Chapter 31
Instead of heading back to the Command hub, we marched directly over to the Plexus Gate control room.
“It started a few minutes after word got back to us that you had returned,” Trisha explained as we covered the distance. “Quinn was the first to pick up on the attempt. The Dread Scourge are trying to brute force our gate open using the tech on their dungeon ships. The shroud is preventing them from simply punching through the plexus network wherever they want. They still need our gate to get through.”
“How can we be sure it’s the Dread Scourge?” Ana asked.
Quixbix answered for the group. <We can’t be, but Quinn has been digging around and those detectors for the dungeons Titus supplied us with have started to emit a signal. A message that the Fragment has been destroyed we assume, and then this started to happen a couple of minutes later. The odds of it being a coincidence are astronomically low.>
I nodded in agreement. “I knew that Titus would betray our pact and try something, though I did think we might have longer than an hour. How close are they?”
We had just arrived at the control room and the security detail waved us through. Trisha pointed to Nazz, the large Saurian woman was sitting at the main control panel, staring intently at the readout and occasionally typing commands, pressing a button, or adjusting a dial. Crynn was hovering at her side trying to apply a healing salve to the many puncture wounds Nazz had suffered during the recent battle with the manticore.
Trisha guided us over. “I’ll let our resident expert provide the low down. We are lucky to have her. They were almost through before she got back and took the controls.”
“Captain,” Nazz greeted me without taking her eyes off the screen. Her left arm was in a sling, and she was making the adjustments with her right.
“How bad is it?”
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it, it’s bad,” she replied. “I can hold them off for a short while, but they will break through. The only reason they haven’t already is that the Scourge’s best gate-hackers are too high of a level to stay in the cluster. Even so, they have the best tech and there are competent lower-level hackers in their ranks. I’m running interference, but it’s only a matter of time before they stumble across the key and find a way through the security.”
“Is there anything we can do to prevent this?”
“Well, that gate you happen to have in your back pocket might be of use. If you can establish the gate somewhere else, then I can overlay its coordinates as a ghost of this one and trick them into opening the wrong gate. It won’t stop the fleet storming the planet but at least it won’t be directly on our doorstep and inside the city shield.”
I’d had a similar thought myself and knew just where to place it. But that would only delay the inevitable. Titus’ people would come here post-haste. There were preparations to make if we were to stave that off and that meant we needed time. “Can you buy us a day?”
“If I don’t sleep, probably, but I’m not in top condition. There is only so much I can do before exhaustion takes its toll and they get past me.”
“Do whatever it takes. If you can buy me that day, then we have a fighting chance.”
“Aye, captain.”
“I take it you have a plan,” Trisha half-asked.
The truth is that I’d been planning for this kind of eventuality for a while. It would be risky, very risky and if it failed, well, there wouldn’t be many of us left to rue the plan’s failure. I smiled at my spymaster and put on the air of as much confidence as possible. “I sure do.”
***
We departed the gate control room and left Nazz to deal with the hacking attempt without any further distractions.
“First things first,” I declared once we were out on the pedestrian arrival platform. “I need to level up.”
Trisha pursed her lips in confusion. “Torin, a personal power boost is always helpful, but do we have time for this?”
“You don’t know how big a bump this will be; besides, it’ll be a short visit. Ana, you and Claudia will be coming with me. Afterwards, be ready to upgrade Marena’s Mercy. Trisha, contact Kristoff and get Storm Raider over here. We’ll be doing the same for that ship.”
“That’s not how it works, Torin,” Ana interrupted. “And entering a cocoon now would keep both ships out of the fight for the better part of a week.”
“Not anymore. Everything that just went down changed the rules. Let’s just say that the shards we retrieved from the Manticore dungeon are somewhat malleable in more ways than one. I can speed up the metamorphosis and have enough experience to get you a second mark upgrade and a few other goodies. Your dungeons are getting a permanent grade lift to K.”
Ana’s eyes took on a gleam of excitement. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
I smiled back. “It sure does, you’re about to get your wings.”
My eyes closed and I singled out the level-up prompt and selected it.
