“Now, let me show you where you must direct your teleport,” Matthias said as he reached into my mind, and I got the same feeling I’d experienced with Polgar and the diviner in the Wayfarer commune. Then I saw a mental image of a passageway with six artillerymen squatting in front of a doorway while they played cards on the floor. I figured Matthias had gained control of the surveillance system, and he was now sharing the image with me.
“The storage room lies behind that doorway. Now, do you know the trigger which activates the nanorunes in your bloodstream?” Matthias asked me.
I didn’t know what nanorunes were, but I did know how to teleport, so I gave the machina a nod. I only needed to contemplate the horrors that would follow cannons firing from this warship and eliminating the Stalwart. I wasn’t overjoyed with contemplating the possible future again, but I’d do it if it meant getting back to the Stalwart in time to stop my friends from dying.
“I have set up a camera loop inside the passageway, so you won’t be seen. I shall disable the artillerymen’s communication devices and seal the doors so they cannot escape. The next cycle of guards is not scheduled for another hour, so we need not worry about hiding the dead bodies you leave behind.”
“There won’t be any dead bodies,” I corrected.
Matthias tilted his head at me, and I could see his brain pulse as he considered what I’d said. “Very well. The virtual crawlers will find my handiwork on the ship’s network soon, so we do not have much time.” Matthias paused and then tilted his head. The cables inside his transparent skull pulsed as if new information was travelling along his brain’s electronic neural circuitry. “Ah, it seems the grand knights have retrieved the rest of the armor from the Stalwart and delivered it the storage room on this vessel.”
“Then the fleet will be leaving soon,” I whispered with a sense of dread, knowing that as soon as Polgar’s ship was the last one remaining, the Stalwart was doomed.
Matthias nodded. “You should make haste. We have only a few minutes.”
I swallowed and concentrated on the passageway the machina had inserted into my memory while also focusing on the impending gruesome fate of my friends. I experienced the sensation of being torn apart and put together, and then I was in the passageway.
The six soldiers were squatting with their backs to me, and I was hidden behind a curving bulkhead. They were better equipped than the Stalwart’s artillerymen, with carapace armor painted in royal blue. All of them wielded sword and shield combos as well as bayonets. They wouldn’t be easy to fight, especially when I didn’t want to deal them any lethal blows.
As the artillerymen continued playing cards, unaware of my presence, I studied the door to the storage room. The door was completely open, and I guessed Polgar never considered someone might attempt to rob him. It also explained why artillerymen were guarding the door and not knights. Unfortunately, there was no way I could sneak past them without being noticed.
I knew time was running out, but I needed a way past without killing these men. My heartbeat pounded in my ears as I considered a teleport into the room. I wasn’t sure how many more times I’d be able to use my mutation. For all I knew, its use was limited, and I’d get stranded in there with the king’s armor and no way to get back to Matthias.
“Attention, crew,” a female voice blared from the intercom. “Weapon teams are to rendezvous in the assault deck immediately.”
A sickly feeling boiled in my stomach. They were getting ready to fire on the Stalwart. I couldn’t deal with these soldiers non-lethally with such little time.
Every second mattered.
They needed to die.
Or my friends and I would die.
I prayed Queen Catrina would forgive me as I dropped my left hand to my prot-belt and typed the speed sequence.
I spun away from the bulkhead and swung my longsword in the direction of the first two artillerymen. They didn’t even see the forcewave coming, and the powerful attack sent their playing cards flying as it crumpled their carapace armor. Their bones snapped as they slammed against a bulkhead. Unfortunately, the angle of my attack didn’t cause them to hit the other artillerymen, and they reached for their swords and shields.
A readout blinked on my visor.
Prot-field: 29%
I’d used an enormous amount of my prot-field in that attack, but it didn’t matter because I was already sprinting toward the other enemies. I was too close to throw another forcewave, but my legs surged toward an artilleryman as he screamed for assistance over his comms.
