Space Pirate Charlie: The Dragon Mage Book 2

by Scott Baron

  “Yeah. Not much luck finding dried goods, but we did get some other supplies. How about you? Any love from your source?”

  The Geist hesitated a moment.

  “There were, difficulties.”

  “Difficulties? How so?” Charlie asked, a hint of concern in his tone.

  “Nothing I couldn’t handle. It just seems my old acquaintance had other ideas as to the nature of his debt to me. He foolishly attempted to attack me.”

  “But he was a friend, right? Why would he do that? Was he enchanted or something?” Leila asked.

  “No. I’d actually have preferred that. In that case, I could have seen fit to let him live. But no, he was not enchanted. Merely paid off.”

  “All the way out here? But we’re so far from the core systems.”

  “Indeed. That word has reached this far does not bode well for us. Not well at all.” He turned to the resting Zomoki. “Wise One, do you think you will have the energy for our final jump tomorrow?”

  Ara sat up and stretched her wings one at a time, rolling her neck like a prizefighter readying for a bout. “Yes, Geist. I will be ready. But first I must hunt and replenish my strength. Organize your goods. We will depart in the morning.”

  With a few powerful strokes of her wings, she lifted into the dusky skies and quickly flew the opposite direction of the nearby town. She’d hunt, but not so close to prying eyes and ears.

  Charlie and Bawb set to making a small fire and laying out some of the day’s acquisitions for their dinner, while Leila mixed another batch of milk for Baloo. The pup had only taken the smallest of sips when his eyes sharpened and a tiny little growl rumbled from his throat.

  “Now that’s new,” Charlie said, scanning the nearby woods.

  Bawb was already on his feet, darting for cover, and Leila had done likewise. Charlie took the hint and joined them.

  “There are many attackers,” Geist said. “I do not think I can flank them given their formation, and Ara will not be back for some time. We’re going to have to fight them head-on.”

  “Shit. Again?” was all Charlie could say.

  Then the attackers descended on them.

  Chapter Fifty

  The trees nearest Charlie’s head erupted with concussive blasts as successive layers of carefully cast spells pinned him down. These were no ignorant townsfolk who had followed the newcomers in hopes of robbing them. These were professionals.

  “How many, Bob?” Charlie called to the assassin, safely tucked behind a sturdy tree trunk nearby.

  “I can’t say for sure, but it sounds like about two dozen.”

  “Two dozen? What the hell did we do to earn that kind of attention?”

  Another flurry of spells howled through the air, pulling branches from the trees above.

  “You mean besides stealing a notoriously touchy visla’s new Zomoki, slaughtering a bunch of his men, and knocking out his daughter?” Bawb asked, a wry grin plastered to his face.

  “Well, there is that,” Charlie conceded. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen proper battle, you know. My encounters are typically of a far quieter and more personal nature.”

  “Will you two stop yapping and fight back?” Leila shouted. “We have to do something.”

  “What would you have us do?” Bawb asked. “At the present time we are rather effectively pinned down by a much larger fighting force. They have us outnumbered, and from what I’m sure you’ve seen by now, they are not targeting us directly, but are rather, lobbing harassing spells at us.”

  As if to punctuate his statement, a whirlwind of rocks and sticks whizzed past them with no particular target.

  “This is them testing our strength, and as we have not fired back, they do not know our numbers, nor our exact positions. At the moment, it’s something of a waiting game, I’m afraid. Now, when they make their move and step out into the open, well, that’s another story,” he said with joy and perhaps a little bloodlust in his eyes.

  “But how did they find us? We’ve only just arrived on this world last night,” Leila noted. “There’s no way they tracked us from the last system.”

  “No,” Bawb agreed. “However, given my encounter with my former acquaintance, I think it is safe to say word of someone out of the ordinary may have trickled through the channels. These aren’t the visla’s men, that much is obvious, so I assume they are likely men for hire. Every system has them, and we just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and these caught wind of us.”

