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  I pulled the weapon out from the alien’s tear-shaped skull, wiped the gunk from my visor, and peered at the trees above me. From what I could tell, there were no more aliens waiting to pounce on us. I waded out from the swamp and returned to find the corpses of Ludas’ last two knights. Their weapons and armor might have been useful, but none of them were Novice class, so I couldn’t wield them. Selling them could lead to lots of Kingdom Points, but I didn’t want to be too encumbered. The extra weight would keep me from getting to the extraction zone speedily, and I couldn’t help Mom if I was dead.

  “Poor Boy?” Ludas came out from the bushes where he’d been hiding. “I don’t know if I can do this. I’m not cut out to be a knight.”

  I couldn’t really tell him he was great knight material, but I was saved from lying when I heard a voice moan somewhere in the undergrowth.

  “Cadets,” the voice said between groans.

  Keeping an eye out for any other shimmers that might signal a cloaked Grendel, I found the person who’d called out. It was Sergeant Myers. A Grendel had savaged his lower half, ripped apart his armor, and turned his legs into a pulpy mess. Corpses of four lizard-men surrounded the dying sergeant, but I couldn’t see any sign of Alice.

  Sergeant Myers gripped my chest armor and pulled my face into his. “Find the jump mage,” he said as I leaned down. “She’s your only way off this planet.”

  “Yes, sir.” I nodded, and his grip slackened around my light armor. His head sunk into his chest. For all his harrowing drills and hard exterior, I’d liked him.

  He’d never called me Poor Boy.

  Where was Alice? What was the chance she’d somehow evaded the Grendels by herself? I glanced around the dark jungle and searched for any footprints in the mud.

  I pulled up my control screen from my prot-belt. The readout on my visor showed the telepathic link to the Academy starship’s navigator was still down. This rift was far stronger than a Level One, so the estimated distance needed for our telepathic comms to work was out of whack.

  Sergeant Myers was right. Our only hope now was to find Alice before a Grendel did.

  I returned to Ludas and saw him tugging on the armor from one of his fallen knights.

  “That’ll be no use to you,” I said. He’d obviously not been listening when we were taught the requirements for using Runetech. When enchanters built magical weapons or armor with Dust, they sealed it with a specific rune class. All cadets were initiated into the Novice class, so we could only use matching Novice gear.

  I signaled for him to follow me, and we moved through the swamp. There was the sound of a battle up ahead, and we soon came upon a pair of cadets engaged in combat with a Grendel Elite. It was Cadet Jenit and Cadet Erinhien. They were both from wealthy families and had joined in the name-calling with Ludas, but the few seconds of observation convinced me they were going to need my help. The Elite was just too powerful for them.

  “I say we wait here,” Ludas whispered as he grabbed my arm. “We are safe here in the bushes. Let’s get around them and keep running. No point going out there and—Hey! Poor Boy! Where the hell are you going?”

  I yanked my arm free of his grasp and charged into the clearing before I could explain to Ludas the finer points of honor. My sword threw out bursts of color while I twisted it in a circle. Before I closed the distance, the Grendel drove its short spear through cadet Jenit’s stomach. The young woman screamed with agony, and Cadet Erinhien tried to use the opportunity to behead the lizard-man. The Grendel was too fast though. It sidestepped Erinhein’s clumsy attack, pivoted to bring its spear around, and knocked Jenit’s dying body into Erinhein.

  The Elite ripped its spear from Jenit’s stomach, and I was still too far away to do anything. I screamed to try and get the armored lizard’s attention, but the monster ignored me and thrust its weapon down into the young cadet’s skull.

  I activated my armor’s speed sequence with a practiced flurry of keys on my prot-belt. The runes along my boots and leg armor hummed as I sprinted at the heightened speed granted by my equipment’s rune effects.

  Using every bit of my enhanced musculature power, I jumped ten feet into the air and descended with my sword pointed at the neck of the Grendel that had killed my two classmates. This was a move I practiced hundreds of times during training, but I never thought I’d have to use before graduating.

