Jack looked around as Fass and his fighters searched the destroyed camp. His process

had left personal things alone, so they could rob the dead men and women of

whatever they were carrying. He had seen worse in the warzones he had traveled

through for Uncle Sam.

He wondered how many foot soldiers had escaped and would think about reforming.

What would that do to the Makeover? Either he had marked all of them for life, or he

hadn’t. The ones that were still marked had to be dealt with in one way, or the other.

He doubted that he had left any treasure chest around with the growing of his ring of

transport.

He frowned as he considered the implications of what he had done.

He had cleared most of the cover, and transported all the victims at the same time.

That had worked perfectly as far as he was concerned. Death had worked out but he

hadn’t been able to kill all of them. Practical limitations had worked against him

there.

“Jack?,” asked Fass. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” said Jack. “I was thinking that we should have stopped the runners. I just

didn’t see how to catch all the ones on the edge. Word is going to spread when they

reach other parts of their cartel. Maybe that will make them look for us the next time

we decide to take out an arm of their organization. I don’t know.”

“Do you think the rest of this will be doable?,” asked Fass.

“I have to take a look at the battlefield,” said Jack. “If there is a lich queen, it could

be bad for whomever she goes after. I don’t want her to roll up to Hawk Ridge and

kill everybody there. I’ve grown attached to it in the two weeks I have been living

there.”

“I’m fond of it too,” said Fass. “We’ll regroup and leave. Can you cover the bodies

up? We don’t want a lot of scavengers showing up to lead others back here. Let the

Montrose search for their lost infantry.”

“I can do that,” said Jack. “You might want to grab your stuff and get back up the hill.

You don’t want to be caught in the move.”

“I’ll get everyone back,” said Fass. “Let me know if you can’t go forward.”

“Will do,” said Jack. He grinned. “I should have done something better than what I

did. A mass killing like this is bound to weigh things down.”

“Warfare is never as clean as people want,” said Fass. “We’ll move out so you can do

what you can do.”

Jack nodded as he looked at the clearing full of dead people. Budd had gathered all

of the bags of money they could find and carried them slung over his shoulder. They

filed up the hill toward the stand, and the quinjet behind.

He looked up and down the clearing. He had done something a little more monstrous

than usual. He wondered how the Society would take this. He doubted they would be

happy if he killed all these people and the Lich Queen started her scheme working

before they could do anything to stop her.

He could bury all the bodies in one fell swoop. He could see that.

He hoped that Elaine had a good show to watch when he got home. He needed

something to take his mind off what he had done.

Jack checked his watch. He had enough fuel to do the deed. Then he could walk back

to the quinjet and make sure Josie hadn’t turned her anger on the dragon keeping her

company. Then he could ask for a letter to be sent back to Elaine to get a bearing with

the model. Then they would take to the air.

He hoped he wasn’t flying them into a place where they got killed, and the girls and

Elaine were on their own.

He changed into Majik. He took control of the iron ring running around the camp. He

channeled his spell into the ring and the bodies were covered by the ground and

crushed down. He looked around. The corpses were buried.

He let the persona go. The ring could stay. It was inert unless he was using it. He

might need it for later.

He walked up the hill. Fass was the last man there. They walked toward the waiting

quinjet in silence.

Jack looked at the pad. He wondered if he could use it like Jo used her birds. He

scratched his head as he examined the piece of metal in his hands. He thought about

possible builds as he walked along.

He might be able to use the second generation as combination scanners and coms like

in Star Trek. He wasn’t sure. From there, he could build short range teleporters.

“What are you thinking?,” asked Fass.

“How many atoms make up the human body,” said Jack. “And if I can turn all that

into a stream that I can project a million miles away.”

“And why would that be important?,” asked Fass.

“It just enables faster travel,” said Jack. “Imaginary worlds back home had gates

where your home could be splintered across different places for ease, gates to cross

days of travel in an instant, weaponized equipment. I was thinking that maybe I can

use a version of Josie’s model to instantly transport anything anywhere.”

“And you wouldn’t have to fly,” said Fass.

“I mean you might need to fly for different things, but for just walking between

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cities,” said Jack. He shrugged. “It might be okay. I imagine people would lose their

minds about being able to leave their home city and look at some place different for

a bit.”

“Most people don’t travel unless they have to for making a living,” said Fass. “I think

my group is one of the few that have adventured more than a few days from Hawk

Ridge’s walls.”

“I forgot that you guys don’t have the speed to move around and return to get back

to your lives,” said Jack. “Still, it might be good for adventurers to be able to move

from station to station to do quests.”

“The King and his nobility will want this more than adventurers,” said Fass. “It would

allow him to move people at will, while denying his enemies the travel time.”

“So I should hold on the development,” said Jack. He thought about the technology

abuse that could come from having teleportation. Schlock’s mercenaries had started

a million wars with the dropping of teleportation on the galaxy. Did he want to do

the same thing to the world he was trying to protect?

“I would keep it to yourself,” said Eric. “Your magic eyes and model can change the

ability of warfare at the moment. Do you want to change it so much that things would

spiral out of control?”

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “I don’t want to make it easier.”

“Think about your discoveries a little more before you let the general public have

them,” said Eric. “Anything can be weaponized in the right hands.”

“Don’t I know it,” said Jack. “Let’s move on before I start crying over the death of

my idea baby.”

“I admit it would make what I do that much easier,” said Fass.

“I’ll think about it,” said Jack. He put on his grin. “I have to send a letter to Elaine

to see if she can get us a bearing. Once we have that, we can launch. Better get your

gear stowed and the crew strapped in.”

