Chapter 12

The undead marching down the winding road that cut through the reclamation zone glowed like purple torches to Cinder – visible clearly to her dark adapted, magic sensitive eyes. She leaned against the small, wooden doorframe of the cottage and heard Markova cursing under her breath and the labored breathing of Kaleb. That sound, that sound of raspy, crinkling breaths, were like knives, digging into her spine. Her whole life, Cinder had been dogged by the story of the backstabbing, sneaky t’row. Hell, she was pretty sure a t’row wizardess stealing the life and vitality of someone she slept with was one that she had actually been accused of, back on the steppes of the Sur.

She stepped back into the cottage and swung the door shut. The owners were nowhere to be seen – Markova said that it was most likely they had been in at a local enclave – what the Starkers called their villages for some reason. But with the undead out in force, it was unlikely that they’d be returning any time soon. Markova didn’t blink at helping herself to their food, to their computer terminal, and to their ‘wi-fi’, but that was proving to be balky and uncooperative, something that struck Cinder as rather odd. Most Stark technology worked with a worrying precision.

When she said that out loud, Markova glared at her, as if she had been making a very poorly timed joke.

“What?” Cinder asked.

Markova sighed. “They’ve taken the local internet infrastructure into their control. All I’m getting is some propaganda that looks like it was written by a twenty year old whose never done any political thought outside of a message board.” She frowned, her scar twisting the feature into an even more fearsome expression. “Cinder, explain to me, how can this fascist raise and control this much? It is too much for a single person, is it not? You had to draw on the strength of the orc...”

“W-Well, I’m just a sellspell,” Cinder said, her ears drooping ever so slightly as she rubbed the back of her neck. “My main job is to throw fireballs downrange during a battle, not to raise the dead. But ... well, the Dark Lord was famous for being a master necromancer. And...” She chewed her lower lip. Her hand lifted and she looked at her fingers, focusing as she tried to draw on the mana surrounding her. More than she expected flared around her palm and her fingertips, swirling like a blue haze. She gritted her teeth, feeling the sting, the burn of magical power. It took a concentrated effort to bleed it off without singing herself.

“And what?” Markova asked.

Kaleb let out a wracking cough. Cinder’s eyes flicked to his age-ravaged features and she tried to clamp down on the swelling guilt inside of her as effectively as she had bled off the excess mana. Trying to sound professional, she said: “This world has a bare fraction of the number of wizards as Arcadia. But it seems to have the same amount of magic – flowing from the portal? Maybe?” She shook her head. “That means that we all get more, as you say, thrust for our remass.”

Markova nodded, curtly.

“But where did he get all the dead?” Cinder asked. “And those flying machines – how many flying machines did you build and then destroy?”

“In war?” Markova shrugged. “Enough.”

She stood, then. “We need to get into contact with the local military. Unfortunately, that would be the EUDF and we are not exactly what you might consider friends. I do not know their ciphers. They do not know mine – or if they do, the intelligence boys have fallen down...” She clicked her tongue, then picked up the pistol she had laid out on the table. Sliding it into the holster by her hip, she said. “However, we must try. Can you disguise us?”

Cinder blinked. “I ... can ... try...” She said, slowly, chewing her lower lip. Camouflage had been a purpose that she had been set to before. But it was one thing to make an army seem like a company – or, more often, the reverse – and another thing entirely to cloak her elven ears and midnight black skin. She looked over at Kaleb. And him. Even if she could conceal the wrinkles, she wasn’t sure if he was going to survive the night, let alone any kind of tramping about the French countryside, looking for some military unit to throw in with.

Markova, seeing her hesitation, pursed her lips. She jerked her chin to the door and the two of them stepped outside. The undead were gone and the night was silent, save for distant hooting, the occasional drone of those undead flying machines. A glow lit the horizon – one that made Cinder think of great forest fires, blazing and out of control. Save that they were glows without smoke, and the light was not quite the hellish flare of a wild blaze. It was something harsher and yellower – but more ... appealing for all that.

“Paris,” Markova said, bluntly, jerking her chin in that direction. “The City of Lights, they call it.” Her tongue slid along her lips. “Kaleb is dying.”

“I...” Cinder gulped. “A healing spell could fix him – but it’d need to be more powerful than anything I’d ever cast before.”

