Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) Read online

  “But what?” he asked in reply. “We can’t get Her Majesty to ‘call off the Hostile attack’ because it isn’t hers. Blue Fire says it’s not hers either. And now, it probably doesn’t matter because there is no way to cork the bottle spewing forth those demons.” He pointed out to where the black spot was still growing on the field. “Your father and his men are making hay with the demons from what I just saw, but even that won’t be enough. Look how the numbers grow.”

  He had seen that the fleet’s mechanized units were increasing in numbers too. There were many standing with the colonel, and many more coming in and disembarking from ships landing at Little Earth. There would be thousands of them soon, and not a small number of flying craft.

  In addition, from their place on the wall, he could see that her Majesty’s troop numbers were increasing on the field as well and, for a time, even more rapidly as the teleporters hit their stride. But even with those forces combined with the mechs from Earth, it wouldn’t be enough for long. The parade grounds inside the city would eventually empty. The staging areas filled with assembled warriors in cities across Kurr would empty. So too would the bellies of the Earth ships empty all their warriors in their various fighting machines. Soon they would all be here. But that fissure in the plain out there beside the orc host would not run dry. The demons would come until there were millions of them, and only when the numbers were so great that they could consume each other as fast as new ones came forth would their numbers level out. And there it would stay in perpetuity, an ongoing spew of death that eats death, forever and all time, just as the stories of Duador told.

  “So where are they coming from?” Orli asked, watching as he did the spread of the black stain on the prairie where the demons arrived. It had begun to flow toward the Queen’s army now, and the orcs had also begun to advance.

  “From hell, I guess,” said Altin. “I don’t really know.”

  “There’s no such thing as hell,” she said. “They have to be coming from somewhere. Is there like a cave or something? Are they some kind of subterranean animal? Like field mice or ants or something?”

  “I really don’t know. The study of demon conjuring has been forbidden for five hundred years. Nobody knows what it is. It was deemed too powerful, as the forever-absent dwarves will attest. Since then, the worship of the evil gods hasn’t even been practiced in secret. Her Majesty’s diviners find anyone who even thinks about it, and she has them hauled off to the headsman’s block.”

  “I hope they get better hearings than I did back at home,” Orli said.

  Altin nodded, but his mind was not on the ways of justice just then. “We have to get word to the Queen about what Lord Forland advised. We haven’t time to waste. The battle will be upon us soon.”

  “What will we do then?” Orli asked.

  Altin shook his head, making a sound like a grunt deep in his chest. “We’ll fight.”

  Orli’s mind raced for an alternative, but there was simply nothing that came to mind. Turning away from the wall she leaned into him. He enfolded her in his arms and let go a long warm breath into her hair. He was right, of course. They’d have no choice but to fight. And, worse, even if they won, it would still be over for Prosperion. The War Queen couldn’t call off the attacking orbs on Earth, and so they were going to die anyway. All of them. Everyone would be dead. What a great time to be alive.

  She allowed herself to draw strength and comfort from Altin, who seemed to do the same from her. She loved how his clothes smelled of Prosperion, how they smelled of the wind that blew across Great Forest and permeated the fabric with the authentic scent of this world, or what it had been before today. She’d come close many times to having this world to live upon in peace, as a home, a place to be happy, but no matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried, it seemed the universe, or perhaps some laughing god out there somewhere, really just didn’t want that for her. Violence lived everywhere. The Queen was right, it followed her.

  But if that’s how it was, then that’s how it was, she thought to herself as she listened to Altin’s heart. It beat so steady and strong. She would be strong too, like he was. She wouldn’t go out simpering like some frightened child. With one last inhalation of beech and elm and the scent of the man she loved in his clothes, the scent of the man she was probably going to die with very soon, she leaned back far enough to look into his emerald green eyes. She smiled up at him. “Let’s get it done,” she said.

  He kissed her, long and with passion heated by the burning down of two whole worlds, crushing her to him for a time. He pulled away then, holding her face in his hands, smiling back at her. “I love you,” he said.

  “I know. I love you too.”

  And then they were with the Queen, who had just learned of the demons herself.

  Chapter 30

  Captain Asad sat upon the bridge of his dark ship swearing under his breath. His crew had done this restart ritual over twenty times between practice and traveling to Goldilocks, or Blue Fire as it was thought of by some. And yet at the nine-hour mark, his people had insisted it would still be at least two more hours. “Other crews will have gotten it done in ten,” he’d insisted. “We have no idea what’s going on down there. Get it done.”

  The two hours was up and he was still sitting in the dark.

  “Nguyen, what’s the problem down there?” he barked into his com badge.

  “It’s almost ready, sir. I’m on my way back now. They said five minutes.”

  “They said two hours, a hundred and thirty-one minutes ago.”

  “Yes, sir,” came the ensign’s tactful reply.

  Captain Asad rose from his command chair and paced the bridge. The older man sitting at the weapon controls glanced up at him as he passed by. He too had been around long enough to recognize when silence was the best option.

