I couldn’t see any other threats in the area, so I took a moment to check my leg. The armor had absorbed most of the blast, but it didn’t look like it could sustain another hit. My leg was badly bruised, but nothing was broken. The armor Zah’rak had made for me would repair itself with time, as would my leg, albeit a lot slower.
“Focus. You have to get to the ship,” I said to myself through gritted teeth. I broke a branch off of a tree to form a makeshift crutch and started hobbling back towards the ship. I didn’t know if there were any others around, but I suspected … no, hoped that the rest were back at the ship.
As I approached the location, Marcus signaled me from a small shelter he’d found. “Are you all right?”
“I will be,” I said. “What’s our status?”
“Six guards are all I can see, well entrenched. I haven’t been able to get any closer unseen.”
I risked a fast peek over and saw them behind portable blast shields with what looked like rapid-fire rifles pointed in our general direction. “Did they see you?”
“Yeah, they know I’m out here, but not where,” he said.
I looked over at him. The situation was still dire. Two mundanes couldn’t survive this encounter, so it was either die or trust Marcus with my secret. “Do you trust me?”
“Fine time to ask,” he said. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to create a distraction while you run for the ship. Get airborne; just leave the airlock open and give me clear line of sight to it.”
“Okay, but if there are others in the area they might start shooting,” he objected.
“Then go and leave me behind,” I said. “You can come back for me later when things cool down.”
He hesitated and looked like he was going to argue.
“Look, we don’t have time for this; just get ready,” I said and rolled out from the shelter behind a nearby fallen tree. It wouldn’t stand up to any fire, but it shielded me from view.
I took a deep breath and prepared myself as best I could for the pain, then got to my feet. The guards called out, and I chanted a spell to bring fire down upon them. It was the only spell I’d had the chance to learn from the spell book before I left Zah’rak. I had practiced when I could, but hadn’t actually used it in combat yet.
My pain and fatigue threatened my concentration on the spell, but I pushed through it. Over their heads a thin plane of fire appeared and hung for a moment. They looked up and, before they could react, I released the spell and fire rained down on them. Their armor protected them from my relatively weak spell, but the dry leaves they were kneeling in were not protected and soon flames erupted around their entire position.
Over to my left, I saw Marcus make a dash for the ship as the guards ran in a panic. Fire quickly spread through the area and I realized then that a fire spell in a dry forest hadn’t been the wisest choice. Thick black smoke billowed out as the guards’ equipment started to burn. My armor warned me that poisonous gases were being released, but filters in my helmet were sufficient to clean the air.
“Come on, Marcus,” I said as I watched him disappear into the flames. “Just get her in the air!”
Heat from the fire was washing over me as the flames devoured the Resden position. I could no longer tell where they were, and the fire blazed between me and the Resden cruiser, completely blocking my view of it.
I was forced by the heat to hobble away from the flames. My armor was still holding up, but sooner or later it would be overwhelmed. If Marcus didn’t get airborne soon, we would both be toast.
I did my best to circle around the flames, but they were spreading faster than I could move. The smoke thickened, completely blocking my line of sight and preventing teleportation. I gave up trying to reach the cruiser and headed away from the flames. I needed to get clear of the smoke so that I could teleport ahead of the fire, which was now a raging beast with a life of its own. The flames were devouring the forest around me and my wounded leg was screaming at me to stop. It wasn’t the best situation I’d ever been in, and one I hoped to avoid in the future.
A sudden whoosh of wind came from behind me and stole my balance. “Arrgh!” I screamed as I fell on my wounded leg. Above me hovered the Resden cruiser with its airlock facing me.
“I sure hope that’s you,” I said and teleported into the airlock. As soon as I was inside, the outer door shut and I felt the cruiser accelerate away.
After taking a moment to catch my breath, I hobbled over to the inner door and onto the craft. Bodies of Resden agents were strewn about and there were blaster burns across most of the walls. I tried to wipe the grime out of my eyes, but just made things worse. Fighting fatigue and pain, I made my way to the bridge.
I found Marcus at the controls. He looked bad, really bad. His face was severely burned, he was bleeding from numerous wounds, and one arm was dangling lifelessly at his side while the other appeared to be wired to the controls to keep him from losing his grip. I had to admire his strength; most humans would have been dead, and he was still flying a shuttle.
“Hey, take over, will you?” he asked as he fell out of the chair, ripping his arm free of its makeshift harness.
The cruiser went into a dive as he slid across the controls. As quickly as I could, I pulled him out of the way and activated the autopilot. The computer quickly righted the ship, and I set it to take us into orbit. Thankful that I didn’t actually have to try and steer in my condition, I turned my attention back to Marcus.
“Stay with me,” I said. “Come on, Marcus.” I stopped all of the bleeding I could find, but he had already lost a lot of blood. His wounds seemed to have a large amount of metal, wires and other foreign debris embedded in them. I didn’t want to risk removing them and making things worse. He would need a real doctor as soon as I could get one.
