We Unhappy Few

by G R Fabacher

  He kept his hands clear on the posts as he thought about the months he’d spent in the corps. The two missions he’d been on stood out the most, and even he could tell from his cloistered viewpoint that the conflicts between the Republic and the Union were reaching a breaking point. The tension was like a wire, and had only grown over the past few days. There were seldom any diversions to keep his mind from drifting to current events.

  “Guys, drop everything.” Oslo was hustling toward them, “Day off’s been canceled. Lieutenant wants everyone in the armory and ready to don armor right now, in fact probably five minutes ago, but you know.”

  Joyride didn’t stick around. Damon pulled the weights up and Urani sat up, wiping her neck off with a towel and tossed it back at Damon, “Last one there goes into the mission with a hand tied behind their back!” She shouted.

  Damon dodged the towel letting it hit the dirt. He also didn’t rise to the orc’s challenge, but didn’t waste time dawdling. He headed toward the armory to get on the body glove that would protect him from the various rigors of magical armor. It was the closest thing to a uniform that the Lich Corps had, and at some point someone—probably Hellaina now that he thought about it—had gone through the trouble of stitching little embroidered skull patches over the right shoulders where a unit emblem would be. Damon didn’t think any of the official Republic brass cared as long as there were no clear identifiers that the corps were from the Republic. It was the secret everybody knew about, but no one could do anything about. Deniability was all the rage in Terrasti’s modern concept of shadow wars and police actions.

  “Here.” He heard Shaya say. She pulled the seams on his body glove together and they stitched into one seamless black fabric. It was laced with orichalcum and mythril to add strength and magic resistance. It felt kind of hard like leather but with a spongy quality he couldn’t quite place. It covered him from his neck to his toes, leaving his hands and face free.

  “What’s the deal?” He asked her returning the favor of zipping her up. She ran her fingers through her living hair and he watched as they coiled themselves into braids and then the braids into a bun that would fit underneath her helmet. He watched as she deftly tied off her bun. Damon supposed that way she didn’t have to think about holding her hair in the pattern the whole time.

  “Big action, whole corps.” She said. “This is what we’ve all been waiting for. Almost like we’re a real legit part of the Republic army.”

  They walked out onto the small square of concrete that served as the parade grounds for the corps when they assembled. They hardly ever used it and there were cracks and weeds. The whole of both cellblocks were assembled, even the ones they never let out of their cages. Damon felt the air around him as it hung with an ominous weight.

  Shaya sidled away, and he watched her go, his heart felt tense. He reached and grabbed her hand. “I…” he began, “Just be careful.” He said. Her green eyes softened and she nodded. With a turn she was gone to find the Lieutenant. Damon stood between Urani and the buteo pyromaniac named Aszna. She was actually pretty normal to talk to even if she was clapped in irons like Sparky.

  “They call me Firefly.” She said. Her voice was far too bright and cheery for a serial arsonist. According to her they only kept her locked up because when she was free she couldn’t help herself, she just had to set fires.

  “They’ll probably lock my armor too.” They only really bring me out as part of a distraction team.”

  “Question,” Joyride said, “how do you fit those big beautiful wings of yours in armor?”

  The buteo woman smiled, “We have special armor. It flies.” Her yellow eyes were wide, dilated, her hair had a threadlike nature and a feathery quality like down. It was kind of curly a fluffy too.

  Others of the extremely dangerous variety were around in chains. Some were cloistered in blocks by themselves, and Damon noted the number of guard rifles pointed at them. Others were like Firefly and allowed to join the general ranks, albeit in chains. Damon looked forward, he was in the front row near the center aisle created by the two assembled blocks.

  Up at the fore of the assemblage stood Knight-Captain Absolom Mortens. Again in yet another fit of clenched jaw and fists, Damon wanted to punch the handsome bastard in his smug face. Beside Mortens there was another man Damon didn’t recognize. He was tall and whipcord thin. He wore a black tunic buttoned all the way up to his neck. He wasn’t a bad looking man, but his face was thin and sharp. It was his eyes though, dark and intelligent. Damon caught his eyes, and the man lifted a corner of his mouth in a smirk. Damon blinked and the man was looking somewhere else. It was like he had never traded glances in the first place.

