Accounts Payable

by Blaise Corvin

  Suddenly, from where he hung from Gwen’s back, Christopher woke with a start and hissed. “I found the settlement, and we’re almost there.”

  “Look sharp, people!” I commanded, then asked Chris, “where is it at? Do you have a status report?” Finding our destination hadn’t been easy without roads. Traveling the backcountry like this had led to inevitable conflicts with monsters, too. The number of random monster encounters we’d had seemed high, though, much higher than just a few months ago. I doubted that anyone in our group had been feeling much hope for the colonists.

  Christopher shook his head. “It’s just up ahead, maybe a couple miles. We’re actually heading right there. The place looks like it’s under attack, and something knocked a big hole through the wall. The defenses are battered, and I don’t think they could hold out for more than a day or two. After I found the settlement, I took one more look around before waking up. I might be wrong, but it looks like there are a lot more monsters in the woods than are already attacking, and they’re heading there. If that is true, the people probably won’t last more than another hour or two.”

  “How many monsters are there, I mean attacking right now?” I growled the question.

  “At least a few dozen. It may be a nasty fight.”

  “Wonderful,” I sighed. “Benjamin, did you hear that?”

  Up ahead, the giant, horned wolf nodded his head. To the side, Jessica whispered loud enough for me to hear, “Why is she Captain Hazard to me, but Benjamin is Benjamin? This isn’t fair.”

  My urge to punch my friend came back, not least of which because she had a point. I could tell that I wasn’t myself right now, was acting less focused than usual. The theoretical end of my military service looming might have been part of it, and I feared what that could mean. But I had a job to do, and if my team moved our asses, we might actually succeed in saving some people today.

  “Let’s turn it up a notch. Double time!” I called. As we all shot forward, I wondered when I’d lost the jitters and nervousness I used to get before an operation. The thought wasn’t a happy one.

  Teamtalk

  I saw smoke before the settlement came in sight. The surroundings were bleak, mostly just reddish soil with sad-looking clumps of trees here and there. The soggy ground would have been squelching under my feet if I’d actually been touching the ground using my full weight. Hills and forests rose in the distance, probably where the monsters had been attacking from.

  It didn’t look like much, but the area must be decent for growing crops or nobody would have bothered building anything here. After my team crested a small hill, we saw our destination. A torn, Tolstey flag still flew over Bairn Settlement, limping in the wind. Colonists had probably worked hard to craft fields, to plant crops around the defenses, but everything had been ruined.

  The settlement itself looked more like a fort than I had been envisioning, probably for good reason. Tall, rustic palisades, fashioned from rough-hewn logs, had been gouged and peppered with battle damage. Burns covered almost one entire wall. I could barely see the edge of the hole that Christopher had mentioned, but the area was immediately obvious by the group of monsters concentrated there, trying to force their way in.

  I recognized the creatures—I’d fought them before. Standard Giant Man-Shaped Reptile Demons, or lizardmen, were all over Ludus. In Berber, the scale-armored kind were more common, and were stronger than standard lizardmen. They were all ravenous and murderous, though.

  Lizardmen didn’t stand as tall as Terrans, but were usually taller than Areva. They had thick shoulders and powerful bodies, wide necks, and powerful, toothy jaws. They weren’t particularly graceful, and their eyesight was rotten, but at close range, they were extremely dangerous. Luckily, out in the open like this, they were a lot easier to deal with. Still, there were a lot of them.

  “Rot,” I swore, counting at least two hundred lizardmen, all armed with crude polearms and other basic weapons. I cursed again when I caught sight of a few crossbows. Lizardmen were similar to goblins in some ways, but more dangerous on account of their greater size, strength, and the fact that they were more likely to use longer weapons. Unfortunately, with a good leader, they could even formulate some strategy. Luckily, they didn’t breed as fast and usually didn’t attack in large numbers. Usually.

