Bryce

“Is everything okay? You were out there for a while, and where’s Elliot? We’re not picking him up on any of the scanners.” A male voice came over the bridge speakers aboard our new ship. Lysc, Daria, Sora, and I were all gathered around where Rossi was sitting as she called into the Syndicate compound.

Rossi was in rough shape. The already pale elven woman looked like a ghost from blood loss. She was missing her left ear, three fingers on her right hand, and her right eye. She was covered in burns and long gashes. Daria had even left a knife in her shoulder, and from what little I knew of anatomy, it was cutting into bone.

All of that was before even asking a single question, she had apparently been harboring a grudge.

Rossi looked toward us for instructions. Lysc nodded towards the blank screen, encouraging her to respond but not saying anything that the microphone could pick up.

“The bitch was lying.” Daria twisted the knife in Rossi’s shoulder. There was an audible sound of metal against bone, and a fresh line of blood ran down Rossi’s arm. Her face twisted in pain, but she didn’t cry out, instead continuing her explanation with fewer insults.

“She had somebody else at the meeting point waiting to ambush us, and they blew up Elliot. I barely made it out alive, and couldn’t get a message out until I repaired the com-relay."

“Well, shit, that’s probably going to mean war. How bad was the damage? Lord Rajak won’t be happy if you ruined his new ship.” The voice said.

“It’s bad. Is Lord Rajak there?” Rossi asked. “I need to meet with him.”

“Yeah, he’s in his compound. I’ll lower the shield for you, and I can get a message to him, but he’s got a few meetings today. So, you’ll probably have to wait a while.”

“That’ll be fine.” Rossi shut off the call and turned to address Lysc. “Is that what you wanted?”

Daria pulled her knife out of Rossi’s shoulder, leaving the woman cursing and holding an open wound.

“Take Rossi to the brig, lock her up and make sure she doesn’t bleed out,” Lysc said.

“Yes, boss.” Daria lifted Rossi by her left arm, putting pressure on her wounded shoulder.

“Fuck, that hurts!” Rossi complained. “Careful, you blood sucking cunt, your master said to leave me alive.”

Daria let go of her arm, which caused Rossi to fall to the ground. She clambered up before limping off the bridge while Daria kept prodding her with the knife.

“That was a bit much,” I said.

Lysc scoffed. “Rossi goaded the last pack alpha into a fight before killing him with a poison blade. Daria liked him.”

“You think she was trying to do the same to you today?” Sora asked.

“Yeah, I do.” Lysc said. “She thinks we’re animals and tries to trick us into fighting whenever she has the upper hand. Rossi has killed a lot of my pack.”

“Are you going to let her live?” Sora asked.

“Rossi is ambitious, underhanded, and she definitely can’t be trusted. If she were in our position, then she would kill us without question,” Lysc said.

“You’re letting her live,” I said.

“I’m the better person,” Lysc sighed. “I won’t go back on my word.”

“Survivors could be a problem for us,” Sora said.

“I said I’m the better person, not an idiot. We’ll leave Rossi alive, in the jungle. She won’t be bothering us again,” Lysc said. “Now, please, little fox, bring us down to land.”

Sora eyed me, and I nodded, so they took a seat in the pilot’s chair. We watched the horizon shift as Sora angled the ship towards the planet.

“I’m going to go check on Thea. Make sure you bring us down slowly, we’ll need to give them time to get to the FTL array, and the longer we’re on the ground, the more suspicious we look,” I said.

“Captain, we’re already near the compound, and I’ll need you with us in the cargo hold when we land,” Lysc said.

“I won’t be long. There are a few spells I wanted to cast to help them with the landing.” I left the bridge to head towards the one working airlock.

The ship was in bad shape. The Fury’s missiles, followed by my attack, had caused a cascade of failures that took Samira nearly seven hours to patch.

She’d had to manually reroute power from different systems, which meant going through the hallways and pulling power lines out of the walls, ceiling, and floors. I had to clamber over and through exposed cables just to get around. I was going to have to apologize to her again when I got back to The Fury.

I could hear Rashka speaking from the airlock as I turned the corner. “Okay, I get that it’s not always the best way, but it still works basically every time, so why shouldn’t it just be the first thing you try?”

“Because when it doesn’t work, then you burn bridges that aren’t easy to repair,” Thea spoke to Rashka, but waved at me as I turned the corner. “Oh, hey, princess!”

And Rashka glared. I must have done something to piss off the shifter at some point, because she really didn’t seem to like me.

“We’re on approach to the compound. I just came down to cast a modified slow fall spell on you two. It won’t do much against gunfire, but it should help with the landing.”

“We’re only jumping from a couple dozen meters. We don’t need your help,” Rashka said. They would drop out of the airlock at the height of the shield, which was nearly thirty meters off the ground. It’s not something normal people survived.

