Penny

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

The contrast between the opulent floors above and the mundane working space was jarring. Worse still the corridors that lead between maintenance and storage areas were of the same decorated marble as the rest of the palace. Doors of ornately carved wood opened onto greasy fabrication shops and warehouse shelving. Presumably the arrangement meant that a noble who had business here wouldn’t have to see the unsightliness necessary to run an establishment of this size. Sayeeda found the experience unpleasant in the extreme as though the hall way were a magical conduit with doors opening to alternate reality.

With Taya’s directions they raced down the hall and through several bays. Workmen in palace smocks watched them run past with shocked expressions, doubtlessly wondering what to make of the strange ensembles of battle gear and formal wear. Junebug as glad of their shock because she didn’t have her less lethal riot rifle anymore and she didn’t want to blast a half dozen civilians to paste if she could avoid it.

The roar of aircar fans filled the air as they opened the door to the hangar bay. It was an odd mix of stylish and practical, with expensive limousines and sporty compact air cars lined up in twin rows of glistening paint and sparkling chrome. High vaulting pillars supported a high ceiling which allowed even amateur pilots, as many of the nobles no doubt were, to land safely. The support pillars hung with vast silk banners twenty or thirty meters long, displaying the sigils and heraldry of Dar’mond’s noble houses, Aiden’s own sigil foremost amongst them.

At the end of the chamber a knot of armed men were climbing into a pair of air cars, their fans already running up to speed. Some of the men, not yet aboard, spotted the pair and opened fire. Plasma bolts burst on the doorframe and sprayed shards of jagged stone and flaming timber in all directions. Neil and Sayeeda both dived forward into the hangar, skidding on the slick marble flooring to land behind one of the pillars.

“Ok…” she began, ready to outline a plan but Neil was already on his feet. Yelling at the top of his lungs he took off along the right hand row of cars. The pilot had no weapons but made his hands into imitation pistols as he had when they landed and mock firing them at the gunmen. Junebug could only watch in horror as the fire shifted to him. Plasma bolts ravened through the air, one struck the hood of a red sports car igniting the paint and windscreen in a fireball of burning plastic.

“Make a distraction he said…” she muttered to herself, but it was too late to worry about strategy now. With the attention on Neil and the ongoing destruction of property he was causing, she jumped to her feet and bolted down the left hand side, keeping low to keep out of the sight of the gun men. Her formal shoes pounded on the marble and she was really glad she hadn’t worn heels for the opera this evening. None of the shooters even looked at her, their whole attention focused on the capering Neil as he doded and rolled from car to burning car.

By the time she reached the end of the chamber the big limousine was already lifting on air pressure. Throwing caution to the wind she lifted the shotgun to her shoulder and pulled the trigger. The big weapon thumped hard against her shoulder and the windscreen starred in a thousand crazed stress lines. The glass had to be bulletproof and though the pilot was in no danger, no civilian reacts well to a point blank shotgun blast. The unseen pilot hauled back on the flight yoke and the big aircar lifted and tilted towards Sayeeda the back blast of its fans blowing her hair out in a short snapping banner and forcing her to narrow her eyes. It was an understandable mistake. If the pilot had kept his head, he could have slid out of the hanar on his air cushion and slipped away. As it as his panicked maneuver liftd the bottom of th car towards Sayeeda, exposing the micron precise fan arrays which powered it. She squeezed the trigger and held it in a long thumping, shoulder bruising burst, walking it down the length of the car. Thousands of pellets smashed into the fans, air intakes and control rigs. Several of the fans seized on the spot. The shafts, rotating at thousands or RPM, bound in their housings, cooking the bearings in a shower of sparks more brilliant than any firework. The imbalance in thrust flipped the aircar like a childs toy, smashing the top of it into a pillar that starred all of the bullet proof windows and smashed the chassis into mangled scrap. A hydralic line blew in a fireball that seemed boring amid the fountaining sparks. Either a saftey cut off finally kicked in or, less likely, the pilot was able to cut the power and the wrecked limousine slid down the pillar with a groan of rending metal and hit the ground, coming to rest nose to the ground and rear to the pillar at something like seventy degrees.

Sayeeda sucked in a throat flaying breath of air filled with the stink of a dozen different combustibles, and swung the shot gun onto the four gunman standing in open mouth horror. She dropped one with a shot to the chest and the others threw their weapons aside and ran for one of the service exits. Taya was shouting something in her ear but Sayeeda couldn’t hear anything over the thundering adrenaline, Whatever the girl needed would wait. Junebug staggered towards the wrecked car, making it nearly to the vehicle before the door cracked open and Alexander flopped out onto the stone floor. His handsome face was bloodied and the general’s uniform he wore as torn and disheveled. Smoke poured from the interior of the car.

“Sayeeda stop!” a voice yelled in her ear. She looked left and saw no one before she realised it was Aiden talking through her implant.

“Do NOT shoot him!” the Prince commanded. Alexander was on his hands and knees looking up at the shotgun wielding figure in her bizzare mix of evening gown and combat gear. Blood ran from both nostrils and one of his ears and a row of medals had gashed his chest during the crash. She leveled the gun at his face and pulled it in snug to her shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Neil getting up from behind a wrecked air bike.