  I couldn’t get a clear view of the defenders yet, but I assumed the only thing saving them was how high up the hole in the wall was. The lizardmen were not very good climbers; at least this species wasn’t. As a result, the monsters couldn’t just use their weight of numbers to push through the gap in the defense; they still needed to climb somehow. A pile of dead lizardmen had almost created a grim ramp to the gap, though.

  As my team zoomed forward, turning up speed and moving into position without being told, I briefly wondered how many other settlements like this in Tolstey were being destroyed, and wouldn’t have a powerful military team to save them. My dark thoughts weren’t helping matters, so I shook my head and focused on the task at hand, rising into the sky with my Flight power.

  I’d practiced my abilities for years now, so flying was as natural as walking, and one hell of a lot faster. After I’d gotten a good vantage point, I clicked on my magic speech transmission tool, which looked like a sphere tied around my neck. A narrow strand of braided monster hair that could conduct magic power connected the necklace to a canister at the back of my belt. The canister housed a magic stone that powered all the military devices I was using. My team all had a similar canister and smaller stones made from the original rock, attached to earpieces.

  Everyone was almost in position, and the lizardmen hadn’t seemed to notice us yet. Before issuing a command, I got a good look inside the settlement, and did a double take. “An ork?” I wondered out loud. No, actually, there were two. “What the—”

  “Come again, Flight One,” said Jessica. To her credit, she was all business now, and her voice had grown colder. A few years ago my friend had been a loudmouth, but fairly helpless. Now she was a loudmouth with a scary reputation in the northern Tolstey army.

  “Disregard, Flight Two,” I replied, and tried to keep my voice crisp. The teamtalk stones didn’t always work well. I shot forward to see the situation inside the walls more clearly, verifying that I’d seen the scene correctly.

  There were about fifty defenders from what I could see. Most of them weren’t outfitted all that well, but they were fighting smart, with makeshift shields at the breach in the wall, and the rear ranks taking rests.

  A handful of fighters with bows patrolled other areas of the walls. Smart, I thought. Whoever trained these people or at least had given them orders knew their business.

  What had made me doubletake before, what I confirmed, was that two orks seemed to be fighting with the Terran defenders, holding the wall. The sight was so strange, I could barely believe my own eyes. The blueish mottled-skin monsters were known for their ferocity and pride. While they rarely wound up on Ludus, I’d heard they were feared on other worlds. While orks were big and savage, their most dangerous feature was their intellect.

  I’d never heard of orks working with people before, much less against other monsters. With a shake of the head, I took one last look at the small but fierce fight below and prepared to give orders.

  “Flight Six,” I said, Chen’s callsign. “After the attack, head inside the walls to support the civilians, over.”

  When I’d been a girl, my father had told me stories of how people on Earth used Terran technology. I’d used one of those stories as the foundation for my team’s communication. Before making the changes, talking over each other had been a problem, but not anymore.

  “Copy, over.”

  I continued, “Flight Six, also be advised I see orks inside the settlement, but they look like they are fighting with the civilians. Don’t be trigger happy. This might be a long day and we are going in blind, over.”

  After a slight pause, Chen responded, “Understood, One. Over.”<
br />
  “Flight Five,” I said, calling Gwen Jones by her call sign, “go wide with us around the lizardmen. Keep moving even after I stop, look for any reinforcements and report if you see any. Take Three with you over the wall at the far corner, then rendezvous with Flight Six inside. Flight Three, once inside the walls you will support if necessary, but focus on scouting if possible. I don’t want to get caught by more surprise company, over.”

  I heard two clicking noises, the sound made when someone tapped their stone with a finger. Gwen and Christopher had just acknowledged my order.

  “Flight Four, slow down and engage on my mark. You are going to hit them from this near side while the rest of us flank. I will signal when to move and clear the field of fire. After that you will be picking off survivors, over.”

  “Roger that, One, over.” Benjamin’s response was curt, businesslike. The man really was dependable.

  “Flight Two, you are with me.”