  “Who’s that guy?” Damon asked.

  “Who? Mortens?” Oslo said.

  “No, the guy next to him?”

  “Shite, man, I don’t know.”

  Damon shrugged and gave up that line of inquiry. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the man knew exactly who he was smirking at. The corpsmen looked ahead as the knight-captain strode up. He stood with his hands behind his back, in some kind of at-ease position.

  “Listen up, criminals!” He shouted, his strong voice was filled with contempt, “You’re getting a chance to prove to the world that you’re not irredeemable monsters and degenerates.” He began walking up and down the fore of the parade ground.

  “Today, you will aid the honorable Rangers of the Gloriana Republic in their effort to route the Union force currently stationed near what we believe to be the ancient capital of the Amagistratii Empire. I don’t expect you illiterate morons to know what any of this means, so I’ll make this simple: You fight, you die, you strive and you sacrifice for the second chance that your nation has so graciously bequeathed you. If this mission is successful, then there will be measures to commute each and every sentence.

  “We will begin mobilizing immediately. You will march to the transports, and you will conduct yourselves like you’re actual soldiers. You will be partially briefed in flight. Dismissed.”

  As the knight-captain made an about face and headed away, Damon held up his hand in a rude gesture.

  “Sacreon!” The Lieutenant bellowed, “Get your ass in the transport!”

  “Yes, sir!” Damon said, “Which transport, sir?”

  “The one that will be riding in you if you don’t shut your stupid mouth!”

  As if on cue the warbling of massive magical engines drowned out any chance Damon had to smart off. The bard looked up and shielded his eyes against the faint glowing downwash. These were not the small transports the Lich Corps units were used to. Each massive transport had four engines, one at each corner.

  “Wow, Roc heavy transports.” Joyride supplied. “There’s nothing bigger in the Republic where getting shite from point A to B is concerned.”

  Damon tromped up to the large hatch. The inside of the troop carrier was impressive. A large central aisle could hold several land vehicles. This one was apparently configured for maximum infantry because there were six rows with the port and starboard-most rows facing each other and the inner most staring at each other from across the central aisle.

  “Where exactly are we headed, Lieutenant?” Oslo asked.

  “The Bleak Marshes, Joyride, weren’t you listening?” The Lieutenant said.

  Damon punched Oslo in the shoulder, “I don’t think we’re going to get any more info out of anyone who knows anything.”

  Sparky dropped into the seat next to Damon.

  “You know what that means, don’t you, Sparky?” Oslo said, sitting across from them.

  “Yep, catch some rack time.” She said crossing her arms over her chest and tipping her chin downward.

  Damon knew they were right. Strapped into the seats for transit, the corpsmen weren’t going to do a whole lot of mingling unless they were talking to those in their immediate area. This definitely wasn’t civilian air travel.

  Still, there were some things that were required as a matter
of tradition.

  “Do we get little bags of salted nuts on his flight? An inflight movie?”

  “Sacreon, I swear to any god that will listen, if you do not shut your crumb catcher right now you will not have to worry about the Unies shoving a sword in your gut.”

  Damon sat back, a self-satisfied smile on his face. His duty was done. He mimicked Sparky’s pose and swore he could see the Lieutenant smirking at the fore of the ship.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The ship flew for a little over two hours, it was moving fast, but not at a breakneck pace. It was hard for Damon to really tell in the belly of the windowless transport. Only the Lieutenant and Shaya were allowed to get up and move to the cockpit.