***
Violet escorted the three of us from her side office and into Dean’s parlour of games without a word. At least she understood the gravity of the situation.
Dean’s open plan office was a mess as usual.
Also, as per usual, there were a few new items. Now he had a ridiculously oversized monitor hanging from one of the walls. His bean bags were arranged haphazardly in front of it and there were kernels of half-chewed popcorn scattered all over the floor.
Dean was spreadeagled on one of the bags, his cheeks puffed out due to the volume of popcorn he had stuffed into his mouth. We knew it was popcorn because he spat a wad of the contents into the air when he saw us walk in. Explaining how the rest of the mess came to be.
“It’s my man, Torin!” he squealed in unabashed delight and hauled his portly body off the bean bag. It would be a kindness to describe his athletic efforts as awkward.
Then the popcorn-covered entity rushed over and launched himself at me for an attack hug. This was one of the things you simply had to put up with Dean.
“Afternoon, Dean. I hate to be a bit of a party-pooper, but we’re on a tight schedule.”
“Fuck yeah, you are! It’s been fucking awesome watching you in action, my man. I don’t know what the fuck is going on most of the time and that is so fucking awesome.”
“You used awesome twice,” Ana commented, unimpressed. “Expand your vocabulary.”
Dean ignored the barb. “I’ve never felt this level of excitement before. The not knowing… it''s… it''s fucking exhilarating!”
“That is not how I would describe it,” Violet sighed under her breath.
“Look at me, look at me,” Dean demanded and held his arm out for inspection. “Goosebumps, real goosebumps. I’m not faking this.”
Dean and Violet’s ignorance of some of the events made sense. They involved Ashli and the Fragment and being Framework creations they had inbuilt blind spots. Despite the fragment’s recent demise, I was still using items that it had affected and that would make it difficult for Dean to foresee or comprehend what was happening. Not that it stopped him from watching the events unfold on his four-hundred-inch TV.
As always seemed to be the case, it would be up to me to keep the excitable administrator on track. “Dean, focus.”
He pulled his arm away and let his hooter''s T-shirt fall back over his noodles for arms. “Right, right, time is of the essence. Vi, tablet these fine people.”
Violet was ahead of him, of course. Ana and Claudia already had tablets for them to view and I only had to wait for Dean to give Violet space to hand one over to me.
Dean attempted to put his arm around my shoulder and couldn’t reach. He clicked his fingers, and a stool appeared that he climbed on and gripped me around the neck. “I suppose the first question is are you going to use all the experience to power up to level forty-five or are you gonna’ use those delicious upgrade points first and shift to the A-grade? You can only make it to level forty-three if you decide to do that first.”
In terms of progression, level 45 was a bit of a dead zone. Quite a few of the tier abilities progressed at level 42 and 48. So, in the short term, the two extra levels wouldn’t help much, but if I shifted up to the next tier then that meant getting the rarified T6 ability unlocked. I didn’t know what that would be or whether it would help in the coming conflict or not, but it wouldn’t hurt to take it. All I had been banking on from this trip was the T4 ability increase at level 42, which came with a mark enhancement for my flagship and would allow me to pick an existing deck to be upgraded.
The decision was easy to make.
“Let’s see what the sixth tier has to offer.”
Dean jumped up and down with excitement and would have fallen off the stool if I hadn’t caught him in time. “Yessss,” he hissed in my ear. “You won’t regret this, I swear.
The upgrade was locked in and with a shiver that ran through my body, I became a Dual Dungeon Corsair Duke, climbing ever higher in the piratical aristocracy. This meant Anastasia became a Master Lifeforce Enchantress, and Claudia also took the next step and became a Queen of Pandaemonium.
The extra stats I got per level increased by ten and were evenly distributed amongst the categories where I wasn’t already getting five per level. This meant each of my physical categories was going up by three points per level now which made me happy. My Health was now over one hundred. It wouldn’t be capped at that, but going forward it would no longer increase in lockstep with my constitution, point for point. From now on it would only go up by one for every ten points of additional constitution gained and that currently put me on 102.
