“Fields up, Cadets!”

I flicked the switch on my belt, and the surrounding air crackled. The magical device activated, and flaring light from the triggered rune blinded me for a second. When I could see again, the readout on the left corner of my visor listed:

Prot-field: 100%

The steaming hot jungle where the other Academy cadets and I were situated had likely grown after the rune-forming systems in Tyranus’ atmosphere degenerated, creating a tropical wilderness. My armor’s recycling systems collected my dripping sweat for repurposed drinking water and to cool my equipment’s systems.

I swatted at a massive mosquito as it made the mistake of flying into my prot-field. The field zapped the bug, and its guts exploded.

“Great,” I said as I wiped my carapace breastplate. Sticky mosquito innards pasted the synthetic fabric between my light chest armor and spaulders. These low level forcefields only protected against projectiles, which, it seemed, included mosquitoes.

My readout flashed again, and the prot-field registered 97%. If a mosquito reduced it so easily, I hated to think what a Grendel bullet might do.

“Ha!” Alice Jones, the mission’s jump mage, slapped me on the back playfully. “Making new friends, Nicholas?”

The mage’s purple robes looked striking when set against the jungle greenery. The prot-belt cinching the flowing garments around her thin waist would keep them from getting in the way during the battle. Although Alice wouldn’t do much fighting; her role was to take us back to the Academy starship once we’d finished clearing the rift.

“Hey, all creatures seem to like me,” I said to the beautiful mage. Dust-embossed symbols on her robes enhanced her magical abilities, but they also made her blue eyes glitter. She wasn’t wearing any armor at all, unlike the cadets who were equipped in a hodgepodge of light suits.

I’d considered asking Alice out a few times, but the Academy staff frowned upon student relationships, and I didn’t want anything to jeopardize my chances of graduating or of getting assigned to the best starship possible.

“Save your affections, Poor Boy,” Ludas said from in front of us. “Scholarships won’t help you here.”

The nobleman cadet strangled his axe handle with both hands and smiled as his gaze darted around the jungle. He seemed completely calm, but then he was surrounded by three burly knights. Heavy power armor covered their large bodies, and the swords in their gauntleted hands pulsed with power. Ludas was the son of Duke Barnes, so these bodyguards accompanied him on every mission. They were only meant to intervene if his life was endangered, but he often ordered them to do his bidding and complete his objectives.

Needless to say, I didn’t like the guy.

It wasn’t merely his bureaucratic lineage or his unlimited wealth that soured my opinion. I was, of course, jealous of his status and riches since I’d grown up as the ‘poor boy’ Ludas branded me, but he tended to flaunt his privilege whenever given the chance.

“Got it, Ludas,” I replied as I forced a smile to my face. His bullying had been the most intense during our first year, but I’d gone out of my way to swallow my pride and be nice to the arrogant aristocrat. My strategy worked, and by the end of our first year, he no longer insulted me at every opportunity. He still called me ‘Poor Boy’ though, and everyone but Alice had quickly adopted the name.

I wouldn’t have to deal with any of my snobby classmates in a few days. This was my last mission as a cadet. After we defeated the low-level Grendels today, I’d be promoted to squire, and well on my way to full-fledged knighthood within the Royal Trident Forces.

Just like Dad was.

Then I would be assigned to an RTF starship and dispatched across the galaxy in service of the Queen. My life would consist of clearing rifts and collecting loot. In a few months, I’d earn enough to afford a decent place for my mom to live. I’d be able to follow in my father’s footsteps and provide for her as he once did. It was my dream, and I wasn’t going to let some spoiled rich kid distract me from it.

“Level One rift incoming,” the navigator’s voice entered my mind telepathically and kicked me out of my daydreams. Even after three years at the Academy, I wasn’t accustomed to someone speaking inside my head.

“Activate runic weapons,” Sergeant Myers barked as he marched through the ranks to ensure everyone was following protocol. He sneered at Ludas and the heavily armored bodyguards as he passed them, muttering something under his breath that sounded a lot like, “Fucking nobles.”

I removed my sword from its magnetons. As soon as the temporary rune on my palm pressed against the matching novice rune on the sword’s handle, the weapon glowed with arcane energy. Cascading hues of muted yellow light swirled around the blade’s double edges. The corner of my visor displayed the sword’s stats as it activated:

Weapon type: Iron Gladius of Minor Edge.

Additional damage: None

Power class: Novice

Weapon effect: Minor Edge - adds 5% weapon damage. Edge lasts longer without sharpening.