  The gladius slammed into the Grendel’s neck, and the extra force of my rune-aided attack helped drive my short blade all the way through the monster’s thick armor. Noxious blood fountained from the alien’s neck, and green ichor sprayed across my chest when the lizard’s head popped off.

  Something slammed into my back, and warning signs flashed on my visor.

  Prot-field: 15%

  I didn’t know what had struck me, but it nearly negated all of my forcefield with one hit. I leaped behind a tree, hoping I wouldn’t get tagged again. The water around me kicked up as half a dozen burning plasma balls struck the surface.

  Ludas dove behind the tree next to me and narrowly avoided getting struck by three smoking plasma balls. The energy shots smashed into the tree where I had taken cover, and I guessed we had a few more seconds before it either burst into flame or fell over.

  “We need to find Alice,” I screamed at Ludas over the shrieking noise of the plasma balls pounding into our trees. “We’re not going to be able to get off Tyranus if she dies.”

  There was, of course, the matter of sealing the rift before a jumper could open an exit portal. Technically, we weren’t meant to jump back to the starship before the mission was completed. A return to the Academy vessel didn’t seem likely with the Grendel Elites flooding the jungle. The longer the rift remained open, far worse things than Elites could come through.

  “Nicholas!”

  I turned and sighted Alice wading through the swamp. Her hands clutched her stomach, and her head slumped as though she was caught in a daze. She was injured, and she was about to walk into a deadly line of fire.

  I ran to my friend as plasma balls pulsed behind me. Even through my armor, I could feel their heat on my back as I took Alice in my arms and dove for cover. The tree behind me exploded into splinters, and I tried to shield her with my body.

  Ludas came running, narrowly missing the alien projectiles by sheer chance. Who needed knights for bodyguards with luck like that?

  “We’re sitting ducks while they’ve got those plasma weapons,” I said as I inspected Alice. Her prot-field was almost depleted, and she was bleeding from a deep cut in her stomach. She’d already applied a few medkits to the wound, but they weren’t enough to stop the infection from poisoned talons. I pulled out my medkit and administered it to her. “The Elites we just killed don’t have any guns. Those hiding out beneath that hill might be the only Grendels with them. We take those lizards out, and it’s close combat fighting from here.”

  Unlike the more powerful prot-fields available above Novice class, low-level fields had limited protection against projectiles. They were better than nothing, but we couldn’t laugh off Grendel plasma rifles.

  “Great,” Ludas said. “My knights are dead, and I’m expected to take on these aliens with only you and an injured jump mage?”

  “Don’t be such a coward,” Alice groaned between breaths. She really knew how to make me smile. She winced as I applied my last medkit. “My prot-field went down, and one of the Grunts got me. I put a dagger through its throat.”

  I grinned at her. Despite being a jump mage, she could handle herself pretty well. “Ludas and I will deal with those Grendels firing at us.” I looked at Ludas, and his face greened under his helmet. “Well, maybe I’ll deal with them, and Ludas can keep an eye out. Then, we’ll get to the extraction zone, and you can jump us out of here. You think you can do that?”

  “Sure,” she said with a weak smile.

  I let Alice lean against a tree while I scouted the area in front of us. As far as I could tell, there were only those lizards with rifles
beneath the hill. Every few feet I paused and listened for any Grendel clicking noises. I saw no shimmerings or any traces of uncloaked aliens. We could probably circle around the Grendels with the plasma rifles to get to the extraction zone.

  I was making my way back when I spotted a squad of Grendel Elites sneaking up on Alice. Ludas was oblivious, busy skulking beneath a tree a few meters away.

  “Alice!” I called out, hoping to alert her so she’d get the fuck out of there.

  My friend turned her head to look at me. Then she noticed the Grendels, and her eyes widened as she tried to move. A plasma ball shot through the air and hit her forcefield before she could twist out of the way. The forcefield stopped it, but a dozen more balls came for her. She screamed as the last fiery sphere seared through what remained of her prot-field and melted off her arm.

  Seeing the jump mage go down drove all the wind from my chest. Red bathed my vision as I realized those lizards had probably killed Alice.

