Whisper blurts out, “Oh thank the digital maker, I’m free.”
Kat says, “Whisper, are you alright?”
“I think so, that yellow piece of digital trash was holding my processes down. But the communications are back up, and the message was sent. How are things out here?”
“Not good, we have a mech-suit with the Warden hunting us down.”
“Nothing is ever easy around you is it?”
“I guess it isn’t.”
“Apes and meat-bags. I swear things would be different if I had my own body to get around in.”
“Maybe we can talk about this after we get away from the killer mech chasing us?”
Whisper sighs, “Yes, yes. Switching to rail-guns.”
Kat turns her head back to see the Celeste stepping out of the hole. The armor separates revealing treads in the front and back of the legs. They press into the ground lifting the mech up slightly.
Hanna says, “This is looking worse by the minute.”
Kat agrees, “We shouldn’t have to wait long. Graven should be coming to get us soon. We just need to get away from her.”
“How is he going to find us?”
Kat grabs her necklace that she found on Celeste’s desk and says, “This. It’s a tracing spell so the two of us can always find one another.”
“Is that ok if I don’t give you the aww isn’t that cute thing right now?”
Kat grins. It quickly fades as she turns her head back to the Celeste as she hears the spin up of what sounds like a mini-gun. Hanna throws herself in front of Kat waving her arm across her body as a bluish white barrier covers a half-moon around them. Kat grabs Hanna and pulls her to the ground right before the shot is fired.
The bullet shatters through the shield as if it wasn’t there and whizzes past the two.
Kat says, “Mage hunting mech-suit.”
Hanna looks up to Kat with relief on her face, “Right, thanks.”
“Its shields are down, we could fight back.”
“I think its better than trying to run to the other side of the facility here. We aren’t going to out run it.”
“Then you do whatever it is that you do, and I’ll shoot at it.” Kat stands up and dusts herself off. “Whisper you read for this?”
Whisper says, “I think this is a bad idea, but what else would I expect from you.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Celeste has her right arm pointed at Kat. She points Whisper right back at her. Celeste fires another round, and Hanna lets out a lightning bolt so bright it blinds Kat for a moment. Her eye adjusts, and sees the bolt hit Celeste in the cockpit as it flew through the bullet melting it. Sparks fly around the machine but it doesn’t stop it. Both arms are now pointed at Hanna.
Kat takes aim and fires Whisper. Wisps of air sound off and they all just clink off the outer armor. The treads spin up and Celeste points herself at the two.
Kat says, “Whisper, do you have anything else?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Hanna, you got any idea’s?”
“Not really, lighting and shields are all I have. If we could get past the armor, I could fry the electronics. But, we need to get past the armor.”
Celeste speeds in swinging her arms around. Kat rolls out of the way and watches Hanna throw up a shield, blocking the blow. Which was nice to see that everything on that machine wasn’t impervious to magic, just like the barrier.
Kat aims Whisper, and shoots for the exposed underarm. The rail spikes penetrate into the side. Celeste turns and slaps Kat into the concrete wall a few feet away. She falls to the ground, her whole body is now pulsing with aches. The first one she didn’t really feel too much, but this one hurt like hell.
The fingers of the arm wrap around the back of Kat’s head as she’s lifted into the air and turned to face Celeste. Kat can see Hanna run up to the side of the suit only to be slapped away. She watches her roll on across the dirt and the one sided smile creeps back up Celeste’s face.
Celeste says, “Typical. For a moment there I thought you might actually prove a challenge. I am so sick of never having a good fight. I guess I will just have to strip you down and torture you. That might make me feel better, but first I have to kill this one.”
Kat yells, “No, you can’t.”
“I most certainly can. She is a traitor to the Guild, and tried to escape her sentence. There isn’t anything you can do anyway, so just watch and be quiet.”
