Chapter 10

Svenk Blackscale was not a heroic member of House Bryaugh’s space force. That would have been a remarkable trick for a kobold – even one that had the one tenth dragon blood that was required by the stern admirals and generals that led House Bryaugh’s military forces. But as Svenk wasn’t even a willing member of the space force, heroism felt like it was asking just far too much of his skinny body. His hands shook as he tugged on the flimsy flight helmet and strapped it into place, while goblin technicians swarmed over his fighter craft.

Svenk didn’t know what other noble houses of the Five Tal- er, the Chromatic Dominion used. He knew that he had been trained on the ASP-1011. It was named for its primary armament: A pair of alternating maximized wands that were loaded with the Melf’s acid dart and searing rays spells. They were fairly powerful spells, requiring a class three wizard to enchant them. Thus, most of the ASP-1011s cost was sunk into those two wands and their power source, leaving only a fraction for, say...

“Here,” a female goblin who had had half her face replaced by cosmetic bioplasm after a close call with an exploding reaction thrust a breather into Svenk’s claws. He took it and stuck it to his muzzle, trying to breathe slowly and carefully.

Life support. Shields. Armor. By a dragon’s tits, the only thing that the ASP-1011 had on top of its armament was its speed. And that was because it had nothing else. A frame of aluminum and cloned dragon bone around cockpit, reactor, engine and guns. The goblin workers sang a cheery work song as they screwed and then welded his cockpit shut.

“Please save me, Tiamat...” Svenk whispered. “Please, please save me.”

“This is General Omadon Bryaugh,” a snarling voice growled through his helmet mics. “Wings 12 and 10 are to flank our bombers as they go after the spelljammers that form the centerpiece of the human armada. Their vessels are primitive, relying on only the most simple magic to keep them aloft. Designed for the sea, they will surely fall easy prey. Fighters, you are to focus on the enemy strike craft, if any are launched.”

Svenk nodded.

He could do that. Primitive. He could handle primitive. He had flown four combat missions against pirates, and several of them had used spelljammers. Spelljammers were when you combined a sailing ship with a mystical spelljammer helm. He pictured belling sails falling to pieces under streams of acid and beams of fire. He liked that image. It was an image to make even a kobold less of a cowards. But still not a hero. This was why, as the fighters prepped for launch, he closed his eyes.

He could never bear to watch the launch.

He felt the gravitic catapult take hold, then heard the faint thump thump thump of a goblin slapping his fuselage. That meant he had-

Gravity smashed Svenk into his seat and dragged his mouth open as he screeched at the top of his lungs, even as his ASP-1011 shot out of the launch tube that made up a good chunk of the mid-section of the battleship he had served on ever since an impressor came to his hole and forced all the fighting aged males out with morph gas and shock-prods. Then his eyes snapped open and he swung his head around.

And...

It was moments like this when Svenk did not regret his inability to hide when the impressors came. For all the fear and the horror and the killing and the eventuality of dying, he had to admit that space – especially space at war – was utterly beautiful. The space between stars was a black richer and deeper than the most powerful black dragon, and the stars shone with a harsh purity that had no twinkling, no winking, no softening. The curve of the planet and the moon that they were fighting over shone in the distance, and between him and the planet, there was the human armada. And what an armada.

There had to be thousands of ships there. None had thrust plumes or contrails, but each retained a stately beauty about them. There were flat topped ships that cut forward through space, pushed forward by immense columns of propellers that ground and spun behind them. Svenk didn’t know how propellers worked in space, but he figured that the spelljammers had something to do with it. There were narrow ships that were studded with turrets, cylindrical ones that bore only a single sparse looking conning tower, but still cruised forward with a predators hunting grace. Peppered among them were the more familiar designs of his supposedly hated rivals: Metallic dragons tended towards elegance and beauty ... but that didn’t mean the destroyers and battleships and torpedo boats he saw intermixed with the human formation weren’t exceptionally deadly.

“This is Talon Leader,” the sneering voice of Talon Leader Gigzor, the preening, brown nosing, power grabbing, butt kissing schemer, filled his ears. “The scaleless fools have not even launched their fighters! Follow me, Blackscales! Let us show the humans how kobolds die!”