“Powerful or complex?” Markova asked.

“Powerful. The body wishes to be well,” Cinder said. “It does it by itself most of the time. But it is fighting against the slow creep of the void in this case...” She crossed her arms over her chest. Her voice was soft. “Or the fast creep of my own incompetent stupidity...” Her eyes blurred. “I don’t even like him. He’s just some ... blunt headed sword slinging orc...” She whispered, sniffing. “I just ... I don’t want to be the t’row, damn it...”

Markova placed her hand on Cinder’s shoulder and squeezed her with some strength. Her voice was soft. “You said yourself we have more power here, do we not?” She asked, her lips quirking up. “Well, it’s better to try than to sit around moaning.” She gently turned Cinder around and pushed her back inside with a little shove on the small of her back. For just a moment, Cinder thought her hand would dip down – it would be a very human thing to grope her butt at a moment like this. But Markova instead simply swung the door shut.

Cinder sighed as she stepped over to Kaleb. Her fingers touched together and she closed her eyes, reaching out with her magical awareness – feeling the flow of magic around her body. It was strange, casting here in Stark. The magic was here, but it was less like the roiling, pitching ocean of magic on Arcadia. There, the motion was so common and so all present that she had learned quickly how to ignore it, to dive beneath the waves so to speak and grab for what she needed before it was whisked away. But here, on Stark, magic felt so still, so vast, so untapped ... even with the power coursing through it and into the hands of the Dark Lord, she felt as if she could drink her fill.

But still, Cinder balked.

That power, that amount of raw energy, could burn her from the inside out. She wasn’t Dalethraxius, to casually draw power and fling it out as if the world owed her that. She was just Cinder Spiderblood. Her fingers tightened and she opened her eyes, hissing. “I don’t even have a material focus, a gemstone or a-” Her back straightened and she hissed. The ocean of magic around had begun to roil and flow, great troughs of power being dragged out of it. It was as if a massive, skeletal hand was reaching out and scooping up magic.

Cinder closed her eyes tight and focused on the magic that she felt. Without an entire world of mages, wizards, witches and spellslingers, casting a spell on Stark felt as obvious as a setting a fire in the underdark. And she could see the spell growing, almost a world away. It was a similar spell to hers. Healing. Reversing the pain of death. And to her shock, she saw that a thread of it was being ... pulled on. Something close to the caster was teasing apart the magic, tugging and nudging and even ripping. Cinder could barely move, she was so shocked.

Who would be brave enough to be near enough and connected enough to that spell, to that power ... and still dare to try and twist it apart. And then, Cinder saw her chance. She put her palms together, whispering under her breath the incantation. She had no sympathetic connection, no material focuses. All she had was her own skill.

Throwing a bolt of magical power at very long ranges.

She caught onto the thread of magic and felt the whole thing becoming even more unstable. Her body trembled and she opened her eyes to see that purple flames were glowing around her entire body. Then the distant mage on the other end of the line – and she knew it was Dalethraxius – slammed down his own control. The magic stabilized and she placed her palms onto Kaleb’s chest. Light glowed and flared and he gasped, his eyes widening as his wrinkles faded, his hair darkened, and he regressed in his age, back to what he had been at the start of this nightmarish trip.

Cinder felt the strength leaving her body as the spell did – her knees going weak and the connection to the distant spell snapping off. She had no idea what she had just stolen the magic from – but she managed to mumble a quick: “Thanks...” to whoever had thrown the first monkey wrench in. Whatever the Dark Lord had been about to cast, it surely had been evil and horrible and just ... ugh. She closed her eyes as a pounding headache hit her.

Markova knelt down beside her. She murmured, softly. “Hey there, little coal,” she whispered, her voice shockingly soft. “Are you all right? Are you well?” She made a little snort. “The spell worked – though his snoring is worse now.”

She was right. Kaleb was snoring quite loudly now, his breathing more easy and fair than it had been before. His chest rose and it fell and he slept the deep, happy sleep of the young and the exhausted. Cinder gave a little smile, looking up at Markova, and noticed the faint glimmer of concern in the other woman’s eyes. She grinned. “Captain Markova, showing concern for a little t’row like me?”

Markova sighed. “Not a captain anymore...” She pursed her lips. “Remember those shooting stars during the evening?”

