Space Pirate Charlie: The Dragon Mage Book 2 Read online

  Space Pirate Charlie

  The Dragon Mage Book 2

  Scott Baron

  Copyright © 2019 by Scott Baron

  All rights reserved.

  Print Edition ISBN 978-1-945996-24-5

  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 written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  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

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  But Wait, there’s more!

  Freebies

  Thank You

  Also by Scott Baron

  About the Author

  “In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”

  -Sun Tzu

  Chapter One

  Charlie’s arrival in the strange galaxy several years ago had been tumultuous, to say the least. The engineer from Earth––a man who hated space flight––had been more or less ordered to accompany the ship he helped build on its test flight. Things had not gone as planned.

  The Asbrú spun and hurtled through the dark of space, crippled and blind. Only the briefest of flashes on the vid screens had shown the crew the horrible truth of the situation. They had been sucked down a wormhole and spat out in another solar system––maybe even another galaxy––abruptly deposited in what could barely be called orbit above a strange, alien planet.

  And they were about to crash.

  Warning sirens and flashing lights turned the command center into a strobe-lit nightmare of rattling panic as, one by one, the crew slumped into unconsciousness from the sheer g-forces their bodies were being subjected to. The auto-leveling gyros were shot, and the angle of entry was far too steep for the ship’s structural integrity specifications.

  The heat shielding quickly shifted from orange-hot to white, bits and pieces shearing away as the Asbrú violently rattled its way through the planet’s exosphere. Emergency extinguishers snuffed the fires that sparked where the hull was breached, but decompression of those sections quickly killed the blacked-out crew unfortunate enough to be strapped in within them.

  Like a flaming comet, the ship descended, cooling slightly once in the planet’s atmosphere, but not nearly enough to quench the smoldering embers on its glowing hull. Impact with the surface, however, more than solved that problem.

  They hit hard, but not hard enough to break the ship apart, as luck had it. The ship instead settled into a rough slide, the belly of the craft digging a ragged trench in the red soil as its lower decks and resident crew were shredded to bits before the Asbrú came to a stop, its smoking wreck cracking and pinging as the superheated metal gradually cooled in the early-morning air.

  The Earth ship had crashed, and on an alien world at that. They would be the first humans ever to set foot on a distant planet. All they needed was to pull themselves from the wreckage. To climb free and survive.

  And survive they did, but only just. Some of them, at least.

  Charlie had been protected a bit better than most, being safely tucked away in the engineering compartment adjacent the control center, where he had been desperately trying to bring systems back online when the ship went down. Rika, the second-in-command, had also fared well, waking to find herself buried beneath a pile of twisted wreckage, but intact and unharmed.

  The captain, however, was not so lucky, his fate evidenced by the drying red smear where his command seat had once been, before the ton of metal had torn through the compartment, taking it, and its occupant, with it.

  All in all, seven of the two dozen aboard had survived, but even with reduced numbers, they knew rations would still be an issue. However, when Charlie and Rika discovered a strange, iridescent water hidden in a buried cavern in the desert wasteland in which they’d crashed, they thought they actually might have a decent chance at long-term survival.

  It wasn’t just water, but a water that apparently healed what it touched. A water that they had both swum in, as well as imbibed before heading back to the others.

  They thought it was a discovery that could help the survivors heal and regain their strength, and it very well might have, if not for the green-skinned elf-looking aliens that had overrun their campsite at their crashed ship, taking Charlie and Rika hostage, before killing the rest of the crew––men and women deemed too injured to have much value in trade.

  Charlie and Rika, it seemed, had been captured and thrust into slavery.

  The Tslavars, they were called. A group of planet-hopping traders working for an iron-fisted employer. Someone named Yanna Sok. Apparently, she was not only powerful in the realm of commerce, but, Charlie later learned, also possessed rather strong magic in her veins.

  Yes, magic.

  It was something he took a long time coming to terms with. At first, he had thought it was merely a glitch in his captors’ strange translation unit, a software embedded in the shocking restraint collar around every slave’s neck. Only later did he learn that it truly was magic, the varying iterations present in a tiny fraction of people across the several hundred civilized systems in this unusual galaxy.