How kobolds kill, you idiot, Svenk thought. Then, gulping, he realized that Gigzor might have meant exactly what he said. After all, Gigzor knew who was listening in on their coms.

Maybe it was stuff like that that got him promoted?

Either way, Svenk sighed and throttled his engine up.

“We should send in the B-suits!” Emperor Xosh snarled.

Admiral Thresh did not bridle. It was clear she wished to do more than bridle to Gimtesh. But no, Admiral Thresh instead forced herself to take a deep, calming breath, then said: “My lord Emperor, that would be unwise. We do not know the capacity of the enemies. There are a great deal of them and if we lose here today, that will give the Metallics time to organize and come here to the human’s defense. If we give them a foothold, then this civil war may last decades, rather than months.”

Xosh’s tail lashed. “All the more reason we should commit now!”

Gimtesh could see the eagerness in Xosh’s eyes. The thirst to see this end, and end quickly. She gulped and focused on adding – cell by cell – slightly more length to her left foot. She made sure to do it slowly. Carefully. And only when people weren’t looking at her.

She’d only have one shot.

“If we send in the kobblers...” General Bryaugh said, not looking up from the scrying pit – where glowing icons indicating the first waves of kobold fighters approaching the combined enemy armada. “They can see what the weak points are.”

Thresh gestured to Bryaugh, as if to say: See?

Xosh’s tail lashed. He looked as if he was considering, deeply. But Gimtesh could hear the quiet grinding of his teeth. He slid his arms behind his back and nodded.

“Very well. Carry on.” He spoke the words through gritted teeth. And as he took his seat at the command throne, Gimtesh grew her foot out just a little bit more. Just a little bit more.

Merton Miles stood in the airlock, looking at Princess Relix. Relix smiled, shyly, at him. “Come home safe, okay?” she whispered.

“Promise,” Merton said. The weirdest thing about wearing a B-suit (I.E, a transformed dragon that was genetically engineered to be used as a suit of power armor) was that you didn’t actually feel like you were in a suit. Rather, you felt the wind on your scaled balls and had a hard time remmebering that normally, you were a squishy human. He grinned slightly as Brash hummed cheerfully in his head. “Now, I gotta get out there.”

“You could stay here. Protect me.” Relix muttered, looking aside.

Merton reached out. He cupped her cheek and murmured. “I have a duty to you and to Julia. Both require me out there. Besides...” He cocked his head. “I have Brash watching my back. Right, little buddy?”

Yup! Brash said, cheerfully – his voice echoing inside of Merton’s head.

Relix muttered something under her breath. It sounded an awful lot like: ‘Stupid noble human jerk bag going off and being heroic.’ She shook her head, then put her clawed palm on his chest and shoved him back into the airlock. The inner doors slammed shut and Merton let himself get blown out of the airlock and into the space above the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Or, as Merton immediately started thinking of it as, the Teddy. The aircraft carrier was one of the fifty or so that humanity had launched into space using spelljammer helms. And one might have thought that an aircraft carrier would be uniquely useless in space.

One would be wrong.

Spelljammer helms functioned by mystically enchanting an entire naval ship to operate in space. The key word being entire. A magical shell of atmosphere surrounded the Teddy, allowing crew to operate on the flight deck without space suits or breathers or even sun hats.

The first of the F-15 and F-16s and F-35s and F-22As and whatever other Fs that they had crammed onto the Teddy launched into space with a scream of jet engines. Yes, an audible scream. As the jet roared past Merton, he could see the glowing field of mystical atmosphere surrounding the fighter, even as it started to loop around, waiting for more fighters to launch. And launch. And launch. And launch. A Russian aircraft carrier – about fifty or so kilometers off – was launching their MIGs. A French and Japanese carrier were launching behind them. South Korea and India both had one carrier each, and even they were launching. Spain had an aircraft carrier up here.

And, yes.

She was launching.

Fighter planes roared upwards and formed into formations – sorted and organized by languages spoken and objectives assigned. Merton felt a swelling of pride.

Just a few weeks ago, some of those pilots had been ready to shoot one another down. Now, they were flying in formation towards the hazing swarm of incoming dragon fighters. Well, kobold fighters, if what Relix had said was accurate. He grinned and thought to Brash: Ready to show them what we can do, buddy?

