"Take her up slow." Mindy ordered.Talia sat in the pilot"s seat of the not-quite-completed Wasp prototype, sweat dripping down her face as she pulled back a handle, tilting the maneuvering thrusters so that the airship would be pushed upwards…
"Not that slowly! Faster!" Mindy barked.
Talia threw up her hands off the controls with a squeak. "I"m sorry!"
"Don"t let go of the controls!" Mindy yelled from the basket tied to the turret frame at the back. "Izhan! Power it up! Bypa.s.s the controls and directly take us up six inches!"
"But…!" Izhan gulped.
"Just do it! We haven"t much time!"
Down below, roars and neighing sounded. Max was shouting orders to the legionnaire trainees, changing their formations to better channel as many horse-type Wilds as they could into the smoke-hidden Pit. All around them, above, below, and to the side, ballistas and crossbows were firing. Mindy"s and Arnold"s simple preparations had taken a lot longer than they"d antic.i.p.ated and by the time they were ready, the Beast Wave had already arrived at KarGoth.
At this point, Mindy and her crew were on a platform sixty feet above the ground. While on a usual day this was a platform used to dry laundry, right now it had turned into a temporary rest stop and airship pad.
Or at least, they were until Izhan hastily powered up the engines and…
"WHOA!!!" Four voices yelped as the Wasp practically leapt ten feet straight up from the platform.
"That is NOT six inches!!" Mindy barked.
"Then YOU do it!" Izhan barked back.
"Will you two let me do my job?!" Talia barked right along with them.
Mindy"s crew were three teenagers from KarGoth and the Red Fang. In the pilot"s seat for the very, very first time was a tense and nervous Talia, half-thankful that her father Aren or her mother Zana wasn"t around to see her mess up if the worst happened, half-wishing he was there instead to offer some word of comfort. Behind her, at the power station was Izhan, trying his best to be supportive to all sides, but similarly tense and nervous himself and instinctively protective of Talia. His parents, Taj and Nadia, were not at KarGoth, they stayed at the Farm, but he still seemed intent on putting on a brave face in front of (or behind!) Talia.
Then there was Larun. He just stood in the gunner"s station, hanging on to the empty turret frame waiting to lower Mindy by rope. He didn"t have the mancontrol abilities of the other two, but he was the biggest, most muscular guy on her Red Fang crew. When it came time to haul precious cargo, like crates of Flaming Bronze, or herself, Mindy would trust n.o.body more to shoulder the burden.
Mindy herself was sitting in a basket tied to that frame. As nervous as Talia and Izhan were, she was nail-bitingly tense enough for both of them and then some. They were just new at their jobs, trying to do something she"d already done. She, on the other hand, was trusting her life to people who"d never done what they were about to attempt, getting lowered on a basket into a Pit full of berserk Wilds and trying to cause an anti-magic burst with enough range and power to free them all.
Not for the first time today, she wished Remian were here. That would have solved everything immediatey. Mindy herself would be in the pilot"s seat and Remian can handle all the tricky magic. But no, he wasn"t here today, he was at Fal"herim, with Phoebe…
Which reminded her. Casualties were not recommended today, because their emergency doctor wasn"t around either. n.o.body expected heavy injuries or fatalities, really, because the last time they had a Beast Wave, aerial bombardment pretty much took care of most of it.
But who knew the bulk of today"s Wave would be horses?! And of course, George, dear compa.s.sionate George, got it into his head to try and rescue them/capture and coerce them into servitude. Because horses could be very useful, after all… so why kill them when they could be put to use, like Spike?
This resulted in the Sky Fortresses leaving them pretty much alone as the Beast Wave made their way to KarGoth. While indeed, most of the stampeding herd landed up running blind into the smoke-covered Pit, roughly a dozen skirted the sides and right into the pike formations. Of those, half fell, the other half plowed through, and a full-on melee ensued.
[Mindy!] George was calling. [Hurry up!!]
[We CAN"T hurry!] Mindy shot back. [These things take time! I need time to get into position, and even if I were already in position, I would need more time to form and trigger the anti-magic burst!]