  It was the suns that caused the development of those powers. Different radiations triggering different abilities to manifest. Some were barely powered at all, while others––the deadly vislas, and lesser emmiks, and mesters, respectively––were in possession of substantial natural gifts.

  A subset of powered beings were dealt a tough hand, possessing powers but either unable to use them themselves, such as the power-storing Ootaki with their priceless golden hair, or ship-driving Drooks, men and women whose gifts led most of them to slavery, forced to power all manner of transport.

  Charlie and Rika’s technology, he learned, was an anomaly. An almost blasphemous ‘tech-magic’ the denizens of this galaxy simply couldn’t understand. They were th
e only two who knew how it worked, but that was soon to change, and not in a good way.

  Rika, stubborn and tough, had drawn the ire of their captors. As a result, she was subjected to what Charlie learned was essentially an alien mind cleanse. Not a spell, but a destruction of part of her brain. His only human friend had been lobotomized.

  Angry and afraid for his life, Charlie bolted for freedom at his first opportunity, only to be captured by another group of aliens. But these were no slave traders. These were pirates.

  Once the shock of meeting actual alien space pirates wore off, Charlie kept his head down and did his job, staying alive and earning the respect of the captain and the friendship of Marban, the very pirate who had first captured him. Oddly enough, the two soon became fast friends, and Charlie even found himself promoted from a mere prisoner laborer to a member of the pirate crew.

  A human space pirate among aliens. It was an odd place for the engineer from Earth to wind up, to say the least.

  Disaster struck, as it was wont to do, and his former Tslavar captors slaughtered a sizable group of his pirate brothers, recapturing Charlie and eventually selling him for Zomoki food when he refused to become a gladiator trainee.

  Zomoki, he quickly learned, were dragons. The very concept blew his mind, but he would see them up close and personal soon enough. One large, red dragon in particular. Its blood mingled with his in an accident when he bandaged its wounded wing, sending him into a fever and nearly killing him. But he survived, and when he woke, something felt different. Unfortunately for him, he was sent to gladiator training before the opportunity to investigate presented itself.

  There, Ser Baruud, a legendary fighter whose brilliance in the arena had earned his freedom, took him in and taught him the ways of combat. Weeks turned to months. Months to years. Soon, Charlie found himself not only fighting and winning bout after bout, but wielding magic as naturally as he had used technology in what seemed a lifetime ago.

  It was during his greatest bout yet––a multi-combatant fight to the death––that he once more met that red dragon. And she remembered him as well. Though on opposing teams, they fought together, a visceral bond linking them, the dragon’s magic flowing into Charlie as he cast the most powerful spell of his life.

  The resulting emergency stun spell applied by the powerful vislas overseeing the event threw him into unconsciousness for days. Days in which strange dreams buffeted his mind. He woke to find himself on a beautiful new world. One where his old slave cellmate was a household chef––the comfort of a familiar face was a great relief––and his own new garments were those of a normal man rather than a gladiator or pirate.

  Charlie, it seemed, was finally somewhere he could call home.

  Then the dreams came. The dreams, and the glowing, golden eyes.

  Charlie woke with a start.

  This time he had been aboard the Rixana with Marban and his other pirate friends, drinking and celebrating another successful raid. The festivities were just getting good when those damned glowing eyes butted in again.

  “Pirates?” a voice asked, amused, before he snapped from his slumber.

  It was morning, he judged by the light flowing through his window. Earlier than his preferred wake-up time, but the smell of fresh-baked goods wafting up from Tuktuk’s kitchen was enough to motivate him to rise and dress. One thing his friend had been telling the truth about when they were cellmates aboard the Tslavar ship, he was one hell of a cook.

  He slid into his soft leather boots and opened the door to his room and headed down to the kitchen.

  “Charlie! You’re up early,” his blue-skinned friend said, his eye stalks pivoting to better greet him while he continued cooking.

  “Yeah, well––”

  “Ah, another bad dream?” he said, noting Charlie’s tired eyes.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it a bad dream. Just odd, is all.”

  “With you, that could mean just about anything,” Tuktuk joked. “Here, these just came out of the oven.”

  Charlie picked one of the piping-hot pastries from the tray, blowing the steam from it before taking a bite, careful not to burn his mouth.

