Hard impacts created a cacophony in the street outside, as a wave of dark shapes poured into the open. Breathing hard I trained my focus on the small contingent at my side. Henrietta was being kept behind cover by a shaky Mable’s hand. Fen was doing her best impression of wallpaper. She had flattened herself against the wall as if she wanted to merge with the cold metal.

  Our company's only cover was about two feet of wall before a doorway let in light from the outside. I could feel myself begin to panic. The image of caps, missing her legs, was replaced with Fen. Escaping my mind was becoming harder as time ticked by; the slowest I had ever felt in my life. I had no weapons or training to use them. Running was all I knew and we had been unknowingly pinned down by the rampaging voidborn outside. All I knew was running from a fight, and that was not going to happen now. Maybe if I could find the right timing in the chaos, but not right now.

  “What do we do?” Fen asked in a shaky whisper. She looked at me with wide eyes in between glances at the door. I instantly knew what she was thinking because I had just talked myself down from the same response. I slid my hand along the wall until I found Fen’s arm. I held her in place as best I could while she fought an internal battle to flee as fast as possible. We both knew what our fate would be if we charged out now. Both duos would die. Crushed by the swarm, and cornered by the cleanup crew.

  I watched Fen’s breathing slow, steadily. She reached over to pat my hand on her arm, and nod with determination in her eyes. It was a look I had felt many times before on Earth, before my chases began. Except back on Earth I usually had a plan or escape route setup already. Now we had nothing but our wits.

  I dug deep into my head again, against my better judgment. What was the problem? We were in danger of being killed by the voidborn. No. Get more specific. I needed a simple version of the problem. We were hidden temporarily. We could be discovered easily. It was a short term problem but a start. “Fen” I whispered over. “The door to the room” I said as I gestured to the flat metal sheet on the ground just barely visible from our hiding spot. Fen nodded back. “What do we brace it with?” Fen asked. “I’ll look for something” I pointed to the main room of the still abandoned Laundromat. Fen looked back with worried eyes. “Let’s make noise while we can disguise it behind the swarm outside. We don't know how long we have” I said.

  We both carefully slid from cover. I stepped out into the main room looking for something that might brace the door. Scanning the sparse furniture available, I found a metal framed storage rack that seemed to have good structure to it. I quickly moved along the back wall and pressed my weight into the rack. I wasn’t strong enough to move it myself. Mable and Henrietta had poked their heads out to see what crazy idea I had in mind. Their heads peeping around the corner almost caused me to laugh. The two looked straight out of a cartoon.

  Mable moved first seeing what I was trying to move. “Where do you want it” Mable asked quietly. “It will brace the door from behind. Get it back to the supply room” I explained quickly. Henrietta was only a couple steps behind Mable and had heard the objective. Together they heaved the rack up and carefully positioned it just inside our impromptu fortress. By the time Henrietta had cleared the door behind the storage rack, Fen had the door upright. The voidborn outside were already becoming quieter as the street began to reach saturation. Soon our laundromat would become overflow.

  I grabbed some clothes that I left here during the time before the academy had started. Mixing them with a few motor belts lying in the far storage room, I tied the storage rack and door together. We all hauled the hurriedly constructed barricade into place and sighed. The frame had been opened up in the middle and I closed the gaps off with a couple towels hanging from the side of the barricade. With any luck our hiding place might work to keep us alive a few more minutes.

  I had thought time moved slowly while I was in that damned medical bed, training my mana filter to be strong enough to operate without assistance. The pain had turned seconds to hours, and days into years. Right now, I was just thankful the front door of the laundromat was still standing. A few bumps caused by voidborn passing to close had jarred the door almost off its surprisingly robust hinges. I prayed that the little bolt would hold on just a tad bit longer.

  “That is one tough door” Henrietta dared to say under the sound of marching voidborn outside. As if the gods of the universe were listening, the door was brushed off its hinges and fell into the stampede. We all turned to look at the Horrified space dwarf. Mable pulled the traumatized dwarf into a hug from behind. If I was a jealous person I might have wished that it was me in Henrietta's place. But, I was a gentleman. I knew others would have nice things, and I had my own nice things. I nodded in silent contemplation. “I’m not doing that for you” Fen said as I looked up at her with puppy eyes. “Drat” I said, sliding into the cold embrace of metal wall. One of these days I will have nice things, I corrected myself.

