Her eyes widened, then narrowed as she pulled her multifunction plasma and laser pistol. It had a sixteen-round magazine in it, which would ignite and fire plasma pellets. Just one would turn anything it hit into slag, and it would completely vaporize any human within three meters of impact in seconds. Beyond that, it’d severely burn any humans within ten meters that weren’t protected in some way. The core powering the laser was good for close to four hundred shots, and it was for taking down other humans in battle. The plasma pellet option was more of a modern equivalent of a grenade than anything else.

  He focused on the closest Viartan ship and teleported them both to the airlock door. He couldn’t teleport anywhere he’d never been or couldn’t see, or to another star system. At least, not without exact coordinates and preferably with a current scan, something he couldn’t get in that moment. That meant boarding the ship the hard way.

  His magic reached out and activated the door mechanism directly, bypassing the keypad security and switches. His command over the elements, specifically Earth, meant he could feel the right connections out in his head. The door swished open, and they floated in with a thought. He relaxed slightly as gravity took hold of them, he hated a weightless environment.

  “Cover our rear. My shield will hold against up to thirty lasers, or ten plasma shots. So take them out quickly, I’ll handle the front. If we run into any of the ship’s wizards, save your ammo and let me know if we have on one our six. I’ll take him or her down. Oh, the plan is to start a core breach and teleport to the next ship. We’ll be taking our quarry last, as a prize and for the information in its databanks.”

  She nodded firmly, “I’ve got our backs.”

  The inner door slid open, and he moved out at a fast walk, Brenda following. He didn’t want to move too slowly, but he had to balance that against going so fast it was reckless. He wasn’t invincible, despite the high holding so much of his power gave him.

  A corvette was even smaller than a destroyer at just a hundred and twenty meters in length, and it was a ship type favored by most mercenaries. It was a tough ship, with four missile launchers and six banks of four eighteen-inch laser arrays that could be used for point defense or against another ship directly. The being small part was also good news, and I knew just by ship type, even one from another government, that the engineering deck was in the lower aft section of the ship. It almost had to be, because of the plasma candle drives were in that spot on the outside of the hull.

  Two crewmen walked around a corner, and he raised his hand with a surge of magic and a focus of will. They both fell silently to the deck. Their lives ended with body magic, as he simply stopped their hearts. He wanted to get as far as he could before they were detected, and any elemental magic or laser beams detected would activate the intruder alarm.

  They’d made it almost halfway to the engineering deck when a mercenary stumbled upon them from behind. Brenda took him out with a laser to the chest which burned a hole straight through his uniform and body, destroying his heart.

  The intruder alarm went off, and he picked up the pace. The mission wouldn’t get any easier from here on out. He mentally cast a spell of detection. There were six wizards on the ship, and he was guessing one of them was their healer and no threat. One was on the bridge, one was where he would expect sickbay to be, two were in crew quarters which they’d just passed a moment ago, and the last two were in engineering. Likely doing maintenance work and maybe recharging the gravity fields throughout the ship.

  He’d waited that long, because a spell of detection was much like active sensors, all six wizards knew exactly where he was as well in that moment. Just like an actively scanning ship would be a beacon to every other ship in the system.

  He pivoted and grabbed Brenda and spun her around, so she was facing forward. Just in time for the two wizards to rush out of their quarters. One about ten yards back on the right, and the second at eight yards on the left.

  They were both shielded, so he didn’t bother with body magic and merely filled the corridor with roaring wind and fire that filled the height and breadth of the hall and then rushed forward like a storm. The wizards had shielded, but this approach would also make it harder for them to strike back, as they were blinded by the firestorm.

  Neither of them went on the offensive, he could tell they were putting all of their power into the shield device which was the only thing keeping them from burning alive.

  One of them screamed, “He’s a fucking knight, run!” the wizard’s tone implying confusion as to why he’d be there at all.

  They tried to escape, but they didn’t make it, as their shields fell and the fire quickly consumed them. They hadn’t been the cream of the crop as far as wizards went, who might be able to match him in a duel of arcane energies. But wizards that powerful just wouldn’t be working for a mercenary band, even one as large as this one seemed to be, so he was unlikely to meet his match in this place.

  Which meant just avoiding being overwhelmed by numbers. Which unfortunately for them, had meant taking them out and not allowing them to regroup and attack him six at once. He might’ve lost, if that had happened.

  He turned, and he noted that Brenda had taken down three more armed crewpersons as he walked past her at speed and continued toward the engineering level. The access door on this level put them on a walkway that allowed them to look down into the vast multi-deck engineering room from near the top.

  He didn’t see the two wizards there, they were on the other side of some of the machinery. Still, he formed a spell of fire, air, and earth, which essentially created a plasma bomb about ten times as powerful as one of the rounds in Brenda’s pistol.

  It had a two second delay, and the magic raced off for the fusion reactor’s magnetic containment systems. It was triply redundant, but all three systems were within ten meters of each other and would be slagged.

