At first, I worried that the grunts would come too soon, before we’d managed to secure the hatchling and ourselves behind the iron crucibles. I inscribed three hasty wards on the crucibles, scratching away the oxidation with my engraving drill. Once, this place had atmosphere. Iron doesn’t rust in space.

  I got into cover before imbuing the wards, in case I fainted. Luckily I didn’t, the cold threads of void force melting into the iron, following the curves and lines, creating the magical effects I wanted. The metal was thicker than my torso and it soaked up the threads like sand absorbing summer rain.

  We’d killed our lights. Now, all we had to do was wait. I wondered if Dordolio really had a hundred men, or if his comment was a calculated ruse. A ship that size could house a major combat complement. Fed cruisers carried battalions of marines.

  I waited, breathing dry, antiseptic air through my rebreather, the salt of sweat pooling on my lip.

  Nothing happened. The hall before us was pitch black. As my eyes got used to the darkness, I realized that the hatchling’s scales were outlined with a thin, soft glow. Somehow, he managed to reflect a light that wasn’t there. Another thing I didn’t know about him.

  My muscles were getting stiff. The cold seeped through my space suit. Its insulation was good, but it wasn’t made to lie pressed against steel at zero degrees Kelvin. I started worrying that the grunts wouldn’t come. It was a stupid thing to worry about.

  Then my fourth and last ward shattered. This one was a razor ward, like a miniature, very short-range ripstone. Light flashed on the walls in the corridor: someone’s spinning flashlight.

  The grunts had triggered the ward, walking right into it. The mage hadn’t come to diffuse it.

  Crud. Maybe Dordolio really had a hundred men to throw away.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  The first grunt passed the door, a bulky, fleeting shadow against the walls. I let him by, shifting my rifle and withdrawing my pistol. The Mino M3 wasn’t nearly as powerful as my magerifle, but it didn’t require me to summon force, and I feared I’d pass out if I tried to conjure up another thread right now.

  A second grunt passed, and a third. The fourth inched into the hall from the top right corner of the door, hanging upside down, only a long rifle and half his head visible, the rest in cover.

  More grunts appeared, cowering by the door.

  They knew we were here. Damn that mage. I lifted the pistol, aimed through the crack in the crucible. My gun jolted, the noise of the shot traveling up my arms and into my ears as a muted thud. The round flashed as it struck the steel door frame, just to the right of the fourth grunt.

  The hall turned into a light show. Hundreds of rounds slammed into the crucibles, making them vibrate with the impacts.

  Hao fired her Hurmer, spraying the room with flashes to little effect. More grunts got into position around the entrance, shooting into the hall.

  I triggered my first ward.

  It was a flame ward, its beam invisible in the vacuum. Nothing to fry en route. It made the wall glow, first orange and then, an eye-blink later, white hot. I tuned the ward, directing the beam around the edges of the door frame, cutting into exposed grunts, melting their guns, their armor, their faces.

  I made it three-quarters of the way around before the ward burned out and shattered, leaving me dizzy and short of breath. I put my pistol to the cracked iron, mostly to keep a volume of fire going.

  It wasn’t necessary. The grunts were withdrawing to cover, leaving only a few combat cameras poking around the edge of the steel wall, tiny black balls on articulated aluminum stalks. I wasted almost an entire magazine before hitting one. The bullet shattered it, ripping it away from its magnetic mooring. Seconds later, a new one took its place.

  Crud.

  “You good?” I asked Hao.

  She didn’t reply, and I tapped her on the shoulder, fearing the worst. The tap made her jerk, then she switched her com to transmission.

  “I’m fine,” she said. She sounded shaky.

  “How many rounds you got left?”

  She tilted the Hurmer, showing me the readout. Eight hundred.

  “Got another power pack, too,” she said.

  I had two spare magazines, maybe five rounds left in the M3, and two wards.

  And my rifle.

  We wouldn’t last in a straight firefight. If only the crudmunching mage would come, so we could run for real.