by M. D. Cooper
She released her magical hold of him and let his body drop as she strode out of the room, determined to put a serious dent in the abilities of the gang to hurt anyone else.
Walking up the corridor, she passed a series of doors on either side, and pushed her extra set of senses into the rooms beyond. They were cells, and half of them were occupied with people who were chained up and naked—or nearly so—and several of these looked malnourished.
“Fuckers,” Amanda cursed.
She’d make sure these people were freed, but for now, they were safer in here.
The corridor ended ahead, opening out into a room. As she peered forward, she could hear shouting and the start of gunfire.
With a thought, she pushed her secondary senses into the large room, which was filled with more gang members readying weapons and charging through to the next room via large loading doors.
Amanda pushed her senses further, into the next room. It was a large space like the first, filled with pipes, machinery and walkways. She quickly spotted Iris and Jinx on the far side behind cover, firing at a group of thugs holed up around a cluster of pipes.
She smiled, though she wondered where Jessica was.
She shrugged off the thought and walked forward, readying her Magic as she went. As she reached the end of the corridor, a woman ran across her path and then spotted her. The thug skidded and fumbled with her gun, and Amanda hit her with a magical punch of energy and threw her the length of the room. She hit a thick pipe with dull thud and stopped moving.
That caught the attention of many already inside the room, and they watched their comrade fall, and then turned to look at Amanda, their eyes wide with shock.
Several of them then looked toward the middle of the room, where a man was standing by a table. Amanda recognized him as the guy who had been talking with the pirate Alma, and guessed he was likely the gang’s current leader.
“You and I need to have words,” she told him.
The man blinked twice as he looked at her, his aura betraying his shock through her Aetheric Sight.
“Don’t just stand there, you idiots, kill her,” he finally yelled, pulling his rifle from the table.
Gunfire filled the room with its staccato beat, the incredible noise bouncing off the walls and drowning out all other sounds.
With a working of her will, Amanda used the Essentia within her to send out a powerful shockwave of kinetic energy that washed over the room.
The men and women all around her were knocked off their feet, thrown black by the blast and sent flying, dropping to the floor, or smashing against machinery or pipes, and then falling down. The leader smacked into the table behind him and flew over the top of it, landing awkwardly on the other side.
The gunfire died away as the wave faded, leaving bodies strewn across the floor, moaning and groaning in pain as they crawled or tried to stand up.
Amanda started to cross the room toward the leader. To her right, a man raised his gun with a shaky hand. Lightning snapped from Amanda’s hand and hit him with a loud bang. He dropped to the floor and stopped moving.
Ahead, a female gang member crawled away from Amanda, her ears bleeding from the shockwave, as she tried to reach the gun that had been knocked from her hand.
With a thought, Amanda hit her with a kinetic punch that knocked her out cold.
She could see the leader moving on the other side of the table, but couldn’t see what he was doing. As she reached the table, Amanda hooked her fingers under the edge and threw it across the room with her enhanced strength, a good twenty meters.
Finally revealed, the leader turned his huge rifle on her and fired. The grenade shot toward her and exploded against her Aegis as a violent fireball that enveloped her in an orange and yellow glow.
The power of the blast knocked her back, even with her Aegis shedding most of the force from the pressure wave and protecting her from the intense heat. She regained her balance quickly, and with a sigh, advanced, quite aware what it would look like to her enemy to see her stride out of the explosion unhurt, her crimson hair billowing around her shoulders.
The look of utter shock on his face was a delight, as she reached out with her Magic and transformed the molecules that made up his gun and turned them into ash that drifted out of the man’s hands. He watched it happen with greater fear.
“What the hell are you?” he gasped as he looked up at her.
“Your worst nightmare,” she replied with a smile.
The man looked around, casting about desperately looking for anything that could help him. He scrambled back from her as she advanced upon him.
Amanda reached into the man’s mind and plucked his name from his memories, while also doing a quick hunt for any Reaver connections—though she didn’t find any.
“Kirk,” she said, and then smiled to herself. “No relation to James T., I take it?”
Kirk paused and looked confused.
“Forget it. I’ve dealt with your sort more times than I care to count. I’ve seen the cells you have back there—”
“Rival gang members,” he blurted. “Killers, all of them…”
“Oh shut the feck up,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve read your mind, I know exactly who’s in those cells, and most of them are entirely innocent.”
Kirk stared at her for a moment, and then jumped up, pulling a pistol from his boot as he rushed her, firing wildly.
