My heart smashed and crashed in my chest hard enough that I could feel the beat in my earlobes. My jacket was armored, the wards engraved onto the ceramic plates that covered my vitals hidden beneath the leather, but they wouldn’t protect me against the kind of firepower the Baylens had.

  If they managed to regain momentum.

  Right now, the Baylen troops were broken. Likely, they thought I was invincible. I needed to find the hatchling before they figured otherwise.

  My bedsheet hung tightly around my middle. I unwrapped it, twirling it like a flag, and conjured up a bit of force into it.

  It was a lesson I’d learned early: never up-tune an improvised ward while wearing it. One of my classmates at the Academy had immolated himself that way when his ward shattered.

  My ward held. It flowed through the sheet, connecting the cotton with its twin, an invisible pulsing pull that tugged on all the hairs on my arms all at once, drawing me forward and to the left.

  “What’s that way?” I asked Hao, pointing.

  “Storage, I think,” she said. “They keep changing the layout.”

  She’d picked up Ma Tomlin’s Novum and held it like a marine, at low ready with her chin just touching the stock. Her finger was on the trigger, though, already curled, and the safety was off. If she stumbled, she’d shoot herself in the foot.

  “Careful,” I said, pushing away her barrel. “Point at what you want to destroy.”

  It was easier than trying to explain combat gun safety while in combat.

  We moved inward and downward.

  Rough-hewn, gray granite walls. Black cables on iron staples drilled into the ceiling. Glaring white lights, shadowed from my eyes by the wide brim of my stockman.

  I considered drawing my foil, but didn’t. I wasn’t completely suicidal.

  With every step, I expected someone to burst out and shoot at us.

  Nothing happened.

  We didn’t check behind us, didn’t deviate from the sheet’s pull. Move fast, hope no one circles around to take us in the back. The corridor stayed empty, a long, gray, sloping run.

  Room on the right, heavy metal door. Closed.

  Light inside, visible through the vent. I pulled a magnesium incendiary burn grenade from my pocket, stuck it into the locking wheel of the door and set the timer. We left.

  The grenade burst, fusing the wheel, sealing off anyone left inside. They wouldn’t come up behind us.

  Forward, pulled along by the dowsing ward. Nothing moved, everything was quiet, only the hum of the ventilators and our steps disturbing the silence. I got a feeling like ants crawling over my skin, and my ward flashed blue-orange. A thread of power, directed at me.

  Far away, but there. Someone had dowsed for wards.

  Maurice-the-dirt-mage.

  “If you see their mage, shoot him first,” I whispered to Hao. The barrel of her Novum was vibrating, but she pointed it forward. I kept my Hurmer at low ready, keeping it from blocking my sight.

  Another corridor crossed the one we were following. The sheet pulled left, and I obeyed, momentarily getting ahead of Hao. I was lucky the hatchling was made of magic, keeping the cotton imbued on his side. Hao hurried to catch up.

  Darker here than before, a single line of lights in the ceiling. Another reinforced door on the left, no lights this time. I didn’t waste any grenades on it. Only two left.

  A man walked out in front of us and froze. He wore a mechanic’s blue coveralls and carried a portable electronics toolkit in his left hand. A pair of giant headphones covered his ears, heavy bass beats leaking out of them.

  With the barrel of my Hurmer, I waved him back into the room he’d exited, and shut the door behind him, fusing it with a burn grenade. One left.

  The tunnel was cold. Everything stank of scorched metal and magnesium smoke.

  The floor sloped downward, the ceiling receding above us.

  “Where does this go?” I asked.

  “Don’t know,” Hao answered. “Never been this way before. The storage areas are above and behind, I think.”

  The walls grew rougher, cracked, rocks jutting out into the run. We were leaving the main complex, going into older parts. Rusted I-beams braced the rock occasionally. I didn’t like the place. Shallow side tunnels started appearing. I stopped, listening.

  Silence. Even the ventilation noise was gone. More ants crawled along my spine and my ward flared. Closer this time.

  My other bedsheet was moving, away from us. The Baylens were retreating, or leading us. Likely the latter. Crud.

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  Forward, as quietly as we could, keeping the ward-light hanging from a string on my belt dimmed. I kept turning it, adjusting the direction of the glow as the light spun, keeping it pointing forward.

  The air smelled of coffee.

  I stopped, sniffed. Definitely coffee, and sweat. No sound, no light. Ahead of us, the tunnel was dark.

  I pulled up my ward-light, unhooked it. With a snap, I flung it forward into the darkness. As it left my hand, I tuned it to maximum glare.

  The tunnel flashed into brightness. Then the ward-light sailed into a curtain of absolute black.

  Someone cursed, and the darkness wavered.

  Cloaking spell, pushed through with major force.

  With barely a thought, I pulled my last burn grenade and tossed it into the corridor, pressing myself to the wall behind an I-beam.

  The burner exploded, its thump followed by screaming.

  The cloaking spell failed, revealing a high, round cave, my ward-light blazing on the floor. Muzzle blasts flashed toward me, bullets pinging off the walls.

  I fired, burst after measured burst, twenty pellets at a time. It was like a dance: muzzle flash, burst, muzzle flash, adjust aim, burst. Blink, twist, pull, blink, twist, pull.

  A bullet smacked into my back, and another. My wards were burning out. On the other side of the tunnel, Hao twisted, her Novum roaring in the enclosed space, red polymer casings bouncing off the wall.

  A bullet hit her low, passing through her calf, and she fell. I felt my last ward shatter, a tiny stab of ice in my brain.

  Darkness descended.

  There was no other word for it: a wave, black as the starless void, sinking from the ceiling and enveloping me.

  I stopped firing.