“Still, I’d like to help. Even if it’s just to make things easier.”

“Thanks princess, we’d love the help.”

Rashka refused, so I just cast the spell on Thea. It would allow her to fall at full speed for most of the drop, but in the last three meters, it would activate, slowing her considerably.

Thea hugged me once I finished casting the spell.

“Please be careful,” I said.

“I’ll be fine, and besides, I should be the one saying that. Stay safe, Bryce, you have one job to do. Let everybody else do the shooting and killing. If it gets dangerous, then hide behind Softie, they seem like they can take a bullet pretty well.”

I laughed and kissed Thea. “Okay, I’ll hide behind Sora.”

“Don’t you have someplace to be?” Rashka asked.

Thea growled, and I broke the embrace. “I’ve got to meet up with the others. I’ll see you when all of this is over.”

I waved at Thea and started jogging. By the time I navigated through the halls to get to the cargo hold, Lysc was already there, and I could feel the ship slowing.

The hold was about the same size as what we had on The Fury, which meant there wasn’t much room for Lysc’s pack and the massive mech suit that had been disassembled and piled into the corner. She had brought Nikko, Dezra, Daria, and four others that I hadn’t met before, three men and a woman, who was by far the shortest shifter I had seen, at a few centimeters shorter than me. Each of them was wearing heavy body armor and armed with short tactical rifles.

“Captain, nice of you to join us. You know Nikko and Dezra, but you haven’t met the rest of my team,” Lysc pointed towards each of the four new people as she named them. “This is Robby, Patch, Davix and Mazi. Mazi is human, but she’s one of the best shots in the pack.”

Mazi nodded with a smile. “Captain.”

“It’s nice to meet you all. I hadn’t realized there were humans in the pack.”

“There aren’t many of us, because joining can be complicated, and you have to earn your spot before you’re accepted.” Mazi shot a shit-eating grin towards Lysc. “Or you could always just seduce the alpha’s daughter.”

Lysc glared at Mazi, and the other shifters laughed at the apparent joke, but it was lost on me.

“I didn’t accept that idiot boy until he gave me Thomas, which was merit enough.”

“Sorry to interrupt, but we’re inside the shield. Thea and Rashka already left, and we’ll be on the ground in a few minutes.” Sora said over the ship’s intercom.

I walked over to a console on the wall and pressed a button that allowed me to respond. “Excellent work. Take as much time as you can to get us down, then come to the cargo hold.”

“Will do, captain.”

I turned back to Lysc’s pack. “We’re going to need to buy time for me to cast the spell that will block the local feed, and for Thea to get to the array.”

“Patch, lock out the external controls for the cargo hold so they can’t open it from outside. We’ll tell them the door was damaged in the fight,” Lysc said.

“Yes, boss.”

Patch jogged over to the large cargo door and opened a panel. Recognizing that the situation seemed under control, I started casting.

My mana still hadn’t fully recovered from the ambush earlier, and I was sitting at around ninety-four percent of my full capacity. The spell wasn’t complicated, but it had to cover the massive area of the compound, which meant it would use at least fifteen percent of my maximum. That was a lot of mana, far more than any other single mortal had.

I needed to create a dome that would encompass the entire compound, then inside that, I could fill the atmosphere with charged particles. It wasn’t the most efficient method, but it would disrupt any real-space communications.

It took me nearly twelve minutes of nonstop casting to finish the spell, and I felt it fall into place along with the mental drain of maintaining it. Once I was no longer focusing on casting, I was able to take in my surroundings.

Lysc’s pack was aiming their weapons at the door while Sora stood near a console, attempting to talk through it.

“I’m trying; the door is just stuck. I’m getting a ton of warning lights and… Can you hear me?” Sora shrugged, turning towards me. “Guess that means you’re done casting, captain. Are we ready to go?”

“Have we heard from Thea yet?” I asked.

“Rashka told us she was in position a few minutes ago, awaiting our signal,” Daria said.

There was a massive explosion that rocked the ship, followed by panicked shouting and gunfire coming from the direction of the FTL array.

“Guess they got tired of waiting,” Nikko said.

“Are you ready, captain?” Lysc asked.

“Let me cast a few support spells really quick and then I will be.” I started with a simple shield spell that would protect against projectiles and impacts. Once finished, I reinforced it with extra mana. Then I duplicated the spell onto Sora, ensuring we were both protected.

I nodded to Lysc. “Alright, let’s do this.”

She lowered her weapon, allowing it to hang from the shoulder strap, and grinned at me. I noticed Daria and Mazi take a step back from the others.

I heard bones cracking, followed by growling as the shifters transformed. Their hulking forms fought against the padded body armor as their limbs elongated. The transformation was startlingly quick and after only a few moments, six massive hairy creatures wearing tactical gear and holding assault weapons stood in formation behind the door.

“Open the door, and let’s begin the hunt!” Lysc growled.