She pulled on Essentia once more and conjured a violent build-up of pressure inside his head, which exploded in a shower of blood and brains. His body fell limply to the floor.
Cries of anger rose up from several places around the room, as the people who’d recovered somewhat from the shockwave raised their weapons.
They clearly haven’t learned their lesson, she thought as they opened fire.
Lightning snapped once more, flashing out from Amanda’s hands to hit these latest attackers and drop them all back to the floor.
She looked around her at the bodies that lay scattered about. Several of them were dead or dying; the rest were suffering from burns, broken bones, and other severe injuries. They should recover with medical aid, but they were incapacitated for now and would be easy for the CPS to pick up.
Amanda turned and walked toward the large, open loading door that led to the next room. Gunfire was still ringing out from within. As she walked, she hunted for the Link signal that she knew Iris and Jinx would be using. She found it and tapped into it.
~Hey, guys, want some help?~ she offered.
~I’m fine, girls. Better than fine, actually. I think I’m finally getting used to this universe.~
~I guess. Did you guys come to find me?~
~She wasn’t wrong,~ Amanda replied.
Walking into the back of the room, Amanda quickly spotted several gang members still up and shooting, alongside others who lay dead or dying on the ground, sporting wounds from weapons fire.
~I see you’ve been busy,~ Amanda commented.
~It was a turn of phrase, Jinx. No need to actually repeat yourself,~ Amanda replied with mirth.
~I’m coming through, I’ll meet you in the middle,~ Amanda said as she strode in their direction.
As she moved, more lightning and kinetic rams snapped from her hands and smashed into the
men she saw before her, dropping them to the floor in moments. Some turned and fired on her, their weapons being next to useless against her as she walked through the machinery toward an open area ahead. Through her Aetheric Sight, Amanda could see the life signs in the room, and watched as Iris and Jinx fired upon the last of them, finally taking out the final man with a precise beam shot to the head from Jinx.
~Good shooting,~ Amanda complimented her.
The two AIs stepped out from their cover and walked toward her, scanning the room as they approached.
“It appears we won the day,” Jinx said.
“Looks that way. Jessica won’t be happy that she missed out on all the fun,” Iris added.
Amanda’s powerful hearing picked out some distant gunfire that sounded like it was getting closer. “Don’t be so sure,” Amanda replied, causing Iris to frown.
“Oh, yes, I see what you mean,” Iris said as she looked to Amanda’s left.
Amanda followed the AI’s gaze to a door with a small window set into it. As they watched, light strobed on the other side in time with the rapid bursts of gunfire. Several shots tore through the door, followed by a figure covered in blood who collapsed into the room.
As he fell, he revealed Jessica standing behind him, her rifle tucked over her shoulder.
She looked up and spotted her friends. “Damn, looks like I got here too late.”
“Better late than never,” Amanda replied with a smile.
“You seem brighter. Everything OK?” Jessica asked as she walked over.
“Fine now, yes. Feeling good. Sorry if I gave you a scare earlier, this universe has been messing with my Magic a bit.”
“You just disappeared,” she said accusingly
“I know. I blacked out. I was having issues using my Magic, but I’ve got a handle on it now.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Amanda turned to see that the AI had walked across the room and was now at the other side, looking into the area where Kirk had been.
“Err, yeah, that was me,” Amanda replied a little sheepishly. She wondered if she’d taken things a little too far.
“Well, remind me never to get on the wrong side of you,” Jinx commented, as Iris and Jessica walked over to have a look themselves.
Jessica whistled in appreciation. “Stars, you took on a whole room?”
“They pissed me off,” she replied, feeling her cheeks flush.
“No kidding. Well, I’m glad you’re on our side,” Jessica replied.
“That reminds me,” Amanda said, waving at the room before them, “we should call in the CPS to mop up.”
“Already did,” Jessica answered her. “They’ll be here momentarily.
The message cut out with a snap, and the ship disappeared from the station’s network.
“Shit, sounds like trouble,” Jessica said.
“Let’s go,” Amanda agreed, and worked her Magic, Porting the group across the station back to Sabrina.
THREATS
STELLAR DATE: 05.11.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina, Cerka Station
REGION: Mullens, Virginis System, LoS Space
Sabrina watched everything going on with the utmost suspicion.
Despite liking Cerka and the people of the Virginis System, it was the place she and her crew had been attacked the most in their long years together.
