Maverick: A Supernatural Space Opera Novel (Witching on a Starship Book 1)

by J. A. Cipriano

  “Bring them back!” I snarled, and as the last of the flames left my hands, the molecules pulled themselves back together, forming into distinctly humanoid looking shapes.

  Which was when Zug’s mech army, the one I’d reformed like a dumbass when I’d told the power to return the world to before I’d tried to eat it with magic, blew through the partially reformed wall and turned their weapons on me.

  27

  Laser fire filled the air, perforating what remained of the structure as I dove through the air, snagging my two friends and dragging us behind cover. We hit the ground in a heap as the engines on Zug’s starship flared to life and fire burst from them. The ship started to blur, and I knew it was initiating the jump to light speed or whatever the fuck spaceships did.

  That couldn’t happen.

  “It’s going down!” I yelled, flinging my magic outward and grabbing hold of the starship. “Timber!”

  I’ll freely admit, I’d never grabbed anything that big before, (ha-ha there’s a joke in there somewhere) but at the same time, I still had Gideon Cube fire running over my flesh. It wasn’t burning me anymore because it was putting me back together. I felt totally fine. My organs were back in place, and my inside bits were back inside.

  Truth be told, I felt fucking amazing, and as the crystal hanging around my neck flared to life, I grabbed at the fleeing spaceship like it was the golden ring on a merry-go-round. Something in the back of my mind popped, and I felt blood rush from my nose as more plasma slammed into our pathetic barricade.

  The vampire and the werewolf weren’t moving around, and their eyes were shut, but hey, they’d been vaporized, so even being back together was something. A smile flitted across my face as I had that thought. My teammates had been dead, and I’d brought them back. Me, Mallory Quinn. If I could do that, I could bring down this fucking ship.

  Unfortunately, I knew I didn’t have the strength to bring the ship down. Its rockets flared harder, and I felt the strain of my magic as it stretched thin. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and my vision darkened around the edges. I jerked my hand back with all the force I could muster, and as I did, the crystal on my necklace cracked. Thin spider-webbed fissures opened along its surface, spilling fractured light across my lap as more blood gushed from my nose.

  The green energy hugging my body trickled out in a webwork of flame that wrapped around my force grab like emerald spiderwebs, and as it climbed up toward the starship, I felt myself being dragged from cover as the ship’s engines strained overhead.

  My feet went out from under me as I flopped forward, smacking my chin on the newly reformed steel floor, and I slid out from behind cover.

  The mechs reoriented on me, letting more lasers fire. I reached out toward them with my free hand because I was desperate and more than a little crazy.

  As the first bolts struck me, I pulled in the heat, the pain, and most of all, the energy. I redirected it through my body, sending it sprinting from my outstretched hand into the web of energy grabbing the starship. Above me, the engines burned brighter, but I ignored it as it continued to drag me forward.

  “I said Timber!” I snarled, my words spraying bloody spittle across the floor as I reached out, extending my senses to grab all the blaster fire swarming around me. I drew it toward myself, causing it to vector toward my outstretched body.

  As it struck me, the power ripped through my insides, burning me up and causing steam to rise from my flesh. I ignored it all and redirected it into my own desperate tractor beam, and as I did, the starship’s left engine exploded into a fireball of twisted wreckage.

  I jerked my head sideways to see the Endeavor’s big forward guns steaming in the fringes of the atmosphere. A big ball of plasma filled the space in front of them as it concentrated its energy for a second shot, and I realized they were trying to shoot down the Void Crusher.

  Fuck Yeah!

  I just had to hold on a little longer.

  Sweat dropped from my face and splattered across the steel, and there was a lot more red in it than I expected. Was I sweating blood? That couldn’t be good.

  Thankfully (or not, depending on how you looked at it), the mechs continued firing, adding fuel to my fire as I pumped every last ounce of energy I had into my spell. The right engine exploded in a burst of blue plasma, causing the Void Crusher to spin into an awkward death spiral back toward me.