  Several steps past the weapon station and nearly to his chair, the lights came back on. All of them. High-pitched sounds were emitted from speakers, and monitors flashed, and then normalcy returned to the Aspect’s bridge. A moment after that, Ensign Nguyen appeared from the lift and took his place at the controls. He quickly tapped in several commands, and after a few minutes ticking and clucking to himself, he had his station fully operational. “Ready to go,” he said. A similar report came from the weapons officer seated next to him.

  “Take us to Prosperion. Get it on the monitor as soon as we’re close enough. Report on the status of the other ships.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the ensign as his hands flew across the controls.

  The time it took to make the jump and cover the distance from exit to orbit passed so slowly for Captain Asad that he might have burned holes through the hull were his eyes actually capable of generating the heat that seemed to radiate from them. But at last they arrived at the planet and quickly set themselves to finding out how the landed troops had done.

  As soon as video was available, they called up the fight taking place on the plains of Prosperion. Even the bellicose Captain Asad was taken aback by what he saw.

  Crown City was awash in black monsters, demons according to the brief they’d been given from the controller at Little Earth as they approached the planet. Wave upon wave of the monsters swarmed around the city walls like an ocean of black tar, and they could see where in places, a few of the larger ones had been able to jump over the walls and were wreaking havoc in the streets. The space fortress, Citadel, hovered over the battlefield along with what looked to be several hundred smaller cubes of stone, which the captain recognized as the small towers dubbed redoubts by the Prosperions. They hung over the fight raining long blue shafts of ice and huge balls of fire into the black mass, but not to any significant effect the captain could appreciate. Occasionally, a particularly agile monster would leap high enough into the air, or perhaps was thrown that high by its fellows, and would grapple with one of the smaller blocks, but each time, the redoubt would simply vanish and reappear somewhere else over the battlefield.


  Meanwhile, the base at Little Earth was under similar siege. All ten thousand mech units had landed, but the status report showed that over a quarter of them had already been destroyed. The fighters and bombers were laying strafing runs across the ranks of the black monstrosities, and the bombs they’d been dropping had dug a trench that was over a hundred feet deep, two miles long and nearly a mile wide. The trench separated the beleaguered base from the huge army that was embattled with the forces of the Queen, but the monstrous things seemed to flow from the flanks of that host like a river of black oil, pouring down into the trench, and then climbing up the other side. The edge of the crevice served as the front line for the fleet forces, and the mechs and fighters were blowing the beasts to pieces by the thousands as they tried to clamber out of the trench. And yet, despite uncountable losses, the demons continued to come.

  “That is not what I expected,” admitted Captain Asad as he looked on.

  “You seeing this, Asad?” came the voice of Captain Metumbe over the all-com.

  “I’m seeing it,” he replied.

  “What do you make of that?”

  “I’d say the arrogance of the so-called War Queen has finally come back to bite her. It looks like she tried to let loose some kind of Prosperion attack dog, and they turned on her somehow. If anything, it’s going to make our job easier.”

  “I agree. Maybe we should get our people out of there though. I’m not sure they’re going to be able to hold out for much longer against all that, despite how well dug in they are. And maybe there’s no point now anyway.”

  “Nguyen, get me Colonel Pewter. And if he asks about his daughter, don’t say a thing.”

  “I won’t, sir. Right away, sir.”

  “Get the director online as well. He should be seeing this.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The colonel did not reply right away, but less than a minute passed before Director Nakamura’s face lit up the ensign’s com. Captain Asad got up and went to it, leaning against the panel with one arm. “Take this feed, Director,” he said. He nodded to Ensign Nguyen to send the video feed they’d been watching since coming into orbit above Prosperion.

  The captain observed the sequence of expressions that moved across the director’s face, at first confusion, then recognition, then shock and last stoic determination. “What happened?” he finally asked.

  “We don’t know. We’re trying to get Pewter up.”

  “Is his mech still up?”

  “Yes, he’s still showing operational.”

  “Transport Nine is inbound,” reported Ensign Nguyen then. “Commander Levi has requested ammunition. He says he needs every crate on the ship. And I have Little Earth control relaying Colonel Pewter’s request for orbital support from any and all ships available.”

  Captain Asad looked to the small monitor where the director was still visible, looking tired as he stared at the video feed of the battle on Prosperion. “Do we pull them out, or do we resupply them and help them cut a path to the city walls?”

  “Did they give the ultimatum to the Prosperion leader?” asked the director. “We’ve seen no lessening of Hostile attacks here, and forty-one cities in the NTA alone are gone, or at least no longer communicating with us. We’ve got to put the pressure on the Prosperion ruler or you folks won’t have any place to call home.”

  “I don’t know, sir. We’re trying to raise Colonel Pewter now.” Captain Asad touched the ensign on the shoulder. “Find out if Little Earth control knows if Pewter or Kincaid got to the Queen.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you think, given the situation, it would be safe to send a ship straight to the capital now?” the director asked as he continued looking on. “She’s got to be sitting in a pretty deep puddle of piss right about now, even if Pewter didn’t get through all that.”

  “The magic screws with flight controls. I expect whatever that effect is will be much worse right now. I would bet everyone who can use that power is using it to defend the city.”

  “Captain, I have Colonel Pewter,” reported Ensign Nguyen.

  “Get him on screen.”

