by Chris Fox
“How close to the center? Am I being paranoid? It can’t be a coincidence that they targeted our location.” I loved how understated he could be about things. “I don’t need an answer. I know that isn’t important right now. We need to focus on getting back to the Remora. I’ve seen wights in action. I can’t imagine that many, especially with there being no defenses on the surface.”
Miri began shouldering her way through the crowd toward the minister, while the rest of the people stampeded the opposite direction through the doors and towards the lift.
I followed and took advantage of the wake she’d created. People definitely got out of her way, though I still had no idea if that was her rank, or more likely, her reputation.
I came up short next to the minister, and noted that the hawk-eyed judge and prosecutor had both moved to join her. The three were conferring in low tones, and I caught the tail end of their conversation as I approached.
“…All going to die,” Sarkor growled, then stalked toward the lift. I don’t think I even registered in his vision as I walked past him, toward the minister. “I’m taking my people and getting out of here.”
“Running for that lift is suicide,” the minister snapped. She nodded at me as I joined her, but didn’t stop her speech. “We need to get back to the surface. I have a ship waiting. You’re welcome to accompany us, Sarkor. Even if you are an asshole.”
The sub-assistant halted at that. “I’ll be going my own way, once we reach the lift. I need to get down to the reactor. There’s an express lift from there that will get me to my ship. The rest of you lot can die for all I care. Most of you already have.”
I stepped between the Inuran and the minister. We didn’t have time for this.
“Are you ready to be escorted to my ship?” I asked. I didn’t really care about the rest of it. Vee and Seket stood behind me, and I was responsible for their safety and the minister’s.
“My aides are screaming that the surface is crawling with spirits, and that they’ve had to lift off. We have nothing on the surface that isn’t being overrun.” She shivered at that, and dropped eye contact. “I can’t abide spirits. They’re unnatural.”
Vee cleared her throat, and took a step closer to join the conversation. “On that we can most definitely agree. They’re unnatural. The maker’s scriptures are quite clear, and I’ve seen what such spirits can do. We need to go. Now.”
“I’m not sure I agree,” I said, thinking aloud. That earned me some fun looks from everyone, especially Sarkor. “Hear me out. We do need to reach the surface, but coming out anywhere near the lift we came in on is asking to get overwhelmed by wights, or maybe worse. Is there another way up? Something far from an occupied area? If we can find a shaft up to the surface then the Remora can come pick us up.”
“You can’t be serious.” Seket delivered a scandalized frown. “Rava isn’t trained. If she crashes that ship we’re all dead. Be smart, Captain. It’s a walk, to be sure, but let’s get there on foot. I’d suggest telling them to stay put and prepare for spirits. If you have salt…use it.”
“We have a forge,” I pointed out. I thumbed the comm. “Briff are you reading me?”
“Yeah, Jer,” the dragon’s frightened voice came back over the com. “Kurz says we’ll be okay if we stay in the mess. Or on the bridge. He put down these lines of salt. Will that really work?”
“It’ll work.” I closed my eyes for a moment. “Buddy, you’re going to have to take charge, and you might need to help Rava fly the ship. We’re going to work our way back to you, but if you are getting overwhelmed, then you’re going to have to convince Rava to take off. Or you’re going to have to do it. Those are her options.”
I knew that would give my sister the courage. There was no way she’d let Briff try to pilot anything. But it didn’t mean she’d be competent at it.
Seket ground his teeth audibly, but at least the paladin didn’t question the order, though I knew he strongly disagreed with it.
“Minister, I—”
“I’m going with you.” Judge Aruni took a step closer and loomed over me like a parent scolding a toddler. Damn, they made these people tall. “You are Captain Jerek, yes?”
“Uh.” I licked my lips and was glad he couldn’t see my face through the mask. “I find it kind of alarming that you know who I am.”
