by G R Fabacher
Damon stood up, looking the dwarven scientist in the eye. “What’s the Union want with a Commonwealth dwarf who works for the Navigators Guild?”
“They want ta find their way inta the Ahmagistratii fortress ‘course.” The dwarf sniffed underneath his facemask, his obsidian goggles glinting.
“Wait, a Magi fortress?”
The dwarven researcher spat again. “Dinna use that bastardized version of the name. Show some respect you gutter-whelk. But, aye, the Guild wants inta a newly discovered fortress belonging to the Old Builders. They’re hopin’ that it will contain some new technology. That’s the Guild for ye, always trying to keep ahead when they’re winin’ by a mile.”
“No points for the first guess on what the Republic wants then.” Damon said, “I bet those artifacts tie right into this whole thing. Is it a super weapon?”
Gorvon rubbed his gloved hand across his shadowed forehead. “Could be, could be some unknown medical artifact, little is known how they healed themselves. Could be anythin’ really. All anyone knows—by anyone I mean me—is that the fortress was heavily warded, which means a lot of the Builder’s blood was used in its construction.
“Huh?” Damon said.
“The Ahmagistratii were the most magically gifted race to ever exist.” Boudira supplied, “They could harness more magic than any race alive today, even the dragonkin. However, they never discovered runic attunement like us, so our technological paths venture in wildly different paths. You see—“
“I don’t live as long as long as a dwarf, so if you could give me the skinny version of this, I’d be eternally grateful.”
“The short of it is, lad, that if the Old Ones wanted to ward a place and not stay on site or return every day or week to refresh it, they had to form crystals in a lattice of their own blood. You know how we grow crystals right?” Gorvon asked.
“Yeah…” Damon said.
“Same deal, but with blood, and to hide and ward a fortress like this one, it took a lot.”
Damon blanched, “Did they sacrifice their own kind?”
Both dwarves shrugged, “Possibly.”
“Whatever,” Jurza said, “Don’t care.” He yawned, not bothering to cover it or his disdain. “All I know is that as soon as we’re back aboard our ship and headed home, we’re one more mission down. Who cares of the Unies want to poke around in some long-dead ruin from a race of four-armed magical wackos?”
“Ye bite yer tongue, blasphemer!” Gulbroch snarled.
“Make me, old man.” Jurza unfolded his arms and made to rise.
“Not now,” Shaya said, stepping between them. “Jurza’s ri—not entirely wrong, we need to worry more about getting out of here. The extraction ship is close, but the Union is no doubt closer. Let’s take a minute to take stock and see what kind of munitions we’ve got left. If the Unies did track us down I want to be ready. We should also get away from this ship. The ship should be making contact any minute now.”
The corpsmen took a quick inventory of available weapons amounted to personal arms and whatever ammo they had in them. It wasn’t the most impressive display of firepower ever assembled. A few minutes before they finished Shaya got the message. The group and their liberated dwarf wasted no time hiking through the harsh tundra of Duamatt’s surface to the extraction point.
“Contact!” Joyride said from the head of the line “It’s friendly, or you know, as friendly as the Republic gets with us.”
“Good, I think I might need actual medical treatment.” Sparky said, holding her hip where she had taken the flechette. She was also shivering her teeth chattering in the cold.
“Don’t be a big baby.” Damon said.
When the corpsmen stopped the extraction transport settled down already lowering its rear hatch. It was another Gryphon. This one was configured more for quick landings and take offs, and the commando uniforms of the soldiers who held them at gun point, added further credence to that assumption.
Damon saw them deactivate everything but his legs. Shaya, Boudira, and Joyride were also similarly locked. An unarmored Lieutenant stood at the top.
“Really good work, corpsmen. Not only did you succeed, you also managed to do massive amounts of damage to the Indomitable. The Unies are going to be furious for months. Now come on, we’ve got a long trip back to Terrasti. Shite, if I actually had control over what rations you convicts got, I think I’d give you all ice cream to celebrate.”