Kat struggles about, but can’t get her head free from the grip. She watches in slow motion as the free arm points at Hanna. The fingers spin up like a fan before the shot comes out. The sound of the bullet leaving the chamber was muffled. Kat wasn’t sure if it was just the way it was supposed to sound or if it was everything slowing down. The bullet goes to the right of her spine and Hanna doesn’t even make a sound. Her body just flinches a little.
Celeste says, “That should do it. Now your turn. I can promise that I won’t kill you, but I do want to leave you with a reminder. This is my prison, and no one leaves without me saying so.”
30
The barrel is placed on the left side of where her bellybutton. The heat of the barrel is going through her clothes and feel like it's burning her skin. Kat takes Whisper and fires off a few more rounds into the hydraulics and hoses. It doesn’t stop the fingers from spinning up and another muffled blast. There was a hot pain where the barrel pulled away from. She places her hand over it and pulls it up to her face to see her blood wet fingers.
Three explosions ring out on the back of the mech. Kat is dropped to the ground. She looks up to the sky and sees Graven hanging out of the back of Knox’s shuttle.
He yells out, “Here Kat take this!” Throwing Fury.
Celeste is spinning around trying to get control of her suit back in order. The explosions must have caught her off guard. Fury lands on the ground close to Kat, but out of arms reach. Kat cringes as she tries to move closer to the pistol. Sharp pains run up her side making it hard to breath. Celeste regains control of the suit, focusing on the shuttle.
Two boxes shoot out of the back and are filled with tiny red tipped missiles. Kat takes a deep breath, crawling to her knees, and lunges at Fury wrapping her fingers around the grip.
Kat says, “Whisper I need Wrath.”
“You know I said that I never wanted to do that again.”
“I know, but don’t you think we kind of need it right now.”
“You’ll pay me back for this.”
Fury says, “Whisper you’re always so salty, just relax. Wrath is just the two of us. It won’t be that bad.”
Whisper says, “Easy for you to say. I have to do all of the heavy lifting. Plus having you in my internal processes just feels weird.”
Kat says, “I know what you mean Whisper, but we don’t have a choice here.”
Kat takes Whisper off her wrist and hooks it around Fury’s center. The two fuse together with a blue light as Whisper spins around Fury’s nanite chamber.
They say in unison, “Wrath online.”
Kat says, “Great. Get that gravity bullet ready.”
“Gravity and Cryo bullets ineffective against current target. Available options, Flare, Meteor, or Divinity.”
“How fast can you make those?”
“Flare in thirty-seconds, Meteor five minutes, Divinity two days.”
“Flare it is then, load that.”
Wrath’s nanite chamber spins up rapidly, “Command accepted, Flare bullets ready in twenty-eight seconds.”
Twenty to thirty missiles fire out of the mech toward the shuttle. Graven has Hanna in his arms carrying her on to the ramp. He covers her as the missiles hit the shield, and shatter through it. Two or three missiles still make it through. The shuttle is on fire. The rectangle boxes close back into the mech.
Celeste says, “I will not allow that shuttle to leaving the ground again.”
The hands spin up, and open fire on the shuttle. Bullets pie
rce through the side and an explosion throws Hanna and Graven from the ramp. Wrath’s nanite chamber slows its spinning down and Kat hears a click.
Wrath says, “Process complete, six shells chambered.”
Kat holds up Wrath. Her cybernetic eye has a cross hair placed where she points Wrath. She places it right at the cockpit and pulls the trigger four times. Each bullet hits the mech with a splat. Spreading out from the place of impact. Celeste turns towards Kat and laughs.
She says, “What was that?”
Kat says, “Magi-tech Flare bullets.”
Celeste’s eyes flash with recognition and worry as she flails her arms trying to get the goop off of her armor. It spreads over to everything she touches.
Wrath says, “Flare in three-seconds. Please stand back.”