Then the ability notifications came through and there were a couple of minor decisions to be made for T2 and T3.
T2 was slightly more important. It was my Chaos magic increase. My thoughts went back to the close decision I had to make when I picked Chaos Missile. Mutiny in the Ranks had been the other contender and this time around, rather than try and play about with Chaos Missile, I picked the new spell.
Mutiny in the Ranks (Greater – 80% more effective)
Type: Defensive
Cost: 150 mana
Range: Line of Sight
Description: This spell must be cast on a group of enemies in proximity to one another. (There must be a minimum of six targets.) The minds (20-40% randomly selected) of the group are attacked. Should they fail a resistance check, (Their Mental Resistance roll versus the caster’s Willpower + Domination / the number of targets attacked) they will see their compatriots as the enemy for thirty seconds. The caster may limit those included in the spell’s effect to a subsection of a larger unit, but they need to be positioned next to one another. You cannot pick and choose specific individuals from an army for example.
This spell cannot be cast on the same group until 24 hours have elapsed.
Duration: Thirty seconds.
T3 was an easy pick too and I simply increased the ranking of Pressganging Corsair to four. Clarion’s Call advanced automatically to five. More room on my canon for crew wouldn’t help in the coming days but if you didn’t plan for the future then you were essentially admitting that there would be no future. Not my style.
T4 had no decisions necessary, it was the increased mark designation for my dungeon ship and the deck upgrade. I didn’t need to choose how to improve the ships now, but I already knew what they’d be. The extra deck for the increased mark would be Aerial Sails. It was high time for Marena’s Mercy to fly. We would upgrade the Heavy Cannon deck to the Super Heavy Cannon Deck and increase the ship''s firepower.
Technically, these were sixth-tier picks that we didn’t have access to, but I planned to use some of the shards to permanently enhance Marena’s Mercy up from the N-grade to the K-grade. Dungeons were allowed to pick from the tier ahead anyway, and shifting the dungeon to the fourth tier gave access to the fifth and then being my flagship increased that access to the sixth tier. I could have boosted Marena’s Mercy farther up the ranks, but then the boost would have been temporary and used up all the shards.
Instead, the remaining shards would be used to pull Storm Raider into the fold and let it mimic Marena’s Mercy and finally top up the ship’s level a bit. The ship had been close to a natural mark upgrade anyway and the second would give us two new decks. The second deck would be a Rift Engine.
These were used to punch holes in the plexus, not much use on Earth while the shroud was still in effect, but the Rift Engine’s power supply was independent of the dungeon’s energy reserves. And it could be used for regular propulsion too. This would give us a much-needed speed boost that wouldn’t drain the dungeon’s energy reserves. Something that we’d been struggling with over the past year.
That just left the brand new T6 ability to peruse. It was called The Shattered Canon. Due to jumping six levels at once, I received it at the third rank in addition to the other three lower-tier ability bumps.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
The very name itself confirmed some of my suspicions that when the Framework didn’t have an existing template, it based the new ability on the experiences and proclivities of the individual.
The Shattered Canon was a new way of collectivising anyone who was part of my faction and all current residents of the Shattered Storm would be automatically added. Unlike my official crew canon, people could leave whenever they wanted. However, doing so meant they would have to depart from the territory I controlled within a few days, or they would effectively be re-enrolled.
Membership conferred several benefits. Faction recognition when in my cities. This mostly interacted with Claudia’s dungeon constructions. Canon members would be recognised by mobs as friendlies and that would help with security. However, the major benefit was a fifteen percent boost to experience gains when engaged in activities that benefitted the faction.
There were benefits for me too. It synergised with Clarion’s Call; I could now use that ability to speak directly to the entire faction.
However, there was a darker side to the Shattered Canon, likely influenced by the Prime markers I possessed and the activities I engaged in. Although the Shattered Canon didn’t enforce loyalty amongst the citizenry, it did spy and report back on acts of dissension. Those reports would be funnelled directly to the Command Hub. I would probably have to expand Doyle’s unit to handle the extra workload of sifting through the data.