  Damon turned his thoughts toward the Bleak Marshes. Every schoolchild knew that both Terrasti and Duamatt were covered in magical wastelands. There was plenty of livable space, but from these wastes came Bleak-Kin. Modern technomagical innovations like air travel and elevated trains made traveling through the larger areas that couldn’t be normally circumvented trivial. On what Damon’s thought dwelt most was why there were such places to begin with? The magical scarring that left the land useless was something left by the Magi in their last days.

  Now there were serious efforts to reclaim these places, a sort of new frontier in the old world. However, this life was dangerous and few people chose to give up modern lives in cities with all the amenities one could need for a hard life on a lawless, monster-ridden frontier. Damon always thought those kinds of people were crazy or hoped to play amateur archeologist and strike it rich enough to retire to Bounty or one of the other boundless mountains and live like a king, waited on hand and foot by insanely attractive female merfolk. Now he knew that these forgotten lands were just a new battleground.

  Not that he ever had such fantasies himself, especially not now.

  He blinked and closed his eyes. There was nothing more to really think about other than what could be require the whole corps, and the answer to that was a clear nothing good. Damon didn’t want to spend his last peaceful moments on something he had no control over. He could never decide if that philosophy was enlightened or lazy. His last thoughts were of the unlikely friends he’d made almost a year ago.

  He was jarred awake by the craft setting down. The Lieutenant walked down the central aisle and shouted at the corpsmen to stand and file out of the transport. The back hatch opened and the first thing Damon felt was an all-pervasive dampness. The Bleak Marshes were cold this time of year, and while the body gloves they all wore were actually fairly insulating, the humidity cut through it like he was naked.

  The emerged into a small city of tents placed on hastily-constructed platforms. Men and women—mostly dwarves—bustled about, and Damon saw that they had Republic Corps of Engineers badges. A carpentry square and compass that formed a diamond, in the center was the Republic of Gloriana seal crossed with a hammer and spade.

  The troops from the Lich Corps filed out of the two massive transports and were immediately surrounded by guards. Damon could hear Mortens shouting for the guards to usher the profligate criminals into the holding area. The mass of prisoner soldiers were shoved into a large prefabricated building.

  “It’s weird not doing this in chains.” Damon remarked as he passed the guards at the door. The guard tapped him with the butt of his rifle, and Damon got the message: just move.

  To get all of the convicts into their cans, the engineers rushed in with dollies and the corps’ various configurations of old armor.

  Damon took a deep breath and stepped up after a female engineer pushed in the suit’s magical battery. She gave it a twist and buttoned up the chest. “Good to go for prelims.” She said.

  He was sealed in and the armor was set on standby mode. He could look out, but his joints and other combat systems were restricted. He saw Shaya walk up to him. He smiled, despite knowing she couldn’t see it.

  “Nice visor there, Bard.” She said.

  “Thanks.” He said.

  The half-elf planted a kiss on his faceplate and lowered the visor. The thin wire bands that made up the guard didn’t obscure his vision much and his eyes quickly compensated for the new view. The wards also activated in a fain pearlescent glimmer before his vision returned to normal.

  The engineers returned with his weapons on a cart. “Okay,” the female engineer from earlier said, holding up a crystal slate. “One paladin sword, windfall. We did you a solid on this. The slight human woman hefted the large blade. “Captain Mortens hates that you use Union gear, so he had us give it a makeover, and we found it a scabbard.

  Damon looked at it. The straight cross-like hilt had been replaced with a wavy one, and they had given it a large hand guard, making it look more like a saber handle that the Republic’s officer corps enjoyed.

  “We also gave it a new battery and—if you can get one from a Unie out there—an enchantment stone can be place in the pommel.”

  “Whose idea was that?” He asked.

  “Your commanding officer figured maybe you’d get lucky or something, I don’t know. I just know that there’s a lot of Union elites around here and they carry those flame and lightning enchantments to boost their cool factor.”

  “Plus, you know, surviving maybe?” He said

  She ignored him and strapped it to his back, the scabbard was physically affixed to the back of his armor, not simply magilocked. “One pistol, Union Manticore, windfall, and two clips of ammo.”