  A tree burst into pieces, a hail of bark and leaves raining down on them.

  Charlie felt a great annoyance swelling in his chest. “I’m getting pretty damn tired of this clear-cutting spell-casting bullshit,” he growled. “Dipangu!” he said, casting a spell in their enemy’s general direction.

  “Did you just cast a novelty spell at them?” Bawb asked.

  “Yeah, I did. If they can hector us blowing up trees all around, then I figure they can deal with an annoying little trick of my own.”

  Leila looked at them both, confused. “What did you do, Charlie?”

  Bawb cracked a toothy grin. “He just bombarded our enemy with a stink spell. Feces, to be exact. Right about now, they will all likely be wondering if they stepped in something on the way to the attack.”

  She fixed her gaze on the odd human. “You’re insane. You do realize this, right?”

  “Call it what you will. I was getting pissed off, and casting it felt good.”

  The spell apparently made an impression on their attackers, as a surge in spells blasted across the field with particular violence, then ceased. The silence after so many minutes of destructive power was deafening.

  “You out there. You are outnumbered and outclassed, but you do not have to die this day. We are here to take you back dead or alive, and believe me, I think we would all prefer alive, am I right? Throw out your weapons and step into the open and surrender, and you have my word you will not be harmed.”

  Hang on a second. I know that voice.

  “Marban? Is that you throwing this weak-ass shit at me?”

  “Charlie?” a shocked voice replied.

  Charlie rose to his feet, hands in the air.

  “What are you doing?” Leila hissed.

  “It’s okay,” he said, walking into the clearing.

  A large man with a pair of bandoliers strapped across his chest, sporting a nasty scar from his head to his collarbone walked out from behind a tree big enough to provide a man of his size adequate cover.

  “Hold your fire, everyone. That’s an order,” he said, an enormous smile spreading across his face.

  “It is you!” Charlie said, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Little brother, you’re alive!” Marban bellowed with joy, scooping Charlie up in an enormous bear hug. “Everyone, stand down. There will be no killing today. We’ve been misled. This scruffy bastard is one of us.”

  From behind cover, nearly twenty men came into view. There were a lot of new faces, but also many Charlie recognized from his brief stint fighting alongside them as a space pirate years prior. He greeted each of them with a warm hug and a slap on the back.

  “It’s okay, guys. We know each other.”

  Bawb and Leila had already gathered as much and were walking toward their former adversaries, who were apparently now their friends, if not allies.

  “Marban, this is Bob, and that’s Leila,” Charlie said. “Guys, this is Marban. He’s a good man, and a dear friend.”

  “We fought some interesting raids, did we not?” Marban said with a grin.

  “That we did.”

  “You never told me you were a pirate, Charlie,” Leila said, eyeing him with newfound curiosity.

  “It never came up.”

  Marban laughed. “Same old Charlie. So I assume you didn’t tell them about the time you slipped in that freight hauler’s blood and fell into––”

  “There�
�s plenty of time for stories later,” he interrupted. “But where’s Captain Saramin? It’s not like him to sit out a fight.”

  The large man’s joviality faltered slightly.

  “I’m sad to say that the captain met his end at the hands of a Council ship a little less than a year ago.”

  “No. What happened?”

  “It was a glorious end. Fitting for a man of his caliber. You should have seen it. There he was, leading the charge into a beautiful freighter we’d tracked to the back side of one of the smaller moons of Rodnin, when we ran right into a waiting squad of Council troops.”

  “You boarded a Council ship? What were you thinking?”

  “No, it was an ordinary freighter. Or so we thought. But we soon discovered it was carrying something of great interest to the Council. Something guarded by far more than the usual accompaniment of armed crew.”

  “Let me guess. Weapons. Magical weapons, and lots of them,” Charlie said.

  “How did you know?”

  “Because the Council of Twenty is preparing for war. Or slaughter, depending how you look at it.”

  “No, they wouldn’t be so foolish.”

