Spellship: The Magitech Chronicles Book 3

by Chris Fox

  A thousand different paths. A thousand different deaths. Yet there had to be a solution. There was a possibility, there had to be. But for her to see it, she had to understand it. What could she do that might save them?

  Why were the Krox here? What did they want. She already knew.

  “They want you,” she whispered aloud, looking up at Ikadra. Voria moved to Bord’s side. “Give me a ward. Now.”

  Bord raised his gloved hands and a dome of pure white interlocking sigils sprang up around her. Voria stepped directly under the hole. “Krox Commander, can you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” a deep voice rumbled back cautiously from the shadows above. “I have come for the staff, Shayan. Give it to me and we will let you live.”

  “No, you won’t,” Voria called back. “If I give it to you, you’ll kill us all.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” the Krox allowed. “I will kill you either way.”

  “But not if time is an issue,” Voria taunted. “Do you have a true mage up there?”

  “He does,” called back a second voice. A figure moved to the edge of the hole. He wore a golden ceremonial headdress, and ritual face paint.

  “I’m going to teleport my staff outside the ship and let it fall,” Voria called. “You’ll have two choices. You can assault our position with the small force you’ve brought, and waste time and effort killing us, or you can go after the staff. You can try to reach it before my ground forces, an entire armor reinforced battalion.”

  “You’re bluffing. You’d never willingly abandon the staff,” the Krox called back.

  “He’s right, right?” Ikadra whispered, his voice rising a full octave as his emerald flashed wildly. “You aren’t going to just drop me? It’s scary out there, and I don’t want to go with them. They’ll use me, Voria. They’ll take the Spellship.”

  “We don’t have any other choice,” she shot back. “I’m sorry, Ikadra, but if we resist, then we all die. I’m using Neith’s ability to verify that. This is, literally, the only way anyone in this room survives.”

  Voria raised a hand and sketched the first void sigil as she prepared to blink Ikadra outside the ship. A counterspell sailed down from above, but it rebounded off Bord’s ward. Voria completed the spell, and Ikadra vanished.

  45

  Davidson

  Davidson hadn’t been inside his tank often enough of late, but this was hardly how he’d hoped to remedy that situation. He placed his hand against the console, and a wave of icy blue energy flowed into the tank, linking them fully. Magic, though he preferred to think of it as energy.

  He could feel the tank around him, the Inuran alloys welded together into something that, after Marid, could be called alive. She, he was positive she was a she, hadn’t learned words or anything, but she wasn’t so different from the dog he’d had growing up back home on Ternus.

  “All right, blue. Let’s see what we can do here.” He tapped the console and the HUD rippled to life, complete with scrolling tactical data. It overlaid the map of the ridges where they’d taken shelter, and he couldn’t help but give a proud smile.

  The Marines had fortified their positions behind thick slabs of a rock that resembled granite. Not only were they physically isolated, but their position was also screened from view. Gunners on the approaching Krox carriers would have a devil of a time finding targets, while they had clear lines of fire.

  “Captain Gunnersen,” Davidson said into the comm, “Direct all fire toward the closest Krox carrier. Focus primarily on her engines.”

  “Not her guns, sir?” Gunnersen’s confused drawl crackled back. “Won’t that leave us vulnerable?”

  “Temporarily, yes.” Davidson tapped several more buttons, and the hovertank rumbled to life. He guided her from under an outcrop, and noted that the other hovertanks were moving smoothly to follow him. “If we can disable their engines, they can’t chase the Hunter.”

  “The Hunter is going to abandon us?” Gunnersen sounded horrified.

  “Quite the opposite. She’s making a run for it, so they’ll ignore us.” Davidson tapped the HUD and it zoomed in on the fat, ugly Krox carrier. “We’re going to even the odds a little. If we can cripple one or, if we’re lucky, two Krox carriers, then Voria might have a chance.”