“Containment deck to security!” He paused and tapped his helmet, and I guessed the channel was dead.
A sweeping cut with my longsword spilled the man’s guts onto the floor and painted the bulkhead in a crimson arc. Blood dribbled from his mouth, and he gave me a surprised look in death, as though he wondered where the hell I’d come from.
Another soldier stormed me, cutting down with the sword in his right hand. I angled my longsword to counter the blade, but my timing was wrong, and the keen edges of my opponent’s sword sliced through my left rerebrace and pierced my bicep. The circuits inside my armor sparked, and my visor said I’d suffered a glancing cut.
I didn’t feel any pain from the injury, so I swept my longsword at the soldier. The blade took the man’s head from his shoulders, and blood spurted from the mangled stump of his neck. The soldier’s head hit the floor with a wet splat sound, and the other artillerymen seemed to pause for a moment.
They might have been taken aback by my savagery, but all I cared about was getting inside the storage room so I could save my friends. The soldiers were standing in the way, so I would kill them.
Another man came at me even as his comrade’s blood dripped from my sword. I bounced back, narrowly missing an attack from the fifth artilleryman with sufficient power to cut through my helmet.
He grabbed my right forearm so I couldn’t bring my sword to attack him, but I slammed my head onto his helmet, and the man’s visor cracked. The broken remnants of reinforced glass plunged into his eyes, and he released my arm. I swept my sword in an upward slice, and cut through armor before opening his torso with another spray of innards, blood, and screams.
The final soldier sprinted away from me in an attempt to escape down the passageway. The hatch suddenly closed, and the man slammed into the metal door. I guessed Matthias had performed that trick, and I whispered a quick thank you to him. The artilleryman gathered his resolve and turned to face me. His grim expression suggested he was ready to die as a man in a fair fight.
But what came next was anything but fair.
As he charged toward me, my longsword burst with azure rays of arcane energy. I spun it around to meet his charge, and the air surrounding my weapon crackled, humming a sweet song of death.
As the soldier closed in, he raised his sword to shoulder height. I dropped to one knee, lunged forward, and cut across. My opponent mustn’t have thought I’d try and hack his knees because he didn’t bring his shield down far enough to block my attack. My blade carved through the armored joints where the artilleryman’s greaves met his poleyns. The blade struck the man’s knee, and he screamed in pain, dropping his shield.
I buried my sword into the soldier’s chest, and blood oozed onto my gauntlets, painting the metal red. As I slid my longsword free from flesh, I whispered a prayer to my Queen, hoping she wouldn’t hold my actions against me.
I felt a tear trail down my cheek. One day I’d make amends for this, but today wasn’t that day. I needed to save my friends aboard the Stalwart, and I wasn’t going to let anyone stop me. Not even an RTF soldier.
I entered the storage room and found the chest with all the armor inside. I now felt the wound the artilleryman had given me, and the cut screamed with pain as I lifted the metal box. I almost dropped it, but I gritted my teeth and forced it up to my waist with a push on my right knee. With the chest steady in my grip, I meditated on the impending sufferings of my friends and called to min
d the passageway outside the cells.
The negative emotion made me nearly cry out, but I held back as my atoms dissolved before uniting again in front of Matthias and a glowing arcane portal.
“Where is the chest?” he asked me.
I glanced down at my empty hands. A moment later, the chest materialized and crashed to the ground. Somehow, when I’d teleported, the chest and I had separated.
“You will need to work on that,” Matthias said with a frown.
I reached down to pick it up again, but my right arm could barely take the chest’s weight, let alone lift it above my knees. The machina brushed me aside and lifted the heavy box. The object rested in the crook of his arm like a bag of air, and I shook my head at his incredible strength.
“Are you ready?” he asked while the glowing lights serving for his eyes glanced at my wound.
I took one last look at the pair of dead artillerymen and nodded. “Let’s go.”