  We all made ourselves comfortable. At least as comfortable as one could be with certain death rampaging just on the other side of a makeshift barricade. Minutes after the station had shook, we had finally found some peace in the fact that we were trapped. Time slid by a bit faster as it seemed we had done enough to hide, for now. The floor jerked underneath us just like when the alarms had gone off originally. We all shared glances between each other. Screeches cut off any words we were forming, as gunfire sounded down the halls. Gunfire seemed to truly be the starting gun in the race outside, as the flood of voidborn moved with desperation towards the noise.

  Along with the more familiar sound of rifles going off in full auto came bright flashes of light. My questions were answered as beams of light sawed through the building across the street. The swarm was immediately and brutally bisected from left to right. The clean sweep made by the beam of light only lasted for a second before extinguishing. The damage had been done and the swarm seemed to enrage even more. Voidborn were now so thickly lining the street that some were being pushed into our building. Crashing from broken windows led the sound of metal walls being ripped off the floor. The voidborn were flowing more than walking through any opening they could find.

  I listened with bated breath as the gunfire began to slow down. Another beam swept through the swarm leaving singed corpses piled on top of the previous victims. Bodies began to pile up in the street so much that light was barely making it in from a crack between the corpses and the ceiling. A minute could not have passed before the floor jerked again.

  Gunfire redoubled in the distance, and a second beam began cleaving at the seemingly infinite stampede. I sighed in relief as it sounded like more people had joined the fight. Joined the fight, I thought to myself. But how? What did I have to help? It came to me in a flash. I was a mage cadet. I could break the rules of physics at a whim. With the right application— I trailed off in my mind as I remembered my lack of capability. Fen must have seen my expressions leaking through my face as her hand landed atop my head. “Not yet” her eyes said. I could tell she was anxious to help the fight in the distance. The distance? No. Gunfire was directly over the pile outside our building. I looked around for a consensus. “If we move out now we can help the defense, even if we only act as an extra set of hands.” I stated plainly to the small room. I couldn't look anyone in the eyes. I was being selfish because I wanted to help. “We can also stay here, and risk being found if the swarm overtakes the active defense” I added, feeling guilty.

  Laser light swept across the top of the growing pile outside. Our only escape was being closed off by dead voidborn stacking up into a wall. We may not have much time to escape this mess. A horrible thought crossed my mind and sent a heavy shiver down my whole body. If we did get stuck and no one knew where we were, we could be abandoned. Trapped by the void outside and the voidborn inside. I banished the thought of failure after far too long.

  I took in my surroundings. “Fen, I'm going. Close the barricade behind me.” I said looking through the peep slot behind the towel. The crooked frame had given us a good view of the action outside. “Don’t you dare try to get away from me. I still need a ride home” Fen replied. Looking over my shoulder I could see her shaking and shifting side to side, as if she had two new feet. Watching her for a moment helped me realize I was shaking too. “Mable, Henrietta, Can you help me out of here please?” I said glancing over. I had expected to see Henrietta watching through the crooked doorframe with Mable looming over her. I instead saw Mable with a determined looking Dwarf under her arm. Mable moved to a brace position with her free arm and Fen matched her. They both quickly shoved the door open and I scrambled out first.

  Barely a dozen steps out of the room, Fen was by my side. I thought I had a pretty good headstart but Fen had caught up quickly. I reached the bottom of the wall of dead corpses and could see Boots and legs pushing past our building with slow heavy steps. They moved in a line against the tide of voidborn. My hands slipped on the purple sludge that had once filled the corpses I had to now climb. Before I had even reached the sharp leg I was going to use as a handhold, Fen had picked me up and thrown me out of the building. I slid over the pile of dead bugs, landing over indentions left by the slow march to my left. Fen joined me a heartbeat later. Mable and Henrietta emerged together after moving bodies enough to make a steep ramp with the downed wall.

  A Mican built like a truck ran up to our party yelling and waving us towards her. The armour she was wearing had been lightened from the one I had seen Redgate’s squad, and the containment unit with Caps wearing. We took the hint and closed the distance with her. I heard scrambling behind me as I ran.

