Rise of Shadows (26 page)

“That is where you are mistaken. You just made an enchanted potion,” I said.

“A what?” she feebly asked.

“The drink you made for me, you enchanted it as you mixed it. Your power made it far more effective than any power drink I have seen before,” I said.

“Yeah, don’t be fooled by those silly tests. I failed them, too,” said Flame. “Thankfully, they were not in use when I signed up, or I might have been just as discouraged.”

Leslie sat down and just looked at me, speechless. I decided to let her think for a while about what we’d just said and sent, “
Spectra, any change in the ghosts or tear out there?
”

“
No, Shadow, except that while you fought that elemental the tear seemed to pulse a bit, almost as if it was trying to match the rhythm of the fight,”
she sent. “
There is something else, though. It is as if what we are looking at is not a tear, but a bulge.”

“
What do you mean?”
I asked.

“
It is like space-time is trying to close the hole, but jump space is pushing into normal space, and it broke through here,”
she sent.

“
So this is like some kind of weak spot?”
I asked.

“
Yeah, I am starting to suspect this to be a natural phenomenon of some kind,”
she sent.

“
Those ships are not natural, and somehow I imagine that collecting spaceships is not the normal behavior of ghosts,
” I sent.

“
Maybe it is a natural tear, but someone found it and is taking advantage of it,
” suggested Flame.

“
I like that better than facing someone who has the power to rip reality itself, that is for sure,”
I sent. “
Good work, Spectra, keep at it and find out what you can, but do not neglect your turn to rest when it comes up. I think we will be here a while, watching.
”

“Doctor, how much longer do you think he will sleep?” I asked.

“Impossible to know. Probably hours,” she said.

“Leslie, I want you to take some time to digest everything you just learned. We can talk again later and maybe even answer some questions for you. Until then, consider yourself a part of this crew, because you are.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said.

“Until he wakes, one of us will stand guard down here. Flame, please take first watch, and I will relieve you after I have eaten and had some rest,” I said. I wanted to take first watch, but I knew enough about magical exhaustion to know that I needed real food and rest or risk collapsing again.

“Good idea, Shadow,” she said, then after a nice parting kiss I headed to the mess hall. The rest of that day and part of the next passed without incident. We continued to study the bulge in space and debate different ways we might be able to close it. The big worry that we had in this respect is that we would likely only get one shot at it before whoever was controlling the ghosts found out what we were up to and came to interfere.

It was around midday when the magus awoke during Spectra’s watch. When I arrived in sickbay, he was lying in bed still restrained, with a look of defeat on his face. “Since there is a distinct lack of random lightning bolts, I think we can release him,” I said.

Spectra moved to guard Leslie as Leslie used a remote terminal to retract the restraints that held the magus down. He slowly sat up and looked around the room until his eyes came to me. “Shadow!” he said with a gasp.

“Yes,” I said, “and you are?”

“Darius, sir,” he said.

“Well then, Darius, suppose you tell me how a nice magus like yourself ended up on a ghost pirate ship that was attacking a civilian ore freighter?”

He looked at me and said, “It would be easier for you to take my memory.”

