Authors: Saje Williams
“You hybrids…” He aimed his gaze at Tuck, Claw, and Bridget.
“…were intended to first lead a softening attack upon the human population, to spread fear, then, once the Cen had sent in their ant-soldiers to crush any military opposition, to become the backbone of the subsequent excavation of the crash site. The plan was to have you run the operation and keep the human slaves in line, since ant-soldiers are not capable of dealing with the extreme cold of the polar regions.
“The thing they weren’t going to tell you was that the ship is already claimed, by an immortal by the name of Odin. He’s been working behind the scenes, building the Church of the Three-Fold God into a force that could eventually, using magic, free the ship for his own use. There’s no telling how Odin would’ve reacted to your attempt to dig out the ship, but I’m willing to bet it wouldn’t have been pretty.
“It’s important to keep in mind that Odin’s still on the loose, and we’re not at all sure what cards he still has to play in all of this. What we’re going to do is use Scorpio’s jump ships to secure the sight, then establish a base and ten mile perimeter around the ship. The mercs will hold the outside while the rest of us clean the ship itself out of anything that might pose a threat during the excavation process. Any questions so far?”
“What kind of opposition are we expecting?” Scorpio asked.
It was a good question, Morrigan thought, and certainly one you’d expect from an experienced military commander.
“We threw a monkey wrench in their plans by subverting their hybrid forces and killing one of their valkyrie—it may be a while before the Cen can put another force on the scene to oppose us directly. But they’re bound to have some agents there, perhaps even within the Church. The willingness of a certain faction of the Cen to make use of magic is a new development, and we’re not entirely certain what agenda they themselves might be pursuing. If they’re after the ship as well, I’d say we can expect www.samhainpublishing.com 263
Saje Williams
some Church troops on the scene before too long, supported by the magic-wielding Deacons.
“If we establish and secure a fifteen mile perimeter, it’s very unlikely they’ll be able to get close enough to hit the base with any spells before your ships can shred their forces. As far as what we’re likely to encounter
inside
the ship…well, your guess is as good as mine.”
“Is it just me,” Tuck interjected. “Or is there an awful lot of conjecture in all of this?”
Raven nodded. “No, it’s not just you. A lot of this is guesswork and extrapolation. Some was Shea’s, some is our own from what we already know. Unlike Shea, we’ve actually been
inside
the ship. Beyond that, part of the problem is that we really don’t know how many factions are involved, and what goals each faction might be pursuing. We know that Odin has some influence with the Church, but we’re not sure that all of it remains under his thumb. And we don’t actually know anything about his ultimate agenda either.
“We’re pretty sure there are at least three Cen factions—the one we all know and love to hate, the new, magic-tolerant crowd, and a group we’re told is interested in more peaceful relations with us. Add this to the possibility that their may be schisms in the Church itself that have little or nothing at all to do with outside influences, we’re dealing with one hell of a lot of unknowns.”
Morrigan was impressed. A lot of leaders might have attempted to gloss over those things they did not know to foster a false sense of confidence, but Raven chose not to go that route. He’d laid all bare for everyone to scrutinize.
“So what’s in it for us?” asked Claw. Had she thought about it, she could’ve predicted this sort of response from the wolverine. Despite the bluntness of his query, she had to admit he made a good point. The hybrids were risking a lot by joining up, and had the least to gain from it.
Scorpio and his troops were in it for the money, and Morrigan felt pretty certain Raven was good for it one way or another.
The hybrids were being asked to participate out of little more than gratitude for being freed from the Cen yoke, and that seemed like a pretty 264
www.samhainpublishing.com
Sword and Shadow
sparse reward if they ended up being killed by the Cen or another one of the myriad of factions involved, in a battle for the ship.
“That’s easy,” Raven answered. “The protection of the immortals and the opportunity to join the growing community on Starhaven, a place completely beyond the reach of the Cen.”
Morrigan nodded. That was good thinking. Not only would they be safe on Starhaven as a group, they’d provide an excellent asset for the agencies, who would give nearly anything to have whole races of operatives capable of infiltrating Cen-controlled worlds without arousing suspicion.
“Sounds like a fucking dog’s breakfast,” Scorpio grumbled loudly.