“THAT IS AN ORDER!” Aiden roared. The barrel of the gun wavered for a moment as the adrenaline began to drain from her system.

“Yeah,” she replied and then pulled the trigger. Alexander screamed in horror as the weapon clicked empty, its magazine expended. For a moment there was silence except for the crackle of fires and the differential pings of cooling metal.

“Yeah, no sweat,” she repeated, her voice weary.
@POOHEAD189

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Camilla twisted with indecision. Her instinct was to hide in the temple and wait for whatever was out there to kill Gorn, hoping it would pass her by. She thought of the reavers claim about shielding her from the mutating effect of the waste and how it would fail were he to die. Something deep inside of her told her that he was telling the truth. If she wanted to avoid damnation at the hands of the ruinous powers she needed to keep the raider alive. Reluctantly she peered out from behind the titanic arch of the temple.

The courtyard as in chaos. Gorn was surrounded by a group of creatures that defied easy description. One of them looked like a woman carved of blue veined marble but her arms were replaced with a tentacles composed of glittering crystal knives. Another was a man with skin like a vultures neck and equally grotesque talons. As she watched third creature, a man wreathed in pulsing varicolored light struck at gorn with a spear of congealed shadows. The Norcan’s axes wove a web of steel around him, flicking aside blows and opening a path as he retreated, backing towards a large fountain.

Gripping her new found blade she ran across the courtyard on silent dancers feet. Without so much as a sound, she leaped into the air, landed on the crumbled base of a pillar and launched herself onto the back of a creature that seemed half man and half spider. The things coarse hair scraped her thighs as she landed, plunging the elven weapon into the joint between its humanlike torso and the spider like adomen. The blade slid in like a bullet through butter. The thing reared back with a scream of agony, thick yellowish blood spurting from the wound as the Tilean twisted the blade against suction, yanked it free and rolled off the things back. She landed on both feet and one hand, her sword hand free to slashed through the things hair covered leg a foot from the ground before rolling clear of the stricken beast.

Gorn shouted something at her in his own language which she neither understood nor cared to understand. She sprang to her feet and deftly parried a blade of run encrusted obsidian down and away from her body before slashing the eyes from its wielder, a woman composed of twisting gold filaments. There was a sudden stench of burning mushrooms as the wielder collapsed like a pile of wet pasta without so much as a sound. Three of the things came at her in a blur of tentacles and exotic weapons but she deflected the blows or pirouetted away from the strikes, dark hair flying in the breeze. She realized she was laughing as she vaulted onto another pillar and flipped over the back of one of the attackers, thrusting backwards into its body and then spinning to send its jewel infused head tumbling across the ancient flag stones.

Suddenly the plaza was clear save for the Tilean, the Norscan and the twitching bodies of whatever their attackers had been. Blood and icor dripped from Gorn’s twin axes, the bodies around him mute testament to the good use he had made of her unexpected appearance. Their eyes locked across the carnage. The reaver’s eyes flicked to her sword as she bought it down backward, poising the tip a foot above the ground, blade out behind and to the left in a duelists stance.

“Put it down,” the Norscan grated, eye flicking from the sword to its wielder as though he couldn’t decide where the threat truly lay. The blade of the weapon glinted in the lifeless illumination of the anemic arctic sun.

“You can’t…” Gorn began but Camilla was already sprinting towards him, sweeping her blade upwards in a disemboweling stroke. Steel flashed on iltimar as Gorn’s second axe cut down towards Camilla, but the lithe Tilean as already slipping sideways into the gap the axe’s parry had opened. The pressure on the axe was light but when the Norscan shoved Camilla merely stiffend her wrist and let the momentum throw her into a spin, bringing the blade around in a glittering arch. Gorn yelled a guttural curse and leveled an axe blow at Camilla’s midriff, concern for his duty to keep her alive forgotten. The darkened steel scythed empty air as she leaped backwards and cat like onto the edge of the well, paused a moment to regain her balance.

“The Prince take your bitch soul!” Gorn snarled but Camilla was already moving launching herself like a missle, with her meager but perfectly balanced weight behind the strike. The chaos worshiper batted her blade with one axe and bough the second up underhanded, like a man gutting a fish. Camilla sprung from the force of the first parry, spinning sideways and twisting in the air, flipping over the Norscan’s shoulder. With a roar that echoed off the surrounding mountain Gorn began to swing around but Camilla landed on both feet in a croutch and pivoted like a flywheel, one hand dabbed to the dusty stone to steady the stroke. The Elvish blade sliced through both of the reavers ankles like a razor through silk. For a moment Gorn seemed to stagger and then his shins came away from his ankles, the cut making a slightly downward angle from left to right and amputating the top of his right boot. Instinctively the big man staggered and landed on the stumps. Gorn screamed in pain and then toppled to the ground in a mound, axes clattering free of his grip. Camilla deliberately kicked both of the weapons clear and then lay the point of the curved blade to the vanquished Norscan’s throat.