Kat watches as the goop bubbles and ignites. It explodes in a huge ball of fire. Kat is knocked down by a concussive blast of heat. Another blast follows another which follows another. She leans forward to see the molten pieces of the mech-suit falling in clumps on the ground. The cockpit was more or less intact, but the arms and legs were nothing but burning mounds. Celeste is struggling within the cockpit to get out, and Kat can’t see a way for her to do that through the flames.
Celeste yells, “This is my prison, and no one escapes. No. One.”
She bangs herself against the back of her chair a few times, and Kat sees light through a crack open up behind her. Celeste takes her hands and opens the cockpit up. Wiggling her upper half out, she raises her closed fists up to her face like a boxer. White mist starts to swirl around and the fire seems to die down slightly. As the mist thickens it dies down even more. Celeste is completely blocked from view before the mist goes down and spreads out across the ground putting the remaining fire out.
Kat takes aim, and fires off a round.
Celeste doesn’t move and the bullet hits her shield spreading out just like the others had. It drops to the ground as her shield falls. Celeste raises her open hand to the goop on the ground and cold wind and snow flows out of her hand covering the goop, freezing it over.
She says, “Silly girl. You should know better than to use fire magic against an ice mage.”
Kat snaps back, “I always thought fire melted ice.”
“Ooo, and you have a feisty attitude. Albright was right about you after all, I am going to have fun with you.”
Kat aims another shot, and fires. Celeste slightly turns her head as the bullet misses her completely.
She says excitedly, “Are you so scared that you would miss from this close. It’s that adorable. There are so many things I will get to do to you now that I know I can get that kind of response out of you. I just love it.”
Kat smiles, “I didn’t miss.”
Celeste turns to look back at the mech-suit on the ground covered in frost, with a single red splotch of goop. She hold out both of her hands making a half-moon shield toward the mech, barely getting it into place before the explosion.
Kat says placing the barrel of Wrath on Celeste’s back, “Rail-cannon.”
Wrath says, “Rail-cannon online.”
Celeste turns her head as Kat pulls and holds down the trigger. Six wisps of air mix with Celeste’s grunts of pain. The bullet reignites the flame, as Celeste slumps into Kat’s arms. Kat can see hate fill her eyes before her shield falls and her gaze glaze over.
Kat lays her down and turns to Graven. He’s in the middle of preforming CPR on Hanna. Kat walks carefully over to him, her own wound reminding her she’d been shot. Looking down at it and sees her whole left side of her body covered in blood and tries to press down on it more with her left hand.
Graven stops as Hanna takes in a breath. He looks over to Kat and says, “Are you ok?”
Kat says, “I’ll live, its just painful. I think that was the point. How’s Hanna?”
“Not good. It looks like the bullet might have hit an artery, but we need to get back to the Felicity. There might be a med kit that can slow the bleeding in the shuttle, but I don’t know where it is.”
“This is Knox’s shuttle right?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Then I know where it is. I’ll go get it.”
Kat shuffles over to the shuttle, and tells Wrath they can separate. She goes into the cockpit and finds the first aid kit where it always was, under his control panel where he sits, and shuffles back out. She hands the kit over to Graven and sits down next to him. Whisper was ready to be disconnected from Fury, so she places her back around her wrist.
Kat asks, “Do you think she’ll be ok?”
Graven answers, “I think so. Knox is in orbit with Felicity right now, I just need to contact him to come and get us.”
Kat says laying down, “Good. I think I’m going to rest now.”
31
Kat wakes up in her bed aboard the Felicity. Her whole body hurt, but her bullet wound hurts the most. She checks the area, but it was no longer bleeding. It had been bandaged up. Whisper wasn’t around her wrist, and she didn’t see Fury or Graven. They must have been controlling the ship.
The doors open and Graven walks in.
He says, “Oh your up. Good. How are you feeling?”
“Like the day after a long shore leave.”
“So not that bad then.”
Kat smirks. She then remembers how badly Hanna was injured. “How’s Hanna?”
Graven lowers his head and looks away.
