“Oh, fuck this,” I growled, wiping the goo off as best I could and flinging it away. My hands burned from the effort, but even that little bit helped me focus enough to see how Jeffry’s cage worked. I pulled another stick of magic together with my mind even though my brain was a lightning storm of pain and confusion.
Then I did what I did best. I shoved foreign objects into holes.
Jeffry’s cage exploded. As his stupid undead vampire body hit the ground, I pointed toward Chloe’s cage which had about a dozen soldiers in front of it.
“Onward to victory, steed!” I pointed at the soldiers while summoning way too much fire for it to be good. I launched it at them, and the blast hit them with enough force to knock them down, even with what their armor absorbed.
“Okay!” Oliver cried, rushing forward as my vision dimmed further. The goop on me was taking its toll, and I could feel consciousness slipping away.
We were only halfway there when I realized we wouldn’t make it in time. The soldiers I’d bowled over were already back up. Worse, Morg was beat to shit, and Jeffry wasn’t even standing.
So I did what I had to do. I locked on to Chloe’s cage and hurled everything I had into its spokes.
There was an explosion, but I barely saw it because I was too busy getting thrown across the room just then.
12
“Mallory, you’d best get up, or I’m going to let the orc lick you, and I dunno if you’ve seen this guy’s tongue, but it would make Gene Simmons pretty jealous. Just saying,” Chloe said as she shook me lightly. I blinked my eyes a few times, trying to figure out what was going on. The last thing I remembered was cracking my head against the side of a table as Chloe leapt free of the explosion.
Only now, her face was only inches from mine. Had I somehow missed the whole fight?
“Don’t worry, I already took care of everyone while you sat here,” Chloe harrumphed, sitting back on her haunches. We were still in the tank room, but now it was filled with assorted body parts. Morg and Jeffry stood next to the entrances I hadn’t caved in with magic, but there were no more bad guys, so I wasn’t quite sure what they were waiting for.
“Oh, I’d never chew my arm off to get away from you Chloe,” I said.
“Ugh,” she said, shaking her head as she got to her feet. “I’m not sure which is worse, the fact that you admit that, or the fact that now I have an image of you in bed next to me emblazoned across my brain.”
“Hey, I look great naked,” I mumbled, getting slowly to my feet. It felt like I had a headache the size of Texas, but that was fine since my magic didn’t seem to be doing the Hokey Pokey on my soul anymore.
“That remains to be seen,” Oliver said, helping me to my feet. “But we don’t have time for you two to kiss and make up. We need to get out of here.”
“Yeah, how are we doing that?” I asked as Oliver threw one of my arms over his shoulder and helped me walk toward Morg. As we moved, Jeffry left his doorway to follow us.
“We get to the Endeavor and get the fuck back to earth before bad shit happens,” Niko said, helpfully. “Say, can you find the Endeavor?”
“Maybe,” I mumbled, wiping my face with one hand. It felt like I’d been run over by a steam engine, and I wasn’t even sure what would happen when I called on my magic because I could feel it buried deep within me. No. That’s not the right word. The way it felt reminded me of a cat hiding under the bed waiting for strangers to leave.
“Well, you’d better do it soon, Mallory,” Jeffry said, moving next to Morg at the doorway. “I can’t tell what’s going on with the ship, but what I can tell is that the place feels dead.”
“What do you mean,” I asked, shutting my eyes and trying to reach out to the Endeavor. It was hard because it wasn’t living, and as such, I couldn’t feel it in the normal way. Instead, I pictured the ship in my mind like I was trying to teleport to it, and as I did, an idea popped into my brain.
“I can feel this place around me, and it feels like me. There’s something to this ship, something not living.” Jeffry clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s really doing a number on me, so if we can hurry up, I’d bloody well appreciate it.”
“Oh, gee, I thought we’d stick around,” Niko said, sticking her tongue out at the vampire. “I’m sure Mallory has a plan to get us out of here.”
