by G R Fabacher
“I’ll cover you, go!” Damon shouted.
Maz nodded and began pulling back with the case while Damon laid down every last flechette he had to cover their retreat.
Damon moved back with a loping hop while he shot. Maz was ahead of him, case in hand, running full tilt. Damon fired his last shot and the weapon’s empty noise sounded with an accompanying rune on his faceplate. Dropping the battle rifle to the ground he pulled out the Union pistol he’d lifted from the paladin. He tried to run and fire back at the same time, but the larger crystal round bucked his arm, even with the suit. When it signaled empty he called out to Maz, “I’m out.” Damon said.
A slew of fresh turret fire from the Union gunship slashed across the roof pinning down Damon and Maz behind an environmental engine. “Just run, Bardo, I’ll be right behind!”
Damon shook his head, “Come on, let’s break for it together! That turret is going to stop, let’s break for the ship then!”
Maz called back and affirmative before tossing his empty pistol.
The ship let its fire die out before hovering to the right to find a better firing angle. The two corpsmen wasted no time breaking from his hiding spot and sprinting toward the safety of the exfiltration craft. Damon focused on running and using his armor to boost his speed, the distance to the ship evaporated in the last few magically-assisted strides. Maz was close beside him when the ship’s turret began spewing heavy crystal shards again. They were almost free when the back of Maz’s armored knee exploded. He fell, leaving his lower leg behind. Panicking, Damon made a wild grab, hooking Maz under the arm. Damon was running purely on magical enchantment to close the distance to the ship, Maz in tow. As the Union ship finished its sweep another of the flechettes took the already wounded corpsmen in the back of the neck, causing the wards to flare. Damon tightened his grip on the wounded man, using what was left in the suit to haul him up.
Red warning messages flickered as he pushed the enchantment matrices to the limit. Damon just managed to wrap his free hand in the rope when his grip on Maz’s armor slipped. His arm screamed in protest along with the warning sounds from his armor, but he managed to clamp a hand on Maz’s forearm. The magilocks were automatically disable to free up power for other systems; the only thing keeping him holding on was his own augmented strength.
As the winch worked he flung Maz up into the bay. His armor automatically shut down his right arm, it fell to his side like a ship’s anchor. The suit told him he was getting burn warnings from magical oversaturation, but it was lost in the greater cacophony of sigils and sounds. A multitude of hands pulled him aboard as the side hatches of the ship closed, flying away like a meteorite across the inky sky.
At first it was all Damon could do to lie on his back and breathe. Air came in rapid shallow breaths, burning his lungs.
“By the great trees, pop his helmet before he suffocates.” He heard Shaya say.
Boudira touched something under his jaw and his face plate popped open and she pulled the helmet off.
“Oy, you’re not too ugly for a human, Bard.” She said slapping him on the shoulder before the little orange dots winked out, leaving only the white, ghastly depiction of a dwarven skull on her faceplate. She raised her own faceplate, but her face was covered completely by a formfitting skullcap with a pair of dark crystal goggles
“Where’s Maz…” Damon coughed, rolling up onto the only arm that worked. He breathed deeply as he watched Shaya pop Maz’s helmet. Beneath was the mousy brown hair of a kid not much younger than himself.
“Broken neck…” Shaya said. She popped her own helmet and Damon saw bright green skin, and thick brown hair that was woven into a spiral bun. She looked at him with two bright green almond-shaped eyes. Turning her gaze down to Maz, she pulled the rune tag from his chest.
Damon watched as she slapped it against his chest. The charm on the tag quickly welded it next to his own blank one. “You saw him die. You carry him with you.” She said.
Damon touched it with armored fingers and fixed his blue eyes on her green ones as the ship flew on.
Chapter 4
“A
lright, we’re going to need to get you out of your can.” Boudira said.
