Sac'a'rith (33 page)

“Use your staff!”
sent Raquel.

I slung my rifle over my shoulder and drew the staff down from the air as she had taught me.
“How?”

“Focus on a target and say the command word, just like a wand.”

I pointed my staff towards the middle of the charging group who were trying to seek cover from Purwryn’s insistent pounding. Speaking the command word, I carefully aimed the staff into the middle of the group; a green bolt of energy was released from the staff and slammed into the chest of my target.

The Cyborg was engulfed in a green-tinged explosion which killed him and several more around him. The effect was far more powerful than that of any wand I’d ever seen, and on a par with the heaviest of hand cannons.

“Wow!” called out Purwryn, who had paused to watch the carnage.

“Keep shooting!” called out Raquel as the fearless Cyborgs began to regroup.

Remembering my training with the wands, I mentally reduced the power level of the staff. I didn’t know yet how to tell how much energy it contained, and figured I’d better conserve its power just in case. We blasted through that position of Cyborgs and charged on, meeting no resistance for the rest of the run; that bothered me. It was obvious where we were going, so they must have been digging in there, preparing for our arrival.

Raquel stopped us just short of engineering. As she sheathed her swords she sent,
“Assume they can hear and see everything we do, because I’m sure they can. They’re expecting us to charge, firing our weapons, and they will have superior defenses and firepower ready to counteract that. I have no intention of making a suicide rush, but we’re going to make them think we’re doing that. So follow me on the dash, but when you see the gate open, dive through it. It’ll let us out behind them in engineering. I’ll open it as soon as I have line of sight.”

We nodded our agreement and she sprinted off down the corridor with her own pair of wands. As we came in sight of engineering, I blasted a hole through their defenses with a single bolt from my staff. Purwryn rained lightning down on them, and Raquel sent white energy bolts from her wands.

Moments after we began our barrage, a gate opened directly in our path. We sprinted through and, true to Raquel’s plan, came out behind the Cyborg position. My staff and our wands made quick work of the Cyborgs, as they hadn’t set up any defenses behind themselves. In their arrogance they never thought we’d get past them, so they hadn’t prepared for it.

“Cover the corridor,”
she sent.

More Cyborgs were heading our way, but now we were entrenched behind cover and they had to navigate the corridor under fire. I switched to Crivreen’s wands, as their smaller size made them easier to work with in the tight fortifications. I would have liked to use my grenades to force them back, but the narrow corridor would have channeled the explosion right back in my face.

I couldn’t see what Raquel was doing, but I knew we couldn’t hold out long. Purwryn had already burned through most of his wands, and the enemy numbers kept growing. I suspected they could run the ship as easily from the hall in front of us as anywhere else. We could soon have the entire crew bearing down on us.

“Okay, time to bail out!”
sent Raquel.

I glanced over my shoulder to see her open a gate. No longer concerned about the narrow passage acting as a funnel for the explosion, I tossed two explosive grenades down the corridor and dove through the gate right behind Purwryn.

We came out on the bridge of the Night Wisp. Raquel said, “Purwryn, go back to navigation and set a course away from here.”

He jumped in his seat and took control of the craft.

“Ragnar, send my warning to the Cyborgs one last time,” she said and cast her spell again, moving the ship elsewhere.

“Okay, sent,” he said.

She smiled and pressed a button on the comm. pad of her armor. Moments later a massive explosion ripped through the rear of the destroyer, throwing the remains of the vessel out of the battlefield.

Raquel, Zah’rak and Purwryn had been gone thirty-seven minutes when a strange blue oval appeared on the bridge of the Night Wisp. I searched my memory banks for a match and finally came up with one.
A gate
, I thought to myself; I had used one to get off the space station when Purwryn and I were grievously outnumbered.

Moving through them was like walking through jump space. It was a very odd sensation, and didn’
t have the hangover effect of the jump drives. This gate technology was something I needed to learn.
The Great Core would definitely be interested in it.

