“Where is she?” Dan grabbed LT’s heavily burned shoulder, forcing a hiss of pain out of the other man. “I don’t have the time or desire to play judge, jury, and executioner for you, but I will if I have to. Just let me know where Sam is, and I’ll leave and never look back. With the System, it’ll take more than some burns to finish you off.”
“Sub basement two, behind a false wall that looks like a server rack.” LT winced at the strength of Dan’s grasp. “The keycard is on my lanyard. Hopefully, you didn’t melt it.” He smiled slightly as Dan released him to begin rifling through his pockets.
Dan grabbed the lanyard and turned back to the security door where William was limping into the hallway after Jennifer. She glanced at the assortment of bodies and pursed her lips. Her father just grunted.
“Henry grabbed Sam, and she needs help.” He didn’t elaborate further, the tremor in his voice stating everything else that he might need to say. She simply nodded, and Dan led the way.
They spotted a handful of Thoth Foundation employees on their way down to the sub basement, but scientist, worker, or guard, they universally avoided Dan. Maybe it was the expression on his face or the naked blade spitting purple fire in his hand, but they wisely concluded that it would be better for their long-term health to avoid questioning him.
There was a guard at the door to the sub basement, but he wisely vacated his post upon spotting Dan’s stormy expression. He vaguely remembered the guard from the training program, but the man had never received runes. Even if he was more technically skilled than Dan, the guard knew better than to pick a fight he would lose.
The door opened on the second swipe of LT’s keycard. Immediately, Dan was assaulted by the smell of unwashed bodies. His mind flashed back to his period in the tree with Jennifer, but one look at the state of the four cells, and any ironic jokes or snarky comments were instantly wiped away.
Sam’s cell was filthy beyond belief. She lay on a cot, unmoving as she stared blankly at the ceiling. Dan was only able to tell she was alive by the gentle rise and fall of her chest. He swiped the keycard through the slot by the door. The machine chirped angrily at him, flashing a red light.
Swearing, Dan took a step back and sized up the locked doorway, his sword flaring. He inserted the enchanted blade into the crack between the metal doorway in the wall around floor level, sliding it up through the door’s heavy hinges. He yanked the handle, pulling the heavy slab of metal toward himself, jumping out of the way as it slammed onto the ground with a deafening clang.
That woke Sam out of her slumber. She sat up shakily and tried to smile at him, but all Dan could see was the gauntness in her cheeks and the bags under her eyes.
“Come on.” He spoke soothingly, the way you’d speak to a small woodland creature as you tried to coax it out of a hiding spot. “We’re getting you out of here.”
Sam tried to stand, only for her legs to give out under her, spilling her back onto the thin, filthy mattress.
“I’m sorry, Dan.” Tears clouded her eyes as she spoke. “The System’s repairing it, but my body just can’t. I…”
“Sshhh.” Dan swooped in, scooping Sam up and putting her on his back. A second later, almost hesitantly, her arms wrapped around his neck as she leaned into him.
She was lighter than he remembered. A wreck of skin and bones. He sighed. If Henry hadn’t killed himself on national TV, Dan would’ve done it for him.
Jennifer walked into the sub basement behind him. Her hand flew to her mouth as she took in the state of the prisoners. She pressed her face against one of the windows and gasped softly.
“Dan.” She spoke quietly, a quiver in her voice. “Abe is here.”
He walked up to the window, Sam’s trembling body still on his back. Abe lay on a futon, metal spikes driven through his biceps and calves. The soldier glanced weakly at their shadows in the doorway, barely able to to lift his head.
Gently, Dan passed Sam to Jennifer before drawing his sword once again. A flare of mana later, and the grating sound of metal on metal filled the sub basement as the door fell into the hallway. Quickly, Dan removed the spikes pinning Abe to the futon, eliciting a hiss of pain from the injured man.
“You are certainly a sight for sore eyes, Thrush.” Abe trailed off into a coughing fit. “I heard someone fiddling around at the door and feared the worst. Your ex-employer has been far from gentle.”
“I noticed,” Dan replied dryly, flicking his head toward the pile of bloody spikes. “How did Henry get you, anyway? The last I heard you were still in Brazil mopping up.”
“I got transferred back up here to deal with Thoth going rogue.” Abe smiled weakly. “That elf you caught back in Brazil found me. I’m not sure how Ibis got her, but she did a number on the troops sent to bring him in. No one really expected him to have a genuine wizard or that power armor. It didn’t go well.”
“Merella?” Dan asked, his face screwing up into a frown.
“That’s her,” Abe hissed, biting his lower lip in pain. “She just stepped out from the compound, and the next thing we knew, half of us were on fire. I only survived because of the System, and for a while there, I kinda wish I hadn’t. Everyone in my unit ended up with third degree burns covering most of our bodies. Unless you had access to this weird sci fi crap Ibis injected us with, no amount of modern medicine was going to save you from that.”
“What about Bill and Rose?” Dan questioned hesitantly, not entirely sure if he wanted to hear the answer. “Did they…”
“Nah.” Abe shook his head, filling Dan’s silence. “They got shipped to Florida with the rest of the Brazil veterans. I don’t know what they’re up to, but they weren’t here when things went upside down.”
“Well,” Dan laughed drily. “If you’ve been in here that long, you’ve missed a bit. The U.S. Government and a handful of foreign governments suffered simultaneous coups. It sounds like most of the government is dead, and those who are still there allied themselves with the attackers.”
“Are you fucking pulling my leg right now?” Abe shook his head at Dan. “If you are, it really isn’t the time for it. Even with the System deadening my nerves, I’m not exactly in the best mood right now.”