Damon squirmed on the stand. He was back in the Lich Corps barracks after the raid on Richter’s Bastion. Just like when he’d first been deposited in the corps, he didn’t get to see where he actually was. He was beginning to think it was deliberate.
Once he was up on the stand he took note of all the damage he’d actually taken. There was scoring and burns, a few holes, and Boudira said she was going to have to replace his suit’s magical battery in addition to a laundry list of other repairs he should be grateful she could perform. Damon tried to focus on what the dwarf was saying, but his mind kept going back to Maz. He hadn’t known any of them before today, but he felt responsible. He kept playing the events over and over. It had been pure luck, and that was intolerable.
“Hey, Bard? Damon, ya in there?”
Damon looked down as Boudira yanked down on a specialty wrench, and his armor hissed open. The back plate split in half until it reached the small of the back and another seam opened, then the legs hinged up and he stepped out. Smoking only slightly.
“Hoo-boy…” the dwarf said, “you better see the apothecary. Looks like level one or two burns, aye.”
“Yeah,” Damon breathed. He was wearing the armor’s required skin suit. A composite material that was supposed to absorb excess magic from the suit’s battery. “I can’t feel my arm, is that normal?” He added.
“Kinda.” She said, focusing on the suit in front of her.
Like many dwarves, Boudira was even shorter in person. She had powerful squat legs and somewhat longer arms with sturdy fingers and claw like nails, trimmed short. They had evolved as diggers, and their physiology reflected that. Not that these finer details were known by simple observation; she was covered from head to toe in a shade suit. Only a few red hairs escaped her head covering, and her eyes were covered by thick obsidian goggles. Even her mouth was covered by a scarf. The traditional garb for the blue-sky dwarf.
In fact, Boudira’s outfit was rather plain, denoting her status as prisoner. Damon had seen many a dwarf, and it was a sign of wealth and high fashion among any of the many dwarven cultures to have heavily embellished and textured outfits.
Damon looked down at her, “I’m headed to the prison infirmary next I guess.” He turned back before leaving the room, “Thanks.”
She grunted and banged her wrench against his armor.
Damon made his way, little curls of smoke still emanating from his skin suit. “It’s purple smoke now… that can’t be good…” he muttered.
Like many people Damon knew that the modern world operated on the ability of various races to harness magic from the universe at large, but he didn’t know the particulars beyond safety courses everyone took in school. Always carry your exposure pins, seek emergency help for anything above second degree exposure and don’t go into Bleak areas without proper protection. The stuff was dangerous but also so utterly mundane he had never given it a second thought until they forced him into that armor. He’d never had to deal with anything that couldn’t be treated at the corner apothecary.
The Lich Corps barracks was a prison. It was dank in places, poorly lit, and he was sure he saw armed guards in the towers around the pentagonal complex. Surprisingly, it was more well-kept and cleaner where the actual prisoners made their residence than he would have ever thought. Then again, who liked living somewhere dirty? Looking at it from an outside perspective, he supposed it made sense. The Lich Corps were a penal battalion made up of military criminals and deserters, at least at first. Forced to don the armor for the glory of the Republic they were expected to find redemption in service. So a prison was the epitome of practical if not, at the very least, apropos.
Now that he was on the inside, and not for any military crime, he wondered just how mistaken about these people an
d the system that put him here he was. Damon walked past cells containing men and women in orange tunics. He hurried past a particularly angry looking orc male who looked like he was just searching for any excuse to break arms or kneecaps. He decided quickly that some people deserved to be here, but his misgivings about the system remained.
Damon walked beneath a doorway with a faded red teardrop, the standard symbol of medical treatment. The heady smell of herbs and antiseptic tinctures hit his nose, causing him to announce his presence in an undignified coughing fit.
“Just sit on the table and I’ll be with you in a second.”
Damon looked around and saw a man in a dirty white coat. At the doctor’s direction he took a seat on the threadbare examination table. The man turned after wiping his hands clean with a paper towel.