“Your name is mentioned frequently in the case files I perused.” Aruni folded his arms and nodded at the slowly shrinking crowd forcing itself through the doors and into the already overpacked corridors. “Once that lot has thinned out I’d like an escort to the surface. I can pay.”
I blinked at that. This wasn’t about money. It was about survival. I wasn’t stupid though. “What are you offering?”
“I want to look you in the eye if we’re to make a deal,” Aruni waved a hand, and my HUD went dark, then the helmet slithered off my face. “I am offering justice. I will rule in your favor. The debt will be forgiven.”
Miri choked and by the time I glanced in her direction her mouth had begun working like some poor sucker that had just been spaced. “They’ll…you’ll be ruined. Your career is over.”
“This moon is over,” Aruni countered with a raised eyebrow, thrust like a spellblade. “I understand what’s coming. Every citizen unable to defend themselves will rise as a wight. Or worse. When they turn they will turn others. The spread is…well, you’ve seen nothing in the life of your world that will prepare you for what is about to happen. I wish to live. Get me to the surface, Captain. I am not blind. I see the paladin and the lurker girl in her moth-eaten uniform. You have the tools to get me to the surface. I have the tools to save your people officially.”
“Done.” I didn’t even need to think about it. I turned to the minister. “I haven’t tried to reach Mom yet. I don’t know how these hostiles are going to deal with the Word, but we have to assume they’ll have an aggressive plan. If you deal with that situation, then I’ll get us back to the ship.”
“I don’t like it. I don’t like any of it,” she groused, but she was already nodding. “Get us to the surface, and to your ship, or another one that will get us away from this cursed place.” She spared a glance for Aruni. “I don’t trust him to follow through on his promise, but I suppose there’s no harm in keeping him alive. Maybe he’ll soak up a spell, or slow down a wight long enough for someone who matters to get away.”
Aruni began to laugh, the kind of joyous laugh of someone pleasantly delighted to have learned something. “You are a true joy, Minister. I will follow through. I will follow through and more, I assure you.”
“Seket?” I asked into the squad comm.
“Yes, Captain?” His tone transmitted every grievance, though his helmet was on and I didn’t have to endure the smugness directly.
“Find us a route to a stairwell,” I ordered.
Vee’s voice whispered onto the comm. “Won’t the stairwell be packed with people fleeing when they realize the lifts are full?”
“Yes, but we won’t be going up.” I closed my eyes and thought back to the lift. “There’s a reactor down there. A reactor is big, and probably doesn’t require a large staff. We skirt the reactor and move laterally until we’re directly under the Remora, or as close as we can be, and then we look for lift.”
“It’s workable,” Seket allowed. He began clanking his way to the back of the line. A deep, booming voice issued from his armor. “Step aside! Now! Judge Aruni is passing through.”
The crowd somehow melted before us, enough that we were able to force a path. I held on tightly to the minister, and was conscious of Vee behind me. She looked innocent enough with that ponytail, but I’d been shot by her and knew how quick she was on the draw.
The crowd thinned as we bypassed the lifts and made for a pair of doors marked with an icon of a stairwell.
Frantic screams came from within.
5
I didn’t think. I acted. Sometimes that is a really bad idea. Sometimes, though, acting
can save someone’s life.
I blinked through the door and into pandemonium. A few stray beams from headlamps were the only illumination, save for a ghostly glow that flowed down the stairwell above us in an inevitable tide of hungry death.
“Downstairs as fast as you can. Go, go!” I yelled, even as I realized who I was yelling at. A team of pristine Inuran mages in scout spellarmor had been about to try the door to our level. I counted six, but in the darkness it was hard to be certain. “Get to a fortified position down there. If you have life mages or salt, set up a barrier. We’re going to be dealing with a whole lot of wights.”
“Yes, sir,” a feminine voice issued from the armor closest to me as she snapped a fist over her heart. “We’ll fortify the next level. Who are you escorting?”
