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  We Unhappy Few

  Lich Corps Book 1

  G.R. Fabacher

  We Unhappy Few-Lich Corps B © 2019 G.R. Fabacher. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Cover designed by Sapphire X Designs

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Email: [email protected]

  Follow me on Twitter at: @GrFabacher

  For Mom.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Note from the Author

  Chapter 1

  The soft thrum of the void-ship’s magical engine vibrated gently under his feet as he stood in his coffin. That’s what everyone else around him had been calling it, just before they shoved him inside. It was gallows humor at its finest, but he wasn’t laughing. He couldn’t see out of the faceplate of the armor, it was an opaque goldish color without power. The lack of power also prevented him from moving his arms or legs. He couldn’t even turn his head. His breathing quickened, filling the helmet with nothing but the sound of his own ragged panic.

  “Don’t worry, kid,” a muffled voice came from outside the armor, “first time’s always the hardest. Try not to puke, and pray they get your suit turned on in time.” There was laughing after that and someone punched him in the shoulder.

  “Why are you laughing? This is insane!” His heartbeat grew louder until it filled his ears. The pounding of his pulse mixed with the panic in his mind until he felt like his head would explode, “I don’t belong here!”

  That only drew louder laughs from those outside his dead suit. There was another slap on his armor. “I’m going to let you in on a secret,” a new voice said, “you’re already dead.”

  He felt a moment of pressure on his back and then his armor tipping forward. It was so gradual at first he thought it was the onset of anxiety-induced vertigo, then he realized too late that he was no longer in the void-ship. They pushed him out of a flying ship! They opened the door and pushed him out! What kind of people did that? The weightless sensation of freefall quickly enveloped him, but he still couldn’t move. The joints of the armor were still unpowered and unyielding to any attempt he made to force them to work.

  “I don’t want to die!” he screamed.

  Only the deafening rush of wind answered back.

  Suddenly, there was light in his vision, it started in the center of his view plate and blossomed slowly outward, before filling with rapidly scrolling and flashing runes. Just as fast as they had appeared they were gone and the crystal screen of his view plate was replaced with a rapidly approaching cityscape. He screamed again and felt bile rising in his throat.

  The scrycomm crackled to life, “Remember, new blood, don’t puke.”

  Out of habit he looked around to find the owner of the voice, and realized that he could move his extremities again. He began to twist and flail in animal panic, trying to find a way out of meeting the ground in nothing more than a magically-imbued sardine can.

  “Hey… aw shite,” he heard a female voice call out, “new blood, straighten out… straighten out!”

  “Willow, grab our bard,” a gruff voice came over the line, “I think his tactical use as a big metal projectile is not going to have any effect on Union morale.”

  “On it, sir.” The same female voice replied.

  As his systems came online and the sensors that fed his suit external data attuned themselves, he heard a whistling whoosh and then his body rocked as something smacked into him. A loud metallic clang accompanied his body’s sudden change in motion. Whatever he had hit was not letting go.

  He began to flail in shock, but whoever had him was not fazed in the least. He looked down and saw another armor-clad form gripping him around the arms. He looked into the stylized white skull of a half-elf and swallowed.

  “Hey! Hey! New blood!” It was the female voice belong to Willow. She smacked the sides of his helmet a few times, “What’s your name?”

  “Damon!” He shouted over the scrycomm.

  She smacked him again. “My ears, asshole!”

  “Sorry.”

  Trying to get his bearings, Damon watched as the corpsmen grappling him looked around too. He realized that he had flipped over at least once and was now getting a great look of Terrasti’s two moons and the purple rings that circled the planet. He looked to his left and saw that he was dropping below the horizon far too fast.

  “You’re not going to die, we haven’t lost a new blood on a Hanging in at least six months.”

  Damon hadn’t realized he’d been muttering.

  “Shite, we’re really off course.” She said.

  Damon felt her roll over and his view was once again filled with a much, much closer version of the cityscape he’d seen only moments ago.

  “No time!” She shouted and pitched them both upward to they were perpendicular to the ground. “Okay, Damon, when I say I want you to slap that thing on your chest. It’s a feather bubble and—“

  “This thing?” He asked, slapping the rune glowing on a device on his breastplate.

  “Yes—No!” She replied.

  Suddenly, a pearlescent bubble surrounded him about a foot in every direction. He was tumbling slowly, almost lazily, through the air and watched as his dislodged rescuer tumbled toward the ground below. From his higher altitude he watched as she was almost to the ground before her own bubble popped into existence around her, arresting her plummeting almost instantly.

  “Sorry.” He said again.

  “Watch out!”