“Oh, hey, you’re the new guy.” The doctor was human and on the tall side, with dark skin. Probably a descendent of Vilant at some point though he didn’t have the accent of an islander. Damon watched as he tapped his broad nose. “Yeah, looks like you overdid it on your armor. Hang on.”
“Am I not going to make it, doc?”
“Hah, you should be so lucky.” He reached up and rummaged around in an overhead cabinet and came down with a jar that looked like it contained floating strips of fish skin.
“Arm out please.” The doc said.
Damon worked his arm out of the skin suit. There was the unsettlingly moist sound, and for a moment he feared his skin was sloughing off. Once freed he noticed it had purplish blisters and what looked like honeycombs running from his bicep to his wrist.
“So what’s with the people in the closed cells outside?” Damon asked, looking to distract himself more than anything.
“We are a penal outfit…” the doctor muttered as he looked up and down Damon’s arm.
“Yeah, but aren’t we all kind of in this together?”
The apothecary scoffed, “Do you want to sleep next to an indiscriminant orc rapist or a buteo firebug? We keep the worst locked up and shove them in armor when we need them. Though for the most part cells are used for a time out. Just close yours at night if you’re worried.”
“Does that help?”
“Probably not, we generally run on the honor system. Don’t do anything heinous or you won’t be alive to die on a mission. That’s how the corps runs. We’re all supposed to be in cells, but if we did that we’d never be able to keep this place up. The guards aren’t doing it. So in general, if you’re too much a liability for a bunch of psychopaths and hardened criminals to find worth living with you get… handled.” He mimicked a violent stabbing motion, making Damon gulp.
“So why are you here then? Damon asked while the man wrapped his arm in the pickled skins.
“Back-alley doctoring, malpractice, practicing without permits.” He wrapped the skins in a thin layer of gauze and clipped it into place. “Before you ask, the money was good and organized crime doesn’t take no for an answer.”
Damon gave him a look, but the doctor didn’t seem to notice.
“Yep, used to be a real apothecary and everything. Dr. Germaine D’Salais. Now I keep all of your and your squads’ stew bits on the inside.”
“So do you go on missions like the rest of us?”
“Oh yeah, not too often, I’m only at three, I’m too valuable to the Lieutenant to waste as a field medic, so Shaya has been my protégé for a few months now. Heard she got you through your Hanging all right.”
“So the highest ranking soldier of a whole battalion is a Lieutenant?” Damon asked.
“Oh, sea and stars no,” Germaine said, “he’s more like a captain. Everyone just calls him Lieutenant. Not sure why, doesn’t talk much about himself that one.”
The doctor moved to his cabinets, “Where did I put that chelation tincture?” He muttered.
“He can have some of mine.”
Damon turned his attention back to the doorway, but there was no mistaking that grizzled gravel-laden voice. The Lieutenant strode in and placed an octagonal crystal drink container in his hands. The liquid sloshed thickly, glowing bright orange in the harsh magilight of the medical ward.
“That’ll work,” Germaine said, “drink up. That’ll knock the excess magic out of your system. You should really be on a few more, but we’re going to have to rely on your good health, kiddo. Government doesn’t really care to allocate expensive treatments to people it wants dead anyway.” He slapped Damon on his good shoulder.
“Sir,” Damon said turning toward the Lieutenant, “I don’t belong here. I’m just a bard who went to the wrong party.”
The Lieutenant stopped, “So, you think everyone here deserves the death penalty or the corps but you?”
“No, but—“
“Sacreon, no one here cares. Some people deserve it. Some people don’t. Hell, you may not be a traitorous piece of shite. Just like the doc may not be a total hack, but if you keep going on about it, you’re going to find yourself in a prison filled with the worst of the worst and no friends. Why you’re here isn’t nearly as important as what you do now that you are here.”
“So you’re saying I’m screwed.” Damon’s shoulders slumped.