At present, even though Jessica, Iris, and Jinx were off searching for Amanda, it was the events in the ship’s main loading bay that had the bulk of her attention.
Cerka Station’s police were bringing aboard five more bodies of Reavers that had been killed in a shootout at another military depot. That brought the total count of bodies stacked inside her hull to thirteen.
Thirteen more than she’d like to see.
she said on the ship’s general network.
Sabrina felt the same way, eyeing the final body as it was set on the deck next to Usef. He exchanged a few words with the CPS personnel as they turned to leave the ship, and the AI initiated a scan of the five sealed body bags.
They were a little warmer than room temperature, which was to be expected, given the fact that the people within had died only a short time ago.
For a moment, it looked as though one of the bags had moved, and Sabrina checked the replay, uncertain as to whether or not it was just a limb inside settling after being moved, or something else.
Even as she sent the message, she watched the bag disintegrate and a man rise from the dust left behind. She immediately recognized him from the feeds in the bay on the lower ring as the man who had fought, and nearly bested, Amanda.
One of the things that Sabrina loved about being an AI—especially an AI that had seen its core upgraded by none other than Earnest Redding—was that she was fast.
Blindingly fast.
Additionally, she was—and had always been—incredibly paranoid.
Ever since Sera had rescued her from a scrapyard, long decades ago, the AI had feared that her ship, and by extension, herself, would be captured and disabled, left derelict, or scrapped, or sent to some other terrible fate.
Stasis shields kept her safe on the outside, but much of the time, she was docked with questionable stations. She took comfort in the knowledge that she’d worked with her human crew to ensure that the ship’s internal defenses were up to the task of repelling boarders.
A lot of boarders.
They’d never been put to the test against a magic-user—if that’s what these Magi really are—but she was about to find out how well her weaponry and other tricks would do.
That was where her main advantage of speed came into play.
By the time the man had reached his feet and clamped a hand around Usef’s neck, twenty-seven turrets had trained on him, six firing before a single word had left his lips.
If it hadn’t been for Usef’s proximity, she would have unleashed every beam she had on the enemy Magus, but that would have burned the Marine colonel to ash as well, so she dampened her fury to a dull scream of relativistic photons.
Light flared around her target, and he stumbled backward, losing his grip on Usef.
“Go!” the colonel screamed at the station police while running across the bay himself, pulling his helmet back on.
Sabrina watched her human crewmember move behind a crate that contained a grav generator that would shield him from any incoming weapons fire—though she didn’t know what that would do against magic. His best bet, she suspected, was for her to keep the enemy distracted as long as possible with withering weapons fire from as many directions as possible.
“Fucking core!” Cheeky exclaimed as alerts lit up across the bridge. “You’re gonna burn the bay to ash, Sabs.”
the AI said while providing updates to Amavia and Misha, directing them to get armored up and ready for combat.
“Dammit,” the pilot muttered as she dashed to the back of the bridge and backed into the emergency armor rack, letting it encase her in medium-weight ISF plating. “Just let them try me.”
While conversing with Cheeky and advising the rest of the crew of their situation, Sabrina continued to hammer the Magus with beams, growing increasingly frustrated as his personal shield continued to hold.
Four o
ther figures had also risen from their body bags, two dissolving them like the first Magi had, and two others cutting their way free.
she advised the crew, opening fire on the others, only to find that they were protected by shields as well.
Normally, a-grav systems were very carefully limited to never exert more than one g of positive force, though they were capable of producing many, many times that.
When a ship was under heavy thrust, it could create internal forces as high as one hundred gs—easily enough to pancake a human, and much of the ship’s interior as well. To ensure no overcompensation occurred as a ship maneuvered in space, the limiting factors on a-grav systems were considered sacrosanct and unmodifiable.
Sabrina didn’t see it that way.
Triggering the boost in artificial gravity had the desired effect. These new enemies may have amazing powers at their disposal, but they weren’t prepared for their bodies to instantly weigh a few tons.
All five enemies hit the deck, and she could plainly see that two had bones protruding from their legs. Even so, the protective shield still held.
Sabrina had been watching the fight on the dock, where a group of Reavers were attacking the departing CPS forces. She’d been unable to render aid because none of her firing angles were clear—though as more and more of the station police fell, those opened up, and she fired on the attackers outside the bay as well as within.
Her internal beams were starting to tax their focusing apparatuses, lenses heating up as the energies being funneled in an unending stream began to take their toll. Two of the beams shut down for emergency cooling, and three more were on the brink.