Cinder nodded and let the stronger woman heft her up. The cottage was not large, but there was an adjoining bathroom – which they had modified, using some towels and blankets to serve as a bed, so that they could sleep with some privacy. Cinder groaned as Markova laid her down, then sat down beside the small, makeshift bed. Markova reached down and brushed some of Cinder’s chalk white hair away from her eyes as Cinder felt every muscle in her body begin to ache at the same time as the magical backwash started to take its revenge on her. She sighed as Makrova explained: “Those stars were the orbital fleets. I recognized the flashes – nuclear bursts, high yield. Lots of them. I think every fleet saw what was going on down here and assumed the other side was launching their first strike...”

Cinder blinked. She realized what that had to mean.

Her hand reached up, despite the ache in her shoulder and her forearm, and she took Markova’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice soft. “I’m sorry, Captain. Markova. I ... I mean...” She trailed off.

Markova shrugged. “Such is life. And as I am not a Captain, and as I no longer have a crew...” Her lips quirked. That large burn scar on her cheek made the smirk incredibly sardonic. She turned her head slightly – and Cinder wondered if she thought that concealed the scar in shadow. But Cinder could see all of the Russian woman’s face quite clearly, her eyes adapted to a blackness deeper and more complete than this. “You can call me Lata.”

“Lata,” Cinder murmured.

Lata leaned down and kissed her.

The movement shocked Cinder to the core. Her eyes widened and she tensed – and when Lata, when Markova, drew back with her blond hair coming slightly loose from her increasingly frayed ponytail, Cinder squeaked: “Just because I’m a t’row doesn’t-”

Lata looked at her, bemused. “What does you being a t’row have anything to do with it?” She asked, her voice filled with that infuriating blunt confidence that had been her mode since Cinder had been plucked off the wild steppes and into the belly of the Russian starship. Cinder sat up, despite the aches in her back, and scowled.

“I’m not interested in girls,” she said, furiously. “That’s what everyone claims about t’row, but most of us are ... we ... that ... not that...” She spluttered, feeling all the more infuriated the wider and wider Lata’s smirk grew. “You do know Kaleb pines for you!”

“Two things,” Lata said. Her voice had become a predatory purr. One that made the tips of Cinder’s ears tingle. “The first? I do not care that Kaleb pines for me. I’m used to men pining for what they’ll never get.” Her hand cupped Cinder’s cheek. “And the second is that it is good you are not interested in girls. I am a woman.” Her eyes sparkled. Well. The one that was not milky white – but even that seemed more amused than not. Cinder spluttered, hissed, scowled, then leaned forward and kissed Lata with a desperation that nearly drew blood. Her teeth sank into Lata’s lip and when she drew back, she dragged her lower lip with her and released only with a quiet, whimpery moan.

“Shut up,” Cinder said, before Lata could say anything.

Lata chuckled. “We’re in a war. Talking is usually a bad idea.”

And she put truth to her word by leaning forward and kissing Cinder even harder. Cinder felt every spike of adrenaline, every near-death experience, every dollop of existential terror, transmuting into a single fiery pit of lust. Her cunt ached with desire and she cast aside every doubt she had ever had. After all, considering the stunt she had just pulled, she might be dead tomorrow. Still, when Lata took hold of her tank top and tugged it up and over her head head, Cinder lifted her arms grudgingly and broke the kiss with a tiny mewl of disappointment. The coarse grain of the Starkian outfit tugged against her nipples, teasing them, then rasped against her neck, then caught on her nose as her arms grew tangled. For just a moment, Lata held her there – and with the top over her eyes, Cinder could no more see than Lata could have in pitch black.

“Mmm...” Lata murmured. “Do you know ... how...”

Her breath was moist heat against one of Cinder’s nipples. Cinder whimpered and squirmed and tried to escape the top. But her muscles twinged and ached abominably, making her hiss through her teeth. Moving her arms hurt. Keeping them still hurt slightly less. And the thrill buzzing along her spine as Lata drew closer and closer made her want to scream with delight and frustration both.

“Beautiful ... your titties are...” Lata’s lips just barely grazed one of Cinder’s nips. Cinder did let out a squeak, her back arching – and then grunted low in her throat as the movement set a cascade of tightening muscles through her lower back. Her clenched her fist and hissed out as Lata drew back, then finished tugging the tanktop off. Cinder panted softly as she let her arms drop, groaning as she felt her muscles untense. Relax. But as they relaxed, the rest of her grew more taut. Lata was regarding her with that wry little smirk, made ferocious by her scar.

