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  For a moment, I thought she might stab me with the sword, but she slid it between her belt and a golden embroidered full-coat bearing the RTF’s trident crest. Bionic implants glistened on her temples and their design indicated she was a point clerk. Every Royal Trident Forces ship was assigned a PC to ensure any gear obtained from missions was properly logged and accounted for. They were able to use their magical-machine tech to link with the kingdom’s databases, serving as brokers for Runetech equipment, Arcane Dust, and Kingdom Point distribution.

  Flawless skin pulled against high cheekbones, and her pointed nose lifted in disdain as she studied me with her hazel eyes. She bore the air of someone who thought a little too highly of themselves. Then again, she was a point clerk. They all tended to share a haughty disposition.

  “Squire Nicholas Lyons. I’ve come to fix the detection system.” My words carried far more confidence than I felt. I barely remembered the code Zac gave me before I’d left him; let alone what to do with it.

  “I was about to repair it when these pirates attacked me,” she said. “I figured they’d been sent here to make sure no one cleared the virus.”

  “Seven-zero-golf-nine-delta-whiskey,” I said, but the woman frowned at me. “That’s the code, right?”

  “Don’t ask me,” she said with a shrug.

  “Why did you come here if you didn’t know the code?” It seemed really strange the point clerk would have come to the surveillance room to fix the systems if she didn’t know the code, but her sneer stopped me from asking any further questions.

  “What are you just standing there for?” she said. “Enter the code.”

  “Oh, uhh.” I got over the point clerk’s ferocity and turned to the computer systems instead.

  After careful scrutiny, I found the terminal responsible for detecting hostiles on board by searching for organic bodies that didn’t wear prot-belts. I was surprised the Stalwart was even equipped with these systems. It was probably one of the few pieces of regulation equipment on the starship.

  I punched the code into the system’s console. A monitor two rows down and one column up flickered for a moment, and then scrambled into error codes. I clenched my teeth in frustration as I stared at the glaring text. If I didn’t get this system up and running, then there could be pirates hiding all over the ship without any way for us to track them. We’d never deal with them all without massive casualties.

  “Can you contact anyone else on the ship? They might be able to tell us how to fix it,” the beautiful young woman asked me.

  “This is my first tour. My prot-belt isn’t connected to the network yet. The artilleryman who knew how the system’s worked got injured so I left him in a corridor elsewhere on this deck. It will take at least five minutes to go to him and bring him back here.”

  There were probably a dozen other people on the ship who knew how to fix the systems. Regrettably, they were all too busy fighting the pirates.

  The scrolling ones and zeros on the monitor seared my retinas. None of it made sense. I needed to get Zac here so he could figure out how to fix it. Moses had ordered me to make sure the artilleryman didn’t get killed for a good reason. If the bullet had made its way to Zac’s heart, we were screwed.

  I could probably run down the passageway to ask the artilleryman if he knew any other way of bringing the systems online again. He might be unconscious, but with luck, I might be able to prod him awake.

  The door was still open so I peered into the passageway. With my head outside the room, I could hear fighting. Olav and Flanagan had probably engaged more pirates in combat.

  Ten pirates trickled out from a doorway. I spun back into the surveillance room to avoid detection and then pressed the button beside the door. It closed with little more than a whisper, silencing the sounds of battle.

  Damn. It was going to be way too risky to retrieve Zac and then carry him back to the surveillance room.

  “More hostiles out there?” the point clerk asked as she walked over to the computers. She seemed far too levelheaded for a woman who was on board a pirate-infested starship.

  “I counted ten. I can probably take them down. Except I don’t really know how many more could be waiting in any one of those rooms. If I get swarmed by a bunch of them, I’m not going to be able to get these systems online again.” My gut twisted in frustration.

  A shadowy mist burst from the black-haired woman’s face. It was like a cloud of demonic tendrils reaching from her head into the computer terminals. A bunch of numbers rolled along the surface of her eyes like a thousand lines of scrolling code.

