Kinfild ran out from an arch at the edge of the landing bay. The entire structure of the spaceport was a cluster of circular landing bays made of sandstone, and their bay was one of the largest. They’d picked one near the edge of the spaceport for expressly this purpose.
It didn’t make it any easier.
Kinfild crossed the floor of the landing bay, jumping over tubes and wires while hoisting a repeller-cart of starcoals behind him.
For a moment, Jace felt a pang of guilt at not being there to help the old man carry it. But Kinfild was a [Level 31] Wielder. He was the strongest of them all physically.
Besides, Jace had a starship to fly.
He pulled the crash harness over his shoulder with one hand, and when Kinfild scrambled up the boarding ramp—cart of iridescent coals in tow—Jace pulled back on the control yoke.
The Wrath’s repellers thrummed, and the starship lifted up off the dusty floor of the landing bay. Wind swirled beneath it, and waves of garbage and sand wafted up beneath the vessel. Kinfild shut the boarding ramp, then lugged the cart back to the engine room.
The Watchmen sprinted out from the exact same arch Kinfild had departed from, and they both held Whistling Blades out and ready. The glass swords glowed and whined, and if Jace wasn’t fast enough, they’d slice right through the Wrath’s hull, rendering the ship un-spaceworthy.
[Level 24 Watchman]
[Level 23 Watchman]
Good, but not a true match for them. Nothing Jace couldn’t escape from.
Even if this was the closest a Watchman had ever gotten to him in the months since the Battle of Celacor.
He reached up to a brass dial on the ceiling. It had a moving handle sticking out its side and a holographic core, like an old earth-ship’s speed controller. He adjusted it to “full forward,” signalling Err-Seventeen to push the thrusters as hard as he could.
Then he reached to the power-shunting levels. The turbines could deflect particles all day, but if he didn’t direct the internal power generators to generate as many ions as possible, the ship’s main drive wouldn’t function.
He flipped all the levers down, and all the lights within the ship temporarily shut off. The repellers cut out, and they plummeted a few feet, until he flipped the drive systems level back on. The Wrath shot forward, clipping the edge of the spaceport bay and spraying out a plume of sandstone dust.
The Watchmen pursued. One activated a technique card and darted across the landing bay with inhuman speed, and he slashed at the empty air with his Whistling Blade. Too slow, no matter whether he wrapped his legs in tendrils of shadow or not.
The second Watchman also activated a card, and though Jace was too far away to see the card’s text, it was some kind of ranged attack.
A pulse of black smoke raced off the man’s arm, like a bar of cloud, and smashed into the stern of the Wrath. Steel shrieked, and the entire starship lurched. Jace’s shoulder rammed into the wall beside him, and his crash harness bit into his shoulder. Lessa yelped as she plummeted out of her bunk.
Grunting, Jace pulled back on the control yoke. A warning light blared red on the console beside him, but it was just a single light, and there wasn’t any beeping. It couldn’t have been too bad.
Or at least, the Wrath had survived much worse.
The technique cards all had cooldowns, and the Watchmen were catching up on foot any time soon.
“Kinfild, did they have starships?” Jace shouted back through the Wrath’s hold. He glanced over his shoulder for a few seconds, but they were climbing through the busy atmosphere of Illu, and he couldn’t afford to look back for too long, otherwise he might crash into some other cargo hauler or freighter that’d decided to use the planet as an intermediary along their hyperroute.
“Jace, watch out!” Lessa shouted. She clung to a bulkhead in the hallway between the main hold and the cockpit, but was steadily pulling herself forward until she reached the cockpit and dropped down in the copilot’s seat.
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Jace spun forward again and wrenched the yoke, dragging the Wrath to the side to dodge a cargo train. They passed by the airborne vehicle’s blocky stern, then shot high up into the sky.
“We will be well away before the Watchmen get their ship in the air!” Kinfild called from the engine room. He’d picked up a trowel and was helping Err-Seventeen shovel their new coals into the dwindling furnace.
“Did you keep the jump route in the computer?” Lessa shouted.
“It’s still there!” Kinfild said. “We’ll charge it manually, and I’ll tell you when to pull the lever! It’ll take us straight to Braka!”
“Got it!” Jace called.