For a moment she stood, totally motionless as blood trickled slowly from the stumps of the chaos warriors legs. His eyes locked hatefully on hers as she touched the point to his throat, waking a small droplet of blood around the razor sharp point. The ruin shuddered and the buildings bean to crumble, slowly at first and then as quickly as sandcastles giving way before the onslaught of the ocean, elegant ruins sinking into dust. As she watched the walls of the temple came down and she saw a statue as tall as the nave of the building, an elf she thought fleetingly but it only lasted a moment longer than the walls which had concealed it, returning as well to the tide of pale white sand flooding out in all directions. For some reason Camilla felt a feeling of grudging approval wash over her as the last of the statue vanished into ruin.

“The Winds will drink your flesh!” Gorn hissed. Camilla let out a breath, her throat dry from her previous manic laughter.

“Only if you die,” she replied, sliding the blade into her belt and picking up one of the gold filaments that remained of the strange woman. She looped the improvised rope around Gorn’s wrists and pulled the knot tight. Then made an improvised tourniquet for each leg. The reaver struggled but the blood loss and the shock of his wounds rendered him to weak to prevent her. Gorn’s lips struggled to move but he spoke quietly and insistently. Confident that the Norscan could do her no harm she leaned closer to hear.

“Slaanesh,” he whispered, his voice dripping with triumph, lust and dark hatred. Camilla slumped into the white sand of the ruins destruction, eyes gazing sightlessly at the shifting aurora of the sky.
@POOHEAD189

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

It became hard to keep track of time. Camilla trudged forward, through the snow, her wrists bound and attached by a rope to Gorn. The Norscan apparently needed neither sleep nor rest, though he periodically stopped to allow her to collapse for what felt like a few moments before he kicked her awake. Sometimes there would be a fire going and there would be some small badly burned creature in the flames. Camilla ate hungrily despite her revolution, trying to keep her strength up. Her heart ached for Cydric. There was no way to know if he even still lived. A glimmer of hope remained, perhaps the Nordlanders had prevailed, perhaps one of the maimed messangers had made it ashore and evaded the bulk of the stranded Norscans, but it seemed precious little to hold onto. Even if he knew of her, there was no way for him to find her across this barren waste, where the snow and wind devoured all sign of their passage.

After four such stops, she hesitated to call them days, the snow gave way increasingly to bare rock. A range of mountains rose in the distance and small streams flowed down from it, vanishing into sinkholes that Camilla imagined fell to the sea beneath the glacial ice. The sky above the mountains was lit by a couruscance of rainbow hewed light which seemed to pulse as though alive. The air warmed as well, astonishingly fast if she were any judge and a half day after leaving the snow fields she no longer needed the fur cloak that the reaver had given to her. Gorn himself spoke little answering most questions with little more than a grunt or a curse. He seemed to be growing apprehensive which could not have been a good sign.

Another day passed and they reached the foothills of the mountains. To Camilla’s surprise they came upon ruins nestled within the rocky bones of the mountain. That they were eleven was obvious but that elves had ever lived so close to the waste seemed impossible to believe. It wasn’t a large settlement, consisting of a few dozen lichen choked buildings and the stump of what had once been a tower, though time or some other calamity had long since toppled its smooth stone.

“We will camp here,” Gorn declared and, to her surprise, drew a short steel knife and sliced the bonds from wrists. Blood flowed painfully back into her fingertips as she flexed them, nail beds pinkening even in the chill air.

“Aren’t you worried I’ll escape?” she asked as the reaver began to pile rotten timber together for a fire. Gorn laughed a short bitter laugh and shook his head.

“If you were to run now, you would be a drooling spawn before you ever reached the sea,” he assured her and pointed to the brand on his head. The flesh around it had blackened and the veins that spread from it were dark and spidery.

“Get too far from me and you will lose your protection, if I die you will lose your protection, your only chance of reaching the Altar of Urken-sugah unchanged is with me,” The Norscan grated. A flash of insight stole over Camilla.“

Your absorbing the magic, taking the taint into yourself, aren’t you?” she blurted. The Norscan nodded as the small fire caught, kindling crackling around the large pieces of detritus.

“They Prince will reward me when I bring you to his altar,” Gorn said, his eyes hardening into something distant an inhuman.

“You will kneel before me and beg me for my favor,” the Norscan wen’t on, relish creeping into his voice. He licked his lips and his tongue seemed longer than she remembered, slithering out of his mouth like a questing snake. The fire grew purple and for a heartbeat Camilla thought she saw a figure in the flames. She turned her eyes away trying not to think about it.

Camilla woke in the darkness. In the far distance something howled mournfully. To her suprise Gorn was slumped over, apparently asleep. As quietly as she could she came to her feet, uncertain of what she was going to do but certain she should be doing something. Unbidden, her eyes drifted to one of the building, a large oval shaped building flanked by crumbling columades. There was something there, a glimmer of something. Camilla cast a look back at the fire and her sleeping jailer. Gorn hadn’t stirred. Carefully she picked her way over to the building and peered through the ruined archway. Inside as a vast hall, something about it filled her with a mix of excitement and trepidation. With gentle footfalls she picked her way through the hall. Crumbled benches lay on both sides, leading up to a marble altar which was so coated with dust that she would never have picked out its purpose if the rest of the building wasn’t so clearly a temple.