  Every part of me ached to spill Grendel blood.

  It took all of my willpower to think of a plan rather than burst into battle. The Grendels would all have forcefields since human prot-fields had been reverse-engineered from the aliens. As much as I’d like to shove one of their guns up their nostrils and pull the trigger, I’d have to settle for skewering them with my gladius.

  I activated my speed sequence, and runic power coursed through my body. My feet padded along the water’s surface as I darted through the trees. Plasma balls boomed out from the Grendels’ guns, but none of them connected. Tree trunks exploded into splinters, and flames engulfed bushes.

  Another activation of my speed sequence, and I was soaring through a gap in the trees and above the Grendel Elites. Before they’d brought their rifles to bare, I was among them, hacking and slashing. I killed the first two as soon as I landed. The third raised its rifle to block my swing. My sword hit its weapon and bounced off with a thunderous clang, but then I flipped the blade under its arms and pushed the point into its lizard heart.

  There was another next to him, and it tried to strike me with the butt of his rifle. I ducked under its blow, cut through its legs and then ended the lizard’s life with a second chop.

  Rage screamed within me. My sword danced through the ranks of the lizard men as if I didn’t even control the arm wielding it.

  I needed to save Alice. Not just because she was my only friend, but also because she was the only one who could get me off this planet and back on our starship. If she died, then I died. If I died, then my mom would be alone, and I’d never get her out of the Dobuni tenements.

  I was suddenly standing before the last Grendel Elite. It dropped its rifle and brought its talon up to parry my gladius. Shock waves reverberated up my arm, and I was thankful a second time for the runes gluing the weapon to my hand.

  From out of nowhere, Ludas’ axe came down on the Grendel’s reptilian head, splitting it in two. The monster gave a few twitches as it fell to the ground, and the duke’s son let out a groan as he dislodged the blade from the lizard-man’s skull.

  “Looks like you grew some balls,” I said with a nod.

  He gave me a sheepish grin before bowing over and vomiting.

  I surveyed the carnage around me. Every one of the aliens was dead. There were at least ten, and I couldn’t remember killing them all. I’d been in such a fury. I shouldn’t have been able to defeat them. These were Grendel Elites, and I was wearing borrowed Novice armor and I’d never been in a real fight.

  Among the lizard corpses, half-buried in the swamp water was a familiar figure with his head covered in dark mud. I pulled him up, and he coughed out a bucket of foul water.

  “Thank the gods; you’ve saved me!” The point clerk gasped. Then he coughed again, and blood poured out of his nose and mouth. Swamp scum and what looked like alien brain matter covered his long beard. He was bleeding badly from a cut on his head, and the skull bone next to his implants was exposed. The man was dying, and his body quivered as I held him.

  “It was a Level Three. Something messed with the rift,” the point clerk struggled to say. “Some kind of foreign magic. I’m sorry, Cadets, I don’t know what happened. The starship’s going to leave within the hour, but not before they drop a rune-nuke on the site. It’s protocol. We can’t let the Grendels get this planet.”

  The clerk traced a triangular sign on his forehead, some religious symbol I’d seen a few nobles use, coughed a final time, and then died.

  I left the clerk’s corpse behind and returned to Alice. My heart raced as I checked her over. She was still breathing, but she was unconscious.

  “You need to hang in there,” I said to her even though she couldn’t hear me.

  My pouch was empty of medkits, and Alice was on the verge of death. She needed to survive to jump us out of here. I could get her to the extraction zone, I could fill her with drugs from the supply crates and wake her up long enough to summon a portal. The distance between the Grendel rift and the extraction zone was sufficient for a clean jump.

  My friend just had to survive until we got there.

  I hauled Alice over my shoulder. Regimented weightlifting within the Academy meant I’d have no trouble carrying her unconscious form through the jungle. Although it might be a little difficult to fight while carrying her, I couldn’t leave her here to die.

  “My prot-field’s almost depleted,” Ludas said. “Looks like yours won’t hold up much longer either. You want to run into enemy fire, you’re more than welcome. But I’m waiting here. My father will hear about what’s happened and send an extraction team to get me out.”

