Penny

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Yria laughed. It was a bitter mirthless sound, like glass shattering. The music thrummed conclusively and the zero gravity dance above grew more intense. Sayeeda watched as items, dropped drinks and personal items floated to the sides of the zero g bubble and slipped efficiently into disguised collection tubes. Presumably they were stored somewhere and those foolish enough not to secure their belongings could collect them.

“Believe it or not there is little profit in double crossing you,” Yria said as she tapped her fingernail on a glass of some sort of fizzy liquor. The woman’s tone was slightly regretful. It was probably true, after the way they had marched into Gnorlaac’s lair and declared what they were offering. It had been a risky move, to let people know the treasure they carried, but it also meant Gnorlaac had to be careful about simply murdering them out of hand. It would be bad for business. There was no honor among thieves, but a certain ruthless practicality did prevail.

“We are willing to make the transfer provided you have the merchandise with you?” In lieu of a response Sayeeda hefted the case onto the table between them and cracked the lid. The precious mineral shone its soft glow. Yria lifted the lid slightly with a fingertip, revealing shaped explosive packed into the roof of the case. She arched and eyebrow at the pair of mercenaries.

“One can never be too careful,” Sayeeda said, her tone a touch defensive. Yria snorted and waved to one of her thugs who took out a datapad and began to type. Sayeeda felt a slight thrill imagining the money that was about to be deposited.

“The account number please…” Yria’s forehead exploded in a spray of blood and brains. A piece of bone traced a bloody line across Sayeeda’s cheek. The boom of a large calibre gun was deafening and people began to scream. One of the guards leapt to his feet upending the table in a spray of spilled liquor. Another grabbed for his pistol, pulling it free of the holster with a snap. Sayeeda swung the case by the handle, slamming into the temple of the would be gunmen. The thug collapsed to the floor a half a heart beat before three more booming shots ricocheted off the metalized floor nearby. Screaming panic spread through the crowd. A half dozen other concealed guns appeared from nearby guests. It wasn’t a coordinated ambush just other low lives who were able to beat the scanners.

“What the fuck is going on!” Sayeeda screamed at Neil as she pulled her own pistol from the bottom of the case. With a flick of the wrist she tossed the second weapon to Neil and dove sideways behind the low bar to seek cover.

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - A Modern Fantasy Adventure!

@Naril I hope you feel better!

Holy Smokes @Penny That background scene is dynamite! Seriously, Bravo.

@ElRey814

Thank you that is very kind :)

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Dear Father,

I write to you to inform you that a Rebellion against the Empire has broken out on New Concordia and potentially the entire Eastern Cross. Imperial forces on New Concordia have been completely destroyed. All loyalists on the planet have been captured or killed. I believe that the Rebels lack the genetic codes to access the PEA network.

I have with me Solae Falia, a Marquissa and the sole survivor of the Falia family. The rebels are hunting her for her genetic codes but we have managed to get off planet. I do not know who to trust other than you but depend on you to help me to do my duty.

Solae and I are betrothed. I do not know if we will survive for this to be of import to anyone but ourselves but if I should perish and she should live I will depend on your honor to do all in your power to protect and support her.

Rene Quentain - Acting Captain General for New Concordia - Imperial Marine Corp

It was a cold and clinical letter Rene thought but even those few paragraphs had taken him the better part of an hour to assemble. His father was not a man to be swayed by emotion and everything depended on him taking the message seriously and acting accordingly. The message would need to be updated as they gathered more information but for the moment it would have to do. Rene didn’t know where or how they would find a PEA to get it out but taking even a small step made him feel better. With the a click he downloaded the message to a small memory chip and slipped it into his pocket.

“Mistress Solae is awaiting you in the cargo area,” Mia whispered with breathless anticipation. Rene started at the interjection. Some part of his mind had expected Solae to sleep until they reached the end of the jump, although now that he thought about it consciously there was no reason that should be so. The jump chronometer spun downwards like an hourglass counting off the hours and minutes until they dropped back into real space. The air temperature had already begun to increase by a slight but noticeable amount. Friction from the tiny proportion of the ship that interfaced with the material universe had begun to stress the cooling system. That was one of the normal limiters for jumps. Vessels that operated in hard vacuum could only handle waste heat by a slow process of radiation, or by dipping into an atmosphere or passing through another substrate, like a nebula to gain an assist from convection. In that regard bigger ships were actually able to jump further than smaller ones, their large surface areas allowing a more efficient radiation of waste heat. The fact that the Bonaventure was already heating up suggested that the drives could use a tune up, a task for which Rene didn’t even pretend to be qualified. Well if it were a perfect universe many things would have been different.

