Wizards At War

“Just as well,” Nita said. “You’d bankrupt yourself.” Through the smoke of the second mobile weapon’s explosion, Nita could just see something moving. Oh, great, she thought. What did I do with the accelerator? Is it another of those—

But whatever was coming, it didn’t move like a Tawalf. Though it was still mostly hidden by the smoke of the last weapon’s destruction, Nita could see that it went on just two legs. Nita spoke the words of the spell that made the accelerator remanifest itself, then put it against her shoulder, sighted—

It’s a humanoid, Nita thought, as the figure came toward them through the smoke. What’s that hanging off its head? Humanoids don’t usually have tentacles there. And it doesn’t look like it’s armed.

It wasn’t a very big humanoid, either. It was only a little taller than Nita. As it came through the smoke, she could have sworn that it was actually human—the skin color was one of the possible ones, the eyes and other features seemed all to be in the right places, and the clothes—Jeez, will you look at those, Nita thought at the sight of the tight black T-shirt, the slightly-retro cargo pants in a truly eye-jangling hot-pink-and-green floral print, and the strappy little pink boots. And the “tentacle” wasn’t a tentacle at all, but, hanging down in front of one shoulder, a single long, thick, dark—

—braid?

Nita’s mouth dropped open as the girl came all the way out of the smoke. She had a light backpack-purse on her back, some kind of holster hanging at one hip, and a wicked grin on her face.

Nita shut her mouth, and opened it again.

“Carmela?” she said, in sort of a strangled squeak. “Carmela?”

She came striding over to them. “Hey,” ‘Mela said, “I’m glad to see you, too.” And she peered at Nita curiously. “Why’re you so red? You have got to start remembering the sunscreen, Neets. You’re gonna ; die of skin cancer or something.”

Nita laughed weakly at the stinging feel of her face, burned by the overloading shields. She looked up and down the corridor to the smoking wreckage of the remaining three fusion weapons, and the walls and other structures that had been between them and Carmela. “How the heck did you do that?” Nita said.

Carmela smiled. From the holster, the kind that beauticians carry their hair dryers in, she pulled out a two-foot-long object that seemed to combine the features of a curling iron and an eggbeater. The beaters throbbed faintly with a threatening glow, like the one that had come from the first mobile weapon just before Nita blew it up.

Nita blinked. “That’s the thing you got off the alien shopping channel?” she said. “But that was just a laser dissociator—”

“‘Was,’” Carmela said. She grinned again. “I sent away for the free upgrade.”

Sker’ret clambered out of the control console’s rack and flowed over to the two of them. “And there’s my favorite bunch of legs!” Carmela said, and hunkered down to Sker’ret’s level. As he came up beside her, she reached out and yanked a couple of his eyes in a friendly way. “Hey there, cute-as-a-bug,” she said. “You okay? You look a little scorched around the edges.”

Sker’ret simply stared. After a moment, he said, “This is… unexpected!”

Carmela produced a pout. “You’re not glad to see me!”

“Oh, glad, absolutely glad, but you shouldn’t be—”

“Why?” Carmela said. “Why shouldn’t I? Really, why do you guys all think you have to be wizards to save the universe? You people get so grabby sometimes.”

Nita blinked. Did I say I thought the weird quotient in my life was going to start rising? Remind me to keep my mouth shut in future. “Forgive me if I take a moment to see where the people who were shooting at us are now,” Nita said, and got out her manual.

“Sure.” Carmela looked around her, admiring the architecture through the general destruction. “Hey, nice ceiling. Or is it really a ceiling?”

“What’s left of it,” Sker’ret said, since a lot of the ceiling was now on the floor.

Nita turned to her detector spells, found a favorite all-purpose one with a good range, and read it, inserting the name in the Speech for the Tawalf species, and the energy signature of the big fusion weapons. The silence of a working spell settled around her, while in the back of her mind she could sense the peridexic effect waiting to see if she needed extra power. Hey, Nita said silently, thanks for what you did back there.