  A moment later the colonel’s face appeared, looking haggard and sweat-soaked. “Asad, we need starships to cut us clear and get us time to get out. This is pointless without a lot more suits and air support.”

  “We’re working on a solution for that, Colonel. I have the director on the feed. We need to know, did you get to the Queen? Did you give her the ultimatum?”

  “No, I couldn’t get there in time. Not before all this went down. But she knows. Orli is in the city with her. I told her to get the message to the Queen.”

  “Pewter?” the captain said, eyes wide as his gaze shot to the image of Director Nakamura.

  The director’s expression flattened, grim, and he was nodding, as if a suspicion had just been confirmed.

  “Yes, my daughter is alive,” said the colonel watching Captain Asad. “And she told me what you did. You and I are going to deal with that if I get off this planet alive.”

  “In the meantime, Colonel,” said the director, redirecting that subject for now. “What was the Queen’s response?”

  “No response. I’ve been busy, and Orli said it’s not the Queen attacking Earth. Altin Meade confirms it.”

  “They’re lying, and both are servants of the crown. So that’s the end of it,” said Captain Asad. “Earth is finished.” He shook his head and looked as if he wanted to send a nuke down into the capital city right then.

  “Maybe not,” said the director. “If that woman really has miscalculated as bad as it appears she has, maybe she needs to soak in the juices of her mistake for a while longer is all. When it gets ugly enough down there, she may be forced to stop playing this stupid game.”

  “I don’t think it’s a game, Director,” said the colonel then. “We’ve been working with a company of royal cavalry down here, and their C.O. swears this isn’t the doings of the Queen. He says this is an invading army from the mountain, a population they call orcs. They’re the ones that brought the demons out.”

  “He’s lying, just as she is,” said Captain Asad. “They’re a race of liars. We had a run-in with the orcs a few months ago. They’re savages with bows and pointy sticks. This is just another attempt to buy their War Queen time. For all we know, those orcs aren’t even real.”

  “The demons are real,” said the colonel. “And faking the rest doesn’t make any sense. I think she’s got a real problem, and it popped up at a really bad time. We’d have been screwed if those orcs came at us, but they never have. They’ve been engaged with Her Majesty’s regulars the whole time. And since these black devils have started showing up, the total number of invaders has more than quadrupled. The only reason we haven’t been overrun is that trench. Well, that and the fact that half these bastards are too busy either eating the dead or eating each other to come at us properly. If you guys start helping out from up there, and we don’t run out of ammo down here, I think we can hold out for a while. But I don’t think it’s going to go as well for the Queen.”

  Both the director and Captain Asad nodded at that. The captain spoke what the director clearly thought. “If that’s the case, then she will want our help at some point. Let’s just hope it is in time to save the Earth.”

  “We need to get in touch with your daughter, Colonel,” said the director. “We need to tell her to let the Queen know we can help her clean up her mess. Tell her to call off the Hostiles.”

  “Pretty goddamn ironic, isn’t it?” said the colonel. “You two jam her straight through the system, behind my back, and you send me here to do this at the same time. Me fighting your battles while you’re murdering my daughter. You’re like a couple of snakes, and you even fucked that up. And yet here you are, needing me and my girl to pull your ass out of the deep shit you got us in. I’m not impressed, gentlemen.”

  “We didn’t get us in it, Colonel. We never asked to be at war with the Hostiles, or that queen. Yo
u can have your day in court when this is all over, but that day will only come if there is a court for you to come back to. So, secure the sour grapes for now, do your job and get your daughter into the feed.”

  Hate warped the colonel’s features like heat coming off the hot barrels of a Gatling gun, but he seemed to relent some. “I’ll see what I can do.” His feed went dark.

  Chapter 31

  The line of Orli’s laser cut a clean gash along the ridge of spines running down the demon’s back, toppling several of the sharp protrusions, like severed stalactites, and sending them tumbling over the sides of its body toward the cobblestone streets. Two of the city guardsmen beneath it, pestering its lower hemisphere with the sharp points of their halberds, had to jump out of the way as the huge spines crashed to the ground.

  Taot’s flight path took them low, and Orli spun her head around in time to see three other guards diving out from between the demon’s legs, just in time to avoid its vicious bite. But another was not so lucky. She watched in horror as the monster plucked a fourth guardsman up from the crumbling cobblestones in one of its claws, held him dangling by one ankle, thrashing and screaming for a moment, before passing him into the nasty shears of its awful visage where it mashed and masticated the man in its bloody mandibles. Orli turned and pressed her forehead against Altin’s back, trying to clear her mind of what she’d witnessed. She had to stay focused.

  Taot swung back around, and once again Altin threw down an ice lance that was as thick as Taot’s tail and nearly half again as long. The huge frozen shaft crashed into the cut that Orli had made and split it wider, though, as before, the ice broke up more easily than it should. Altin had concluded early on that the creatures were resistant to magic in some way. Fire was useless and lightning almost as bad, but this strategy, working together, was garnering some results. The creatures were less resistant inside than out. Their hard outer shells made magic largely ineffectual, but his magic seemed to hold together almost half the time if he could get a shot through a break in that carapace.