“The prince? Why would he tell the Teifen where he was?” Cora asked, surprising the knight, though he recovered quickly.
“Captain, I wondered the same, so I put the question to the prisoner. He said that the prince promised him it was for the good of the empire. I honestly don't think the prisoner knows more,” Sir Reitus said. He hung his head in shame at his next words. “Normally I would not believe such a story, but the prince has been acting strangely ever since we left Effrit. It is as if he thinks this is all a game, and he will simply be returned home after. The prince is young, so it could be that he is being manipulated.”
“If the prince is sending those messages, we could be too late! The guards are all being watched, but the prince was sent directly to the embassy, where I’m sure no one will suspect a thing. He could be sending the messages now! We need to get in there and stop him!” Cora was nearly shouting, she was so angry.
Grimms slammed his fist down on the desk. “Cora! This is not the time. We need to get in contact with the embassy, and prevent the prince from sending anything more out. They have an Aether dampening room; we need to have him moved there.”
“If they will listen to us at all. That’s their prince, the next emperor; I doubt they are going to lock him up on the word of a drugged up prisoner and the hunches of a starship captain and a guard,” Cora spat back.
“I agree that the embassy will do little to help us in this, Colonel. They will take the word of their lord over our word. I will have to go talk with him directly. He may listen to me, as I have served him faithfully all his life,” Sir Reitus reasoned.
Cora took an audible breath, which Grimms found odd, considering she was projecting her voice with her mind, and not actually speaking the words. “That may work, but it would be too late by the time you got down there. I have another idea. You’re not going to like it…” she said, her tone defeated.
Grimms sighed. “Sara?”
“Sara.”
The surface of the ocean bulged upward for a second before bursting in a foamy spray, as Sara shot the five of them out of the water in a shield bubble that she had formed while in the airlock leaving the Exitium. She figured the group bubble would be much easier than trying to get to the surface individually, and, as a bonus, there was no pressure difference that they had to take into account.
The shield hovered above the waves while Sara turned in a circle, looking for the shuttle. She found the hovering craft a little ways off, its back ramp still open. She’d begun moving her group toward it when her comm buzzed.
“This is Sara,” she said, guiding the shield bubble into the open cargo bay, and letting the spell fade. There was a clang as all three armored mages landed on the deck. The shuttle swayed at the sudden weight, but righted itself almost immediately.
“Sara, it’s Cora.” There was a slight hesitation. “We have some news. It looks like the Elif prince is the one that’s been sending messages to the Teifen.”
Now it was Sara's turn to hesitate. “Are you sure? Why would he do that?”
“We’re pretty sure. The traitor started talking, but the details are fuzzy. If it is the prince, though, he’s currently in the Elif embassy without supervision, and we can't monitor all the messages going out from there,” Cora said. She took a breath before continuing. “We need you to get there and keep him from getting a message out. They have a dampening room you can put him in, but I don't think they are going to just let you walk in…”
Sara's face hardened. “You need me to force my way in? How sure are you that he’s the culprit?”
There was silence on the line, and Sara imagined Cora talking it over with Grimms one more time. “We’re sure enough to ask you to do this. Don’t hurt anybody, and they can't complain too much. I mean, they will, but we need to be sure. The UHFC is not acting on this, afraid it will cause an incident.”
“Oh, it’ll cause an incident, all right. I don't know if I can do this without hurting anybody, but I can be sure not to kill anybody,” Sara qualified. She closed the cargo ramp and tromped to the front of the craft to squeeze into the pilot’s seat. “Cora. You’re sure about this? You know it’s going to be a shit-show.”
“I know. I just can't think of a way to get this done quickly enough. Every minute could be a minute too late. We cannot let the Teifen know where Earth is.”
“Right. Okay, see you back on the Raven.” Sara ended the call and grabbed the control sticks. She took a breath and looked over at Boon as the girl slid into the seat next to her. “Hang on, everybody. Turns out we’re in a hurry.” She slammed the throttle open, rocketing the ship to supersonic speed in less than a second.
The internal dampeners compensated for the acceleration, so they weren’t turned to paste by the sudden thrust, but they were still thrown back in their seats. Sara pulled up on the stick, and they were soon above the clouds, where she pushed the limit of the engines. The nose of the shuttle was a dull orange as they plowed through the upper atmosphere.
“What’s going on? Who was that?” Baxter said from the back of the ship.
“It was Cora. Evidently, the Elif are going to try and betray us again, and we’re the only ones who’ll stop it.”
“How are we supposed to do that?” Boon asked, her eyes wide.
“We need to go scare the shit out of a prince,” Sara said, gritting her teeth.
Chapter 32
“This is Captain Sara Sonders of the UHS Raven, I am requesting assistance in preventing a potential attack on the Sol System,” Sara shouted into the comm.
She had been yelling her way up through the command structure of the UHFC for the last five minutes, as the shuttle screamed across North America, heading for Hawaii. She was finally talking to the base commander.
“You are to stand down, Captain. We cannot risk the political fallout. We need the Elif if we are going to win this war. The embassy is Effrit ground; we have no authority there. We are attempting to contact the ambassador, and we will deal with this diplomatically,” the commander said for the third time.