  Damon’s eyes snapped to the flashing proximity and threat runes on his face plate, which were now glowing an angry, desperate red. His head swiveled around, trying to find what the detector was seeing that he wasn’t and found himself looking at a glowing bolt of pure magical energy. The missile of blue energy was the kind soldiers launched from man-portable launcher tubes, and they were usually reserved for aircraft or vehicles.

  “Oh shite!” Was all Damon had to say before it exploded, his bubbled popped his protective wards flashed, and he slammed straight through the façade of one of the Union’s infamously tall and dirty skyscrapers.

  His armor’s face plate went black again, and he couldn’t move. Damon focused on trying to get his lungs to work, but his breathing came in pained fits. He groaned and clawed at consciousness but lost.

  Chapter 2

  “D

  amon Carnon Sacreon,” the judge magistrate said, “you have been found guilty of seditious actions against the Republic of Gloriana and its people. This includes spreading Union propaganda, fraternizing with wartime states
, and inciting open and armed insurrection against the government.”

  “But I’m not guilty!” He shouted. The gavel came down.

  “In spite of all the evidence that has been arrayed against you, son? As a citizen of this great country, I find this dogged insistence of your innocence deplorable.” The magistrate said, looking down from his high position.

  “I’m a bard, I’m not a terrorist. I write music, I live in an apartment over a kaffe shop, and I’m not even that good. This is ridiculous!” The thock of the gavial filled the courtroom again. Several obscura orbs flashed, taking pictures of the proceeding for the papers and scryers.

  “Quiet. There are records of you not only partaking in seditious actions, but attending Union philosophy functions, and even masterminding plans to undermine the fortitude of our government. It is overwhelming.”

  “It was a party! I went to a party!” He shouted. Damon knew when someone was mugging for the morning papers, but still he tried.

  “I said silence. You’re a traitor and a criminal with a well-established record of deplorable conduct. Your guilt has already been established by Order 305 and the Seditious Acts Referendum. We are not here to re-adjudicate your case; this is a sentencing hearing.” The obscuras flashed again as he stood there for the sake of spectacle.

  “Your choices are death or the Lich Corps.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Damon grunted and his face plate flickered back to life. The view was filled with two armored figures, gleaming a soft-glowing white despite the lack of light in the cloudy night sky. Union Paladins. The one on his left had a sword against his neck, while his friend on the right had his pistol drawn. Damon let his head fall back into the rubble. So much for his illustrious redemption in the corps, it must have been some kind of record.

  “Don’t move!” the one with the sword shouted, voice amplified by his armor.

  Damon flicked on his external vox projector by using his eyes to activate the appropriate rune, “I don’t suppose we could just forget I was ever here?”

  “Silence, Republic filth, you’re coming with us. We will pry your secrets from your skull and you will tell us what your degenerate nation’s plans.”

  Damon laughed. It started out small but grew with each second to an almost maniacal crescendo, “See, according to my nation, I’m with you guys.”

  The two paladins looked at each other, “What are you talking about, scum?”

  Damon propped himself up on one elbow, the sound of rubble and crystal shifting and crunching beneath his weight filled the small office as he moved around. Rain started to blow in through the hole in in the window and surrounding masonry where he made his crash entrance. The fat drops sizzled against the glowing faceplates of his armor.

  “Okay, get this, it’s because my country thinks I’m some kind of traitor working for the Union that I’m here at all. You’ll laugh, it started when I followed this lounge singer into—aw never mind.”

  Damon knocked the sword into the other paladin. Pulling his sidearm, he began wildly firing several crystal flechettes into the paladin with the pistol leveled at him. Sparks erupted from the Union soldier’s shoulder as he spun, but his friend with the sword quickly recovered and brought his blade down. The aura around the edge would cut through Damon’s armor if he gave it a chance. Rolling to his right he leveled the pistol at the paladin who wheeled his blade around and cut the pistol’s barrel off with practiced ease.

  “Fool,” the sword point was placed at his throat, “I admire your bravery, but you could never best a warrior of the Purpose. I will enjoy—“

  There was a loud sound and the paladin dropped, the back of his helmet a smoking wreck. A few more shots finished off the prone paladin with the shoulder wound. Damon looked into the stylized half-elf skull on the faceplate and sighed. It was the woman from earlier.

  “Hey, new blood, not bad. Try actually killing one of them next time though. You don’t want to end up in a Union bastille.” She reached down and lifted him up.

  “I’m just glad you came back for me…”

  “Darashaya, just call me Shaya or Willow.”

  Damon tossed his bisected flechette pistol aside and picked up the Paladin’s, his suit’s lattice began working to break the minor warding-lock on the pistol so he could use it. A rune flashed green on his faceplate.

  “Lieutenant,” Shaya said over the scrycomm, “I picked up our bard and we’re heading for rendezvous. Please advise.”

  “Affirmative, Willow,” the gruff voice from earlier came over the line, “make your way to Prosperity Square, coordinates 23a by 56b.”