“No, Sacreon, I’m saying we’re all screwed. Talk to your damned advocate if you think you got a lotto ticket out of here. Just don’t bitch about it.” The Lieutenant turned around one last time before leaving the room, “Drink up.” He opened his arms in a broad shrug, “Now that you’ve survived your initiation, we’re going to turn you into a real corpsman.”
Damon twisted the cap off the vial and slugged the liquid back. It tasted almost as bad as he felt.
Chapter 5
”S
o what can you tell me about the Lich Corps?” Damon asked. He looked at the elf woman beyond the looking glass, separated by only a thick pane of magically-imbued crystal that held her image despite a few hundred miles between the prison and her legal office. She idly adjusted her screen.
It was somewhat rare to have a full-blooded elf in Gloriana. Elves liked elvish lands. Even as progressive and friendly to the Republic as the Alliance was—by elven standards—they didn’t usually seek out the multicultural lifestyle. “I mean, I know it’s a prison outfit. They get sent on suicidal missions, but how bad is it now that I’m here?”
The elf fiddled with her long green fingers and blinked both sets of eyes. She was relatively young for her race. Several lines and spots of unpolished bark dotted her face, denoting the lack of what was called a full mask. As she aged and spent time within the trees of her people it would grow more complete until it covered the whole of her face.
“Normally, we are the advocate for half-elves, so you’ll forgive us if we are brusque or rude. It is, how should we say… a longer way to find the end of a noose.”
“But I can in theory make ten missions and then everything is forgiven?”
His advocate stiffened at the first-person pronoun. Traditionally collectivist, elves were uncomfortable being singled out from the group, even by something as small as certain forms of direct address.
“Sorry, I—It is difficult to…”
She held up her top most right hand, “No it’s just our—my parents were from Redforest originally and were very traditional even when we moved to the Alliance and then the Republic, but I am here to help you. Anyway, we would be remiss to not inform you that the mortality rate is… exceptionally high, even more so for humans like yourself.” She fiddled with her papers with her lower set of arms, stroking her chin.
“Tell that to Maz…” he said, and the elf advocate tilted her head, the elvish equivalent to a raised eyebrow.
“Never mind.” Damon said, “Well the alternative is death, as a traitor.”
“We are working very hard on your appeal. We should have—“
Damon held up a hand. “Look, I—we,” he put his hands to his own chest, “have had a lot of bad news today already. Can… can you just tell me if my family has… you know…”
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His advocate fidgeted uncomfortably, “We’re very sorry, Mr. Sacreon. Your family has refused all calls and letters, and in regard to your sister, we have not been able to get into contact with her.”
He leaned back in the rickety chair and exhaled, “Okay, so that hurts more than I thought it would. Maybe we should talk about my case instead. Did you find anything new?” He held his head in one hand.
“Not yet, our firm is looking into it. Yours is not the first dubious case to be swept up under the anti-sedition laws. It’s going to take time. The prosecutor made a very good case. You were not the most pristine Republic citizen.”
“Yeah, but… treason’s a stretch, don’t you think?”
“We and our firm agrees, Damon. This is just a particularly nasty law to have to appeal.”
“Well hopefully I can survive long enough in here to benefit from your work.”
His advocate smiled sadly, and didn’t seem to take mind of his poor elvish manners.
♦ ♦ ♦
Damon left the visitor center feeling hopeless. He resisted the urge to scratch his fish-scaled and bandaged right arm. He entered the hallway that was supposed to lead to the mess hall, but he thought that maybe the signs on the walls were lying to him, too.
“Hey, Bard.”
He looked up to find Shaya walking toward him from the other way. Unless you were put into one of the cells for being a problem case, the prison block was divided in half for the most part. Men stayed on one side, women on the other. The middle was the common area. It was nice and easy to remember. That was a good thing as far as Damon was concerned, because the last thing he wanted to do was end up on the wrong side of Lich Corps custom.