In her mind great statues flanked the altar and she could hear a distant and fey chanting. The scent of blood and steel filled her nostrils as she stepped towards the altar and the chanting, music of a cold and deadly purity swelled in her mind. With a trembling hand she reached out toward the dust covered altar and brushed back an ancient and moth eaten piece of cloth. Beneath it a cruelty curved sword glinted. Its steel shimmered with intricately inlayed designs which faded along the length as though the steel itself were an unseen fog. Gold fillagree wrapped the handle and a small but perfectly cut stone of uncertain color.

“Ranald’s mercy,” she breathed and picked up the sword, finding it to be perfectly balanced. The cold chanting faded as she lifted the blade and she found herself alone in the silent temple. Outside a creature howled, far closer than before and she heard a throaty war cry followed by the scrabbling of claws on stone.

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Frozen timber splintered under the reavers heavy boots. The ship was of Elven make, long and sleek but the jagged angles and harsh runes seemed not to fit the graceful aesthetic she had seen in the Elven quarter of Marienburg. Its timbers were dark, like teak or ebony and in places they were charred as though fire had claimed it. Gorn vaulted down into a hold where a pile of skeletons lay in intermingled heaps, frost rimming empty eye sockets. Here and their an arm still hung from iron shackles. A slave ship?

Gorn kicked the bones aside contemptuously as he clambered to the back of the ship crouching through a doorway. Camilla swung uselessly on his back unable to do more than kick feebly at the walls. If the Norscan noticed he didn’t bother to comment. In a smaller hold he found a rune covered chest with a grunt of triumph. Gold and silver winked when he pried the lid open, revealing a trove finely minted coins. The Norscan plucked one of the gold coins at seeming random and clambered out of the ship.

The cold was becoming intense and even the furs her captors had given her seemed little protection as Gorn finally untied her bonds and dropped her to the snow crusted ice. They were sheltered in the lee of the Elven ship which spared them the worst of the wind.

“Why did you bring me here,” Camilla demanded, the gregarious Tilean finding the silence oppresive.

“The Prince commands that you be taken to the Altar of Chalmindrian,” Gorn replied, tearing free pieces of the shattered hull with his bare hands and piling them together. He produced a flint and steel and struck the timbers to light with surprising ease.

“If you fail his trials you will be fair claim as a slave, but until then you must remain as you are,” there was clear disappointment in the Norscan’s tone. From a pouch he produced a handful of some sort of powder and cast it into the small fire. The flames dyed down to almost nothing and then rose again with the same hateful purple hue she had seen on the beach.

“You are taking me to an altar?” she demanded. The reaver ignored her and drew the coin from his seal skin pouch. The gold coin had the visage of a heart stoppingly beautiful woman on the face of it. Some quirk of the artisan gave the face a look of hungry and hedonistic excess though Camilla couldn’t have said exactly what rendered it so. Gorn tossed the coin into the fire which again seemed to die down to a flicker, coiling and grasping at the coin.

“You have the Dark Princes’ favor, you should be honored,” Gorn said, to her utter amazement she realised that he was jealous. Her skin crawled at the thought. He was going to take her into the Waste for some sort of sacrifice? To make her swear allegiance to some dark god? She tried to stand, to run, throwing herself into the ocean would surely be better than allowing the waste to twist her into some hideous and damned mutant or some horrifying creature in black armor. The fire held her gaze like a clamp, she couldn’t move so much as a muscle.

Gorn reached down and seized a handful of her dark hair. He licked his lips hungrily as he beheld her but the commandment of his god was evidently a heavier compulsion than a drive for personal pleasure. With a swift jerk he severed a lock of her hair and cast it into the fire. The air stank of burning, shriveling hair for a moment before the arctic wind carried it away. Without a moment's hesitation, Gorn reached into the flame and seized the cherry red coin. His fingertips smoked and sizzled as he lifted the coin and with a shiver of pleasure pressed it to his forehead. The skin hissed as the hot metal burned him, for a moment its stood out against his skin and then, amazingly, it seemed to sink into his flesh, leaving only the brand of the woman's face on red and discolored skin. For a moment Camilla though she could see a faint shimmer of multicolored light flowing towards the brand.

“Your talisman is within me,” Gorn rumbled, “So long as I live, the winds of change will spare you. But should I die…” The Norscan left the threat unfinished. With a swift jerk of his knife he severed her bonds. Unsteadily she got to her feet, flexing limbs gone weak for the constriction of the cords. She looked back towards the cliff, there was still time, she could throw herself into the ocean and at least her soul would be safe. Gorn watched her with amusement.

“Hope is ever the doom of men,” he chuckled.

_______________________

Yantz plodded along behind Cydric, amazed and disgusted at how little the cold seemed to affect the big Ostlander. Skaldi, the dwarf, seemed to be taking a positive delight in the discomfort of his human companions, repeatedly asking if they were cold. Dietricha was still dressed in nothing more than her riding dress and a shawl. She should have been freezing and she looked as warm and untroubled as though she were strolling down the high street in Nuln rather than tramping through an icy wasteland at the edge of the world.