  “Roger, hurry and catch up, over,” responded Jessica. I tapped my communication stone in response and descended through the sky toward my friend. She was almost ready to unleash mayhem, and I needed to be there to back her up.

  I arrived just in time, right about the same moment the lizardmen collectively noticed some of my team. “Flight Four, this is Flight One, mark. We are in position, over.”

  “Understood, over,” Benjamin confirmed. To the side, I heard a blood-curdling howl as he turned into something big and tough, hammering at the lizardmen’s flank. The lizardmen I could see all turned, attracted to the noise and sudden commotion.

  I loved when a plan actually worked. Now I was ready to protect Jessica for the last two hundred yards or so we moved, but she never needed it; Benjamin’s distraction had been super effective. The lizardmen were still basically pushing toward the wall, but many were moving toward the scuffle on their flank now. As the seconds ticked by, more of the creatures began squawking and screaming, alerting their fellows to the big monster attacking their vulnerable side.

  Finally, Jessica and I reached a good spot to attack from, finding some solid footing. “Okay, Four, get out of there, over,” I ordered Benjamin.

  “Moving, give me twenty seconds, over.”

  Jessica stayed silent as I eyeballed the lizardmen, only scrubby undergrowth separating us. With this angle and our current position, Jessica and I should be able to lay down damage without destroying the settlement’s walls. Only moments away from engaging, to initiating a life-or-death struggle, the seconds seemed to crawl by. I didn’t want to fight, I wasn’t excited about it, but I wasn’t afraid either. A tiny seed of fear that never seemed to go away was still there, but I’d gotten very good at ignoring it. More than anything right now, I just wanted to get this over with.

  Finally, time ran out. “Flight Four, are you clear, over?”

  “I’m clear, over.”

  About seventy yards separated Jessica and I from the nearest lizardmen, and we had a little bit of cover in the form of scraggly trees. With Benjamin heading to one side to clear our field of fire, some of the nearby lizardmen were confused, knowing they’d been attacked but not from where. As a result, some of them that weren’t directly attacking the settlement began looking around and one of us spotted Jessica and I. It hissed and began wildly pointing, nearly dropping its crude sword in excitement.

  I could only wear my magic armor for about an hour at a time before it would need to recharge for a day, so I tended to conserve it. When I’d first joined the military, I’d activated it at the first sign of trouble, but I was more conservative these days. The best time to use the armor was right before a fight, like now. I lifted my hands to the necklace around my neck, slightly below the black line on my skin that marked me as a soldier. “Armor,” I commanded. The strange but familiar feeling ran down my limbs as thick, dark plate armor formed from mid-air over my body.

  Lieutenant Chen had been fast. About three hundred yards away, where the lizardmen had been attacking the hole in the settlement wall, I could see a sudden burst of air from the other side blow a lizardman back into its comrades. Another creature was thrown upwards far enough to come down with like a sack of neu-potatoes. I wasn’t using my Vibration abilities to extend my hearing, but I could imagine the sickening crunch the monster must have made before dying.

  Despite the relatively minor danger with only a couple lizardmen nearby, I still created a low level vib-shield to disrupt any crossbow bolts, keeping my attention on the enemy. A glance showed me that Jessica had drawn one of her new wands, an expensive one made of aluminum. I shook my head and touched my teamtalk stone, turning it off. We only had a few seconds before we’d be peppered with arrows or overrun, so I had to make this quick.

  “Lieutenant Porter, that wand only has a few uses, right?”

  “Two, yeah. I wanted to try it out and this seemed like a good chance.” Jessica eyed me and held her weapon up. “This is the metal ground spikes wand I was telling you about a few weeks ago.”

  I shook my head. “Switch to something you can use until it overheats, something you won’t break just by using. I want to conserve weapons and power.”

  “What? Why? They’re just lizardmen. I get being safe and whatnot, but there are only a few hundred of them. Like, we are having a damned conversation while they are running at us.” She gestured. “Lizardmen.”