  “What the . . .” I shook my head.

  I’d seen people connect bionic implants to computer systems before, but I’d never witnessed a strange black mist coming from someone’s head.

  The detection systems booted up, summoning a holographic display with a map of the ship. About eighty red dots spotted the Stalwart’s five decks, and I figured they were pirates.

  Now I knew why the point clerk came to the surveillance room without knowing the code required to reboot the monitoring systems. Whatever the mist was, it allowed her to do the impossible with computers.

  “Was that mist some kind of point clerk thing?” I asked. The only PC I’d spoken to before was the old man who’d died on Tyranus, so I didn’t know whether it was a functionality I’d never heard of before.

  The point clerk shook her head. “Not exactly.”

  “Well, whatever you did has put the detection systems back online.”

  The markers on the holo were quickly vanishing one by one until there were only about sixty remaining. The enemies outside the room had been vanquished. I wondered whether I had Olav and Flanagan to thank for clearing the passageway.

  I’d need to know the whereabouts of the remaining pirates while I was outside this room. I wondered whether the point clerk possessed other technological gifts that could assist me.

  “This holo shows the enemies on the ship, but it won’t do me any good outside this room,” I said to her. “Can you link my prot-belt to the ship’s computers?”

  “That I can’t do since my prot-belt’s unlinked like yours. You’ll need the captain’s approval to get access. I can track the hostiles using my magic, so I can come with you and let you know when there are pirates nearby.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was put this woman in danger, but I didn’t have a choice. She was the only hope I had of helping the rest of the crew take down these intruders.

  I nodded at the point clerk. “What’s your name?”

  “Elle McGrath.”

  “Alright, Elle, let’s go kill some pirates.”

  With a punch of a button, the doors opened. I tilted my head and saw pirate corpses lying on the ground. Olav and the herald knight must have gone somewhere else because there was no sign of the two knights except for this trail of death. I whispered a quiet thanks and stalked out of the surveillance room.

  “Are there any other pirates on Deck 5?” I asked Elle.

  Her eyes did their weird rolling thing, and she nodded. “Fourteen in all. Two groups of them.”

  “Where’s the nearest group?”

  “I can see five in a room three doors left of here. There’s no breach, so they must have gone there to hide.”

  “Let’s deal with them.”

  We made our way to the room. The door was closed, and I turned to Elle. “You stay out here. I’ll take care of the pirates, and then we’ll move on.”

  The point clerk nodded, but I could see she wouldn’t stay put for long. I didn’t have time to argue with her, nor did I think she’d listen. So I punched the button and raised my sword as the door opened.

  The five pirates were standing at the far end of the room with their backs turned, and they whirled around when I entered. Their guns barked as I ran toward them, but my prot-field caught the bullets, and they pattered to the ground like pebbles. I couldn’t keep taking fire for long. I also couldn’t deplete my prot-field by us
ing a forcewave because I needed it for protection.

  It didn’t really matter though, because I was in the middle of the pirates in seconds. My longsword took two enemies down with a single swipe, and their screams filled my ears as I plunged the blade into the chest of another. One of the pirates shot me with his rifle at close range, but his bullets disintegrated on my shield. The man’s pupils widened as I opened his chest with a backhanded cut.

  When I descended on the last pirate, he dropped his weapon and knelt in front of me. “Don’t kill me, please.”

  I punched him in the face, and he crumpled to the ground. I knew the RTF’s policy was to accept an enemy’s surrender, but I didn’t know whether this pirate was classed as a regular enemy or something else. I also wasn’t sure whether the Stalwart even shared the RTF’s policy. They didn’t hand over Dust stores, so they might just decide to kill enemies like this guy. Even if that were the case, I couldn’t kill a man in cold blood. The only problem was how I’d keep him locked up.

  There was a door behind him leading to another room, and I figured I might be able to lock him inside there. He was unconscious for now, so I kept one eye on him as I crab-walked over to the door.