“That is not good enough. There is a very real chance that the Elif prince is the one communicating with the Teifen fleet that attacked my ship. If he tells them where Earth is, what kind of chance do we have?” Sara argued. She wanted to rage and scream at their stupidity.
The commander’s voice took on an annoyed edge. “Captain, you cannot just go to the embassy and speak on humanity’s behalf. It is not the way things are done.”
Sara ground her teeth. “I will not stand by and let some child lead the enemy to our door. I am going to stop this, and you can help, or you can get out of the way, but it is going to happen.”
“Captain, you will not invade Elif airspace. That is an order,” he stated sternly.
Sara took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. God, I really need to do some yoga and work out this rage; it can't be good for my heart, she thought.
She cleared her throat, and spoke as calmly as she could. “Commander, I cannot help that you are too stubborn to see the real danger. There is a person who, at any time, could send a message that will spell the destruction of everyone you know. I have the ability to stop him, so I will.”
The commander gave a gruff laugh. “This is your final warning; you will not attempt to land at that embassy. If you do, you will be shot down.”
Sara cut off the comm channel, and screamed with rage. Boon was watching with wide eyes, her hand over her mouth in surprise.
Baxter stuck his head through the cockpit’s door, a look of concern on his face. “So, that seemed intense. What are you planning on doing?”
“Just what I said I would. I’m going in there and stopping the little shit from contacting the Teifen fleet. But more importantly, I’m going to find out why he’s doing this in the first place,” Sara declared, gripping the controls white-knuckled.
“What about them trying to shoot us down?” Boon asked, reaching up and scratching Silva’s chin.
“The two of us will handle anything they throw at us.”
Ten minutes later, Sara pushed the stick forward, diving from the upper atmosphere toward the big island. She highlighted the Elif embassy on the cockpit window with the navigation feature, and an icon appeared above a set of buildings inside the city. She made straight for them, slowing the shuttle now that the atmosphere was thickening again.
An alarm began to wail, and Boon reached up to flip a switch, dropping the wail to a drone. “They have us targeted,” she reported, then made room on her lap for Alister to join Silva. The two familiars curled together and hunkered down for the fight.
“I’m not worried. I'm going to need you to take care of the defenses at the embassy. Try not to get too out of hand, and for god’s sake, don't kill anyone. I’ll provide cover and clear our path,” Sara ordered, diving through the scattered cloud cover.
They closed in fast, and Sara waited until the last minute to pull up, screaming over the buildings and streets at just under Mach 1. She pulled the throttle back, and they slowed to a crawl, just outside the Elif embassy.
The building was in the Elif style, with bulbous towers and high arches. The embassy almost looked like a mix of Russian style onion domes, and a cathedral from the dark ages, but the whole thing was painted with metallic coatings in bright greens and blues. There was a wall surrounding the compound, with turrets along its top in armored boxes. A group of Elif in Aetheric armor were surrounding the landing zone, and each of them was pointing a rifle at the shuttle.
Sara was circling the courtyard to bring the shuttle in for a landing, when Boon yelled, “Oh, shit! We have inbound missiles.”
The projectiles hit before Boon was done warning Sara about them. They had come from the capital’s defense grid, and were hypersonic when they hit, having had a flight time of less than a second from the launcher to the shuttle. The warheads were designed to explode after penetrating the hull of their target, that way they concentrated the destruction inside of the target itself, instead of spending energy on the armored hull.
The timing was extremely precise, and there was a failsafe built in, in the off-chance that the armor was able to withstand the impact of the hardened tip of the missile. The crushing of the tip would set off the explosion early, doing maximum damage to the armor, so that the next missile would have a better chance of penetrating. The missiles were smart, and judged the best course of action in a split second.
Sara knew all of this about ground-to-air missiles. She had taken classes on them at the academy. Even in that class, she tended to daydream once she’d grasped the material. However, one of the things she’d daydreamed about was how she would deal with such a weapon.
Back then, she’d lacked the power and control to actually carry out her plan, but that was then.
This is now.
Sara had been prepared for the strike even before she was diving from high atmosphere. She had Alister construct a thick, gelatinous shield. The idea was that the missiles would hit the gel and slow to a stop before they could get close.
It worked like a dream.
Sara could see the two missiles suspended a hundred meters off to their left, their rockets still burning at full blast, but not able to move through her and Alister's construction. With a second form, she wrapped each missile in a force spell and flung them out over the ocean, then crushed their tips, making them explode.
The detonation of the missiles served as the signal for attack. All the auto turrets on the embassy walls opened up, spitting metal slugs out in curtains of steel. The guns were similar to the PDCs on the Naval ships, but with a smaller caliber of slug. The Elif in the landing zone began firing their rifles, though Sara guessed it was more for effect than any thought of actually damaging them.
She had already dismissed the gel-shield for a hardened one, and the slugs and slivers of metal ricocheted off, peppering the ground around the shuttle as she sank lower and lower.