“Are you all right?” she murmured.

“Back aches...” Cinder licked her lips – then let Lata gently push her down. Soon, Cinder was laying on the makeshift cot beneath Lata, and the Russian woman was undoing button after button after button. “Have you...” Cinder bit her lower lip. She wanted to feel the same ache that Lata did.

“Hmm?” Lata slid her uniform off. Her breasts, larger than Cinder’s, were contained within a bra that was as efficient and plain as most of Stark. Cinder would have wondered what it was like to live in a world so bereft of elegance – had she not immediately been distracted by the glorious sight of Lata’s full, heavy breasts swinging free as the older woman tugged her clothing off. Her breasts had a sag to them no elven woman would have, and that sag and sway drew Cinder’s eyes, almost as if she was hypnotized. Her mouth filled with eagerness and she tried to breathe. But she had forgotten how. She had even forgotten how to speak – until Lata put her finger under her chin, lifting her head.

“Have you what?” she crooned.

“Ever been with a ... a woman before?” Cinder asked. She trembled, like prey under a hawk, as Lata drew her finger from chin to lips. Lata’s smirk was wry.

“A few times. One needs to be cautious among astros. No privacy. And there are regulations,” she shrugged. “But since I am no longer constrained by regulations...” She leaned down and kissed Cinder again. Their breasts pressed together, the points of contact burning like stars. But while Cinder was acutely aware of the way their hard, eager nipples slipped and skidded around one another, she could also feel everywhere else the other woman touched her. The five points of fire that were her left hand, sliding along her thigh, her hip. Finding the button on the front of her leggings. The warm palm print, skipping along her belly, then between her breasts as Lata drew back enough to breathe and to move. The fact Lata did not simply cup her breasts, but rather, cupped the back of her neck and tilted her head backwards, so that she might kiss and suck and nibble on the pulse point of her throat ... it made one of Cinder’s legs kick upwards, her toes curling tightly.

Her pants slipped past her anles and Lata’s hand teased its way along one thigh, then the other as she nuzzled at her neck. Her voice purred soft sweetnesses – words that were barely translated by the magical spell that shrouded the two of them. Words that failed utterly to penetrate the warm glow that filled Cinder. Her heart pounded as she spread her legs – and yet, as wide as they spread, as desperately as she bucked her hips upwards, Lata’s calloused fingers refused to find purchase. They skidded along her thigh. Teased where a human would have had pubic hair. Circled her belly button. And the whole time, Lata planted kiss after kiss across Cinder’s face, teasing her forehead, kissing her cheek, her neck. Cinder mewled and then finally broke.

“A-Are you going to fuck me or what?” Her eyes flashed. “Do girls-”

Lata chuckled. “Oh. Girls can.” She kissed Cinder’s neck. She bit. “I’m just winding you up like an expensive watch, Cinder.” She kissed a glowing line of molten pleasure – points that were hot for what felt like years before fading to her normal temperature, then colder as her spittle dried – between Cinder’s breasts, to her belly button. Finally, Lata attacked. One hand cupped Cinder’s ass. The other pressed to her cunt and she slid, without preamble, two fingers into Cinder’s hot t’row sex. As her fingers plunged in, she closed her expert lips around Cinder’s clit and sucked on her, using a pressure that neither needed to be increased or decreased. The final, exquisite detail that pushed Cinder entirely over the edge was the rough, sandpaper rasp of her scar against her thigh – a counterpoint that completed the melody.

It was like being dropped into a volcano.

It was like leaping onto ice and feeling a crack, then sweeping into water.

It was like casting a spell for the first time.

Jolting, crackling pleasure roared up every one of Cinder’s nerves. She arched her back and hooked one of her hungry knees behind Lata’s head, and the blond Russian leaned into it, kissing and licking with more frantic passion than Cinder had expected. Gone was the almost clinical skill, the musician’s fingers that had wrung every mewl and moan and gasp and squirm from Cinder that could have been snatched. In their place was a fierce, eager coaxing – her knuckles almost pounding against Cinder, her tongue questing inside of Cinder’s cunt. Finding a place inside of her that, when touched, exploded.