  When magnetic containment fell, well… boom.

  He teleported out, and turned back to the ship, which exploded a split second later.

  One down, seventeen to go, except all seventeen ships had ignited their plasma candles and were heading out system. Which told him they weren’t going to stick around for him to blow them up one by one. So much for his total vengeance plan, but the enemy always got a vote, and he honestly couldn’t blame them for running away.

  “Change of plans. We can only take one more ship.”

  She smirked, “Getting tired already?”

  He snorted playfully and leered, “You know all about my endless stamina.”

  She blushed and then sighed, “True. They seem to be leaving the party early.”

  He nodded, “Which means going for the prize. Our fleets can hunt down the rest of this mercenary group later. Hold on.”

  She held onto him as he pulled her tight against his chest. She looked, really turned on, but only to him. Anyone else would just see the professional badass Commander Brenda Vila in that moment. Well, unless they had a way with body magic. The attraction and lust weren’t a big surprise, they’d been wild together and he’d put her through more potent orgasms than most of his flings ever got the privilege of on his cock. Merely because they didn’t normally last for two whole months.

  That, added to the life and death situation, and the adrenaline pounding through their veins with every hard beat of their hearts, meant it was normal, and healthy, to feel that way. Life affirming lust in dangerous situations was something he was very familiar with.

  But it was also a distraction during the mission, so he pushed it out of his head. Then he teleported in front of a ship already going several hundred miles an hour. It was the mercenary corvette they’d been following for two months. He narrowed his eyes in concentration, and the ship was only a mere ten feet away when he’d finally matched their speed and acceleration. Then the airlock door popped open, and he moved them inside.

  He heard the claxons as soon as the air pressure equalized between what his shield was holding in and the previous vacuum of the airlock. That did it, they knew he was there already.

  “What’s the plan, sir.”

  “Auxiliary bridge, in engineering. We’ll lock it down, break the bridge control systems by cutting the feeds to make it transfer to us without command authorization. That should be automatic. Then we’ll override all doors and airlocks to space the bastards.”

  Brenda said, “That’s impossible, the safeties…”

  He put a finger on her lip, “Can be bypassed with magic, and all celestial knights are trained in how to do so.”

  It was part of a magic discipline he was only barely adequate at, but electronic systems didn’t fight back like wizards did, so he wasn’t all that worried about his shortfalls in the area. It was good enough, with his savant mastery of the combat and body magics, not to mention teleportation to escape unwinnable odds and certain death.

  It wasn’t the same as using earth magic to bypass electronic countermeasures by moving physical switches. It was actually hacking technology with magic, he couldn’t bypass all the doors and airlocks with earth magic. Not all at once, anyway.

  So in this case, he needed the computer system to do it for him.

  He shook his head, “After that it’s likely we’ll still have to deal with the wizards. If they’re prepared for such a tactic and have a device to contain atmosphere in a shield, that is.”

  Which was a gamble with odds not all that bad, because they might not be carrying a device capable of creating atmospheric level shields along with protective shields.

  There were six wizards on this ship as well, or like before, probably five wizards and a healer. The detection spell didn’t differentiate between the magic user types, it just told him who had magic and where they were. He wouldn’t know their type or strength of power until he’d laid eyes on them.

  Unfortunately, four of the wizards were in engineering, one on the bridge and the healer in sick bay. This ship was prepared, no doubt having time to prepare a decent repelling strategy while he was destroying the first ship.

  That impression was backed up when they reached the T intersection where they had to turn right to head aft toward engineering. He stopped and backed up around the corner.

  “I know why they haven’t been attacking us yet. They’ve set up an ambush in front of the engineering access door at the end of this corridor. There must be twenty of them with rifles and pistols down there, and they’re behind a hastily erected barrier.”

  He bet there was another group like that right outside the bridge. The crew complement of a ship this size was about fifty, so twenty in both positions made forty, which left the bridge crew, engineer on duty, and the four wizards to round out the crew roster inside engineering as a last defense.

  She asked, “What’s the plan, even you can’t defend against that many.”

  Maybe not directly, but now that he knew they were there, unless he walked into their line of fire, he could take them out fairly easily.

  He shook his head, the captain had assumed he was here to destroy the ship, so set up a barricade where he’d entered engineering on the other corvette. Which honestly did give him the best line of sight to the reactor, without infiltrating very far into the room.

  He waved at the deck plates, although it wasn’t strictly necessary. The sound of tortured metal was deafening, as the deck plate split and was pealed up in both directions. He grabbed Brenda, and she gasped as he jumped. They both fell to the deck below. He could’ve levitated to slow his fall, but he was in a hurry and that would just slow him down, so he just strengthened his bones, muscles, and tendons with body magic and landed lightly on his feet.

  He peaked around the corner, and as he’d suspected, the coast was clear.

  He moved into the hallway and walked quickly for the door to engineering. If he was right, there was no one at all on this level to stop him, save the four wizards inside engineering as well as an engineer or two on duty. He had no doubt the crew would be repositioning, but it’d take time to get twenty of them down to this level using the lift system.