  My magic screamed as another salvo of blaster fire was thrown into my force grab. I jerked my hand backward with everything in me. My vision went spotty, fracturing straight down the middle before splintering into indistinguishable shards.

  That’s when I felt Jeffry and Chloe. They were touching me, their hands wrapping around my waist, and then their energy mixed with mine, spreading out the pain, the shock, the strain.

  My vision cleared as the starship above struggled to get free, to jump to safety.

  Worse, even though the Endeavor was readying another shot, the two remaining Void Crushers had moved between Zug and our ship. No matter how powerful the Endeavor, it couldn’t shoot through two Void Crushers while taking heavy fire.

  Captain Brand must have known that too because the Endeavor shifted, its entire carapace flipping in midair as it unleashed another burning salvo that took the closest starship on the underbelly before bursting out the top in a halo of flame that rained debris down upon Space Planet Maverick.

  Still, as I got dragged forward across the battlefield, I knew two things. They wouldn’t blow another engine in time, and I couldn’t keep up the energy funnel from the mech’s fire. It was too hard. Not in the “oh, I’m whiney and moving from the couch to the fridge is too hard so I’m going to just starve” way. No, it was hard in the “I knew I was going to die long before I pulled down the starship” way.

  But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a way if I had the will to make it happen. It just might cost me everything to do, but that was okay because my planet would survive. My mom and dad would survive. And Marty would survive. To make sure that happened, any price was worth paying.

  “When I die, I want Ke$ha to sing at my funeral, okay?” I cried, dropping the hand I was using to funnel the blaster fire as I formed a makeshift shield, I knew wouldn’t last more than a second or two, but hopefully, that’s all I needed. “’Cause this thing’s about to blow.”

  I dropped then, driving my palm into the ground and calling upon the energy of the planet. I’d restored this bitch, and she could damn well pay for that by helping me.

  As I called on the power of the earth mother or whatever the fuck lived inside the hallowed Planet Maverick, a surge of strength filled me. The warmth of the lava beneath the crust, of the planet itself, of all the life swarming over its surface, surged into my veins, but I didn’t give two fucks about that.

  No, I needed something specific.

  Gravity.

  I seized onto the elemental force of gravity itself and suffused it into my spell as I jerked backward like I was hauling in a bucking bronco.

  The strength of the planet’s gravity rippled outward along my metaphysical rope before slamming into the starship, and as Chloe and Jeffry cried out in pain and my vision went to a pinprick of shrapnel-wrapped agony, the engines in Zug’s starship exploded from the strain, and it fell from the sky.

  28

  “Holy fuck!” Chloe cried as Zug’s Void Crusher slammed into the mech army firing at us in a titanic explosion of force that threw us from our feet and sent our bodies tumbling head over heels into the far wall.

  As the cold steel kissed my skull like a baseball bat, and my consciousness snapped, crackled, and popped, Chloe wrapped her hand around my arm and hauled me over her shoulder right before the horizon exploded into fire and death.

  The rush of heat singed my eyebrows as Chloe flung me to the ground before throwing herself bodily on top of me, and shielding me with her back. The smell of burned flesh and hair to fill my nostrils.

  The fire slammed into the wall overhead, superheating
the metal, and causing it to sway dangerously as flame licked up and down its edge.

  Chloe cried out in pain right before something ice cold wrapped around my ankle and hauled me backward. I hit the ground behind the barricade as more explosions filled the horizon and what looked like ruptured fuel lines in the Void Crusher spilled viscous flaming fluid onto the mechs like a fully automatic napalm machinegun.

  “Careful, fire’s a bit warm,” Jeffry said, kneeling beside me as he tore open his wrist with his teeth. Then the vampire shoved the bloody wound into my mouth. The taste was like Boone’s Farm Strawberry and nearly made me throw up in my mouth because OMG high school.

  Still, because I was a good little girl, I dutifully swallowed the sticky fluid. As I did, I felt warmth spread out inside me, filling me to the brim. Then my vision cleared, and my body stitched itself back together. I lay there sucking wind like I’d just sprinted across the street while Jeffry shoved his bloody arm into Chloe’s mouth.