Vroom vroom! Senketsu Shippu! Brash called out. His back shifted and grew, fanning his wings out to their full length and growing a double set of jet engines. His wings beat and the engines kicked on and Merton thrust his hands before him. Mostly to keep them from being ripped back behind his back. He whooped as he shot forward and then matched, then exceeded the speed of the jet fighters. He flew up beside one of the leading fighters – an Indian MIG. Yeah, the Indians flew MIGs. Who knew?

The indian pilot – inhuman behind flight mask and helmet – sent him a Namaste. At least, Merton thought it was.

Merton waggled his wings and Brash laughed.

But Merton’s joy at the sheer speed of the moment bled away as he saw the onrushing enemy force. He gulped – and tried to focus. This was the plan. And soon, things were going to get real dicey. He gritted his teeth, then put on an extra burst and focused. He and Brash both grew larger and larger, until they were in full dragon form, jet-pack roaring brightly enough to match a torpedo ship in terms of engine plume and thrust contrail.

If that didn’t scream ‘pay attention to me!’, Merton wasn’t sure what would.

“Activate PWSs!” Talon Leader Gigzor snarled.

Svenk breathed a faint sigh of relief. The PWS on a ASP-1011 were weak and they took power from the engines. It took a direct order to authorize turning them on. Svenk plunged his claw-tip into the controls and felt some of his shaking subsided as his ship hummed and the shimmering field came on, then vanished from visibility. It was a thin shield, but it was better than nothing. Especially considering the veritable swarm that the humans had flung up.

“Pick targets and cut htem down!” Gigzor laughed. Then, he gasped. “Wait!”

In the center-front of the enemy air wings, a sudden draconic shape had appeared.

“It’s Miles! All wings! Target that fucking Dungeon Master!” General Bryaugh’s voice exploded over the coms.

“Svenk, you’re on me!” One of Svenk’s wing-mates yipped. She put on her after-burners and angled towards the dragon. Svenk gulped and took up position next to her. “Kiiiiyaaaaa ya ya ya!” The sound of a dozen kobold war cries filled the radio bands. Then the flight computer on Svenk’s cockpit blared warning signatures. Targeting lasers were lining up on him! His eyes widened and he flung himself into a corkscrewing flight path as missiles erupted from every single human fighter. Each missile flew straight as an arrow – straighter, actually – and sought out a different fighter. Svenk’s wing-mate exploded with a screech of shock, her Asp crumpling and ripping apart in a flare of orange and white light.

Svenk groaned as G-forces dragged blood away from his head. His vision dimmed. The missile that had targeted him missed by a tail length and he swung the nose of his Asp around. Twin searing rays leaped out and shot through the missile, tranfixing it. It flashed away, vanishing as its warhead went off.

Then the human fighters smashed into the wings of kobold fighters. The worst part was the sound. The howling, screeching sound of their jet turbines as they roared forward. Svenk relied on instinct and instinct alone as he kicked engines to full, throttled down, fired laterally, spun, twisted, flipped. The laser targeting alarm went off every second – a screaming jangle that rattled against his ear-drums. He swung his head around, screeching: “Does every fucking fighter they have have laser targeters!?”

“I’ve got two humans on my tail!” a fighter from the Redscales screamed as he twisted and twirled, trying to swing her nose around. But the human fighter took advantage of their mystical areodynamics with shocking alacrity: They would flip up areobrakes that would normally be utterly useless in the depths of space, slowing and dropping themselves out of line of fire, then hit after burners to scoot underneath Asps.

But the worst part was the...

The guns.

Svenk’s eyes widened and he gaped as he saw one of the heavy bombers – which was trundling straight towards one of the spelljammer battleships – was struck by a pair of human fighters. Normally, a Planar Whipple Shield worked by snapping open tiny portals to the Elemental Plane of Water, so that the needle-like darts that most railguns or the beam-rays that most magical weapons fired would zip through. But the humans took that rulebook, laughed, and tossed it into the furnace.

Their nose guns were horrible, chattering things that seemed to paint the space before them in a haze of bullets, cutting out the pattern of a fighter – guided by those infernal laser seekers. So, rather than one portal to open to shunt away one stream of railgun slugs, the PWS had to open dozens if not hundreds. The bomber’s shields flashed and rippled as portals opened across it like smallpox blisters ... and then the shields shattered. Bleeding planar energy like a whale struck by a harpoon, the bomber crumpled, then exploded as the bullets tore into their armor.