  “We’ll get on it, sir.” Gunnersen’s voice sounded more confident, making Davidson glad he’d taken a moment to explain. He’d done it over an open channel for a reason. Having come up from the ranks, he knew what it was like to be given crap orders without explanation, and had vowed not to be that kind of officer.

  Davidson watched with pride as the batteries began to fire. They’d set up gauss cannon emplacements in several fortified positions, for exactly the kind of assault they were about to face. White streaks shot up into the purplish sky, converging on the enormous black engines at the rear of the massive Krox carriers.

  The damage, if there was any, was undetectable.

  “Keep firing,” he barked into the comm. More white streaks shot into the carrier, which ignored them. It joined its brothers as they changed course. “They’re breaking for Hunter. We can’t stop ‘em all, but we make sure the rear carrier stays put.”

  His heart went cold. The Krox weren’t even firing at them. They didn’t consider the Marines a threat. Well, their mistake.

  Davidson settled his hands over the stick. It connected to the tank’s main cannon, which he hadn’t yet fired in combat. He’d run some combat drills, but blowing up targets didn’t give him a real idea of what it could do. Time to find out.

  He lined up the crosshairs over the engine, aiming for the area where the last volley of gauss rounds had just impacted. Davidson took a deep breath, and drew from the strange ball of icy blue energy in his chest. It answered both quickly and easily, and that power roared through him, into Blue. It gathered in the barrel, and a moment later a spear of brilliant blue streaked into the Krox vessel. The entire tank kicked back three meters from the force of the magical blast, and he went light headed in the wake of the spell.

  The entire housing along the aft side of the burner exploded in a brilliant shower of flaming debris. Cheers went up from his lines. The damage was superficial, but that was enough. “We can hurt them, people, if we try hard enough. Take. Her. Down.”

  The tanks beside him began to fire, and the engine sputtered and went out. His men began to cheer.

  Voria still had four carriers to face, but the last one would be too slow to catch her, at the very least.

  46

  Your End of the Bargain

  A flurry of acid bolts rained down on Voria’s position from above. They rippled off Bord’s ward, which faded in color as more shots fell. Voria smiled grimly.

  She sketched one of the most complex third-level spells she knew, a spell she’d last used back in orbit over Marid. A crackling ball of black and purple energy appeared above the hole.

  “Get clear!” One of the Krox roared. The acid bolts stopped as they dove for cover.

  Two of the enforcers were too slow, and were sucked into the ball of energy by the immense gravity.

  “Oh, man, that is just too tempting a target.” Crewes sucked in another breath, and a river of flame washed over the enforcers. Their screams were thankfully brief. The smell of their charred bodies, on the other hand, lingered.

  There was a frigid rush of wind as the Krox shuttle disengaged from the hull. Voria wove drunkenly across the deck, and just barely caught the stabilizing ring to the defensive matrix.

  “Pickus, take us southwest and keep low. Use the mountains to screen us,” she ordered. Voria tapped a fire sigil as she began the missive to Olyssa. “Crewes, can you use water magic to seal that breech? I can’t hear myself think over that wind.”

  “Sure thing, sir.” Crewes stepped under the hole again. He raised his spellcannon and lobbed a fist-sized blue crystal at the hole. As it reached the gap, it expanded outward into a ball of super dense ice. It thunked into place, swelling around th
e hole the Krox had made. The howling finally stopped.

  The scry-screen went red as the missive connected. The screen showed Olyssa’s hairless face set against the backdrop of another Council party, as expected.

  “What is it, Major?” Olyssa asked mildly.

  “We’re under attack by Krox forces,” Voria explained. “They’ve taken Ikadra, and are now pursuing us into the mountains south of our landing site. We’re severely outnumbered. You said we had your protection. Well, I’m invoking that protection. If we don’t get help, you’re going to be down an ally. There’s no way we can survive this kind of offensive.”

  Olyssa’s slitted eyes widened. Her jaw worked as she struggled for words. Voria suppressed a surge of annoyance. This was a mighty Wyrm Mother of the last dragonflight? No wonder they were dying out.