  Only despite being charbroiled, the werewolf pushed him away. “I don’t want your tainted blood anywhere near me,” she snarled. “We’re way not close enough for me to want any of your bodily fluids inside me.”

  “Suit yourself.” Jeffry shrugged as another explosion shattered my newly repaired hearing and sent a shockwave rippling outward that made my gut clench in pain. “I didn’t want to share my blood with you, anyway.” The vampire offered me his hand as he pointedly turned away from Chloe. “Come on, shall we? We need to find Zug.”

  “Find Zug?” I asked, eyes widening in shock as I let him pull me to my feet. The Void Crusher was half pancaked into the ground, and as I stared at it, Jeffry leapt over the barricade, his crimson laser sword springing to life as he stared at the wreckage. Then he began to move forward, deflecting plasma blasts back at the remaining bad guys like an undead Jedi Knight.

  “Right. Oliver is telling me he’s still alive in there, which means we need to find him and pull his ass out.” A wry smile flitted across his lips as he lashed out absently, burying his blade into a still struggling mech with one of its legs shorn off so it was flopping around like a wounded duck. He slashed outward spilling the robot’s guts across the ground in a spray of superheated muscle as Chloe got slowly to her feet and put one hand on the barrier for support.

  “Okay,” Chloe wheezed, throwing one arm over my offered shoulder and pointing toward the starship, her nostrils flaring. “I can smell the fucker. Let’s go.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” I asked as the hatch at the front of the Void Crusher opened up, and an armada of mechs surged forth toward us. “Last time you got pretty fucked up on his stupid sauce.”

  “You have a better plan?” she asked as she grabbed a piece of debris the size of a baseball and hefted it with one hand before launching it at the closest mech. The rock struck the robot in the faceplate, shattering the screen and causing it to veer sideways as it fired into its comrades.

  As that happened, Jeffry tore forward in a blur of speed, laser sword flashing through the air as it rent metallic limbs from robot bodies like a vortex of doom.

  A moment later, the vampire stood in front of the mauled Void Crusher, glowing blade held off to the side while the wind ruffled his dark hair and sparks shot from destroyed robots.

  Overhead, the Endeavor’s blaster fired once more, blowing a hole straight through the final Void Crusher. The energy pulse passed through the ship’s armor in a stream of molten metal, and as lightning arced from the devastated craft and it began to explode from within, Oliver’s voice filled my mind.

  “We have more enemy ships incoming. Don’t worry, we’ll keep them off of you. Find Zug. Captain’s orders,” Oliver said right before the Endeavor took off in a burst of engine thrust, jetting up into space as more pinpricks of light solidified in the sky, letting me know more of the enemy fleet was about to engage our starship.

  Buy time was right. The Endeavor was covered in scorch marks, and while clearly a better overall ship than the Zugian Void Crushers, I wasn’t sure it could fight off an armada.

  “Did you get that message from Oliver?” Chloe asked as we limped closer to the vampire.

  Thankfully, with every step we took, she healed, so that by the time we reached him, she was nearly one hundred percent. Still, part of me wished she’d just sucked the vampire’s blood. Sure, it tasted like ass, but we’d probably already have boarded the ship and be kicking butt if she had.

  “Yes,” Jeffry replied, arm snaking out as he buried his sword to the hilt in the Void Crusher’s hull. The metal warped, turning molten around the blade as he swept it out in a wide arc. “We don’t have a lot of time. Par for the course, I should think.” He glanced at me as he completed the circle he was drawing in the ship’s hull. “Pull this off.”

  I thought about mouthing off, but I didn’t. Instead, I just raised my hand, called upon my magic and tore the piece of red hot hull from the Void Crusher. As I flung it to the side with a clang, sparks leapt from the ragged edges of the hole where he hadn’t managed to cut all the way through.

  Inside, I saw more destroyed mechs and some downed fighters, but there were no Mavericks as far as I could tell. It was a little weird because I’d expected people to be rushing around inside. I mean, they had released an armada of mechs a moment ago, hadn’t they?

