Penny

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

The dance was just ending and another crowd of would be partners was jostling for position when a servant, very politely, but very forcefully pushed his way to the front of the group.

“Gravina, your husband requests your company on the balcony,” the servant said with the satisfaction of one whos station allows him to ride roughshod over the group of other wise important dancers. Camilla nodded and stepped clear of the pack heading for the balcony where she had seen Cydric and the Regent repair for there conversation.

With a suddenness that made her jump iron strong fingers grabbed her wrist, squeezing with a painful strength. Dietricha’s eyes were wide and paniced though Camilla could see no cause for such alarm.

“I didn’t see this!” she hissed in a whisper sharp enough to cut glass.

“I didn’t see this!” the wizard repeated as though it were the most important piece of information in the world. Camilla pried her fingers free with some difficultly. It was easily the most animated she had seen the wizard in their short aquaintence.

“Calm down, didn’t see what?” she pressed, half guiding, half dragging the other woman behind one of the large carven columns.

“He was supposed to die!” Dietricha all but wailed. Camilla felt her blood run cold.

“How was supposed to die? Cydric?” Camilla’s own voice began to climb as Dietricha’s panic played upon her own fear for Cydric. Dietricha clasped her hands to her face.

“The architecht! The architect!” she all but sobbed and then turned and fled without another word, leaving a trail of confused party goers as she fled and trailing blue silk from her dress. Camilla hurried to the balcony where she found Cydric. His eyes were wide and his breath rapid, she could see his muscles clenching and unclenching.

“Have you been in a fight?” she asked, partially startled and partially relieved to find him alright after Dietricha’s theatrics. For the hundredth time her hand went to her belt where her sword would normally have hung only to come away empty.

“What happened to Rishnekov?” she asked looking around for the reagent. There didn’t seem to be any other obvious way to leave the balcony.

“I may have set him on fire and thrown him from the castle,” Cydric said leaning forward and placing his palms on his thighs to catch his breath. It took her a moment to realise he wasn’t joking and then they heard it. A scream of rage and pain made by no human thing somewhere far below them, the sound dopplered away faster than a horse should have been able to move.

“What in Ranalds name is…”

Alarm horns began to sound on the walls drawing their attentions to the east. A score of burning fireballs rose in graceful ballistic arcs before plunging down onto the walls and into the city. Smoke began to rise immediately and the screams of wounded men sounded faint on the wind. It seemed that the siege had officially begun.

@POOHEAD189

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Sayeed coughed violently blood splattering the inside of her helmet with an opaque mist. Unlike the outside there was no static charge to keep dust and corruption from smearing the inside of visor. A groan escaped her lips and she made an awkward grab for an olive tab on the side of her armor. Weakness and pain spoiled the attempt but Neil took the hint and pulled the tab down firmly. THere was a barely audible hiss as integral injectors stabbed into Junebug’s body, flooding her system with analgesics and trama cocktails.

“Fucking amatuers,” Junebug weased and then went limp. The steady rise and fall of her chest proved she was still alive, but even with the force of the blast and the fall distributed by her armor she was in a bad way. Her combat pants were blackened and scored and stained with blood from a dozen minor injuries and the amor itself had new pits and scrapes to add to its battered testament to a life spend in violence and danger.

“Junebug?” the radio crackled in Taya’s voice. The girls panic of minutes before had been replaced with the sort of terror that overtakes people who are far outside their depth.

“Junebug, I have a Terran ship closing on me, its locking… Lony says that… may not…” the transmission trailed to static as high powered jamming flooded the circuit, leaving Neil alone with the critically injured captain.
@POOHEAD189

Penny's Egregious Overreach

I really hate interest checks. If you are interested in any of the below, let me know. If you have questions, ask questions.

If you are interested in the kinds of stories I have hidden below let me know.

Interests:

Pulp Adventure
Call of Cthulhu (including sci-fi)
Medieval Monster Hunters
Vikings (perhaps with some magical elements ala Conaan)
Original Sci-Fi in general
Traditional fantasy adventuring party, think along the lines of the original dragonlance.

Note: These are just writing examples and not necessarily the characters or scenarios to be used in the RP we decide on.

Note: All people living and dead are purely coincidental.

Medieval or Renaissance Monster Hunting

“απερίσκεπτη θρασύτητα ήρθε … Reckless audacity came...to be...conflated? No, considered, the courage of a loyal ally,” Brother Gregory mouthed the words of the ancient tome as he read, moving through the unfamiliar syntax slowly. A chill wind howled outside, guttering the tallow candles low but not quite extinguishing them. The uncertain light seemed to make the alien greek script crawl and slither across the page. He squinted, straining his eyes to pick out the next few sentences. It was a miserable night, and the only solace to be found was to escape to the warm Mediterranean heat that existed only within his mind.