But ... the bombers are adamant plated! How!? Svenk’s eyes bugged.

Then, again, he had to rely on nothing but instinct as two human fighters screamed towards him – nose mounted cannons winking like the baleful eyes of a dark god.

Svenk threw himself into a spun, felt the right moment, and pulled back on the trigger. A series of acid arrows plunged into the belly of the human fighter as it shot by overhead. The human fighter folded in half, then exploded as the fuel went up. Svenk breathed out a quick sigh of relief.

Then, it was right back to desperately trying not to die.

As the fighter scrum devolved and devolved, the human capital ships had not been left idle. They moved in a great, graceful V, sweeping towards the front lines of the picket ships defending the Bryaugh warsphere, which was the first to start its approach towards Earth. Picket ships was a misnomer.

They were mostly battleships.

Aboard one such ship w as Captain Thrug. Thrug had not attained his post by being particularly bright. Bryaugh tactics did not award the bright or the creative. They awarded those that could follow orders and those that could die. And Thrug, being a lowland orc from the world of Ventalis, could die with aplomb. His crew – also mostly orcs – could do the same. And the kobolds who were mixed in among them managed to keep their opinions to themselves.

“Sir,” his scrying officer – a female orc – spoke up. “We’re detecting mage-flares from the human ships.”

“They are spelljammers,” Captain Thrug snarled.

“No, these are active arcanic casts.” Buttons were pushed by thick, green fingers. The forward screen winked and showed the deck of one of the human battleships. It flew a flag with a blood red circle in the center. Thrug grunted, slightly. He approved of that flag, though something about the massive battleship struck him as different from the human ships surrounding it. It had larger guns, yes, but it also seemed ... strangely primitive.

But then his narrow eyes narrowed further as he saw the war-wizards on the deck. They were easily visible, being the only non-humans. They stood beside those main guns, and they cast.

The main guns bellowed.

Smoke rocketed from each massive barrel and flames and fury surrounded them. Captain Thrug chuckled. “They’re firing non-magical weapons ... those shells, are they even plus one?”

“They’ve-” the sensor officer paused, then gasped, her eyes widening. “They’ve been-”

The PWS of a draconic battleship was considerably more powerful than a fighter-craft. They were able to draw on the energies of the plane of positive energy on a scale that made a fighter-craft seem inconsequential. But they still were designed to resist beams and railguns. And so, the portal opened by the ships computer was roughly a foot wide, and they were pressed right up against the skin of the ship, to save on the energy costs. Projecting a shield-portal got more expensive the further from the projectors it got, after all.

The incoming shells were eighteen inches of armor piercing, high explosive apocalypse, enchanted by professional war-wizards. They screamed in, struck the too-narrow shield portals whose edges set off contact tips. High explosives exploded with ship-shaking concussions, while glowing chunks of white hot, enchanted shrapnel struck adamantine and ignored the extra hardness provided by the mystical alloy. Decks were torn apart and internal components were ripped to shreds. Crew barely had time to scream.

The battleship reeled under the impact. Captain Thruk – knocked off his throne and blinking at his severed arm – had enough time to say: “I really like that flag!” before the second volley from the other human battleships struck. The draconic battleship crumpled and the reactors overloaded. A flash of brilliant white light flared and, across the human fleet, cheers rang out. The first enemy ship had gone down.

Aboard the Xosh Warsphere, Emperor Xosh growled. Smoke poured from his nostrils, drifting about the ceiling as Admiral Thresh tried to not attract any attention as she stood stock still in the room.

“Launch the B-suits.”

Julia whistled cheerfully as she twirled a wand around her fingers.

Across from her sat some cute Asian chick. Well, cute-ish. It was hard to think someone was cute when they were glaring at you with some mixture between suspicion and loathing. She was the leader of the twelve men jammed into the tiny, flying VTOL, which was right now creeping along as carefully as it could manage. The asian chick – Lt. Kisogawa – was dressed in sleek armor that looked several tech levels above what normal humans managed. She had an actual freaking laser rifle in her lap, as did the rest of the twelve man team did.

And best of all?

They were all shrouded in Julia’s spells.

