ALL NOVEL 26
‘Magus…Magus! Are you awake in there?!’
Amoura tapped on my armor’s visor as I sat meditating on the bench in the back of her hovercraft. She had an aversion to silence, so it was hard to find a minute to get away to my personal leaf. I had hoped the current trip would give me some time to myself, and apparently, Amoura had driven full throttle the whole trip just to shorten the time she would be alone in the cockpit. I became aware of extremely loud rock music blaring over the intercom speakers. It would have been on my internal comms too if I hadn’t turned them off.
‘Settle down, Pink. You know I have to take some time to incorporate Mana I’ve absorbed. Iggy says hi, by the way.’
‘I still can’t believe you gave the avatar of the World Tree a nickname. And when are you going to drop my stupid nickname? At least come up with something better than my hair color.’
‘I’ll stop calling you Pink when you stop calling me Magus.’
‘But your other name is just...embarrassing. Did your parents really name you that? And besides, you are the Magus. Own that, it’s so cool. Anyway, How are things looking on that end?’
‘Not good. The leaf is already more than half-rotted, and it’s spreading fast.’
‘How much MU do you have left after the last fight?’
‘About 200. I used as much as I felt comfortable spending on the Magus Stone. I’ll save the rest for emergencies.’
‘Any cool new skills?’
‘And ruin the opportunity to see your face when I pull off a clutch win with a surprise new skill? Not a chance.’
She pouted and slugged the shoulder of my exosuit and then turned to check the latest diagnostic report that had been transferred to her holowatch. She ran her fingers through her hot pink, shoulder-length hair and pulled it to the side, emphasizing the shaved right side of her head. Several large piercings made holes in her ears large enough for bolts to enter and were secured by nuts from behind.
When we were still in the military, Amoura had a reputation of being wild in both beauty and temperament. If she thought there was a better way of doing things, she would do it that way, and if she didn’t feel like doing it, she’d do that too. She would have been court-martialed years ago if she wasn’t so good at what she did, and she was the best hovercraft pilot seen this decade. So they put up with her shenanigans as long as she put out results.
My father had pushed hard for me to be removed from her battalion, and I never heard the end of how much of a bad influence she was on me. But when you are the only Magus in the world, it’s hard to not be paired up with the only pilot who could successfully airdrop you into the middle of all hell and make it out alive.
They had attempted once to ground us both, right before the last wall fell. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We both decided to go AWOL and take it solo in the war against the mutants. The capital was overrun one week later. Now we jump from ruined city to city, reclaiming what’s left of the Mana generators in a hope to gain enough power for one last stand to bring down that damned tower.
They had thrown everything they had at the thing. Fire, bombs, nukes, high altitude orbital bombardment, even an antimatter bomb. The earth around it grew more and more scarred, but the tower remained like it had been frozen in time. The answer had to be inside, but it was surrounded by some of the strongest mutants this world had ever seen.
Amoura slipped on her aviator jacket with the sleeves torn off and looked out the side window out at the landing pad.
‘So how many more generators do we need to grab before you’re ready? We are running out of real estate to plunder.’
‘Soon, Pink. I got one more node I want to fill and I want a good bit stored up for my overcharge abilities. Better off being prepared over…’
‘…being dead. I know, I know. It just feels like we are running out of time. You’re the closest thing I’ve had to a partner and all, but I’m still not keen on being stuck with you as the last humans on earth.’
I walked over and put my hand on her shoulder as I looked out the window as well. The next generator was in the basement of the next building over, but it didn’t have an adequate landing pad. It would be easier for me to base jump over to the building from here then crash in from the top. My sensors picked up a few mutants several floors down.
‘Thanks, love you too. I don’t think you have to worry about that, though. Salinas would claw his way back from hell before dying without you at least letting him take you on a proper date. And since we know there is a cold chance of that ever happening, we can pretty much mark him down as immortal.’
‘Don’t remind me.’