  I would later learn my decisions that day would shape my entire future, and by extension quite a few decisions following. I witnessed a Mican, in full armor, fall under the weight of a voidborn. It had sunk a bladed leg into the chest of the soldier. While pinned down she fired up through the beast, shredding its body into confetti before going limp on the ground. For some reason the wounded soldier was getting larger in my vision. I was only a few feet away, no, I was directly over her. My aura which had been active since I learned how to modify the regeneration circle moved to inside the girls chest. I could feel through the aura that the leg had sliced through her entire left chest muscle. The feeling of the severed heart made my blood run cold.

  Focusing on the weak beat of her heart I knew what had to be done. “Fen! The leg! Remove it!” I yelled as clearly as I could over the gunfire. I sensed the would open and the offending leg leave the heart. I was not looking at the body beneath me anymore as I had closed my eyes and willed my aura to me enough. Muscle cells stitched together under my influence. I could sense the constant drain on my mana bank as my store was being depleted and filled in rapid succession. I was not smooth enough with my control. I knew this life was not long for this world if I didn’t change something. My filter tugged at the ambient mana forcing my mana bank to fill as I depleted it again and again. Something clicked as I flashed back to the constant pull I had maintained in the early seconds of consciousness in that hospital bed. I had pushed my mana bank to improve so much that it hurt to continue the involuntary reaction. My mana bank even with its small capacity begged for mana so badly that I had been forced to over exert my filter to the point it knocked me out.

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  I remembered the feeling, and pushed against the brick wall with my mana filter. The familiar sense of pain returned, and my body collapsed over the soldier. While my body had given out from the pain, my mind was getting exactly what I expected. The effect of my aura rose significantly as I mended the heart in only a couple more seconds. I released tension in my filter back to a comfortable pull. I had closed the heart but a ton of blood was lost in the process. The rest of the wound remained open. Fen Pushed me off the soldier, removing the chestplate from a ripcord under the arm. I pushed myself back to my knees to see Fen had pulled a shiny patch out of packaging and sealed the open chest wound to stop the bleeding. To my surprise the patch held even over the blood wetted skin. The sickening squelching accompanying the soldier's breathing also stopped coming from the wound.

  “Fen hefted the disheveled warrior into her arms before taking to her back legs and running towards the end of the street. I could see a line of what could only have been doctors leaning over their own patients at the end of the street. I followed the much faster Fen to the beachhead camp.

  An area had been cleared of voidborn corpses enough to lay injured people in rows on the now purple stained street. One medic stormed over to us and relieved Fen of our patient with a quick nod. The medics hand reached to the now unarmored neck of the Mican to feel for a pulse. Clearly she thought we had retrieved a corpse, and didn’t want to spoil the efforts of two trainees. Our actions and timing could only be that of trainees considering no one was recognising us in our academy uniforms as military. I recognized that all the people here wore the station’s name on their shoulder where a patch may have gone on a uniform from Earth.

  Henrietta, and Mable were waiting out of the way in the back of the field hospital, having reached it before us.

  A scream interrupted my observations of the ramshackle field hospital. I knew then that I could be of help in some small way if I was careful. “I can regenerate muscle” I said, in an attempt to be clear and concise. The medic that had taken our patient was in shock as she set down her patient and pointed a couple people over to someone with a brace on one leg.

  I was shuffled from patient to patient as the fighting continued behind me. Fen was making hurried trips over the corpses, returning wounded from the front line, and taking ammunition back. The individual that had waved us over originally that I now knew was a logistics persons was also ferrying ammo, and injured. Henrietta and Mable found purpose in the assault by following Fen’s lead. They were both given frame packs to carry ammo refills for heavy machine guns.

  I eventually realised that If I laid down before I fell limp from straining my mana filter my nose would hurt much less. Patient after patient was healed in one way or another. In most cases my aura was able to repair muscle around an open fracture after the bone was braced back in place. I noted how tough the Mican’s were and understood why they had been such successful soldiers on station. The injuries I was mending were guaranteed death sentences for most humans. These soldiers were mentally tough. Most were conscious as medics reset bones, and I stitched muscles back together. I was getting into a rhythm of reconnecting split muscles. I had even adjusted to the muscles flinching as I repaired them slowly. Patients stopped returning after what seemed like a year. I would later learn why I had slept so well that evening.