He found Solae in the cargo hold as Mia had promised. She was in the process of prying open an access panel that probably hadn’t been opened in their lifetimes. With a sudden snap the rust and void frozen seam gave and the panel crashed open in a cloud of dust. Stars above how had the vessel kept functioning for so long without even the pretense of maintenance. Solae peered inside the panel, evidently she either knew what she was doing or Mia had told her what to look for. Watching the stunning noblewoman work was a surreal experience, like watching a sculpture by one of the Masters come to life and start cleaning a floor. Rene suddenly remembered what it had been like for him when he had found himself in the Marines, exposed to a world of physical labour he had, until that point, only a theoretical knowledge of.

“Feels strange dosen’t it,” he said as he crossed the deck grating to where she stood.

“I didn’t think I’d ever get used to having to do things like this myself. I used to say to myself that I was the first Du Quentain to do anything useful in the last three hundred years.”

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - A Modern Fantasy Adventure!

Sophia De La Fuente - Narco Bruja

Name: Sophia De La Fuente

Gender: Female

Race/Species: Human

Age: 27

Appearance: An olive skinned Latina with short raven hair and hard eyes. Although not unattractive, her features have a slightly feral look. Tattoos cover her arms and much of her body, though her face is unmarked. Many of the tattoos appear to be related to South and Central American religions of the Pre-columbian Period, although there are a number of gang related designs. She is slender and a little on the short side.

Personality: Sophia is passionate and intense. She is easily roused to anger, especially when she is frightened or confused. She is in the process of beginning to break down the walls that her previous life required her to build but remains a trifle aloof and perhaps a little awkward.

Powers, Traits, and Abilities: Sophia’s primary talent lay in the direction of ritual magic and thaumaturgy. After being extensively educated by her mother she traveled from her native El Salvador, absorbing various other traditions along the way. Years of involvement with gangs and narcotics trafficking have given her an insight into the criminal underworld, though it isn’t something she is eager to revisit. Sophia is also a naturally gifted sculptor and painter, though she lacks any kind of formal training.

Background:

The smell was the worst. Like greasy meat burned in an oven. It clung to her, coating her dark skin, sheening her black hair, an oily film at the back of her throat. Even when the flashing lights gave way to the quiet interrogation room and she was permitted a few minutes to ‘wash up’, swab her filthy body with a few wet wipes and rinse her mouth out with tepid tap water, it still clung to her. A change of clothes had been permitted her, an orange prison jumpsuit to replace the rags she had been arrested in, but the bright fabric did little but accentuate the filth that coated her. The detectives that came next wrinkled their noses, struggling to conceal their horror behind the blank face of professional detachment. They slapped a paper file down on the table between them and took their own seats.

Sophia looked up with them, her eyes dark and unreadable, the fluorescent light seemed to make tendrils of smoke dance in her irises. Neither of the detectives flinched but the younger of the pair shifted uneasily. He covered his unease by picking up the manila folder he had just slapped to the table and making a show of leafing through it.

“I’m going to be honest with you Miss De La Fuente, it doesn't look good for you. Four men burned alive… well California doesn't have a death penalty but if you don't cooperate there is no chance you will ever see the outside of a prison cell again.” It had the ring of a rehearsed statement, but that didn’t make it untrue.

“I was a prisoner there,” she said, her thick El Salvadoran accent rendering the final word as ‘dare’ rather than there. English was not her first, or even her second language but she spoke it well enough to be intelligible. The statement seemed to move the two policemen onto more familiar ground, a perp denying a crime was more intelligible than four men burned to carbonized husks. It helped that she spoke the way she did, it fit their comfortable preconceptions.

“Look girl, we got security footage of the place, no one in there but you, and you were the only one in the building,” the older, fatter one declared. Sophia spread her hands wide, the restraints that bound the ran through the eyebolt which secured her to the floor with a musical tinkle of metal on metal.

“So your theory is I overpowered four chera and set them on fire?” she asked with a skeptical quirk of her eyebrow. The younger thinner of the two gave her a malevolent grin, clearly aggravated by her apparent lack of reaction. He leaned across the table and grabbed her wrist. From arm to shoulder her skin was covered with tattoos of various kinds, curving serpents and strange sigils atop more prosaic ink.

“You think we don’t know gang ink when we see it? You think that any jury in the world won't take one look at those MS13 tats and…”

The metalized door swung open hard enough that the gasket hissed with the pressure of slowing its progress. A flustered looking junior officer slid into the room a only a footstep ahead of an elderly man dressed in a neat vest and wearing a bowler hat. The officer was trying to make a point of leading the newcomer into the room, but there was absolutely no evidence the older man would have waited for his theoretical escort. The man swept the room with his eyes and cleared his throat meaningfully.

“Uhh the chief says you are to give Mr Priest here a moment with the pris.. I mean suspect,” the escorting officer stammered. Both detectives stood up at once, their postures of angry beligerence so identical that the movement appeared rehearsed to Sophia’s eye. One of the cheap metal framed chairs toppled over with the suddenness of the movement. Priest regarded the detectives with a calm as cool and dry as the Atacama. Both men seemed to freeze for an instant in mid outburst, as though they had expected to find one more step in a long flight than was truly there. Angry words died on their lips in a moment of shock and confusion which transmuted to an anger for which their hesitation left them no outlet. Sofia saw the pulse throb in the heavier detectives neck. The moment passed and they stormed brusquely from the room but neither of them spoke.