  “Yeah, after last time I thought it best to keep some on hand.”

  She continued to ignore him and slid it into the holster built into his armor’s thigh.

  “One slightly modified Republic Chimera battle rifle—“

  “So that’s what they are, I never knew.”

  She folded the stock up and slapped it across his abdomen. The weapon stayed in place. “Four extra magazines of ammo. They went on his armor’s belt.

  “Five standard issue M-13 Changeling grenades. She slapped the bandolier across the other side of his belt. “That’s it. One standard infantry kit.”

  “Last time I got a grenade launcher.” Damon pouted.

  “Not this time.” She said holding up the tablet. “You’re all done.”

  “No one ever lets me have any fun.”

  Chapter 22

  After the whole of the corps was kitted out they were allowed to move with the bare minimum of power to the staging area for this operation. They were divided into small five man teams with Damon, Joyride, Sparky, Jurza, and Urani making up one team in dozens.

  The Lieutenant walked up and tapped his breast plate. The old man was wearing his own battle-scarred armor, but his face plate was popped up. Damon raised his mask and then his own faceplate to meet the Lieutenant’s gaze.

  “Sacreon, you’re leading this team. Pay attention to the briefing.”

  Damon watched as the man made his way down to Shaya’s team. She was with Boudira, Firefly, Emomnu, and the elf new blood.

  Damon watched as Emomnu picked him out of the crowd and waved. As a massive engine of artificial destruction there wasn’t a lot they could do to give the golem a proper Hanging, so he had the honor of hauling the totally locked in elf around for Shaya. Damon watched as the golem hefted the elf like a bag of dirty laundry. He swore he could almost hear the guy’s screams from where he was standing.

  He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see Urani looking at him. “You’re the leader now, Bard. Orc women find that irresistible, you know?” She slapped his armor-clad rear. He ignored her comment, but he couldn’t help but feel a tension in his chest. He was leading these people, some of them the closest things he had to friends. He looked down at his hands and clenched them, watching the articulated joints of the magical armor.

  From his right he heard Mortens talking to a new man. The new guys was shorter than the knight-captain, but he had a hardened intensity. He looked like he might have been descended from the dark-skinned islanders of Valant like the Lie
utenant or Germaine.

  The new guy wore more cutting edge armor. It was more form fitting, less bulky and formed from metal-ceramic composites. It was a dark green and obfuscating slashes and splatters. The Ranger emblem emblazoned over his heart. A bow and arrow crossed over one another with a knife descending downward.

  There were whispers. Everyone in the Republic of Gloriana knew about the Rangers. The elite of the Republic’s armed forces. They had a history going back to the founding of the Republic after the collapse of the Azure Crown Empire. Damon had the posters hanging in his room like every other preteen boy.

  They were excellent covert fighters, pathfinders, but their most infamous claim to renown was that they were unparalleled and ruthless mage killers.

  “And there are the stars of the show.” Damon said.

  “What there are only like twenty of them?” Oslo said. “We’re all here, that’s what a few hundred of the most hardened bad-asses in the Republic?

  “Roadies don’t get the groupies, man.” Damon said.

  “Well, shite!” Oslo cursed.

  The Rangers walked to the fore and their leader produce a portable illusion cube. Despite the name, it was mostly used to display information and battle plans in the field to such a large gathering of troops.

  “Alright, everybody, this is the big show. This is payback for Archeon.” The Ranger commander said. There were a few cheers from the auxiliary support and the Guild liaisons that were present. The Lich Corps stood deathly quiet.

  The commander continued, “Intelligence procured at great cost to ROCO has massive Union force making its way to the old Ahmagistratii capital in clear violation of international law, but we know what the Union thinks of laws.”

  Damon almost yawned. This wasn’t some mission to strengthen international solidarity. This was payback, pure and simple. That was something he could understand more readily than trying to claim the moral high ground. Again the Lieutenant’s saying filtered its way through his brain.