel fire magic. That ability gave him access to divination, which meant her ship wasn’t flying blind, so she used him where needed.

  Crewes spoke again. “Looks like they’re firing, sir. Offensive spell. Void-based.”

  “That makes sense,” Voria said, calmly, “given the Catalyst they’re leaving. I’ll handle it.”

  The cruiser wasn’t a real threat, even if it was backed by a talented mage—not against a full battleship like Wyrm Hunter. Voria cleared her mind and watched the vessel through the scry-screen.

  Power gathered within her breast, and she cocked her head, listening to something past the edge of hearing. She rested her right hand briefly on the spinning silver ring, grounding herself to the sigil for void. Then she added its opposite, the sigil for life. She repeated the process on the gold ring, then the bronze.

  A bolt of crackling negative energy shot from the smaller vessel, whipping toward the Hunter. Voria studied the spell for a long moment, then touched a final sigil. She pulled deeply from the core of power in her chest, feeding it into the sigils she’d ignited.

  Those energies were amplified, flowing through the base of the matrix and into the hull. The matrix carried it to the spellcannon, which launched a burst of grey light into space. The counterspell caught the enemy void bolt, and both spells dissipated.

  Counterspells were an effective way to gauge an enemy, because a counterspell could generally unravel a stronger spell. That meant it would cost the enemy caster more energy to assault than it cost her to defend. If this became a game of attrition, it was one she could confidently win. Every spell her opponent cast taught her a little more about them.

  Voria’s sucked in a deep breath, wiping sweat from her cheek. She watched as the cruiser grew larger. How would the enemy mage react? What tricks did they know?

  The enemy ship shimmered from sight, fading into the black. Illusionist, then.

  “She’s cast an invisibility spell. Crewes, deploy clinging flames,” she ordered, guiding the Hunter in a wide arc as she circled the planet’s umbral shadow. That would be her enemy’s target. If they escaped into the Umbral Depths, there’d be no catching them.

  “Firing, sir,” Crewes growled through gritted teeth. He touched a fire sigil, then a dream sigil. A sheen of sweat broke out on his dark skin as a nimbus of fiery energy grew around the matrix. It flowed from Crewes into the metal around him, then down into the ship itself.

  The spell shot from the spellcannon, exploding into a wide cone of scarlet flame that blanketed the area of space where their enemy had disappeared. Most of the fire quickly sputtered out, but some of the flames clung to an object, exposing the fiery outline of the enemy cruiser.

  Space shimmered, then the enemy vessel flickered back into view.

  “Nice work, Sergeant.” Voria moved her hands to earth and spirit, channeling a binding spell. The matrix ripped a large chunk of power from her chest, sucking it into the ship. She sagged a bit from the effort, lightheaded as the torrent of power poured into the matrix. A glittering net of pale white energy hurled toward the enemy ship, which desperately attempted to evade.

>   Had the vessel been fully repaired and outfitted, it might have dodged the attack. Instead, the net crawled over the ship like a living thing, bonding to the sigils on the hull. Those sigils flared brightly wherever the net touched, then faded to a muted white, barely giving off any illumination at all. The ship’s engines sputtered, then died. She was drifting.

  “Vessel successfully neutralized, sir,” Crewes boomed, snapping to attention when she glanced in his direction.

  “At ease, Sergeant,” she commanded, resting against the support ring. The battle had been short, but taxing. “Captain, now that they’re immobilized, I want you to lead a team over there to secure the vessel. Non-lethal force only. If you find Kazon, send word immediately.”

  “And if we don’t find the target, Major?” Thalas demanded. It wasn’t quite a direct challenge, but it was as close as a Shayan noble was willing to risk when speaking to a superior officer.

  “Then this entire trip will have been wasted. We find Kazon, and bring him back to the Inurans.” Voria kept her tone firm, stowing her doubts. There was every likelihood Kazon was already dead, and if that were the case, they’d come all this way for nothing.

  8

  Worse

  Aran winced as something slammed against the hull of the ship. The lights on the bridge dimmed, and the spelldrive died with a groan.

  Nara tumbled into the side of the command matrix, barely catching herself. Arcs of golden energy shot out around her, aftereffects from whatever spell the Confederate battleship had fired. The energy dissipated, leaving wisps of smoke in its wake. Nara’s eyes drooped, and she stumbled out of the matrix.

  She wove drunkenly in his direction. “Listen, I know you don’t trust me. But right now we need each other.” She shook her head, some of the color coming back to her face.