He couldn’t afford to follow the proper sky lanes. Hovering buoys marked out paths for air traffic, but he swerved in and out of the lanes, navigating up through the atmosphere. Around sky trains, under other smaller freighters. A glimmering silver yacht screeched around him, and someone tried to hail him on the wireless transmitter.
Kinfild might get permanently banned from ever entering the Illust system again, but that was a problem for tomorrow, or for years in the future.
For today, they just needed to survive.
He blasted up into a patch of billowing clouds, disappearing from sight. The atmosphere faded from blue to black, and the beige surface of the planet turned into a marble behind them, then a distant speck.
Finally, a blue light blinked on the console, and Kinfild yelled, “The hyperdrive is ready!”
“Launching!” Lessa shouted back. She reached for a silver lever on the console, gripped it, then rammed it forward. The starship thrummed. Jace’s skin tingled and pricked, and a slight gravitational force pulled his flesh in all directions.
Then the viewscreen lit up with golden light, and the Wrath shot off through hyperspace.
Jace exhaled and melted into the seat for a few seconds, but he couldn’t wait too long. He pulled off his crash harness and stood up, then walked back to the central room of the Wrath. He bent his knees, compensating for the rocking and shaking deck with ease. The larger shudders still threw him off sometimes, but for the most part, he was used to surviving a starship’s movements.
A few seconds later, Lessa joined him. She dropped down on the couch, shrugged, then plucked up a plate of eggs. Half of the scrambled chunks had fallen off and landed on the floor, but she plucked them up and blew them off, then plopped them in her mouth. “Thanks for breakfast. And…sorry for sleeping through a lot.”
Jace chuckled. “We made out fine.”
Kinfild emerged from the engine room. “That should last us for a few more weeks. Err-Seventeen has everything under control now.” He dropped down on the couch a few feet beside Lessa and picked up his plate.
“How’d the Watchmen find us?” Jace asked.
“When you form your third foundation pillar,” said Kinfild, “you will uncover your rudimentary spiritual senses. They likely sensed me and came to check on me.”
Jace sighed. “Senses?”
“Wielders have a sixth sense of sorts, which allows us to sense other wielders. They advance properly at your Soul Circle Opening phase, but they likely felt a well of power—or multiple—and went to check it out.” He tapped his fork on the side of his plate. “They are looking for you still, after our run-ins with them a few months ago.”
Jace nodded, then willed the Split to show him his status sheets. He hadn’t gained enough Aes to condense any more attribute shards, and the sheet of golden sparks and swirling dust displayed a simple message atop its otherwise similar data readout: [DESTINED Quest available: Kill General Rallemnon. Reward: Three hundred (150) standard Aes Units].
It hadn’t appeared automatically, but then again, Jace had been improving at manipulating his Aes. When he closed it, he registered that something was trying to push out and push up—he had just been holding it in with his will without knowing.
That…was an improvement.
He allowed the quest to display in front of him properly, then, without speaking, accepted it. All it took was an assertion of consent, to project that he accepted and thrust it against the fabric of the universe.
It sounded harder than it was. By moving Aes through his body, he’d refined his will, and instead of being subservient to the Split, he could work with it.
Even if he didn’t know who this General Rallemnon was.
“Kinfild,” Jace asked. “Do you know anyone named Rallemnon?”
Kinfild snorted. “Split delivered you a new quest, finally?”
Jace nodded. “It took a while. Again, it wants me to kill someone.” Turning him into its personal hitman?
But then again, he needed the Aes, and there was no sense dodging it.
“General Rallemnon…” Kinfild set the plate down on the table again and said, “Now, it has been a while since I heard that name. He was a general of the Cardinal Federation, but he died decades ago. A border squabble between the federation and the Starrealm. Lost a few territories to the Starrealm.”
“No wonder the Cardinals joined the Eastern Powers,” Lessa grumbled. “Even better that they never had much influence.”
Jace shrugged. “The Split seems to think this Rallemnon is alive and well. Hey, fancy golden sheets, you hear that? Do you answer questions about your quests?”
Jace pulled off all restrictions of his will, but nothing more came.
“I guess not,” he muttered. “Well, I say we hold our course. When we find out more, we can deal with it, but we can’t pass up this Braka opportunity.”