Bellator: An Anthology of Warriors of Space & Magic Read online

  “Don’t be misled by what you see,” the apprentice rasped. “Image is not everything.”

  With an unexpectedly forceful push, the guild mistress shoved Carlisle away, throwing her off balance and knocking her to the floor. Minerva was stronger than her small frame would suggest, but the apprentice was faster than her larger build implied, and she rolled out of the fall, restoring her footing before the older woman could respond. There was no surprise expressed in Minerva’s loosely held stance. She smiled viciously.

  “Mistake number three,” Minerva breathed raggedly. “Never allow your opponent the advantage of familiar terrain.”

  She flicked her well-sharpened sword upwards, slicing through one of the two silky cords attaching a Redsun banner to the ceiling. The banner slipped down to drape over Carlisle, temporarily obscuring her vision and threatening to entangle her. She backpedalled, hastily drawing away from the opposite cordon holding the other half of the banner in place. The half covering her slid off and fell to the floor.

  “I fight fair or not at all,” Carlisle hissed. “I won’t stoop to your dirty tricks.”

  She stepped onto the banner and reached up to cut the remaining rope. With a soft rustling whine, it slipped to the floor. Carlisle glanced over, but Minerva was no longer there.

  Before she could react to the guild mistress’s disappearance, the apprentice caught a flash of steel from the corner of her eye. The older woman had stealthily whisked around her and her blade was sweeping towards Carlisle’s throat.

  “Mistake number four,” Minerva gloated, believing the kill to be a sure thing. “Always watch your back.”

  Carlisle dropped suddenly to her knees before the blade made contact, and the guild mistress found herself off balance. With a careful twist, the younger woman swept Minerva’s legs out from under her, toppling her to the floor. The impact knocked the wind from the veteran warrior’s lungs, and as she lay partially stunned, Carlisle seized the opportunity to pin her opponent, wedging her knees into Minerva’s chest. The apprentice brought the edge of her blade up to the guild mistress’s throat.

  “Back-stabbing is for cowards,” Carlisle growled, letting her sword bite into the skin of Minerva’s neck.

  The guild mistress laughed softly, expressing no fear.

  “Maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you are Redsun material, but that has yet to be seen. You can fight–I never denied that–but that’s not enough. If you want my position, you still have to kill me. I won’t beg for mercy. I am defenceless. Go on, make the kill.”

  Carlisle snarled, grabbing at Minerva’s coarse hair. She tossed the idea of ending the guild mistress’s life back and forth in her mind, but each time she prepared to make the kill, her hand began to tremble and her head began to swim. The fly buzzed past her face as the seconds slowly passed–once, twice, three times.

  Realizing that this final act was beyond her, Carlisle released the older woman and got to her feet. Minerva sat up.

  “You couldn’t do it, could you? You wouldn’t accept my judgement, so I had to prove it to you. Face it, you are not mercenary material. If this were a battle situation, you would be out of a job. We aren’t interested in taking prisoners, which is why we aren’t interested in you. Give it up. Go home. Killing isn’t in your blood. Go find yourself a nice husband and raise yourself some equally nice kids.”

  The veteran’s face grew red as she spoke, and Carlisle wondered how many of her words were sincere and how many were spoken to save face. The apprentice had, after all, defeated her. Dejected, Carlisle tore the sash and tabard from her back and flung them to the floor.

  Minerva got to her feet, frowning at the dishevelled state of her office. She swatted at the fly, and turned her back on Carlisle.

  “If the situation had been reversed, and I had had you helpless on the floor, you wouldn’t have been walking out of this room. I’m not paid to hesitate,” Minerva said, without turning to face her.

  Carlisle slammed the door. Outside, Elliot sat up with interest, his eyes wide.

  “What happened? Did you...”

  Carlisle did not give him the chance to finish, storming past him before he could complete his thought. She did not slow down until she had marched out through the guild’s front gates and into the street. The gates clanked loudly closed behind her.