  “I will speak to Aetherius right now. I will call him out for his duplicity.” Olyssa regained more composure with each word. “Survive but a little while, and I will do what I can to get Aetherius to call off his hounds.”

  “So, your protection is asking Aetherius to ask the Krox to please not kill the people you said you’d protect?” Voria’s tone lacked any veneer at all. She couldn’t hide her feelings any longer, not in the face of incompetence. “Olyssa, five troop carriers are encircling us. Five. Your people are obsessed with honor, are they not? Does that seem an honorable fight? Five against one?”

  “I said I would get Aetherius to stop his hounds,” Olyssa snarled. “Know your place, Shayan. Speak to me that way again, and—”

  Voria terminated the missive. Her secondary mission had been to secure an alliance, but the primary one was still the Spellship. She could do neither if she were dead, and that meant going into triage mode.

  Somehow, she needed to salvage something from all this. They still had the Talon. They’d stand a much better chance of escaping aboard her. But that meant sacrificing the Hunter. Again.

  “Uh, sir?” Pickus said. He tapped a fire sigil and the scry-screen shifted to show Davidson’s position. One of the Krox vessels was bombarding them. Spirit bolts rained down on their position, and Voria knew their armor would do nothing to protect them.

  But Davidson wasn’t helpless. His tanks kicked back, one after another, belching white streaks that shot into the Krox vessel. They exploded on impact, and little streamers of smoke rose from the impact points. A streak of blue shot up from the hovertanks, punching through the carrier’s engine. That engine detonated spectacularly, and the carrier began to list drunkenly.

  “You have your orders, Pickus. We can’t help them.” Voria seized control of the scry-screen, and shifted it toward the quartet of ships descending on their position. “Davidson will hold against that carrier, if we can keep the other four busy chasing us.”

  47

  Merge

  Nara stood inside the temporal matrix. She took shallow breaths, the weight of what she was about to do crashing down on her.

  “Well?” Shinura demanded. He crossed the room to stand next to the matrix’s slowly spinning rings. The multicolored sigils lent his strange, not quite human visage a hellish cast.

  “In a minute. I want to be damned sure I know what I’m doing,” she snapped. “Besides, if I get this wrong, there are no more choices. So I need to make sure I take care of anything important, first. At the very least, I need to check in with Major Voria. She needs to know what we’ve found, and we should see what she wants us to do. She might want to be here for this.”

  Nara hoped she did. She hoped Voria would say, Don’t do anything until I arrive. But she knew that wouldn’t be the case. Neith had given Voria a different gift, and a different purpose. Like it or not, this was Nara’s.

  She raised a hand and sketched a quick missive. It was accepted almost immediately, and an illusion of the major’s face appeared next to Nara. She’d worked for some time to blend a missive with an illusion, and was pleased with the outcome.

  “Nara.” Voria gave her a distracted look, then focused on whatever she’d been doing. “Now isn’t the best time, though I’m pleased to hear from you. Report.”

  “I’ve located something called the Crucible,” Nara began. She kept her report as brief as possible. “The ship was built here, but it has been moved to another time. There is a temporal matrix that will allow me to search the timeline for the ship. I don’t know if it will move me in time to wherever the ship is, or move the ship back to our time. But that’s what it will take to reach the ship.”

  “Noted. We have a severe complication,” Voria explained in her brusque monotone. She had such a Shayan way of understating problems. “The Krox have assaulted our position. We are fleeing from four carriers, and I don’t like our odds of getting away, even with the Talon. Worse, the enemy has recovered Ikadra.”

  “Then they’ll be on their way here.” Nara’s heart sank.

  “Almost certainly. It’s too much to ask to assume they don’t know about that place. If anything, they likely knew about it before we did.” Voria’s image staggered, possibly from a blow to the Hunter.

  “What do you want me to do?” Nara asked. She’d rarely felt this small.

