Dromon growls as the ship starts to shake violently. Cabinets and kitchen items were tossed in every direction, loose panels were punched out of their positions, and more explosions rattled the ship as the unmistakable sound of energy bolts hitting the hull sent shivers down the spines of the passengers.

  They must be scared, but Dromon scoffs at this; the feeling is far worse as his jaw sets hard. This ship, though a flying brick, had practically become his house, and though he would occasionally detach himself from the vessel and go outside for a couple of days, for a spirit such as himself, there was something genuinely euphoric about seeing the familiar shape of a solid brick of archosite.

  Even if the ship is made from the inferior, cheaper archosite 2, and corrodes. Nothing like pure archosite. To others, this ship might look like a heap of junk, but to spirits, it was something far more important, irreplaceable even, a home.

  Dromon turns around and punches through the wall of the ship, his ghostly hand phasing through it, and within a matter of seconds, the point defense cannons start to move, their old gears groaning in protest as Dromon forces them into position and fires.

  Immediately, two of the smaller Black Host attack craft are hit, one pulling out while Dromon focuses fire on the other, another energy bolt vaporizing one of the engines, and another one cleaving the ship in half.

  Tidak runs to Dromon’s side and has a good look at his expression. Her heart sinks as hard as a rock on a river, her face becomes softer, and her confidence false.

  “Gods… He has the look.”

  “Look? What looks?” Oliver yells.

  “The kind of look that says a lot of enemies are going to die.”

  Tidak runs over to a nearby viewport, followed by Astrid and Dori. What they saw outside astonished them and sent great tremors of trepidation through their very being.

  Watching over them like a hawk was a massive vessel, a large cargo hauler that had been heavily modified with all manner of weapons, armor, and hangar bays.

  Swarming around it like a flock of agitated wasps are multiple squadrons of fighters and bombers and small attack craft, their weapons deliberately made visible, the skull and bones symbol of the Black Host emblazoned upon them all.

  Another violent attack came, Dromon growls as he tries to take down as many as he can, only for more to take their place.

  Another three fighters are hit, forcing them back, but they still riddle the ship with concentrated fire.

  Oliver can be heard swearing in his native tongue, “Schei? drauf!”

  Fiddling with the controls, Oliver moves the ship out of the way, narrowly dodging another wave of munitions coming their way before slamming down the controls, accelerating.

  Tidak turns back towards the young man.

  “Don’t tell me you’re…”

  “Getting down to the surface of the planet? Yes, yes I am!” Oliver banks hard to the left, barely dodging more fire as Dromon scoffs at the pursuing ships.

  “It’ll be the only way we can lose them. I did a scan, this planet can mess with radar and sensors, we can lose them!”

  Tidak nods. She turns to Dori and secures her tightly in place, “Stay here, Dori. Astrid, you’re with me.”

  “What are we gonna do?” The elf asks.

  “Damage control. Dromon can operate the handful of weapons on this thing; we just gotta make sure she holds.”

  Tidak, makes sure her rifle is secure around her person, runs over to a compartment, and grabs a multi-tool, an advanced piece of equipment that can fix virtually any internal damage.

  Tidak know they can't do much about the hull, but they can fix wires, repair cracks, and get systems back online. She had been through worse; this was nothing compared to the musical orchestra of destruction that was the battlefield.

  She gazes at her dearest elf, eyes like a torch of determination, and just as she did so, the ship shook violently; the pair is scarcely able to keep their footing. Dromon’s jaw hardens, teeth showing like a predator.

  “They hit the artificial gravity generator. Fix it if you want to keep standing,” his tone is venomous.

  “Come!” Tidak grabs Astrid by the arm, and when they open the door to the generator, they find it in a horrid state. “Reattach those wires, they’re color-coded!”

  Tidak goes to work, attaching smaller cables back in place and returning knocked-out panels to their position, while simultaneously dodging electrical sparks. She growls, then hardens herself. These are nothing compared to enemy Tesla weapons, she thought to herself

  Astrid does much the same; she pushes a few collapsed wires out of the way and starts to repeat what Tidak was doing. A dozen wires and bundles of cables find their places, but she looked at the broken ones with a sense of horror. They are either burned, broken apart, or simply snapped in half.

  The elf fiddles around with the wires, trying to figure out how to fix them, as the humming of the generator begins to waver.