Runes inscribed: None

Rune class: Novice

Rune effects: None

Alice triggered her dagger while Ludas activated his axe. While my gladius was tarnished with age and glowed a dull yellow, their weapons burst with a green brilliance.

Lights sparked from all around the jungle swamp as the fifty other cadets prepared themselves. They were all wearing Novice armor, fashioned like the suits of armor human warriors wore before the gods gifted us technology to cross the stars.

The gravity runes inscribed on every Runetech item meant they could be constructed with unwieldy material. Even with gravity runes, some armor pieces weighed upwards of twenty kilograms, so every cadet needed to be in peak physical condition. Our ethos was “strong, fast, and fit”, and there wasn’t a single cadet in this jungle who didn’t mirror that.

Using the electronic inventory on my prot-belt, I displayed the weapons screen on my visor. I selected the Iron Gladius, and activated the dampener. Immediately, the sword dimmed to gray carbon.

“Listen up!” the point clerk yelled as he appeared a couple meters in front of us. His wrinkled head bulged with the bionic implants all clerks wore to interface with the kingdom’s database. “Remember, whatever loot you bring back from this mission will count towards your Kingdom Balance. Return it to me after the mission is complete, and I’ll provide you with Kingdom Points.”

I nodded and tried to keep the pleased smile off my face. After graduation, I’d be able to buy my first piece of Runetech equipment. I appreciated the basic gear the Academy gifted me, but I was really looking forward to building my own kit with KPs earned from this mission.

The rift site was about twenty meters in front of my designated position. The portal’s center appeared to glow a deep purple. Most of the Level One rifts we’d seen in our classes had been closer to blue. Its edges were expanding, becoming less ephemeral. Soon Grendel Grunts would filter out of it.

“Enemy arrival in 10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . .”

I hadn’t faced any real Grendels before. There was a big difference between simulations and the real thing. My hands were streaming with sweat, and my heart hammered in my chest with urgency.

“7 . . . 6 . . . 5 . . .”

I shook myself free of my worries. I needed to focus. If I failed today, then it was back to the enchantry in Bratton and its meager pay. Mom needed me. I’d come this far; I wasn’t ready to give up now.

“4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . .”

I thought about Dad and his exploits as a Space Knight. I wanted to do him proud today. What little I remembered of him stayed in my mind as the final second passed. Had he ever been afraid? I doubted it, so I swallowed the lump in my throat and ran my tongue across dry lips.

“ . . . 1.”

The designated drop zone hummed with low vibrations, and a dazzling light burst from the rift as it opened. When the sunspots vanished from my vision, I expected to see a small squad of Grendel Grunts moving through the jungle and the closest cadets preparing to engage them in combat. But there was nothing. The rift whirled with color and crackled with energy, but there were no Grendels.

“Something’s not right,” Alice said. “Where are they?”

I caught a shimmer, like light reflecting off a body of water, moving through the foliage around the drop site. The cadet closest to the rift suddenly fell onto his back screaming. His stomach tore open, and his guts flew out as if of their own accord. The shimmer vanished, but in its place was a bipedal lizard-man atop the cadet’s mangled corpse. Blood stained the monster’s serrated talons, and saliva oozed down its jagged fangs. It jumped from the dead cadet to another like a giant grasshopper, and I looked around in horror as dozens of the same monsters appeared throughout the jungle.

“Those fuckers are Grendel Elites!” Sergeant Myers screamed. He ran past me, grabbed Alice, and sprinted away from the combat area. “Fall back! Protect the jump mage at all costs. Rendezvous at the extraction zone.” His voice faded, giving way to screams of terror.

All around me, Grendel Elites were materializing and taking out cadets. Grendel talons cut my classmates to pieces, but I was too far away to help any of them.

Ludas’ three knights jumped in front of the nobleman as they prepared themselves for the impending onslaught. One of the knights suddenly roared and pushed something away from him. The air shifted, and a Grendel appeared. Up close, the monstrous aliens looked even bigger. They were seven feet tall walking lizard-men with dark green scales, wide mouths, and two-inch long razor teeth.

The knight on Ludas’ left swiped his greatsword in a two-handed swing, but before he could complete the movement, blood exploded out from his stomach where a second Grendel’s talon pierced his armor. This one appeared out of thin air instantly, and it followed up its talon cut by lopping the head off the dying knight.

“Prot-fields won’t hold up long against Grendel Elites!” another knight said as he fell back to the duke’s son. “Get behind me, Ludas.”