“Bad news, son.” William spoke up from behind Dan, leaning up against the wall to take weight off of his bad leg. “Ibis convinced a bunch of people to throw in with him. Most of the army looked the other way, and now the President and Congress are either dead or the sort of people who would sell their country out in a heartbeat.”
“General Finch?” Abe looked the older man up and down before chuckling. “Forgive me for not saluting, but you look like hell, sir.”
“Likewise,” the older officer looked down at Abe, frowning as he tried to place him. “You’re a sergeant, right? One of Bowman’s boys?”
“Formerly,” Abe grimaced. “Once we cleaned up the mess in Brazil, I met with the Colonel. I don’t know if it was the machines in his system or the access to the magic, but something changed him. He was meaner than I remember, almost paranoid. I don’t like speaking ill of a senior officer Sir, but if people are going rogue, I would point a finger at him first.”
“Given that your former employer has dissolved into chaos,” Dan interrupted William before he could get worked up defending Colonel Bowman. “I am here with a bright and shiny job offer for you. We are trying to get the hell off of the planet until whatever is happening sorts itself out. I know where the Viceroy’s Pride is, and I have an affinity with space magic. I figure we strip this place bare and get into orbit. There’s a self-sustaining satellite there filled with Tellask thralls that we can probably persuade to work with us.”
Dan paused, noting the contemplative look on Abe’s face before going in for the kill. “The way I see it, we’re in a prime position to set up a mercenary company or magic consulting firm. Whoever is left running the planet is going to have a lot of alien equipment and no way to use it. We could make a good living while building up the defense force that humanity actually needs. None of this bickering over national pride bullshit. As bad as the elves were, the Orakh will be worse. If we aren’t ready for them, we won’t be slaves. We’ll be food.”
“My mom always did say that I was too sweet to be true,” Abe replied with a quick chuckle. “Let’s see if I can give some aliens a stomachache.”
“Glad to have you.” Dan picked the soldier up, careful to not aggravate his wounds. “Let’s get you, Sam, and William aboard the ship. I doubt any of you will be much use in looting, given your condition.”
Once again, no one dared to stop them. The Viceroy’s Pride lay exactly as Dan remembered it. Deep within the base and covered in diagnostic machinery, its main bay still open from when it disgorged troops during the first contact. With a conventional vessel, the hundreds of feet of earth and steel would prevent any attempt at theft or escape. With a void ship, steel was just as easy to teleport past as the emptiness of the void itself. Dan would just have to make sure to aim the vessel high enough to avoid clipping the atmosphere when they rematerialized.
Then, Jennifer began looting and pillaging the compound with an energy that would put a Mongol warband to shame. About ten to twelve of the Thoth scientists had enough self-awareness to realize that it was only a matter of time before someone less friendly than Dan tried to raid the compound and joined up with them. With the help of the scientists, they were able to grab copies of almost all of the research facility’s data, as well as most of its sensitive equipment.
Some of the heavier machinery had to be left behind, but when they finally finished loading the Viceroy’s cargo bay, they had a hundred and five injections worth of the System, thirty of the power suits in various states of disrepair, a significant amount of runescripting material, enough assorted lab equipment to equip an R&D facility or five, three generators, enough diesel to run said generators for a very long time, and a truly massive amount of silver, gold, and tungsten. In short, enough for Dan to set himself up as a minor warlord somewhere undeveloped, which was more or less his plan.
Casting his gaze about the facility, Dan silently cursed himself for promising LT his life. After what he had seen from Abe and Sam, the guard didn’t deserve to live. He might have been following orders, but at some point, those orders become so repugnant that you have to disobey them. Grudgingly, Dan acknowledged that LT claimed to have circumvented his orders, but for now, he only had the man’s word for it. Besides, the man had already tried to kill him rather than let him discover the truth on his own. Even with his promise, Dan probably still would have killed the man if he had allowed his soldiers to take advantage of Sam.
Dan waved a brief goodbye to his planet and home before stepping into the Viceroy’s Pride’s loading bay and running mana into the mechanism that closed the hatch. He marched to the drive chamber, ruminating the turns his life had taken in the past couple of years. From a directionless research assistant working a dead end job, he was about to launch humanity’s first interstellar starship, based solely off of a skimmed manual saved in his System’s databanks.
In the drive chamber, he quickly interfaced with the control crystal, activating the ship’s mana forges. Almost as an extension of himself, he could feel the mana capacitors of the void ship swelling. Incomplete pictures and data began to filter to him through the ship’s scrying stone, like a muted version of a beacon. He began trying to piece together the jump he wished to make, only to be swamped by the math underpinning the teleportation.
The System stepped in, quickly bridging the gaps in Dan’s understanding. He reached for the ship’s mana, holding the jump equations in his mind. The world shuddered around him for a second before flashing white. Then Earth disappeared.
Briefly, he was disoriented as new information began to flow into him from the scrying stone. The ship was only a hundred or so miles away from the satellite they previously landed on, practically on top of it. The moon hung in the sky, dull to the mana scans from the Viceroy. Beneath them, most of Earth was just as drab except for a bonfire of magic in the Amazon and some pinpricks of light situated all about Florida.
Then, the night sky lit up in a cascade of mana. Spires of stone and metal faded into being as an asteroid, covered in black metal towers that glowed white hot in the Viceroy’s mana scan, appeared in space just outside of the moon’s orbit. Visible light sources covering the asteroid caused the metal superstructure girding it to glitter in the otherwise empty night sky. Slowly, it began tumbling toward Earth.