Matthias stepped through the portal first, and I followed him. As I winked out of the RTF Bulwark and traveled to the Beluga-Class RTF Stalwart, I prayed that we weren’t too late.
Chapter 26
Matthias and I stood in the Stalwart’s deployment room. The starship was deathly quiet, and I didn’t hear any warning sirens which would normally accompany an assault. I didn’t know exactly how much time was left before Polgar’s warship started firing on us, but it couldn’t be long now.
“You will need to free the crew,” Matthias said, still holding the chest with the king’s armor in the crook of his right arm like it weighed a kilo instead of eighty. “They have been locked in two areas of the ship. The yeomen, artillerymen, and enchanters are inside the galley, while the Command Team and the knights are locked within the holding cells.”
I hadn’t seen the starship’s holding cells before, so I didn’t know their exact location. The problem was solved when I connected my prot-belt to the ship’s systems, and my visor showed a map of the Stalwart. The cells were located on Deck 1, between the engine rooms and the hangar.
“I suggest freeing the Command Team first. I believe they are the least likely to kill you on sight,” Matthias said. “Your palm rune should open the locks. I must go to the arcane chamber now to prepare an escape for our ship.”
The machina moved out of the deployment room with an alacrity I didn’t expect. The strides of his mechanical legs were at least two meters long, and each step hissed with the firing of pistons.
I left the deployment room, took the elevator from Deck 3 to Deck 1, and then raced along the passageway toward the cells. A description flashed on my visor when I walked through.
There were eight cells in total, and each of them was designed to house a maximum of two prisoners. Prot-fields sealed the captives off from the corridor, and nullification zones prevented the use of Runetech equipment.
I was hesitant to walk in the open, knowing the knights would probably want to skin me alive. It was only the impending death of the crew forcing me forward, and my heart played a drum roll as I approached the first cell.
Olav and Leith were waiting in the room, and they leaped to their feet when they saw me. They were still wearing their armor, and I guessed Polgar’s men hadn’t disarmed them since it wasn’t like their Runetech would help them escape their cells before the Stalwart was blown apart.
“You!” Olav screamed at me, and his face reddened to match the color of his mohawk.
“How about you let us out of here, lad?” Leith hissed with a deadly smirk.
I kept walking, deciding to free some less dangerous men first. The second cell held Moses and Flanagan, and the shield knight’s mouth dropped when he saw me.
“Nick,” he said. “What are you doing in here?”
“I gotta get you guys out of here,” I said.
Flanagan pointed a finger toward the passageway. “There’s a control panel next to the cell behind you.”
The two jump mages were inside the cell Flanagan indicated, and Ronan and Patrick watched me as I approached the control panel needed to open the cells. The interface was motion-sensored like much of the other tech on the starship, and I flicked through the menu, located the option for opening the cells, and then held my palm rune over the scanner.
Olav and Leith were the first to be freed, and they sprinted toward me. The last thing I wanted to do was draw my longsword at the knights, but I still reached for the weapon on instinct. Before I could free it from my prot-belt, the berserker gripped my throat and Leith pressed the point of his dirk in the vulnerable seams of my chest armor.
“You fucking traitor!” Olav yelled as spittle flew from his mouth.
“I say we carve him up,” Leith said. “I’d like to see a traitor bleed.”
“The ship is moments away from being attacked,” I struggled to say while Olav’s gauntleted hand was doing its best to crush my esophagus.
“Let him down, Olav,” Captain Cross ordered as he and Commander Reynolds walked out from the cell to my right. “I want to hear his explanation.”
The berserker released me from his grasp with a grunt, and I dropped to the ground. I massaged my aching throat as the captain approached me. When I straightened, Captain Cross was looking into my eyes. His hair hung loosely over his shoulders, and his white-peppered beard sprung out in all directions. On any other man, the hair and beard might have looked disheveled, but it gave him the appearance of a weary warrior. The official uniform of an RTF Captain, a bright blue trench coat, hung from his shoulders.
