by Taki Drake
“But, Misha, you know how this game is played.”
A chorus of growls drained the color from the Headmaster’s face, and he seemed to age 20 years in an instant. The Academy Advocate stepped in front of the Headmaster and declared in a hard voice, “Justim Foste, you are hereby relieved of your authority as the Barkin Prime Academy Headmaster, pending review by the Imperial Court.” Nodding her head at one of the Peacekeepers lining the walls, two armored figures advanced to bracket the suddenly broken man as he was escorted from the room.
Spinning back again to confront the Head Healer, Misha advanced on him so suddenly that the frightened man almost tripped getting away from her. Unable to pull his eyes away from her anger, he flinched as she raised her hand and pointed at him, “Patrea, you are adding no benefit here, and your efforts to play politics will be remembered. I suggest you delegate to the people who actually know how to do the work and take yourself out of here. If you do not, I am going to hold you personally responsible for the welfare of all the endangered students and the well-being of anyone who needs Healing from this debacle.”
With a terrified look on his face, the man called out, saying, “Jerroy, this is really a triage issue. So you are responsible for it and any coordination needed. Work with whomever you need for the rest of the Healer evaluation and treatment. I’ll be in my office if you need me.” Before anyone acknowledged the handover, the man turned and fled the room.
Watching his retreat with satisfaction, the Imperial Auditor said in a dry tone, “Even after all these years, Misha, I never knew how bad a temper you had. The flame and fury are quite impressive, but I really like how you frighten them from the battlefield.”
“Caria, they might be picking up the fact that I’m ready to shoot them with a borrowed weapon. It seems to get their attention.”
While Misha had been verbally scorching those that were not contributing to the recovery effort, Advocate Amity had walked over to Corda’s bed. Passing effortlessly through the baffling shell, he stood next to the young girl and gently brushed her hair from her face. Thanks to the muffled sound, no one could hear what the man said, and those closest looked away at his expression of grief and the two tears that slid down his face.
The Seer joined him, putting her shaking hands around her granddaughter’s shoulders and murmuring brokenheartedly. The elderly Advocate wrapped one of his arms around the shoulders of the Seer and stood quietly in support.
There was a flurry at the door, and three men in the uniform of the Imperial Military moved quickly into the room. One of them was carrying Magically enhanced cuffs, which glowed a peculiar purple. Glancing around, the man in the lead locked his attention onto where the Nyri Mage had parked her prisoner. Moving quickly over to where she stood, the man brusquely said, “Major Raymy Pery, Imperial Military Intelligence. We are taking custody of this man and will remove him from the room. Release your spells, Mage.”
All over the chamber, heads turned to stare. Sensing a spike of emotion, the Healers shifted to protect their patients’ bodies and retreated away from the confrontation. The Armsmaster stood up, and the Peacekeeper Commander moved to a position beside him.
Chapter 36 – Custody Wars
T’Kini looked the rude man up and down, drawing out her examination until she saw that her affront to his importance was causing him difficulty. Offering a thin, sharp-toothed smile, the Nyri Mage said, “No.”
“What do you mean, no? He’s military, and we are MI. He belongs to us.”
“No is an important word to learn. Obviously, you would benefit from remedial language lessons. In case you didn’t understand the answer, I will not be turning my prisoner over to you. I don’t trust you, I don’t know you. And given your manner, even if I did know you, I wouldn’t trust you.”
Snarling, the soldier holding the bespelled cuffs pushed toward the Mage, and said, “Watch it! We could just as easily put these cuffs on you.”
The whine of charged weapons and the click of safeties releasing had the three men spinning around looking for the source of the danger. Every gun in the room was pointed at the three men. Whether it be Peacekeeper, Academy Security Guard, or the Emperor’s Own, the men were caught in a lattice of sighting beams and angry regard.
The Major was first to react, slapping a slick smile on his face and saying, “Everybody, please calm down. We are removing this man for interrogation, and there shouldn’t be a problem.”
