Chapter 14

Lucas sat on the bridge of the Enterprise and frowned at the orbital chart. He was reminded, obscurely, of one of the many shitty 20th and 21st century spec-fic shows that Helen had crammed down his eyes during the long, slow, stately voyage to Arcadia. It felt like a thousand years before, like a lifetime ago. It was a time where magic was relegated to vidscreens, and where cheap effects that could clearly be seen on modern resolutions wobbled around and pranced to even cheaper, synth’d up music.

The episode in question had involved an engineer, trying to stop a moon from crashing into the surface of a planet. A godlike being who had been forced to be human for contrived reasons had, in irritation, exclaimed: “Just change the gravitational constant of the universe!”

The joke, of course, being that while such things were easy for the godlike being, they were quite beyond the crew of the fictional starship. At the time, Lucas had mostly been blind stinking jealous of a ship that could travel faster than the speed of light, create artificial gravity without rotation or acceleration, and seemed to be able to turn on a dime without expending propellant or reaction mass. Hell, he’d been jealous of the fact everyone involved had been able to fit properly into their nearly skintight uniforms without ever needing to be shown working out.

Now, of course...

“The ritual’s starting, sir,” the communication officer on duty said. Captain DuPont nodded back to him – and the screen at the front of the room switched from the camera view of the Ceres worksite to the habitat dome that had been thrown over one of the craters. The camera filled with washes of static, while several figures in crudely fitted spacesuits shook staves over their heads and chanted words that Lucas half understood.

Helen grabbed onto the small workstation that Lucas was using, grinning as she levered herself to sit against the wall.

“It’s pretty great being Lord Winsom, you know,” she whispered to him. “You can’t believe how hard those elves bitched until I gave them orders to shut up and fucking do it.”

The ritual buzzed even more – and the camera filled with static. When it cleared, the elves were all sagging, but they were sagging in that queer, boneless float of the very tired in microgravity. The whole ship shuddered. He could feel it, deep in his bones. A sensation that the ground upon which they were seated had shifted. The bridge was, properly, situated near the core of the Enterprise. That meant that it was in the same microgravity as the rest of the surface habitations on Ceres – and that very minute gravitational pull had kept it pressed firmly against the array of scaffolding that turned the Enterprise into one of the hundreds of makeshift thrusters that would be pushing the dwarf planet in the next few hours.

But even with thousands of thrusters, each with theoretically infinite reaction mass in the form of summoned water, Ceres was nine times ten to the twentieth power kilograms. It was nine hundred kilometers wide. It was, in effect, another smaller moon. Humanity could have spun it. Humanity could have shaped it.

But they never, never in their history, pushed it.

Until now.

The order couldn’t have been given or punched in by human hands. Instead, one of the admirals had given a nod to a tech, and that tech had thumbed down a switch, and that switch had triggered a hastily thrown together bit of programming that set each thruster online at the same moment. The ships were all mature pieces of technology, when it came to their programming and operational structures. This meant that only ten percent didn’t fire at the same time, and only two of them had major crashes that required their operating systems to be rebooted and fucked with for a few hours before they came to sputtering, hissing life.

The end result was within the parameters that Lucas and the rest of the logistic officers throughout the fleet, had worked out.

Ceres began to move. In fact, it began to move with worrying rapidity – with its mass partially negated and with an entire fleet’s worth of thrusters, it began to slowly curve in its orbit. Orbital dynamics were sometimes quite complex. In this case, with a surfeit of ΔV and the laws of physics broken over their knees like a cheap tablet, it was very simple. By accelerating, they turned Ceres’ orbit into an increasingly elongated parabola – then by burning again, along a tangent, that parabola would intersect with Earth’s orbit within the next month.

The Earth, the Moon, and Ceres would whip past one another like a bullet fired between a pair of dancers – though Ceres, by that point, would likely be glowing from the amount of nuclear ordinance that would have struck it. Abandoning their shield, the fleets of free humanity would engage in the single largest fast pass attack in the history of solar systems. Without time to decelerate, the fleet would simply drop their nukes, fire their lasers, and throw as many railgun slugs as possible at a safe angle, to strike the undead ships without peppering the Earth’s inhabited surface.

