Chapter 33: Interlude 4 – The End of Earth (1)

Chapter 33: Interlude 4 – The End of Earth (1)

Location: Solar System; Orbit of Earth; System Defense Station

A muscular arm lands on Conor Valterion’s shoulder after he appears on the space station in a purple flash. “Long time no see Conor, how are you?” The deep voice belonging to the arm on his shoulder greets him.

“Hey Ferdinand, good to see you too.” Conor greets his friend Ferdinand Benson – CEO of Magicon Incorporated. Together they start walking toward their meeting room, only to be interrupted by another flash of magic power. Both Archmages turn around to greet the person who just arrived.

The Chinese woman heads straight for them. She radiates power despite her tiny size. Li-Ming Song, another Archmage and founder of Song Medical greets them back. “Come on guys, the others are waiting.”

Together, they arrive in the meeting room a short while later. Just like Li-Ming said, there are two people already waiting inside. The tall man to the left with dark hair and a bushy beard is Magnus Schmidt, founder and director of Armortec SE. Next to him is a young blonde woman with long hair and piercing blue eyes. Maria Axtendus, second-generation leader of the same named company.

Conor and the others greet them while entering the room, then they sit down around the round table in the middle. The quintet of the five most powerful people in the Solar System is complete. Not only are all of them powerful Archmages, but they are also the leaders of the five biggest companies in the star system. While the United Nations of Earth are the official political leaders, nothing can be done without the approval of those five people.

Here we go...

Conor’s thoughts are interrupted by Ferdinand’s long sigh. “You all know why I called you here for this meeting, so let’s begin.”

The table turns silent, and everyone looks at Ferdinand expectantly.

Good that I’m not our unofficial leader.

Ferdinand continues. “Utopia has finally made their final step. Two hours ago, a formal declaration of war arrived via courier ship, confirming what our spies had sent us before. As of now, we are at war! The UNE will inform the population in a few hours, but we can’t waste any time. They are probably already on their way and won’t waste any time. What’s our status of defenses Magnus and Conor?”

Magnus clears his throat and starts speaking. “Planetary shields are all ready and on standby. The Mages powering them are on a three-shift rotation and should be ready to keep them powered indefinitely, as long as Utopia doesn’t pull a new super weapon out of their hats. What our spies report on weapon capabilities is covered by our shields. I suggest evacuating our stations around Uranus and Neptune, as there isn’t enough out there to warrant a complete shielding costing us thousands of Mages to power it. As for mobile defenses, I gladly refer to Conor to update you, as he is much more included in the shipbuilding business. I only supplied the weapons.”

Ah come on Magnus, don’t throw me under the bus like that. You know how I hate speaking up.

Conor sits up a bit straighter. “As Magnus said, our mobile defenses consist mostly of warships. I’ll spare you the precise numbers, as that is the job of our Admirals. Needless to say, our preparation in the past years bore fruit and we now own the biggest system fleet the Solar System ever had. It should be more than enough to repel anything they can throw at us. Additionally, every ship is crewed with at least one Senior rank Space Mage, to enable unpredictable jumps behind enemy lines and a contingent of A&D Mages to throw out attacks and shields independently from Magnus’s weapons. Same as Magnus, if there aren’t any nasty surprises, we are prepared sufficiently. And even if there are, we should still come out victorious.”

“Good,” Ferdinand replies. “Put everything on high alert, I expect them to arrive in the next few days. Let’s prepare a warm welcome for them around the wormholes leading toward Utopia.”

Maria lifts her hand and Ferdinand acknowledges her. “Why don’t we simply cut off the wormholes? That should stop them, right? They don’t have Senior Space Mages in their slave army.”

She’s got a point there, but we can’t cut off every wormhole out of the Solar System.

Ferdinand is quick to reply. “We could do that, yes, but that won’t stop them. If we cut them off, they’ll travel through other systems, endangering our neighboring systems in the process. While I am confident in stopping their forces here in the Solar System, I don’t think the others around us could stop them. I can’t willingly endanger those around us.”

Conor is quick to add his own thoughts. “Also, we can’t simply close off every wormhole. We still rely on trade with other star systems. Our resources are way too depleted already.” He winks at Maria. “You should know that best. Your old man complained about that all the time before retiring.”

Chuckling, she waves the others off. “True enough, I can see why we shouldn’t close them off. But let’s not concentrate our forces completely at the wormholes, who knows what ideas they have to throw us off.”

There are murmurs of agreement from the others.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

She’s got a point here. Utopia has their own spies… They wouldn’t dare to attack if they weren’t sure of their chances of success. Maybe we underestimate them? But how? We completely outclass them. Our magic is way superior compared to their advanced, but still mundane technology…

Ferdinand waits till everyone quiets down, then turns to Li-Ming, who has been quiet so far. “Li-Ming, can we count on your company to provide medical supplies and personnel throughout the war?”

She nods. “Yes, I’ve already spoken with Conor about that, and we plan to put at least one Mage who can heal on each ship that gets deployed. Additionally, our factories are working overtime to provide the necessary supplies as soon as the fighting starts. Lastly, we have a few dedicated medical ships, which can jump in and out in minutes, to take care of critical cases.”

Ferdinand sighs in relief. “That’s good. If there is nothing else, I conclude our meeting. We’ll meet again, once they’ve arrived.”

----------------------------------------

Location: Solar System; VS Saoirse

“Mr. Valterion, your presence is required on the bridge.”