  After the medics kicked me out an airlock, onto a shuttle, I realized that my eye lids, in fact, were made of lead. Fen’s shoulder seemed as good a place as any to rest the bowling ball that was my head as I closed my eyes. I felt Fen’s head land on mine just before drifting off.

  Something softly poked my cheek. I swatted it away before trying to bury myself in the warmth next to me. What was so warm against my side? I slowly made up my mind to check, in a few minutes. Muffled talking in the background lulled me to sleep again.

  I opened my eyes, and immediately was hit by bright lights, and a soreness in my neck. My nose also felt strange for some reason. I took an exploratory feel at my nose with the one hand I still had feeling in. It hurt even just disturbing the surface of the swelling. I jerked back in reaction to the pain. My neck felt every millimeter of movement from the jerk. A sharp inhale above me lifted a weight off me and I could feel the cold air on my head again. Looking towards the arm that had no feeling left I saw it was trapped in between Fen’s side and mine. Shifting my vision upwards I meet her eyes. We both stared at each other in confusion for a heartbeat. The next heartbeat saw Fen shooting off the bench seat of the shuttle, and me hitting my nose against the floor as I was shoved forward. I felt Fen’s back legs push against my back as she stood. She stumbled and fell back into the bench seat a little farther down as her legs gave out. I pushed against the floor to sit up but only managed a weak grunt and some huffing before I realized my arms were currently useless.

  Rolling over I saw the smirking face of Station Security Commander Ingrid Redgate. “ I didn’t do it” I said, trying to come up with words to defend myself before I could figure out what was going on. I didn’t either” Fen added, slumped in the seat. Fen looked more work out than my first school backpack, only with less tears, and more stains.

  “Sleeping together already, I see. Bold move Ashford. You better have taken him out to dinner first at the very least” Redgate said in a mock serious tone. Fen stumbled over her words for far too long before saying “no date just sleep”. She paused, drooped further into the seat, and resigned herself to defeat. The sound of Melissa’s laugh from behind the imposing commander, broke the moment to pieces and shattered those pieces on the ground. The air became easier to breathe, and Fen joined in with her own pained laughter. I soon added a few chuckles of my own.

  Redgate explained that the shuttle pilot had moved to a separate crew shuttle after trying, and failing to wake us. The cleanup of the abandoned sphere was currently taking place. Apparently we had slept long enough for the sphere to be swept clean of all living voidborn including the queen. “The operation you caused took 16 hours to clean up mage cadet Walker. I expect less trouble from you in the future. That means no more parties with the voidborn on my station, understood?” commander Redgate said. “Understood, no more parties with voidborn on the station” I repeated, feeling slightly more awake than before. My stomach grumbled part way through my response. “Good, now report to medical. I can’t give you two anymore. This shuttle needs moved off the landing pad for more traffic to come through” Redgate said before turning to leave. “I would get moving before you keep them waiting any longer” She said over her shoulder on the way down the dark metal ramp.

  Her exit left Fen and I to stumble our way out of the shuttle on our own feet. I had working legs while Fen was clearly spent in that department. The noodles she had were just enough to act like two awkward crutches. She spread her weight out over all ten legs while leaning most of her weight on me. None of her normal graceful movement was left as I practically carried her down the ramp. The shuttle bay's light was blindingly bright. Stopping at the bottom of the ramp, I let my eyes adjust. This bay was large. Not in the we can fit a lot of shuttles in this bay large. In a, we can fit a lot of ships that carry shuttles in it large. If this bay was in an infomercial on earth, someone would slap their hand on the back and say how many watermelons would fit in it large. One of said shuttle carrying ships was waiting patiently over our shuttle for the docking area to become available. Pushing forward with new motivation to not be crushed by said ship, we cleared the landing zone. Once clear, the pilot of the shuttle made a steady takeoff. With a little movement that looked like a stumble, the ship cleared the landing zone too.

