Jake's Justice, Book Three of Wizards (22 page)

The magic available outside was far too weak to affect anything physical. Even if I had the power to throw something at the switch from a location where there was more magic, what were my chances of actually hitting it? So close to zero it wasn’t worth considering.

What could I do with almost no power? Apart from look at things, there wasn’t much else. I stared through the wall in frustration. If I could collect the power to take one of the guards’ launcher things off them I could shoot it, but I didn’t have the power to press the fire button, let alone pick it up and aim it.

Getting to my feet, I banged on the wall getting everyone’s attention. The two guards lifted their launchers and pointed them at me. I’d just remembered the one thing a wizard could do that required almost no power.

“Shoot the large green button.” I commanded the guard on the right. He was nearest. I had already gathered what magic I could find out there around his head.

I hoped there would be enough.

22.
      
Insanity

The soldier did as I commanded him. As he changed the aim of his weapon to the button, his colleague shouted something at him and the two officers turned round. The flash of his weapon was followed by an almighty explosion that flung us off our feet and cracked the thick transparent wall in front of me. Magic flowed into the room and I hopped through the wall into chaos and slaughter.

The two officers had been killed by the blast; no living creature could survive the contortions their bodies were in. The soldiers were either unconscious or dead and I cared little for which one it was. They were no longer an obstacle in achieving my goal. There was a gaping hole where the control wall had been, revealing the outlines of what looked like a giant electric motor. Electricity sparked across its surface in mini lightning bolts. Thick cables wrapped an inner core of gleaming metal that stuck out east and west.

Looking at the core, I converted its metal from solid to liquid and then let it change back to metal a few moments later. If the Fedre ever managed to rebuild this particular machine it would be a miracle of the first order.

The flashing green lights had returned along with the scream of klaxons. I stepped over the soldier who saved me to reach the door beyond. When it didn’t open I broke it in two and stepped into a hail of machine gun fire.

Giving the shield a property akin to rubber, the shells fired at me were flung back at my attackers with identical, but reversed velocities. Screams followed as many hit those that fired. My anger threatened to overwhelm me as I stepped over dead and dying to walk up the hundred foot wide metal stairs in front of me. They ended at an enormous viewing platform. The General was there waiting for me, standing with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at me with infinite contempt. That fed the anger inside me. I wanted vengeance and I wanted him to plead for his life on his knees.

The soldiers at his side aimed their launchers at me. I threw them forward with a wave of my hand and they fell from the platform. Stepping forward, I watched them scream as they fell.

That was when I discovered we were on a spaceship, or perhaps it was a space station. The viewing platform opened onto space. Arms a mile wide spread out from the buildings base like the spokes of a wheel. Where we stood was the top of the hub of that wheel.

Spaceships miles across dwarfed the spokes they were tethered too.
 
The falling men passed through some kind of force field and their screams died. I watched their death rattles as the vacuum of space took them.

“General Siago Mantoyot, I have come to destroy your base, as you said earlier, with a click of my fingers. Is there anywhere in particular you would like me to start?”

If the General knew he was defeated, he gave no sign. In fact, he laughed and infuriated me further.

“The Fedre hold fourteen thousand worlds together. Prevent them from destroying each other by creating law and generating order. This base is beyond the power of any wizard to destroy, but even if you could we have more than one base. We are the police force for over fourteen thousand worlds and are not easily frightened.”

I looked down and focused my magic into a molecular blade and cut through one of the spokes below. That one act used up more magic than I used in my final fight with Bronwyn, but I still had plenty in reserve.

For long moments it looked as though I had done nothing. My enhanced sight showed vast discharges of oxygen and broken metal, but nothing else. Then ever so slowly the severed spoke and the ships tethered to it began to drift in slow motion towards the spoke to the left.

The General’s composure fell away as he saw what I had accomplished and he gasped in horror.

“There are two million people in that module alone. The deaths of all those men, women and children will be on your hands.”

I ought to have been bothered by that. Killing people was something I despised. But all I wanted to do at that moment was to bring this man to his knees and hear him beg for mercy. To give apologies for killing a man I was proud to call my friend. A part of my mind fretted at me and I silenced it before it made me think again. There was still a question I wanted an answer to.

“Who paid you to kill me?”

He said nothing, looking stubborn again, though I could see the anguish in his eyes.

“Shall I cut another spoke?” I peered below and looked around. The third one along from the one I’d cut looked like a good bet.

“By all that is sacred, no,” he said in words that sounded like prayer.

“I promised you I would destroy this base. If you tell me what I want to know, perhaps I’ll spare some of it.”

One of the ships on the broken spoke attempted to use its engines to move away. The energy field of its engines caught a ship in the next spoke along, which crumpled like a cola can. Despite the destruction was all eerily silent on the viewing platform. A small voice inside me shouted ‘no,’ but I ignored it.

It was too much for the General.

“The Elves. We have an alliance with them that has survived a thousand years. There are no good wizards, we all know that. And you stand here proving it.”