The cathedral had been raised as a glorious monument to God, and that it was, but little thought had been given to the comfort of its earthly caretakers. Reluctantly Gregory closed the book, handling the ancient vellum with the care of long practice. The small garret was chilled despite the oil flames that burned fitfully beneath bubbling alembics and blackened brass condensers. The air was sharp with the smell of astringent chemicals and unguents. Alchemy like all fields of endeavor brought glory to God by better understanding His Mysteries and, if distilling a little cyanide to destroy rodents, or milk of the poppy for toothache helped Brother Gregory of Ferrara afford the occasional manuscript or barrow of coal, then so much the better.

Speaking of which… Gregory climbed from his bed, blowing the hair of his tonsure from his face with a quick exhalation. The cold cut at his spare frame and he quickly slipped on his brown robe. The wool was coarse and growing threadbare but it was a balm on a cold night. A small brazier guttered as the coal burned down. He would have to gather some more from the storage room below or face the unpalatable but not unfamiliar sensation of shivering beneath his bedclothes.

“Gallia est omnis divisa,” he muttered to himself as he shuffled down the stairs, ignoring the fanciful carvings of gargoyles and demons that some pious artisan had immortalized in stone. It was not a night to dwell on the beyond, the miserable cold quite drove the theology from him. A flicker of movement caught his eyes as he crossed behind the nave. A young woman praying before the altar, head bowed and hands clasped. What could drive a creature to such an excess of piety that they would kneel in the cold nave in the middle of the night. He considered ignoring her, she was no thief certainly and therefore no proper business of his.

Duty and curiosity won out over the desire for a warm bed. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was young and female. Obviously. With practices solemnity he moved into the nave behind her, walking softly but without real intent to stealth.

“Peace be with you my child,” he began.

Vikings vs Cthulhu?

There was hardly a ripple to disturb the water. The river was black under the moonless sky and the clouds veiled the stars. Oars of long oak, blackened with pitch and charcoal sank silently into the dark waters, propelling the black ship forward with slow deliberate strokes. A soft wind whispered across the forested river bank, all but concealing the creaks and groans of the ships timbers. A score of men plied the oars, their bodies wrapped in heavy furs despite the late summer warmth.

In the distance a low hill shouldered its way half-heartedly into the starless night. Lights flickered above a shabby palisade surmounted by a single ramshackle watch tower. More majestic, an ancient steeple built in the days the Romans still ruled the Isle to the east, thrust upward like a boney granite finger. The Roman’s had never come this far, but their hateful God had made the journey. Their Dead God and his Priests.

“Is this the place Brenna,” Hralfdan rumbled, a thunderstorm trying to whisper. The big Dane from Hedeby and therefore suspect. Charcoal blackened every inch of his face, save for his teeth which nature had blackened already. Hralfdan had only one arm, though his muscular torso gave him a fearsome strength. Brenna thought him the greatest sailor she had ever met.

“This is the place,” she replied grimly. The big bosun nodded and leaned his massive weight to the steering oar. Brenna’s face was black with charcoal too, and her fine Roman leaf mail was concealed beneath the pelt of a black bear. She had waited half a lifetime for this moment and wasn’t about to give Loki any opening to steal it from her.

“Watch me All-father,” she murmured in Norse, pressing her hand to the hilt of her sword in invocation of Old One Eye.

“Morrigan, bear witness,” she said in Gaelic, causing several of her crew to shift uneasily. It would not bother them that she was invoking a foreign god, they merely mistrusted a language they didn’t speak. A moment later the stem post ground ashore against the soft gravel laden mud like the nails of Hel. Without a word the reavers poured over the side of the blackened long ship and waded ashore swords and shields held high.

The great oaken doors, laboriously carved with the torments that sinners could expect in hell, flew open. Above the bell tolled incessantly, sounding an alarm that would come too late. The village beyond the door blazed and screams tore the air as hard eyed Norsemen ransacked the small wattle and daub huts before tossing flaming brands into the thatch. A few of the men had tried to make a stand but they had been no match for the cold steel of the Vikings. Brenna strode into the church, the sword in her fist slicked with the blood of an unfortunate watchman.

