Spear of Destiny by James Baldwin (little bear else holmelund minarik .TXT) 📕

fingered his whiskers, hooding his eyes at the other commanders. “Voivode Dragozin and Lady Ba’hadir led us to victory at the Prezyemi Line. It stands to reason they know something about thisss strategy we do not. You can count on The Orphansss, your Grace—on one provision.”

“Go ahead,” I nodded to him.

“That you Starborn test this device and demonstrate its use,” he said, lashing his tail. “If you land safely, I will commit my elite infantry to thisss training, the best of the best. We are Prrupt’meew, warriors of the Hm’rraw. We fear no height.”

“Done,” Suri said. “Rin, build us a chute and I’ll demo a jump.”

I glanced at her, surprised.

“Sure! I can make a parachute, no problem. If I have the mats and can figure out the recipe, I can probably craft one by this afternoon,” Rin replied, blinking as she looked between us. “Which of you has more skydiving experience?”

“Him, so grill him about the design. But I’ll make the actual jump.” Suri pointed at me. “I fuckin’ hate heights and weigh a ton with all my armor and gear on. If I can pull it off, any of our troops can.”

“Okay!” Rin nodded, smiling up at her. “Hector? Can you come to my workshop and sketch out some military designs for me? The only kind of parachute I know is the round one, but I know the Army has better shapes for combat purposes.”

“Can do,” I replied. “We can test it tonight, preferably when it’s dark.”

“I will test it,” Suri repeated, stubbornly. “You will park your arse on your dragon and watch.”

“What gives?” I PM’d her.

“Karalti told me what happened to you last time you died,” she fired back. “If anything goes wrong, I’ll respawn at the castle with my memories and sanity intact. You won’t. You were out for three days, last time. The next time, you might not wake up.”

“… Fair enough.” I grimaced and closed the chat.

“So let us say this tactic is workable,” the Wing Commander said. “The idea is to send a small team to disable the anti-airship ordnance, then land the army in the castle?”

“Yes,” I said. “Taethawn’s volunteered for the vanguard already, so that’s taken care of. He will open up the sky for the Royal 2nd Company and its ships. With your Dragoons and the Royal Elementalists, we’ll be able to hit them hard and fast, and avoid a siege. We just have to make sure he can’t knock our ships or Karalti out of the sky.”

“Indeed.” Captain Vilmos said. “I will be honest with you, my lord: I am skeptical. It seems like a very long reach to jump off an airship, land inside of a castle, and storm it in such a way as to avoid detection.”

Unseen and unheard, Mehkhet the Illuminator hung in the shadows at the very back of the room, his shadowy sleeves billowing in the gloom. I smiled, and absently rubbed the Mark of Matir. “Trust me. Once you see what I’m talking about, everything will fall into place. The Black God has our back on this one.”

Chapter 21

I went with Rin to the smithy where she’d set up her quarters. It was still fairly chaotic. Rin’s workspaces were neat—organized by shape, size and color—but she’d heaped her belongings into a pile on the middle of her bed.

“Hi, ladies!” She sang out as she opened the door. I hung back as her artificed sentinels, Lovelace and Hopper, scuttled over to greet us. They were mobile turrets the size of large dogs. Hopper was heavily armored and engineered for defense, capable of deploying magical protections and barriers to shield Rin from damage. Lovelace was her attack drone, armed with what looked to me like a really, really old-fashioned Gatling gun, the kind that had to be turned with a hand-crank. They waved their front legs at me in what I hoped was a friendly gesture as Rin hung up her coat.

“Okay, parachutes. There’s two kinds I know how to use, the T-11 troop dispenser and the HI-5 free fall rig, and I’m pretty sure I remember how they’re put together.” I gingerly patted Hopper on her ‘head’ as the machine stomped over. “And while we’re at it, two things. Can you possibly repair the Raven Helm and the Spear for me? And do you mind if I ask you some stuff before you get stuck into the design? About Michael, and OUROS.”

“Oh! Sure! If you can leave the helmet with me, I can repair it this afternoon, but you need an Aether Forge for the Spear and we don’t have one here. There’s one in Litvy, but we won’t have time for that today. As for questions… umm… I don’t really know much more other than what I already told you, but I mean, it can’t hurt to ask?” Rin smiled prettily at me, plopping down onto a heavy-duty stool built to withstand beings who weighed as much as Mercurions.

“We spoke to Jacob.” I pulled the scarred Raven Helm off and set it on an empty worktable. “He told us that Michael experienced hallucinations when he was glitching during his upload. Did you know about that?”

“What? No.” Rin shook her head, picking up the helmet and turning it over to appraise the damage. “We watched him enter the game and go through character creation, but when the glitch happened, we only saw him die a couple of times before HR cut the feed. They gave us some peppy little Silicon Valley propaganda talk about it afterwards. We heard the truth via gossip, of course, but when management reactivated the game stream, Michael seemed to be fine. He was laughing and talking... no mention of hallucinations or other problems. He reassured us they fixed the issue, and he was okay.”

“Yeah. Well, the SysAdmin team heard a different story,” I said. “It was