[How much time?!]
Talia was inching the airship out above the Pit now, moving it at a painfully slow pace.
"Larun! Start lowering the basket!" Mindy decided. "Let"s see if we can hurry this up…"
Meanwhile, she sent back a message to George. [Five minutes to get into position and at least as long for me to work the anti-magic!]
[Five minutes?! We could be dead by then!]
[Pay attention! I need ten minutes, not five! Maybe fifteen!]
[Why so slow…?]
[Are you kidding me? This is anti-magic we"re talking about, not some scroll-casted light sphere! I"m not even sure I would even succeed in my first attempt!]
[Remian could…]
[I"m not Remian! If I weren"t careful, I could kill myself!]
[What if you started now, and did it real slow…]
[And risk frying my own airship"s magic drive? No way! Anti-magic is totally unstable, unpredictable even in stable conditions and I"m in a basket swinging around in mid-air, for goodness" sake! Under these circ.u.mstances, it could go off at any time! I"m not even going to start until I"m at least forty feet away from anything we want to keep!]
[OOF!] George didn"t reply, knocked over by a prancing pony of a Wild. [Oh, sc.r.a.p…]
Mindy held off on the anti-magic for now and pointed a finger. "Dazzling Light!"
Fireworks shot out. Really, Mindy"s magic was pretty much just a brilliant light show, colorful and bright, but otherwise completely harmless. Trying to provide magic support at long range through the smoky environment was risky, especially since the pony was practically on top of George. The best she could do was try to distract it or surprise it into backing off.
[Oof! Ow!] George took a few more hits, but he didn"t sound afraid or anything, just disgruntled, as if it was all her fault.
Mindy protested. [Hey! Don"t put the blame on me! You"re the one who wanted to spare all of them! The more we save, the more we gain, you said!]
[Isn"t there a way to hurry it up a bit?]
Mindy flared. [Next time, get someone else to do you precious anti-magic!] She turned away in a huff.
Regardless of George"s haste, Talia moved the airship so slowly, they practically drifted their way out to the middle of the Pit.
By that time, Mindy was roughly sixty feet below, trying to put together a decent burst of anti-magic, but failing to gather enough power before losing her grasp on it entirely. The entire cl.u.s.ter dispersed, then regathered and dispersed again and again under her flailing attempts while the basket rocked to and fro, and she almost dropped everything at least thrice.
This is why n.o.body tries to anti-magic the Wave while it was in motion! Trying to put it all together was hard enough if she were completely still, what more while swinging about like this!
Meanwhile, the fighting had already stopped, the horse-types who hadn"t run straight into the Pit outright had been either struck down, or pushed down into the Pit to join the rest.
It took six more tries after the airship stopped inching toward the center. Roughly an entire hour after the battle began, Mindy finally managed a single burst of anti-magic.
But nothing happened.
"Too small, too far away!" George grumbled.
As they waited for her to get her act together, the clean up started and George sat down to rest on a spare crate that had been used as a traffic channeling obstacle. Someone brought him a drink and he sat there sipping from a wooden cup while Mindy tried and tried again to work some anti-magic.
Five tries later, she managed another burst. This time, a few of the horses below were affected.
"Still too small!" George called out, sipping his tea.
"Quit complaining! Next time you try it!" Mindy grouched back. "Larun! Talia! Lower!"
Another hour pa.s.sed. The clean-up was half-done by the time Mindy managed a third burst.
But again, it wasn"t enough.
"Lower!!" Mindy yelled up to her crew.
A fourth burst happened half an hour after. Then a fifth, six minutes following.
By then, Mindy was panting and sweating and wishing to high heaven that she"d never volunteered to try to perform anti-magic, much less in a swinging basket.
Finally, ten minutes after that, she dropped the sixth burst just as she completed forming it.
There was a buzz, and a silence, and then, a lot of confused Psionic questions from a lot of confused horse-type Wilds.
"Finally!" George exulted. "You should have tried dropping it on them from the start!"
Mindy took off her left shoe and threw it at him.