How many times had she walked down this aiel? The glowering statues of the Dead God’s saints glared impotently as she strode into the nave, wreathed in the smoke of their congregations destruction. The altar was as she remembered, draped in purple cloth and piled with the gold and jewels of the communion service. As the Lady of Raven’s had promised an aged priest knelt before the altar in desperate suplication.

“Priest!” she bellowed in Gaelic, the rasp of smoke in her throat making the cry terrible beyond her own abillity. The man pretended not to hear. His knuckles were white for the ferocity with which he clasped them together. She stalked towards him, in no hurry. There was a scream and a thump behind her. The bell peeled twice more and fell silent, its tongue stilled now that its ringer lay dead on the floor of the nave. She had pictured this in dreams and visions, seen it in the flames at Uppsalla at the High Feast.

“Priest!” she yelled again as her hobnailed boots clacked on the first of the stone steps. The elderly priest turned, his face contorted with terror. She must look a demon in black helm and mail, her skin darkened with charcoal. She was a demon. Tonight she was.

“Be gone fiend!” the priest called in a quavering voice which barely rose above a desperate whimper. Brenna pulled off her helm and let her long dark hair fall nearly to her waist. It shone like oil in the candle light. No sign of recognition flickered in the old mans eyes. She lifted a bowl of holy water, a fine silver dish chased with intricate carvings and poured it over her face, washing the charcoal away to reveal the pale white skin beneath.

“I am no fiend Father,” she said in Gaelic, her voice hard and brittle as sea glass. The priest was crying. The tears ran down his face in great salty rivulets. He reeked of wine, age and his own urine.

“You baptized me, dont you remember?” she asked with seeming gentleness. In her dreams she had lived this moment a thousand times. It kept her going through hungry winters, through driving storms that stole mens hearts. The priest shook his head in mute rejection and she seized his face with a hand to each temple, her fingers like iron on his fragile aged skull.

“LOOK AT ME!” she roared, forgetting in her excitement to speak Gaelic, though her meaning was unmistakable. With an effort of will the old priest met her dark eyes. For a moment there as panic but then, like an icedam giving way, it melted to recognition.

“Dirdre,” he breathed it started as a question but ended as a statement rising in horror.

“What are you doing here?” he gasped. In her fantasies she had crucifixed the priest, gelded him, nailed his body to the wooden crucifix behind the altar, but now that she was here at the end of all she had planned since the last time Vikings had visited this small hamlet over a decade ago, since they had carried off a little girl to their far icy shores, nothing but a single phrase filled her mind. She spoke the phrase slowly in Gaelic as precise as that of a poet, lending each syllable the funeral solemnity of a dirge.

“Be sure your sin will find you out.”

The priests neck snapped with a pop that was audible even over the ruin of the village and Brenna, who had been Dirdre, rose to her feet, leaving the corpse on the cold stone steps. She turned to her men as they streamed into the church.

“Burn it all down.”

Pulp Adventure

Bullets bored into the fuselage like railroad spikes being driven through ancient sleepers, the sound so loud that the shattering of the cockpit glass seemed like an afterthought. The rush of air and the roar of the engine crashed over them now that the dam was broken. Glass and timber rattled around the interior of the cockpit or was swept out into the warm tropical sky by the onrushing air. Opportunity threw the aircraft into a steep side slip, dropping the nose and sacrificing precious altitude for more speed. Her pursuers roared passed, the nondescript grey biplanes still spitting gunfire, though their pilots had, for the moment, lost their chance at a kill.

Below them the green profusion of the Belgian Congo spread as far as the eye could see, broken only by the tapering muddy strip of the mighty river itself as it wound its way to the horizon. Though they were only a few hundred miles from Kinshasa, it wouldn’t be long before the trees closed over the tanin laden waters, concealing it from the air. Steam rose from the jungle in long rivulets stretching towards the brilliantly blue January sky like the tendrils of some great unseen beast was questing for their aircraft.

“Ms Knox,” came Alcander’s disapproving voice from the rearward passenger seat.

“If you get any closer to the treetops we are going to wish we had hired a boat!” the archaeologist shouted over the roar of the slipstream. His tone was deliberately light but his stress was apparent from the way he bit off his words, and from the way the back of her seat creaked under his grip. Opportunity pulled her goggles down to shield her eyes from the wind rush, her auburn hair flew backwards like a snapping pennant as she craned her head to watch the enemy scouts curling around for another pass.

“Can’t you outrun them or something?!” someone shouted from the passenger compartment. The treetops were nearly close enough to touch, streaking past in a green tide.