The newcomer, Priest apparently, bent down and righted the toppled chair with quiet efficiency. This accomplished, he snapped open an antiquated looking case and withdrew a folded cloth which he unhurriedly spread on one of the recently vacated chairs. He sat down and adjusted the seat before tenting his fingers peering across at the chained, orange clad Sophia intently. There was something to his eyes, a keenness and weight to his gaze that she hadn't expected. She tossed her hair in half hearted defiance anyway, as a woman brought up in a brutal world of gangs and narcotics, it was an instinctive reaction.

“Miss De La Fuente was it?” he asked in culture Spanish. It was Castillian rather than South American in accent and idiom but perfectly understandable. It sounded exotic to her ear even elegant. She nodded her head, as powerless to prevent herself from moving as she would have been to stop a mudslide.

“That was quite an impressive piece of Thaumaturgy back there, what did you use for a flame?” The question was matter of fact and the point, the tone a man would use when asking which chisel one had selected for a particularly difficult cut. The shock moved quickly to a sense of panic. Were there police who could understand what had happened? What if she couldn’t… Priest lay a hand on hers, his hand was dry and slightly cooler than she imagined.

“No fear child, I just want to know how you did the working. Quite impressive, if a little gruesome. Now what did you use for a flame.” Sophia looked around as though afraid of hidden recording devices. Priest merely shook his head, dismissing the fear with unarguable certainty. His eyes bored into her as though trying to draw the answer from her mind with strength of will.

“The pilot light,” she said finally, “the stove had a pilot light, those cabrons were smart enough not to use it but they didn’t know about the light.” Priest sat back on his chair an appraising look in his eyes.

“It must have taken you days to gather enough power to use such a flimsy ignition source.”

“Four days,” Sophia said blankly, her eyes focusing on the near distance. By the way his gaze sharpened he clearly understood what such a task implied. The cartels knew how to hold a Brujha. An empowered circle was easy to create, even for a layman if they knew what they were doing, and even the mightiest practitioner could only do so much with what power remained within the mystical confinement. It would have been easy to waste it in useless fury, every mote of magic had been needed for what she had done, even then one of them might have lived if he hadn’t gone into shock.

“How did you create your links to them surely they were…” Priest trailed off as the answer to that particular question revealed itself in the asking, his face frowning with distaste. Sophia shrugged her shoulders as if to imply that it was nothing that concerned her. Priest withdrew his hand and sat back, his face considering.

“I will be frank Miss De La Fuente. My … firm you might call it, has an opening for someone of your particular skills. We consult on matters regarding the paranormal, take care of problems that sort of thing.” Sophia shifted against her restraints, rattling the chains.

“Senor if you can get me out of here, I don’t care if you are reanimating corpses for your friends to fuck.” Sophia’s voice was quiet and desperate, the profanity a habit rather than an effect of anger. If she were transferred to a prison, she wouldn’t last a day. Even a Brujah had to sleep sometime and the Narcocartels had a very short way with people like her, at least, once they slipped their leashes. Priest smiled as though he had expected nothing less.

“Splendid my dear, we will be happy to have you aboard.” Sophia glanced around the room, as though imagining some miraculous means of escape was about to present itself. No mystical portal opened, now transportation spell whisked her away, she merely sat, chained to the floor.

“So how are you going to get me out? Magic?” she asked Priest as he stood and began to fold his cloth, replacing it in his case with the same neat precision with which he had retrieved it. He gave her a slightly superior smile.

“Oh no my dear, a force much more powerful and diabolical than that.” As if on cue, the door opened to admit a man and a woman bedecked in sharp suits of severe and expensive cut.

“Lawyers.”

It was only after he left and the lawyers wrinkled their noses that Sophia realised that Priest had not so much as blinked at the smell of charred human corpses.

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - A Modern Fantasy Adventure!

I also thought of a faerie changeling but its a little too similar to Morgan, except with more frozen death.

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - A Modern Fantasy Adventure!

Kind of torn between my skeezy regular wizard and my skeezy illegal immigrant wizard....

The Sunday Group

Ok so Ellie can definitely provide some medical attention/wake Malone up, although I cant imagine there are much in the way of medical supplies about seeing all of her baggage was abandoned at the Jet Port. Prosaic as it sounds we probably need a walmart run to supply ourselves with food and equipment :P

The Sunday Group

I can neither confirm nor deny that Naril and I are the same person.

The Sunday Group

Of course I read my own stuff and wince at some of my work :P

The Sunday Group

I reread most of it today, some great writing!