Rooks glanced at the com. Not her com, but the Volanter version. She did not have a way to use it yet. At least, she had no false order to give. She reached a tentative hand to the device and placed her fingers lightly on the slick black pad. She kept her mind open and waited.

Whispers to fall back and protect the damaged ships came to Rooks’ mind. Whispers about repairs followed. One lone voice called for an attack of the wormhole, but others disagreed. An accurate damage report of the Iruedian and Scaldin force caused Rooks to pull her hand away.

The Volanter had a very good idea of what the Iruedians and Scaldin needed. Their damage report was almost better than the one Rooks got from her own crew.

So, she wasn’t ready to give a false order. She never anticipated such a learning curve, and she had a lot to learn about the Volanter and what they would believe. It wouldn’t be this battle.

Beside her, Inez cast spell after spell. Her cast of three and four rings almost always hit their marks, and the Volanter struggled to back out of her range. It gave the Fauchard some breathing room.

The twenty ships that rushed into their midst retreated or floated in ruin. Rooks thought they might have destroyed as many as five – just five. All the rest pulled back, and their undamaged comrades completed the rescue. The wormhole, generated by the Volanter, opened and took the damaged ships away. Those that could still fight remained.

“Dammit,” Rooks whispered. She raised her voice and asked, “How many left?”

“Fourteen.”

“How many stayed?” Rooks asked.

“Twenty-two.”

Not great news.

Spells raged out the windshield. They sparked with ferocity, though they made no sound. Rooks counted four separate types. She saw the dual rings of the Bacchan and guessed that Carex and Ranunculus were aboard that ship. The Bacchan ship added little to the force. The Stolon’s rayed spells gave stronger effects. They lit the vacuum in snowflake shapes. The complex rings of the Bract floated a long time, taking a while to set off an effect.

Whenever Rooks saw one, she ordered its source a prime target. So far, they only had to endure two explosive Bract spells. The rest they killed by finding the caster.

Of course, the worst among the spells remained the rotating rings of the Rhizo. They circled in Rooks’ view, ever changing. Annoyances and worse spewed from those rings.

Pan’s dragon landed on the top of a Volanter vessel. The dragon seemed to take a deep breath, and the cage of scales expanded. Pan sat up, astride her beast. She kept her legs curled as the expansion only worked in an upwards direction.

Pan gazed out at the fight all around her. The ships that had fallen for Rooks’ trap were gone. They fled or were nothing more than ruined pieces, hovering in a cloud around the Scaldin and Iruedians. The rest of the Volanter vessels sat unharmed, and she above them.

“Up here, they’re unlikely to notice me. We’re at the apex of the battle. Who will see a great circle?” Pan closed her eyes a moment. Then, she opened them to see her circle light up the top of the ship she stood upon.

Pan took a deep breath and let the circle go. It was a new one, designed to shatter the things it touched. The circle shattered the hull beneath it, sending shards up in a ring pattern. Pan watched starlight skitter over the shards of metal. She imagined she heard the sound of tinkling glass as the shards floated upwards, past her dragon, past the apex of the battle.

Pan glanced down at the broken hull. Scaffolding and wiring lay exposed, but Pan doubted the damage counted as a true hull breach. Pan sighed. She laid across her dragon, and the scale cage shrank after her.

As Pan grabbed black fur, her dragon jolted and flew from the ship, end over end. Pan growled as her head bumped the see-through scales. Her dragon’s chest heaved, and she felt its body twist, regaining control.

The dragon slowed and drifted in space. Pan saw the ship they’d just wounded, and the floating shrapnel they’d just left a dragon sized hole in. Across the top of the ship, through the shards of metal, Pan saw the Eidos and its rider – Gladiolus.

His circle spun.

Pan cast her shield, quick. She left it open, rather than forming a bubble. The circle flashed, and then, she had a dish of protection.

Two effects from Gladiolus’ rotating circle hit her shield. They bounced off, and Pan couldn’t identify them. She bet one was the numbing spell. Actually, she bet he’d already hit them with that. Hit her dragon that is.

Pan pressed a hand to her dragon’s back and sent a healing circle down into its person. The dragon’s fur twitched, showing that the muscles beneath felt tickled by her magic.