Ludas jumped behind his two remaining knights. I stood beside them and held my gladius while the more experienced men engaged the two Grendels. One of Ludas’ knights shuffled forward with a sword thrust aimed at the lizard-man that just killed his friend. The beast raised his arm to push aside the knight’s thrust, but the armored man pulled his blade back, jumped forward to slam his shield into the Grendel, and then clocked the lizard upside the head with the pommel of his weapon.

The attack spun the Grendel to the side, and I felt my body move forward without my brain giving it the order. My sword wasn’t as long as the knight’s standing next to me, but my swing still caught the stumbling creature at the back of its knee. The monster was wearing armor, but it was thinnest in that spot, so my blade cut the bottom half of the beast’s leg off.

The Grendel growled as it tipped over away from me, and I cocked my sword into my chest in preparation of my next attack. But before I could stab the stumbling monster, the knight next to me pivoted around my left shoulder and brought his longsword around to cut into the creature’s chest. His powerful blow sliced halfway through the lizard’s breastplate, and it flailed around the blade before it died.

Ludas’ knight and I turned to the remaining Grendel, but the other knight had already downed the creature and was pulling his blade out of the dead lizard’s skull. The young noble was standing a few paces behind us, and his axe was shaking in his trembling hands.

“Good job, Cadet,” the knight next to me said.

“Uhh. Thanks,” I replied as the emotions swirled in my stomach. I was glad to see the Elites felled by the knight’s powerful weaponry, but the terror in my body was almost overwhelming. Something had gone wrong with the portal. While it was too bad the rest of the cadets didn’t have Space Knights like these to protect them, I didn’t think three, well now two, knights were going to be able to keep us all alive.

I swallowed back my fear and recalled the training I had received at the Academy. All the classes, drills, and battle room sessions had been for this moment. Even if the Grendels were stronger than we had planned, I wouldn’t let terror cripple me.

I wanted more than anything to become a knight, and that meant surviving this battle.

One of the surviving knights grabbed his dead comrade’s sword, tested the weight of the weapon, and then pushed Ludas forward. “Let’s get to the extraction zone,” he said.

The petrified screams of my fellow cadets filled my ears as we sprinted northeast. I heard a chorus of insect-like sounds behind me, and I turned to see a flood of Grunts the size of greyhounds filter out from the rift. They swept through the jungle, running along the ground on their ten legs and swimming just as easily through the swamp water.

None of the monsters were cloaked so I could see them coming. One jumped at me with a snarling maw, but I managed to cleave its head off with a horizontal swing of my short sword before it could latch onto me. The strike messed up my running form, and another lizard made a jump for my legs. I sprung forward, tripped a bit on my feet, and then turned around with my sword out.

I’d only intended to keep the thing at bay, but it made a jump at me, and the tip of my blade pierced its skull and drove into the thing’s tiny brain. There weren’t more monsters coming at me, so I continued to run. These Grunts were what we were meant to fight with a Level One rift, not the Elites who could appear and disappear in an instant.

I followed Ludas and his two knights into the thicker part of the algae-covered jungle. As soon as we entered the darker foliage, I heard screams from other cadets and stopped. The terrified shrieking and the bellowing of pure agony surrounded me, filling my ears and making my heart slam into my chest repeatedly. I couldn’t possibly help them all, so I sprinted after Ludas’ knights.

The warriors pressed forward, pushing the duke’s son in front so he was better protected. I thought about Alice and hoped Sergeant Myers had taken her to the extraction zone. The insect-like chorus filled the air, signaling another wave of Grendel Grunts. Their legs clicked behind us as they surged forward.

Two Grendels dropped from the tree branches above me and landed atop Ludas’ guards. The knight who I’d helped kill the earlier Elite didn’t get to raise his shield in time, and the lizard-man’s sword cleaved through his glittering helmet as if it was made out of an eggshell. The other knight lifted his shield to check the enemy’s next attack, but the Grendel tackled him to the jungle floor.

The second Grendel grinned at me with its razor teeth. I leaped into the air and slammed my gladius down onto the lizard-man’s left shoulder. My sword pierced its armor and reptilian hide easier than I expected. It let out a surprised gasp as green blood sprayed over my visor and obscured half my vision.

The infuriated Grendel twisted around to glare at me as it pulled the blade it held in its right hand to strike. I chopped down again on the creature’s left arm, and the limb came off the shoulder. Dark-green blood erupted from the wound and sprayed my armor, but I didn’t let my disgust distract me.