And, while zipping past, the marines would be taking advantage of yet another piece of magic.

Magic that Lucas would take part in. He tried to not think about that.

Instead, he watched with trepidation as the orbital charts shifted.

Helen, her hand reaching out, tweaked his ear. “Hey,” she said.

Lucas looked over at her.

“You’re not going down with the marines,” she said, smirking. “That’s my job.”

Fireheart had been rather blunt about it: The elves of the Faelands would, of course, be following Lord Winsom into battle, to earn their new stories. The of course, had been given while glaring daggers at Helen. Helen had managed to not snort and roll her eyes. So, there was that. Lucas put his hand over her hand, squeezing gently.

“I saw what being a material focus did to Vidya,” he said, quietly.

“Did you know, I heard that she’s getting it from Prince Qasim?” Helen asked, grinning. “Like, getting it hard.”

“Vidya? Banging Qasim” Lucas snorted. “Yeah. Right.”

Vidya ducked her head forward, pressing her face against the pillow, her fingers digging into the sheets as a cock slammed into her sex. Again. And again. And again. She swore, she felt it brushing against the depths of her womb, and it felt divine. Her eyes closed and she muffled her moan by biting down on the cheap pillow, while scaled hands gripped her hips and Hua leaned over her, growling in her ear. “Your pussy feels real nice, Dr. Rachna,” he murmured. Vidya threw her head back, moaning loud enough to echo off the walls of the tiny stateroom that Prince Qasim had been given. On the Enterprise, the rotating living quarters gave them gravity. Which meant there was none of that awkward fumbling that sex in microgravity could end up involving.

Instead, here she was, naked, sweating, dripping with her own arousal, while being fucked absolutely silly by a goddamn dragon and it felt fucking amazing.

Hua’s moans grew sharper and more eager, his breath hot against the back of her neck as he slammed into her harder, harder, faster, faster. His balls rebounded off her clit again and again, each percussive impact sending new sparks before her eyes. Vidya’s fingers clenched tighter against the sheets and she moaned. “Sukhdeep!” She threw her head back, trembling as her orgasm struck her, her cunt clenching hard on the thick, lizardish cock that filled her. At the same time, Hua moaned his own pleasure, his tail whipping from side to side. She felt his cum pulsing into her – filling her like the hot, molten core of a volcano.

Vidya, even as she struggled to breathe after her little death, tried to die a real death. A death of embaressment. She buried her face against her pillow and felt tears of shame filling her eyes. Hua remained inside of her, his cock throbbing, his cum escaping from her well fucked pussy, and for a long, long moment, the silence stretched. Vidya could barely believe she was even here. After the long, crushing mundanity of her work on Ceres – work that felt as disconnected from her chosen profession, her chosen life, as anything she had ever done – to be swept into the orbit of a literal prince and his literal dragon companion had been...

Stark.

The fact that was now a pun made her want to groan.

Instead, she remembered sitting with Hua, in this very room, as Hua discussed with her ... everything, it seemed. He had listened to her talk about her husband. About how they had met, how they had fallen in love, how they had been separated. He had even listened to her talk about her Venusian research, and his work with quantum physics and FTL travel on Janus, before that moon had become twisted apart and inverted into the portal that was now the link between Stark and Arcadia. And when the talking had turned to tears, he had gently taken her in his arms and hugged her tight. Then there had been the kissing ... and the desperate, frantic tearing of clothes, and the fucking.

And now, she had moaned her husband’s name while another man’s cum dripped from her cunt.

Great.

Then Hua let out a little giggly snort. “Uh, if you wanted, I could have looked like him, but that would have felt really crass.” He sounded like he was grinning. Then his teeth, gently nipping, touched her ear and his voice became a playful croon. “But I take the high compliment that you’ve given me. After all...” He licked her ear, meditatively. “I’d have to be pretty good to make you think of your husband, right?”

Vidya giggled, despite herself. She turned her head aside, whispering. “Sorry.”

“I mean, I’ve had sex with widows before, I kinda know how it works,” Hua said, with his blithe, casual confidence. He slid from her with a slow groan, then sprawled beside her, his body glowing and shifting as he transformed from his muscular, well formed lizardman body – the form that Vidya had to admit was the most ... masculine ... and into his lithe, skinny, human form. His hair tousled around his face, and looked soaked through with sweat. Vidya laid her hand on his chest, enjoying the contrast between her darker skin and his lighter.