Cinder’s back arched. Her cunt tightened. And she screamed her pleasure out as her fingers gripped onto Lata’s blond hair. Tight enough to almost tear. And she felt no pain – at first. Then, as the white cleared from her eyes and she sprawled back onto the ground, she felt her muscles whimper and mewl, but in sharp, clear lines. Like knives, scraping against her spine. She hissed her pain through her teeth as her fingers went slack and Lata drew back, licking her chops slowly.

“Do all t’row taste like that?” Lata slid two fingers along her chin. Scooping up juices that glowed, faintly, with mana. Her tongue darted out and, with an almost excessive relish, she licked her fingers completely clean. The whole operation could have been dainty and elegant and controlled. But Lata licked herself clean like an animal and refused to break eye contact with Cinder the whole time.

Look at how delicious you are, my little t’row, those blue eyes said, in purring tones that Cinder would never have expected to hear fromCaptain Markova. But it seemed humans, once they took their uniforms off, and dropped the Captains and the Luydmiilas and Markovas and allowed you to hear their shortest, most personal names, their Latas...

Well.

It seemed that they could become something, someone, entirely new.

Cinder nearly came again, just from the sight of it.

“Well?” Lata crooned.

“Yes...” Cinder mumbled, turning her head. She wanted to bury her face into a pillow, but just the act of turning her head set off tiny twinges through her body. She squirmed and shivered and then gasped aloud as Lata lifted her leg. Cinder lifted her own head up, craning and peering down her nose at the other woman. Lata had slipped off her leggings and her panties and was settling down against Cinder. For a moment, Cinder was baffled. Then she felt the soaked heat of Lata’s cunt, pressed to hers.

“W-What are ... oh...” Cinder whispered. “Ohhh.” Her croon was warm and eager and she started to rock her own hips back, despite her aches and her pains. Pleasure washed through her – less fierce and intense than the licking and nuzzling and fingering. But there was something warmer about it. She could feel her lover’s sex. Her lover’s pleasure. And that pushed her over an edge again. It was less of an explosion than the last time, but it was still enough to make her mewl and moan. Her eyes closed and she trembled as she leaned in, her body molding to Lata’s.

The two sprawled together. Lata panted softly, her eyes half closed. “Mmm...” She caressed Cinder’s hair and Cinder closed her eyes, letting her tiredness carry her away into a deep, dark, dreamless sleep. When she woke the next morning, she was holding onto nothing and her body had stopped aching quite so much. She managed to roll herself onto her belly and then slide to her hands and knees. She stretched, like a cat, her back popping loudly as she groaned. “So...” She mumbled to herself, drawing down to her knees and sitting back onto her ankles. She looked at herself in the mirror of the bathroom. “You’re an official t’row now...” She smirked, ever so slightly.

When she emerged from the bathroom, it was to find Kaleb standing and stretching while Lata...

Markova.

She couldn’t see the wry Lata in the woman sitting at the table. While she had left off the official parts of her uniform, she still had that shield around her. That feeling of being a stern woman at her job. She was Markova again and Cinder wasn’t sure what they were – or if they had been anything more than a fling. She gulped. “So...” She said. “Kaleb. You’re welcome.” She sounded snarky. She didn’t want to – but Kaleb grinned at her.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “We’re alive, I’m young again.” He shrugged. “All in all, things are looking up.”

Markova slapped the magazine of her pistol back in and checked the chamber. She pursed her lips. “Can you get the disguise done, Cinder?”

Cinder nodded.

“Good,” Markova said. “We’re going to find anyone who is fighting back ... and we’ll see what they can do with a wizard of their very own.” Her lips pursed. “I think we’ll be able to cause some damage, eh?”

Kaleb nodded.

And so, a trio of humans left the cottage.

The owners never returned. In the chaos of the days to come, the cottage was left to be slowly reclaimed, piece by piece, by a long battered, long repaired ecology. In remarkably short time, vines and leaves and grass and moss had worked the cottage down to a leaning ruin. But sheltered in the tiled bathroom, the small makeshift bed where Cinder saw past Captain Markova’s shields, if only for a brief, sweaty moment ... lasted.

For longer than some things at least.