  “Understood. Willow out.”

  Shaya tapped Damon on the shoulder and gestured to main firearm at his hip. He pulled it and with some small effort found the safety rune and disengaged it. “Just don’t shoot me in the back, new blood.”

  Damon nodded and followed her to the hole he’d made in the side of the building. He saw other small craters starting where she must have landed and used the amplified power of the armor to climb in, crushing the brick and metal-work like dry gypsum. Damon looked at the skull painted over her faceplate again. It took on a sinister ghastliness in the dim light of the outside. He watched as she swung her gaze down and hopped down to the balcony leaving fine cracks in the stonework. Damon followed her down, and caused half the balcony to give away. He cursed and scrambled back before he slipped off.

  “Yeah, we don’t get any of that ceramic stuff, good old fashioned enchanted steel alloy. Not great for delicate work.” Shaya said over their internal communications.

  The pair moved through the building toward the lift. Damon poked at the darkness with the stubby muzzle of his flechette gun. The interior spoke to some kind of state or government building. The Union did love its government buildings. Desks were littered with papers, small family obscra prints hung on cubicle walls below Union propaganda posters. The crystal screens of adding and typing machines were dark, the people who worked them absent for the night.

  Considering that this city was far away from the front in the Barrens, Damon thought it a safe bet that curfew had more to do with the peace and quiet that anything else. The Union loved curfews almost as much as government buildings. That or they were properly paranoid about being attacked, which gave credence to why the Lich Corps were here in the first place.

  “So, how do you like your first mission, Bard?” She asked.

  “Could be worse, I was expecting heavier resistance.”

  Shaya scoffed, “That’s because your little stunt put us just under a mile outside of our actual operations area. Don’t worry though, we’ve seen worse. Keep your head on a swivel and you just might make it out of this with all your limbs.”

  They boarded the lift and it descended, quietly playing some spirited patriotic music. Damon found himself tapping his foot to it. Shaya gave him a look, or at least a head tilt that implied a look behind the skull on her faceplate.

  “Old habit…” he said.

  The lift stopped several floors up. There was a ding and the door began to open. Noting the large number of Union security being led by two more paladins, Damon slapped the close-doors button.

  “This isn’t our stop.” Damon said.

  “Enemy combatants, surrender to the mercy of the Serene Union and we will spare your lives.” A magically-amplified voice came from beyond the double doors.

  “Should we take him up on the offer?” Damon asked.

  She laughed wryly, “No, I think we’re good.”

  Shaya knelt and began using a torch from her suit’s storage to cut a hole in the bottom of the carriage. She tossed him grenade and told him how to arm it. He nodded and primed it by lining up the runes that would give it a directional proximity explosion. Using another rune he clamped it to the carriage just above the door. Shaya kicked out the floor of the carriage and Damon hit the rune and fired several bursts of flechettes through the doors before following his fellow corpsman just as the return
fire cut through the door and out the back of the carriage.

  The pair dropped down the elevator shaft. As a modern elevator instead of using magic to turn the winch the carriage floated on magical generators similar to the feather bubble magic that allowed the Lich Corps to make its aggressive landings. Overhead a green-tinted explosion blew apart the carriage and hopefully all the pursuing Unies. The fire and debris pursued the pair down the shaft, but they were able to outrun it by sliding down the shaft walls using the magilocks in their gauntlets and boots to arrest their rapid descent. Random colors flashed from the magilocks casting an eerie pallor over the lift shaft as the two came to a stop at the exit to the lobby.

  At the bottom of the lift they each took one side of the sliding doors, firearms at the ready. The lobby of the building was empty but the glowing warning runes of nearby Union peacekeeping forces flashed through the clear crystal windows, telling the corpsmen that it wouldn’t remain empty forever.

  “Come on, move.” She said while pushing forward. They crashed through the door and out onto the street, breaking the glass and tearing the frame out of the wall in the process. Various police vehicles were nearby. Unlike the Republic of Gloriana, the Union didn’t have a civilian police force; they used a special branch of their army. All of this meant that the men facing down the two armored corpsmen had all the lethal Union military training of any other solider.

  “Open fire and keep running!” Shaya said.

  “Great plan!” Damon agreed.

  Thankfully, the Union peacekeepers weren’t deployed with military-grade arms. Crystal bounced off his plating as Damon ran, spraying the vehicles in front of him. Shaya pulled a grenade twisted the top and pushed it down, lining up the runic symbols.

  “Down the alley.” She said through the suit comms, pitching the grenade at the Union military police. Purple-tinged fire rushed down the street as the corpsmen smashed through a small metal fence. Sparks danced off their armor as they shot through it. The enchantment matrices within their suits of armor made it possible to run for hours without stopping, as long as the magical reservoirs in the batteries held out.