  Trembling with rage, she made her way to a nearby large rock and sat down with a grunt. The sweat poured from her now, and the sun, a tormenting symbol of her failure, hungrily devoured what little energy she had left. She let her head droop between her outstretched arms, her hands resting on the pommel of her propped up sword. She felt as though she was drowning in disappointment.

  Several moments later, a fly spiralled down from above and settled upon her boot. Carlisle choked back a sound, half sob, half chuckle, and lifted her head.

  “You want killer instinct? I’ll show you killer instinct.”

  She raised the sword, preparing to mash the fly into oblivion, but it had already vanished. That was when she noticed the man standing next to her. She raised her eyes to get a full view.

  He was a small man, dressed in light, airy white robes emblazoned with a gold and royal blue insignia. He stood uncomfortably close to where Carlisle was sitting, but did not seem to care that he had invaded her personal space. The little man appeared to be middle aged, with a slim frame and a slight beard. His eyes were eerie, so dark that they seemed to peer right through her. She stared at him, trying not to appear startled.

  “My name is Dermott, and I would prefer you ease up on demonstrating any sort of killer instinct. We would rather that you remain the way that you are,” he said with a smile. “Otherwise, you’ll be no use to us. We’ve lost a lot of good candidates to Minerva’s bad influence.”

  Carlisle eyed the insignia warily. Only an idiot would not recognize the royal crest of Seaforest.

  “What, is that supposed to be the royal ‘we’?” she grumbled.

  “I guess you could say that, in a sense,” he chuckled bemusedly, cocking his head to one side.

  “Why are you here?” she stated bluntly, still irritable from her encounter with the guild mistress.

  Dermott smiled, but it was an inviting smile, not a superior one like Minerva’s.

  “I’m one of the court mages, and with fighting skills like yours, by failing Minerva’s tests, you have passed ours. You have the ethical framework and discipline that we look for in a warrior. We seek out everything that she despises: honour, gallantry, a sense of duty. After having observed the evidence for myself, I am pleased, on behalf of the king, to offer you entrance into his royal guard.”

  Carlisle gaped at him, flabbergasted. She certainly had not been expecting this, and she wanted to know exactly what he meant by having observed the evidence himself. How would he know about her recent confrontation with Minerva?

  She, like most people in Seaforest, had an aversion to magic, and yet, for some reason, she found this man’s presence comfortable. She shrank back from him nonetheless. She was too confused. None of this made any sense.

  Seeing her reaction, the little man shrugged.

  “This is not something to be entered into lightly. Take your time. Prepare yourself, make up your mind, and if you decide that you actually would like to accept the invitation, you can come to the castle to let us know. I’m sure that you’ll need to mull this over for at least a few days. This is a very significant commitment.”

  He turned to go.

  “Wait!” Carlyle cried. “If I agree to your terms, how do I get past the guards at the gate?”

  He laughed, his dark eyes sparkling mirthfully.

  “Tell them that Dermott sent you. They’ll be watching for you, and expecting you.”

  He took a step back. She leaned towards him.

  “How did you know?” she demanded.

  Dermott paused in contemplation, selecting the best method in which to reveal the truth. He grinned mischievously.

  “Let’s j
ust say that sometimes the walls have eyes.”

  With that, he transformed back into a fly, and buzzed away.

  * * *

  About the Author: Chantal Boudreau is an accountant by day and an author/illustrator during evenings and weekends, who lives by the ocean in beautiful Nova Scotia, Canada with her husband and two children. In addition to being a CMA-MBA, she has a BA with a major in English from Dalhousie University. An affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association, she writes and illustrates horror, dark fantasy and fantasy and has had several of her stories published in a variety of horror anthologies, online journals and magazines. Fervor, her debut novel, a dystopian science fantasy tale, was released in March of 2011 by May December Publications, followed by its sequels, Elevation, Transcendence and Providence. Magic University, the first in her fantasy series, Masters & Renegades, made its appearance in September 2011 followed by Casualties of War in 2012 and Prisoners of Fate, in 2013.