It was kill or be killed.

I flicked my blade out a half second before the Elite’s weapon would have impaled me, and its head came off its thick neck with another grotesque spray of green gore.

I turned to the other Grendel and expected it to have already killed Ludas, but the nobleman was nowhere to be seen, and the monster was staring straight at me with its milky eyes. The alien tilted its head as though studying me. To my left, I could see Ludas inching behind me as I stared down the armored lizard.

“Ludas,” I said from the side of my mouth as I held my sword in front of me. “Now would be a good time to grow some balls and help me out.”

The Grendel was still looking at me, and I was wondering why it hadn’t attacked me yet. I knew as soon as I made a move to attack, it would be on me. This Grendel was an Elite, and the only reason I’d killed the other one was because I’d surprised it.

Ludas screamed like a madman as he ran toward the creature. He was far too slow, but a distraction was all I wanted anyway. The Grendel looked away for less than a second, and I charged. Before I could get to the Elite, its tail shot out and grabbed my feet.

My helmet smacked into the jungle floor, and I felt tension on my ankles. I tried to stand, but the lizard’s tail tightened around my legs and pulled me into the nearby swamp water before I could cut myself loose.

Scum filled my lungs as I tried to breathe, and the novice rune on my palm was the only thing keeping me from losing the gladius. The alien thrashed me about, but my armor shielded me from breaking any bones. Every time it slammed me against a tree or back down into the swamp, my armor crumpled. It wouldn’t last much longer, and the Grendel was too strong for me to wrestle from its grip.

After a minute, my enemy’s movements slowed. It was getting exhausted. I gritted my teeth as my equipment took almost the entire force of being thrown against a tree trunk. My armor was only a few blows away from fracturing. The alien must have exhausted itself because it paused for a moment. With my gladius in my right hand, I gave my prot-belt the command for a burst of speed, and I jumped out of the swamp water. I didn’t give the Grendel enough time to glance up before my sword skewered it right between the eyes.

I pulled the weapon out from the alien’s tear-shaped skull, wiped the gunk from my visor, and peered at the trees above me. From what I could tell, there were no more aliens waiting to pounce on us. I waded out from the swamp and returned to find the corpses of Ludas’ last two knights. Their weapons and armor might have been useful, but none of them were Novice class, so I couldn’t wield them. Selling them could lead to lots of Kingdom Points, but I didn’t want to be too encumbered. The extra weight would keep me from getting to the extraction zone speedily, and I couldn’t help Mom if I was dead.

“Poor Boy?” Ludas came out from the bushes where he’d been hiding. “I don’t know if I can do this. I’m not cut out to be a knight.”

I couldn’t really tell him he was great knight material, but I was saved from lying when I heard a voice moan somewhere in the undergrowth.

“Cadets,” the voice said between groans.

Keeping an eye out for any other shimmers that might signal a cloaked Grendel, I found the person who’d called out. It was Sergeant Myers. A Grendel had savaged his lower half, ripped apart his armor, and turned his legs into a pulpy mess. Corpses of four lizard-men surrounded the dying sergeant, but I couldn’t see any sign of Alice.

Sergeant Myers gripped my chest armor and pulled my face into his. “Find the jump mage,” he said as I leaned down. “She’s your only way off this planet.”

“Yes, sir.” I nodded, and his grip slackened around my light armor. His head sunk into his chest. For all his harrowing drills and hard exterior, I’d liked him.

He’d never called me Poor Boy.

Where was Alice? What was the chance she’d somehow evaded the Grendels by herself? I glanced around the dark jungle and searched for any footprints in the mud.

I pulled up my control screen from my prot-belt. The readout on my visor showed the telepathic link to the Academy starship’s navigator was still down. This rift was far stronger than a Level One, so the estimated distance needed for our telepathic comms to work was out of whack.

Sergeant Myers was right. Our only hope now was to find Alice before a Grendel did.

I returned to Ludas and saw him tugging on the armor from one of his fallen knights.

“That’ll be no use to you,” I said. He’d obviously not been listening when we were taught the requirements for using Runetech. When enchanters built magical weapons or armor with Dust, they sealed it with a specific rune class. All cadets were initiated into the Novice class, so we could only use matching Novice gear.