The door to the room opened and Prince Qasim entered without a knock or a pause. The pause came when he looked at the bed – at Vidya, at Hua, and at the cum dripping from her sex and along her thigh. Vidya grabbed the blanket and tried to tug it over her body with a mild squeak – while Hua said: “Hey Qasim! Vidya is a really good lay. Cushy. Squishy. Soft. And she’s super easy to fluster. Also, I think she has never tried anal, so-”

Qasim put his hand over his face. “Hua,” he said. “Dr. Rachna ... my apologies for entering my room without knocking.” He bowed his head to Vidya, stepped backwards, then closed the door. Just before the door whisked shut, Vidya was sure she heard a female voice giggling.

“I want to die,” Vidya moaned, turning her head and pressing it to her pillow.

“I can fuck you again,” Hua said, cheerfully. “You came pretty close to reaching heaven with my cock in you...” His finger gently circled her clit, his hand darting down to stroke her. Vidya moaned and squirmed, her thigh spreading despite the tired ache that suffused her body. She lifted one leg up into the air and Hua began to gently finger her well fucked pussy, his thumb rubbing her clit as Vidya bit down on the back of her wrist to stifle herself. She was unable to help herself, Hua just ... was so confident – and then she shuddered as his finger crooked against her center of pleasure.

He was fucking good at it too.

“Hua!” Qasim’s voice barked through the door. Either he had heard her, despite her attempts to be quiet ... or more likely, Qasim knew his draconic companion quite well.

“Pout,” Hua said, drawing his fingers – slippery with her arousal and his own spunk – out of Vidya. “Finnnnne!” He licked his finger clean, then slipped from the bed, helping Vidya to her feet. Vidya dressed, steeled herself, and managed to walk through the door without bursting into flames as Prince Qasim and Ning, his lover, watched her go. Ning gave her a smile and a nod, as if she knew exactly what it was that Vidya had just enjoyed – and the image of the muscular, tough Chinese woman pinned between Qasim’s chiseled body and Hua’s malleable form flashed into Vidya’s mind. She hurried through the decks of the ship and came to the laboratory.

Mohammad was there.

Because of course he was.

She stepped over cautiously, still feeling the warmth of Hua’s cum in her belly, and took a glance at what her friend was doing – her brow furrowing as she saw that he had what looked like bog-standard silicates in a jar, with several oblong sensor aparatuses surrounding it. He was tapping at the keyboard, frowning as results scrolled past. Vidya took a seat next to him, trying to sound casual. “Hey,” she said.

“Hello Vidya,” he said, his voice warmth – any awkwardness from her attempt to seduce him clearly far in the past. He regarded her ... and to her shock, a tiny, playful little smirk crossed his lips. “Are the rumors I’m hearing true?” He leaned forward, his voice soft. “The crew have been murmuring about your visit to Prince Qasim’s chambers.”

“This ship has too many people on it for its own good,” Vidya’s voice grew dark. “Fine! Yes! I’ve been fucking a dragon.”

Mohammad chuckled, softly – but she saw that his cheeks were darkening. “Well, I wish you joy of it,” he said, casually, or as casually as he could manage.

“Not going to get judgmental or...” Vidya shook her head. “No, sorry. That’s unfair. You’ve been nothing but a good friend to me, Mohammad...” She put her hand over her face.

“There are some that may take a hardline,” Mohammad said, shrugging one shoulder. “But the fact I cannot go to Mecca without a radiation suit shows that sometimes, a hard line is less important than the subtler truths of a creed. And the Prophet said that humans are, at the end of the day ... good.” His lips quirked. “Even if they are somewhat forgetful of God. And if God is so displeased with you for, ah, spending time with a dragon, well...” He shrugged one shoulder. “I’m sure that he can find it in himself to forgive you, if he can forgive the rest of us.”

Vidya blushed. Hard. “Thanks.”

Silence passed between them and Vidya frowned at the silicate. “What are you researching anyway?” she asked.