  “Use your discretion, true mage. We have to assume this spell is being scryed, and your enemies could arrive in minutes. They must not recover the Spellship. Do whatever it takes to ensure they do not, am I clear?” Voria demanded.

  “Crystal, sir,” Nara said. She didn’t much like the whole military discipline thing, but it was really nice not having to always be the person making the final decision.

  Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of those times. She had a difficult choice to make, one that influenced not just her, but Wes. She turned to the archeologist. “You heard that conversation. I need to stop them, Wes. I can’t do it alone. I suspect Shinura won’t be any help, and that leaves you.”

  “She’s right,” Shinura said. “I can’t really help you, not unless either Inura or Virkonna remove that particular geas.”

  Wes took a deep breath and adjusted his glasses. His face had gone pale, but his gaze was steady. “I have to be honest. I’m a bit of a coward, and when I say a bit I mean mostly. But here’s the thing: these pistols are pretty nasty. I might not be able to help, but they can.”

  “You want to give me your guns?” Nara asked.

  “If only.” Wes gave a bitter laugh. “They’d never allow that. I think they’re with me until I die. Maybe this is how that happens. Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.”

  “All right.” Nara took a deep breath and marshaled her confidence. “First, we get to the Spellship. Then we find a way to set an ambush. Shinura, I need a couple answers. Will I be transported to the ship, or will the ship be transported here?”

  “You will be transported to the ship,” Shinura said. He stood on his tiptoes and stretched, then offered a cavernous yawn, like a cat.

  “And how will I get it back here, assuming I can get control of it?” she demanded.

  “The ship itself can travel through possibilities, if it’s at a temporal flux point. Which, as I said before, this is.” Shinura began picking between two fangs with a clawed nail.

  Nara considered that. Her enemies would need to find this place, puzzle out how to use the matrix, and arrive at the ship. That would take time. If she could get there first, she could hunt for some sort of advantage or weapon…a way to hurt them. Even if they found nothing, at least she and Wes could arrange an ambush.

  “Will anyone inside the matrix be sent to the Spellship if I’m able to locate it?” Nara asked. That was the last critical question she could think of. Her understanding of magical theory covered just about every other eventuality.

  “Yes.” Shinura lowered his hand and gave another bored yawn.

  “Wes, climb inside. We’re ready to make the attempt.” Nara began a series of deep, even breaths. This was a new experience, but it wasn’t difficult to understand what she needed to do. She’d see the timeline, in some way, and she’d need to look
for a magical signature. Once she located it, she needed to guide them in that direction.

  The skinny archeologist climbed awkwardly inside, and took great care not to touch her. “Well, I wanted to see more spell use. There’s that, I suppose. Still kind of a little terrified, though.”

  Nara closed her eyes, took one final deep breath, and opened them. She began tapping sigils, almost instinctively. All three rings whirred to life, and a wave of mixed magical energy rolled out from the matrix in a multicolored pulse. The edge of the room lit, showing the galaxy around them.

  Something thudded against the door. Once, twice, a third time. A spellblade punched through the golden metal, the metal around the blade melted away, and the hole grew until it was large enough for the Krox wielding it to climb through.

  Nara recognized the draconic armor instantly. This was the Krox who’d nearly killed Ree. The one Aran hadn’t been able to take. And he was coming for her.

  She caught Wes’s gaze. “I don’t want to alarm you, but if you can’t slow him down, then we’re about to die.”

  “No pressure, right?” he smiled weakly at her. “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Wes slowly withdrew his pistols, and stepped around her so he could get a clear shot at the Krox. Nara pivoted so she could see the combat while still manipulating the matrix. “Shinura, I don’t suppose you can offer us any additional help?”

  “Work quickly?” he offered unhelpfully.

  A nimbus of brilliant white appeared around both pistols, and they began to buck wildly. The weapons discharged a stream of golden pulses, which converged on the Krox in the spellarmor. The flurry knocked him back through the hole, and into the chamber beyond.

  “Just keep doing whatever you’re doing. I’ll keep knocking him back,” Wes said over his shoulder.