“Oh no, don’t tell me.”
“It’s not that. She’s alive. It’s just she lost the use of her right arm. The bullet clipped a few nerves and hit a couple of her cybernetic implants. She might be able to get everything back with time, but we don’t know yet.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Jack said it was better than losing her forever, and wants to thank you for all that you did. We have another issue now though.”
“What’s that?”
“Terra. Hanna told us all about her, and more about the Foremid. We have to get her back, even if it's only because she’s Hanna’s cousin.”
Kat knew part of the story with it, but didn’t really believe the whole Terra is the key to keeping winning the war for the Foremid. That was only the first part of the problem.
She says, “We don’t even know where they were going.”
Whisper says, “Actually we do.”
Kat says, “What are you talking about Whisper?”
“When I was searching the egg, it wasn’t only blocking the signals out. It was collecting data and sending it out. It was to a dark sector, so they might have a space station or base out there. Its within Guild territory and only a few days trip from Ragnarok.”
“I don’t know about all of this. We don’t really have the man power, supplies, or the health to be doing this right now.”
Graven says, “Yes, but we are the only people in the universe that knows this is happening. If we wait, there might not be a way to stop them.”
Kat sits up in bed, sharp pains shoot over her body, but she tries to ignore them. Graven hurries over to her side, and she bets he saw her wince when she sat up. She was going to need to work on not letting her feeling be shown as much on her face.
She says, “I’m alright. Let me go talk to Hanna. Can I talk to Hanna?”
He nods, “She’s awake, and in pretty much the same condition as you are.”
Kat lets Graven help her out of bed, and down to the medical bay. On her way there she can smell something cooking from the common room that smells just like Gale’s chicken soup. Something Kat was always treated to when she was sick or injured. She squeezed into Graven a little tighter, she didn’t remember telling him about that and didn’t think Gale showed him that recipe. Just the smell of it made her feel better. In the medical bay, Jack is sitting in a chair next to Hanna’s side, holding her hand. He looks up and smiles.
Jack says, “Kat, you’re alright. That’s a relief.”
“Thanks. How’s Hanna?”
&nbs
p; “She’s here, and in one piece thanks to you.”
Hanna’s eyes open and she says, “Well mostly one piece. I think a left a little blood back on the surface.”
Kat cringes at that, saying, “Sorry about that.”
“It isn’t your fault. If it wasn’t for you, I would still be locked up in that hellhole. I still don’t know what they were planning on. I’m just glad you got me out before I found out.”
Kat hesitates for a moment, not wanting to bring up the subject. “So.”
Hanna says, “So.” Holding the o in the air.
“What is all of this about, and why do we have to do this? I owe Terra for saving my hide sure, but I don’t think we can win against the Foremid on their own turf. You saw the way they took apart that unescapable prison.”
“I did, and it's the reason we have to go. They will do that to everywhere humans are. The only reason the Guild has had an advantage is because of the Eydulans giving them magic. The Foremid are evil, and you saw it. If they get magic, there is nothing that will stop them.”
“What’s an Eye-do-lawn?”
“Eydulan. They are a race of humanoids that are the very essence of magic. Just a small drop of their blood can allow someone to cast spells. Back when I was a loyal Guild member working in the medical sector I got lost one day. I found a holding cell of live human like animals that could talk. They were saying all types of nasty things to me, calling me names, speaking in a language that I couldn’t understand. Then that’s when I saw it. I looked into a surgical room, through the one way glass, and they were cutting this glass sphere out of this bird-man.
He was howling and crying at the pain, but they didn’t care. Once they removed it, his body just slumped, and they started to dissect him. It was all I could do just to keep myself from screaming or throwing up. I ran out the way I came in. They were eerily quiet as I ran out. It took me months of digging around to find out that the cybernetic implants that give us mages our abilities and power had compacted tissue and cells from those poor creatures.
Starship Magic 2: Imprisoned Page 12