“Not to worry, though. Our craft can take on anything the bugs can throw at us.”
“It’s not the bugs you should be worried about,” Raven told him. “The real issue will be dealing with the Church mages. If they’re smart, they can target your ships as easily as any anti-aircraft battery. What’s worse is if they do it right, you won’t be able to trace the source of the attack.”
“Huh. Good point. What do you suggest?”
A slow, sly smile crept across Raven’s face. “We ward your ships.”
All in all, the mercenary company, which called itself ‘Havoc,’ had nearly three hundred jump ships, ranging from dual-seat fighters to large transport vessels like the one in which Scorpio had originally arrived. It took several days for Raven and Morrigan to ward them all, mostly because they pulled out all the stops to make the wards as potent as possible. Constructing wards with more than three strands was rare, but they actually put across the effort to tie five threads to each, making the defensive response of the spells remarkably violent. While one thread was intended to parry an attack, a second was meant to follow it back to its source, and the third laid down a stream of supercharged ions for the two-pronged lightning bolt to follow.
It was a nasty response and Raven felt undeniably proud of its potential effectiveness. The only way for the Deacons to survive it was if www.samhainpublishing.com 265
Saje Williams
they were warded to the hilt, and mages didn’t tend to ward themselves as a matter of course. Arrogance could be a killer.
If Raven had his way, it
would
be.
The first real hitch they had during the whole preparation phase was Scorpio’s insistence during one of their daily briefings on having a clear chain of command laid out, and everyone knowing everyone else’s place in it.
Raven cocked an eyebrow in response, Val cleared her throat, and Morrigan snorted loudly. Lady-like she wasn’t.
“How ’bout we do it this way? Raven’s in charge,” Morrigan said. “Val, you, and I will be his lieutenants. She runs the wolves, I’m in charge of the cats and weasels, and you take care of your mercenary troops. In the absence of conflicting orders, any of those under our command should take orders directly from Raven or the other lieutenants. Does that work for you?”
He looked dubious, but hid it behind his coffee mug as he took a drink and gazed across the table at her. “Sounds like chaos.”
“What would you prefer?”
“I don’t mind Raven being in charge. He’s been a soldier, I understand. He’s been in combat. But I think I should be the next in line.”
This didn’t sit well with Morrigan. Her eyes went flat and she leaned forward, catching his gaze within her raptor stare. “My name is Morrigan.
I was—
I am—
a goddess of war. Don’t presume to throw your macho military crap at me and expect me to swallow it. Not for a flaming second.
Am. I. Understood?” She clipped the last three words so sharply they each stood alone, naked and unafraid.
Raven exchanged glances with Val, both of them restraining the urge to smile. Sexism didn’t fly where they came from, and even if it was the way things usually worked on
this
Earth, things were about to change.
Scorpio’s expression didn’t alter a fraction. He nodded once and slid his chair back, standing in one easy motion. “Now
that’s
settled, I suppose it’s time to arrange for a last maintenance check of the ships.”
266
www.samhainpublishing.com
Sword and Shadow
He swept from the room without another word. “Well,” Val observed quietly. “I don’t think he liked that much.”
“I think you’re right,” Morrigan murmured. “You screw a guy and he thinks he knows you.”
Val shot her a look and laughed aloud. “Funny how that works, isn’t it?”
Raven shook his head and chuckled to himself. No matter how you figured such things, Morrigan was a character. He couldn’t begin to express, even to himself, how glad he was he hadn’t fallen for her not-inconsiderable charms. Of course, their first meeting had gone a long way toward making
that
pretty much impossible.
The hybrids tended to remain silent through the briefings, probably some kind of a holdover from their Cen training. “What was his objection?” Bridget asked him.
“Humans have gender issues,” he told her. “Some men don’t like to consider females capable of doing the same jobs they do.”
She cocked her head, one ear flicking back in a very canine expression of disbelief. He smiled slightly and shrugged. “It sounds unbelievable, I know. But that’s not the worst of it. For thousands of years on my world, men considered women to be property—if not the property of their fathers and brothers, then the property of their husbands. It wasn’t universal, but damn near enough.”
“And she—Morrigan—was a warrior?”