The dragon charged Gladiolus and his ridiculous familiar. Pan had no idea if her healing had helped or been lost on her familiar friend.

“No,” Pan called against its fur. “Don’t engage him. He distracts us. That’s it. Let’s destroy a ship. He hates that.”

The dragon veered off course, dodging Galdiolus’ final choreographed circle. It tucked its wing, and they moved fast for a Volanter ship. Pan glimpsed inside an unpainted window, just in time to open a portal. They sailed through and the dragon twisted up in the corridor, avoiding a collision with a wall.

The dragon started to open its back.

“I’m not getting off,” Pan said.

The dragon closed up. It started on the path towards Engineering, for once not doing what she had in mind.

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“No. I have a different idea.” Pan raised her head. “Run a circuit around the ship, on the inside.”

Pan had a good idea of how the ship looked from the outside, and she knew that it had a corridor that ran the length of the inside, judging from the series of windows that ringed the hull. She didn’t know if it would work, but Pan cast a sneaky portal as they ran.

Around the upper molding, every few hundred feet, she pictured one of the runes, praying she placed them right. She made the runes tiny and secret.

The dragon laughed. Pan felt the motion even through the dragon’s bumping gallop.

“I know,” she agreed.

The intercom activated. “Locate the intruder. She is likely headed to Engineering. Repeat – protect Engineering from enemy mage.”

The dragon galloped through the outer hall. They slipped past the bridge, and Pan placed a rune just above the door, too tiny to notice, especially with everyone hiding inside rather than venturing out.

“Intruder is yet to be located. If you find the intruder, do not engage. Call direct – 3276 – Galdiolus, with information.”

“He probably wasted all that time in Engineering,” Pan said. “And oh, how he loves me.”

Again, her dragon laughed. Then, it swerved and ran along the wall.

Pan glanced back. She saw a Volanter woman pressed against the corridor. The woman pulled a small flat device from her scant clothes.

Pan tsked. “They’ll tell him where we are now. Just two runes left. If you smell him ahead, let me know.”

Pan lit one more rune atop a molding. Her dragon leaned into a turn as it galloped past Engineering. It snorted. Then, it sniffed.

“Oh, is he?” Pan cast her shield, throwing it just ahead of the dragon. She kept her unorthodox portal circle going too.

Gladiolus appeared down the corridor, with a rotating ring. The shield caught his first spell, and Pan knew it had to be the numbing circle as his next spell was some kind of glowing net. Her dragon just skidded under and shook the net from the tip of its tail.

Pan cast her telekinesis ring, and it pushed Gladiolus against the wall, interrupting his ring.

“Don’t stop to maul him,” Pan warned.

The dragon quickened its pace again. It hit Gladiolus with its hind claw as they ran by.

Pan placed the last rune. It glowed. The portal formed, and the ship broke neatly in half. Pan watched as the hall ceiling drifted up, with the rest of the upper decks. The bottom decks seemed to stay put, but it must have been an illusion. The walls still towered around Pan and hid the lower decks movement from her view.

Gladiolus, of course, ran through his choreographed vacuum protection circles. His beast brayed, but the sound was soon lost to the vacuum of space.

As the ship parted in two, Pan’s dragon hopped up to the edge and launched into open space.

“That was wonderful, but I doubt they’ll let me do it again.” Pan stared back and saw the ship drift apart like two halves of a thick cookie.

Gladiolus and his Eidos surged out and after. The Eidos seemed to run among starlight, well galaxy light.

Pan sighed, throwing more than a hint of anger and frustration into the sound. “He’s after us. You know…we should trick him into destroying his own ship. That would be fun.”

A voice in the back of Pan’s mind offered an objection, but she shook it away. She didn’t care.

Pan and the dragon flew slow and watched Gladiolus. A rotating ring began, and they swooped low over a ship, still far enough from it to entice his spellfire. His ring spun faster. The dragon angled over the vessel but didn’t land. Pan thought their position gave the illusion of a space cushion, though any spellfire from Gladiolus should hit the ship.

Gladiolus’ spell went off. The dragon swerved and dodged. Pan watched Gladiolus’ net hit a gun. It tangled over the canon and held the weapons discharge inside. A part of the ship around the gun exploded and blew free – a true hull breach.