  My ears rang, a high-pitched keening. Even the sound-wards had shattered.

  But I had other means of fighting.

  I wasn’t powerful. In terms of raw power, Maurice-the-dirt-mage was out of my league. I couldn’t dampen his cloaking spell. But I could bypass it.

  Magic is all around us. In the void of space, in the iron magma at the heart of planets. But mostly in living things.

  I conjured, pulling on the threads of magic around me as gently as I could. Warding is a finesse skill. I could conjure the thinnest threads of force and keep them separate in my mind. I conjured four, feeling around with them, ignoring the warmth of my own life.

  Hao to my right. A great, hidden weight that would be Maurice, somewhere in front. A faltering heat between us, likely a dying soldier. And someone moving, behind me.

  I turned, sensing the general direction of the thread, hooking it into the life. I wouldn’t be able to follow it well enough to aim, but I didn’t need to aim. The tunnel was long and narrow, and I had a direction. I flicked the Hurmer to full auto.

  The Hurmer belched. I kept my finger on the trigger, sweeping the muzzle in narrow arcs, until the power pack ran low. The pellets impacted in the darkness, crashing into walls and support beams. The thread faltered and diffused.

  Five left.

  I switched out my last power pack. A thousand pellets. A thousand kills, or none.

  Suddenly, the air turned hot, then burning.

  Maurice had also been preparing.

  A wave of flame rolled into the tunnel, invisible in the darkness of the cloaking spell. I threw an arm over my face, the leather of my jacket scorching, the corridor stinking of burnt flesh.

  Most of my fire and radiation retardant wards were in Hao’s ward-vest. I wouldn’t hold out for long.

  Time to gamble.

  I pulled the foil from its sheath, the blade vanishing in the dark. But the ripstone at the tip glowed white, dissipating Maurice’s cloaking spell and flame both.

  My hand shook. I kept the ripstone as far away from me as possible, trying to hold it away from where I thought Hao was. Gently, I conjured a thread of force into it.

  The darkness ripped, the flame curled in on itself. Someone swore, crude and vicious.

  My arm went dead, spikes of pain shooting through it. I let my Hurmer fall, grabbed the foil with both hands, feeding more force into the ripstone, trying to direct it outward.

  Its white light shattered Maurice’s spells.

  Suddenly, the cave was visible. Maurice was twenty meters away, his hands raised as if trying to catch a bullet.

  My foil jerked, pulled forward. Maurice was pulling on the blade, trying to tear the ripstone out of my control. I fed another thread of force into it.

  Instead of spearing toward Maurice, the rip flattened into a thin, white disk, cutting the stone on both my sides with a deep roar.

  Maurice grinned, a wide, hungry crudmucker grin. Twenty meters. He was holding my ripstone at bay at twenty meters. He might have been untrained, but he was insanely powerful.

  The air bent and distorted, making the cave look like a broken mirror. I wished for someone to charge Maurice, scream, take a shot, distract him somehow. No one did. Everyone kept their head down, avoiding the magic duel.

  Maurice took a step closer.

  I could feel the disk bending, the edges curling inward. Another step, and spikes of ripstone-moderated force thrashed the walls of the tunnel, pulverizing rock, sending parts of the ceiling tumbling. And he was still pulling on my foil.

  Void him. I cut the thread winding into the ripstone.

  It almost killed me. The ripstone turned into a spiked ball, launching slender, meter-long shards of white light in all directions.

  It was only Maurice’s inexperience that let me throw up a fresh thread before he perforated me. My head felt like an overripe melon about to burst, pressure from all the threads I was trying to push through. Black and grey spots danced at the edges of my vision. Migraine, as yet only a mounting tension in my mind, about to explode into pure pain. It was only a matter of time before I fainted.

  Maurice yanked on my foil.

  The force was tremendous, like a meteorite decompressing a starship. The foil started slipping through my numb fingers. I stumbled forward, trying to keep hold of it. Maurice laughed.

  In that moment, I hated the crudmucker with all my heart. Syndicate slave driver, taking my hatchling, trying to take my foil from me.

  Let him have it.

  I dropped the foil, shoving on it with all the strength I had remaining, pushing my fraying threads against the ripstone.

  Helping Maurice.

  The foil accelerated, flying true, pulled by Maurice toward himself.

  At the last moment he realized what was happening, reversing his force and stopping the foil half-a-meter away from him.

  It fell to the floor at his feet with a clang, all but one of my threads dissipating.

  The migraine exploded like a hammer blow in my brain.

  We stared at each other across the distance, me shaking, Maurice grinning. He bent to pick up my foil.

  I rammed my last thread into the ripstone, not caring to direct it, not caring to control it.

  White shivs exploded from the tip of my foil, perforating the floor, the air, Maurice. The lower part of his body vanished, ripped to shreds and pulled into the ripstone flow. He opened his mouth, then fell forward, into the stone’s white fire. Parts of him hit the floor.

  A bad way to die.

  My thread frayed, dissipating, my vision swimming with a thousand dots. The ripstone’s glow vanished.

  I leaned against the iron girder I’d been hiding behind, trying to stay upright and failing. Slowly, I slid downward, catching myself on the wall. On the other side of the tunnel, Hao lay on her back, eyes open and staring at the ceiling, her chest rising and falling rapidly. A pool of blood surrounded her.

  There was a bang.

  Something punched me in the gut, and I fell against the wall, bouncing and collapsing the rest of the way to the floor. A thin thread of smoke rose from a big hole in my jacket.

  Strangely, it didn’t hurt, much.

  “Got you, you ugly crudmuncher,” said Baylen, stepping out from behind a pile of rubble halfway across the cave, behind what remained of Maurice’s corpse.