The Imperial Advocate stepped up to the men and tapped her tabs of rank, saying, “In addition to having problems with complex words like no, you dishonor the Imperium by your rudeness and willingness to break the chain of command. Are you so uneducated that you have forgotten how to salute a superior officer.”
Turning pale, the man stiffened to attention as did his two companions. Executing a picture-perfect salute, the man waited for the Imperial Advocate to return it. Since her office came with a rank of four-star General, the woman was also now offended and furious at the disrespect the man had shown to both the Academy and her office.
Leaving the three men to hold their positions, she tapped her comm-unit and reeled off a series of numbers. Eyes straight ahead, the MI Major paled slightly as he heard the sequence. The Imperial Advocate waited for less than 10 seconds until the holograph of a man in a dress Imperial uniform appeared above her comm-unit.
“Caria, to what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”
“I’m afraid I am not going to make you happy, Juanio. We have a situation where what we truly hope is a rogue MI infiltration team attempted to interrogate an injured 13-year-old and has attacked Academy Mages, Healers, and students.”
“What the hell?! Of course, it was a rogue unit. There is no way we would have given an order to do that.”
“Does that mean that you did not task an Imperial Military Intelligence Major to arrive at the Barkin Prime Academy with spelled Mage cuffs to remove our prisoner for interrogation?”
The good humor of Juanio Parker, Military Chief of Staff, had totally disappeared. The face that stared out of the hologram was infuriated and showed the same promise of death that had earned him his nickname of Laser Eyes when he had commanded the Imperial Special Forces. Snarling, he demanded, “Who? And where is he?”
As the Advocate turned to catch the three uniformed men’s faces in the view of her comm-unit, the Major shouted, “Kill them! Protocol Ibis!”
Shaken by the speed in which the three men pulled weapons, the Advocates, both Imperial and Academy, stood flat-footed for a deadly instant. Springing forward, the Major reached for the older woman, while the other man dropped the Mage cuffs and jumped for the younger.
Sizzling beams from some of the Emperor’s Own licked at two of the attackers, but the reinforced uniforms that they wore, shrugged the initial blasts aside. The rapid advance of the Major put the Advocates in a blocking position and gave him the protection of hostages that he was striving for.
Moving with all the enhanced speed and strength of his powered battle armor, one of the Emperor’s Own slammed into the Imperial Advocate and took the older woman down to the ground and covered her with his reinforced and protected suit. At the same time, the PK Commander dove for the Academy Advocate and swept her out of the danger zone. Moving two steps further into the center of the room, he swung around like a shot putter and flung the woman toward Corda’s bed.
Rankev had flung her so hard that she flew well over the bed and crashed into the corner wall, collapsing with a groan onto the floor. Unfortunately, that left the Peacekeeper exposed and without a drawn weapon.
Quickly, the MI Sergent shifted his aim to Rankev and fired. A bolt of poisonous green erupted from the end of the gun and zinged its way toward the commander. Realizing his danger, the man twisted in an effort to avoid the shot but was only partially successful.
There was a smell of burned flesh, and Rankev Powood, Peacekeeper Commander, dropped to the ground with the boneless fluidity of someone that was either badl
y injured or dead. Charging two steps closer and taking better aim at the injured man, the MI enemy was destroyed by the intersecting fire of a dozen weapons.
The violet hues of the Academy beam weapons crisscrossed with the intense yellow of the Imperial guards. Piercing dozens of places in the man’s body, his synapses fired uncontrollably, and he jerked like a drop of water on a hot grill as his body was cut to pieces.
Thwarted by the escape of his chosen hostage, the Imperial Advocate, Major Pery dove toward Corda’s bed, where the elderly Advocate and the slender Seer stood by the unconscious girl's body. Smashing through the insubstantial sound containment wall, the desperate man reached toward the Seer only to have her yanked out of his path and pushed behind the figure of the old Advocate.
“Move, or you’re dead old man,” Pery growled. Bracing himself to be hurt, Epheth stood his ground as the attacker continued to charge him.
