The Sac'a'rith (12 page)

“Return?” I started to ask, but he was gone. He did not leave; he just simply ceased to be there. He had done that before, but it still baffled me.

Far from where Zah’rak was coming to grips with his newfound powers, Claw was applying lightweight oil to one of his swords. He was unnaturally focused on his task as he worked. Sitting nearby, Fang had his blasters completely disassembled on a table in front of him. With the same painstaking care that Claw was using to care for his blade, Fang was cleaning and tuning his weapons.

The two of them worked in complete silence until their leader came in. “What makes this Narcion so special?” asked Fang.

“Yeah, I’ve never heard of him before,” said Claw.

“Well, he is good at staying below the radar. He is a contract mercenary. He does a lot of impossible jobs, and never fails.”

“Kind of like us then?” asked Claw.

“Yes. He has a very large bounty on his head, possibly the biggest one anyone has ever had, and this has been the case for many years,” said their leader.

“Why hasn’t anyone claimed it yet?” asked Fang.

“Many have tried, but it is a dangerous sport, and none survive. A few years ago, there was an officer in Resden Consortium who decided to try to claim that bounty. He set up a trap for Narcion and sent an entire battle fleet to kill him. Narcion was in a hauler with some goods he had been paid to retrieve when they met up with him and surrounded him.” He paused there for a moment and then said, “Not a single member of the battle fleet survived.”

“Nice,” said Fang.

“The man who had contracted the fleet was found dead with no visible wounds on his body. He was deep in the secure Resden headquarters,” said their leader.

“Hmm, sounds like someone we could like,” said Claw.

“You said he was recently trapped on a station?” asked Fang.

“Yes. That was the latest attempt on his life. Our employer had him trapped on a station and convinced the guards to activate the self-destruct mechanism. Narcion escaped and managed to bring around two dozen survivors with him, one of whom turned out to be a problem for him.”

“How so?” asked Claw.

“He was a plant from another consortium, unrelated to our employer, and he tried to organize a mutiny. The local police found all of them floating in space unharmed. A few days later the one who had tried to organize the mutiny turned up dead while sitting in a high-security prison. The man who had hired him was also found dead that same day, light years away from the prison.”

“So you are saying anyone who tries to hire someone to kill him is quickly dispatched?” asked Claw.

“Yes, this seems to be a very effective method of reducing the number of people that bother him,” said their leader.

“But you just said our employer took out the last hit on him, didn’t you?” asked Claw.

There was a moment of silence in the room as that comment just floated in the air, then their leader turned to a terminal and attempted to call their headquarters. After receiving no response he began to scan the news blasts. One headline caught his eye: “Slave uprising in the Phineary District.”

“Computer, disengage autopilot and find the fastest route to headquarters!” He quickly left the room and headed to the bridge.

Fang and Claw followed him down the corridor and Fang said, “I think this just got personal.”

They headed back to headquarters as fast as they could, all the while trying to reach anyone who might be there. The Phareon government had declared a state of emergency and was not allowing anyone in, but did nothing to stop their craft as it blew through the blockade at full speed.

As they dove into the atmosphere and flew over the city Claw said, “It’s a warzone.” Around them they could see combat everywhere. Slaves had taken to the streets and overpowered the local police forces; armed with the police weapons, they then took over. The local military was going from door to door trying to retake the city, but the city was being destroyed in the process. The death toll was rising by the minute. It was unlikely the city would ever recover from this revolt.

“Yeah, local news blasts say most of the city is rioting,” said Claw.

“What could have caused this?” asked Fang.

“Loss of control from the top: a moment of weakness, and those with nothing to lose rise up,” said their leader quietly.

As they approached the tower where they had last seen the man behind the desk who had employed them for this job, they locked down their helmets on their armor and headed to the airlock while decompressing the entire ship. Below them, rebels could be seen on the roof. They were using it as an anti-aircraft platform and were in the process of trying to get their guns lined up with the fast-moving Wolf Pack cruiser.