“You knew we were coming to the Chaos Wastes and you never mentioned that we might need warm clothing, or supplies?” he carped. They had loaded what they could from the boat but no one had expected a trip like this, or maybe no one but her.

“I didn’t know we were coming to the Chaos Wastes,” the wizard replied with an airy nonchalance which set Yantz’ teeth on edge. In his long and unfortunate association with the wizard he had never known her to be wrong.

“You literally told us…” Yantz bounced of Cydric as the Sergeant stopped suddenly, his eyes narrowing at the featureless snow. There was a long moment of tension and then one of the men screamed. Yantz spun towards the source of the sound and saw one of the greatswords go down under a mass of white fur and claws. One of his fellows slashed at the thing, lopping off a limb thicker than Beckers neck in a spray of blood.

“Fuck me,” Yantz cursed as a half dozen similar shapes, each as large a horse burst from concealing snow drifts. He yanked his pistol from his belt and pulled back the hammer with a comforting click.

“Unlikely,” Dietricha observed in a neutral voice, humming quietly to herself as men began to shout warnings to each other.
@POOHEAD189

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Sayeeda rolled into a crouch, brownish ichor coated her chest and right arm where Neil’s shotgun blast had splattered the first of the alien. Its companion roared as it swatted the pilot aside and then swung a short barreled weapon towards Junebug. With a spike of adrenaline she threw herself behind the large marble table a second before a spray of hypersonic flechettes tore the floor where she had been crouching to fragments of powdered stone.

“Fuck,” she moaned, her own rifle had been lost in the scuffle and the abbreviated nature of their preparations meant she didn’t have a side arm or another backup weapon beyond her power knife. She didn’t fancy her chances against the hulking xenos with only a six inch cutting bar. Glancing around desperately she caught sight of Neil’s shotgun laying against the wall a few feet beyond her. The alien made its weird hunting hiss and leapt atop the table with a crunch. Junebug dived for the weapon, snatching it up by the rubberized grip and twisting to face her opponent. The Hexangallion was already swinging its flechette gun down towards her. There was no time to aim, or properly brace, only to pull the trigger. The shotgun smacked into her shoulder with terrific force as it went of, the blast blowing the alien’s knee into a pulpy mass of shredded flesh and shattered bone. It screamed as its body betrayed it and toppled off the table into an ungraceful heap. Junebug fired a round into its chest and another into its head, spraying the white marble room with gore.

For a moment she lay on her back gasping, the smell of poisonous vapours and slaughtered alien tugging unpleasantly at her olfactory senses. The things smelled like burning dung, their blood or flesh evidently containing some kind of sulfurous compound. It wouldn’t be long before however was out in the hallway either rushed the room, or, more probably, tossed in grenades to do the work for them. Taya was yammering in her ear but Junebug ignored her, crawling instead to where Neil lay. The pilot was unconscious but still breathing. There was no way that Junebug was going to fight her way passed the remaining soldiers in the hallway dragging the supine pilot.

“Junebug,” Aiden’s voice sounded in her mastoid implant, “Alexander and his cronies are on the move, they are headed for the garage four levels down from you.”

That didn’t strike Junebug as a good idea, for all Alexander knew they might have an anti-aircraft gun waiting to swat him out of the sky, but war was a fog and no one ever had complete information. As it happened it was the right move, there was no way they could make it down four levels unless…

“We are on it,” Sayeeda acknowledged.

The window blew out with a gust of wind that swept a storm of paper and detritus out into the night. The howling wind took Sayeeda by surprise but it should not have done. They were several hundred feet above the ground and there was nothing but the shattered glass to obstruct them. With a shout she ran for the window one hand on Neils belt the other on his heavy shotgun. She leaped into the abyss before she could think about what she was doing, plunging downwards at heart stopping speed. The rope which Neil had worn like a bandolier played out behind her until it snugged up tight against the marble table. The jerk nearly broke Junebugs ribs, but the webbing she and Neil wore distributed the force of the four story fall enough to save them. Nonetheless, they slammed against the window with enough force to star its reflective surface. Awkwardly she turned the shotgun to press against the window and blew it inwards with another shower of shattered glass and then swung them inside. There was no way to disengage the rope so at the end of the swing she sliced it with her knife and the pair fell the remaining three feet to the carpeted floor.

The room appeared to be a lounge of some sort but it was presently deserted. Against the far wall was an impressive fish tank that had sprung a leak when one of the shot gun pellet ricochet through the relatively thin plastic wall. The slow leak would take hours to drain the half a tank of volume. This was the right floor, they just had to get to the garage before Alexander and his council could escape. Neil groaned below her and she realized she was sitting astride him. His eyes fluttered open and she rolled off him.

“Awww,” the pilot moaned in mock disappointment then pawed at the rope attached to his webbing.

“Rope, you always end up needing it.”
@POOHEAD189

Tombs & Treks: A Pulp Roleplay

She is clearly lying about her age!

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

The ship cut through the heavy chop like a plow through sandy soil. The wind was brisk from the south west, a foul wind for Norsca that forced the long boat to make long tacks to try and force its way closer to that forbidding coast. Skaldi had heated the new cut pines on a fire and collected the black resinous tar which dripped hissing from the end in helmets and then had the men smear the sticky goop on to the side of the ship. The resulting seal was better than caulking alone, but still allowed enough seepage that two or three men had to work at bailing to keep the level under control.