  The door bore no handles, no terminals to enter access codes, and no scanners to read palm-runes. Faintly glowing symbols marked the outer edges of the door. Sadly, I didn’t recognize a single one of them.

  I was interrupted by the click of a magazine inserted into a firearm. When I turned, the not-so-unconscious pirate was pointing his rifle at me. I’d been too caught up in the strangeness of this door, and I’d taken my eyes off him. The man barely had the strength to pull back on his rifle’s operating rod, but he accomplished the action before I could initiate a forcewave attack. My prot-field couldn’t have replenished enough to stop all the bullets this man was about to fire at me.

  Before the pirate could pull the trigger, I saw a flash of metal at the other end of the room. A cutlass spun toward the man, and the blade plunged into his head. As he toppled, his finger pulled the trigger. The gun screamed as bullets sprayed in a vertical arc, and I threw myself down in an effort to avoid them.

  My prot-field absorbed two of the shots, but then it went down, and a final round slammed into my chest. It felt like a champion kickboxer had kicked me in the ribs.

  Elle ran over to me and pulled her cutlass out of the dead pirate’s head. “She’s a beauty,” she said as she smiled at the blade. “These pirates really do have some nice weapons.”

  As I stood, the point clerk walked over to me. “You okay?” She pointed her bloody weapon toward my bullet wound.

  “Hey, I’m not so sure I want you operating--” I started to say as the black-haired woman inserted the end of her dagger into my cuirass. Then she jimmied the bullet out and onto the floor.

  “It didn’t even get through your armor,” she said with a snort.

  “It still hurts, you know.” I stood and brushed down my armor.

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” she said as she straightened. “Now get up. We still have more pirates to kill.”

  “Thanks,” I said. My chest was sore, but it felt like a bruise and nothing broken. I owed Max my thanks for a well-crafted chest piece.

  “You’re welcome. Are you glad I didn’t listen to you now?”

  I couldn’t stop the smile from forming on my face. “I am. But I’m wondering how those pirates managed to corner you in the surveillance room earlier. You’re pretty good with that sword.” I’d never seen someone throw a sword with such precision before.

  “If you want me watching your back from now on, you won’t ask about it ever again. Besides, I’m not the only one who did something stupid today. You were asking to be shot by leaving that guy alive.”

  “Something else caught my attention.”

  “Like what?”

  We really needed to get moving, but I was still intrigued by the locked door with the strange symbols. Elle might even know something about it. I stepped over the dead pirate and showed her the door.

  “Know anything about this?” I asked the point clerk as I pointed at the strange door.

  “It’s not regulation on RTF Beluga-class starships.” The point clerk ran her hands over the glowing runes on the doorframe and sighed. “Another thing to add to my long list. I can look into it if you like, see whether there’s anything in the database matching these runes.” She touched her temple, and I guessed she’d captured the image through her cybernetic retinas.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll hold you to that if we kill all these pirates before they get hold of the bridge.”

  Elle gave me a half-smile and sprinted toward the elevator. She might have been a point clerk, but she could run like a soldier. After fifteen more minutes of sweeping through Deck 5 together, I’d killed another six pirates, and Elle had added two to her tally.

  I couldn’t help but admire the woman’s tenacity when fighting. The point clerk could wield a blade as well as any of the Academy cadets. Her kingdom-issued prot-belt beneath her golden coat absorbed bullets as though they were made of jelly.

  I sent a forcewave into the last of the pirates, and it crushed him like a tin can. After the crew finished dealing with the attackers, there would be a lot of cleaning to do.

  When I glanced down at my prot-belt, it wasn’t showing my remaining shields. I touched the interface, and the metal surface seared my finger. “Ow!” I pulled my hand back.

  Elle knelt in front of me and examined my belt. I felt a little awkward with a beautiful woman so close to my crotch, but I endured.