“Yeah, I do, can everyone hold hands?” I asked, reaching out and taking hold of Morg’s arm. As I did, he stiffened beneath my touch, and I caught a weird look from him. “What?”
“Nothing,” he replied as everyone else joined hands.
“So, what’s the plan?” Jeffry asked as I used the metaphysical equivalent of a vacuum cleaner to chase my magic out from under the bed. As it poofed up, tail shooting straight in the air before dashing down the halls of my brain like it was 3 AM, I directed it toward the image of the Endeavor I held in my mind.
Space and time melted around us, exploding into a bazillion scintillating shards of blueberry light, and then we were standing on the bridge of the ship.
“Done, and done,” I said, collapsing to the deck exhausted. Clammy sweat clung to my skin, and my heart hammered. It was crazy because that should have been easy. Only it hadn’t been, and I had the metaphysical claw marks on my soul to prove it.
“Good job, Mallory Quinn,” Morg said kneeling next to me as I hacked up a lung and then wiped my mouth with my sleeve, leaving a glistening crimson snail trail along the dark fabric.
“Yeah, I need to rest,” I said, shaking my head. My headache was worse, and the light was hurting my eyes. “Can one of you take it from here?” I added, gesturing weakly to the bridge.
“I can operate the ship,” Jeffry said, looking at me, “but first I want to scan for Captain Brand. He moved across the bridge and hit a button on the captain’s chair. There was a sound, like engines revving as the entire control board came to life.
Then Cortiri, the holographic projection of the ship’s AI, appeared in front of us.
“Greetings,” she said in that weird Siri voice she had. “How may I be of assistance?”
“Can you bring the ship’s systems online so we can jet out of here?” Chloe asked, moving away to seat herself in the pilot’s chair to the left of the captain’s seat. As she did, the ship began to rumble, and the view screen toward the front of the ship turned on to reveal us staring at what looked like the inside of a hanger.
In the distance, I could see a small window covered by a translucent blue film, and beyond, space beckoned. All around us, other ships were docked, and I could see a coterie of four-armed soldiers rushing toward us while more appeared to be running toward the giant cannon stations littering the hanger.
“Systems indicate that we will not be able to exit through the docking bay doors. The shielding must be lowered before we can pass through.” Cortiri turned to look at Jeffry. “What is your command, first officer?”
“Where is Captain Brand?” he asked, staring out the viewscreen toward the docking bay doors. “We can’t leave without him.”
“Scans do not indicate his presence within the range of this ship. There is a 99.76% chance he is not within the Planet Breaker.” Cortiri’s eyes sparkled as she stared off into space. “Sensors indicate he was only briefly in this system before being transported elsewhere.” A holographic image appeared in front of her that sort of resembled a chamber with lots of glowing pink pulsar crystals.
Those words made me shudder. What if we couldn’t find him?
“Are you able to find out where he was taken?” Jeffry asked as the big guns began to swivel toward us. Their ends began to glow with not so friendly energy. “Also, power the shields.”
“Shield systems offline. They will not be online for three more minutes.” Cortiri’s image flickered. “I can try to break through the Planet Breaker’s AI and find the location, but it will take time.”
“Mallory, get to the pulsar chamber and power the ship’s shields with your magic.” Jeffry turned to look at
me. “I know you’re tired, but we need that information.”
“Yeah, I’ll do it,” I mumbled, getting to my feet. “You’re lucky, I like Captain Brand because if this was for you, I’d tell you to suck it sideways since I’ve been doing everything.”
I teleported before the vampire could respond, arriving in the Pulsar chamber, and as I did, I suddenly felt ten times better. The room was specifically designed to enhance my powers, and while at first I’d needed to wear what seemed like a magical strainer to increase my powers and mesh, I’d spent a lot more time in here since then. Long story short, I didn’t need the strainer. Usually.