“Don’t go soft on us now, Lieutenant.” Joyride said.
“You’re right, Oslo, standard puke it is then.”
Chapter 12
Damon walked into the brig of the transport. All the doors were open and he felt better after getting out of his armor, even though he really could have used a shower. It was almost like back in the barracks but there were a lot more armed guards at the entrance to the brig than there ever were in the mess hall. Also every corpsmen was shackled. Damon didn’t think trying to hijack a Republic void-ship was what he would call a sane escape plan, but apparently navy security disagreed. They had the guns so he wasn’t going to argue. Jurza, Shaya, and Joyride were playing cards. Sparky was taking a nap under everyone else’s commandeered blankets. Damon saw Boudira in the corner sketching something.
“Got a minute to talk?” He asked.
“Yeah sure, aye.” She muttered folding the sketching and tucking it into a pocket in her shade suit. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Well—“
“Wait, are you going to charm me like all the other girls in this joint, because your digging down the wrong hole, I’m a practicing believer in dwarven—“
“No not that—“ Damon said quickly.
“What? What’s wrong with me? I know we dwarves don’t have the giant milk sacks you hairless monkeys like but—“
“No it’s not like that, I wanted to ask you about the Magi.”
“Oh… well good, because you know I don’t go in for men like that.” She tapped where her nose would be.
“Yeah, noted, but anyway: Magi. I know they’re this long disappeared race of super mages, but I was hoping you knew more than the textbook answer. Like how their society was or what they might be keeping in that fortress. Or like what happened to them? Anything really.”
“Oh sure, I’ll just give you the crib-notes to hundreds of years of dedicated archeological research like it’s one afternoon block of civic history.”
“If anyone can do it, it’s you.”
“Charmer.” She lifted up her goggles, blinking her big orange eyes. “I already told you I only go in for—“
“I can’t turn off my charm any more than you can your big beautiful brain, so we’ll just have to let this sexual tension of ours go unresolved. If there was any of course.”
“Of course.” She said. “Anyway, the Magi ruled in a period of time we generally just call Antiquity. They sprung up on Terrasti, and their ruins are also found on Duamatt. They are the most magically gifted race of beings to ever have existed, like I said earlier.”
Damon nodded, “So it was like having everyone be a natural mage?”
“Yeah, but cranked all the way up. We know a little bit about what they look like. Four arms, three eyes, maybe four, those Alliance elves have a cultural theory that’s even making its way to the Dauramite Empire that elves are the last vestiges of the Ahmagistratii—“
“What do you mean by cranked up?” Damon said. “Isn’t magic just kind of there?”
“Yeah and no,” Boudira said, pulling out her sketch and doodled on it while she spoke. “Magical Law has divided the various abilities of magic into categories. In general light manipulation is the low side, matter manipulation is the highest, and enchantment is somewhere in the middle—you know the magical science that lets our armor give us strength and speed?”
Damon rolled up the sleeve on his orange prison tunic and showed her the light discolored scaring left over from his magical exposure, “Yeah, but this happens if we do too m
uch. That’s why we still need hospitals and have to grow crops more the old-fashioned way, or you end up getting killed or the call to the Wastes.”
Boudira nodded, “You’re not as smart as you are cute, but you’re not the idiot everyone seems to think you are.”
“Thanks…” Damon’s brows drew together. “Why idiot?”
“Something about trying to get your gemstones polished getting you thrown in with us. Anyway, yeah, magical polymorphic transmogrification, or Bleakening if you’re feeling folksy.” Boudira erased something on her sketch and began redrawing it. “Tumors, madness, crazy strength, crazy… craziness… did I mention they’re nuts? And I’m certifiable.”
“So I know it’s true.” Damon drawled.