Of course she assumed I was someone’s bodyguard. I planted my foot against the door and channeled an infuse strength spell, then kicked as hard as I could. Nothing.
Then I remembered. I had miracles from Xal’Nara. I rested a hand against the door’s magi-scanner and whispered, “Weaken.”
Rust rippled outward from where I’d touched, and the entire panel flaked away. I kicked the door again, and it flung inward in a shower of rust as the last of it dissolved.
“Down. Quickly!”
I guided Judge Aruni through, and as I did so the buzzing in the back of my head rose to an urgent pitch. There was something about him. Something my gift from the Flame of Knowledge should allow me to see. Then the buzzing faded, and Aruni was past me.
I helped the minister through next, then Sarkor’s still sneering face afterwards. When Seket entered I nodded at the stairwell. “Hey, can you get your aura up? We need to keep them at bay long enough to fortify a defensive position, or this is going to end badly.”
“Yes, Captain.” Seket stepped forward, and his entire armor flared a brilliant white-gold. He extended a hand and his void pocket opened, a vertical slash in reality I wished I could crawl into. Out came his spellblade, which also flared in brilliant challenge.
The tide of wights finally rounded the last bend onto the stairwell above our level, and their layered shrieks grew into a frustrated frenzy when they realized they could come no closer.
“Nice work.” I capped Seket on the back, then turned to Vee, who’d been lurking in the doorway. “Get down there and back the Inurans up. Be ready to use your aura, but only if we have to. I want to save that until later, if we can. You can only do that once a day, right?”
“Yeah.” She bit her lip. Then shook her head. “I’ll try hard not to have to use it. They might have salt down there, or a forge so I can make more.”
Then she was trotting down the steps, her ponytail bobbing behind her. She had her helmet cupped around her free hand opposite the bracelet, and I realized she was using it as an improvised shield. Smart. Her armor wouldn’t stop spirits, so no sense having it on for wights.
A stream of people from the courtroom flowed down the stairs after her. I recognized a drifter I’d seen, and a hatchling with a black patch of scales over half his face, and an elderly human couple who looked like they’d been waiting in that courtroom for days.
“Okay, that’s it,” I finally called. “I’m making for the fallback point. Retreat slowly once the rest of the people are through, or if you see anything nasty approaching.”
The paladin nodded, so I turned and sprinted down the steps like an army of wights was chasing me. It wasn’t hard to imagine, for some reason. Their inhuman cries had thickened, and if not for my armor it would have driven me to the ground in pain.
I wound down a flight of stairs, then another, and then a third. On the fourth revolution the stairwell was much longer, and descended into a far larger chamber. A tram tube stretched along the far side, and I could hear one rumbling closer.
Perhaps three dozen passengers paced on the landing platform, eager to reach safety, real or imagined.
A sleek white tram burst into view, each car shaped like part of a dragon so that it resembled one in flight as it prowled through the transparent tubes stretching off in a variety of directions, many deeper into the planet.
An unearthly glow came from inside the tram, and as it slid to a halt the would-be passengers suddenly decided they had elsewhere to be as they began sprinting in the opposite direction. Wights flowed through walls and windows and doors, all swarming toward the doomed passengers.
I looked away, and forced myself to scan the rest of the situation and find us a way out. There had to be something.
The Inuran soldiers had set up a defensive position in a gift shop with a single door and a single window. That made it a death trap in my book. Clearly they’d never played the tram level of Arena.
Beyond them I spotted a few equally doomed shops, but no better shelter than what they had. That didn’t make it a good place to hole up. In fact, holing up would almost certainly get them killed.
I trotted over to the far side of the gift shop, and ignored the Inuran mages staring in my direction. Even the ones who hadn’t removed their helmets were looking my way, instead of at the stairs where the army of wights would emerge. Not exactly the crack troops I’d fought on Jolene’s cruiser.
“There!” I yelled, though I’m sure nobody else had any idea what I was talking out.