I signaled for him to follow me, and we moved through the swamp. There was the sound of a battle up ahead, and we soon came upon a pair of cadets engaged in combat with a Grendel Elite. It was Cadet Jenit and Cadet Erinhien. They were both from wealthy families and had joined in the name-calling with Ludas, but the few seconds of observation convinced me they were going to need my help. The Elite was just too powerful for them.

“I say we wait here,” Ludas whispered as he grabbed my arm. “We are safe here in the bushes. Let’s get around them and keep running. No point going out there and—Hey! Poor Boy! Where the hell are you going?”

I yanked my arm free of his grasp and charged into the clearing before I could explain to Ludas the finer points of honor. My sword threw out bursts of color while I twisted it in a circle. Before I closed the distance, the Grendel drove its short spear through cadet Jenit’s stomach. The young woman screamed with agony, and Cadet Erinhien tried to use the opportunity to behead the lizard-man. The Grendel was too fast though. It sidestepped Erinhein’s clumsy attack, pivoted to bring its spear around, and knocked Jenit’s dying body into Erinhein.

The Elite ripped its spear from Jenit’s stomach, and I was still too far away to do anything. I screamed to try and get the armored lizard’s attention, but the monster ignored me and thrust its weapon into the young cadet’s skull.

I activated my armor’s speed sequence with a practiced flurry of keys on my prot-belt. The runes along my boots and leg armor hummed as I sprinted at the heightened speed granted by my equipment’s enchantments.

Using every bit of my enhanced musculature power, I jumped ten feet into the air and descended with my sword pointed at the neck of the Grendel that had killed my two classmates. This was a move I had practiced hundreds of times during training but never thought I would use before graduation.

The gladius slammed into the Grendel’s neck, and the extra force of my rune-aided attack helped drive my short blade all the way through the monster’s thick armor. Noxious blood fountained from the alien’s neck, and green ichor sprayed across my chest when the lizard’s head popped off.

Something slammed into my back, and warning signs flashed on my visor.

Prot-field: 15%

I didn’t know what had struck me, but it nearly negated all of my forcefield with one hit. I leaped behind a tree, hoping I wouldn’t get tagged again. The water around me kicked up as half a dozen burning plasma balls struck the surface.

Ludas dove behind the tree next to me and narrowly avoided getting struck by three smoking plasma balls. The energy shots smashed into the tree where I had taken cover, and I guessed we had a few more seconds before the trunk either burst into flame or fell over.

“We need to find Alice,” I screamed at Ludas over the shrieking noise of the plasma pounding into our trees. “We’re not going to be able to get off Tyranus if she dies.”

There was, of course, the matter of sealing the rift before a jump mage could open an exit portal. Technically, we weren’t meant to jump back to the starship before the mission was completed. A return to the Academy vessel didn’t seem likely with the Grendel Elites flooding the jungle. The longer the rift remained open, far worse things than Elites could come through.

“Nicholas!”

I turned and sighted Alice wading through the swamp. Her hands clutched her stomach, and her head slumped as though she was caught in a daze. She was injured, and she was about to walk into a deadly line of fire.

I ran to my friend as plasma balls pulsed behind me. Even through my armor, I could feel their heat on my back as I took Alice in my arms and dove for cover. The tree behind me exploded into splinters, and I tried to shield her with my body.

Ludas came running, narrowly missing the alien projectiles by sheer chance. Who needed knights for bodyguards with luck like that?

“We’re sitting ducks while they’ve got those plasma weapons,” I said as I inspected Alice. Her prot-field was almost depleted, and she was bleeding from a deep cut in her stomach. She’d already applied a few medkits to the wound, but they weren’t enough to stop infection from poisoned talons poisoning her bloodstream.

Alice winced as I squeezed the blood from the cut. “My prot-field went down, and one of the Grunts got me,” she said. “I put a dagger through its throat.”

“Good job,” I said. “Those Elites hiding behind that hill might be the only Grendels with firearms. I haven’t seen or heard any other discharges. We take them out, and it’s close combat fighting from here.”

Unlike the more powerful prot-fields available above Novice class, low-level fields had limited protection against projectiles. They were better than nothing, but we couldn’t laugh off Grendel plasma rifles.

“Great,” Ludas said with a sarcastic smile. “My knights are dead, and I’m expected to take on these aliens with only you and an injured jump mage for assistance?”

“Don’t be such a coward,” Alice groaned between breaths. She really knew how to make me smile.

