“You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Persh’al took another metal sphere and ran his hand over it before finding the almost invisible button on the side. He pressed it with a little click, and the sphere opened in his hand. He dropped the thing as the mechanisms whirred and spun and flipped into place. When it was finished, the resulting part looked like a curved black metal shield.
Or the shell of one of those beetle-things.
Persh’al shook his head as he stared at the unfolded part. “What were they thinking? Just throw a bunch of un-activated parts across the border and hope those idiots know how to put it all together?”
Corian stared at the troll. “You’re good, Persh’al. But the chances that you’re the only O’gúleesh Earthside who figured out how to meld human tech to magic are low.”
“This isn’t human tech, man.”
“Then they’ve got someone who figured out how to activate this shit with operational magic. Can’t be that different.”
“It’s completely different, Corian. Nothing Earthside conducts the same way. If I tried to close a circuit with riverchrome over here, I’d blow my fucking head off.”
Cheyenne left them to argue the semantics of magic and otherworld tech, her attention captured by Maleshi’s march across the clearing toward the crates with the gray handles. She had to pass the raug commander on her way there, and she shot him a scathing glare.
Gu’urs chuckled again through his mashed mouth and widened his orange-brown eyes. “She’ll rip this world apart to get to you, mór úcare. You know she will. I can see it in your eyes.”
The halfling stopped inches from his face and hunkered down. The raug’s eyes narrowed, spit dripping in a long string from the corner of his slack mouth, and what little sneer he’d managed faded.
“Obviously, she has no idea who my friends over here are.” Cheyenne glanced around the clearing and the incapacitated soldiers of the Crown strewn across the grass. “Her first mistake was underestimating what we can do. If she wants me that badly, asshole, go tell her to make the crossing and find me herself.”
The commander chuckled again, but it caught in his throat as his spittle spilled down the back of his mouth. “You’re the one who’s making the crossing, as a vassal of the Crown or in a box. Your choice.”
Angry purple sparks crackled at the tips of the halfling’s fingers, and the raug leaned away as far as he could with his wrists bound behind him. “I’m staying right here.”
She jerked toward him, and a sputtering hiss of surprise leaped from the commander’s swollen mouth as he flinched. Cheyenne stood swiftly and walked toward Maleshi.
The Nightstalker woman had already opened three of the five crates marked with gray handles. The first two had been tossed aside, their contents spilling over the grass as the woman sifted through the third container.
“What’s in those?” Cheyenne stopped behind her former mentor and glanced at the tiny black squares littering the ground.
Maleshi poured a handful of the metallic pieces back into the upright crate and shook her head. “Batteries, more or less.”
“Batteries.” The halfling approached the crate to look inside. She picked up one of the small metal squares the size of a quarter and turned it over in the afternoon sunlight. “These look like circuit boards for the first cell phones ever.”
“This is one of those reverse situations where size really doesn’t matter, kid. Humans over here think they’re smart for cramming the best technology into tiny, fragile pieces. But these? If we were in Ambar’ogúl, one of these could power the state of New York.”
Cheyenne dropped the chip back onto the thousands of others filling the crate. “Someone figured out how to make O’gúl tech work over here.”
Maleshi let out a quick, mirthless laugh. “This shit was old news when I still wore the crest on my shoulder. The Crown’s going old-school for this.”
“That’s supposed to work over here?”
The Nightstalker woman wrinkled her nose. “Compared to what the Crown had at its disposal when I still served, using this tech is like a structural engineer building a high rise out of Legos. These bastards know something we don’t. They wouldn’t waste a massive shipment of disassembled parts and power chips on nothing more than a hunch.”
“And weapons.” The halfling nodded at the single open crate with red handles. The giant launcher the orcs had fired at Maleshi lay on the ground beside it.
“And weapons.” The Nightstalker woman grimaced in bitter frustration and went to the red-handled container.
“This crap…” She lifted a smooth metal cylinder half the width of a soup can and tossed it in her hand. “We stopped using these halfway through my prematurely ended term of service.”
“But it worked.”
“Yes, it did.” Maleshi’s shoulder blades drew together at the still-fresh memory of the projectile unleashing its attack across her back not half an hour ago. “This is more magic and less tech. Blood magic, but on a race-wide scale.”
“Okay.” Cheyenne folded her arms and frowned at the canister in the Nightstalker’s hand. “Pretend I’ve never been to Ambar’ogúl and don’t know a thing about race-wide blood magic.”
The Nightstalker snorted and jiggled the canister. “These things are loaded with potions, kid. Fire one of these, and it’s like a heat-seeking missile. Only in this case, it’s seeking a magical race and the specific magical signature that goes with it. If Corian had been any closer when they fired this thing, it might’ve gone for him instead. You never know. This shit is unpredictable at the best of times. Packs a punch, too.”
“You look pretty okay to me.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice being shot at, kid. A lot of practice being shot,