  Connect with the Author:

  http://chantellyb.wordpress.com

  http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Chantal-Boudreau-WriterIllustrator/107318919341178

  http://www.amazon.com/Chantal-Boudreau/e/B004O1FP2E/ref=sr_tc_2_rm?qid=1339427087&sr=8-2-ent

  http://twitter.com/chantellyb13

  What the hell is going on? thought Private Benito ‘Benny’ Suarez, trying to get his wits again through the haze of agony. What happened to me? He knew he was an Imperial Marine, assigned to the old battle cruiser Lodz. He knew they had been attacked by the Ca’cadasans. And he knew he had been badly wounded. The wall of pain that seemed to prevent him from accessing reality told him that.

  The thought of relieving the pain crossed his mind. In the back of his mind lurked the knowledge that such was within his grasp. An order through his implant would release the drugs that would take away the agony. That it would also render him incapable of any kind of action was stopping him from thinking that order. Relief meant losing all touch with the real Universe, and that meant death.

  Just a little bit, thought the Marine, sending the order through the implant. Just a little bit. The pain started to recede, just a bit. Not enough, and he ordered the release of just a little more of the medication, at the same time ordering a nanite pain block at a site just above the major injury.

  Moments later, he could feel some of the haze leaving his mind, putting him back in touch with the real world. He linked into his suit and the body it contained, and almost ran back into unconsciousness as he saw what remained.

  Good God, no, he screamed in his mind, finding his legs gone below mid-thigh. The flesh above that was burned to the bone, dead. And his body below the waist was scorched, the skin crisped, muscles raw with screaming nerves.

  Benny closed his eyes and prayed, asking for God to get him out of whatever this was that had left him so badly injured. God didn’t seem to be working this day. On this day, technology was the only thing working. If not for his suit and internal nanites he would already be dead, bled out, his heart stopped by shock.

  The Marine wanted to hide, to drop into unconsciousness and forget what was happening to him. If I do that, I’m dead, he thought, not understanding why that was true, but knowing that it was. Something had done this to him, and it still might be around. I’ve got to do something. He opened his eyes and looked down the dark corridor, lit by flashing red lights that strobed in space.

  His battle armored suit was floating in a null gravity field. Something had happened to knock out the artificial gravity on this section of the ship. Probably the same something that took my legs, he thought. I don’t want to die, was his next thought. And if I stay here, floating in the open, whatever hurt me will come back and finish the job.

  Benny checked the status of his suit on his implant, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw that his shoulder grabbers were still functional. Of course, the units that had been attached to his boots were gone, but with one set he still had a chance of moving.

  With a thought he activated the units, which actually gripped the fabric of space to pull objects along, everything from ships to suits such as his. The heavy armored suit moved forward, and rammed his helmet into the ceiling of the corridor.

  “Shit,” whispered the Marine, trying to compensate and going into a wall. The suit hitting the alloys of the corridor sent more vibrations through the metal than he would have liked. Vibrations that could attract the attention of something he would rather not deal with. Let me get to that hatch, he thought, moving ahead slowly, his left hand reaching for a handhold built into the wall. He grabbed it and swung his body to a stop, then pressed the opening panel. It slid open, revealing a small storage room filled with metal and plastic boxes, some still on the shelves they had been strapped to, others scattered across the floor, as if they had been thrown by a hard shock.

  The door slid shut behind him, and Benny let himself float in the room, bouncing from wall to wall with minor bumps. With some work he was able to stop his motion in the center of the room and he floated there, taking stock of what he had to work with.

  One really screwed up body, he thought, looking over the suit diagnostics. Some onboard weapons, but no rifle. The damned sergeant would ream me for that, if she were around. With the thought, the memories came flooding back, and with it the knowledge of what had happened to the ship, and him.

  * * *

  “Alert,” yelled the voice over the intercom. “Alert.”

  “What the hell is going on?” asked Benny, coming out of a deep sleep, the door to his soundproofed sleeping cylinder opening with the alert signal.

