ATWinPC-17

<<Previous Chapter>> - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
==Chapter 17 - A Toreel Wizard in Prince Davion's Court==
-----
===Captive Audience===
SpaceportG-class cargo carrier dropshipEuschelus, Taurian ConcordatOctober 14th, 3025
"We honestly just wanted to help," she had the illusion anchored to the top of the bay say. Chim was herself standing on the stair case that circled around the cargo bay, cloaked by invisibility and far enough back that she could just duck down and they wouldn't have a clean shot at her. They hadn't had much time since teleporting back to the ship. Certainly not enough to do things right, so she'd had to play be ear.
"Maybe I should have stopped and thought about it," she added. "Tried to figure out a way that wouldn't have exposed us. Or maybe tried to ease your boss into it instead of showing off."
"How about we talk about this in person?" the man on the cargo bay floor said. It was the same one who'd introduced himself out on the battlefield, and Chim felt ashamed that she'd never bothered to commit his name to memory. "You come out, don't do anything threatening. Nobody shoots, nobody throws a dragon a people, nice and easy. We all get together and hash things out."
Chim silently shook her head. "I think we're past that point," she had the illusion say. "Your leader seems to think us just existing is threatening. I guess..." Heh, when it came right down to it, this was her pride talking again. "I just wanted you guys to know we didn't want to hurt anybody."
She walked to the edge of the staircase and looked down. The illusion wouldn't be able to say this part. "I suggest you leave this ship and get far away," she said, letting the magic seep into her voice, "so that none of you have to die."
For a moment the armed soldiers at the bottom of the bay looked confused, but then they began to move, one after the other, towards the ramp. All but one of them. 
"Hold on!" he called out. It was the same one. Mister... whoever. His mind seemed to be made of sterner stuff than the others. "Hold, damnit!"
But they weren't listening as they fled the cargo bay and the ship, so instead, he looked around the bay, scanning the staircase roughly where Chim was standing.
"Please," she said. "I don't want to hurt you, but I will."
There was a look of grim determination on his face, and what seems like a faint... as he raised his gun and fired. The bullet passed maybe a foot above Chim's head. He pulled the gun back, pulling on some sort of slide mechanism which ejected a brass cylinder from the weapon, then sliding it back into place. 
Chim cast again as he raised the weapon back to his shoulder, striking him with three rays of force which knocked him back to the deck and seemed to render him unconscious. She hoped it hadn't been enough to kill him.
Still, she had to focus on the task at hand. Running down the stairs to the main deck, she hit the big red button that was supposed to control the main bay door. To her satisfaction, the ramp began to lift with a loud, grinding whine. 
Next was the guy. She ran to him and first kicked his gun away as hard as she could. It... didn't go very far, but she was focusing on other things. He had a knife, another smaller gun. Those were easy enough to remove, but he had all kinds of things, a lot of which she didn't even know if they were weapons or not, so she just started stripping off equipment and tossing it away from him, before pulling a rope out of her bag and tying him up. 
"Good news is you're going to survive," she said. "Bad news is I think I need to keep you a while longer."
----
===Repelling the Boarders===
There had been two men on the ship's bridge. Celia had cut down the first as he'd raised his weapon at her. The second has been much slower to react, slow enough that Celia had been able to cast.
When he finally got his weapon up, his expression was a mixture of fear and confusion when he realized he could not bring himself to fire. Celia's next swing cut clean through his weapon, the pieces clattering on the floor. She then raised the blade to his chest.
A bluff. The sigil of forbiddance she'd branded them both with kept each from harming the other (save through an act of extreme willpower). But he didn't know that, which proved more than enough as he raised his hands in surrender.
----
Celia's voice came over the ship's intercom. //"The bridge is taken, mistress."\\
That wrapped up everything here, Chim reasoned as she magically locked the main bay door. One last part to go.
"Okay," she said steeling herself for the task. "Mage's College, asking Roderick Trumbull if he wanted to court, all the people watching when he said no..."
----
===Come with Me===
Being empathically linked to a capricious Gnome for close to a decade, one got a feeling for her various moods and emotions, enough to tell them apart very well. It was particularly handy if you needed a simple signal and didn't want to spend a spell on it. 
"That's the signal," Polly said. "She really isn't over that guy."
"About time!" L'heo said, moving to the first cell. They'd gone from occasionally firing a decanter of endless water through the window to smashing out the grating and just dropping three through, all expelling water at their maximum rate. Chim had been specific on this part of the plan, saying giving them an endless source of fresh water was the least they could do for the trouble they were causing.
The roiling mass of something just shy of a thousand gallons of water every minute pouring into the room outside and whatever lay beyond had kept anybody from trying to get close, but they had fired a few shots through the door. Though all they'd managed was hitting L'heo once. 
L'heo stuck his hand through the cell. "All of you grab my hand," he said. "I can teleport five of you at a time, but we'll get you all out without any problem."
----
===Who in Charge?===
Chim could hear the bangs of something explosive striking the ship's hull by the time L'heo was bringing the last person across. That last person just happened to be Trisha, who focused her fear and confusion on Chim.
"What happened?" she demanded.
Chim shrugged sheepishly. "We tried to help," she said. "It's just that the way we did it was existentially terrifying or something. Now they want to kill us."
Trisha sighed. "Doug was probably right about keeping you on the ship" she said, then turned to start barking orders to the people around her before looking back. "It'll be a couple minutes before the ship's up to full power and ready to take off. Hopefully the people outside shooting us won't break anything important. I want you guys to stay down here until we lift. If they punch a hole in the hull... I don't know, do what you do and fix it? I've got to get to the bridge."
Then she was off, leaving Chim surprised. She looked over to L'heo. "She's... the captain of this ship?"
L'heo looked back. "You didn't know? Of course you didn't, you stayed in the cabin working on magic equations the whole way in."
Chim let that pass. "How did it go on your end?"
L'heo shrugged. "I don't think we killed anybody, but I hurt two of them pretty badly. You?"
Chim sighed. "Celia had to kill one of them. We ended up taking two others prisoners."
L'heo followed her gaze to the two men tied up in a corner of the bay. "That a good idea?"
"I don't know," Chim said. "I'd tell them to leave, but their friends would come in if we opened the door. Besides...." she trailed off. "I think one of them might be able to tell me something."
Polly, who had up to this point been watching the conversation quietly, finally spoke up. "Finally!" he said. "About time you moved on from old Roderick. People affiliated with organizations that want to kill you always were more your type."
Chim shot the cat a death glare. "You are not helping."
"I bring joy and mirth," Polly respond, "and break the tension of all this unnecessary drama. Of course I'm helping."
Chim decided to ignore his comments, trying not to think about how their empathic link meant she couldn't pretend his needling wasn't successful. "I think," she said, "they might have some form of magic after all."
----
<<Previous Chapter>> - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
17