Pan laughed.

Another spell from Gladiolus’ choreography hit the ship, and the canons ceased to fire. That was the final spell from him as he stopped the choreographed unit.

“Run around the ship. Let’s paint ourselves a new portal,” Pan ordered.

The dragon landed and obliged. Pan made the runes bigger as she drew them. No one would see all sides of the circle, and therefore, no opponent should be able to mount a good counter.

Pan completed the circuit and noted that her first rune was gone. “Gladiolus.” She smiled.

Of course, a single rune could be countered. She’d done it herself on someone else’s spell – on Galdiolus’! What a sloppy mistake on her part. What would he have to say about that?

Gladiolus’ silent but braying Eidos galloped over the hull, with Gladiolus safe beneath its canopy.

Pan glanced behind her and watched her final rune wink out. “Countered. Every one.”

Gladiolus began a new spell. Pan countered five of the runes and killed it.

“I know your strategy. You know mine. You can counter me, but I’ll counter you. I won’t let you harm any more Volanter ships.” His voice seemed to flow through her dragon’s scales.

Pan’s dragon propped up its scales, and Pan sat up to talk to Gladiolus. “You’re a hero. Truly, a man of gold.”

Gladiolus gave her a dark but inviting look.

An explosion lit up their periphery. Gladiolus’ beast danced over the ship’s hull, with wide eyes. He pulled it back under his control. Pan jumped, and her dragon twisted to view the shattered Volanter ships and fading explosive light.

Pan squinted. Who had done that?

Gladiolus’s mouth fell open.

“Oh, I remember. We plugged the vents of those ships. I guess it finally caught up with them.”

The dragon’s laugh honked into her breathing space.

Pan lay flat across her dragon, and her familiar sprang off the ship’s hull. Pan conjured a portal, and they left Gladiolus with his shock. Pan considered her prowess redeemed in his eyes.

“They’re leaving now,” promised Sotir, the Scaldin’s fortune teller. “I predict they need a week to repair the ships that fell for the trap, but they have enough to return within days. They can keep attacking us with forty ships.”

Rooks crossed her arms. “I bet. We have a handful in comparison.”

The Volanter fled through their wormhole. They looked like frightened birds, winging to safety.

“I have an idea for how to use the com device,” Sotir called.

Rooks glanced at the unused Volanter com. “Oh?”

“If you would allow me to have it…” Sotir suggested.

“No,” Inez objected.

Rooks held up a hand. “We’ll discuss it.”

The last Volanter ships hurried to escape.

“Yes, we can discuss it,” Alban agreed. “For now, would you like to hear the tallies?”

Rooks began to count the losses herself, but she knew that Alban would have good numbers. From his vantage point, he could see the whole thing, and he had Sotir to correct him.

“What are the numbers?” Rooks asked.

“Together, Iruedians and Scaldin, we have lost no ships.” Alban’s pride rang in his voice.

Rooks scrolled through her reports. Everyone remained, but they had damage. Some needed substantial work. Rooks made a cutting motion across her neck, and the com muted from her end.

“Get started on repairs. If you have to, take parts from smaller Lurrien vessels.”

The com fizzled, and Alban said, “Still there? You don’t sound the least bit happy.”

“I’m glad we still have ships, but if you haven’t noticed, they’re in terrible shape.” Rooks winced as she read the damage to Ranseur. She would keep it out of the next battle under normal circumstances, but she had no choice.

“Sotir assures me that between the supplies we brought, those you have, and magical repair, we can expect to have everyone back up to eighty percent.” Alban cleared his throat. “Now, where was I? Ah, yes. The Volanter’s losses. Seven ships to Rooks and her fleet.”

Inez punched Rooks on the arm and grinned. Rooks accepted the compliment with a half-hearted incline to her head.

Alban continued, “They also lost five ships to Pan. Five whole ships to once mischievous arcane.”

“Twelve ships?” Rooks felt her eyes go wide. “And, we know that some can’t return for a week. That’s actually pretty good.”

“I know. It’s 12-0.”

If the Iruedians could keep coming up with good plans, they might win.

“Now, how do you think we can use the Volanter com device?” Rooks asked.

“Simple,” Sotir answered. “We’ll call someone we know. Perhaps, Carex.”