War of Wizards (32 page)
Authors: Michael Wallace
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Epic, #Sword & Sorcery
And finally, I’d love to write out the story of Markal as an apprentice training under Memnet the Great during the Tothian Wars. That would be really fun. What about Aristonia and all those wizards? Where did Memnet get his orb, and what’s the story of Soultrup, the magical sword?
Meanwhile, did I mention my sci-fi adventure with space pirates? Yes, I did! Will you give it a try and tell me what you think?
Here’s a link to the first book.
Check out that awesome cover by Lorenz Hideyoshi.
And here is the first chapter to see if it catches your eye:
Starship Blackbeard: Chapter One
The warning light flashed yellow on the airlock door, and James Drake braced himself to be ejected into space. His pod contained several other court-martialed marines and space sailors, also strapped into their seats, also headed for the helium-3 mines of the system’s outer worlds. He didn’t know how long the others were in for, and he didn’t care. Didn’t even know if they were innocent or not. It was only the injustice of his own sentence that burned him, the disgrace to his good name.
Two years. You can survive that.
He guessed that his two years of hard labor was one of the lighter sentences. The last perk of being an officer. Only two years—long enough to get him out of the way as the navy mopped up untidy details in the aftermath of the war. But if the Admiralty thought he’d return docile, begging to be readmitted, they were mistaken. The instant he finished his sentence, he would return to Albion to fight the injustice that had sent him away. Fight to regain his commission. Find out whoever had framed him for the destruction of the merchant ship.
Through the transparent partition, he could see the second pod, also preparing for ejection. Not human in there, but long-limbed, pink-skinned Hroom. Their fate was more grim still. Instead of being fired toward the mining ship, they’d be launched toward the slaver now in orbit around Albion, to be shipped to the sugar worlds and worked to death. Terrible criminals, supposedly. Most likely poor, dumb civilians caught on the wrong side of the war.
A cool, clinical woman’s voice came into the pod. A computer. The crew of
Ajax
called her Jane. He supposed it was the last time he’d hear her voice.
“Twenty seconds to launch. Prepare for rapid acceleration.”
The yellow light flashed faster now.
The man next to Drake whispered the Lord’s Prayer in Old Earth English. A chaplain, he’d tried to lead them all in prayer minutes earlier, but one of the marines had cursed him and his god. This time all were bracing themselves for a pop, a hiss, and a giant fist to slam them into their seats as they hurtled outward.
“Ten seconds,” Jane said.
Drake looked out at the beautiful blue-and-green sphere of Albion one last time. The island continent of Canada stretched below, verdant and beautiful, with the Zealand Islands curving from the west coast into the ocean like a string of jewels. He looked for his home island of Auckland, but it was covered with clouds. He’d spent his childhood dreaming of the day he’d turn sixteen and join the Royal Navy and get off that boring rock. Now, he wanted nothing more than to sit in the sleepiest pub in the sleepiest farm village with his feet warming in front of a peat fire.
This latest mission aboard HMS
Ajax
had lasted seventeen months. Almost a year and a half in deep space, spending blood and treasure for the kingdom, and he’d only made it home for three days. Then arrest, court-martial, and sentencing. One nightmare after another, until here he was, strapped down in this pod. The injustice of it felt like a hand tearing at his heart. Worst of all, he didn’t know where to direct his rage. Who had betrayed him?
“Five seconds.”
Drake shut his eyes and counted silently. Five, four, three, two, one . . . zero?
Jane’s voice came through again. “Recalculating. Eight seconds . . . recalculating. Ten seconds.”
The ship shuddered. A malfunction, he thought. A defective transport pod.
He opened his eyes. The slave pod was gone. It had launched, disappeared into the black void. But Drake and the other criminals were still strapped into their chairs.
“Pod eleven launched,” Jane’s voice whispered in her soothing, computerized voice.
“Aren’t we pod eleven?” someone asked.
“Life support readings normal,” Jane continued. “Pod eleven docking with transport ship in thirty-seven seconds.”
“You dumb tit,” one of the men said, to nervous laughter.
“Hey, Cap’n,” someone else said. “Ain’t this your ship? What’s wrong with her?”
“Maybe it’s no mistake,” said a young marine with the Albion lions tattooed on her right forearm. “My commander coulda issued a pardon.”
Someone snorted at this, a loud, braying laugh like a donkey.
“Could be,” she insisted. “I punched him in the nose when he cheated at cards. Gave me thirty bloody months for that!”