“Ah, it’s from Ceres,” Mohammad said. “I’m studying it to see if the mass reduction that our fae friends have accomplished is diffused or specific – and as it transpires, it is specific. The instant this mass was removed from Ceres, it began to exist once more. Though it is somewhat hard to measure a kilogram’s worth of difference.”

“Fascinating,” Vidya murmured.

“It-” Mohammad stopped – frowning. The screen that displayed the readouts from the analysis he was managing flickered. A cloud of hissing static flared through the screen and when it had passed, the analysis looked as if someone had taken the GUI elements and bent them into odd shapes, folding and crumpling them. Letters glowed out of their place, molded into a wild pattern that, only after a few seconds of fierce examination, turned into words: COM LASER NA – DR S.R

The screen blurred with static again – and the GUI was once more normal.

“That looked like one of the hauntings,” Mohammad said.

“Sukhdeep,” Vidya whispered – her guts knotting with guilt. “He was sending us a message.”

“Yes, com laser NA...” Mohammad looked at her. “North America?”

“It has to be,” Vidya said, nodding. She stood. “We have to talk to the Captain – to the Admirals. Right now.”

Cinder laid flat on her belly, the binoculars pressed to her eyes. She had to give it to the humans ... they damn well knew how to work with glass. She had, as a sellspell, used looking glasses. Often, they were cheaper and faster and easier to use than a scrying spell. But unlike the crystal clarity of a scrying spell, a looking glass was wobbly. Some even showed images that were fully upside down, rather than the proper sight that she had wanted to see.

But this?

This was like standing a good five hundred paces closer to the undead. They swelled before her eyes, and she didn’t even feel the twinging pain from the lights they stood beside. The forest was plunged into deepest night, and the undead had glowing purple flames to illuminate their workplace – but the binoculars had some kind of trick to them that kept the light from hurting her eyes. Cinder was not about to complain, even as, beside her, Lata checked over her rifle.

“Do you know what they’re doing, my umber beauty?”

Cinder lowered the binocuars and looked over Lata – who was rolling her eyes – and at Madeleine Lecuyer. The tall, middle aged woman looked utterly unconcerned about the fact that she was alone in the woods with about ten other French partisans, armed with what weapons they could steal from or borrow from the local rural homesteads. It was a motley collection of deliberately stripped down hunting rifles, rifles that Madeleine claimed could have fit in perfectly with her great great great grandmother when she had fought some people called the Cabbage Heads.

Cinder sometimes wondered if her fucking translation spell worked.

Lata shot Madeleine a lowering glare that bounced off the Frenchwoman as if she was made of steel, while Cinder did some mental math. “If this is like the last factory, they’re preparing it for a spell that will ... hold up...” She lifted her binoculars. Another group of undead were heading for the factory, walking casually along the road. “What the hell...”

“What is it?” Lata whispered.

But Cinder was not quite sure. It was just that something felt...

Off.

The two groups of undead turned to face one another. The plan had been that their weapons, enhanced by Cinder’s magic, would take the undead down and they’d be able to get close enough to blow the factory. No one believed the propaganda that the Dark Lord was putting out about bringing a world free of labor and strife – at least none of the people who were part of Madeleine’s partisan band. Cinder definitely did not. She remembered the stories of the Dark Lord bringing down her people’s homeland, to access the magical power within more easily. She pursed her lips.

“We should fall back,” Lata said, quietly.

“The professional gets wet feet, eh?” one of the other partisans whispered.

“None of you have ever fought as an underdog, have you?” Kaleb grumbled from where he was crouched. The orc had taken to rifles with the same casual skill he had taken to other forms of weaponry. He hadn’t complained about any residual effects from the magic that had boomaranged his age back and forth, but Cinder still felt a small knot of guilt in her gut – not only about the magic that had connected them together, but also about the simple fact that Kaleb had pined for Lata since the moment they had met ... and yet, the scarred Russian captain was definitely more sapphic than she was straight.

And fucking me, Cinder thought as she lifted her binoculars. The ghosts and skeletons were speaking to one another.

The violence that erupted was so fast that she nearly missed it. One second, a ghost was pointing at the skeleton that had ambled down the road. The next, the skeleton was bringing their sub-machine gun up and firing from the hip. The harsh, ripping sound of the flechettes spraying into the air, striking the ghost in the midsection. The bullets had clearly been enchanted. Ectoplasm flew in every direction and the two other ghostly guards of the factory scrambled for their weapons, but pistols and SMGs put them down for good.