Julia knew she should have been deeply nervous. But it had been hard to feel anything but giddy excitement, when every day brought her new understanding of magic. She closed her eyes and recounted everything she had memorized. Relix had granted her an unofficial rank of class six. Six, out of twenty. But the important thing was that she had gotten her mitts on Summon Sexual Partner. For after this little kerfuffle.

“They’re going to town on each other up there.”

The disembodied voice came from the pilot of the VTOL.

That made Julia nervous. But she carefully took her nervousness about Merton and put it into a tiny box. Merton had Brash watching his back. He’d be fine. She nodded slightly.

“All right, everyone,” Kisogawa said, her voice soft. “Hats on. And remember, no one fires a shot till Akko over here is out of level 1 slots.”

“Did...” Julia blinked. “Was that a Little Witch Academia reference?” She grinned – mentally putting Kisogawa up a few notches in her mind. Kisogawa grunted as she slid on the face concealing helmet. Julia was kinda glad she didn’t have to deal with that bullshit. Armor, any kind of armor, would fuck with her magic. And she’d rather take her chances ducking and using magic armor and shield spells and blur and mirror image and-

The VTOL rocked slightly. A faint crackling, hissing noise filled the deck. The members of D-Com stood. Each of them were the best of the best of the best, and they had trained their whole lives for this moment. Julia stood, bouncing from foot to foot, then readied herself. The door swung inwards – and a billowing cloud of acrid smoke flowed outwards. Through the cloud, Julia could see a pair of very confused kobolds. She thrust her finger at them and hissed. “Sleep!”

A bolt of energy flew from her finger, struck the kobolds, and sent them sprawling on the ground.

Kisogawa stepped into the narrow corridor, swinging her rifle around, checking each corner. She was followed by more D-Com soldiers. Julia was hustled out in the middle of the group. She rubbed her palms together, then placed her palms onto the deck. She murmured the words of the spell and felt one of the buzzing knots of magical energy that she had locked into her brain with eight hours of meditation uncoil. Her palms flashed and she felt a shiver rush through her brain.

A useful spell, Locate Weakness.

She pointed. “That way.”

And together, she and D-Com started through the corridors of the Bryaugh Warsphere.

Merrrrtonnnnnn! Brash’s squeal of alarm jerked Merton away from his current task, which was firing spinfusor disks at a heavy bomber that was rushing towards the USS Antietam. The shimmering blue-white disks of cutting, exploding plasma smashed into the sides of the bomber, whose PWS had been taken down by the Antietam’s anti-missile cannons, which were still pouring high caliber machine gun bullets into the front of the bomber. Since they hadn’t had time to enchant every single bullet, shell and missile used by the entire navy of the entire human race, those bullets weren’t enchanted, and so simply bounced harmlessly off the adamantine armor.

The spinfusor disks did a lot better. The secondary explosion sent the bomber wheeling to the side, trailing smoke and fire.

“What?” Merton asked.

They launched the B-suits!

“Shit,” Merton whispered.

They had been waiting for this moment.

But there was a difference between waiting and actually being ready.

A hundred B-suits shot out, each one in its own unique configuration, suited to the cruel mind of the black dragon wearing They rushed towards the human ships and the dragon ships that were, even now, harrying the Thresh Warsphere. They had swung straight past the Bryaugh sphere to begin firing on the massive red sphere that made up the centerpiece of the second wave of Chromatic attack. Shells slammed through massive planar shields, while missiles tried to jink around and hit the actual armor. Most were scooped up, but even the immense power of the Warsphere’s shield emitters had limits, and some parts of the skin started to glow with the heat of explosion and shine with the fresh-metal gouges of shrapnel ripping across thick armor plating.

Brash kicked himself to full gear, shooting straight at the first of the enemy B-Suits.

Even that was too slow.

Hellwhips slashed out. Beamcasters snarled and split space. Tactical nuclear launches smashed down. Flares of brilliant white heat consumed one ship, then another. The Russian aircraft carrier – the Kuznetsov – heeled under the impacts. Great, jagged tears were ripped across the flight deck. Bodies tumbled into space. Flames poured through those holes, and Merton’s eyes widened as he saw the whole ship start to crack in half under the strain of the damage. Lance-beams intersected and fuel tanks went off with crumps that shook him, even from this distance.