It wasn’t exactly thought policing. Thinking negative things about me wouldn’t trigger anything, but bad-mouthing me did, as would anything perceived as seditious activity.
The most significant element, though, was the effect it had on defeated rivals.
Should I or any of my followers defeat the leader of a rival faction then all the surviving members of that faction would face a mental attack based on my Dominance. Fail the check and any existing loyalties would be shattered, and they would be automatically added to the Shattered Canon. This put them under temporary geas that significantly improved their opinion of me and the faction. And it would…strongly encourage them to swear a more permanent loyalty.
This was not a catch-all. There would always be bindings that couldn’t be overpowered in this manner. Soul Bonds like I had with girls were a good example. But slave collars, simple Framework Oaths or Contracts, and the canon conditions of rival corsairs could all be broken. Similarly, there were people whose hatred of me, or the Shattered Storm was so powerful that even a strong encouragement wouldn’t be enough to prevent them from breaking with the Shattered Canon and turning their backs. However, if they felt that strongly they were unlikely to fail the check in the first place.
The experience gains and boost to my base Domination for the check was currently 15%, 5% for each rank and this would continue to rise by 5% for every further rank I accrued to a maximum of 50%.
“Everyone happy?” I asked.
Ana and Claudia beamed back.
“Good. Dean, it’s been a pleasure, but I’ve got a lot to do.”
“No worries, Torin. I’ll be watching every moment. You better believe it.”
***
My eyes popped open.
“That was fast,” Trisha commented with surprise at the swift return. “I expected Dean to hold you up for longer. You must have put your foot down.”
“He’s enjoying the show and wanted us to get back to it,” I told her and peered over the side of the platform wall. Storm Raider was emerging from the submerged dry dock where Kristoff had stowed her to increase the ship’s regeneration rate. That wouldn’t be necessary now, Storm Raider would emerge from the cocoon in tip-top condition as would Marena’s Mercy.
“Trisha, get on the blower to Raven and her people in Texas. They need to be warned of what’s coming.”
“What is coming?”
“I’m going back to Dallas, establishing the gate I stole from RR in the ruins and unleashing the Dread Scourge smack dab in the middle of Liberation Army territory.”
“Yup, that’s something she should know about,” Trisha said and rushed away, heading for the palace and the Command hub where we had our secured communication station.
“Crynn, with me, after I get the ships upgraded, we need to figure out who is fighting fit and be ready to set sail the moment they come out of their cocoons. Titus, or whichever of your brothers he now inhabits won’t let the Libbers slow him down for long.” I tapped my organ-hosting abdomen. “He’s coming for this; it’s the only explanation I can think of for his precipitous behaviour. The man is practically the dictionary definition of playing the long game. Destroying us could have waited until after the shroud was dropped. We have to take advantage of the coming distraction.”
Stat Block for Level 43
(This chapter is the full stat block and can be skipped if you aren’t interested.)
Name: Torin Carter
Species: Frostbinder Abyssal Acheronian (Tier 4.2.3)
Abyssal Acheronian: Physical stats +30%, Social Stats +30%, Health +10, Dominance +10, HP +200 (+20 per level), Armour Slots +3, Weapon Slot +3, Item Slot +1
Affinity for Dark (Moderate) and Chaos (Greater) Magic. Aversion for Light and Harmonic magic.
Physical Stats: +30% Social Stats: +45%
Class: Dual Dungeon Corsair Duke (A-grade Notorious) 267,000 XP
Level: 43
Strength: 100
Constitution: 106
Speed: 105
Agility: 98
Mana Capacity (+30%): 76.7
Perception: 77
Willpower: 164
Mental Resistance: 159
Empathy: 134
Charisma: 171
Dominance: 319
Leadership: 285
Hit Points: 9.825
Health: 98
Mana Pool: 767
Unused XP: 62,000
Notoriety: 935 (XP multiplier x2) (Path cost x 0.665) (Harmonisation cost x 0.8) (Class cost x 0.8) (Species cost x 0.8) (Act of Piracy length +100%)
T1: Skill 10: Preternatural Insight +3, Acrobatics +3, Sword Use +3, Negotiation +3, Intimidation +3, Tactics +3, Public Speaking +3, Leap +3, Grenadier +3, Sneak +3
T2: Chaos Magic 6: Grants ability to cast Chaos Magic spells. May cast Summon Rift Beast 1.4, Chaos Missile
T3: Clarion’s Call 5: Mental communication with adherents. The number of uses is Leadership divided by 4 (Faction wide). Pressganging Corsair 4: Adds the tier bonus to the crew cap for each rank.