“Mallory, can you get those shields up?” Oliver asked, telepathically speaking into my mind even though he was on the bridge and could have used the speakers. Then again, that was pretty much his whole purpose, so yeah…
“On it,” I said, settling into my chair and allowing the crystals power to infuse me. I inhaled a breath that tasted of jasmine and cherry lip gloss, and I felt the strain on my own powers wane. It was sort of like stepping into a warm bubble bath with one of those expensive bath bombs after a long day.
As magic washed over me, healing the tears in my soul and coaxing my magical cat out of hiding, I raised my hands like a conductor. Then I brought them down. As I did, magic flowed out of me and into the crystals causing them to crackle with electricity. As they glowed hot pink, the entire ship rocked in a way that let me know the shields had just turned on.
It was a good thing too because a second later our ship was flung sideways in a way that let me know we’d just taken a massive attack. The crystals all around me sparked, and pressure slammed into my brain hard enough to drive the breath from my lungs. My teeth snapped together, and I roared, angry.
“Fuck off,” I snarled, directing more power into the shields as I felt the ship’s shields strain against the barrage of plasma. It was weird because, in this moment, I felt one with the ship, and I could feel where the plasma blasts were hitting me. I could feel Jeffry and the others scurrying around.
Hell, I could feel Cortiri fencing with the Planet Breaker’s AI, and instantly deduced I’d never be able to hold the ship off in this way.
Only, I didn’t have to.
“Hey, everyone hang on to your butts,” I said, directing my mind to the link I had with Oliver, and as he repeated my words, I pictured the room within the Planet Breaker that had once been occupied by the space dragon and unleashed my power.
13
The Endeavor shifted through time and space and slammed down inside the cavern that had once housed the dragon. The shielded ship rebounded off the steel inside the cavern, and I felt the impact in my bones. Air whooshed from my mouth as I collapsed onto my knees, barely able to see past the pain rocketing through me.
I hadn’t actually struck the metal, but because the ship was acting as an extension of my own consciousness, I felt it nonetheless.
“What the fuck did you do, Mallory?” Chloe cried, her voice a high-pitched shriek over the intercom. The sound of it rocked me, sending a fresh spasm of pain rippling across my body.
I took a deep breath, trying to center myself. Now that the initial impact was subsiding, and we sat on the mesh with no one firing laser beams at us, I found it was much easier to hold the shields in place.
“That was genius,” Jeffry said, his voice coming over the intercom. “Still, keep those shields up. The sensors are showing they’re scrambling fighters. I don’t know if they’ll reach us before our shields come online, but either way, we can’t move until Cortiri is done.”
“Roger, roger,” I said, and as I spoke, I realized I knew exactly what he was talking about. I could feel the sensors pinging against the incoming fighters like an extension of myself. I could feel Cortiri fighting the Planet Breaker’s AI next to me, one hand outstretched as blue light rippled all around her. The information she was after was just beyond the lion, and while the whole of the ship sought to augment its power and drive her back, she’d been burrowing forth through its defenses.
The ship was me, and I was it. I also knew I didn’t need to keep the shields up until those fighters got into range. Without bothering to ask for permission, I dropped the shields, allowing the Endeavor to settle onto the mesh, then I shoved that power into Cortiri.
It was a little weird because I’d never tried to magically enhance a computer program, but as I reached out toward her with my magic, I felt my power seeping into her. I can’t quite explain what it was like only to say it was sort of like when they hit the nitro boosters in a street car.
Power exploded through Cortiri, and as it did, she slammed hard into the Planet Breaker’s AI. It reared back in my subconscious like a bleeding lion, and as it did, I gathered my own power. Then I blasted it full in the face. My magic hit it like a lance, blasting a hole clean through it, and as bits and pieces fell off of it in a rain of bits and bytes, Cortiri shot forward.
Her lithe body wove past the thundering lion even as tentacles reared up from the landscape and attacked her.
“Get the information!” I cried, pulling more magic into myself, and as I did, I realized I could feel the magical undercurrent of the ship again, that strange foreignness.
It rushed toward me, and as I turned, I found myself face to face with a man. He looked mostly human except he had skin the color of sun-dried tomatoes and eyes like yellow bananas. He wasn’t tall, maybe five foot at best and had yellow hair that matched his eyes.
