Free Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) by John Daulton

coming from the Earth ships was easily diverted through and out the back side of Citadel ’s armor. Though no one would ever say it aloud, that particular enchantment was a direct order of the Queen, and Aderbury for one was, at that particular moment, quite happy that he had so willingly complied. The missiles were another matter, however. Citadel did have a variety of Altin’s original Combat Hop spell, the one he’d adapted for his tower, but it had been devised for the Hostile weapons, the long battering rams of stone, not the Earth weaponry. There was no description woven into the spell to trigger it to leap away from the explosive missiles the fleet ships used. And from what Aderbury had been made to understand, it was not just the impact of these weapons that was cause for concern: close was bad too.
    “Conduit wants to know what you want to do with those missiles,” Cebelle said, her thoughts and those of Conduit Huzzledorf clearly in echo of his own. Fortunately, the woman’s constitutional calm remained in place, though there was an edge to the telepathic request that let Aderbury know he didn’t have much time to decide. “Will it be you or us?”
    “You,” he said. “Ice walls. Time it so they don’t have time to dodge. And make them thick. Forty spans.”
    She didn’t answer, but he felt her leave his mind. He turned and, through his megaphone, called down to his men. “Illusionists’ marks by sector on those missiles in case the ice walls fail. Get them up now. Teleporters grab them if they get through and send them out behind us as far as you can. Keep sending them away if you have to, until we can coordinate merges and transmutes.”
    He saw the movements indicating his people were setting that plan into motion, and he turned back to watch as the blue auras of light that glowed from the back ends of the missiles grew in size with their approach. He waited, his fingers tapping the stone ledge of the balcony in anticipation of the first ice wall. The Earth weapons were still too far away for him to see the conjured ice walls very well in that darkness, but form they did, and, one by one, the missile fires flashed in one manner or another, then either snuffed out immediately or went spinning off wildly before burning out. None of them made the enormous blinding flashes Altin and the teleporters who had fought alongside the fleet had spoken of. He wondered if these were different kinds of missiles, less powerful than those he’d heard of. Or perhaps hitting the ice walls had simply broken them before they could go off. Either way, it didn’t seem to matter. At least the threat was past. For now.
     
    It might be called bad timing that the particular moment of Envette’s arrival on the NTA II ’s bridge coincided with the complete obliteration of the first salvo of missiles the fleet sent at Citadel . It certainly did not set the conversation off on very good footing. It did, however, give her a chance to see what had happened, for when she arrived—carefully placed at the back of the bridge out of danger of merging with anyone—she was able to watch as the ship’s lasers, like those of its squadron mates, skewed and fanned out harmlessly, shooting off into the vacancy of space after being diverted through Citadel . While none of the crew seemed overly surprised by that, they were all made instantly furious by the appearance of the ice barriers, into which the missiles collided like goats charging into a castle wall that had suddenly appeared before them. Even though the NTA II herself had no missiles to add to that barrage—a condition that they would say came thanks to the Prosperion deception that had disarmed them during the attack on the Hostile world—everyone aboard felt the letdown when those weapons were all so easily destroyed. In that moment, it became clear that lasers and missiles all meant nothing against Citadel .
    “Well, that’s it,” said a lean fellow sitting at the