“Let’s move!” he called out and they jumped out of the airlock and fell onto the roof. Their armor absorbed the shock of the landing and the ship flew back up into the clouds out of range of the rebel weapons.

Before the guards on the roof could react, the Wolf Pack was in motion. They moved with unnatural speed and grace, quickly cutting the down rebels with their swords. Once the roof was secured, they charged the door that led down into the building and blasted it open.

Inside, the building was well-lit, but they punched a command into an access panel and killed power to the entire complex. With a grace that one does not expect to see in men running through complete darkness, they moved quickly towards the heart of the building. For the most part they were able to avoid the patrols of rebels who were trying to get power restored, but when they could not they cut right through them. It was as if they could still see, while the rebels were completely blind. They easily moved at twice the speed of any normal human.

Eventually they made it to the room where their leader had met with the man behind the desk. They kicked open the door and charged in. Unlike the rest of the building, this room still had power. The man who had hired them was sitting in the chair, dead, a knife handle sticking out of his forehead and a look of sheer terror frozen on his face for all time. In front of him, calmly sitting on the desk, was Narcion.

“Hold your fire and fan out! Careful, it would be impossible to overestimate him!” said their leader over their private communication system.

As they fanned out, Narcion said, “I have no quarrel with you.”

“Where is she?” demanded their leader.

“I’m here!” came a female voice as a young woman came running out from behind the desk. She was the same woman who had been trapped and who had previously drawn longing looks from him. Slight of build, she was covered with bruises and scrapes on her scantily-clad body. She pointed to Narcion and said, “That man there freed me,” as she fell into the leader’s arms.

“As I said, I have no quarrel with you, and now you have your freedom. I trust you understand?” asked Narcion.

“Go. Wolf Pack will hunt you no longer,” he said.

Narcion simply vanished before their eyes and the leader clicked his helmet back on. “Let’s clear out!”

They moved a bit more slowly, as their leader was now carrying the young woman, but it was not long until they reached a window. Fang made quick work of the window with his blaster, and they all jumped out and into their waiting vessel, which had swooped down to meet them in midair.

Standing on the roof overlooking the city was a figure dressed in thick robes with a deep hood. The person’s gender and species was completely disguised by the outfit. The only exception was two powerful yellow eyes that seemed almost to glow in the darkness of its deep hood. The figure watched the Wolf Pack fly away and then it simply vanished.

“Well done, Zah’rak!” cheered Felix.

Narcion had been gone for roughly a week, and there was still no word from him when I finally teleported successfully for the first time. I had previously picked up telekinesis very quickly, as it was not much different from telepathy in actual execution, but teleportation did not come as easily to me. With telepathy and telekinesis, you were simply projecting your thoughts across space, but with teleportation you were projecting your entire body.

Teleporting was a weird and disorientating sensation. You were standing in one place and everything seemed fixed around you, then you willed yourself to be someplace else and suddenly everything around you moved and you were there. There was no sensation of movement; it was as if the universe rearranged itself so that you could be somewhere else.

“But I only went a meter or so,” I said. I was sure I could have moved farther if I had simply jumped. Still, I had to admit it was a bit exciting to have pulled off that much.

“And that is a good thing, since we are in the middle of empty space,” said Crivreen with a large grin.

“I suppose it would have been less than desirable to end up outside,” I chuckled.

“Now that you have done it once, it will become much easier for you. Any magus can teleport short distances to any place to which they have line-of-sight. I have been told that a more advanced magus can teleport to any place they have already been, but is still limited by range. I have never met any magi who have reached that level,” said Felix.

“What about further distances? Can more advanced magi travel, say, from a ship to a planet?” I asked.

“No, teleportation is very much limited in distance at all levels,” said Felix.

“But I have heard stories of the wizards traveling great distances,” I argued.

