Freedom, Humanity, and Other Delusions (Death's Handmaiden Book 3) by Niall Teasdale (best summer reads txt) 📕

‘And if we find the one who’s doing it, Captain?’ Booker asked.

‘Then you arrest them. If they happen to get a little bruised while you’re doing it, we’ll write it up as resisting arrest. Just don’t go overboard. At the very least, they should be able to walk to the infirmary.’

‘Gotcha, Captain. So, breaking their arms won’t be an issue.’

Nava shook her head. ‘I feel you’ve taken in the general meaning, but there may be nuances you’ve missed…’

236/6/3.

Nothing happened on Thursday night, which came as a bit of a surprise. It was almost as though the mysterious attacker knew the patrols were using protective sorcery. Nava decided not to dwell on that; if something fairly simple could put them off, maybe that would be the end of it.

It was getting close to eight in the evening and nothing had happened today either. Nava was doing paperwork at her desk, which sat at the far end of the HQ room from the door. Patrols started from here and ended here with the teams checking in and making a report before heading off for their apartments. That made this a good place to wait for anything to happen. Nava was hoping she could do watches like this from the house now and then, but the solitude was actually quite to her liking and right now she needed to be here.

Paperwork, she had decided, was going to be the death of her. The worrying thing was that she suspected a lot of what the ASF did was paperwork, and she was going to end up in the ASF after graduation. Could you actually die of boredom? She would have to look that up. Maybe there was a medical clause she could invoke to restrict her paperwork time.

Pausing, she leaned back in her chair and picked up the mug of coffee she had poured herself. The SSF had, it seemed, some of the best coffee in the school. It could not quite match the special stuff Mitsuko brought from the mansion after a visit, but it was pretty damn good. The flavour was excellent. The scent was even better. Nava sat in the silence, savouring the smell of good coffee. Skylar and her partner would be coming in soon, but for right now, the silence was golden.

Then the silence turned into crackling, and arcs of electricity danced in the air throughout most of the room. Computer screens went blank in an instant and Nava heard a shriek from outside the door. She was on her feet, her mug hitting the ground beside her, and heading for the door almost before the electricity had stopped. The screaming continued and she yanked open the door to find Skylar and her partner lying in the corridor. Skylar was the source of the shrieks, but it looked like her partner, Vance Shepherd Fosse, a fourth year who was close to being a veteran, was in just as much pain. Both of them, along with the paintwork on the walls, were showing signs of electrical burns. Skylar’s burns did look worse.

Nava cast Active Recovery on Skylar and then Vance. Vance’s pain vanished in a second as his wounds faded into nothing. Skylar had been hurt worse, because it took three full seconds for her to stop screaming.

‘Captain,’ Vance began.

Nava held up a hand. ‘You’re both going straight to the infirmary to be checked over. That was an electrical attack. I’ve healed your wounds, but it may have done nerve damage or something. Go. I’ll listen to your reports when I get there.’ She had a second thought. ‘Sky, are you okay to walk to the infirmary?’

Skylar pulled herself to her feet and looked herself over as though checking she was all there. ‘I think so, Captain. That spell’s amazing. I mean, I saw you use it on Mori, but it’s like a miracle when it’s used on you.’

‘Anyone can learn it. It’s not even that complex. Get yourselves checked out and wait for me there.’ Turning, Nava went back into the HQ room. Around her, machines were coming back to life. No permanent damage, it seemed, but she would get an engineer in to check everything tomorrow.

Walking back to her desk, she pulled up the views from the security cameras outside the room. No one was visible on them. Next she checked for ketcom registrations there in the last few minutes, but the only ones showing as near were Skylar, Vance, and herself. Someone had cast an area effect electrical spell right outside the SSF’s HQ and they were not showing up on any means she had of detecting them.

No… If there had been someone there casting the spell, they would have been seen by Skylar or Vance. A trap then. A delayed spell with a trigger condition. Sitting down, she connected through to the school’s database of spells and began searching.

~~~

‘It’s called Lightning Mine,’ Nava said. ‘It’s a conditional delay spell which causes a wide-area electrical attack. Generally, it’s triggered by a human walking within two metres of the centre point, though there are variants with different triggers. Someone had to place it right outside the door, which means it was done after everyone left on their patrols.’

‘So, why didn’t you trigger it?’ Skylar asked. She was still being checked over by Tanzi Royce, the school’s best medical technician. Vance had already been checked and given the all clear, but he had waited, as asked, for Nava to arrive.

‘I didn’t go near the door. That room’s pretty big. The discharges didn’t even reach me and the spell’s radius is eight metres. But, if it had been there when everyone left, it would have triggered and electrocuted all of us. Whoever is doing this, they just stepped up their game to ridiculous levels.’

‘Right,’ Vance said. ‘First it was Flash spells. Now it’s military-grade magical traps?’

‘And they had to be aiming to catch you, Captain,’ Skylar added. ‘They had to figure you’d leave and