The skeletons started into the factory.

“What in hell?” Madeleine hissed.

Lata stood, with effortless grace. She held her rifle to her chest and jerked her head. “Come on!” She hissed – and the partisans followed after her, loping after Lata while Cinder forced herself up and started forward. Cinder didn’t know how to use a magjile – which was why Kaleb was certainly better with a rifle than her. So, instead, she primed one of her spells, whispering the first few words of an incantation, to bring the spell to her palm. There, she let it hang, a sizzling bead of white light at the tip of each of her fingers.

There were twenty undead in the factory now – but they were focused on their task. Ten skeletons were unloading heavy satchels from the wagon they had dragged to the factory, while the other ten were within the factory proper. All of them snapped their glowing eyes up as gunshots began to ring from the line of trees, Lata being the first to drop into a kneeling position. At the range she had picked, she couldn’t have missed, and the spray she fired took three skeletons apart. The real strength of the bullets she fired wasn’t in their kinetic damage, as there was no flesh to rip or tear through. Instead, it was the spell that Cinder had carefully placed on every rifle.

That spell flared golden, and when the light faded, the skeletons were crumbling to ash, their cries of alarm dying in their undead throats.

Two partisans rushed for the front door and one fell, blood exploding from his chest, his rifle clattering to the floor. The skeleton that had shot the ghosts was standing in the doorway, his SMG in one hand. He was wearing an armband, Cinder saw – but she had no time to think. Instead, she thrust her fingers at him.

Three darts of light shot outwards and slammed through his skull at the same moment he pulled the trigger. The SMG kicked and a trio of flchettes thunked into the tree beside Cinder, quivering, the bark splintering and spraying her with a fine patina of wooden chunks. The skeleton dropped, but the partisans were none too eager to enter the factory proper. Cinder let the spell in her hand fizzle out, then began to hiss and whisper. Her palms touched together and she breathed out an growling snarl. Golden flames exploded from within the factory, the unmistakable light of holy wrath.

The skeletons sprinted out, several of them screaming. The withering crossfire of the partisan’s hunting rifles caught them, hung them in the air for a single hideous moment, then let them drop upon the ground, their bones turning to ash and blackness. Panting, Lata stepped away from her firing position as the flames winked out.

“What was that?” she asked.

“You’re not a paladin, Cinder,” Kaleb said, chuckling. “Or did you get religion when I wasn’t paying attention?”

“Illusory images are easier to conjure than actuality,” Cinder said, breathing a slow, shuddering sigh out. Then she shook her head and ran towards the man that had been shot in the chest. She frowned – but he was already dead. In the darkness of the forest, she could hear someone being noisily sick. Madeleine stepped over to whoever it was, touching their back, murmuring softly in French outside of the ring of the translation spell.

“Are the fuckers fighting each-other now?” One of the partisans asked.

Lata, wordlessly, knelt beside one of the satchels. She yanked it open and frowned at the collection of cans and wires within. “This is a jerry rigged explosive – fertilizer, common chemicals. They’d need, well, that whole wagon to bring the factory down.” She frowned, hard at the door, as if she was expecting the factory to answer her questions. Cinder shook her head.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said.

“Well, it seems that me and my ancestor have more in common than I thought,” Madeleine said, stepping over to the skeleton that Cinder had killed. She yanked the armband off and held it up, pinched between two fingers, as if it was particularly distasteful and she didn’t want to touch it more than she had to. She held it out and Cinder looked, without comprehension, at the crimson color and the faintly Vedic symbol that was crudely daubed on with black paint.

“Fascists?” Lata asked. “The Dark Lord doesn’t talk like a fascist on his propagandist. He talks more like a communist – even if he’s bringing it with the barrel of a gun. His skeletons wearing a swastika makes as much sense as him blowing up his own factory.” She stood. “Cinder, you know the undead. How would this happen?”

