He was pissed, and Sara was sure she understood why. They had an answer to the Familiar spell, and she was hesitant to use it. But Cora had been right that Sara was not in a position to try something, when she didn't know what the outcome could be.
What if it cripples my abilities, like it did when I first summoned him, and the Teifen show up? What if the spell doesn’t work at all, and I just end up killing myself by expending all my Aether?
There were too many questions that she just didn't have the answers for.
Sara suddenly smacked her forehead, causing Alister to jump at the sudden movement. “Why didn't I look it up on the core?”
Alister cocked his head at her question, screwing up an eye as he tried to figure out what she meant.
“The Familiar spell. Why didn't I look it up? It was probably there in the data somewhere. If they were storing information about the tech, why wouldn't they have info on spells?” she explained to Alister, who, for his part, just rolled his eyes and jumped into her lap.
She had to pull her coffee out of the way so he didn't knock it out of her hand, but once he was up there, he stood on his hind legs and put his front paws on her chest, stretching his neck till his nose was nearly touching hers. He bumped his nose on the tip of hers, the cold wet sending a shiver through her. He looked deep into her eyes, and said, “Merow.”
A breath of a laugh shot from her nose, but the little cat was being serious.
Sara sobered. What he was being serious about, she didn't know; but she also knew he was intelligent, and she didn't want him to think she didn't respect that.
“What? You want me to just trust you?”
He licked the tip of her nose.
“The thing is, I do trust you, buddy. I just can't risk leaving my crew without a captain. I understand that we are going to need to do this, but we need to wait for a time when things aren’t quite so desperate,” she said by way of apology.
He growled and narrowed his eyes.
Her own eyes went a little wide at that. He had never growled at her! Even if he was a tiny cat, hearing the angry sound so close was intimidating.
“Look, man, I can't risk it. How do you know there will be no side effects?” She shook her head and held out a hand palm-up when he made no move to respond. “What, no answer? That’s my point, Alister. I can't take the chance.”
He broke eye contact and dropped to the floor. His body language screamed irritation, but there was nothing she could do about it right then.
“We have a ship that just dropped from warp, Sir,” one of the soldiers said, his voice loud and clear.
Baxter came running down the row of stations and leaned over the desk, peering at the monitor. Sara stood up and jogged to the station and saw the signature of a ship coming in hard from half an AU.
“Telemetry is confirming a Teifen carrier. They are deploying ships; it looks like ten fighters and twenty troop transports,” the soldier reported.
Sara could see the little blips spreading out from the main carrier. They began to burn hard for the planet, while the carrier continued coming in at its slower pace. It appeared they planned to come in hot and try to take the colony by surprise. Hopefully, she could surprise a few of them instead. Without the amplifiers in the ship, she couldn't project shields quite big enough to protect the whole central park of the city, but she could protect a significant portion of it from the fighters for a time. She would have to rely on the other specialists to protect their districts.
“At current speeds, they will make landfall in ten minutes, sir.”
Baxter stood and opened his palm projector. A small map of the area sprang up, showing the deployment of troops, both human and Elif. “We are all centralized, and every company has a specialist to protect them, but those fighters are going to rake the shit out of us ‘til their ground troops can get here. We need to take them out quickly, if we are going to survive the next hour,” he said to Sara as he examined the empty ground around the city.
“Luckily, they don't know we’re here,” she reminded him. “We should have the element of surprise in the first attack. Also, their ships are small enough to land in the city’s parks, so they will be flying in nice and close for our AA guns to rip them apart.”
She looked at Baxter, who furrowed his brow in concentration. “Only if they don't know we have AA guns. That would mean not taking out the fighters as they come in for their first pass. That would let us take out some of the transports, but then the fighters are free to come back around to pepper us from long range. Basically, we take out the fighters, or we take out the transports.”
“Which of the two will go down easier?” Sara asked.
Baxter nodded his head side to side as he considered. “The transports are more heavily armored, but slower. We could hammer them as they come in and continue as they try and fly out. We would take out half of them in the first go. Then the fighters would target the AA, and we would lose them. The fighters are less armored and easier to take out, as long as they don't evade too well. A surprise AA attack would probably take out two thirds of their force—maybe more, depending on our luck and their reaction. Either way, they get boots on the ground.”
“We’re better prepared to fight a ground war, though. I say we take out the fighters, but this is your battle, Sergeant Major. I’m just the backup,” Sara said, taking a step back.
Baxter weighed the options, and then barked out orders to take out the fighters.
“Each mage in a group is to shield incoming fire for their company, and wait for the ships to close in for better firing solutions with the AA guns. If for whatever reason they continue to come in with the transports, switch to those after taking shots at the fighters. Use the heavy armor to supplement the AA guns, and use those missiles. We need to take out as many as possible,” he shouted, his voice coming over her comms as well as filling the room.
“I’m going to shield the command tent and as much of the surrounding area as possible,” Sara said, turning to go.
“Good luck, Captain,” Baxter said to her retreating back.