I was a bit surprised by this as it implied a level of trust, no, a level of submission that was far beyond what I would have expected. It would, however, make it very easy to know whether or not we could trust him. He would not be able to hide anything from us, so we would get a solid feel for him as a person through it, far better than we could through interrogation. “Okay, then, at your request I will view your memories.”

~~~

Suddenly I was a young man serving as an engineer during the Great War. I was serving on the Basilisk, a fast attack destroyer that was on the front lines of the battle for Terathan XV. Our ship had been boarded, and foul creatures were laying siege to my engine room. They were the stuff that nightmares were made of. My men had the blast doors sealed, but the creatures had destroyed a section of the wall, and a fierce battle was being waged in that breach. Screams of men dying and the bone-chilling war cries of the enemy filled the air, making it virtually impossible to concentrate on maintaining command.

“Sir! We can’t hold out much longer,” reported one of my men.

“We must, there is nowhere to retreat to!” I called back. The Basilisk was doomed, but I was determined to keep her in the fight as long as my captain wanted us to. I would not surrender my post. I grabbed some spare power cores and started working on a makeshift grenade, when a section of the enemy forces attacking us disappeared. They vanished in an instant, and suddenly it was as if they had never been there.

“DUCK!” I cried out as I tossed my makeshift grenade at the remaining creatures. My explosive was more powerful than I had estimated it would be, and a section of the ship’s already heavily damaged hull collapsed.

“Hull breach!” called out one of my men as everyone scrambled to pull on their helmets and lock their magnetic boots to the floor. The force of escaping air sucked the remaining creatures out into space, giving us temporary reprieve from the attack.

“We have to seal that breach while we still have air. Put everyone that can still walk on it,” I ordered over the suit’s communication links.

Following my own orders, I grabbed a welder and moved to assist with the mounting of armored plates over the breach. Soon we had the hole sealed and the room re-pressurized, but we were losing power fast. I ran to our power plants and saw they had taken serious damage during the fight with the boarders.

“Bridge, this is engineering. We have a problem here,” I said over the ship’s comm but received no answer. I tried several more times but could not raise the bridge, no matter how hard I tried. I called several other departments until I finally got a response from medical. They told me we had lost the entire bridge crew, the captain, and most of the top officers in the last rush. That meant I was in charge, in charge of a dying ship on the front lines of a battle with hostile troops on board. A quick survey of the damage reports showed me that the ship was not salvageable, and the best hope would be to get the crew back to a carrier where they could be redeployed to new ships. Even if we retook the ship, we were in no shape to fight. My duty now was to save the men I still could.

“All hands, all stations, this is Chief Engineer Darius Stanley assuming command. Fall back to engineering and medical. We will make our stand to retake our ship from those two locations,” I announced over the ship’s public address system.

With the bridge crew gone, I took over control of the ship from the stations in engineering and activated the autopilot with the directive to retreat. Soon we had crew members pouring into engineering from all the nearby sections and more of the foul creatures chasing them. With our remaining forces consolidated, we were able to secure this section of the destroyer, but our power plants were fading faster than I had anticipated.

“Abandon ship!” I called out and sent the orders out across the ship’s comm system. There was no reason to fight and retake the ship anymore, as it would not get us safely home. Our chances were better in the escape shuttles.

I led the men that had rallied to engineering and made a push to the shuttle bays. Eventually we got everyone off, well, everyone that still lived. In the end less than a quarter of the crew made it to safety, and the Basilisk was destroyed by enemy fire.

Ever since that battle I was obsessed with learning all that I could about magic, demons, and the ancient arts. I researched every culture’s history, tracking back all their legends, looking for common features that would give some clue as to how the universe changed so drastically so fast. I could not accept that wizards and sorcerers just randomly showed up here one day. Something must have drawn them.

My obsession eventually drove everyone I knew away from me and cost me every job I could get after the war. I had taken to petty thievery just to stay alive and spent many a night in jail for it. It was just such a night that put me on that battleship.

I was sitting in a local pub where less than respectable people would go looking for work. It was a rough crowd there, as usual, but it was the only kind of crowd where someone like me would be welcome. I had a plate of food in front of me, which I ate very slowly, trying to prolong the inevitable, when a group of men came up to me.

“Hear you’re an engineer?” asked one.

“Yes,” I said and then added, “with combat experience,” because they looked like the rough type.

“Perfect,” he said and tossed a credit stick on the table. “Come with us, and that plus much more will be yours.”

I should have stopped and asked some questions, but the truth was I could not afford the meal on the table, and I was planning to spend the night in jail since I had no place to go. The credit stick they tossed me was more money than I had seen in years, and it hinted at freedom. I took the stick and followed them out.

We quickly boarded a shuttlecraft and left the station with several other craft. They gave me some combat armor and weapons. At this point, any sane man would have been questioning the assignment, but a life of poverty effectively banishes any such thoughts.

“One minute till boarding, safeties off, men!” called out a voice on the shuttle’s speakers. I watched my fellow shipmates make obvious battle preparations and decided it would be wise to follow suit. As I was getting ready, I felt the ship slam to a halt, and the outer hatches flew open.

“Charge!” came the cry, and suddenly I was in the middle of a firefight to take control of a shuttle bay. We had the advantage of surprise so we were able to take it quickly. Instinctively I started calling out orders to men around me to secure the bay until the others could join us, and then I ran to a computer station and pulled up maps of the ship.

While I was doing that the man that hired me ran up beside me and said, “You want to be chief engineer? Take the men from your shuttle and claim engineering. I will be taking the rest up to the bridge.”

“Yes, sir!” I said. I knew now that I was in too deep to ask questions. Whoever owned the ship we were taking over would kill me if they got the chance. My best chance for survival was to help my new shipmates succeed in taking control.

I split my team into two squads and charged towards engineering from two different directions. The route to engineering was a grueling fight. Whoever we were up against was unorganized and primitive in their combat skills, but they were fierce and dedicated. My men were not much better trained, but we had the advantage of momentum, surprise, and my superior combat tactical training.

Eventually we reached engineering, but the ship’s defenders had anticipated our goal and fortified themselves well. The battle was fierce, and I lost more men than I cared to think about, but we were making progress in breaking through their line, when an old man in a robe appeared behind their lines. He was wearing a shield belt like those that the sorcerers from the Great War used to wear. He raised his hand, called out a word in an arcane language, and sent a bolt of power right towards us. Thinking quickly, I dove behind a pile of debris, which was completely destroyed by the bolt that was intended for me.

I jumped back to my feet, looked him in the eye, and called out, “Astrapi!” Immediately a bolt of electricity arced from my outstretched arm and into his body, quickly overwhelming his shield. As he screamed in pain everyone paused to look, and I called out, “Charge!”

That delay was all we needed to take over engineering and kill the remaining defenders. It was not long after that until we got the report that the battleship was ours. We quickly jumped away to prevent anyone from attempting to retake the ship.

The next month was spent repairing the damage we had done to the ship in taking it over and preparing for our mission. Captain Kerid had dreams of taking this mismatched group of criminals and making vigilante warriors out of us. He wanted to come to the aid of any ship in need that was outside the reach of the Aleeryon Navy. It was a grand scheme, and one I could definitely get behind for a while, just long enough to make some money and pay off my debts.

That plan would have been great, but less than a month later ghosts attacked the ship. I knew them from my studies, and I tried hard to organize my shipmates to fight them, but the ghosts’ fear weapon was overwhelming, and the crew quickly fell. I tried to make a stand in engineering, but the ghosts turned my own men against me as zombies. I summoned a powerful electrical elemental, which almost completely
drained me, but even he could not stand against the ghosts. Eventually the elemental killed all the zombies, and I was left alone with a ship full of ghosts while trapped behind the shield belt taken from the sorcerer I had defeated when we stole the battleship. I was utterly powerless to do anything but watch my elemental destroy the animated corpses of my shipmates while the ghosts pounded on my shields.

Darius’ memory ended there, and I was once again Shadow and back on the Dust Dragon. I looked at him and wondered a bit about what I had just witnessed. “
So, what does everyone think?”
I sent across our network.

“
He is an outcast, no different from many at Alpha Academy. We should give him a chance,”
sent Phoenix. I had to wonder if he was referring to Spectra or Dusty with that comment.

“
He wanted to help police this space. That’s gotta count for something, right?”
asked Flame.