  “He’s that way,” Chloe said, sniffing the air like a bloodhound before pointing to the left where the ship stretched out until it terminated in a translucent wall covered in portholes.

  “Fuck,” I murmured as my gaze narrowed. Behind that wall was a literal army of soldiers all clad in black body armor so they almost looked like beetles holding staffs that had blue lightning crackling from either end.

  “We’re a team. I’ll handle this,” Jeffry said as the wall slid away into the ceiling and the soldiers charged. “You two see to Zug.”

  Then the vampire was sprinting forward, blade sweeping outward to clash with the staffs. Unfortunately, the things were up to the task of deflecting the vampire’s sword, and as he put boot to ass and knocked them down with heavy blows, I knew it wasn’t going to buy us much time no matter how good of a fighter he was.

  “Hang on,” I growled, grabbing Chloe around the wrist as she made to help the vampire and ported us behind the army and behind the translucent army. As my body reappeared, I released Chloe who stumbled forward haphazardly and flung my magic like a lasso. It wrapped around Jeffry, hauling the vampire off his feet and sending him careening toward me. As he crashed to the ground beside me, I reached out with my magic, grabbed onto the wall that had slid into the ceiling, and jerked my hands downward.

  The sound of hydraulics whining filled my ears for a second before the whole structure came slamming down in place, sealing the army off behind us.

  “Thanks, mate,” Jeffry said, getting slowly to his feet as Chloe took a step toward me and pointed to my left where a large glowing shaft filled my vision. “He’s through there.”

  Only as she said the words, her eyes started to get that distant, vacant look. Drool started to fill her mouth as she looked vacantly toward me, and as she did, I decked her in the nose.

  She reeled back, blood exploding from her shattered nose as she grasped her face.

  “What the fuck?” she cried, eyes spilling back to their normal amber hue, but before she could do more, Jeffry covered her nose with his hand while pulling something from his pocket.

  “Put these in your nose. They’ll help to counteract the pheromones,” the vampire said, and surprisingly Chloe nodded, her rage draining away.

  As I watched her stuff the two tampon-looking things into her nostrils (Yes, they looked that ridiculous) I couldn’t help but wonder why we didn’t start the mission wearing them. After all, Oliver’s warning had been a dime short and a dollar late.

  “I won’t be able to sniff him out,” Chloe said in a weird, nasally, voice right before that door slid into the floor and an exo-suit wearing Zug appeared along with twenty simila
rly clad henchmen.

  “Give up now, and I won’t pull your nose out your spleen,” I said, readying my power as an energy broadsword appeared in Zug’s hand that made me think he’d played Halo one too many times. As it flared to life in a flash of green energy, his men followed suit, brandishing their own versions of the weapon.

  “I don’t even have a spleen,” Zug replied as his men charged straight for us. Only as they did, I nodded to the vampire.

  “Handle this,” I said, and as he nodded, I teleported past the charging Mavericks, reappearing right in front of Zug so I could pound him into the ground and save my planet from this crazed fanatic. And hey, if I enjoyed it, bonus, right?

  His eyes widened in surprise as I reached out with one hand and slammed a fireball up into his grill. The blast threw him backward into the darkened hallway in a cloud of blackened smoke. As he hit the ground and skidded across the steel in a flurry of sparks, I sprinted forward while slowing down time, only as I crossed the threshold, all my magic evaporated from around me.

  I stumbled forward, time speeding back up as my eyes caught sight of all the sigils painted on the walls in green blood. A pile of dead Mavericks lay in the corner, and as I put two and two together and realized he’d somehow caused me to lose all my magic, Zug began to laugh maniacally. The huge metallic feet of his exo-suit dented the ground as he stood and strode toward me like an avenging god.

  Fuck.

  Panic shot through me as I turned and tried to run back through the door, but before I made it two steps, the door slid shut, sealing me inside with the Maverick Lord.

  29

  “How does it feel to stand before me and know that you are nothing before my awe-inspiring power?” Zug asked, the robotic arms attached to his suit glinting in the eerie light as the sounds of the battle outside filled my ears.