  He shook his head. If he was the captain then he’d have those twenty use the access door behind them, and then set up fields of fire on the walkway that went around engineering.

  Fuck, in hindsight, he should’ve just taken the time to kill them. Now he’d have to fight four wizards who might overwhelm him, and twenty-armed crewman who could also overwhelm him, all at the same time.

  He shook his head, screw that. Fortunately, he hadn’t shared his whole plan with Brenda, so she had no idea he had to adjust again. He realized he was too angry, he needed to be smart, and not just use his magic like a slow-moving tank. He’d die if he didn’t get it under control, not just outwardly, but the deep anger he felt on the inside. At least he’d recognized his mistake before it’d killed them, but it was still a failure.

  He waved at the ceiling right outside the door, and the deck plates above them were torn apart. The straining metal loud as hell, as it was torn and pulled part.

  Then he cast a quick-fire spell and tossed it up. It exploded in a ring of fire, and it had enough air in the spell to make a really nasty and powerful compression wave. There were only two death screams above, which told him he was right, they’d already moved into engineering.

  He grinned and pulled her into his side again, then levitated up to the second level.

  She said in annoyance, “Make up your mind,” but he didn’t fail to detect the breathiness in her voice, as her generously rounded breasts and heated body was pressed so tightly against his. She felt far too good in his arms, and her otherwise lithe and petite body made her deliciously easy to manhandle, but it wasn’t time to claim his reward for a job well done, so he put her down and focused on the job at hand.

  “Be careful where you aim that thing, we want this ship intact.”

  She just gave him a look, and he winked at the dark brown-haired beauty, with lovely gray eyes and full lips.

  Despite being ten feet away, the door to engineering swished open with a thought. He formed a fire and air spell, one that was not damaging to anything, save human senses. It was like a flash bang, as the spell rushed into the center of engineering and then exploded in a blinding flash and a loud boom that would deafen, blind, and disorient anyone in the room that wasn’t protected.

  Then he peaked inside, which is all he needed, line of sight. That act a moment ago would’ve gotten him killed, as twenty lasers hit his shield and burned through his skull. But the ten crewpersons on the right were suffering from vertigo, and his body magic raced off and turned their hearts off in quick succession.

  A quick glance to the left, and his magic finished off the second ten.

  He moved forward into the room, and he saw the four wizards already protecting the fusion reactor chamber with a powerful shield as one, each wielding an identical device.

  They looked up at him, absolutely terrified, but he didn’t let that make him cocky. He knew more than most, that a Celestial Knight was still a man or woman, if a powerful one.

  It was also a small conundrum, he wasn’t sure he could breach that shield, powered by four different wizards. He also wasn’t sure he could do so to kill them, and not harm the reactor in any way.

  He took Brenda in his arms again, and he stepped off the platform while glaring at the wizards with the promise of death in his eyes. They were scared, and obviously very focused on that shield defense. With all their power. As soon as they reached the ground, he let Brenda go and walked to the left casually, as if he had no care in the world, and then moved into the auxiliary control room.

  He moseyed over to the controls and secured the door, and he erected a level five force field around the room. He sent his magic into the circuits, it didn’t take long to isolate the bridge feeds and he burned them out with a flash of power. Even without the command codes, the loss of bridge control automatically had it rerouting to auxiliary control.

  Then every door and airlock on the ship opened.

  He said, “Stop the ship, and set a course to Dragos and implement it. By the time we reach orbit in a few hours we should have most of the data transferred to Bright Star, and we can turn the ship over to the local forces. I’ve already started a data dump.”

  She nodded, “Okay, what will you be doing?”

  He sighed, “Dealing with the four wizards behind that shield, everyone else is dead. Either suffocated or blown out into space.”

  She frowned at the console, “You might want to hold off on that. Raising shields. Four of the other ships have stopped their forward thrust and are charging weapons and opening missile ports. The other twelve are continuing to the FTL line at top acceleration.”

  Fucking hell, nothing was ever easy.

  He chuckled casually, “They must be desperate to prevent us getting our hands on their data.”

  He hit the intercom and then headed for the tactical station.

  “Your crew is dead, and protecting the ship is pointless. I’m a little busy at the moment, so now’s your chance to run for one of the life ships in the hangar. I’d advise you not being here when I find a moment to come finish you off.”

  Brenda snorted, but she also looked more than a little turned on by his cocky confidence.

  Even if it was partially feigned. He was confident, but far from cocky. He really didn’t want to fight them if he could avoid it. It wasn’t like they could leave the system in a tiny life ship, and they’d be running into the arms of the royal navy patrol groups in orbit of Dragos. There was nowhere for them to go. But he figured they might prefer to surrender and live instead of dying for no reason at all.

  Mercenaries didn’t die for their beliefs, that was left to those with principles and a government or maybe a cause they believed in. So, he had no doubts at all that they wouldn’t be destroying the ship while still on it.