“A legendary warrior, if you believe the stories,” he answered. “I wouldn’t want to try her. She may have gotten soft in the intervening centuries, but I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it.”
She curled her lip into a fair semblance of a human grin. “Neither would I. We follow Val. We know she’s killed a Valkyrie. And the immortal known as Deryk Shea. She hunts well.”
“She does,” he agreed, aiming his gaze in her direction.
She caught
me sure enough.
www.samhainpublishing.com 267
Saje Williams
Chapter Thirty-two
“This is what we get for making assumptions!” yelled Raven, over the sound of the rattle of machine-gun fire.
Val shot him a sharp look and a lop-sided grin as she ducked back into the trench. He risked a glance over the barricade and grimaced.
“Where’s our fucking air support?”
As if conjured by the words themselves, a low whistle filled the air and a jump-ship rocketed overhead, spitting bolts of directed radiation at the oncoming troops.
Either Shea’s intelligence was completely off, or he pulled a fast one on
us from beyond the grave.
Someone besides Morrigan had been supplying the locals with munitions, and, apparently, training them as well. Raven had the suspicion it had been Odin, but he had no way to confirm it until the one-eyed bastard showed up on the scene.
They hadn’t been able to get close enough to find out whether they were using the ship as a base, or if they were just camped around it.
Either way, the easy excavation they’d been anticipating had turned out to be a sucker’s bet.
They’d only been here for two days now. This was their second night and Raven was getting downright pissed about the whole situation. Their troops didn’t have the ammunition to stand up to any kind of protracted battle, and, the way it seemed right now, that’s what they were facing.
The enemy barricades were heavily warded, which made any kind of magically-assisted assault nearly impossible. The air support helped, but the Deacons had learned quickly not to target the ships themselves, but just to trust in their defensive arrays to counter their weapons. Only one shot out of about thirty were getting through to do any damage.
268
www.samhainpublishing.com
Sword and Shadow
What was that I was thinking about over-confidence just a few days
back?
he thought wryly.
It’s a killer.
Maybe you were betrayed,
said that voice, the one he hadn’t heard for months. He ignored it and jumped into the trench beside Val. “You have any ideas?” he asked her.
“I might have the glimmer of one,” she replied. “It’s risky, but it might work.”
“Risky is good enough. We can’t take more than another day of this.
Our troops will run out of ammo if it keeps up.”
“Tell me something I
don’t
know,” she shot back, a bit irritably.
“Sorry. I’m as frustrated by this as you are.”
“I can tell.” He reached out and ran his fingers through her hair.
Even as dirty and matted as it had become, he couldn’t keep his hands off it. He seemed to always be wanting to touch her. If he were her, he’d be about sick of it by now. “What do you have in mind?”
She sketched a gently curving line in the dirt floor of the trench, demarcating the line of the enemy barricades. The line formed a half-circle with its open end butting up against the massive bulk of the crashed ship. “We’re looking at as many as a thousand human troops in there, all armed with automatic weapons and possessing what I assume to be a massive stockpile of ammunition.
“We can’t charge their line because we’d get shredded, and we can’t just hang back here and plink away at them. We’re likely to run out of ammo long before they do.
“I’m wondering if I can conjure a plane of force and aim it into the center of their barricade. I’m estimating that I might be able to form one thirty to forty feet long. Judging by what I was able to do to Shea’s doppelganger, the plane might well slice right through the barricade and whoever’s standing behind it. If you can transport a sizeable portion of our hybrid forces close to the barricade, they can use the distraction to break through and gain a foothold on the other side of the wall.”
“You weren’t kidding about the ‘risky’ part, were you?” He knew he’d gone dead by the concern reflected in her gaze. She hated it when all semblance of humanity faded from his face, but sometimes he couldn’t www.samhainpublishing.com 269
Saje Williams
help it. He’d already figured out what she wasn’t saying out loud. To pull this off she’d have to get within a hundred feet or so of the barricade, well within range of enemy fire. “Fine. I’m going to modify the plan a little, though. Bryon and I will accompany you on your initial charge. I’ll use a strand to re-route any fire that comes our way, then Morrigan will transport the hybrids to reinforce us. You didn’t happen to get my other pistol back when you escaped from Goban, did you?”