They came running out of the gate moments later, and the blue oval disappeared behind them almost before Zah’rak had made his way through.

“Purwryn, get back on navigation and set a course away from here,” ordered Raquel. “Marcus, watch for incoming fighters; if any move within our range, destroy them.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

It was odd that she was running this battle, since Zah’rak was the captain, but it was obvious that she knew she was doing and Zah’rak did not. It was wise of him to let her lead, given her skills, but he seemed to be doing more than that; he was behaving as if she were the captain and he just another warrior following her into battle.

I listened as Ragnar sent her message once again, and I couldn’t understand why she kept sending it. Did she think they hadn’t received it the first couple of times? I was sure they had, and that it was stored in a memory bank somewhere. Cyborgs never forget anything.

Moments after we began to pull away from the destroyer, my tactical sensors were momentarily blinded by its destruction. I didn’t know how they had achieved it, but somehow they had completely destroyed the craft. These primitives were extremely resourceful.
No, not primitives; magi,
I corrected myself.

“Alpha target destroyed,” called out Zah’rak.

“Purwryn, prepare an evasive spiral while Ragnar finds us a new hiding-place,” she said.

“Okay,” he replied.

The Cyborg fleet was in disarray. The destroyer she had chosen was a lynchpin in their communications network, and it would take several minutes to reroute the comm. traffic to compensate for the loss. How in the name of the Great Core did she figure out that this one was the core of the fleet?

Raquel was the only trained wizard on the craft, as far as I could tell. Ragnar had some training, but he didn’t seem very knowledgeable about current events or technology. Despite this, or maybe because of it, Zah’rak completely trusted Ragnar’s input on any subject.

“Agent P2003, report,”
came a call over my internal communications network.

“I am undamaged and on mission,” I silently replied.

“Agent P2003, the Night Wisp is a liability to the fleet. Eliminate the threat.”

“I cannot without jeopardizing my mission.”

“You will receive new mission parameters when the Night Wisp is gone.”

“The Night Wisp is a minor inconvenience in this engagement, but its information value is irreplaceable.”

There was temporary silence. I hoped I hadn’t overstepped my bounds, but I knew it would be foolish to take down the Night Wisp at this stage. The magi had proven deadly in combat and, in order to compensate for their presence in this region, we needed information about them. No one was in a better position than I to do that. It had been a major stroke of luck teaming up with Purwryn back on the Paradise, and one I was eager to take advantage of for as long as possible. The Cyborg nation needed this desperately, even if they hadn’t yet realized it.

“The fleet is jumping in now,” said Ragnar.

I watched on my tactical readouts as a fleet of Class Three and Class Four tech. jumped into the battle, impressed by the show of force. The Wizard fleet by itself would have overpowered the Cyborg fleet, which was mainly Class Two technology. They had some Class Three, but Class Four was almost unheard of nowadays in these numbers.

When the Empire had fallen, there had been a general regression in the level of technology. Cutting-edge out here became known as Class Three tech, one generation of technology behind the Empire’s last achievements, which had been arbitrarily labeled Class Four. Some of the more remote areas had fallen to the standard of Class Two or even Class One. The galaxy seemed to be losing ground as the constant wars continued to take their toll. Cyborg command predicted that most of the galaxy would fall back to Class Two before things stabilized enough to begin to rebuild. The Wizard fleet, however, seemed of a standard which called that prediction into doubt.

“Excellent,” said Raquel. “The carriers won’t be able to escape, and the rest of their fleet will be in a shambles for some time. Purwryn, head for the Wizard Fleet.”

“Okay,” said Purwryn.

“That fleet is impressive!” called Zah’rak.

“It’s fairly primitive compared to what we have back home,” said Raquel. “We had to buy all these ships out here and make do with whatever upgrades could be performed on them.”

If this is what the wizards consider to be primitive, Cyborg Command was seriously overestimating their chances of victory now that the Wizard Kingdom had established a foothold out here. I wondered how I might convince them of that. Hopefully this battle would be enough to do so, otherwise our nation would fall.