The crew made space for Dietricha at the rear of the ship a few feet ahead of the tiller bar. She sat cross legged on the bench humming idly to herself and occasionally muttering snatches of what sounded like an argument though with whom she argued was a mystery. Her robes were soaked by sea spray but she showed no sign at all of feeling cold, or even noticing the state of affairs. Periodically she glanced at the sky, screwed up her face and returned to her one sided argument.

Yantz had stripped out of his armor though he still wore a worn bastard sword across his back and a large cavalry horse pistol at his hip. The Rieklander wasn’t a huge man, but he had a sort of resigned solidity about him that was a comfort. His sandy hair flapped in the breeze and his mustache drooped as he stared at the rolling sea ahead with a distinct lack of enthusiasm

“Szo, you caam from da collage of magic dah?” Ivan asked as he joined Yantz and Cydric at the bow of the ship.

“That’s what the lady says,” Yantz said, though his tone was not exactly one of agreement.

“Ahand you. Not exactly great wizard looking,” Ivan pressed on, his accent rendering exactly as ex-zicked-ly. Yantz snickered in spite of himself.

“Not me, I’m just a guy with a sword,” he confided, swiping at his hair for the hundredth time without noticeably improving his situation.

“Why trevil wit da witch?” Ivan asked. Yantz sunk further into the dark woollen cloak he wore as though trying to find shelter from the cold sea air.

“Well I..”

“Herr Becker!” Dietricha said, her voice easily auidble even though it was from the other end of the ship and against the force of the wind. The disheveled looking wizard was standing now staring at the sky with a look of perplexion on her round face.

“You said they were going to Norsca?”

_______________________
Days Later….

Camilla awoke, to the yells of her captors. The ropes binding her wrists, bit painfully and her face felt raw from sun and salt. Ahead of them loomed a massive sheet of ice, that stretched from horizon to horizon.

“Norsca?” she wrasped, her voice dry from the flaying wind. Gorn laughed in derision at the comment. He seized Camilla by the hair and held her head up so she could watch the cliff of ice sliding closer.

“The Frozen Bones,” he rumbled as though it was supposed to mean something too her. For a moment she thought she heard something in the reavers voice, uncertainty, fear?

“We must reach the Valley of Uken-sugan by the time the Changer Moon watches us,” Gorn went on. His voice as quiet now as the vast ciff of ice loomed up, casting a frigid shadow. The were all of them afraid Camilla realizd as she glanced around the crew. Some of them glared at Gorn as though cursing them for bringing them to this place. The big Norscan did not appear to notice.

“You southerner call this the Chaos waste,” Gorn went on, it was the most he had said to her since she had passed out when he said… her mind skittered sideways and the crew all glanced at her as though she had spoken something. Blinking her eyes she tried to focus.

Gorn shouted something in a language she couldn’t unerstand and men rushed forward as he through the tiller bar over. They thrust out with their oars, frantically trying to fend the boat away from the fifty foot ice cliff. Suddenly Camilla pitched forward as her bonds were cut, her forehead bouncing of the deck. Gorn grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her against his back. Another Reaver bound her wrists together around his neck.

“What are you…” she began. Gorn took a pair of axes from the deck and took a running leap off the ship. Camilla screamed in panic as they sailed across the expanse of water between the ship and the cliff. Both axes sank deep into the ice, providing grip for the reaver. Behind her the ship began to pull away as she dangled above the freezing water. The crew began to shout, raggedly at first and then in increasing unison. Camila didn’t understand the words but somehow knew it to be a name.

“If you fight me southerner we will fall into the ocean, both of our bodies will be trapped beneath the Frozen Bones,” the reaver warned. Camilla’s full weight pulled at the man bull like neck but it didn’t seem to be a burden.

“Sounds like a win win,” she grated, trying to find something to do with her dangling feet. She couldn’t turn to see but from the sound of the chanting the long ship was pulling away rapidly.

“While you live, you have hope,” Gorn said though it sounded ironic rather than hopeful. With a huge effort he pulled one axe free and plunged it into the ice a few feet above them, spraying them both with shards of freezing crystal.

It took Gorn a long time to reach the top of the icy cliff. He neither slowed nor faltered but even hed was sweating by the time he pulled them both over the lip of the glacial sheet and slumped to the snow crusted ice in exhaustion.

“Testicoli de Ranaldi,” Camilla breathed in amazment and horror. Before them streted a plain of ice as far as the eye could see. Far from being barren the plain was covered with ships. There must have been a hundred of them, each one unquestionably a wreck. Many had frozen seaweed or dead crustaceans on them, as though they had been raized from the sea bed to be placed on this sheet of ice. Many of them were Norscan long ships but she saw others as well, a massive Imperial galleon lay on its side, snow blown up against one side in a drift. Slender vessel of elvish make and sleek corsairs lay scattered like bones of a great feast.

“All begin from the sea,” Gorn rumbled and pushed himself to his feet.

“We will find you a talisman.”