  “Oh, Tuk. That’s awesome.”

  “‘Awesome?’ That was one of the good words, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then I’m glad to hear it. Some of your lingo the translator spell still has trouble with. Would you like some tea to go with?”

  “You know I can never turn down a nice cuppa, though I gotta tell you, I really miss coffee right about now.”

  “Yes, you’ve mentioned this beverage several times. Sadly, I can only offer tea.”

  “And I’m grateful,” Charlie said, accepting the mug gladly. “So, any word on the man of the house?”

  “Nothing yet,” Tuktuk said. “But I’m sure he’ll come around soon.”

  “Cool,” Charlie replied.

  He’d been at Visla Yoral Maktan’s estate for several days, but he had not yet met his new owner. Despite years as a slave in one capacity or another, it was still odd calling someone that. But until he finally met the man, Charlie really didn’t know what was expected of him on this new world.

  He was a victorious gladiator whose former life had been chief engineer on a spaceship from another galaxy. He had no clue what the powerful wizard wanted with him, but whatever was in store for him, given the way his life had turned around in the past few years, it could be just about anything. With his luck, he couldn’t help but wonder.

  He would find out soon enough, of course, and given what he’d experienced so far, compared to his stint aboard the slave ship and his time among pirates, this place was an absolute pleasure resort. It was one hell of a substantial improvement in lifestyle, and he was damn sure not going to mess it up.

  Chapter Two

  Absent specific chores, Charlie had walked to the small garden outside the main building to get some fresh air, then proceeded to move through a series of stretches and calisthenics, the daily practice drilled into him from his years training under Ser Baruud.

  The legendary gladiator had taught him far more than just how to fight in his time there, though he had most certainly done that in abundance, as Charlie’s owner had paid him to do. But in addition to martial skills, he taught him to calm his mind, as well. To tune in to his body and spirit. And thanks to his teachings, Charlie had also developed a decent grasp of a good many combative spells.

  Charlie had been without a konus, or any other magical device, since his arrival, but he still went through his memorized list of spells, as he did every day, repeating them in his head in a sing-song mnemonic tune that linked them in an easily memorized way. Even after all of his training, Charlie still messed a few up in actual combat, but magic was never his strong suit to begin with.

  His hand-to-hand skills from his training on Earth, however, had proven a sizable advantage when he faced magic-dependent opponents. Combined with some dirty tricks learned from his pirate friends, Charlie was able to hold his own against most in single combat.

  When it came to strict magic, however, he was typically outclassed and underpowered. To compensate, Ser Baruud had him focus on what some might consider trick spells. Sneaky little things that seemed benign, but distracted his opponents by sheer surprise if not force, allowing him to get close enough to lay hands on them.

  Now that he was living a domestic life rather than a gladiatorial one, he wondered what exactly the visla would have him do.

  No sense dwelling on ifs and maybes, he reminded himself as he cleared his mind and began another series of movements.

  He continued for the better part of an hour. There was no rush. He had––so far, at least––nothing else required of him since he’d arrived after his final, epic gladiatorial bout. As such, he was going to keep doing what he always did until told to do otherwise. One of the few benefits of his position as a slave.

  Upon completion, he cleaned up and returned to the kitchen to chat with T
uktuk as he prepared ingredients for the afternoon and evening’s meals. While his staff would help cook for the dozens of slaves and servants working the grounds, Tuktuk himself had earned the role of Visla Maktan’s personal chef. Whenever the visla was at the estate, the blue man was to prepare his meals, and no one else.

  It was a great honor in Tuktuk’s eyes. He had often regaled Charlie with tales of his culinary prowess as they ate the tasteless slop served aboard the Tslavar ship when they were slaves performing manual labor together. Now, he was putting his money where his mouth was, and, so far, his talent for the food arts had lived up to his hype.

  He was cleaning some vegetables fresh from the plot of gardens near the outer buildings when a buzz of chatter filtered to the kitchen.

  “It sounds like the visla may be heading off-planet again soon,” Tuktuk noted. “He only just returned. I hope he at least stays long enough to enjoy today’s meals.”

  “If not, I’m sure I can think of someone who won’t mind eating them,” Charlie said with a sly grin.