  Fen slowly found her footing, which was good because my legs began to feel like hers looked. She eventually took most of her weight back and I was just there for stability. The long confusing trek to medical led us through spheres we had never seen before. We both looked around at some new commercial districts. One sphere had a small food market attached and we decided on bringing semi warm food to doctor Offsman who would undoubtedly be busy tending to the raiding party’s survivors. With our peace offering for showing up in medical so many times, we plodded on. Fen was nearly dragging her feet behind her with each step by the time we hit the cold sterile tiles of medical.

  “Ashford, Walker, Sit in the lobby. The doctor is busy so leave her food on the counter, left of the sink” A voice came from behind the rows of curtains. I deposited Fen in a beanbag style chair before I waddled over to the countertop with our spare dish. Placing the dish down with the appropriate space fork, I found my own beanbag chair. I dragged my chair right up next to Fen who was not waiting on me to eat. She had dug into her meal ravenously the moment I sat her down. I couldn’t blame her in the slightest as I took my meal from her lap, where I had left it, to tuck in myself.

  “Remmy, did those two fools ma—” doctor Offsman started to say as she entered the medical wing with four bowls tied up in a stack. Her gaze fell on us almost as soon as she passed the threshold. “You buffoons! How did you find damned voidborn hiding on the station? I swear when I heard you two had found your way into a raiding party without permission, I questioned station security’s ability to count. Then I hear you were prowling around an abandoned section of the station rather than focusing on your studies” the doctor paused her scolding to take a breath and calm herself. Her arms coming up in front of her and falling slowly as she exhaled another breath. “A cadet trainee combo came through here hours ago for a psych eval. I figured you two would be with them. Then I hear you were sleeping on a shuttle before checking in with me” Offsman stopped herself.

  “I understand that your efforts in assisting the raid lasted for quite some time. Thank you for making my job easier. Now, listen closely. Do not ever, under any circumstance, go to sleep without checking in with me after a mission. Do your tiny, little, itsy, bitsy brains understand?” Offsman said, staring through both our souls. The translation in my head was working overtime to expound upon how small our brains were. “Understood, ma’am” we said in unison with tired voices. I needed one thing right now. One very mandatory addition to my day. A factor so vital to my continued sanity that I feared for the day I would have to go without. My bed called to me like a lighthouse in a foggy sea. Soon I would find myself wrapped in the silky warmth of space blankets on my space bed, in my space room, in my space suite.

  Instead of passing out like my mind was day dreaming about on the walk over, I laid awake in bed reviewing the past day. The first few injuries I had mended were small tears that would not be life threatening in the slightest. These first few mends got me confident in my ability albeit slowly. Once I had warmed up to the idea of stitching muscle back together I was given my first heavily bleeding leg to fix. The field medic was holding the bone in place while another set a brace to keep the wound stable. I laid down next to the leg and passed my aura over the injury as I was verbally directed by the experts. I reconnected muscle per the instructions given to me. The leg became stable after only a minute of healing, and the medics left me to continue the remainder of the repair. I never finished with that leg, but I was damned close.

  I had been pulled over to an urgent case that Mable had brought in. A similar wound to the first soldier with a puncture albeit small went through the soldier's heart. The leg had been severed so it could remain lodged in place while she was carried to the medics. I remember feeling as if I was going to overstrain myself repairing that heart. The leg being removed cut the heart open even more and I had almost panicked. In only a couple seconds, and with a now definitely bruised nose, I had repaired the heart in full. Injured flowed through the camp one after another. I was dragged from patient to patient, sometimes literally. I helped stabilize urgent cases under the expert direction of the field medics. I had no time for bedside manners as I had to keep my focus on the delicate operation of my aura.

  I had noticed that the regeneration effect would increase as the aura size decreased. Unfortunately I had very little control over the size of my aura. By the end of the night I was patching whole muscle groups at a relatively fast pace. I knew I had made great improvements that day in my ability to control my aura. My filter, which continued to pump fresh mana into my bank, felt just a little bit stronger than before.

  Mana was strange, and I was not creative. No way would I be rewriting the book on its use to break all the laws of the universe. Mana's flexibility was almost inconceivable when I first started learning about its capabilities, and now here I am using my own custom circle to fight the voidborn. I may not have killed any of the rotten critters myself, but I stopped them from raising their kill count as fast. Maybe, next time, I would get a chance to draw some of that purple viscera from the voidborn myself.