  I frowned. “This is training for Lieutenant Chen. Use your flamethrower wand first, then switch to your lightning wand, please.”

  “But—”

  “Now,” I barked. “We don’t have time to debate this.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Jessica drawled, extending the last word. She stowed her fancy new wand, instead drawing one of the standard wands she used most often. Her weapons all varied in effectiveness and numbers of uses. Some of them she could practically use all day, like her movement wand and a light wand, what she called a “flashlight.”

  Some of her wands would get hot with use, and I knew she had gloves to wear if that happened, but this would only prolong their use a bit. These types of wands could burst into flame or melt if they got too hot. Her most precious and difficult to make wands only had a few uses, and would crumble to dust once they were used up—similar to an enchanted weapon that had had three owners.

  Normally, I probably would have let my friend test new wands on weak enemies like these lizardmen, and I understood her frustration. Something was bothering me, though, a tickle. I was getting a bad feeling about this operation, and I trusted my instincts.

  Jessica let loose a cone of fire, flash-frying the handful of lizardmen that had been closing with us. I hadn’t noticed any arrows hit my vib-shield yet, which would have slowed and diverted them. The defense was not infallible, but was very useful in a situation like this one. But now, if any projectiles had been inbound, Jessica’s fire would have burned them right out of the air.

  The energy passing through my shield began draining my magic power so I let it drop. I didn’t want to take any chances, but the lizardmen really weren’t much of a threat to a team of six highly trained orb-Bonded soldiers, and my rotting tickle wasn’t going away.

  I quickly dropped my hand down to the dagger at my belt. Vistvis knew what the motion meant, and I heard her voice in my mind as my talking dagger said,

  With a nod of acknowledgement, I took my hand off the dagger and put my head on a swivel, looking for anything that might be causing my nerves. Meanwhile, my friend stayed busy creating a wave of heat, noise, and destruction.

  Jessica moved her jet of flame back and forth, roasting everything before us and more importantly, creating one hell of an obvious attack for the other lizardmen to see. The scrubby vegetation, mostly thick grass, caught on fire, creating plumes of acrid smoke.

  I turned my teamtalk stone back on, saying, “All Flights, this is Flight One. Flight Two and Flight One are engaging.” I got back a number of clicks in acknowledgem
ents before I muted my stone again.

  “Lieutenant Porter, you can switch to the lightning wand now, I don’t want them to try flanking us.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” With that response, I knew my friend was irritated with me, but she would get over it. We had a job to do.

  Jessica’s lightning wand was made of bone, scribed with symbols from end to the other. “Do you think we’re far away enough from the settlement for this?” she asked. “It’s hard to aim this thing.”

  “Yes.” As I answered, I created a new vib-shield to protect us, just in case. It looked like none of the lizardmen were really in bow range anymore, Jessica had torched everything in front of us.

  She shrugged and muttered, “Roger, Captain Hazard,” then slashed her lightning wand forward. Thunder boomed, and an angry finger of lightning stabbed down from the cloudy heavens, impacting about a hundred yards away. Jessica’s aim had either been skilled or lucky, because she’d hit one of the lizardmen—the creature’s smoking body toppled over. My friend’s next two attacks missed, but had the desired effect; between the new attacks and the smoke rising from our position, all the creatures now knew where we were. Even the lizardmen that had been busy attacking the settlement turned around and ran toward us, hissing in anger.

  “Orders?” asked Jessica. I could tell she was trying to sound nonchalant, but the sudden rush of distant monsters was definitely the sort of thing to get someone’s attention.

  “Give them a few more lightning attacks, get them good and mad. After that get your earth wall wand ready.”

  “Got it.”

  Jessica rained down inaccurate, but terrifying destruction on the lizardmen. She only actually hit a couple more, but the sound and spectacle whipped the remaining creatures into a frenzy. They roared as they raced toward us.