The Sac'a'rith (17 page)

“Not far off. They are watching us, waiting for us to lower our guard,” said Narcion.

“How can you know that?” I asked.

“It comes with being a Sac’a’rith. We can sense the unnatural creatures and sometimes read their feelings.”

I wanted to question that statement, but as a magus I had to admit it was as good as any answer I could give about my own powers. In the past century the universe as we knew it had gone through such a dramatic change that supernatural powers had gone from being the stuff of children’s stories to becoming an integrated part of society. Answers like his would have offended the scientific elite of the previous era, but had become the best answers available.

As we approached the control center of the station I noticed that all its blast doors were closed also. With the power off, there was no additional shield layer, but those doors were formidable enough on their own. “I presume that the manual release for those doors is only on the inside?” I asked.

“Of course, otherwise they would not be very effective at securing the command center from attack,” he said.

“How are we going to get in?” I asked.

“The problem with the typical mundane, as you call them, is that they focus their protection on doors. I doubt my cutter could make it through that blast door, but the wall next to it should not be a problem. Keep an eye out for trouble while I work,” he said.

I did my best to watch the area while I tried to make sense of Narcion. It was apparent at this point that he was some kind of magus, but he hardly ever used any power. He never tried to solve a problem with magical means, and barely even seemed to acknowledge the existence of power. Being a magus, he should have been able to train Zah’rak as well as I could, yet he did not seem to have tried before he met up with us. That did not make sense, as it would have been a major advantage for him to have telepathic communication with Zah’rak.

I didn’t get to think much more about that, as I saw something drifting towards us in the darkness. “Narcion, alert!”

He looked in the direction in which I was pointing and drew his knives. “Stay behind me and try to conserve your power. I do not know how many there are.”

Soon there were three creatures moving towards us from three different directions. “They have us surrounded.”

“True, but there are only three of them. Make sure your personal shield is ready.”

He was calm and collected in the face of three of the deadliest creatures I had ever heard of. He seemed to have utterly no fear of anything. In a mercenary that was a good trait but, if not mixed with some realistic humility, a trait that could get you killed.

As the creatures approached I felt an unnatural fear pass over and through me. It became hard to stop my hands from shaking, and I could not match the wraiths’
gaze. I was not confident I could even move, never mind help Narcion in this fight.

Fortunately, I did not need the reminder about the shield, as I had cast that before leaving the ship. There was no way I was going to wander around a station that had an unknown number of wraiths without some protection. I knew from watching them fight that, as good as the armor was that Narcion had provided, it was no match for their claws.

I am not sure what happened next, or in what order. It all happened too fast for me to process. Without any warning the three wraiths came flying down the hall towards us. Narcion seemed to move with even greater speed in response. The grace and fluidity of his movements as he sprang towards one of the wraiths seemed more befitting a cat than a man.

I had barely had time to register the first fight when he was already moving to the second wraith. I turned to face the last wraith, which was moving towards me at great speed. I had a split moment of fear and indecision on how to proceed, and in that moment it closed the distance between us
and swung one of its claws at me.

Instinctively I threw up my arms to block its attack and its claws slammed into my shielding, sending me flying backwards into the wall. Stunned, it took me a moment to get my senses back, then it was on me again. This time I used the wall as a brace and kicked out with my shielded foot, hitting the creature square in its chest. As it went flying backwards I stood to cast, but Narcion must have finished with the second wraith, as he followed after the one I had kicked and quickly finished it off.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yeah, but I suspect I will have a nasty bruise from that blow,” I said.

He smiled. “A bruised arm beats being a corpse any day. There are yet more wraiths, so get yourself ready for when they come, and I will get back to cutting.”

Once I was able to calm my nerves enough, I recast my personal shield spell. The two contacts with the wraith had weakened it, and I did not need it failing on me during the next fight.

It was not much longer until we were into the command center. “Where are the bodies?”

“Good question,” responded Narcion. “We need to disable any defensive systems or other lockouts before main power is restored.”

“Okay,” I said, and we went to work searching the room for anything that might cause us problems when power was restored. I was still a bit shaken from the fight. I doubted I would sleep well later that night, if indeed ever again.

“Zah’rak, you and Criveen go to Main Engineering and see if you can get power restored. I’ll take Felix and head to Central Command,” said Narcion.

“You sure it’s safe to split up?” I asked.

“Zah’rak, you’re more than ready for this. N
ow go,” he said.

“Sure.” I did not quite understand what he meant by that, but I knew better than to question it. “Crivreen, are you ready?”

“Yes,” he responded.

We left Narcion’s cruiser and drifted through the weightless vacuum of space through what was left of the docking arm attachment. It was an odd sensation to float through space like this. Everything seemed so peaceful; there was no sound in the vacuum of space around us, and the station had no lights. Behind us was Narcion’s cruiser sitting silently and almost completely blacked out. For those few moments, it was easy to believe that all was well everywhere. The knowledge that we were floating towards a station that was probably filled with dead people trying to kill us kept me from getting lost in the peace of the moment.

“We should find an intact airlock,” said Crivreen.

“But there is no power. None of them will be working,” I said.

“We don’t need it to be working. For whatever reason, mundanes like to put windows in their doors, so we will be able to teleport in.”

“Let me guess: if you designed it, you would leave out the windows?” I asked.

“No, I would leave out the airlock completely. It’s a waste of space and resources for us,” he said.

I thought about that as we drifted towards an airlock he had found. The only reason for an airlock was to keep atmosphere in when opening the door to the outside. If you never had any need to open a door, that did make an airlock a bit useless. This world of magecraft was different in so many subtle ways that it seemed as if I had crossed into a whole new reality.