“That’s really not how engines work!” Opportunity shouted. Their aircraft was a DH.50, an old mail plane that Jack Buchannan had scared up from God alone knew where. The enemy was, she thought, a pair of aging Avros, a great war surplus scout that the Belgian’s, the Dutch, the British and damn near everyone else still had in service. Though they bore the markings of the Belgian air force it was a fair bet that they were in the pay of the mysterious Germans. They curved around in a long arc and began to close to firing range. Unladen, the DH.50 might have been slightly faster, but weighed down with the expedition, its gear, extra fuel, and floats to allow it to land on water, it wasn't close. The Arvo’s seemed to leap forward, orange flashes stabbing as their lewis guns spewed lines of tracer fire. Opportunity hauled back to the stick to lift them out of the hail of death. The heavy machine wallowed sickeningly as it shed airspeed and maneuverability. With a curse the young pilot slammed the mixture to full rich, averting a stall for a few heartbeats before she shoved the stick forward, yo-yoing the passengers with a chorus of shouted curses.

Both enemy scouts howled past, their guns falling silent as the shot was spoiled once again, though the DH’s airspeed was now dangerously low and the trick wouldn’t work a second time. A treetop slapped the undercarriage and Opportunity yelped, climbing as quickly as she dared but resisting the urge to haul back on the stick and send them into a lethal stall. Behind her rifles cracked as Lucien or perhaps Jack opened fire, the rapid click click of the bolt actions lost in the howl of the now open cockpit. Even the reports, normally painfully sharp, were washed out by the rushing air. It was a valiant effort, but the odds of a man in a bucking cockpit, moving at over a hundred miles an hour, scoring a hit at some critical point on another target moving away at the same rate were vanishingly slim.

The Arvos curved around in long graceful arcs lining up for the kill. Without speed or altitude the DH.50 was out of tricks and an easy target. The scouts closed quickly, holding their fire this time as they must be growing near to the end of their ammunition. Lucien and Jack continued their metronomic fusillade, the angle of attack made the shot a little easier when the enemy was closing, but not much.

“There has got to be some bloody thing you can do!” Alcander shouted into her ear, but Opportunity wasn’t listening, her attention completely focused on the incoming Arvos. They were close enough now that she could make out the helmeted head of the pilots, their glasses catching the mid morning sun in erratic flashes.

“For what we are about to receive,” she muttered inaudible and both enemy machines opened up within a heartbeat of each other. Bullets chewed into the fuselage like horde of angry woodpeckers and rounds spanged of the engine cowling like hail on a tin roof. Smoke fountained from the manifold, oily black, and reeking of burning castor oil, choking the passengers and pilot before being whipped away by the slip stream. The DH.50 staggered like a whipped horse and just when it seemed they must be torn apart by the bombardment, Opportunity threw the aircraft on its side and the slipped below the level of the trees, the tip of the left wing touching the muddy brown Congo river for a instant before she leveled off, sliding into the few feet of clearance the vast flow carved through the jungle. One of the enemy machines, in an effort to keep its guns aligned, dipped too low. It’s undercarriage caught the canopy and, like an origami puppet, the machine vanished into the jungle with a booming crash of shattering timbers and rending metal. The second Arvo, realizing its peril, pulled up but too eagerly. The machine wallowed for a critical half second, offering an almost zero deflection shot to the rifle men in the rear of the compartment. Lucien shouted in triumph as the figure in the gunner’s seat of the second machine slumped sideways and tumbled from his cockpit, the body performing a slow half rotation before vanishing among the trees. The surviving fighter was gone in an eyeblink streaking away over the treetops, toothless and impotent.

“We made it!” Alcander crowed in jubilant relief.

“No we didn’t,” Opportunity shouted back, wiping a the oil that coated her face and goggles. Bright orange flames stuttered to life around the engine which had developed a jarring thumping note. Instinctively she cut the fuel line and dropped the nose, smothering the flames better to risk a crash than to burn. For a moment there was silence save for the whistling wind before a sheet of brown muddy spray obliterated the world.

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - A Modern Fantasy Adventure!

Never gonna give you up! Never gonna let you down! @Naril

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

“Are you.. Are you a princess?” the girl asked, her voice quivering with fear and exhaustion. With the wind whipping about some of the aurite strands had come free, waving about in a pale golden halo. Even without the soft glow it must have seemed to the girl as though she had encountered an angel. Rene hovered in a moment of indecision, suddenly embarrassed to be holding a weapon but at a loss for what to do with it. As unobtrusively as he could he slung the weapon over his back and tightened the carry strap to free his hands. It was a miracle the girl was alive, both that she had survived being swept out to sea and that she had avoided death on the reefs which churned the water beyond the shore. Over and above even that she had clearly been exposed in the teeth of the storm for hours or days. Now that he had the leisure to examine her, he saw dozens of small cuts and scrapes, perhaps from the coral or from flying debris.