Conor quickly puts his tablet aside after reading the urgent message that just popped up. Then he concentrates and less than a second later he finds himself on the bridge of his flagship VS Saoirse. It’s named after his late mother. Saoirse Dunleavy. Dunleavy was once his own surname before he founded Valterion Heavy Industries before he changed his surname to match the company’s name. Excepting the retired Carlos Axtendus, the other company leaders kept their original surnames, but for Conor and Carlos, changing just felt right back then.

“What’s the matter, Sam?” Conor asks the short woman he’s now standing next to. The woman doesn’t flinch at all when he appears next to her, a testimony to her power, being of Grandmaster rank herself. It could also be that she is used to it, she’s married to Conor after all. He bends down for a kiss, which she returns before answering.

“First of all, couldn’t you find someone else to captain your ship? It’s annoying to stay in Earth orbit in the backline. I’d rather be waiting at the wormholes to blast those Utopian idiots to oblivion.”

Conor visibly flinches. He knows that his wife loves herself some action, but there’s the fact that she is no Space Mage herself – not yet at least. She can’t escape if things get too dangerous and he doesn’t trust his wife’s life to any other Space Mage besides himself.

His wife owns two cores, one Utility and one A&D, both of Master rank, which makes her a Grandmaster by the definition humanity set up when they discovered magic. Conor is currently searching the galaxy for an Artifact core to enable his wife to finally join him in the Archmage rank.

While he could use one of Ferdinand’s artificial cores, he doesn’t want to. Currently, Magicon only manages to build them up to Senior rank and artificial artifact cores don’t have the ability to advance. The problem is that his wife needs three cores at Master rank so that they can merge and finally lift her to Archmage rank. Ferdinand’s Senior core would enable her to use all three magic classes, but she would miss out on a lot of power that the merging brings with it.

I sure hope to find that Artifact soon or she will be insufferable. Then there’s still the issue of training the core up… That takes even more time. Hopefully, Ferdinand finally comes up with a method to advance cores through other means besides use. He’s been trying for a long time now… Probably after the war. Even better would be an artificial Master core. At least we don’t have to worry about dying of old age for a long time thanks to Li-Ming.

Now how can I tell my wife that I just want her to be safe without telling her that?

“Sam, you’re one of our strongest offensive Mages and I’m one of the strongest Space Mages in the system. We’re the backup and fast response force in case Utopia tries anything to surprise us. We both know that they probably have something planned, otherwise, they wouldn’t attack.”

She sighs. “You’re right…”

Yes, nailed it!

“And I don’t think we have to wait that much longer. That’s the reason I called you. It’s started, they are here.”

She waves her hand and the screen in front of the two comes alive, showing two giant rings in space with an armada of starships around them. Then the rings flash and lots of ships start appearing with no sign of stopping.

Conor's eyes widen slightly.

That’s too many ships!

“How can there be so many? They shouldn’t have the Space Mages to pull that off!” Conor is confused. Utopia did indeed manage to surprise them.

He quickly focuses on one of his favorite Utility spells: Communication. Locking onto the man he wants to talk to, he triggers it, and his magic surges.

“Ferdinand, what’s happening, how can they have so many ships?”

His friend answers with a strained voice. “I’m about to find out. Give me a moment to breathe, I just jumped out there to the rings and you know how I hate teleporting.”

Conor chuckles.

After all those years, his stomach still rebels after teleporting, that never gets old.

“Okay, I’m fine now… Huh, how is this possible? They fixed it, holy shit!”

Conor is immediately intrigued, Nothing surprises Ferdinand Benson lightly. “What is it? What did they fix?”

“The wormhole, Conor! They fixed the fuckin’ wormhole. It feels stable, that’s how they have the throughput. They don’t need any Space Mage for the passage anymore!”

Conor’s eyebrows raise to his hairline.

That’s huge! We have to get our hands on that technology!

Ferdinand clearly has the same idea and before Conor can reply, he goes on. “I’m going to jump over and check out the other ring. I should be able to cloak myself sufficiently. Magnus should be fine with defending the rings, so stay back in case they have even more surprises.”

Conor still surprised only manages to acknowledge Ferdinand. “Uh, okay… You do that and don’t come back without the secret to stabilize wormholes. That’s going to change everything!”

Ferdinand cuts the connection and Conor refocuses on what’s happening around him. The bridge is now a heap of activity, and everyone seems to be waiting for him. His wife notices that his awareness is back and turns to him. “We’re ready, you can jump us in immediately.”

Conor shakes his head. “No, Magnus should be doing fine out there. We’re still backup in case they‘ve got even more surprises.” He waves his wife to follow him and together they leave the bridge and enter the adjoining Captain’s cabin. He waves his hands and throws up shields and other protective spells to ensure their privacy. Seeing this, his wife adds her own. Conor nods in satisfaction.

That should make us as secure as we can be.

He notices his wife scowling at him, her anger is barely contained, which she voices immediately after finishing her spells. “The fuck, Conor, why the hell aren’t we joining them and why do they suddenly have that many Space Mage slaves? Are they secretly breeding them?”

Conor shakes his head again. “We can’t join in… Imagine they secretly moved through the Alpha Centauri system or any other in the vicinity. They’ll catch us with our pants down… And the worst or best part – I don’t know how I feel about it – is that they aren’t using Space Mages to cross the wormholes. They somehow fucking stabilized them!”

Now it’s his wife’s turn to stare. “They what…?”

“Yeah, that was my reaction as well… Ferdinand is about to jump over and check how they did it. This is going to change everything.”