“Exactly! Lots of psychoanthropological theories about why we still have tall cities and high walls, you know, because Bleak-Kin don’t stay in their wild ruins, but I’m getting off topic. The Magi, they’re totally immune to MPT or at least we think they were. They were almost beings of pure magical energy. Lots of debate in circles whether or not they had achieved matter transformation, no one’s really sure because they used a whole different system of writing and communicating.”
Damon raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t have to come up with a whole new language to breathe do you?”
“Like telepathy?” He asked.
“Maybe, that’s Zeroth Law stuff, prophecy, mind reading. We’ve never been able to do it with our understanding of magic, so who knows? Most academics ignore it as parlor tricks and tarot readings.”
“Three unicorns!” Jurza shouted and raked in the pot of prisoner bric-a-brac.
“So they didn’t go Bleak, but they’re responsible for the Bleak Marches and the Forest of Ash, and numerous other magical wastelands, right?”
“Why am I telling you all this, you seem to have paid more attention in history class than you’ve let on. Especially for a bard.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly, “humanities…” she added under her breath.
Damon leaned back against the bulkhead, “Then why don’t you tell me something I don’t know about them.”
“Well, how about their whole magical course of development gave them a society completely different from our own. Remember that breathing bit from earlier? Well, it’s been theorized that some of the ruins were massive teleportation hubs. That’s right, instantaneous travel from one place to another. We’re not even sure how they did that. They couldn’t do it on their own, but it does not fit neatly into the categories, so it leaves us academic types stumped and they shove it into some kind of matter transformation.” Damon could almost see the smug smile beneath her shade suit.
“Okay, so they were more advanced, so why are they not around anymore?” Damon asked.
“That’s the million-note question.” She said. “No one’s sure.” She looked up from her notes. “There are those that think that they tried to ascend to some level of magical godhood. There are some that believe that at the height of their power that they succumbed to the rigors of political strife and turmoil.”
“Why would they be fighting with one another? They had all that magic.” Damon asked.
Boudira scoffed, “Why would they be one mono-culture, yeah? Just look at all those unified dwarven, elvish, and human empires. The only ones that come close these days are the beutoes, and there are three different nations on Terrasti.”
“Okay, point.” Damon said.
“Some think there might have been some calamity that there’s no evidence of. It’s weird because the only race around to know what may have happened was us, but the War of Red Gold destroyed many of our records from Late Antiquity. Which shows an impressive level of dedication, because we carved those records on rocks.
“So whatever the reason, they’re gone and they left a lot of magical damage in their wake. I can’t say for sure which is the real reason they disappeared, but I tend to think it was probably some mix of factors. Nothing’s ever really got one single point of failure.”
She tucked her sketch away one more time.
“Anyway, you better strap in,” she said, “the shite’s about to hit the fan for us.”
“What? We were successful. We did everything they asked.”
“Yeah, you go on thinking that, blue-skyer. Welcome to the real job of the Lich Corps.”
Chapter 13
“A
t least thirty civilians—non-Union civilians—dead. Millions of notes in property damage. Two suits completely lost. It’s probably making the rounds on all the news agencies right now.” The knight-captain strode up and down the lined up corpsmen. Damon stood with his blue eyes boring a hole through the deck of the RNV Virtuous.
“Look at me, criminal!” The knight-captain said, stopping in front of Damon. The bard watched as the captain scrolled through the rune slate in his hand. He tapped it with one of those fancy styluses that did nothing but show people how well-to-do you were.
“Sacreon. I knew you were a traitor, but I didn’t realize you were a cold blooded psychopath, too.”
Damon clenched his fist, the chains on shackles clinking softly.
“First things first: Hellaina, you’re getting three missions for the suit of armor your lost. Thank whatever god or gods you believe in, witch, that I’m feeling merciful.”
Damon saw Sparky’s eyes flicker violet.”
“Five missions for you, Bo’Crazca. You lost the damned Ogre. How do you lose a Damned Ogre?”
The Knight-Captain walked over to Jurza, his tirade continuing. Jurza looked down at him. “I will snap you in half one day, little man.”