“I was a little preoccupied at the time,” she said in a low growl. “I didn’t think to reclaim your gun.”
“It’s not a gun,” Raven informed her, lifting the M-16 that had been leaning against the trench wall. “
This
is a gun. It’s a sidearm or a pistol.”
She rolled her eyes. “Give it up. It’s a goddam gun, Raven. So…you want to spread the word, or shall I?”
“You can contact everyone mentally, right?”
She nodded. “I think so.”
“Do it. Let’s get this show on the road.”
Morrigan raced behind Val and the vampires, drawing a thread behind her like a long whip. As the roar of automatic weapons filled her ears, she saw the two vamps stop, put Val down, and watched as the blonde woman raised her hand to point at the barricade.
A rising whistle filled her ears, so high of pitch no mortal could possibly hear it, and, for a second, she wondered what it was. Then she realized that it was the sound of a mono-molecular plane of telekinetic force sweeping forward from Val. The sound rose to a crescendo as something invisible neatly bisected the barricade and the air was suddenly filled with the sound of choking screams. A cloud of red mist rose from the enemy’s ranks and Morrigan felt a sudden chill rush down her spine.
The two vamps swept her up again and ran toward the barrier, moving as little more than pale blurs in the liquid dark. Morrigan snapped the thread she carried backward and transformed it into a transit tube.
270
www.samhainpublishing.com
Sword and Shadow
They vaulted the cordon and vanished from sight, but she could still hear the rattle of weapons fire. One by one, the feline and mustalid hybrids emerged from the other end of the transit tube, running for the barricade with weapons in hand. Morrigan suppressed the strong urge to sprint forward herself, knowing she needed to stay here to hold the transit tube in place, and replace it if made necessary by a possible disruption from the Church mages inside the compound.
Every new burst made her wince. She
hated
being out of the action.
She hated being back here, more or less, safe, while they took all the risks.
Across the barricade, Raven released Val’s arm and he and Bryon spun in unison, their M-16s spitting blazing death at anyone within range. He picked out a bullet spinning toward Val like slow motion video in his vampiric sight, and nearly screamed when it pinged off an invisible shield a foot from her body.
She had her sword in hand, and was striding forward, meeting up with a knot of soldiers struggling to train their weapons on her. Her rapier arced, and steel barrels sheared away, cut by a blade now as sharp as the crystal weapon in Raven’s dimension pocket.
They went down before her like grain before a scythe, and she advanced over their bodies, throwing out her left hand at another clump of soldiers some ten feet away. Another invisible plane of force passed through them, and they were dying even as their bodies tumbled in bloody segments to the ground.
Somewhere to his left Raven spotted a couple of Church Deacons in gray robes, eyeing Val and reaching for passing strands. Raven fired a quick burst and vanished in a swirl of black fog before materializing in their midst. He smashed one from his feet with the butt of his rifle and snatched the other up with his free hand. “You hitched your cart to the wrong damn horse,” he snarled. Then he whirled, sending the mage hurtling through a mass of soldiers and into the inside corner of the barrier with a sickening crunch.
www.samhainpublishing.com 271
Saje Williams
And then the cats and weasels were coming over the wall, Tuck and Claw in the lead. The tiger launched himself from the top in an impressive sixty foot vertical leap, coming down in the middle of a squad of soldiers trying to take aim at Raven. Without even bothering to un-sling his rifle from his back, he used his massive clawed hands to rive his way through them. They fell screaming.
The burly wolverine leaped down from the barricade and charged across the killing field, faltering once as a single bullet found his flesh, but without missing a single step. He caught a soldier by himself—a young man barely old enough to shave—and plowed him into the crimson earth under his feet like a furry battering ram.
Then he filled his hands with spitting death and mowed through another squad scrambling madly to get a bead on him.
Breaching the wall had made all the difference. Now the feral savagery of the hybrids came into play, and the close quarters made the automatic weapons carried by the Church soldiers nearly useless.
Raven shifted his focus to the Deacons interspersed through the crowd. They’d been taken by surprise as much as the troops, and were now fighting to come up with a way to defend themselves as well as repel the invaders.