Fass smiled. He joined his crew, unstrapping his sword. He didn’t like it but he knew

the consequences of having a certain amount of poundage shift at the wrong moment

and wounding his leg while he was sitting in a chair not designed to let a weapon

hang by his side.

Jack checked his watch while he headed up to the pilot’s seat. He put his pad in a

pocket in his seat before he sat down. Aviras and Josie looked at him from the co-

pilot’s chair.

“Could you send a letter to Elaine and see if she can get us a bearing for the Lich

Queen circle from here?,” said Jack. “Then we’ll fly over and take a look around.”

“Yes,” said Josie. “I think we should get this done. This could be a Dark Rider

situation and I think that’s why the Society wants us to handle it.”

“It could be worse than a Dark Rider depending on things,” said Jack. He didn’t

power up the quinjet. He didn’t want the charger to interfere with Josie’s watch when

she sent the letter.

“What kind of things?,” said Aviras He glared with his diamond eyes at his curse

maker from Josie’s lap.

Josie scratched a note out and sent it. She waited for the reply. Her eyes were on her

grinning partner. She didn’t look amused to him.

“Well a lich queen can be a queen of an army of dead people that are animated but

brainless,” said Jack. “They are puppets. Or...”

A note dropped out of the air on top of the dragon. Josie unfolded it and read it. She

nodded.

“Or?,” prompted Aviras. A little flame had started on the edge of his snout. His

expression, while frozen to strange eyes projected a fear of knowing to those who

knew him.

“We could be dealing with a queen of an army of necromancers who can overrun

everything around Shemmaria and kill everything they encounter and bring their

victims back to animation, or use that to power more spells to do more damage,” said

Josie.

Jack gave her two guns with his index fingers and a grin.

“Lovely,” said Aviras.

“Queen of the necromancer army is looking good from where I am sitting,” said Josie.

“It’s the kind of thing the Society wants to stamp out.”

“I’ll have to switch my crowd killing personas,” said Jack. “Elaine give us anything?”

“She said the bearing is about eighty points, south by southeast,” said Josie. “She

gave me a four hundred mile marker. Her note said the circle is still big, and hovering

over some town named Kas.”

“All right,” said Jack. He fired up the charger and set the navigation. “It looks like

it’s a straight line from here. We should be over it and getting information for the

pads to do our thing in a few minutes.”

“So you’re going to fly at this dangerous thing?,” said Aviras.

“It’s who we are,” sang Jack. He lifted off. “It doesn’t matter if we’ve gone too far.

Doesn’t matter if it’s all okay. Doesn’t matter if it’s not our day.”

“Oh, won’t you save us?,” sang Josie. “What we are? Don’t look clear. 'Cause it’s all

uphill from here. Oh.”

“They say we’re crazy!,” sang Jack loudly.

“You are!,” said someone from the back.

“You can walk home,” Jack said back. He shook his fist in mock anger.

Josie and Aviras rolled their eyes.

The flight across the border was uneventful. Nothing had been developed that could

fly. And nothing was as fast as the quinjet. There might be some natural monsters

who wanted to challenge for the title, but they remained clear of the line as the jet

streaked like a missile across the sky.

“All right, flight crew,” said Jack. He looked out his side of the cockpit. “Anyone

see a pile of bodies, slave caravans, or marked men who need to be killed?”

“Give me a minute,” said Josie. “I’ll throw out a marker to give us a starting point.”

“All right,” said Jack. “Everyone look for where the red bird goes when released.

That’s the place we have to be to save the day.”

Josie took on Zatanna and sent a scry bird through the window. It hovered outside

for a moment and then headed down. It hovered over something that could have

been a church from the looks of things.

“Everybody see that?,” said Jack. He made a wide turn to look for a landing spot. “It

headed for the box with the steeples.”

“I’m going ahead, Jack,” said Josie. “I’ll see you when you hit the ground.”

Jack mildly cursed when she vanished from her seat. He dropped the ship down in a

clearing at the edge of town. He saw guards coming to stop them from doing what

they wanted to do. He would handle them before following Josie.

“Gear up,” said Jack. He grabbed the pad from its pocket. “Hostiles incoming off the

port side. I have to get out there and tell them that’s a bad idea.”

He called up Majik and did a short hop to stand on top of the quinjet. He looked down

at the approaching guards. He summoned a ring around the ship, calling it up from

the local flora. It exuded lightning to keep the Shemmarians from trying to get to the

jet. He changed forms to let Captain America carry him over the wall of electricity.

The red, white and blue scarecrow charged into the crowd. His momentum broke their

ragged wall. His blows broke their faces and the bones in their limbs. He let them

drop where he forced them to a stop.

Jack changed back to Majik to dampen the protective wall. He dropped the gangplank

so the adventurers could exit as soon as they had their equipment ready to use.

“Josie went ahead,” said Jack. “I doubt that was a good idea. I am going in and

ripping the place down.”

“Wait,” said Fass. He walked over to one of the men clutching his legs in pain.

“What’s going on at the temple? What are you doing there?”

“The commissioner is working on some kind of weapon,” said the man. “He has been

in there for months. He takes in women and asks for more.”

“What happens to the women?,” asked Fass. The grim look on his face said he had

a possible answer that he didn’t like.

“I don’t know,” said the guard. “They never come out.”

“It looks like we’re here in the nick of time,” said Jack. He formed a charger and wall

around the quinjet. “You know what that makes us?”

“No,” said Fass.

“Big damn heroes,” said Jack.