  “Believe me, they are. I saw it with my own eyes on Visla Maktan’s estate. Slaaps, thousands of them, all being prepared for their expansion into systems not yet part of the Council’s conglomerate. They’re going to slaughter whoever they have to in order to consolidate power. They’re just working on procuring enough power to see their plan to fruition. That’s where the Zomoki came in.”

  “Ah, yes. Beautiful creature, that one. Amazing how you’ve managed to tame it. We had to wait for it to leave before attacking.”

  “Smart move. But tell me, Marban, I’m still confused as to what happened aboard that Council ship. It has to be tied in to what I saw in some way.”

  “Perhaps, but I didn’t see much, I’m afraid. It was all we could do to escape, but the captain sacrificed himself so we could get clear. Oh, Charlie, you should have seen it. The legendary Saramin fighting at full-bore. He single-handedly took out over a dozen heavily armed Council troops before they even landed their first blow on him. It was magnificent.”

  “But why didn’t he run? I know the Rixana. She’s a fast ship, and well armed––”

  “Because another compartment opened, and he saw who else was onboard and coming to join the fight. There was a visla, Charlie. Not one of the truly powerful ones, but strong enough to end the fight in an instant. He knew what was about to happen, and in the seconds he had before capture, he triggered his personal destruct spell.”

  “The failsafe? I always thought that was just a rumor he spread to make sure no one tried anything stupid.”

  “We all did, but Captain Saramin cast that spell, and not even the visla could stop it. The men and I barely made it back to the Rixana before the other ship burst into pieces. It all happened so fast, the Council never received word of who had attacked the ship, but we run a much lower profile now. No sense tempting fate, after all.”

  “Yet here you are, chasing down the Council’s enemies,” Bawb said.

  “I don’t know anything about that. All I know is there was a bounty posted by Old Grayagg. No names, just a basic description and dead or alive.”

  “Yes, Old Grayagg will not be paying any bounties ever again,” Bawb said.

  “Really?” Marban said with interest. “Well, Charlie, it appears your Wampeh friend here is something of a badass, if he managed to take that tough old bastard out. I wonder if he’s ever considered a career in piracy.”

  Bawb laughed. “My friend, you could not afford me.”

  “Well, in that case, dinner’s on you,” Marban replied with a jolly laugh. “Come, little brother, tonight we eat, drink, and catch up on old times.”

  “Indeed. And we will toast Captain Saramin.”

  “So we shall. We will drink to the captain until we cannot walk straight.”

  A massive feast was laid out. Charlie’s pirate brethren, it seemed, had greatly improved the quality of their food since he was last with them. Roasts and vegetables and breads were all to be had in abundance, as was alcohol of a wide variety. In addition, Marban had the men bring down a case of dried foodstuffs from the ship, a special gift for his friend’s journey.

  “You really want to go to the Balamar Wastelands?” Marban asked, more than a little drunk.

  “We have to. I’m pretty sure it’s the only place I’ll have a chance of cutting these collars off. They’re far stronger than any I’ve ever seen.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I help Bawb kill Visla Maktan and stop whatever he’s got planned. After that, who knows?”

  Marban took a deep drink and sized up his friend. “You know, you’ve changed, Charlie.”

  “For the worse, I assume?”

  “Nah, nothing like that. It’s good to see you passionate about something. An actual cause. To be honest, I rather miss those days, myself.”

  Charlie looked at his friend with inebriated eyes.

  “Yeah, you know, Marban, you never did get around to telling me where exactly you came from and how you wound up with Captain Saramin in the first place.”

  Marban grinned, emptying his cup. “You’re right. I didn’t.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The pirate crew who had stayed on the surface, eating and drinking until late with their prey-turned-pals, woke groggily with the morning sun already climbing in the sky. They had feasted well, drank much, laughed, and sung, and generally had a good time the prior night.