She turned and snapped a salute. “You as well, Sergeant Major.”
Then she and Alister were outside, the tent flap falling behind them to close off the sounds of soldiers organizing a battle.
The afternoon was still, the air smelling clean and fresh after the day’s rainfall. Sara took a deep breath, enjoying it while she could. With a mental command, she closed her helmet and gloves, the smell of sweat and recycled air filling her nostrils. Alister jumped to her shoulder and gave her an expectant look.
“We’re going to need a big shield. Something to cover this whole area, if we can manage it. The ships use missiles and gauss rounds, so something hard, but not so hard it will shatter. I have a feeling we are going to be taking the brunt of this assault,” she told him conversationally.
A spellform blazed in her mind, and she examined it. It was strong, but she didn't like the shape. It was just a dome, so the fire would not be deflected so much as absorbed.
“Remember the wedge shield I had you make in that first space battle? Let’s try something like that, but one that points up and out at an angle, say like that,” she said, holding out an arm at an angle just above the closest building.
Alister considered this, and the spellform morphed while she watched.
She nodded in approval. “Good, let’s make the base twice as strong, though. The leading edge doesn’t need to have the same thickness. Any missiles or mass rounds will be sliding down to the ground, and the explosions will need to be kept from breaking through.”
The spellform changed just slightly, and she was satisfied.
“Good. That should do well. Now put a dome over the opening to close us in, just in case something comes over the top edge.”
Alister added a second spellform in her mind, and immediately smashed them together. It was similar to how she had done the Familiar spell, but without the rotating. She marveled at his
ability to manipulate the forms with such ease.
“Wow. You know I tried that when I was combining the spellforms to summon you,” she said, examining the complex form in her mind.
Alister cocked his head, “Merp?”
She laughed, “No. It didn’t work. I had to trick my mind into doing it in the end.”
He turned and looked out at the soggy ground as if he knew she couldn’t have done what he did. But she saw his ear flick and she swore there was a tugging at the corner of his mouth as if he were about to smile.
“You’re a strange little dude, Alister.”
“Merp.”
She turned and looked up to the sky. The smoke trails of thirty ships began to form high up into the atmosphere; billowing white and grey streamers heralding the coming of war.
Sara fell quiet, waiting for the chaos that was about to erupt.
33
“Incoming. Ten seconds,” a voice said over the comms.
Sara felt a trickle of sweat roll down her cheek. She tried to wipe it away, but the armor stopped her hand, and she cursed. Alister's spellform blazed bright in her mind, and she prepared to channel a healthy amount of Aether into it. They needed to withstand the long-range fire long enough for the fighters to close.
“Five seconds. I count ten fighters,” the voice said calmly.
Multiple sonic booms shook the sky. Sara could make out the specks above the horizon: coming in fast, but slowing for their strafes, not knowing the colony had been reinforced.
“Three, two, shields,” the voice commanded.
Sara poured Aether into the form, and a wedge of power sprang to life, covering the grounds for a hundred meters in all directions. She began to feel the constant pull on her well of power, but it wasn’t uncomfortable, and she still had plenty in reserve.
The fighters were upon them in a flash. Even at subsonic speed, the craft came faster than was easily tracked. They let loose with multiple missiles each, and their gauss cannons began to fire in tight bursts. Sara’s shield flared orange instantly as two missiles and multiple gauss rounds slammed into the Aether construct, sliding down the sloped edges to drive into the muddy ground. Explosions tore chunks of earth from the grassy lawn, raining muddy sludge across buildings and ruins alike. Just as the fighters were passing overhead, the AA guns opened up.
They had brought twenty guns down from the Raven, and they were set up in isolated pockets for optimal firing arcs. The AA guns used magnetic rails to rapidly fire explosive canisters at incredible velocities. The canisters would detonate their explosives at a calculated range to fill the air with flying shards of metal. The same concept had been used for as long as humans had been trying to shoot down planes.
A buzzing roar reverberated off the buildings as the sky filled with explosions, creating a wall of shrapnel that tore through the relatively delicate Teifen fighters. More than half were shredded in the air, bursting when batteries were punctured, which released huge amounts of potential energy. A good quarter were able to fly out of the city, but only after suffering catastrophic damage, trailing smoke and debris only to finally plummet into the forests beyond the city’s walls.
Sara noted that the three fighters who got away relatively unscathed were right in line with Baxter's assessment. Of the three, two were trailing smoke, and one of those was peeling off and heading up, abandoning the battle.
Small groups of missiles shot from the ground as the heavy troopers let fly. The second smoking fighter lost control, and multiple small missiles quickly overtook it, ripping the ship to flaming pieces which blossomed out like a horrifying fireworks display.
The third ship turned hard and let fly with a salvo of smaller seeker missiles that spread across the city, dodging fire and heading for a large number of the AA gun embankments.
Sara could see a few of the guns from where she was, and a soldier bailing out of his nest and falling a few stories to the ground. His armor should have protected him from the fall, but she didn’t see anyone else make a quick exit before the missiles began vaporizing the other guns.