“Explain yourself, Mr. Lyons,” Commander Reynolds spat from beside the captain.
These two possessed the power to command my death in seconds, and I swallowed back my fear. Their lives depended on me convincing them the Stalwart was moments away from certain destruction.
“Polgar’s ships are leaving the galaxy through a portal as we speak,” I said. “They might have already left.”
“Then they aren’t a problem,” Commander Reynolds said, and I got the feeling her desire to see me dead might have bested Olav’s.
“Before the last ship leaves,” I said, “they’re going to fire rune-nukes on the Stalwart.”
“He’s lying,” Olav said.
“I agree,” Leith said. “Let’s kill him.”
“Squire Lyons is on our side,” Matthias’ voice came over the intercom. “He made a mistake allying himself with the high sorcerer, but he saved me and brought me back here. Please, do not kill him.”
Every eye turned to Captain Cross, and I understood now that my fate was entirely in his hands. Matthias would tell them the ship needed defending, and then they’d do it without my help. I wasn’t essential to the defense, and not having me around would certainly boost morale.
“Where is the armor?” Captain Cross asked me.
“Silvester Polgar obtained all of King Justinian’s armor,” I said, and the captain’s eyes wavered for a millisecond, “but I retrieved them with the help of Matthias.”
The captain continued staring into my eyes as though he was reading my soul. He nodded once and then turned to the rest of the crew. “We’ll keep the squire around. He may serve a purpose yet.”
“Like giving my daggers something to drink,” Leith said.
“Or my hatchets!” Olav added.
They both turned away when Captain Cross laid his eyes on them.
After a few seconds of staring at me again, the captain called out, “Matthias!”
“Yes, Captain,” the machina responded over the intercom.
“Is there any way to evade this fleet?”
“I am afraid not. As soon as I initiate a portal, it will inform the other vessels that we are no longer imprisoned. I suggest waiting until the last ship remains.”
“The one that’s been instructed to shoot us once the other ships have gone through the portal?” Captain Cross asked with some skepticism.
“Exactly,” Matthias responded. “I will still be unable to activate a long-range portal due
to the warship’s silencing capabilities, but I can summon lesser portals. We will be able to move a maximum of one hundred kilometers at a time.”
“Hmm . . . “ The captain paused to think. “We should be able to evade the enemy missiles with short-range jumps. Can you make that happen, Matthias?”
“Yes, sir. Although I will require the assistance of the jump mages. Can you send them to the arcane chamber?”
“Ronan, Patrick, you heard the machina.”
The two mages ran out of the passageway.
“Let’s head to the elevator,” Captain Cross said to the crew as he marched.
The crew followed behind him, and I tried to stay as far from Olav and Leith as possible. The pair of knights still glared at me, but then Moses and Flanagan came alongside me. The shield knight pressed his palm to my shoulder lightly as we traveled to the elevator.
“How do you plan on battling a Cachalot, Captain?” Moses asked.
“We’ll outflank it with SR portals. This old girl has some speed to her, so we should be able to outmaneuver the other ship and try to hit them on their underbelly.”
“How long can we keep that up for? I doubt we have the firepower to take down the other ship’s shields.”
The truth of Moses words struck home as we approached the elevator. Cachalots were the strongest starships in the RTF, and these particular models were used for the protection of kingdom officials. We had almost no chance of taking out the warship with our rune lances, plasma quarrels, or heavy cannons. From the pregnant silence among the knights, I guessed they were thinking the same thing.
“Uhh . . . I might have something.” My mouth went dry when I heard Casey’s voice. She must have been put in one of the containment cells instead of with the rest of the crew in the galley.
I turned to face the enchantress and also saw Elle. The point clerk scowled as she met my eyes, and I got the impression she wasn’t too pleased with me. Casey’s green eyes also flickered to my face for half a moment, but I couldn’t read her expression. Then she pushed her way through the circle of knights and stood before the captain.
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