Right before they touched down, two mages let loose with fireballs. They aimed for the cockpit, but the fire splashed across her shield with no effect, though they did turn the golden color a brighter yellow for a second.
Sara extended the landing legs, and the shuttle rocked slightly as it touched down. She smiled cruelly through the glass at the armored troops while they fired with everything they had.
A soldier stepped out from behind a pillar and, swinging a rocket launcher to his shoulder, let one fly. Sara caught the rocket with a force spell before it was halfway to the shuttle; with a complicated change, Alister morphed the spell into a shield bubble, and collapsed it around the rocket. The explosion was contained in the rapidly shrinking bubble, so that when Sara released the tiny shield, a ball of mangled steel and carbon fell to the courtyard to bounce once, and then lay still as it smoked.
“Boon, let’s take out those turrets,” Sara pitched, watching the soldiers as they looked at the small, smoking ball that used to be a rocket.
The women got up and made their way to the back of the shuttle with Baxter, and Alister and Silva rode on their Mage’s shoulders. Sara activated the ramp controls, opening the back door and lowering the ramp. They stepped out and saw that the shuttle was surrounded. Further, the shield around the shuttle was taking a beating, making it hard to see past the sparks and flashes of golden color as every attack was repelled with ease.
Boon and Baxter began targeting turrets, crushing them with a force spell, and sending sparks and showers of broken parts to the ground.
“Lower your weapons,” Sara shouted as the last of the turrets crumbled.
To her surprise, the soldiers stopped shooting… but they did not lower their rifles. Instead, a section of the soldiers encircling them shifted to the side, allowing a woman in robes of office to step forward.
The woman held up a hand. “Please, stop. There must be a way we can come to a resolution,” she said, and Sara recognized her as the Elif ambassador.
“Ambassador, there most certainly is. Bring the prince to your dampening room, and allow me to speak to him,” Sara said.
“That is out of the question. The prince shall be protected, for he is the new empire. We cannot allow you to see him; not after what you have done to our defenses. This is highly—”
She was cut off as a new set of guards pressed their way to the front. In the center of the newcomers was a young Elif in white robes.
“It is all right. I have nothing to hide from this Mage,” the young Elif said. “I shall do what I must to protect my people.”
Sara pointed directly at him. “This is the prince?”
The ambassador nearly choked. “This is His Highness, Prince Paelias DeSolin. You shall show him the proper respect—”
“We know you sent messages to the Teifen, and I’m here to make sure you don't do it again,” Sara told him. As she stalked to the edge of the shield, a small opening appeared for her to walk through. The shield was closed again before anyone could think to raise a weapon.
“That is preposterous. The prince was the only royal to escape the attack on our homeworld! Why would he want the Teifen to know where he has gone?” the ambassador asked, stepping in front of Sara to block her path.
The guards closed in tighter around the prince, obviously wanting to take him back inside. The prince however, stepped forward, and waved back the guards.
“I had no choice,” he admitted, to the gasps of his soldiers and the ambassador. “The governor has my father and mother. He told me that he would release them if I led him to the humans’ homeworld. I did it for the good of all Elif-kind.”
The ambassador took a step back in horror. “My Lord. The Teifen are treacherous; you cannot take them at their word.”
Sara grimaced. “It seems that is something the Elif and Teifen have in common, if the old histories are correct. Once again, your people will sell out humanity for your own personal gain, no matter how shortsighted that gain may be.”
The ambassador knew exactly what she
was referring to, and seemed surprised that she had any clue about the ancient history between their people.
Sara took a breath and blew it out in frustration. “How do you even know the emperor and empress still live?” she asked the boy.
“I spoke to my father. He is being held on the governor’s dreadnought,” he said defiantly.
Sara bit her lip, thinking of what that would mean, if the emperor was still alive. The prince may be a symbol of their empire, but he was far too young to actually rule. The still-living emperor, however, could mean a workable alliance between the humans and Elif. From everything she had heard, Emperor DeSolin was a good leader, if not a little mired in tradition.
The ambassador was talking frantically with the prince, but Sara interrupted them. “You’re sure it was your father? Not just a trick?”
“I am. We have a passphrase to verify our identities in just such an occasion,” the prince assured her.
“Well that’s something, at least. We have some time to come up with a plan,” Sara said, crossing her arms, and beginning to think up a strategy.
“Will you save my father?” the boy asked, and Sara noted that his eyes were filling with tears.
“If the options are to save him, or have you rule the Elif? Yeah, I’m going to do whatever I can to save him,” Sara said, regretting the jab immediately.
The prince seemed unaffected by this, as he already appeared to be pretty miserable. “Then you should know that the Teifen are on their way. I sent the message an hour ago,” he confessed, hanging his head, as tears dripped from his nose.
Sara closed her eyes. “Fuck. Me.”
Chapter 33
The mood had changed dramatically in the embassy courtyard following the prince’s admission.
Their lord had betrayed an ally, and had publicly admitted to it. The fight had left them, and confusion and anger were fighting for the lead in their emotions. Sara didn't blame them. She would be beside herself, if her president had done the same to the Elif.
War Mage Chronicles- Part One Page 43