Cleansing Fire

by D. L. Harrison

  Cassie tilted her head, “Hmm, you may be right.”

  I pointed at the crystal, “I also think I found your big red button, how big a crystal do you think it takes to power this city sized ship?”

  Steve laughed, “It wouldn’t be hard to destroy this crystal and make it release all its mana catastrophically. I’d say fire is the best bet, it’s incredibly strong, much stronger than a diamond, but like diamonds this crystal will burn. At high enough heat. Blunt force probably won’t work.”

  Gwen smirked, “You’re assuming the ship is powered from one location. There could be crystals of that size throughout every wall in every deck for all you know.”

  I shook my head, “I doubt it. For that to work they’d have to at least connect the crystals in a grand enchantment, and I’m getting the idea they can’t do that. They don’t build a thing with magic, just power stuff with it. Even if they could, it would mean losing just one of the crystals to enemy fire would disable the whole ship. Unless, there’s an independent crystal in every single piece of machinery there has to be a main one on the ship. But, we already know that’s not true, none of machinery out there has a large magic aura.”

  Cassie snickered, “Only one way to find out for sure, let’s see where that big door leads?”

  “Let’s grab a few crystals, we’ll never be able to use them at our level, or probably not even at grandmaster, but we’ll be able to experiment on them. Find the best way to blow them up. Probably fire, as earth, Steve would know best, but just in case?”

  No one disagreed with that idea, and we all loaded them into our packs.

  The door led out into a large hallway. It was large enough to fit all those large parts, and in a short time we could tell this hallway was circular around the edge of the ship. It was the hallway where the smaller docked ships would load and unload. We also discovered between each of the docking ports, was another large room the size of the machine shop we’d come in at.

  We didn’t do a detailed check, but we peeked in quite a few. Some were electronics factories, others built plastics, fittings, and moldings for inside the ship, things of that nature. It wasn’t until the fifth factory room that we ran into something interesting. Armor manufacturing. Not the green stuff, but the armor for the quadruped invaders, be it from another continent or the stars. I was betting on the latter, and I bet the others were too, but none of us talked about it.

  Like the ship, the armor was coated in green stuff, but we still had no idea how it was made, or what it exactly was. I was sure though, that was the impact protection, while the mana shield would handle magical attacks, and most likely other forms of non-physical energy.

  The real discovery though, was we found out critical information. The armor was powered by two sheets of crystal, both of them capable of a holding a hundred thousand mana. One was wrapped around the left arm, and the other was placed on the left side of the torso.

  Gwen said, “Look at this, there’s an interface here. I bet the shields are plugged in and powered by the crystal in the left arm that holds it, while the suit is powered by the one in the torso. The shield itself is merely to protect the crystals from being broken or shattered in battle, and it doesn’t have crystals in it at all for obvious reasons, in case it gets broken.”

  After that, we entered a room for the rod manufacturing. We didn’t find out much more than the fact I was right. Half the rod was packed with crystals, the other half was electronics. We assumed the electronics was what made the beam, and what secured the device from tampering, but how it did that was beyond us all. There were no manuals, computers, or even viewscreens of any kind.

  At that point, we started to skip doors, and looked for engineering. We tried in the back of the ship, but that was just more manufacturing. The whole outer ring was manufacturing, and docking ports. At least, on the level we were on. I’d estimate there were four or five decks, the place was just vast, at ten square miles, we were looking at forty to fifty square miles of corridors and rooms.

  Steve suggested, “Engineering is probably very well protected, we need to look in the interior of the ship. It’s probably in the middle of it, the bridge too.”

  “On what level?”

  Steve shrugged, “The middle one. Where we are now. I bet this is one of their high security decks, there’s probably a whole bunch of those quadrupeds living here on the other decks. Consider the fact we haven’t even seen one of them yet. They also wouldn’t just want engineering safest from attacks from the sides, but from the top and bottom as well.”

  A guess, but hopefully a good one. We found a door on the side leading further into the ship, and we went through.

  The ship was impossibly huge, with doors to the left and right as the corridor headed deeper into the ship. We opened a few, which were storage rooms of food, and other necessities that were more than half empty. After a while we didn’t even bother looking anymore, and just kept going forward. I had a feeling we’d recognize engineering, as soon as we were sixty feet from it.

  The spoke corridor led to a doorway at the end. We all exchanged glances and went inside.

  It didn’t take long to realize this was another curved corridor, a loop inside the center of the ship. It also wasn’t long before we saw one of the quadrupeds, this one out of armor. It wore a fiber suit of some kind, and kind of made me want to puke.

  Part of it was the stench, but the rest of it was just what the thing looked like. The legs had three segments, and they were half extended making the creature about ten feet tall. I guessed they could duck down to five or raise up to fifteen just by bending or straightening their legs. They were reminiscent of a spider on the bottom, but at the same time were far too bulky and muscular. I recalled my assess life, they were very strong, but their mana was very low.