The Enterprise and the Russian fleets did not break orbit all at the same time. The dance of orbital dynamics required them to burn in sequence, each one striking at the moment of apoapsis, the moment when their slightly elliptical orbits were furthest from Arcadia. At that moment, water was boiled in the nuclear rockets and jetted out of the thrust nozzles of the starships, sending them whipping away from Arcadia and towards the Janus Portal. Aboard each ship, they were loaded down with a new kind of consumable.

Wizards.

Each Arcadian state and principality and city that had helped to battle the Dark Lord centuries before had found the finest of their spellcasters, and sent them up alongside extra supplies. Normally, starships used dried rations that could be hydrated into something approximating an edible state. Stored like this, they took up less space, less mass. But the old calculations, the rocket equation that had dominated human engineering for centuries, had been tossed out on its ear with the advent of men and women who could create reaction mass from nothing.

However, not every ship had it as easy as the Enterprise.

Two thirds of the Russian fleet – the laser frigates Ladnyy and Admiral Grigorovich, the drone carrier Svatoy Nikolay Chudotvorets, the railgun corvette Sarov and Gorky – were all hydrogen burners. Hydrogen was less massive than water, providing a lower thrust, but since it was less massive, more could be stored, giving them a greater measurement of ΔV over time. This had led to some hasty jerry rigging and the solution had been somewhat sloppy. The SNC, like her departed sister ship, carried sixty drones, each one loaded with a rapid fire conventional cannon. Cheaper than a railgun, faster rate of fire, and slower muzzle velocity, with significantly less strain placed upon the projectiles. This allowed said projectiles, safely protected from the chemical propellant by sabots, to be more complex than the Teflon coated tungsten slugs used by most railguns. The end result was the Russian drone fleet fired semi-guided explosive projectiles, designed to explode and ‘shotgun’ at enemy ships at relatively close range.

This meant that the drones were designed to go slower, to allow their slower firing guns more time to fire. Russian thinking was that it didn’t really matter if this gave enemy point defense lasers more time to burn the drones out of the sky. The drones were going to be shot off into space once they had emptied their tanks anyway. Losing a few to lasfire was acceptable, if it gave the survivors more time to pelt the enemy with explosives.

But the end result of this tactical doctrine decision was that each drone had a rather large chunk that could be easily removed – the ammo bins and the conventional weapon, as well as the gimbals. What was left was a relatively efficient thruster, tanks of liquid mercury, and an empty space on the strut-work. Working with duct tape, screw drivers, and the brainpower of every engineer in the fleet, the Russians knocked together several gas carrying drones, allowing their largest remaining ship, the SNC, to serve as a fuel production station while in transit.

Wizards made water on the SNC, the SNC’s nuclear reactor powered the electrolysis, and the water was turned into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen became a serious problem after a few hours of operation, but by then, the Russians had jerry rigged a set of vents to blow the oxygen out of the SNC’s rear nozzles without causing too much damage. The end result was that the Russians were able to burn towards the Janus portal. Not as efficiently as the Enterprise which was able to just use the water as is. But they managed it, drones bringing each ship in their fleet the magically summoned, technologically filtered hydrogen.

The end result of this inefficiency was that the Enterprise emerged first, a week after setting out from Arcadia. They emerged with good timing, considering the slow, celestial dance of the solar system. Jupiter and Saturn were relatively close to one another, as opposed to being on the far sides of the solar system from one another. The Enterprise had shot through the portal at an obscene velocity – one so high that the crew had actually stopped actively celebrating it in the mess hall, the number having grown beyond their own ability to be quite comfortable.

Deceleration was a long, slow process – spanning several more days as the Enterprise began the glacial turn through space that would bring her back around to begin falling towards Jupiter. They had been going too fast to use Saturn’s gravity to slingshot – but that kind of maneuver, so important when ΔV was a budget and not an infinite, renewable resource that could be drawn from seemingly nothing, was essentially meaningless in this new age of spaceflight.

When the Enterprise – and two days later, the Russian fleet – arrived at Ganymede, they arrived at a colony that had been completely turned over. What had once been the remassing and rearming station of the entire United States outward fleet, as well as home to nearly ten thousand colonists who were beginning to work on future plans to settle the entire Jovian system was now the refugee home of the only parts of the human race not currently under the boot-heel of the Dark Lord.