“Who are you?” I asked right before he grabbed me by the throat and hauled me into the air like I was weightless.
It was weird because while everything wasn’t happening to my actual body and just this weird manifestation of an avatar in my mind, it felt real, and what’s more, it hurt like a son of a bitch.
“So, you’re the witch who has been causing me problems,” the voice boomed in my head like a thousand screaming ducks. Power wafted off the hand as it held me, and as I thrust my own hands out toward it, I knew it wouldn’t matter.
My blast of magic hit it full in the chest, and he shrugged it off like I’d swatted him with a wet tissue.
“This is what they have sent for me?” he raised an eyebrow before flinging me across the landscape. I hit the ground hard, bounced, and came to my feet.
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I cried, reaching out to the magic all around me, and as I did, he snapped his fingers. Instantly the landscape rose up in a swirling mass of tentacles. I could barely see Cortiri through the mass of them as creatures straight out of HP Lovecraft began to pull themselves together from the either.
Their tentacles gnashed the air as the man smiled. He flicked his wrist, and Cortiri’s form exploded into a zillion shards of ethereal nothingness. The ship to which I was tethered screamed in pain, and as the ragged edges of the AI’s consciousness fluttered to the ground in bits, I got ten kinds of pissed.
“Oh, you done fucked up now, space monkey,” I snarled, and this time I didn’t care how the power in the air felt as I grabbed it. Doing so was like biting down on fetid meat, and as my stomach roiled and revulsion swept through me, I took a step forward and threw it like a lance. The blast pierced through the virtual old ones, blowing them into scatterings, and as their bits and whatnot rained down around us, the man laughed.
“You fight like you actually think you’ll win,” he said, nodding toward me. “There was a time where I might have even offered to take you as an apprentice, but alas, I do not trust you.” His lips quirked into a sinister grin. “Goodbye.”
The word hit me like a dump truck to the grill, and as I reeled backward, my consciousness was violently expunged from the virtual world. My back hit my chair, snapping my connection to the ship.
“Mallory, what’s going on?” Chloe screamed in front of me as my eyes fluttered open. Her chest heaved as she gulped in air while dropping down onto her knees beside me.
“Cortiri is gone,” I said, shaking my head as I tried to reorient myself to the pink of t
he room. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
“We can’t get out of here that quickly,” Chloe said. “The thrusters are still warming and there are ships approaching. You need to get the shields back online.”
“That’s the problem,” I said, turning to point at the crystals. Hairline cracks spread through them, and I no longer got a sense of power from them at all. “Someone was in there, and he threw me out when he killed Cortiri. I can’t talk to the ship at all.”
“Cortiri is just a program, she can’t die,” Chloe said, shaking her head in bewilderment. “We’ll slot a new AI—”
“Well, you better do it soon because unless I get connection with the ship, we’re fucking toast,” I snarled, and she nodded at me right before sirens went off and lights began to flash red.
“Fuck,” she muttered as the first of the fighters plasma bolts lanced into the Endeavor.
14
As claxons exploded all around me and warning lights began to flash, Chloe took off running. She sprinted out of the room. I tried to follow, but as I took my first step the ship rocked violently left, throwing me from my feet.
I slammed into the ground, smashing my chin onto the hard steel and making my vision go blurry as agony shot through me. I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the burning, raw sensation on my chin as Chloe disappeared from view. Only, why wasn’t she using the comm system?
I turned toward it and saw it was dead. Had it gone out when Cortiri went down? I wasn’t sure, but it seemed really likely. It was probably why everything was down. Without the AI to help run the ship’s systems we were well and truly fucked.
“Oliver, can you hear me?” I said, reaching out to the mental link in my mind. It was way harder than it should have been, and what’s more, as I tried to talk to him, all I got was muffled static.
Planet Breaker: A Supernatural Space Opera (Witching on a Starship Book 2) Page 7