“Six missions, savage.”
The Knight-Captain paced back towards Damon. “Now, for the centerpiece of this whole masterpiece of ineptitude, we have you.”
Damon looked up, fixing the knight-captain’s stare with one of his own. Damon wanted to punch him in his stupid handsome face, but there were other guards holding weapons on the congregated felons.
“For callous disregard for life, I’m extending your sentence by eight missions. Good luck finishing sixteen missions.”
“That’s not fair, we finished the mission! I didn’t set out to kill those people!” Damon snapped.
The knight-captain’s fist connected with his jaw. Damon’s head snapped to the side and he felt to the floor because of his shackled hands and feet. Their army leader placed his boot on Damon’s throat.
“When I want your damned opinion, criminal, I will squeeze it from your useless shite-filled head. You killed those people. That’s on you! If you weren’t a filthy traitor, selling poison, you’d never haven here in the first place.”
Damon grunted.
“I’m glad we’ve come to an agreement.”
The knight-captain stormed out of the ship compartment.
Damon felt rough hands on his arms. He looked around as the Lieutenant hauled him to his feet.
“He knows we had no choice, but he’s blaming us like we did. It’s either do what they say or get shot.” Damon said, rubbing his throat.
“That’s what the Lich Corps is for, Sacreon. It’s for people like Mortens—“
Damon gave him a raised eyebrow, something about that name seemed familiar.
“The knight-captain—and those in power use us to do the things that they won’t admit to. We are the instrument that allows them to keep their hands clean. You bear the brunt, you pay for their self-righteous hypocrisy. It’s the certain sin of virtue that their ilk are prone to commit, and we’re their sin eaters.”
The Lieutenant dusted him off, and squared him up. “Remember that you’re not above the sins you’ve committed. You’re not better simply because you can have someone else do the dirty work for you. You’re Lich Corps, you survive, and you find a way to live with yourself. If not, you’ll never get out of it.”
Damon gritted his teeth and stormed off. The realization that it had all been agai
nst him from the start hit him worse than any punch from the knight-captain. They were never going to let him out. He was going to rot in that armor. He was going to be used up by a government who wasn’t simply indifferent to his fate, but actively encouraging it.
One the guards stepped in front of Damon. He was a burly kid, probably just turned eighteen. “Get out of my way!” Damon growled.
The solider didn’t move. He brandished his rifle and pushed Damon backward. “You will wait to be escorted back to you cell, prisoner.” He said.
“Get out of my way or I will damn well make you, kid.”
The Lieutenant tried to pull Damon back by grabbing his shoulders. Damon slipped from his grip and moved toward the security officer. “Have you ever killed anyone? Because up until a few months ago I never had either. Then people start shooting at you and you just do give a damn anymore.”
The guard wasn’t listening. He grabbed Damon by the front of his tunic and shoved him back. “You will wait or I will shoot you.”
Damon saw the hesitation in the kid’s eyes, “Then do it! Do it, damn you! Shoot me!” He shouted. “Can you do it, kid? Do you have the balls?”
Damon lunged at the guard who smashed the barrel of his rifle into Damon’s face. The world went dark.
♦ ♦ ♦
Damon grunted and gasped as he woke up. He was shackled to a hospital bed. Shaya was sitting next to him, her wrists shackled. He looked at her lovely yellow-green face. Her full lips pulled upward in a smirk.
“Did you put some of that medical training to use on me, doctor?” He swallowed, trying to smile.
“A little. I thought you were going to get yourself shot…” She said.
“Not for lack of trying. I just snapped… didn’t want to do it anymore...” He coughed and she carefully passed him a cup of water with both hands. He took it and drank it down, dropping the empty cup in his lap.
“It’s okay, Damon,” she said, “it happens to everyone. We all get here thinking that we just have to put in our missions and you’re a reformed member of society. Then they start tacking on the penalties. The really shite part of it all is that it’s totally legal. It’s all there on the books.”