  “It’s malfunctioned,” she said. “The prot-belt looks like it’s good quality. Maybe there’s a problem with some of the equipment your belt is linked with. What about this longsword?” Elle asked, and I held out the weapon for her to inspect. She touched the surface of the Forcewave rune, and her eyes turned to their whites. “Non-regulation rune. No wonder your prot-belt malfunctioned.”

  “Can you fix it?”

  “Do I look like an enchanter?” She stood and shook her head. “That’s why we have regulations. Your prot-field is down, and I wouldn’t try to use the longsword’s rune effect either.”

  I sighed, trying not to think what would happen if we faced any more pirates while my prot-belt wasn’t working and I couldn’t use the forcewave rune.

  “Where to now, then?” I asked Elle.

  She glanced down at her prot-belt, and her eyes rolled back into her head. “The bridge,” she said as numbers flashed across her eyeballs. “Twenty pirates are making their way there now.”

  “We need to get there before they do.”

  That was just our luck. The other crewmembers might be heading there also, but we were only one level away since the bridge was located on Deck 4. We needed to get there before the intruders killed the command team and took control of the ship.

  I could still use the longsword as a regular weapon, plus I knew how to take cover. I’d have to be extra careful not to get hit with any bullets. My armor could probably take a few shots, but they’d hurt like hell.

  As Elle and I sprinted down the passageway, I stopped to check on Zac. He was unconscious, but the medkit had stopped most of the bleeding. Without an x-ray, I couldn’t see the bullet’s whereabouts, but he would be alright as long as the shrapnel didn’t move toward his vitals.

  I heard a commotion and looked up to see Elle raising a finger to her lips. She tilted her head to indicate the corner of the passageway. The bulkheads curved around so I couldn’t see what she was looking at. From the way the black-haired woman was acting, I figured there were more pirates.

  But how was that possible? She’d scanned the area, and the detection systems hadn’t found any intruders.

  I left Zac’s side and crept forward silently until I could see around the bend. Three pirates carrying rifles slipped into cover behind a console. Their weapons were much larger than the other intruders I’d fought and probably contained some heavy firepower.
They were in position to ambush anyone that came from the other direction, and I prepared myself to slowly sneak up behind them.

  Then Casey stepped into the passageway on their other side.

  She was holding what looked like a railgun, its black rails glowing with purple runes. I was a bit shocked a woman of her size could carry such a massive gun. Her slender arms bulged with the effort, but her expression gave no indication she wouldn’t be able to fire the weapon.

  Casey’s back was to the pirates.

  I played out the next few actions in my head and saw a dozen bullets slam into Casey’s forcefield. Another dozen shots would penetrate the forcefield to puncture her soft flesh, and she’d be dead before she hit the ground.

  No. I’d watched Alice get hit when I was helpless. I couldn’t let a friend die again.

  I sprinted toward the pirates, willing my legs to go as fast as possible. With my prot-belt malfunctioning, I couldn’t use my speed sequence to make a short burst or employ a giant leap. Almost in slow motion, I saw the pirates rise from behind their cover. My breath caught as they raised their rifles toward Casey.

  I heard Elle cry out behind me, but her voice sounded muffled because my mind was too focused on saving the enchantress.

  Every step was a giant leap, and my heart slammed a thunderous reverberation in my chest. If only my prot-shield hadn’t malfunctioned. If only I could swipe my sword and take out the pirates with a forcewave maneuver, but now I only had my leg muscles and my prayers to help the enchantress.

  I wasn’t going to get there in time. Casey would be riddled with bullets in a microsecond.

  Time seemed to still as every portion of my body scrambled and slammed together again. My mind whirled as I experienced the same displaced feeling as when I’d teleported Alice, Ludas, and I from the battlefield on Tyranus to the Academy starship.

  One second, I was fifteen meters away from the men who would kill Casey, the next; I was standing in the middle of the three pirates. My unexplained arrival caused them to falter for a moment.

  A slight hesitance from my enemy was all I needed.