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

There was a moment of frozen silence as the guards goggled, clearly taken by surprise to find Neil spitting out a mouthful of nutribar as the rest of it flew from his hand. Junebug whirled a moment before the guards could react. A short birth, shatteringly loud in the confines of the small room, chattered from her rifle, tumbling the three men down in a spray of blood and tangle of limbs. Rather belatedly she remembered Aiden’s admonition to try not to kill any of the palace guards. Well, worse things happened in war time.

“I agree,” Junebug said dryly, “we should steal something.”

Outside she heard yells and distan reptilian shrieks as the gunfire alerted other guards human and otherwise. It would only be a few minutes before they were pinned down. Sayeeda stripped a weapons belt from one of the guards and pushed the door open. A burst of gunfire smashed the door frame to flaming splinters and she ducked back inside barely avoiding decapitation as a thundering combat shotgun added its roar to the cacophony.

With a twist of her wrist she plucked a grenade from the weapons belt, thumbed the arming switch.
“Fire in the hole,” she announced from reflex and then lobbed the explosive down the hallway in the general direction of the shots. There were shouts of alarm and then a concussive boom that rattled Junebug’s teeth. She leaned out around the corner and fired a burst into the coiling smoke and shattered masonry. There was another doorway about three meters along the hallway and the opposite side which stood ajar, its polished wooden surface scuffed and pitted by the grenade blast.

“Follow me, I’ll cover you,” she snapped and made a diving roll across the hallaway, batting the door open with her modest weight. The shotgun roared again and the blast came close enough that she felt the wind of its passage as she tumbled through the shattered doorway. A conference room with wall to ceiling glass windows and a massive white marble table stood in perfect condition save for where the concussion had knocked over a stack of papers. A massive foot came down towards her and she barely managed to squirm aside as one of the Hexangallion’s drove a foot down at her with enough force to crack the marble tiling.

“Fuck!” she yelled and swung her rifle awkwardly at the things ankle, driving it into the mass of bone and sinew with an audible crunch. The alien made an undulating hiss and dropped on top of her grabbing at her throat. She kneed it in what would have been a humans groin to no noticeable effect and then barely managed to catch its thick wrists before its hands could close on her throat. For a moment they were frozen together like status of effort, but then the aliens superior weight began to tell and its mandibles descended millimeter by millimeter towards her face.

Outside the volume of fire redoubled. This one must have ducked in here when the grenade came out, its weight rather than the grenade had smashed the door. Junebug kicked viciously at the thing but the angle was poor and robbed the blow of much of its force. The things tongue lolled out in anticipation of its triumph.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene wrapped his fingers around Solae’s as she spoke, taking a measure of comfort from simple physical contact. Men, and soldiers particularly rarely touched each other outside of the bounds of duty or sparing and Rene wondered if anyone had touched him for more than a few seconds in the years since he had taken the star. The lightning flashed outside at pulsing intervals, the bursts of light illuminated the room in sharp momentary reliefs. The light made Solae’s hair flash a white gold that was almost painful in its purity.

“I was on a punishment detail,” Rene began, thinking of Solae being saved by happenstance. So much coincidence had gone into bringing them together.

“When the Gids hit us I was halfway up a sensor antennae, a shell burst bought it down and I blacked out when I hit the ground and the wreckage fell on top of me. By the time I came to they were gone.” Lightning flashed again, illuminating his eyes as pools of darkness surrounded by brilliant white, the light casting his features in a sharp grimace of remembered pain. He squeezed her hand gently with his own.

“It isn’t surviving that makes you tough Solae, it was getting up and getting out of there,” he told her. She had been lucky, as he had, but he doubted many people of her station would have been able to keep themselves moving and evade capture. Plenty of people, even with military training, would have frozen up or simply shut down in the face of such an overwhelming calamity.

A shiver ran through Rene’s body and his left eyelid twitched spasmodically. The veins on his right hand stood out and throbbed for a moment then subsided. Side effects of the drugs Min Ho had given him and familiar from the course in combat pharmacology he had undergone back on St Croix.

“As for why I signed up…” he trailed off uncertain of what to say or if he should say anything at all. In his mind he had rehearsed such a conversation countless times, justification and self justification for what had happened. Amellia’s body flashed into his mind, laying on her white silken bed covers, her face cold and still in a mockery of the vital, vibrant woman she had been. The galling fact that her killer, who ever they were, was still at large and unpunished. For years Rene had harboured fantasies of finding out the truth, exposing those responsible but each imagined scenario had left him with the same hollow emptiness at its conclusion. None of it would bring the woman he had loved back. Solae kissed his forehead, her lips cool against his skin and snapping him back from the mausoleum of the past. His face had twisted into a rictus of pain and he forced it to relax with an effort of will.

“There was a murder,” he managed in a ragged whisper. He realised he was gripping her hand far too forcefully and he relaxed his grip but was unwilling to let go of her completely.

“I didn’t do it but the evidence… well it doesn't matter,” he concluded in a whisper, unwilling to revisit the pain and the anger that simmered deep beneath his carefully constructed defenses. If he started down that road he might go to pieces and he couldn’t afford that now, maybe not ever. Nothing he could do now could change what had happened but he wasn’t going to let another woman face death or worse while he could still affect the outcome.

