“Fuck.” Persh’al rubbed the side of his mostly shaved head and stared at the bar of metal in the Nightstalker’s hand. “How’d they even get that across?”
“Deactivated,” Maleshi muttered, scanning the crate’s contents.
“More like never activated in the first place.” Corian flicked the metal bar again with a twist of his wrist, and the pieces folded back on themselves before the metal links fell loosely toward the ground once more. “Can’t bring O’gúl tech across the border, but they can send the parts. And these are old parts.”
“How much of this crap did they bring?” Lumil eyed the half-dozen stacks of crates in front of the Nightstalkers before stepping across the clearing to eye the other stacks and the scattered crates that hadn’t yet been organized.
“Doesn’t matter how much they already sent Earthside.” Persh’al joined the Nightstalkers and peered into the open crate, shaking his head. “Only how much more they’ll try to push through after this.”
Cheyenne took a tentative step toward the Nightstalkers and the troll. First time I’ve felt this out of my element. “What is it?”
“Machine parts.” Maleshi stiffened, then stepped quickly back and eyed the black handles on the crates in this stack. “Open the others.”
Corian grabbed the handle of the open crate and yanked it onto the ground. Dozens of thick black chains spilled across the grass like metal snakes before he slashed his claws against the locks of the next crate. Sparks flew, the lid rocked back on its hinges, and he pulled out a black metal sphere the size of a basketball.
“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