T4: Claim a Dungeon Core 4: Two Cores claimed (max 2) Flagship and first free dungeon shard. Splinter boost for your cores. Your cores can grow core splinters (slowly) to be used for splinter vessels/weaponry. +1 tier access for upgrades
T5: One with the Ship 3: Symbiotic bond with the ship improved to tier 3. The environmental field is increased to tier 3, with high mitigation against non-magical environmental damage while within the field’s range. The effective range is increased to 1 kilometre. Swim speed is x8. Can remain at high altitude indefinitely without harm. Enhanced Healing rate while on the ship is +15%.
T6: The Shattered Canon 3: A faction contract that provides mutual benefits. Signed members gain 15% extra experience when completing tasks for the Shattered Storm. Members of defeated factions undergo a Domination Attack to be brought under the influence of the Shattered Canon. Your base Domination is increased by 15% for this attack.
Armour Penalty Offset: -1
Path of the Binder 2: This person can bind the souls of others to their own. Those bound become devoted servants and gain benefits from their Binder. (4 bonds permitted. 4 being currently used. The next bond is available at level 50.)
Social Stats +15%, HP +150, Dominance +15, Item Slots +2. (Item Slot bonus shared with bonded)
Frost Element Harmonisation 3: Major Frost Affinity granted. Spells, Effects, or Gear that utilise the Frost element are 60% more effective. Mana Capacity +30%, HP +300
Frost Blade Generation: You can form bladed weapons made of Impervious Ice from Mana.
Frost Armour Generation: You can form or coat armour with a layer of Impervious Ice from Mana which increases the damage mitigation by one degree. Frost Armour is brittle and loses durability quickly but can be reinforced.
Frost Resistance: Damage that utilises the Frost element is reduced by 100%.
Chapter 32
Texas
“Now is the time to strike!” Raven’s fist slammed hard onto the table and left a sizeable dent in the varnished hardwood.
The regular debriefs that Glastos and the other mercenary captains insisted on had been a bother, taking her away from the job of purging the wicked from the lands they’d stolen, but now they were actively trying to thwart her.
Glastos sighed and decided to try again. “Raven, please see reason, the situation has changed. If what Carter told us is true, then getting mixed up in the middle of this is suicidal. The Dread Scourge…”
“Pirate filth warning us of more pirate filth,” she snapped in irritation, interrupting the rest of what Glastos was about to say. She had heard it all before. Several times. Why couldn’t they understand that none of it mattered? She would not be dictated to. Not by Carter. “This is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for. When this enemy arrives, they will be distracted and forced to battle on two fronts. It is the perfect chance to hurt them and make it a killing blow.”
The dog-faced captain Brock put his hand on Glastos shoulder and urged him to sit back down. “The boy is right, Raven. You hired me and the others to fight the Lamers. We can’t do that if we’re dead and that is what will happen if we stay and get mixed up in a fight between them and the Scourge. You want the Lamers eradicated, that is what will happen with no more input from us. We need to withdraw and keep out of Shiptaker’s way. The Lamer warships are dangerous, but his dungeon vessels are positively lethal.”
“This smacks of cowardice to me,” Raven snapped in petulant anger.
It was Lyra the halfling who responded. She jumped up onto the table, took three strides and crossed over to Raven before slapping the stunned woman across the cheek. “Don’t you dare insult him like that?”
“Lyra…” Brock started to try and placate the small woman only to be cut off with a sharp look.