  Most men would have emptied their bowels in fright to wake with a full-grown Zomoki staring at them, but these were not most men, and Marban’s rough-and-tumble pirate crew merely experienced the briefest flash of adrenaline before rising and stumbling off into the woods to relieve themselves.

  Ara had been watching them for some time as each one of them performed the same morning ritual.

  “At least they could have walked a little farther,” she grumbled.

  “Sorry, Ara,” Charlie said with an apologetic shrug as he stretched. “Pirates, ya know?”

  “Indeed, I do.”

  “Where were you last night, anyway? I can’t imagine you had to travel all that far to find a suitable dinner.”

  “Oh, I ate quite well. There was a herd of rather delicious beasts just over those mountains in the distance. The flight felt wonderful, by the way. It’s really nice stretching your wings like that. But after I ate my fill, I noticed you had company. At first, I was concerned, but the smells were of feasting and the sounds of friendly talk and song, so I decided to stay clear a bit longer so as not to put off your guests. Many are discomfited by a Zomoki in their midst.”

  Oglar, a particularly stout man, stumbled out of the woods, still highly inebriated and bleary-eyed. The pirate weaved unsteadily around his waking comrades until he bumped right into Ara’s massive flank. He turned his bloodshot gaze higher and higher as he took in her mass.

  “Hello, Zomoki,” he slurred, patting her side, then staggered off toward the nearby stream.

  “Yes. Quite put out, I see,” Charlie said with a silent laugh.

  The enormous Zomoki chuckled as she watched the man go. “You certainly do have some interesting friends, Charlie.”

  Soon all of the pirates had risen and quickly set to work rustling up a hearty breakfast. The men were nothing if not hearty eaters, and a well-fed crew was a happy crew. Within just a few minutes they were all tucking in to a hangover-curing––or at least hangover-lessening––meal. Charlie even broke out one of his precious sealed containers of coffee.

  “You realize there is only so much of that in our packs, right?” Leila noted.

  “Yeah, but these are friends, and I’m glad to share. Besides, Tsokin berries have to grow on other worlds. They were just used as a decorative shrubbery, after all, so they can’t be that difficult to find.”

  “That was more of my father’s area of expertise, but I th
ink you’re right,” she replied.

  Charlie brewed up several pots of hot coffee and passed the steaming beverage around to the men who hadn’t decided to head back to the Rixana early. While none of the pirates possessed powers of their own, the effects of the drink on their hungover heads was immediate.

  “Now this is amazing,” Marban gushed. “We need some of this on the ship. I feel fantastic!”

  “Hey now, don’t get carried away. It’s just caffeine.”

  “Whatever it is, I like it!”

  Bawb let out a little snort of amusement. “We would be happy to provide you some to take back to your ship,” he said, giving Charlie a knowing look.

  “Yeah, I’ll hook you up, Marban. It won’t be enough for the whole crew, but I’ll tell you how to find and process the beans so you guys can start making your own when it runs out.”

  “Most kind of you, little brother. Most kind!” He took a swig of the hot, bitter brew and swished it on his tongue, savoring the unusual flavor as much as the effects. “A Zomoki on your side, and this invigorating beverage––I’m beginning to think you might actually stand a chance.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Charlie replied with a grin.

  Baloo, silent the majority of the evening with all the drunken pirates around, poked his head out of his bundle sack and let out a little howling stretch. Marban spun, his eyes lighting up at the sight of him.

  “Oh my. I haven’t seen one of those in a long, long time,” he said, moving to greet the littlest member of the family. “Hello, little friend. My, aren’t you a handsome one.”

  Baloo gratefully accepted the head rubs and ear scratches the large man so freely gave out. For a tough and intimidating pirate, Marban had quite a soft side for the small animal, it seemed.

  “His name is Baloo,” Leila informed him.

  “Hello, Baloo. Hello, little one.”

  It was a bit unusual, seeing a burly pirate baby-talking a pup.

  “So, you’ve seen these before?” Leila asked. “It’s a new breed to me.”