“It shouldn’t,” Cinder said, walking slowly towards the factory. She furrowed her brow as her eyes swept around the interior – she could see the daubed patterns of magic on the floor, the ceiling. She may have been a simple sellspell, but she could tell the gist of what the arcane rituals within were meant to do. And seeing them made her stomach tighten. She chewed her lower lip as Lata stepped up to stand beside her – then Lata shoved her back and snapped her rifle up, one handed, in the same movement. Cinder stumbled and almost fell onto her ass – while Lata barked.

“You! There! Out! Hands up!”

When Cinder peeked around the door, she saw a pair of shimmering, ghostly hands thrusting out from through a closet doorway. A few seconds later, a ghostly woman stepped through the door. She looked as if he was a step or two above the completely mindless undead ... but there was something very unusual going on with him. Cinder tried to place what exactly it was as Lata and the rest of the partisans moved forward, ringing the ghost with firearms rather than taking him and trussing him up. Kaleb helped Cinder right herself somewhat, and Cinder leaned slightly against him as she thought.

Then it clicked.

The ghost’s eyes lacked any sign of submission or control. There was only the raw, animal terror of...

Well, a human being whose coworkers had just been shot to death and who was now surrounded by a gang of ruffians with guns. She looked as if he had been flung from the fire to the frying pan, and Lata did not look like she was ready to be gentle. “Can you speak?” she asked, her voice flat as she slung her rifle over her shoulder, the strap hanging tight to her. The ghost nodded, mutely. “What are you doing here?”

“I-I’m ... my name is ... I have a name,” the ghost whispered. “My name is Belinda. I died in 2101, in a car crash. And I was set to make this factory run itself, with magic. Well, that’s what I think I was doing. But then there were two voices in my head, then one voice, and it said something about how I was free, but also, to be wary of ... and then the voice went away, and then there were the skeletons, and they were shooting...” The ghost was starting to hyperventilate, despite the fact that she was dead and didn’t need to breathe.

Lata turned to face Cinder. “How would someone take control of the undead from the Dark Lord?”

Cinder chewed her lower lip. “By claiming his phylactery. But that would...”

The pieces clicked into place.

Her eyes widened.

“They’d have to kill him.”

Annie paced back and forth. The song of the undead was gone – there was just herself, in her head. And the wait. Reports were coming in to the shambles of the undead administration that Dale and her had made. She had freed each of the generals that had been chained to her and spoken to them earnestly about what needed to be done ... and to her shock, almost every single one had decided to stick with her. She still felt like every time she turned around, they should have all fled, having come to their senses. Instead, they were organizing the disparate, confused masses of the undead that were still under her control.

The undead she had freed.

Mordechai watched her pace. “You did the right thing, Annie,” he said.

“Oh, yeah, the right thing,” she said. “I just threw a wrench into our logistic organization at the same time that an evil Nazi is trying to claim power. And people are scared and they’re confused and I don’t know what to tell them.” She put her hands over her face. “And it should only take eight minutes for the response to come back from the fucking fleet, why haven’t they sent a response yet?” She turned to the ghostly, vague figure that hovered in the corner of the room. “You sent them the message, right Sukhdeep.”

Sukhdeep was the strangest ghost that she had ever met. Most ghosts were more ... present. But there was a vauge, half-there quality to him, even after she had breathed some necromantic energy into him. The bands of magic that would have transformed him from a ghost to a revenant or something similar had instead skidded off his shoulders and left him just as he was. And his communication was always distant and twisted, as if it was bouncing through a corridor of mirrors, rather than whispered merely from beyond the grave.

But he was still willing to work with Annie. At least...

She thought that he was.

She was pretty sure he was nodding.

“I do kind of wish you hadn’t fucked things up in the first place...” She muttered softly as she turned away from Sukhdeep.

“You know, it is entirely possible that the fleet got the message and simply has not yet decided how to respond. It is three, four fleets out there, with who knows how many admirals. Have you ever heard how too many cooks can spoil the pot?” Mordechai suggested.

“I know, I-” The computer in the center of the room flared and bleeped and Annie screamed with delight, running over to it as she leaned forward – and the screen flicked on. Several people she didn’t recognize were there: Three admirals (she recognized the uniforms), some Chinese guy in a fancy costume with what looked like a fucking dragon on his shoulder, and several elves. But most importantly, sitting there at a place of moderate importance, was her father’s sister’s widower, Captain DuPont.