  “Remember when I said you’d grown some balls? I was wrong.” He had a point though. We couldn’t take on another squad of Grendel Elites. Not while I was carrying Alice.

  I needed something better than a gladius. I recalled the rifles the Grendel Elites had been carrying and doubled-back with Alice over my shoulder.

  When I got back to the dead lizards, I set the jump mage down and picked up one of the plasma rifles. It was still attached to one of the alien’s limbs, merged with organic material. I used my gladius to sever the connection.

  The Academy might have given us stronger prot-fields if they’d known what we’d be facing today. Part of this mission was to see how the cadets would fare with only close combat weapons available to them. This was meant to be a ‘controlled scenario.’

  I sheathed my sword and inspected the rifle. I’d seen Grendel weaponry like this before while working as an enchanter apprentice. Most of the time, they were dismantled for Arcane Dust and made into weapons more appropriate for humans to wield. When I opened my control screen, my fears were confirmed.

  Weapon type: Undocumented Plasma Rifle

  Additional damage: [unknown]

  Power class: Expert

  Weapon effect: [unknown]

  Runes inscribed: [unknown]

  Rune class: [unknown]

  Rune effects: [unknown]

  Warning: Undocumented. Use with extreme caution. Abusers will be prosecuted.

  Even if I’d wanted to break the law and wield the weapon, I couldn’t risk it. If I tried to use the plasma rifle, it might backfire. There was a slim chance it’d work, but it was a chance I wasn’t willing to take.

  Still, I slung the weapon over my shoulder. It might be worth a decent amount of Kingdom Points if we ever got off Tyranus, and the strap on the rifle meant I could carry it over my shoulder without sacrificing run speed.

  “Everyone is dying all around me,” Ludas said, bordering on delirium. “I’m not going to make it, am I?”

  “Keep your head on. We aren’t dead yet. We need to get Alice back to the extraction zone.” I knew our odds were slim, and my prot-field was almost gone, but I wasn’t going to quit even though things looked impossible. I wanted to become a Space Knight more than anything. Mom needed me. I couldn’t abandon her by taking leave of my senses.

  With Alice in my arms and the useless plasma rifle hang
ing from my shoulder, I weaved through the trees, using whatever cover I could find. With my prot-field at such a low capacity, a single plasma ball would probably kill me. Ludas must have changed his mind about waiting for his father to help him because he was following closely behind me. Thankfully, we got to the extraction zone without encountering any more Grendels.

  I put Alice down in the small clearing. Standard procedure was to leave supplies in planned extraction zones, and I easily found the crate containing the basic medical kits. I took out the correct drugs to give my friend, punched the needle into her heart, and pushed the drug into her veins.

  “Can you open a jump portal?” I asked her when her eyes opened.

  “I think so.” Alice squeezed her eyes shut, and the air shimmered in front of her. A crack showed and expanded until it was a few inches wide. She groaned, and the tiny portal vanished. “I can’t do it. I’m too exhausted.”

  “We need to find some other medkits. The ones here aren’t strong enough.” I stood and faced the way we’d come. “Maybe someone was carrying something better. We’ll double back and check Sergeant Myers’ corpse. Maybe he had some rune-level kit.”

  It was a stupid plan.

  The sergeant’s body was a kilometer away, in the enemy infested territory. I should have searched him for advanced medkits before I’d left him.

  Ludas’ face drained of color as he stared at Alice. “Poor Boy . . . She’s not breathing.”

  “Alice?” I asked as I knelt beside her. Her eyes were open, but there wasn’t any life behind them. My stomach sank, and I blinked away tears. I knew it was futile, but I ripped open another medkit and applied it to what remained of her arm. I might as well have been trying to heal a rock.

  My friend was dead, and I would soon be joining her.

  Clicking sounds came from the surrounding jungle, and I could see flashes of green scales through the thicket. It sounded like a dozen Grunts were coming toward me, and I knew there would be another group of Elites following them.