She turned back to Raven. “For weeks we’ve risked our lives in pursuit of your vengeance and redemption. More than twenty percent of our company has fallen already and now you insult us when you make an unreasonable demand. The crew of the Nasty Bitch will not sacrifice themselves for your vanity.”
“It is not vanity!” Raven screeched, raising her hand as if to strike the small woman but then lowered the outstretched arm. “None of you understand. None of you.”
Raven turned and stormed from the meeting room.
“That could have gone better,” Glastos muttered.
Brock hurried around the table, picked Lyra up, and lifted her down to the floor. “What were you thinking? You saw what she did to the table. That could have been your skull.”
“Faugh! You need to know your audience better, Brock. She would never have hit someone of my stature. The poor girl can’t see past appearances, no matter how hard she tries, which isn’t much.”
Glastos stood up and straightened his coat. “I’d better go after her and make sure she doesn’t do something stupid like attack the Lamers by herself.”
He walked out with Brock and Lyra staring after him.
“What did you say about knowing your audience…” Brock started to say.
“I may have made a horrible mistake,” Lyra talked over him before he finished.
The pair of them hurried out of the meeting room with the other mercenary captains watching on.
“Should we go after them,” one of the captains asked. “That’s the money potentially removing itself from the equation.”
“Nope,” another replied. “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. It’s Brock’s problem now. I’m gathering my crew and getting the fuck out of here until all this blows over. Pick through the ruins for scraps once the big dogs have pissed off elsewhere. I know my place and ain;t afraid to admit it.”
His statement was met with a rush of head nods and the mercs started to depart.
***
Fallor Greybeard’s fall from grace was complete. After the excoriators were done with him, he was a broken man. The bastards hadn’t just taken the left hand but most of the forearm too and the mass of scar tissue where his left eye used to be alternated between weeping pus and driving him mad with itching.
He should have done the deed himself. If only he had the courage.
Fallor was quickly stripped of rank and put to work with the other penitents digging earthworks and clearing debris from the city. Not an easy task when you only have one functioning arm.
By chance, on this day, his work detail had been sent to dig out the rubble to the east of the Dallas city centre. Greybeard didn’t need the uncovered pieces of an eagle chariot to recognise the place.
It was the site of his ignominious defeat.
“Saint Carolus, why do you mock me this way.”
A whip lashed out and struck him on the cheek, almost taking out his one working eye. “Do not take the first Grand High Marshal’s name in vain, penitent,” the overseer barked with barely controlled fury. “You will be thoroughly lashed when the day’s work is done.”
Greybeard had to rein in his desire to hit back. Not long ago this overseer would have licked his boots and said thank you for the opportunity.
“Back to work!” the overseer cried. “Work hard or there will be no food for the wicked! Not that I would feed vile vermin like you anyway. Marshal Campion is far too generous to you filth.”
Greybeard swallowed his anger, moved onto a pile of rubble and started to lift pieces and pass them back to the line of labourers that had formed. Gripping larger lumps was awkward but his naturally high strength let him manage it.
An hour passed and soon the debris of the building had been mostly cleared. The former captain had worked his way down a stairwell that led to the basement of this building. This was a trick he had picked up from his fellow workers. Stairwells like this took you out of sight of the bastard slave-driver and that allowed you to take it a bit easier for a while. At least, until they decided to come and snoop around.
The ease-off wouldn’t last much longer. They had already reached the bottom, and it wouldn’t be much longer before they cleared what was left in front of the red double doors which were locked from the other side. The overseers would notice if nothing was being passed up.
Then unexpectedly, the double doors swung open, and he stared open-mouthed at an Acheronian man, a Leonid woman, and a dark-haired elf who gazed back at him.
“You!” Greybeard breathed out in horror recognising the man who stood before him.
“Friend of yours, Torin?” the elf chuckled.
“I can’t say that I can place him, and with a mug like that, I think I would remember.”
“Sinner!” Greybeard bellowed and reached for a sword that was no longer there. No matter, he grabbed a chunk of rock and swung at his most hated of foes, only to be met with steel that stabbed through his unarmoured chest.