I’d spotted a maintenance hatch. Maintenance hatches ran parallel to trams, or at least they had on Kemet. Almost no one ever went down there, which had made ours the perfect place for outcast kids to play without being harassed.
I turned back to the Inurans and adopted my most authoritative voice. “There’s a maintenance hatch down there, and we need to keep moving. There will be almost no one in that tunnel, and right now being away from crowds is the smartest thing we can do.”
An Inuran in a helmet shook her head, then rested the barrel of her spellcannon on her shoulder. “We’re not abandoning a tactically fortified position. There are already salt lines down, and we have room for six more people. Everyone else…you’re on your own.”
Angry mutters grew in the surviving refugees, about twenty in total. I noticed that Aruni merely observed everything with a detached calm. He made no move to influence the situation either way, despite having enough authority to run things. He’d demonstrated that in the courtroom.
Only then did I realize I’d lost track of the minister. I scanned the crowd but there was no sign of her. Vee was tending to an older woman clutching her side, and didn’t seem like she’d know where to find my missing charge.
I spun to rush back up the stairs, but Minister Ramachan was standing right behind me.
“You are a terrible bodyguard.” The minister folded her arms. “You said we need to make for the tunnel, and you’re talking sense. Get down there and scout the tunnel to make sure it’s not infested. I’ll wait here with Vee until your man Seket falls back. In the meantime I’ll see if I can diffuse matters here.”
I nodded, grateful for the sudden distraction. I hated making command decisions. Especially ones that endangered the lives of people I didn’t even know, much less know their combat capabilities. A small part of me empathized with the minister. She’d shouldered this for billions, and now did so for a hundred thousand ragged souls.
I couldn’t do it for twenty.
The armor hummed as I drifted into the air, then zipped toward the hatch I’d seen. None of the wights had made it to this side of the station, and none seemed to notice when I drew my pistol and void bolted the locking mechanism. There was no time for anything else, and I wasn’t really worried about locking it behind us since most spirits can walk through walls.
Tension wrecked me as I slowly pried the door open and peered inside. I nearly lost my breakfast when a wan glow met me, but released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding when I saw it was soft magical lighting, and not the horrible spirit glow.
The tunnel was clear.
I turned back in time to see dozens of wights flowing down the stairs as Seket sprinted
just ahead of them. There was no sign of his aura, and I doubt he’d cancelled it on his own.
Something stronger must be controlling those wights.
Interlude II
Irala appeared on the Word of Xal’s bridge in an exhalation of air that popped both her ears. She should have been wearing her helmet.
The bridge stood empty, with the single spell matrix alone and unwatched. That would be one of many changes she’d have to implement, and soon. Security mattered. Not that the lack of it was his fault.
Jerek had surprised her in the most pleasant way that a son could.
He’d found his passion, as syrupy as that sounded. Her boy had settled into being a leader, though an inexperienced one to be sure. He understood magic, and how to surround himself with good people.
Once upon a time she and Dag had talked about how maybe he’d be the perfect mix of them both, and she proudly admitted he was. He would eclipse them both one day.
If she gave him enough time for that to happen.
“Guardian, get me an image of the Inura’s Grace on screen at full magnification.” She began pacing as the screen flowed into the desired image.
A long sleek vessel like a carpenter’s wedge glittered in the black, and even from this distance she could sense the wrongness. “Guardian, what can you tell me about that ship as it stands right now?”
“Congratulations on your promotion, Captain.” Kemet appeared and his staff struck the ground once, and sent up a flurry of illusory sparks. “The vessel we are dealing with shouldn’t be a warship. She might have been the Inura’s Grace once, but no more. Inura designed her as a university where magitech could be experimented with, and ultimately mastered. This vessel glows with illegal necrotech. Someone has retrofitted her with a far more dangerous type of magic.”
“What about the trade moon?” Irala tried, but her voice was a small, pitiful thing. “Did anyone survive on the surface? Is there a chance they’re alive?”