“This one will work,” he said, interrupting my thoughts.

“Seems a bit cramped in there,” I said.

“Yeah, we should go one at a time,” he replied.

“I’ll go first in case there is trouble.” I was not at all confident of his ability to survive if there were walking dead or wraiths waiting for us.

Using my headlamp to illuminate the airlock through the window, I was able to teleport in without any problems. Then repeating the process, I was able to get into the station proper. Once Crivreen was also aboard I asked, “What would happen if we tried to teleport into a place too small to fit?”

As we went down the corridor he said, “I am not sure. I don’t know anyone who has tried. It is generally assumed to be a bad idea, and no one is willing to risk their life to find out.”

That made perfect sense, but magic had been around for a while now. “Surely someone has done it by mistake?”

“I don’t know; maybe. I have not met many magi,” he said.

“I have heard magi were rare, but it seems like I keep running into them out here,” I said.

“Well, to be fair, you have only run into the ones who were sent here to deal with a problem that requires magical help,” he said. “So I think your perspective is a bit skewed.”

That was a valid point. We drifted on in silence for a while longer. I kept my headlight on for him, but I had my visor darkened. In the poor lighting it was easier to see using Sight than my natural eyes. It also lessened the chance that we could be jumped by wraiths unawares. The station looked eerie by Sight. Crivreen was sharply defined in color, but rest of the station was indistinct and colorless.

When we reached Engineering we discovered that the blast doors were closed. Crivreen floated over to them and said, “This is not good, but I did expect it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Engineering is designed to be the place where defenders can rally if an attack on the station is going poorly. Unlike most of the rest of the station, Engineering is designed to withstand an extended siege.” He floated over and tapped on the door with his armored fist. “Even your great strength won’t get us through that.”

“Then what do we do?” I asked.

“You’ll watch my back and I’ll get the door open.” He pulled a large box out of his bag and attached it to the wall. “With this battery I will restore power to the motor and open the door. I just need to bypass its safety protocols, which will be fairly easy since there is no power.”

He sat in the air, floating perfectly still at a comfortable distance from the panel. As he took it apart he placed tools and parts in the air around him. In this zero-gravity environment they stayed arranged around him in easy reach. It was obvious he was far more comfortable with this environment than I was.

“What if gravity were to come back suddenly?” I asked.

“What? Oh, would I fall? No, gravity never comes back suddenly. It takes time for the gravitational field to build and align with the station. Besides, we are in no danger of that happening unless I can get main power back online.”

I was amazed that even though he was moving around working on the panel, he seemed to stay put. I could not figure out how he was doing it. I had a hard time just floating in one place, never mind engaging in the level of activity he was doing.

I was going to ask him about it, but then he said, “There!” and the doors to Engineering slid open. “Let’s go.”

“Won’t that slam back shut?” I asked.

“Not as long as that battery is connected. We have plenty of time, at least a day if we need it, and we can always go back to the ship and get another battery should it come to that.” He gathered everything that was floating around him, all the tools and even the parts he had removed from the door, stuck them in his bag and then floated into Engineering.

The scene inside Engineering was very different to the rest of the station. The walls were scorched with blaster fire and there were dead bodies everywhere. Not all of the bodies were fully intact, and most had an expression of pure terror etched on their faces. “They must have tried to make a stand here.”

Crivreen did not respond at first, and then weakly said, “Yeah.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Sorry, I’ll be fine in a minute. Let’s just figure this out,” he said.

I watched him head for one of the terminals and then realized he had probably never seen a massacre on this scale. As a slave, I saw many killed and left to rot; I had even had to spend many nights sleeping with rotting bodies. Seeing Crivreen’s reaction made me ashamed that I had grown so cold to this level of killing. “Crivreen? All this blaster fire, could that have taken out the power?”

“No, it would take far more power than hand-held blasters could produce to harm these stations,” he said.

I watched him rip open console after console. “What are you looking for?”

“There should be a line here somewhere that still has power. You don’t just shut down something like this. If I can find that, I can trace it back to wherever the problem is and fix it,” he said.

“Shut it down? Are you saying this was deliberate?” I asked.

“That’s my conclusion. There is no sign of any reason for the power generators to have failed, so it must have been shut down intentionally.” As he worked he did his best to keep his eyes averted from the bodies around us. It seemed that as long as he focused on his work he would be fine.

I began pushing the bodies out of Engineering and out of sight. I needed something to do, and I figured that would help him out more than trying to assist with the repairs. I had got about halfway through when he finally found what he was looking for.

“Here! It looks like a manual cut-off. There does not appear to be any damage. I believe we can just turn everything back on,” he said.

“Hold on for a moment,” I told him, then over the communication system I said, “Narcion, it looks as if we can restore power. Engineering is filled with corpses, but there is no damage; the system was shut down intentionally.”

“Filled with corpses?” he asked.

“Yeah; I think they tried to make a stand here,” I replied.

“Listen, quickly; blow off their heads!” he said.

“Do what?” I asked, startled.

“Brother! Think about it! What will the wraiths do once you restore gravity?” he asked.

“Animate the dead,” said Crivreen coldly.

“Yes, and if you destroy their heads they cannot be reanimated. Now, do it! Quickly!” said Narcion.

I looked around and realized that if they came back to life we would be completely outnumbered and surrounded. “Very well,” I said.

I looked over at Crivreen, who was a bit pale, and he shook his head. “Okay, watch my back while I work, then. It is better this way, so they can rest in peace.” I added that last part in the hope that it would help Crivreen to cope with what I was about to do. He did his best not to watch what I was doing while keeping a look out, but in the end it was impossible to avoid the gruesome sight.