“Nobody cares,” someone else growled. “So shut yer gob.”
Someone else took exception to this, and soon the prisoners were arguing.
“Keep quiet,” Drake said, annoyed by the chatter. He knew his ship and was listening for familiar sounds, like a man with a cranky furnace who knows what is wrong by its groans and hisses.
“Nobody asked you,” one of the men said, the one who’d started the arguing in the first place. He was a burly man, older, with a saber scar across one cheek. “Anyhow, you ain’t captain of this ship no more, so stop acting like it.”
Like the others, Drake was dressed in a pair of brown overalls with a red prisoner’s circle over the chest, but the others had recognized him at once. Apparently they kept up on the news in the planetside jails.
“Cap’n better watch his back,” another man said, this one dark skinned and with a wolfish smile. He was the one who had been defending the woman with the lion tattoos. “In the mines, we’re all equals, eh? No man got any rank. Plenty of tools lying around. Accidents happen. Know what I’m saying?”
There was a hint of nervousness in the laughter that followed. Drake wasn’t worried about the implied threat. Some people were bullies and cowards. Others craved leadership.
He imagined how it would go. They would test him, he would fight back and win. An officer in the Royal Navy—even disgraced—was a man of breeding, culture, and education. Much of that education was in how to dominate those of a lower station. The natural order would not change simply because he had entered a prison camp.
The ship shuddered. A familiar rumble vibrated through the hull. That was
Ajax
’s plasma engines firing up. She rolled slowly away from the planet. What the devil? Did they really not know the capsule had failed to launch? And why were they moving, anyway?
Four other ships came into view. Two were light corvettes, the third a cruiser like
Ajax
, long and lean and hungry looking. The fourth was the lord admiral’s flagship, HMS
Dreadnought
, looking like a wounded monster of the deep, her sides scarred with deep gashes from where the enemy had raked her with kinetic fire.
Dreadnought
dwarfed the orbital fortress at her rear, where she would be in repairs for weeks.
Some of Drake’s fellow prisoners began to laugh. They seemed to be thinking the same thing, that there had been a malfunction and nobody realized they’d failed to launch. They’d now go off . . . well, wherever
Ajax
was headed. Problem was, she wasn’t supposed to go anywhere, which Drake knew, but the others didn’t. These weren’t his men and women, but a random collection of discipline problems.
The lord admiral had put Captain Rutherford in command of
Ajax
while he chose a new captain, but Drake guessed that his first mate, Commander Jess Tolvern, was the actual officer at the helm. Tolvern was a capable officer, but she didn’t have enough experience to earn her bars yet. In any event, she was tainted now. They were all tainted. Tolvern had tried to testify at the court-martial, had argued angrily that the charges were false. Drake’s pilot was caught falsifying permissions to hack the Royal Navy defensive grid to get records of the battle. He’d probably lost rank as a result of that little stunt.
Tolvern may not have lost rank, but defying the admiral would no doubt hold back her career for years to come. She’d been her typical self in court, sarcastic and abrasive in the face of injustice. Navy barristers had called her to the stand, hoping that she would pin blame for the disaster on her commanding officer’s shoulders, but had shortly declared her a hostile witness.
As a result, the admiral didn’t even trust her on an interim basis; he’d put Captain Rutherford in charge of
Ajax
. Drake’s old ship would continue in orbit until the board approved a new commanding officer. So where was Tolvern going?
Ajax
wasn’t the only ship in motion.
Dreadnought
remained in place, but the other three ships began to turn in their direction. After a moment of what looked like hesitation,
Ajax
’s sister ship
Vigilant
didn’t follow, but presented a broadside. The cruiser’s outer shields retracted, hiding the lions of Albion and showing the black, snub noses of cannon.
“King’s balls,” the woman with the lion tattoos cursed.
The other prisoners fell silent, staring out the window. The plasma engines were still warming up and hadn’t reached critical. A double thump vibrated through the hull, this at a lower frequency. That was the warp point engine coming online. It took several hours from ignition switch to jump, but it burned so much energy just to contain the reaction that it was only turned on when it would be used.
More cursing greeted this.
“We’re bloody trying to jump?” someone cried.
“I don’t believe it, we are. We’re going to run.”
“Captain? What’s going on?”
Of course,
now
they all looked to Drake for leadership, now that their stones were on the anvil. He didn’t answer. But he knew. He suspected the other prisoners did too.
Tolvern, you fool.
His first officer was leading a mutiny.
-end chapter one-
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