Hard Magic by Larry Correia Read Free Book Online

don’t make sense to me.” He waited for it. None of it really made sense to him. He’d just learned to control it by instinct. Most of the others like them weren’t so lucky. “You taught me to feel ahead before I Travel . . .”
    “And you always do, right?”
    “Of course,” she said defensively. “But lately, it’s been more than feeling. If I try real hard, it’s like, I don’t know, like I can see the space before I get there. I don’t know. I don’t have the words to explain it good. It only happens if I try real hard.”
    The old farmer nodded thoughtfully. According to everything he had learned over decades of practice, that was impossible. You didn’t see until your eyes actually got there. A Traveler could get a sense of wrongness if he was about to jump into a bad place, and that could save your life, but you couldn’t actually see anything until you arrived. “I don’t know how magic works, just that it does. I teach you what I know, don’t mean you can’t learn more than me.”
    Faye seemed perplexed by that. “Why is it that some of us can do some kinds of magic, but only some of us, and we can only do one kind? If we got one magic, why can’t we get more?”
    He knew that she was wrong. There was at least one person out there with more than one Power, but she was too young to have to know about him . “That’s how God wants it, I guess.”
    “What if magic was something that could be learned, and we’re not just born with? What if regular people could learn it, like from books or a school or something?”
    This train of thought made him uncomfortable. Faye assumed what most people did, that there was only one kind of magic, but he knew that there was the other kind. The old kind, the bad kind. He grunted. “Less talk, more work. Come on. Calves are hungry.”
    Faye sighed. “They’re always hungry.”
     
     
    Springfield, Illinois
     
    “Sullivan! Are you okay?”
    He blinked against the brilliant light. His head was throbbing, pulsing like somebody was running a blacksmith’s forge inside his brain. “Ohhh . . . that Fade cooled me good,” he muttered, pulling himself up. Cowley was kneeling at his side, blood leaking from his nose. Sullivan wasn’t the only one the Fade had worked over.
    The Spiker mashed one big hand against the side of his head, and it came away stained red. He’d really gotten belted. Sullivan knew that he should have been out for a lot longer, but he’d spent a lot of time using his Powers to toughen his body. It wasnlike there was much else to do inside an eight-by-ten windowless cell all day. “Which way did they go?” He picked his fedora up and tugged it down tight on his head.
    Cowley pointed up.
    The blimp. Sullivan got to his feet. “How’s Purvis?”
    “I’ll live,” the senior agent grumbled from off to the side, his left arm hanging at a very unnatural angle. “Everybody’s alive, but they’re hurt bad. I don’t know where the locals are. They should have come running when they heard shooting. They’ve got a gang of Actives, Sullivan. There are more of them that went up there. A Mover bounced the boys I left on the door. There was another girl, who knows what she does?”
    Sullivan stood. His head hurt, but everything seemed to be attached. No bones were sticking out, and he wasn’t squirting blood, so he’d been worse. He checked his Power. It had automatically returned and he could feel the weight in his chest. He had about half of what he’d started the night with. There was a sudden clank as the docking clamps were retracted from the dirigible. “Take care of your men, Melvin. I’m going after them.”
    “There are at least three Actives,” Purvis warned.
    “That’s suicide,” Cowley said, grimacing as he picked up his tommy gun. “I’m coming with you.”
    That kind of bravery would probably get the agent killed someday, but Sullivan could respect it. “Fine, let’s go.” His .45 was on the ground and he