  “Tap into the net and find out, Slacker,” said Sergeant Sheila Traore, using her favorite nickname for the private.

  Up yours, bitch, he thought, rolling out of his bed as he linked to the ship net. Oh shit, thought Benny, getting the uptake on what was going on as soon as he let his awareness become one with the net.

  The tactical display showed the overall situation. Lodz was in hyper VI, the highest dimension she could reach, traveling at point six light through a space that abhorred her very presence. They were in a decel profile, heading toward the system where they were to drop off the new Ambassador and his family to the Margrave government for a visit before taking him to his assignment. The aliens were allies to the Empire, but were as alien as it got while still in the realm of carbon-based life forms.

  Lodz was an older battle cruiser. Very few of her sisters had survived to this point in the war. Most were scattered debris or plasma, and a few wrecks that had been scrapped so their materials could be used for new construction. Slower than the newer hyper VII ships, underpowered and underarmed, the ship had been relegated to diplomatic courier duty, plying the spaceways in the quiet sectors. The crew, while competent, was not of the same quality as those in the battle fleets. The same with the Fleet Marines who manned her. Many were the dregs of their units, good enough to serve, but troopers that the Empire would rather have serving in areas where they were unlikely to be needed as combat soldiers.

  Benny looked at the ship’s tactical plot through his link. The plot showed the battle cruiser, along with her vector and velocity figures. And just out on the edge of detection range…

  Oh, shit, he thought, seeing a vector arrow pointed at them, decelerating at a much higher rate in hyper VII. The arrow was marked with a question mark for a moment, though he was pretty sure what it must be to have caused an alert. Then, suddenly, the information filled in, and he knew they were truly screwed.

  “How in the hell did Cacas get here?” he asked no one in particular. “They’re not supposed to be in this sector.”

  “I guess they didn’t get the memo, numb nuts,” said Private Gandra, one of his squad mates.

  “All crew,” blared the ship’s intercom, at the same time the message came over everyone’s link. “Prepare for emergency deceleration. Five minutes to emergency decel.”

  “You heard the skipper,” yelled the platoon leader, walking up the corridor that
led into the squad bays. “Get to your tanks, if you don’t want to ride out an extra thirty gees.”

  Everyone started to move, stowing the gear that might turn into deadly missiles at higher gravity loads. Benny tossed his own gear into his sleep cylinder, then sent it back into the wall. He ran after his squad mates, still not really sure why they were going into the tanks. When he asked he got the type of response he was used to.

  “Because, genius, the skipper wants to get us into normal space,” said Sergeant Traore, reaching her tank as it rose above the deck. “We can’t jump down at this velocity. Now get your ass into your tank. Or don’t. It really don’t matter to me.”

  Benny kept the smart-ass remark from his lips and climbed into the upright cylinder that was now above the deck. He made sure his breathing mask was working, then hit the panel that caused the outer tube to rotate and seal, just before liquid started rising from the bottom. Within a minute he was floating in the fluid that would allow his body to handle an extra thirty-two gravities of acceleration. A couple of minutes later, the warning lights flashed, and soon after, the ship went into emergency decel, thirty gravities above the four hundred and eighty that were her inertial compensators’ limit.

  Linking back into the ship net, Benny watched as the deceleration figures on the enemy ship also increased. We might get back into normal space, thought the private, looking at that icon through his occipital lobe. But is that really going to help?

  No captain really liked fighting in hyperspace, where the very dimensions wanted to throw material objects out, most times with catastrophic results. Even worse, it was impossible to hide in hyper, with the drive units giving off a continuous wave of gravitons. In normal space they might be able to hide, if they powered down everything, and the enemy came into normal space far enough away.

  The deceleration figures on the enemy ship had increased again, up to five hundred and thirty gravities. And, even worse, they could jump at a much higher velocity than the human ship. And all Benny could do was watch the plot, seeing his probable doom coming at him while he floated in the tank.