Three stabs of lightning lit the room in quick succession, the purplish light melding into a single sheet of wavering illumination, etching Solae’s beautiful face in fluid magenta. The smell of tropical rain and wet earth were heavy in his nostrils mixed with the slight sharpness of ozone and tropical flowers. Without conscious control his arms wrapped around the marquessa’s slender waist, pulling her gently too him. The warmth of her body pressed against him through the thin cotton garments sending a shiver down his spine that had nothing to do with the restorative drugs burning their way through his system. He looked down at Solae, her eyes luminous in the uncertain light of the storm. Forgetting the coup, the Gids, the storm and the whole universe he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene nodded as he finished his soup. Outside the distant rustling of trees gave a few seconds warning before rain drops began to fall onto the clay roof tiles in their soothing tattoo. The sun was already hanging low on the horizon and the rain darkened the sky and mutd the light still further. It might have made more tactical sense to move out tonight after dark but Rene didn’t want to rush Solae’s leg, especially in spite of what Oanh had told him about her possible vulnerabilities.

“Thank you both for your hospitality,” Rene said, passing his bowl and plate to Oanh who stacked them in a tube of water filmed with some sort of harsh lye based soap. Min Ho nodded companionably and stood up from the table.

“You mentioned that you had some recovery boosters?” Rene asked when they were finished cleaning up the small meal. Lightning flickered outside, booming after several seconds delay. Rene judged that it wouldn’t be as severe as last nights storm, though it could be hard to judge. Min Ho nodded and led Rene down into the cellar. The bearded man opened a cabinet and took out a phial and a gas operated injector.

“You ever used one of these before?” Min Ho asked, fitting the phial into the gray plastic injector housing with a hiss and a snap. Rene nodded. Combat drugs of various kinds were widely used in the marines, mostly stimulants to keep awake and hyperglobins for operation in space where oxygen penetration was a problem. Healing drugs like these were less common. Battlefield medicine was quick and brutal, basic stabilization get a casualty back to an automated medical unit. The usual rule was to spray someone down with sealant and drag them to a medic. If they survived the trip, they were likely to make a full recovery. He took the injector from Min Ho and set it against the vein on the inside of his wrist. With a hiss of compressed air the injector stabbed icy needles into his blood stream, tingin as the mixture of drugs and hormones raced towards his heart from where it would be pumped to his peripheral tissue.

“You might feel a bit strange for a few hours,” Min Ho counseled, entirely too late to affect Rene’s choice.

“They normally give it with a stim but I think rest is probably more important than a little discomfort,” the older man continued, placing the empty phial and the injector back into the cabinet and pushing it shut with a click.

“Do you have family back on Cappella Rene?” Min Ho asked with a nonchalance so complete as to set off its own alarm bells. The marine shook his cuff down, ignoring the small drop of blood already hardening on his wrist. He gave Min Ho a guarded look.

“I don’t have family anywhere,” he said, his tone making it clear that it wasn’t a discussion he was interested in. His host merely nodded impassively as though it had been a subject of little interest and made a gesture towards the stairs. Rene climbed back into the kitchen to discover that Oanh and Solae were out on the porch discussing something. He nodded his thanks as the old man started to put his gear back on. Rene wondered how he would explain the tactical armor to the Gids if they came around. Likely enough he either melted into the bush before they could ask, or they didn’t go around anywhere ever again. It had been a stroke of luck to find them but Rene couldn’t bring himself to fully trust intelligence types.

The upstairs guest room had an attached shower and Rene stripped off and got under the water. It was cold, or more to he point it wasn’t hot, but the tepid water was still a relief to the impressive heat. He leaned his head gratefully against the plastic tilework and let the water run over him for long minutes trying to find some sort of equilibrium. He needed to plan, to think of what was to come and prepare but his thoughts continued to slip into images of golden hair. Rene was not a spiritual man but right then he could have used some of the meditation practices his mother had forever been trying to interest him in. Thunder boomed close by and he wondered if it were possible to be electrocuted while standing in a shower. Deciding he had enough excitement in his life without a side line in life or death physics experiments he turned off the water and stood for a minute, allowing the last rivulets to run to the drain before toweling himself off. Min Ho had left him a pair of knee length black pants and a shirt of dark grey cotton, common laborers garb for most of New Concordia. He pulled the outfit and tucked his pistol into the canvas belt where he could conceal it with the shirt.

Solae was in the room when he came out of the bathroom, as breathtakingly lovely as ever. He gave her a smile and sat down on the edge of the single large bed. It was nearly full dark now and the room was lit by flashes of purplish lightning as much as by the dim glow of the rapidly receding sun. He wanted to clear the air between them but he had only the cortiers dissembling to reference. Ignoring that chunk of his past he forged ahead.

“Look I’m sorry about what I said at the manor, you certainly don't need me to make your decisions for you. Your smart and you're tough, you must have been to survive what happened yesterday.” That was the Stars truth, he hadn’t been that far from cracking up at points and he was trained for this. He couldn’t imagine how she was keeping it together.

“I won't treat you like a porcelain doll again. I promise.”