  Then a thought crosses her mind. Grabbing her conduit and allowing it to float in the air, Astrid said.

  “Granny, I’m gonna use alchemical transmutation to fix these wires!”

  “What?” Tidak says. She looks around and analyzes the situation intently, “Fine, but do it quickly!”

  Astrid gives a nod, grabbing whatever materials she could get her hands on, broken panels, bits and pieces of metal, and the remnants of shattered objects. She looked deep into her being.

  The conduit floating ahead of her began to spin faster and faster until a faint golden glow came out of it, an aura of raw power, with golden energy trails leading right back to Astrid. She is feeding her own psychic power into it, as a species that has mastered alchemy and has a natural pool of immense psychic energy, matched by only a few other species in the galaxy. It is marvelous.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  It is like the conduit blooming into a flower. Yet Astrid has enough strings attached to control it, and like a marionette controlling a puppet show, she raises her hand, and the collected objects around her were consumed into a white light, before being fed into the conduit as raw energy.

  Just then, Astrid commands the broken wires to float upwards before the conduit feeds the accumulated energy back into reality, and atoms are reshaped and transformed into something else as they re-enter the realm of the physical. Becoming new wires that fuse with the shattered ones and bringing them back online.

  Not long after, the system hummed strongly once more.

  Astrid grabs the device and panted rapidly. She begins shaking and coughing, “Alchemical… Transmutation, complete.” She holds her head high with her dominant hand.

  “That… That took a lot out of me. I am not the strongest alchemist.”

  As she is about to fall, Tidak grabs her by the hand and carries her back to the main room. As she did, Dori’s eyes shot up with fear when she saw her elder sister; she leaped out of her seat.

  “Hey, big sis!”

  Dori takes the conduit from her hand and helps her sister, securing her back on her seat.

  “Ugh. Dori, I feel like I wanna faint.”

  Dori looks around, and her face lights up, like a spark of genius. She runs to the supply cabinet and brings her a bottle of water, before practically forcing her older sister to drink. Though Astrid is taken aback by this, she complies with her sister’s attempts to help.

  “How much longer till we reach the atmosphere?” Tidak asks.

  “A few minutes, I just need Dromon to keep operating the guns.” Oliver glances outside and notices that the hull is starting to heat up, becoming bright red, then a familiar golden aura.

  Dromon remains silent. The Black Host is relentless as their fighters and attack craft run circles around them, taking potshots and unleashing all they have on the hull.

  The ship spirit is being tested, his eyes narrowing like a predator on the hunt. The Black host ships turned around once more, but just as they were about to unleash another volley of weapons fire, Dromon’s aim found its mark.

  The lead assault craft is struck in its wing, causing its rockets to explode. The crew, dazed and panicking, pulls the attack craft out of the chase, barely able to do so safely.

  The point defense guns continue firing, and Dromon manages to down another two enemy fighters, one exploding as its power plant was hit and another, which was engulfed in flames as its engines burned up, disappearing in a ball of flame as it got pulled to the planet below.

  The ship spirit has no time to celebrate. Using the ship’s sensors, he can see more of them giving chase, far too many. They threaten to overwhelm the vessel’s meager arsenal.

  “Oliver, Planet, now! I am not losing my house this day!”

  Oliver nods, his gaze entirely focused on making a controlled descent. Tidak straps Dori in next to her sister, old bones acting up as the old woman powers through the pain. Tidak strikes her back, forcing it back in line.

  Both siblings grasp each other tightly as Tidak sits down close to them. She looks up at the flickering lights above and utters a prayer to the Gods of the Teuton Empire, “Oh, Overlords… Deliver us, this is no fate for the two young ones with me.”

  The Black Host ships are getting closer, but just as they were about to deliver the killing blow, the ship disappears into a sea of dense clouds, their pursuers follow them in, but as they go deeper in and eventually penetrate the clouds, they are greeted by nothing but towering mountains of ice and snow and great tree covered landscapes so vast that it looked as though it was a warm coat, disguishing the chilling truth of this world.

  One of them got on the comms, “I lost them, agh! My sensors aren’t working, it's this damn planet again!”

  “Keep looking, we can’t afford witnesses; they’ll have us chased from this place if they report this to the authorities. We only got one ship!”

  “Spread out, find them!”

  The Black host pursuers split off, searching in every direction, while the attack craft flies low to the ground and starts looking for visual indicators.