“Ah, yes. I have heard those stories, too, but there are no wizards out here,” he said. “I am not so sure those stories are true. Tales like those have a habit of growing in the telling.”

“Still, some of the stories are pretty cool. Heck, just a couple of years ago I was told a story about a prison break where a small team of wizards from the Wizard Kingdom rescued one of the most notorious criminals of our day,” said Crivreen.

“Oh?” I asked.

“Yes; according to the story, they blasted their way into the maximum security prison, and then just walked out with the prisoner. No one could stop them,” said Crivreen.

“Buy why would wizards break out a criminal?” I asked.

“The story goes that he helped them and they owed him for it, so this was their repayment,” said Crivreen.

“Don’t listen to him. He loves a good tale, and lacks the sense to filter out the obviously ridiculous claims,” said Felix.

I thought about what Narcion had said about being thrown into a body of water and not knowing how to swim. I wondered how hard it would be to contact a wizard and get some decent training. “How did you learn this stuff?”

“Trial and error, mostly,” he said.

“What else can you do?” I asked.

“Not much more than you can now. I can do all the things I taught you, plus cast mage bolts and some basic shields. Crivreen can do the same, but does not seem to be able to create a shield around anyone other than himself,” he said.

I too had heard many grand stories of what wizards could do, and I could not help but wonder what else the three of us could do with proper training. I realized then that I was starting to embrace being a freak, and why not? I could easily see how it could give me a great edge in combat. “What is a mage bolt? Is that the fire and lightning you two used on the station?”

“Yes, ‘mage bolt’ is the general name for the basic attack that magi can use. There are many varieties, as you have noticed, but we just refer to them as ‘mage bolts,’” said Felix.

“How do I cast one of those?” I asked.

“Well, that is much harder and will drain your strength much faster,” said Felix.

“Yeah, I saw what it did to you guys, but still, how do I do that?” I asked.

“I am not sure. Not all magi can, and since there is great variety in bolts, I am not sure what to teach you,” he said.

“How did you find out about yours?” I asked.

“Don’t try it the way I did!” said Crivreen.

“Why not?” I asked.

“He lost his temper in a public area, and lightning flew everywhere. Thirty people were killed and many more were wounded,” said Felix. “From what I hear it was a very impressive show.”

“Hardly! There were burnt corpses everywhere. It sickened me to my core to see it, and I still have nightmares about it,” said Crivreen.

“I can imagine,” I said.

“I had no idea I was a magus at the time, but the judge and the families of the dead did not care about that. Everyone wanted the death penalty for me,” said Crivreen.

So that explained why he was in jail. “How did you escape the death penalty?”

“I appealed several times over many years, and finally a new judge issued a stay of execution as long as I agreed to help out at that station where you found me,” he said.

“You seem to have it under control now,” I said.

“While I was in prison, they gave me time and space to figure that out before sending me on my way,” he said. “It seemed they thought I would be more useful to them if I could actually aim my bolts.”

“And you, Felix?” I asked.

“My story is about the same. I was in a bar, and maybe a bit drunk, when someone who did not like me very much picked a fight. Fire jumped from my hands and burned him a little. He tried to run, but as I said, I was a little bit drunk and a lot annoyed so I kept at it until I produced enough fire to kill him. I have been on the run ever since. I’ve taken jobs as a hit-man along the way to pay the bills; but I finally got caught and ended up on the team sent to the station where we all met and became one big, happy family,” he said with a grin.

“I think I would like to find a way to figure this out without ending up on death row,” I said. “But I suppose it would be more prudent to work on defense next.”

“Good idea, but you need to keep practicing teleporting until you have it perfect,” said Felix.

It was not long before I could easily teleport the short distances that were available to work with on the tight confines of a starship. After that, we spent the rest of the week working on creating a personal shield around me. It seemed that, like Crivreen, I could only protect myself. I was hopeful this shield would help defend me from the wraiths. I certainly did not relish the idea of being hit by one again.