The Kuznetsov continued to tumble forward. But only as debris and wreckage.

A United States submarine was ripped from nose to propellers by a single B-suit, using nothing more than their claws. Three fighters were shot from the sky by dart-quick silver blades, fired by shrike catapults. The whole offense staggered as if it had struck a brick wall. And that was only the effect of ten or so of the B-Suits. Dozens more were forming up to attack in a unified pattern.

And there was nothing that Merton could do about it.

Brash hissed. Snarled. Bellowed.

It was a bellow that echoed through Merton’s whole body and it made him stagger slightly in space, his knees jerking up reflexively. His wings flapped and he slowed to an almost complete stop. The bellow was wordless at first, but then Brash added – with a snarl full of real pain: STOP HURTING MY FRIENDS!

And to Merton’s shock, every single B-Suit skidded to a stop, their bodies reacting convulsively.

The reaction of the human and Metallic ships was immediate. Missiles rushed off firing platforms and smashed into B-suits by the dozens. Explosions rocked and chunks of organic matter flew through space. Other B-suits were transfixed by intersecting lines of machine gun and cannon fire. Still others were sliced by X-ray lasers fired by the surviving Metallic ships.

“What did you do?” Merton whispered, his eyes wide.

“Noooooo!” Admiral Thresh screamed.

General Bryaugh spun around to glare – but not at Thresh, not at Xosh. No. He glared at Gimtesh. Gimtesh whimpered, grabbing onto the base of the spike that transfixed her. She made a great show of being in pain, but Bryaugh didn’t seem to care. He stomped forward, then grabbed her by her throat and heaved her up. Shifting or no shifting, the sudden pressure of the spike against her belly sent new jolts of agony through her body.

“What was that you said?” Bryaugh growled. “That there was no way the control dragon could be an issue. Not when he was so young!? That was how you covered for your brother’s failing, you half-elven bitch!”

Admiral Thresh, meanwhile, had shook off her shock. She grabbed onto the com crystal and screamed into it: “Shut down your coms, B-Suits! Go dark, go silent, and kill that fucking traitor! Now! Now!”

The surviving B-suits – all twenty of them – winked off the communication board. But they started to move again. Gimtesh whimpered, her eyes closed tight.

And grew her foot just a bit more.

Julia ran out of level one spell slots at just about the worst time. The small group had penetrated deep into the belly of the Warsphere, working their way closer and closer towards the vast guts that powered the immense Hellcannon that made a Warsphere such a destructive force. But here, the very scale of the sphere played against the intentions of its creators. There was no way to staff every corridor, every intersection, even every important room. And so, they had moved and used sleep on every knot of crew and guards that they came to.

Until Julia shook her head. “I’m out. We’re on to second and third level spells. And cantrips.” She shrugged, then wiggled her fingers – using prestidigitation to scrawl: Julia wuz here on the wall.

“All right,” Kisogawa muttered. She looked over at the two soldiers who were using a nifty little fiber optic camera to peek underneath a heavy door.

“It looks like an engineering section,” one of the soldiers muttered. “With a bunch of-”

His head exploded. The sound of the gunshot seemed to come afterwards and Julia swung her head around. She thrust her finger out and snarled out a quick work. The orc guard who had come up around the corner behind them – unexpectedly quiet – let out a garbled scream as he put his palms over the globe of acid that struck his face. But his other friends dove for cover, even as the D-Com troopers started to open fire.

The door opened. An orc, drawn by the gunfire stood there, holding a massive sword in one hand. Kisogawa reacted with astounding speed. She stepped past him, slamming her elbow into his throat with a twist that put the full weight of her body into the blow. The orc clutched at his throat, then let out a low grunt as Kisogawa rammed a combat knife into his heart. As he fell, she shouted: “Light em up!”

Laser fire strobed from her rifle, cutting another orc down as he turned to see what the call had been from. Julia slapped her palms together. “Give me the bombs!”

Kisogawa jerked her chin to the sapper. The sapper under-handed the backpack full of C4 to Julia. Julia caught it and spoke a single word ... and vanished. And, painfully aware that a bullet fired by random chance was just as likely to kill her as one fired deliberately, Julia ducked low and sprinted past the door. Orcs were swarming into the engineering bay, bellowing as they realized that their Warsphere had been boarded.