“Bloody Nora! What a dumbass. We would have freed the dumb fucker if he’d kept his mouth shut. The rest of you, if you want out of this hell, keep schtum and follow Claudia.”
The Acheronian pointed at the Leonid female, and the other workers didn’t need any further encouragement and poured through the doors to the promised freedom from the Liberation forces.
Fallor Greybeard tried to call out another warning to the overseers that the corsair had returned. The enemy was once more within their midst, but his punctured lungs had filled with blood, and it came out as little more than a gurgled gasping.
The corsair knocked the rock from his hand and drew the edge of his blade across his throat with ruthless efficiency. Notifications about bleed effects pinged in his internal directory and Greybeard knew then that he was doomed. Without his armour and items, and suffering Health impairment after the excoriator’s work, his death was inevitable. He lasted only long enough to hear the end of the conversation between the enemy interlopers.
“Shana, are you sure about this? I can send someone else to establish the gate.”
“Stop worrying, my love. I’ll be fine and back before you know it. My class isn’t called Shadepath for nothing. Half of what makes a sniper deadly is getting into position without being spotted and you, skilled as you are in so many ways, are not much of a rogue. Besides, Silk has loaned me Cole for the operation. He knows the area.”
“Be safe and be quick.”
The female elf ran up the staircase and loosed several arrows, presumably at the overseers and then she was out of Fallor’s dying sight. She was followed by a blonde man who wore what was called a ‘cowboy’ hat by the locals.
Torin looked down on Fallor and shook his head. “Muppet.”
Fallor Greybeard’s final thought was. The man who ruined my life doesn’t even remember I exist.
***
“Marshal Campion!”
Campion had been intently studying the map of the area. He had grown tired of the constant hit-and-run tactics of the mercenary companies that harassed their position. It was time to launch a counter-offensive.
He raised his head from the map and looked over at the elderly celestial who had stood up from his workstation. “What is it, Markus?”
There had been a timbre of fright in the scripter’s tone that piqued Campion’s interest. He was used to people fearing him, of course, but this seemed different and worthy of attention.
“Sir, I’ve continued to monitor for signs of the corsair who caused us such bother and, well, there has been a worrying development.”
Now this was interesting. “What kind of development?”
“First, there were reports of unusual activity from the work crews currently clearing where he was last spotted. I was waiting for a report back from the team I despatched to investigate, but, well, the gate…”
“What about the gate?”
“It’s back, sir. Not where we came through. It’s in the city centre, not far from this activity I spoke of. And…sir, it’s operational.”
No sooner had the words left Markus’ mouth than wailing alert sirens blared into life on every control panel of Freedom’s Journey.
“What in Carolus’ name is going on,” Campion bellowed in anger.
Markus stumbled back to his workstation and examined what was being fed back to him. “The gate is open, and ships are coming through. Freedom’s Journey’s sensors identified their provenance immediately. They belong to the Dread Scourge.”
Campion recalled the reports that one of their scout vessels had been spotted in the plexus region surrounding this planet. But he hadn’t dreamed that Titus Shiptaker would waste his time on a backwater shithole like this planet. The point of bringing what remained of the fleet here was to lick their wounds in relative safety.
“Contact every company, tell them we are at war! There is to be no quarter given to the raiding scum. They have come to us and saved us the bother of hunting them down. And we shall oblige them in full!”
A round of cheers went up from the faithful in the room and Campion kept up the false fa?ade of confidence. Something very rotten had just occurred, and the Liberation Army were the target of the malfeasance.
“Markus, have them ready my chariot. I shall take to the skies and purge the sinners myself.”
Campion had no intention of doing any such thing, but he needed Freedom’s Journey to cover his withdrawal, and he didn’t trust them to fight until the very end if they suspected their vaunted marshal had fled and abandoned them.
“At once, sir. Do you need me as…an advisor on your trip?”
Campion’s gaze settled on the canny old bastard. He’d guessed the truth; of that he was certain. There was an unspoken threat in the chosen wording. Take me with you or everyone else will learn the truth.
“A marshal should never be without an advisor.”
“Your will be done.”