I grinned at her. Despite being a jump mage, she could handle herself pretty well. “Ludas and I will deal with those Grendels firing at us.” I looked at the nobleman, and his face greened under his helmet. “Well, maybe I’ll deal with them, and Ludas can keep an eye out. Then, we’ll get to the extraction zone, and you can jump us out of here. You think you can do that?”

“Sure,” she said with a weak smile.

I let Alice lean against a tree while I scouted the area in front of us. Every few feet I paused and listened for any Grendel clicking noises. I saw no shimmerings or other traces of uncloaked aliens. We could probably circle around the Grendels with the plasma rifles to get to the extraction zone. I hated leaving enemies at my back, but we didn’t have time to ensure they were all dead before we moved forward.

I was making my way back to Alice when I spotted a squad of Grendel Elites sneaking up on her. Ludas was oblivious, busy skulking beneath a tree a few meters away.

“Alice!” I called out, hoping to alert her so she’d get the fuck out of there.

My friend turned her head to look at me. Then she noticed the Grendels, and her eyes widened as she tried to move. A plasma ball shot through the air and hit her forcefield before she could twist out of the way. Her forcefield stopped it, but a dozen more balls came for her. She screamed as the last fiery sphere seared through what remained of her prot-field and melted off her arm.

Seeing the jump mage go down drove all the wind from my chest. Red bathed my vision as I realized those lizards had probably killed Alice.

Every part of me ached to spill Grendel blood.

I activated my speed sequence, and runic power coursed through my body. My feet padded along the water’s surface as I darted through the trees. Plasma balls boomed out from the Grendels’ guns, but none of them connected. Tree trunks exploded into splinters, and flames engulfed bushes.

Another activation of my speed sequence, and I was soaring through a gap in the trees and above the Grendel Elites. Before they’d brought their rifles to bare, I was among them, hacking and slashing. I killed the first two as soon as I landed. The third raised its rifle to block my swing. My sword hit its weapon and bounced off with a thunderous clang, but then I flipped the blade under its arms and pushed the point into its lizard heart.

There was another next to him, and it tried to strike me with the butt of his rifle. I ducked under its blow, cut through its legs and then ended the lizard’s life with a second chop.

Rage screamed within me. My sword danced through the ranks of the lizard men as if I didn’t even control the arm wielding it.

I needed to save Alice. Not just because she was my only friend, but also because she was the only one who could get me off this planet and back on our starship. If she died, then I died. If I died, then my mom would be alone, and I’d never get her out of the Dobuni tenements. I would never become a knight.

I was suddenly standing before the last Grendel Elite. It dropped its rifle and brought its talon up to parry my gladius. Shockwaves reverberated up my arm, and I was thankful a second time for the runes gluing the weapon to my hand.

From out of nowhere, Ludas’ axe came down on the Grendel’s reptilian head, splitting it in two. The monster gave a few twitches as it fell to the ground, and the duke’s son let out a groan as he dislodged the blade from the lizard-man’s skull.

“Looks like you grew some balls,” I said with a nod.

He gave me a sheepish grin before bowing over and vomiting.

I surveyed the carnage around me. Every one of the aliens was dead. There were at least ten, and I couldn’t remember killing them all. I’d been in such a fury. I shouldn’t have been able to defeat them. These were Grendel Elites, and I was wearing borrowed Novice armor and I’d never been in a real fight.

Among the lizard corpses, half-buried in the swamp water was a familiar figure with his head covered in dark mud. I pulled him up, and he coughed out a bucket of foul water.

“Thank the gods; you’ve saved me!” The point clerk gasped. Then he coughed again, and blood poured out of his nose and mouth. Swamp scum and what looked like alien brain matter covered his long beard. He was bleeding badly from a cut on his head, and the skull bone next to his implants was exposed. The man was dying, and his body quivered as I held him.

“It was a Level Three. Something messed with the rift,” the point clerk struggled to say. “Some kind of magic. I’m sorry, Cadets, I don’t know what happened. The starship’s going to leave within the hour, but not before they drop a rune-nuke on the site. It’s protocol. We can’t let the Grendels get this planet.”

The clerk traced a triangular sign on his forehead, some religious symbol I’d seen a few nobles use, coughed a final time, and then died.

I left the clerk’s corpse behind and returned to Alice. My heart raced as I checked her over. She was still breathing, but she was unconscious.

“You need to hang in there,” I said to her even though she couldn’t hear me.

My pouch was empty of medkits, and Alice was on the verge of death. She needed to survive to jump us out of here. If I could get her to the extraction zone, then I could fill her with drugs from the supply crates and wake her up long enough to summon a portal. The distance between the Grendel rift and the extraction zone was sufficient for a clean jump.