I was too weak to carry him to sick bay, so I reduced the ship’s artificial gravity to a fifteenth of a G and we mostly floated there. His breathing was shallow and his pulse weak, but he wasn’t dead yet. Using the little medical knowledge I had, I got him into a hyberpod and activated its critical life support.
I felt my own strength leave me and collapsed against the wall.
Chapter Twenty-Four
When I awoke, I was still sitting against the wall in the medical bay. Every joint in my body ached from the awkward sleeping arrangement, not helped by the previous day’s fighting. Judging by the ship’s chronometers I had slept most of the night, but I didn’t feel rested.
I pulled myself up and cursed as pain from my leg ripped through my body, reminding me that I needed to be more careful. The gravity on the cruiser was still set low, allowing me to hobble over to Marcus’ stasis tube without putting much weight on my wounded leg.
The monitoring panels reported that his vital signs were weak but stable. They also produced all kinds of messages that I didn’t understand but assumed were bad news. The tube hadn’t gone into full stasis for some reason, but reported itself to be in critical care mode.
“That doesn’t sound good,” I said to myself.
Marcus looked a little better. Most of his wounds were covered with a metallic shine which I assumed had been applied by the machine to protect the vulnerable areas. He seemed to be peaceful, so at least he wasn’t in pain.
I took some painkillers from the supplies and injected them right above the nasty bruise that had developed on my leg, granting a degree of relief. A quick check of my weapons showed that the blasters had reset themselves and were ready for action. In the fog of pain and fatigue earlier, I’d never checked the ship for survivors.
Sweeping through the small craft, I went from compartment to compartment but found no one else on board. It seemed that the only fighting on board had taken place by the airlock. Looking out through the airlock window, I saw we had achieved orbit.
I stripped the bodies of anything of value and loaded them all into the airlock. Using a nearby terminal, I rolled t
he ship until the airlock pointed down towards the planet and jettisoned the bodies into what would become a decaying orbit. They would burn up completely on reentry to the atmosphere. It seemed the most dignified method of disposal available to me.
Taking some food from their mess hall, I headed to the bridge. The autopilot had done its job perfectly and we were in a stable orbit around the planet. I set all the sensors to passive mode and turned off all the transmitters I could find.
Marcus had apparently disabled all the security on the controls, for which I was grateful. Had he not, we could have easily been stranded in orbit or worse; the ship could have set off an automated distress call and brought in allies.
Once I had given the ship as low an electronic signature as I could manage, I checked the logs. It seemed that the ship had come after me alone, and sent no distress signal. That was good, as it meant I had some time to figure things out.
“Computer, how long to Hospital Station at best speed?” I asked.
“Two months, four days, three hours, and twenty-one minutes,” responded the computer.
I cursed loudly in response. There was no way Marcus could survive that long.
I kept searching the logs, hoping for some information that would be helpful. If I knew why they were after me, I might be able to find a safe harbor to head for.
“Crivreen!” I exclaimed. They had recorded a response to the message I’d sent for help. Crivreen was smart enough to have encoded it, and they hadn’t yet broken the code.
“On our way. Please respond with your situation,” was the entire message.
“Hang in there, Marcus!” I exclaimed. “Help is coming!”
I dared not risk a message yet, but hopefully Crivreen would take my lack of response as a reason to hurry. He had our coordinates, so now it was just a matter of time.
With Zah’rak’s connections to the Phareon government and Raquel’s to the Wizard Kingdom, surely a doctor could be found quickly. All I had to do was to prevent us from being found by anyone else until they could arrive.
I spent the rest of the morning searching the ship for transmitters or identification broadcasting equipment, anything at all that would give away not only our location but also the fact that the Resden cruiser was now stolen property.
Exhausted from my efforts, and sore from sleeping all night in sick bay, I took a break for lunch with Marcus. The medical monitors still displayed codes I couldn’t decipher, but based on the little first aid training I had his vital signs looked a little better.
I wondered about all the debris in his wounds. The hyberpod wasn’t likely to be able to do anything about that; it would probably require a surgeon to remove it. The real mystery was where it had come from. The ship was only superficially damaged, nowhere near enough to create that kind of shrapnel. I wished that I had taken a closer look at the wounds, but I’d been barely conscious at the time.
After lunch I checked my armor to make sure it was spaceworthy, and slipped out of the craft to inspect the exterior. The weightlessness of space was a relief to my battered body. I took a moment to look back at the planet below and saw the forest fire I had sparked off raging out of control. If any Resden agents had been left alive yesterday, they wouldn’t have survived that.
I spent the rest of the day working outside the ship, removing or covering up logos to destroy any signs of prior ownership. It would be obvious that this work had been done, but for the moment at least it wouldn’t be labeled as a Resden ship while we were deep in Phareon space.
It was late at night when I slipped back on board the cruiser. Even with gravity set low, it still felt heavy after those hours in space. I knew that I would have to return the gravity to normal strength if I wanted to avoid muscle and bone loss, but figured one more night of lower gravity would help me get a decent sleep without causing much damage.