  The torso was segmented as well, at the bottom of the upside T, then segmented again at the thorax, and again at the head. Despite the insect analogy, they were definitely not exoskeleton, their skin was a deep dark green color. It made me wonder if they purposefully colored their armor to match their skin tones. The head wasn’t all that much different from other humanoids on this planet, at least in dimensions, which just made it that much more horrifying. They had large black compound eyes, no hair. Their noses looked smashed in, just two holes in their face below very small ridges. Their mouths were much wider than a human’s, and they had razor sharp teeth indicating they weren’t omnivores, just carnivorous.

  We all pressed carefully against the wall as two of them walked past us, and I felt the gorge rise in my stomach, but pushed it down.

  Cassie said, “I’m going to be sick.”

  We all held our breath until both of them were gone. Thankfully, Cassie didn’t puke, and neither did the rest of us.

  We continued around the center ring. There were many doors on the outside of it, all connected to spoke hallways that led back out to manufacturing, or that opened up to lifts. There were only two doors that continued in toward the center.

  Steve grunted, “That has to be it, only two doors. Bridge and engineering.”

  Still a guess, but a good one. I’d been thinking the same thing.

  “Which one’s which?”

  Steve shrugged, “I’d guess the larger door is engineering, to accommodate moving heavy equipment in and out.”

  I nodded, “Let’s go, we’ll wait for one of them to open a door and then slip through. This part of the ship has too many of the enemy to chance them not catching on to phantom door openings.”

  Gwen shrugged, “Won’t we be fighting our way out of here soon?”

  I smirked, “Good point, but what if this is the shower? And not engineering at all? I don’t feel a huge honking mana source, do you?”

  Gwen snorted, “Stop making sense.”

  I laughed, and the other ladies giggled.

  We waited and waited, and then we waited some more. Surely someone would be along soon…

  Chapter Five

 
It felt like hours, but it was probably only ten minutes later when the door swished open. We squeezed past the alien on the left, while it walked out, and I let out a sigh of relief. All the way across the room, at least a hundred feet away, was the largest crystal I’d ever seen. It was in the form of a column from floor to ceiling, which due to our alien friends was about twenty feet high. It was also five feet in diameter. The thing must have been able to hold millions of mana. Not all that surprising, considering the ship was a small city. Five small cities really, if we considered there were five decks.

  There were six quadrupeds in the room. There were also a lot of video screens, consoles, and a whole lot of high tech. I wasn’t sure what this ship was capable of, but we knew for sure it had anti-gravity, or some kind of gravity drive, or it wouldn’t be hovering over a valley. I guessed it probably had some kind of FTL as well, though if it was wormholes, folding space, or using subspace wasn’t known.

  We moved toward the crystal. Of course, things couldn’t be simple, the crystal was covered in a strong mana shield that made their armor look weak, one million mana points worth. Probably to protect it from accidents, and possibly even a containment mechanism. There was a console there, with various controls. They were labeled, but of course not in a language we could read.

  “Plan?” Dan asked.

  “Find a way to lower the mana shield. I’ll plant a nasty fire spell with a ten-minute delay, then we kill all the engineers. You’ll use Earth to seal the door after we leave, and maybe make it thicker to stop them from getting in here at all. At least, within ten minutes. Then we’ll run our asses off back to the ship, and then fly off. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a bit hungry.”

  Steve snickered, “What about the slaves?”

  I frowned, “We can end the threat here, and save who knows how many. If we try to face them in battle, they’ll roll over us, and we won’t free the slaves anyway. We could go recruiting, and invade the valley, but I bet this ship could take out a horde with its weapons without breaking a sweat. It’s just too big.”

  Lara sighed, “I want to save them too, but I think he’s right. We can always come back, most of them might survive in the mines. Only a couple of them seem to be on cart duty, and maybe even they’ll be in the mine when it goes off?”

  She sounded hopeful, but I was pretty sure this whole valley would be a huge crater, and the surrounding mountains would be turned to slag. There’d be no radiation or fallout from a magical explosion, save the dirt it threw up into the atmosphere there’d be little secondary effects, but it would be devastating. Although, there was a lot of ship to rip through, and it had that advanced armor coating it. Maybe the ship would contain most of the explosion? We could hope, but I doubted it.

  Still, worth it. This ship was there to invade and strip a world of its resources. We’d probably win in the end, but a lot more people than a few slaves would die if we hesitated.

  Gwen said, “It’s one of those crappy decisions, the only choices between bad or worse. I don’t like it either, but it is what it is.”

  Everyone nodded a little reluctantly, but they all had a determined look settled over their faces.

  “How do we get the mana shield down?”

  Dan said, “It’s powered by magic, but it’s directed with technology. We can just blow up machines in here until we kill whatever the converter is. I’m guessing that big ass machine next to it.”

  “Fair enough, worst case the ship winds up unpowered for a while, which will make it hard for them to repair it.”

  Cassie tilted her head, “I have an idea, let me try it first. Time to kill the engineers and seal the door?”

  I nodded.

  These guys weren’t in armor, and there hit points were below five thousand.

  I blasted two of them with fire blasts from my running spell, which cancelled our cloak. Alarms started to go off immediately, as the enemy was blown apart.

  Cassie took out two with similar attacks. Her duration offensive spell shot out balls of lightning, and it fried them both. The last two were taken out by Steve and Gwen, with a quick lunge and swing of their swords. The non-combatants really didn’t have a chance.