My friend just had to survive until we got there.

I hauled Alice over my shoulder. Regimented weightlifting within the Academy meant I’d have no trouble carrying her unconscious form through the jungle. Although it might be a little difficult to fight while carrying her, I couldn’t leave her here to die.

“My prot-field’s almost depleted,” Ludas said. “Looks like yours won’t hold up much longer either. You want to run into enemy fire, you’re more than welcome. But I’m waiting here. My father will hear about what’s happened and send an extraction team to get me out.”

“Remember when I said you’d grown some balls? I was wrong.” He had a point. We couldn’t take on another squad of Grendel Elites. Not while I was carrying Alice.

I needed something better than a gladius. I recalled the rifles the Grendel Elites had been carrying and doubled-back with Alice over my shoulder.

When I got back to the dead lizards, I set the jump mage down and picked up one of the plasma rifles. It was still attached to one of the alien’s limbs, merged with organic material. I used my gladius to sever the connection.

The Academy might have given us stronger prot-fields if they’d known what we’d be facing today. Part of this mission was to see how the cadets would fare with only close combat weapons available to them. This was meant to be a ‘controlled scenario.’

I sheathed my sword and inspected the rifle. I’d seen Grendel weaponry like this before while working as an enchanter apprentice. Most of the time, they were dismantled for Arcane Dust and made into weapons more appropriate for humans to wield. When I opened my control screen, my fears were confirmed.

Weapon type: Undocumented Plasma Rifle

Additional damage: [unknown]

Power class: Expert

Weapon effect: [unknown]

Runes inscribed: [unknown]

Rune class: [unknown]

Rune effects: [unknown]

Warning: Undocumented. Use with extreme caution. Abusers will be prosecuted.

Even if I’d wanted to break the law and wield the weapon, I couldn’t risk it. If I tried to use the plasma rifle, it might backfire. There was a slim chance it’d work, but it was a chance I wasn’t willing to take.

Still, I slung the weapon over my shoulder. It might be worth a decent amount of Kingdom Points if we ever got off Tyranus, and the strap on the rifle meant I could carry it over my shoulder without sacrificing run speed.

“Everyone is dying all around me,” Ludas said, bordering on delirium. “I’m not going to make it, am I?”

“Keep your head on. We aren’t dead yet. We need to get Alice back to the extraction zone.” I knew our odds were slim, and my prot-field was almost gone, but I wasn’t going to quit even though things looked impossible. I wanted to become a Space Knight more than anything. Mom needed me. I couldn’t abandon her by taking leave of my senses.

With Alice in my arms and the useless plasma rifle hanging from my shoulder, I weaved through the trees, using whatever cover I could find. With my prot-field at such a low capacity, a single plasma ball would probably kill me. Ludas must have changed his mind about waiting for his father to help him because he was following closely behind me. Thankfully, we got to the extraction zone without encountering any more Grendels.

“We made it, Poor Boy!” Ludas screamed.

“Nick,” I corrected as I put Alice down in the small clearing. My friend and our only chance at getting off this planet was about to die, and I wasn’t going to let this noble call me names any longer.

“Thank you, Nick,” Ludas corrected himself, and I offered him a small nod. “What do you need me to do?”

“We need to find the proper medicine. Maybe a shot of adrenaline, or some kind of enchanted medkit.”

Standard procedure was to leave supplies in planned extraction zones, and we found a useful crate in less than a minute. I took out the correct drugs to give my friend, punched the needle into her heart, and pushed the drug into her veins.

“Can you open a jump portal?” I asked her when her eyes opened.

“I think so.” Alice squeezed her eyes shut, and the air shimmered in front of her. A crack showed and expanded until it was a few inches wide. She groaned, and the tiny portal vanished. “I can’t do it. I’m too exhausted.”

“We need different medkits,” I said as I rifled through the crates. “The ones here aren’t strong enough.”

“There’s nowhere else to go,” Ludas said.

I stood and faced the way we’d come. “Maybe someone was carrying something better. We’ll double back and check Sergeant Myers’ corpse. Maybe he had some rune-level kit.”

It was a stupid plan.

The sergeant’s body was a kilometer away, in the enemy infested territory. I should have searched him for advanced medkits before I’d left him.

Ludas’ face drained of color as he stared at Alice. “Nick . . . She’s not breathing.”