Before turning in, I checked on Marcus again. His vital signs were weak but stable, which I assumed was a good sign. Looking through the window at him was less comforting. Most of his wounds looked as if they had metal plating over them, including half his face. I had never seen a hyberpod do anything like that before. It seemed to be installing Cyborg implants, but that should have been well beyond its capabilities.
I considered taking him out of the hyberpod but was afraid that would kill him; better to wait for the Night Wisp. Criveen had more medical knowledge than I did and would surely be able to figure this out.
I chose the crew quarters closest to the bridge and left the door open as I slept so I could hear any alarms that sounded. Nothing disturbed my slumber, and a good sleep in a proper bed did wonders for me.
The next morning there was still no sign of anyone else in the solar system, so I risked calling the Night Wisp.
“Felix!” came Criveen’s voice as his face appeared on the comm. system.
“It’s good to see you,” I said. I didn’t activate ‘visual’ on the comm., as I looked nothing like I had the last time he’d seen me. That issue could be dealt with later, as I had to keep the call short. It was difficult in my weakened state to make my voice recognizable to him and keep it so.
“What happened? Where are you?” he asked.
“Look, I’m still in hiding so I need to keep this short,” I said. “I’m sending you my new location on a coded sub-channel. I need you as fast as you can get here. I have a friend who is badly injured, probably dying, but I can’t even make out the displays on this medical equipment to know what to do.”
“Okay,” said Crivreen. “I’ll send our ETA on the same coded sub-channel. We’ll get there as soon as we can.”
“Thanks. Felix out,” I said.
It still hurt to put any weight on my leg and Crivreen had said they would be here in another day, so I left the gravity where it was.
“I’d better clean up the blood,” I said to myself. With nothing else to do while I waited, I went back to the scene of the fight to clean up the aftermath.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Back in the Siden system near the ruins of the fortress, Henrick and Curetes seemed to be waiting for something. They were standing at a high point in the terrain looking at the ruins. The ground around them was smoking slightly and was pitted with large craters, as if there had been a recent battle. Curetes and Henrick were unharmed and unconcerned.
Nearby Mathorn suddenly appeared. He must have known where Henrick and Curetes were before he arrived, as he stepped out of the weave and into normal space calmly looking right at them.
“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised to see you two here,” said Mathorn.
“Ah, Mathorn the Mighty,” said Henrick. “To what pleasure do we owe your visit?”
“I was wondering the same thing about you,” he said. Mathorn looked over the battleground around them. “It seems that I missed some action.”
“Had we known you were out this way, we would of course have invited you,” said Henrick.
“I’m sure you would,” said Mathorn.
“We came here to speak with Raquel, but when we arrived several necromancers from Korshalemia were already here, bent on harming her,” said Henrick.
“Oh, really?” asked Mathorn.
“Yes,” said Henrick. “Zah’rak’s team had already killed two sorcerers, so I suppose these were sent to prevent a second failure.”
Mathorn seemed to consider that for a moment. “Have you any idea why they came here in the first place?”
“No,” said Henrick. “I had already removed anything of value from the caves below, so there was no reason for anyone from Korshalemia to come here.”
“Yet you knew to look for Raquel here?” queried Mathorn.
Henrick gestured to a nearby pile of rocks. “That is the grave of her husband. Obviously she will visit from time to time.”
Mathorn glanced briefly in that direction. “This story sounds awfully convenient.”
“What are you implying?” aske
d Henrick.
“Nothing in particular,” said Mathorn, “but it wouldn’t be your style to actually fight or do anything for anyone. Did your little pet take care of these necromancers while you watched and critiqued?”
Curetes moved forward as if to attack, but Henrick placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Relax, Curetes; he is merely attempting to provoke you.”
Curetes begrudgingly took a step back, but his eyes never left Mathorn.
“Now, Mathorn, is that any way to treat an ally?” asked Henrick.
“No, it is not. So at least five sorcerers from Korshalemia came here for no reason at all, and out of the overflowing goodness of your heart, you killed the more powerful ones to protect Raquel?” asked Mathorn.
“Something like that,” said Henrick.
“What does that mean?”
“The sorcerers had a reason; we don’t yet know what it was,” said Henrick.
“It’s not a good sign to see them active as far out as here,” said Mathorn.
“On that we agree,” said Henrick.
“If you learn anything, be sure to let me know.”
“Oh, I’ll be sure to let Vydor know anything that pertains to him,” said Henrick. “Tell me, Mathorn, when the chips fall and Grandmaster Korshalem foolishly decides to go to war - where will you stand?”
“Grandmaster Korshalem won’t instigate a war without provocation. Are you planning to instigate one?” asked Mathorn.
“No,” said Henrick. “You may despise me, but you must see that a war with Korshalemia would be devastating to all involved. I have no desire to take part in any such event.”
“At least we know where you stand, then,” said Mathorn.
“I think you always have,” said Henrick.
“Then I bid you good day,” said Mathorn, stepping out of normal space and into the weave.
“I don’t like him in the least,” said Curetes.
Henrick smiled. “Oh, I’m sure he thinks just as much of you as you do of him.”
“Why deal with him at all?”
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