At least fifteen AA guns went up in less than a few seconds. Sara hoped that most of the crews were under their mages shields, but she knew that not all the AA gunners had a mage with them.
The fighter turned hard again, preparing to fire another salvo, but multiple missiles from the heavy troopers sent it into evasive maneuvers, and the salvo was delayed. The fighter’s small PDCs spat out slivers of metal at the incoming missiles, chopping them out of the sky.
Sara realized how lucky they had gotten in that first AA strike. The Teifen hadn’t had their defenses fully up and came in with reckless abandon. This last fighter, however, was using everything at his disposal. The target had gone from soft to hard in a matter of seconds. She could see that her gunners and heavy troopers were no match. She needed to take this bastard out, fast.
“Alister, I need something to take that fighter out when it comes back around. Any ideas?” Sara said, tracking the fighter as it curved out around the city’s wall, coming back around to take another shot at the AA guns.
A spellform blazed to life, and she focused on it. It was a water-based spell; she could create the water with Aether, but that took a large amount of power.
Then she understood what he was getting at: the ground was soaked with the day’s rain, but that water was sinking deeper and deeper into the ground. The spellform was a way to bring it together and compress it, and then release a part of the pressurized ball in a desired direction. It took a considerable amount of power and, because water didn't compress well, it was not used by many mages.
Sara smiled. “You’re a little genius, aren’t you?”
Alister let out a small “Merp” in agreement.
Sara started powering the spellform, noting the focus was twenty meters in front of them. She could see the once saturated ground going dry as the water concentrated on the same spot. She poured Aether in like she had an endless well, compressing hundreds, then thousands of gallons of water, ten meters under the surface. She knew the water would be heating from the massive amounts of pressure she was forcing it to withstand.
She watched as the fighter came back around and headed right over the center of the city, flying low to make AA fire more difficult. It was picking up speed, and the gauss cannons began to fire, ripping a building apart and taking out another AA gun. As the fighter came screaming over the rooftops, Sara saw that it would pass right over her position. A small pod detached from the ship’s wing and burst into a dozen or more missiles, each firing off rockets to scream after the last of the AA guns.
Sara pushed a last blast of Aether into Alister’s spellform, sending a spike of heat into the compressed water, which vaporized it into steam. She released the top of her pressure cooker, and all the steam pushed out with incredible, pent-up power.
The ground in front of her bulged several meters in a split second, tearing the grass and dirt free of the surrounding ground, and then a spray of rocks, dirt, and steam blasted fifty meters up into the sky like a powerful geyser. The debris spread out like a shotgun blast, filling the path of the fighter and its missile salvo with solid objects. The missiles were shredded just a fraction of a second before the fighter itself was torn into pieces that rained across the ancient city in a burning line.
“Dome shield, Alister,” Sara screamed, holding a hand to the sky.
The spellform blazed, and she powered it with a jolt. The shield popped up just in time to deflect the tons of dirt and rock that came raining down. Large piles formed at the edges of the dome that covered the command tent and the surrounding area. She finally let the shield go when the sound of falling rocks died out.
Baxter came running from the tent and stopped himself before he tumbled into the crater she had created. He stared at it and then looked back at the tent, less than three meters from the hole.
Sara gave a halfhearted laugh. “Yeah, I suppose that was a little close. I had it under contro
l, though.”
He just stared at her for a moment before giving her a salute, “Yes, Ma’am.”
Sara noted the there was a smile in his voice when it came over the comm.
34
Sara was on the wall, facing an open field full of offloading Teifen transports twenty minutes later. She magnified her view, and could see streams of troops pouring from the hulking ships.
“We estimate ten to fifteen thousand troops, Captain. In a group that size, we should expect at least three mages, and a few heavily armored divisions,” Baxter said, leaning on the lip of the wall twenty meters above the city.
“That’s a lot of troops. What are our odds?” she asked, scanning the horizon.
Baxter took a breath and looked to see they were alone. “Not good. I would actually qualify this as bad. At the minimum, it’s ten to one against an enemy that is battle hardened. We are going to have to fall back quickly once they breach the wall, and they will breach. I give us two hours before they overrun it. Then we fall back to the city streets, and it becomes more squad-based running battle. Luckily, that’s where our men shine.
“We’re setting up booby traps in the narrower streets, but there are only so many things we can do. Eventually they will realize that if they spread out enough, they will be able to flank any ambushes. We will have snipers in the towers that still stand, but that will leave them vulnerable to attack. I’m pairing mages with snipers to give shield cover, but we only have a dozen mages, and I want some of them here on the front to soften up the enemy. Not to mention the only way to effectively fight their mages is with mages of our own.” He opened his helmet and rubbed at his face, looking at the field.
Sara turned and looked at the city. Half the buildings were nothing but crumbling ruins, and it looked like a stiff breeze would tumble the buildings that did stand. She could see squads laying explosives at opportune spaces, ensuring the greatest effect.
Genesis: War Mage: Book One (War Mage Chronicles 1) Page 20