The Armsmaster smashed into the Major, blindsiding him from where Hony had taken station by Corda’s head. Concealed by the slightly raised bed, the Head of Battle Attacks at the Academy smashed into the attacker with concentrated force and high velocity.
Scrabbling to stay upright, the MI traitor grabbed any surface he could, to try to keep on his feet. His hands slipping and sliding, his fingernails breaking off to bloody stubs, the man was now truly desperate and on the verge of giving up. Finally, finding enough purchase that he could straighten up, Raymy tried to release the wall and found that his hands were stuck.
The failures and defeats had become too much, and with a determined effort, the man moved his tongue back into the corner of his mouth and started to bite down.
“No, no, no, darlin’. There is going to be no easy way out for you. Besides which, I’m enjoying collecting you guys.” T’Kini, the Nyri Mage leaned closer, staring intensely into the terrified eyes of the man that had breached her spell perimeter. A thick blanket coated the man’s mouth and tongue, freezing all movement in that area of his body and preventing him from the release he so desperately needed.
Her smile growing broader, T’Kini said, “Now I have a collection of three. I don’t know whether to kill you and stuff you, preserve odd body parts in a pickling jar, or hang you from the chandelier and put you in a sustained shell so that you can twist in agony for the next hundred years.”
The claws of her left hand extended with gentle pings, and the man’s eyes grew large in his frozen face. Gently, oh so gently, she ran her nails down his body from his shoulder to his pubic bone, her sharp claws slicing his uniform and undergarments easily. Looking at the scored body that was revealed, the woman tapped the nail of her index finger on her sharp teeth and said, “Hmmm, I always heard that humans were bigger and more impressive than this. Oh well, it will do, if I’m on a diet.”
Turning and sauntering over to the third MI uniformed man, she looked down at his unconscious body and shook her head, “Tsk, tsk. They really aren’t much challenge, are they?”
Barking with laughter, the Armsmaster limped over and gave the female Mage a buffet on the shoulder that rocked her back on her heels. Grinning, he said, “Aren’t you the sweetest thing. Just don’t judge all humans by what you see there.”
Smiling to display her teeth, the Nyri Mage said, “I will hold off making judgment then. But for some reason, I’m feeling ravenous right now.” Punctuating her sentence with a wink from the eye that was not visible to the panicked prisoners, she drew a broad grin from the Armsmaster.
When an acrid smell filled the air, almost matching smiles of vicious satisfaction appeared on both the Armsmaster and the Nyri Mage’s faces. After the shared moment, they both turned and looked to see what else needed doing.
Chapter 37 – Staff Churn
“Misha, blast it! I’ve already scrambled to teams to come that way. I need to know who it was that infiltrated the Academy and who the hell it was that tried to extract him and his team. It’s a matter of Imperial Security!”
“Take a minute and think about your bullheaded approach, Juanio! We have a school here for Mages. In the last 24 hours, three of our students were assaulted in the town. When he got them back to the Academy, a covert infiltration team that looks legitimately MI tried to interrogate and possibly kill some of those same students. In fact, without the skilled Healing Mages, the girls would probably be dead.”
The Armsmaster had cleared the room except for the guard force that lined the walls and the Healers still working on patients that were too fragile to move. The Seer was furious standing in the center of the room and snarling at the hologram of the Imperial Military Chief of Staff.
“Naughty, naughty!” Crooned the Nyri Mage for where she lounged by her prisoners. The Seer and the image of the Military Head spun just stare at her, and the man opened his mouth to roar when T’Kini put her right hand in front of her face fingers and palm cupped up.
Drawing air into her mouth until her cheeks puffed out like a blowfish, the woman exhaled quickly, and a misty ball of sparkling gray light appeared. Staring at the cloudy sphere for a short time, T’Kini held it as until it was about 12 inches across. She tossed it up into the air and tracked as it slowly drifted down. When it reached her shoulder level, the Mage unleashed a lightning-fast blow with her left hand. With a jagged cacophony of sound, the ball fractured. Moving like targeted bullets, the bits and pieces of the sphere exploded in all directions.