I check my sidearm and my blade and then hit the button to open the hatch. I stopped before exiting and turned back to get one last glance at her. I apparently stared too long because she shifted uncomfortably and ran her hands through her hair again.
‘What? Checking your HUD?’
‘No, I’m just…be careful. There are at least five in the lower levels of the building. I’m doing a smash and grab. Thirty minutes to an hour tops. We’re almost there. Don’t take any unnecessary risks.’
‘Scared I’ll go sight-seeing while you’re gone?’
‘I know you will. And you’re an adult, so I won’t tell you not to. So just take a fully loaded rifle and the scanner, and call me if you get in a sticky situation.’
‘Holy cow you sound old.’
‘Sorry. I’m just watching your back, and I’m planning on watching a whole lot more of your back before this thing is over.’
‘Wha...How do you turn a serious moment into some sort of dirty innuendo?’
‘I had to get something out of five years in the military!’
She walked forward and kicked me square in the chest. I fell out of the vehicle and onto the ground. My exosuit took most of the impact, so it wasn’t a big deal. I sat up as she grinned down at me and gave me the middle finger.
‘Go. I’ll be in the air in thirty minutes. If you’re not on the roof in an hour, I’m leaving you.’
I got up and made a pantomime of dusting myself off. I turned and made a long leap to the edge of the building and began to survey the surrounding area. Amoura called out one more time to me and I looked over my shoulder at her.
‘Magus…ₗₒᵥₑ ᵧₒᵤ ₜₒₒ.’
I put my hand up to my helmet where my ear would be like my suit hadn’t augmented the sounds she had muttered from her lips. She blushed a fierce pink and slammed the button to close the hatch. There it was, the reason I called her Pink. I dove off the roof backward and triggered my armor's wingsuit membrane to form.
-
The two mutants I had just killed, which had stood as sentinels over the Mana generator, were unclassified. That meant that the mutants were beginning to evolve again. The two had moved as if they were in sync. One wielding cold blue lightning and the other wielding chaotic red electricity. They had acted as one unit as they blasted the area with arcs of energy and swung their giant crystalline swords. In the end, they were no match for a fully powered Magus.
I stood at the console of the generator's control unit and felt a large burden lifted from my shoulders.
‘How have they managed to store so much Mana? There are more than two thousand MU in here. This is more than enough to top me off for the final dive, and I got here just in time.’
The display on the screen read ‘fifteen minutes until Æther Field destabilization. Please evacuate the facility.’ That was plenty of time to drain the generator. I’d gain a ton of Mana and avoid a destabilization event. A win-win if I do say so myself.
Suddenly, an alarm went off on my HUD. It was my Ally Monitoring Unit. Amoura was in combat. The indication showed her heart rate spike as her ammo count started to plummet. I quickly began to assemble the unit to siphon off the Mana. Maybe I could get half before she needed me.
‘Pink! Do you copy?! Is everything alright? Do you need me?’
‘Did you get the Mana?!’
‘Not yet. It’s the motherload! Over 2K! But I’ve got fifteen minutes to get it or it destabilizes.’
‘Hurry up then. Two of the bastards came out of the vents and they're throwing green crap at me. I don’t want to find out what happens if I touch the stuff.’
‘Slimelings. The goo itself won’t hurt, but it is as sticky as flypaper. Be careful, though, because there is almost always a Banegeist with them. It will use them as a distraction and sneak up from behind.’
‘What the hell does a Banegeist look li...Holy hell! You are one ugly son of a…’
I began to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach as the comms cut off to filter out the sound of the rifle firing. I looked back at the timer counting down. Fourteen minutes left.
‘Pink! I can still make it. Tell me if you need backup.’
No response came through. I stood in the silence for a few seconds as I watched as Amoura’s ammo ran a fifty-yard dash to zero. I opened my mouth to call once again when her heart monitor spiked high and then flatlined. I dropped the cables and blinked out the door. At that moment, I would have ripped a hole in the fabric of space if I thought it would get me closer to where she was.