  Dan sealed the door, it melted and reformed into another seamless piece of wall. There was no door anymore.

  “Cassie?”

  She grinned a little maniacally, and then formed a lightning ball between her hands. It exploded outward in a wave and went right through us without harm. A moment later, everything went dark.

  Lara cast a light spell.

  “What was that?”

  Cassie snickered, “EMP. It wouldn’t get through a mana shield, but since we’re in the heart of the ship in engineering, I just fried every piece of electronics in this room, and possible even in the bridge and beyond. Anything not shielded.”

  I nodded, “So the ship has no power, despite the crystal still being here?”

  Cassie nodded.

  With the mana shield down, I could feel the crystal had fifty million mana, and it was rising. It probably hadn’t been at full charge, with the constant draw of the ship.

  “Oh shit,” Steve said, as the floor dropped out from beneath us, literally. The anti-gravity must have run out of energy. The delay must’ve been from some kind of capacitance in the units.

  The city ship slammed into the ground, and it threw us all to the floor violently. It hurt, but the damage was negligible given how many hit points we had. My mass heal spell kicked in, as did Lara’s, and we were all fine a moment later.

  Cassie said, “Oops, didn’t think of that.”

  I laughed, and then I got to work.

  I wasn’t sure how much sustained high heat it would take to crack the crystal’s lattice structure to cause it to destabilize. I didn’t want to depend on control fires, since it did a lot less damage. Fire blast caused a much higher amount of damage, and it lasted a second at that high heat. So, I built the spell to pulse a fire blast with a five hundred mana at the crystal, once every second for twenty seconds. Usually I’d set a delay of micro seconds, giving the spell time to launch out of my body before it formed. This time I added a ten-minute delay, and then simply dropped the spell on the ground in front of crystal.

  Dan nodded as he studied it, and made one of his own, just in case.

  Dan said, “Let’s exit in a random place. We can hope the entire ship is dead, even the automatons should all be down, but any guards in armor will be fine and probably out for blood.”

  Cassie said, “Maybe, we can’t be sure that my EMP reached the edges of the ship.”

  Dan ran toward a wall that never had a door, and the wall melted as we ran through into the corridor, and then reformed to stop the enemy from getting in engineering.

  As we ran to the closest corridor the door started to melt, obviously we couldn’t open the doors normally anymore, the ship was dead.

  I spied two of the quadrupeds, but not in armor, and two fire blasts left my sustained spell with a thought. They both died, and then we were in the hallway. Once again, Dan reformed the door and sealed it. One of them with a rod could probably blow it back open, but it would lock in any engineers or officers still in the section.

  Then we booked up the corridor. Once again, I was in the back, and going all out despite my body’s protests. A little pain was better than dying after all. Maybe I should work out, a little more agility and strength wouldn’t go amiss, just for these runs if nothing else.

  I hated running.

  We reached the end of the spoke corridor, and once again Dan got us through the door and resealed it. We ran for the machine shop, it was the only room we knew of that had its outer airlock door open. We were maybe halfway there, when we felt the whole ship shake. Then again, again, and again. A few moments later, it shook again, and then again.

  For a moment I had no idea what it could be, and then I started to curse furiously.

  Everyone looked at me in surprise, I wasn’t one to casually cu
rse, ever.

  “Unintended consequences, I think six of the smaller ships just launched. We’ll have to hunt them down, somehow.”

  Thirty yards long, and fifteen to twenty yards wide wasn’t that big, but it was big enough to hold several warriors and maybe quite a few mating pairs. Hopefully they had no manufacturing capability, but we still needed to find them. Unfortunately, being inside the ship, we had no idea what direction they went in. I imagined the crystals that powered them were fairly large as well, not fifty million like on this city ship, but a million or two probably.

  Enough maybe, to terrorize six kingdoms. Even a grandmaster would have trouble facing a ship like that.

  We made it to the machine shop and ran through. The automatons were all knocked out, so Cassie’s EMP had made it all the way through the ship. The only thing I could guess, was that six of the small ships had their mana shields up for some reason.

  I went to create an ice platform, but Dan beat me to it by controlling earth on one of the large sheets of hull. We all jumped on it, and it sped out the airlock as Gwen cloaked us. It was a good precaution, but none of the smaller ships were lurking outside, they’d all disappeared. There were still a bunch of ships in the cradles, maybe their shields had been down for maintenance, or for some other reason.

  I wasn’t going to complain, having six of those running around was enough of a nightmare.

  It’d been maybe three minutes since I set the spell.

  Lara asked, “Do we have enough time to kill those two guards by the cave, and then evacuate the slaves. This hull plate could hold a lot of people.”

  Damnit. My conscience pricked me. We didn’t have to worry about the big ship now, the smaller ships that had power were gone, and all the other quadrupeds were locked up on the ship not able to open the doors. Sure, they’d get out eventually, but not in time to stop us, and not in ten minutes. Seven minutes now.

  “Let’s do it.”

  Dan landed the plate, and then he broke our cloak by creating a three-foot-thick stone wall, about four feet high, and twelve feet long.