Before anyone in the room could react, the impact of her spell material was creating small explosions of their own. Every place that a piece of the sphere hit, there was a pop of sound or spark that smelled of melted circuitry.
Immediately understanding what had just happened, the Armsmaster and the second-in-command of the Peacekeepers pounced on the broken remains of whatever the spell had destroyed. The head of the Emperor’s Own detail joined them, quickly giving the other two men a peculiar handheld device that had a brushed nozzle at the front of a fat cylinder in retaining one for himself.
Activating the switch, the three devices emitted sounds that indicated the influx of air and the collision noises of small items being drawn into the holding cylinder, as each of the men carefully vacuumed up the shattered elements that remained at each impact location. Holding his bottle up, the Armsmaster peered closely at the debris and grunted in approval. He turned and looked back at T’Kini, saying, “You were right. Definitely an audio collector.”
T’Kini had a somber look on her face for the first time since she had run into the fight to aid the beleaguered Academy staff. Her eyes hooded, and her mouth in a straight line, the usually cheerful Mage said quietly, “There are too many fingers in this pie. The problem is expanding too quickly, and I think we have multiple players.”
Nodding in agreement, the Emperor’s Own trooper stared at his own cylinder, saying, “I think this one is a video capture device. The situation is deteriorating.” He looked up and snapped out orders to have his team take over the evidence collection. The Armsmaster turned his over to two members of the Academy Security Guard, while the Peacekeeper had two sergeants take over his.
“Are you telling me that someone bugged in infirmary ward with and video collection devices?!” demanded the Academy Advocate. Her town tone was outraged, and her voice a little rough. Misha turned toward the sound of her voice and realized that the woman was crouched down on the floor next to the team of Healers, working to stabilize the PK Commander until he could be moved.
Rankev was unconscious, his uniform ripped open in ragged destruction that echoed with urgency. One Healer knelt at his head, holding her hands on either side of his skull. The green light of her Healing Magic was intense and highly visible,’s work circling his throat and spreading out over his collarbone.
Two other Healers crouched by either side of the injured man’s torso. Magic burned hot gold and blue-green from the hands of each Master Healer, as they tried desperately to contain a swirling mass of dark, viscous fluid that glowed a poisonous green.
Moving with an
eerie imitation of life, the fluid kept trying to evade the men’s hands in a determined path to Rankev’s head. All three of the Mages looked tired but resolute. The young Advocate was clutching one limp hand of the unconscious commander so tightly that her fingers were white.
The distraught woman continued, saying, “Who could have done this? It is a gross violation of doctor-patient confidentiality and is intolerable under Imperial Law as to Citizens Rights.”
The Seer turned back to the stunned looking Juanio. “You see what I mean? There too many things going on here, and together they make no sense. I think there are multiple interests and players active, and we cannot have anyone that we don’t trust inserted into the middle of this. It is already a confusing mess.”
Letting out an explosive sigh of frustration, Juanio still argued, “By the inclusion of Military Intelligence appearance, I have to have a quick and hard investigation into what’s going on. Until I can eliminate small and large-scale rebellion and treason, what has just happened to you has to be considered a threat to the Imperium.”
“Juanio, I know you are concerned about our safety as well as the ramifications for the Imperium. And I have to admit that I would be thrilled with more firepower here. But we are not helpless, and we actually did pretty well until we started getting hit with the attacks.”
“I know, Misha, but we have to have something that shows the military is not behind these attacks, and that means there has to be a visible investigative head from the Vorcian Imperial Military.”
Sounding ready to blow up again, the Seer snarled, “The people here put together a scratch force of students and instructors, 142-year-old woman and a Nyri Mage. Don’t you dare put down our people!
“They managed to capture prisoners before another group with legitimate-looking military credentials tried to extract them from our custody. When that didn’t work, those men, who even the Emperor’s Own thought were MI, attacked students and Healers. How the hell are we supposed to validate that the people you are sending in are not more of the same deadly bunch?”