Raven pulled a spell from his web and hurled it at one of them, but not before a Deacon managed to cast a sigil of his own at Claw. Five threads expanded outward from the whirling rune as it unfolded itself.
Raven pawed at his own web, trying to find a generic counter, but he was a second too late. Four bolts of fire slashed at the wolverine and he burst into flames.
The last strand snatched him up and hurled him into the sky like a toy soldier launched by a rubber band. Before Raven could do anything for him, he was forced to use the defensive spell to protect himself from a concerted attack by two of the Deacons.
He repelled their spells and vanished from their sights, bounding to where they stood with two thrusts of his legs. He flung the M-16 back and seemed to materialize between them. A savage hooking kick with his heel smashed one to the ground as he ducked a wild swing from the 272
www.samhainpublishing.com
Sword and Shadow
other. He became a blur, moving so quickly that he was behind the Deacon before the man had a chance to react. Rather than giving him another chance to throw a spell, Raven simply reached out and snapped his neck with a twist of his wrists.
The man collapsed, a puppet who’d lost his strings.
Morrigan paused before the wall and looked up at the flaming ball coursing overhead. She snapped out a strand and pulled it to her. She snuffed the flames by sucking them away into the earth at her feet and stared down in growing horror at the twitching and mewling thing before her.
Then it struck her like a thunderbolt who it was. The remnants of fur clinging to the side of his muzzle kicked the realization into gear.
Oh, my
god.
She felt to her knees but stopped herself before she touched him. He had to be in agony. It was a wonder he was even alive. “Claw? Don’t try to speak. Fuck!”
She stood and watched in helpless fascination as he shuddered and died before her eyes.
She spun and, coiling her legs under her, vaulted to the top of the barricade. A stray round sizzled across her shoulder, but she barely felt the sting. Her eyes scraped across the compound, falling upon a single figure at the very back, guarded by a dozen or more soldiers.
“Motherfuckers,” she hissed, and leaped to the ground. She strode purposely in their direction, faltering by half a step to drive a whitened fist into the throat of a Church soldier who strayed too close. Bullets whizzed by like a swarm of angry bees, but she kept walking. At a distance of fifty feet or so she broke into a trot, then accelerated into a full-out charge.
She’d liked the gruff wolverine a great deal, and she wanted blood in payment for what had been done to him. And if someone was being protected by the soldiers, she was willing to place the blame squarely on his shoulders. Why not?
A single round struck her in the ribs and spun her halfway around, but she continued the motion and whirled back to face her target. She www.samhainpublishing.com 273
Saje Williams
still couldn’t make out any details, hidden as he was by his lackeys and the hot tears streaming down her face, but none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was wrapping her fingers around his throat and watching the light slowly fade from his eyes.
She grunted as another bullet struck, lodging somewhere in her left shoulder. By the time she reached the wall of soldiers, she’d been hit three more times. None of it had any effect. Painful, but not debilitating.
Not to her. The first bullet was already being forced out of the wound as the flesh healed it when she drove the first guard to his knees with a straight kick to the groin. She grabbed his weapon as he fell and, rather than using it as it was intended, she simply used it as a club to batter her way through the clump of soldiers.
Several blows, broken limbs, and skull fractures later, she broke through and found herself staring straight at Goban, who sneered and raised a very familiar black matte handgun. He thrust the muzzle at her and pulled the trigger. The slug slammed into her sternum and stopped.
She grinned, and it wasn’t a friendly expression. “You know,” she said slowly, “maybe we’ve been wrong all along. Maybe there
is
a God.”
She slapped the pistol from his hand and followed with a straight left pulled from halfway across the continent. It came at him with all the power and velocity of one of Earth Prime’s anti-grav trains. No mortal could possibly escape or hope to block it.
Goban twisted out of the way and caught her on the side of the head with his elbow.
Val caught sight of a pistol flying through the air, snatched it up with a telekinetic ‘hand,’ and sent it floating Raven, who stood about fifty feet away. He caught it, turned it over in his grasp, and smiled, though she noticed the smile was a bit grim. She couldn’t blame him. Looking around at the dead and wounded, she didn’t feel much like smiling herself.