“Acknowledged, P2003. Stay within current mission parameters.”

“Understood,” I said, not allowing my relief to appear across the connection.

“Send full battle report for retransmission.”

I sent them the full report, including all logs of conversations on the bridge around me. The Cyborgs knew the battle was lost, but they didn’t want to lose the information they’d gained during it. They would send everything back to Cyborg Command now, while they still could. My report would be added to the reports of every Cyborg out here, living or dead, and stored in the Great Core’s database for analysis. Soon the fleet would begin to retreat, to save what was left of their physical assets.

“Three fighters incoming!” called Zah’rak.

My hands were already working the controls to target them, but they were still out of optimum range. “Targets will be in range of our primary weapons in two minutes.”

My human emotions threatened to rebel every time I targeted a fellow Cyborg, but my programming was able to compensate by isolating all emotion and cutting it off before it could interfere with my ability to perform my tasks. Defending these magi was part of my mission parameters, and those fighters were attacking so that my cover wouldn’t become suspect.

They understood they were flying to their deaths, just as I understood I had to terminate them. They had their part to play in the big picture, just as I did. We were tiny pieces in the larger puzzle that was the Great Core’s vision, and i
t was that vision that mattered most, not us.

“Eliminate them as soon as they’re in range,” said Raquel.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I knew my voice would sound strange to them, but if they questioned me I would say that I was running my implants in combat mode or something technical-sounding like that. I couldn’t risk letting my human emotional response show through. The human mind was a powerful tool in its ability to deal with unknowns and unsolvables, but its emotional aspects were a major liability.

I let my hands deal with taking out the fighters and looked over at the tactical displays. The Night Wisp only had four cannons, so it was simple to let one of my sub-processors handle the targeting and firing while my organic brain kept an eye on things around me.

“The Wizard fleet is moving into attack formation,” said Zah’rak.

“The Cyborgs are running!” said Ragnar.

“What?” asked Raquel.

“They appear to be cutting their losses and abandoning any disabled craft,” said Ragnar.

“What about the carriers?” asked Raquel.

“They’re staying put, but their bays are emptying fast,” he said.

Raquel shrugged. “Head for a Wizard carrier and signal to them that we’d like to resupply before leaving. Then get me Fleet Command.”

Moments later a man in purple battle armor appeared on the screen. Raquel told him all that she knew about the fleet and the fight.

“Master Raquel, I advise that we let them get away. I don’t like doing it, but we dare not move more than a jump from our station until its defenses are fully operational,” he said.

“I agree. We’ll resupply and then rejoin the Phareon fleet. Thanks for your help,” she said.

He bowed, said goodbye and closed the channel.

“Well done, everyone,” said Raquel.

I had to agree. This little ship had utterly outperformed any logical prediction. As I looked over the crew, my eyes rested on Purwryn. He was becoming a good friend, and I knew that was a problem. It would have been a tactical error for the fleet to destroy the Night Wisp at this time, but I knew that at some future point it would become a necessity and I wasn’t looking forward to that day. When the time came I would do it just as emotionlessly as I had killed the Cyborg fighters. At least I would try to; the truth was that I was not sure I could pull it off anymore. I was getting too close to everyone.

The Wizard fleet returned to Hospital Station, and we rejoined what was left of Phareon’s fleet. I looked over the ruins of the fleet on the Night Wisp’s tactical displays and was surprised at the extent of the damage. “Phareon is doomed, isn’t it?”

They had lost at least a third of their number, and many of the remaining ships were heavily damaged. The Cyborgs were just one of many powerful enemies stalking the region. If a random ambush like this could wreak havoc on a fleet which was much larger than normal, then the region was practically lost already.

“Yes, Zah’rak, I believe so. My guess is that this region will become wild, probably in less than a decade,” said Raquel. “Many will fight for it, but none will be able to control it for a long while.”

“The Cyborgs seem to have sufficient might to take the region,” said Marcus.

“No; if they think they do, then they have seriously underestimated some of the other players,” said Raquel.