This man wasn’t my enemy. It was the Elves. It was always the Elves in the end. As that thought sank in, my anger with the Fedre faded and I began to shiver with reaction.
What in God’s name was I doing?
Images of the men I’d killed with their hand grenades came back to me. I had walked through their blood and gore as though it was nothing. Now I was murdering millions of innocent people to prove what? That I was everything I hated. The people about to die below were just like Jenny, Esmeralda, and Captain Cari. And they were dying at my hand.

All at once I knew what I had to do, if not how. I turned away from the General and focused on trying to undo the harm I’d created. When I flowed power onto the spoke to move it, it made barely any difference.

I felt the General shoot at me. My shield was still in bouncing mode and the bullet hit him in the hand. I didn’t have the time for this.

“I’ve let my anger drive me rather than my heart. How do I save the ships below?”

His face twisted into a sneer, so I repeated my words as an order. His face smoothed as he considered my question.

“The module is drifting too close to the next module. Can you push it back?”

“Not a chance. The power needed is too great. The best I can do is give it a push. That will use most of my power and even then I won’t get much in the way of velocity.”

The General’s face wrinkled as he thought and I removed the compulsion on him. I needed him in a state where he was free to think. He opened his eyes and gave rapid instructions.

“Concentrate all your power on the broken end of the module and try and get that end moving upwards.”

I braced myself and poured my magic into his request. It looked like nothing happened as magical forces pushed against the enormous mass of the spoke and power drained out of me like a flood, but I knew I had to carry on. The spoke and the ships tethered to it were so massive that it would take time to see the results. I found I was holding my breath.

Then it became obvious it was working. The near end of the spoke was moving up at a wretchedly slow pace. I diverted some of the power to pushing up the nearest ships because they were being pulled up by their tethers.

“Yes, that’s it. Now if only the commanders recover from their panic and see what we’re doing,” the General’s voice was thick with emotion.

The broken spoke had almost cleared the spoke it had been drifting into. Rising vertically out of their plane.

“Don’t shoot!” the General yelled and I momentarily stopped applying power.

I glanced behind me to see a squad of soldiers squatting on the stairs, their weapons pointed at my back.

“No one is to attack this man. He is trying to save many lives.”

The General turned away from the squad and hunkered down beside me. I hadn’t realized I was on all fours, concentrating on lifting the spoke.

“See if you can lift the middle of the module a little,” he said. “It might break if it bends too far.” He put a hand on my shoulder and our faces were only inches apart.

I tried, but it was impossible to tell if it was working. The strains along the length of broken spoke must be immense as I was turning it in a giant circle, pivoted at its furthest end.

The General laughed weakly. “They’ve figured it out,” he said and patted my shoulder. “You gave them the time and the inspiration to see what they had to do.”

What was he talking about?
Then I saw it, jets were shooting from the ships on the broken spoke. They were helping me and pulling themselves clear of the station. Their tethers were straining to lift the spoke up and away from the plane of the spokes and the hub of the base. The ships were coordinating their actions because the spoke was tipping steadily away.

As I watched in awe, the broken end of the spoke rose to the level of the viewing platform. It was at least two miles away, but with my magically enhanced sight I could see bodies among the wreckage of where I cut the spoke from the station. Some of the bodies looked like children.

The General touched his ear and I saw he was wearing an earpiece.

“Calm down and get off the airwaves. The immediate crisis is over. The ships on module twenty-two, stay tethered to it. I repeat, stay tethered. Bring the module to a halt relative to base wherever it is convenient and then search for casualties. Ship F1049 has been crushed by a launch field on Module Twenty-One. Base emergency services are to concentrate resources on searching for survivors and stabilizing their condition. Prioritize the schools and infant facilities. Stay off this frequency until further notice.”

There was only one thing left for me to say.

“I apologize. Your soldiers killed a friend who sacrificed his life to save me and I let my anger take over. You are not my enemy, the Elves are.”

The General laughed and I could hear the relief in it. “A wizard with a conscience, I never thought I’d live to see the day.” He looked at the squad still pointing their weapons at me. “Stand down. He might destroy us all if you get him angry again.”

The squad backed away, their weapons pointing at me until they were out of sight.

“You present me with a problem,” the General mused. “According to our laws you have committed enough capital crimes for me to have you executed a thousand times over. On the other hand, you are undoubtedly the hero that just saved millions of lives, by largely undoing the crisis you created. On the third hand, we attacked you, and I suspect that in your world you are a person of some standing. We probably committed an act of war, which makes your response legal.”

My thoughts turned to Esmeralda. “I am the protector of Salice and married to the heir to the throne.”

“As I suspected. The lawyers will be fighting over this for centuries. On top of that I may have technically surrendered when I offered you my help just now.” The General sighed. “Last and by no means least, I can do nothing against you even if I wanted to. May I suggest we sue for peace?”

I put out my hand. “It won’t bring our dead back, but I think that peace is a very good idea.”

The General squeezed my hand. “Then it is settled. There is only the matter of war reparations on our part as we were the instigators. Is there anything we can give you to settle this matter and stop our lawyers from coming after me?”

I shook my head. What could these people offer me that would make up for Captain Cari’s death?