  Their engines roar as they pass over the very vessel they are searching for, hiding amidst the massive trees and dense cover of the endless winter woods. Oliver leans back on his seat, and a sigh of relief comes; he reaches for a flask and opens it.

  “Okay… We made it. We should be safe for now.”

  “They won't see us?” Dori asks, concerned.

  “No,” Dromon replies, his arms crossed, “These trees are so tall and so thick that it’ll be impossible to locate anything with eyes, that and the colors blend well with the snow, we’re safe… But we should stay put for a while.”

  Tidak nods along. The danger is gone, for now, and the old lady walks over to the two little ones under her care, as the ship's spirit and the Teuton soldier look on in silence. Tidak places a hand on Astrid’s back, soothing her as she began to cough violently.

  “Oliver,” Dromon snaps his fingers, “Perhaps it's time to bring out some drinks to calm everyone down?”

  “Ah, ja, ja, wait… Where are you going?”

  Dromon wanders over to one corner of the room, reaching out, his ethereal hand phases through the walls.

  “Scouting. I’ll go out for a walk, oh, and try not to cause a mess in my house while I’m gone.

  Just like that, Dromon phases out. Oliver looked outside the viewport, seeing his ghostly form blend in and disappear into the great patches of ice and snow.

  He sighs before walking to the storage area to fulfill the request.

  …

  The Black Host carrier in orbit is a hive of activity, crewmen frantically running to make the ship as presentable as possible.

  It was most unnatural indeed, the halls have abysmal cleanliness as a norm with its ragtag crew, but a single message from the intercom is enough to shatter their sense of invincibility, enough to send shivers down their spines, even among the most brutal of raiders among them.

  “Attention, Host Commander Brianah is coming on board, all raider companies to station! All raider companies!”

  Those words alone are enough to cause a shift in attitude among the crew; the people run the ship, and the raider companies on board frantically begin cleaning the ship. Hallways that had become part crate storage and littered with trash are cleaned, and boxes are moved or made to look more organised. Weapons are loaded and ready for inspection, and lesser leaders stand alongside their raiders.

  There is a small craft approaching, a repurposed transport ship escorted from either side by yet more attack craft. The bridge crew clears her for landing, some of them sweating as they see the transport enter the largest hangar bay on the ship; they dare not insult her by clearing her on smaller ones.

  The ship touches down, landing gear secure on a powerful magnetic lock, as the escorts land as well. The ship’s jaw opens, pressurized air gushing out like a cloud before the gathered blocks of Black Host raiders arranged in a ceremonial position, sweat dripping down their faces.

  From the ship comes a bodyguard unit, their energy weapons and fresh uniforms are like shining armor and great swords of brilliant valor when compared to the typical raider with their basic weapons and patchwork clothes. The bodyguards split off, turning left and right, securing the site.

  From the vessel strides a dark figure, a lady draped in pure dark robes and gold accents, her tall figure exaggerated by the comparably short bodyguards around her. Her presence is like a star amidst a sea of darkness, her eyes narrow, as though frowning but burning with a flame that cannot be put down, her face is rigid, still, ever unfeeling and ever unconquerable, thinking and plotting behind a cloak of apathy.

  She is well-groomed, and yet some scars still show themselves above her richly decorated shirt collar, all the hallmarks of the warrior within.

  Gathered before her are the highest-ranking leaders on board. They straighten themselves before one of them speaks, “H-host Commander Brianah, what brings you here?”

  Brianah looks at them, unimpressed, “You tell me that you are doing well in your operations, yet I find out you cannot finish off a single old ship?”

  The officers’ confidence quickly melts like ice in the summer. Their faces become malleable and their eyes wide.

  “We… Um… Minor setback, Host commander.”

  Brianah got up close to them, their hearts sinking deeper, their souls screaming to exit their bodies. Brianah looks down at one and leans over, as her cold hands take hold of the lead officer’s shoulders.

  “Find them. Hunt them. Those people will be a detriment to the operations we have in the area.”

  “Y-yes, Host commander!”

  The lady nods and walks further into the ship, her troops surrounding her as she signals the officers to follow her.

  “Well then, let us go. We have much to discuss, double your efforts, and proceed with our planned operations, understood?” The officers nod along.

  Thus would the Brianah Host have its Bandit Queen.