“Alice?” I asked as I knelt beside her. Her eyes were open, but there wasn’t any life behind them. My stomach sank, and I blinked away tears. I knew it was futile, but I ripped open another basic medkit and applied it to what remained of her arm. I might as well have been trying to heal a rock.

Clicking sounds came from the surrounding jungle, and I could see flashes of green scales through the thicket. It sounded like a dozen Grunts were coming toward me, and I knew there would be another group of Elites following them.

My friend was dead, and I would soon be joining her.

Ludas’ eyes widened. “There’s no way out of here. I can’t die! I’m not even meant to be here! I should have graduated without any field missions.” His voice turned into a shriek. “I told my father I’m too important to go on the field. I’m meant to be an officer!”

I felt the same frustrations, so it was hard to be angry with the nobleman. This mission wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. I’d worked my ass off to get through the Academy like my father had done. Who was going to take care of Mom if I died here? She never wanted me to become a knight. When she told me about the scholarship waiting for me, I’d gone against her wishes and started at the Academy.

If only I’d been quicker to get to Alice’s side. If only I’d fought harder. If only I’d been able to afford better equipment. There were so many things I could have done differently.

I swallowed and opened my control screen. The link to the navigator was still broken and incapable of carrying even the smallest message. The rift’s scrambling effects reached even to the extraction zone.

“I’ll take as many out as I can,” I whispered as I stood from Alice’s side.

The sounds of the Grunts grew closer, and I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. After I’d taken out my share of lizards, the rest would eat me alive. Even if I somehow survived this wave, the starship would nuke the place, and there’d be nothing left of me to send back to my mother.

Angry Grendel screeches filled my ears. They were all around us now.

I wished I was back on the Academy starship with Alice and Ludas.

My stomach lurched suddenly, and I gasped with surprise.

I was standing on the starship’s bridge, cold steel beneath me, with Alice on the ground and Ludas standing behind me.

“How—“ Ludas gasped as his eyes opened.

“Captain . . .” the commander said as she noticed us.

“What is it, Commander?” the captain growled. “We have fifty cadets missing on Tyranus, one of which is Duke Barnes’ beloved whelp. Not to mention a sergeant, and a point clerk. Beyond reason, our navigator cannot contact a single person. Unless you’ve discovered some way of—“ He turned from the computer interface. As he glanced from me to Ludas, his surprise outmatched the commander’s. “You’re cadets. But there was no extraction portal? How did you get here?”

“Our jump mage,” I said quickly. “She brought us back.”

Ludas cocked his head at me, but he didn’t say anything.

Alice was definitely dead before we’d jumped, and if I’d somehow been responsible for our instantaneous escape, it was outlawed magic which would send me straight to the Facility.

I didn’t know if Ludas understood what I’d done, but the brief flash of suspicion vanished from him as he broke into tears.

“I’m alive!” he screamed. “I’m fucking alive!”

“Get this one cleaned up,” the captain said to a yeoman. “Barnes will shit bricks if we deliver his son to him looking like this.”

The yeoman took a blubbering Ludas while I was left to stare at a dead Alice.

Without saying anything to me, the captain turned back to the display screen. He brought up a holographic image of Tyranus and zoomed into the rift site.

“What happened down there, Cadet?” the captain asked.

“We were overcome by Grendels,” I said. “The point clerk said it was a Level Three instead of a Level One.”

The captain bristled. “My God . . . then we cannot delay. The Grendels cannot take one of our rune-formed planets. Commander, blast it.”

“Yes, Captain.” The commander returned to her console.

“There might be survivors,” I blurted out.

The captain narrowed his eyes at me before returning to the commander. “Do it. Then find out what happened there. This colossal fuck-up won’t be on my head.”

“Yes, Captain.” The commander initiated the countdown.

When it reached zero, I watched the view screen as the warhead ejected from the starship’s weapons hangar. It hit Tyranus, and a mushroom cloud enveloped the entire left side of the planet.

The commander stepped out from her console and approached me. “This is the jump mage who brought you back?” She nodded at Alice.

“Yes,” I said, and a yeoman came and took Alice’s corpse.

The commander studied me for a moment as though she knew Alice hadn’t been the one to bring us to the starship. “I’ll see she gets the appropriate honors at the graduation. We have thirty minutes before our jump mage brings us back to the Noridum Tigana system. In the meantime, you’ll need to come with me.”

I nodded to the woman and stood without her help. Then I let her lead me into the briefing room so I could give her a full explanation about the failed mission.