Solae laughed musically at the question, though in truth she was as close to a princess as anyone on Panopontus was likely to meet.

“No, I’m not a princess, just a traveller,” the noblewoman said. The girl made a sniffing sound and Rene realised that she would probably be crying if she weren’t so dehydrated. Carefully, so as not to startle the girl with a sudden movement, he detached his canteen from the webbing belt he wore and passed it to Solae. Dramaris’ eyes flicked to him nervously and he tried to make his face as pleasant and non-threatening as he could. Solae unscrewed the cap and passed it to the girl who snatched it greedily from her hands, pressing the rubberized zero-g nipple to her mouth and sucking eagerly.

“Careful,” Rene cautioned, “Drink it slowly or you will make yourself sick.” If the girl heeded the warning it wasn’t until she had swallowed half the contents that she managed to pull her lips aways. Water spilled from her mouth as her thirst exceeded her capacity and she licked at her parched lips. Having done his six weeks of desert survival training on the Marine reservation at Ketaman Rene could only sympathize.

“I don’t feel good,” the girl whimpered and then promptly vomited up the water she had just drank in a convulsive gout. Mewling softly she fell forward into Solae’s arms, her small frame shaking. Rene stooped and picked the canteen up of the sand, brushing the nipple clean and handing it back to the girl who took it awkwardly and took another sip. As gently as he could Rene drew the canteen away, not wanting a repeat performance. Rene spared another glance out at the wind torn sea. There were no lights either on the water or in the sky, proof that, at least for now, rescue craft and jumpers weren’t able to operate. Further down the beach he saw what looked to be a small vessel perhaps five meters long, it looked battered and abandoned, perhaps a small coral gathering skiff that had been torn from its moorings by the storm. A selection of debris trailed from it like blood from an exit wound, pieces of netting and less identifiable junk in a random scatter. No tracks disturbed the sand around it, if it had crew it seemed they had been lost before it had been driven ashore here. Not for the first time he wished that he had a tactical helmet with visual enhancements that would let him see into the infrared but then if he were getting wishes he probably would have aimed a little higher.

“I’ll be right back,” he told Solae in a quiet voice and turned away, carfully twisting the slung carbine to keep it out of the girls line of sight, before trotting down the beach to the wrecked vessel. As he surmised it was one of the thousands of light craft that coursed the shallow seas of Panopontus, gathering coral for export. According to the limited information available on the Bonaventure, the corals contained useful biochemical compounds that were valuable components in a variety of pharmaceutical drugs. Most of the processing, and most of the money, was concentrated off world where higher technology levels, and accompanying Imperial permits, were available. The hull of the vessel was made from a composite of finely spun mesh and compressed cellulose treated with an industrial plasticising agent. The resulting material was cheap, tough and easily available. Even so a jagged rent in the hull told the story of how the vessel had been torn open on a reef. Already the edges of the gash were beginning to swell as the now unsealed cellulose took up water, making it look even more like an open wound.

The interior of the boat was a jumble of ancient equipment and water logged papers. There was no engine and no signs of recent use. The hatches and porthole covers were rusted shut with far more corrosion than the recent storm justified. It had probably been a derelict for some time, serving as a floating storehouse of no particular value. There was nothing useful among the scattered wreckage save for some woven cables, a few shattered fish traps and an improbable amount of tangled fishing line. Rene wondered if Dramaris had used the wreck as a shelter from the wind, but dismissed the notion for lack of the girls tracks. Exhausted as she was, she must have simply staggered to the top of the dune and collapsed, only to be startled to wakefulness by the approach of the pair of glowing strangers. Rene grinned to himself, if he had been in the same situation he probably would have taken a swing at him too.

“Lets get back to the sh...shelter,” Rene said as he jogged back to where Solae sat with the girl, administering small sips of water to stop her from vomiting. The reconnaissance had revealed all that he needed and there was no point in prolonging Dramaris’ exposure to the elements. If the skiff was salvageable it would still be too rough to risk She needed hydration and medical care but just as clearly she needed to get out of the rain and wind. Together, the two nobles got the girl to her feet. Whatever reserves of adrenaline had kept the castaway going were clearly fading and Dramris saged almost lifeleslly as they half guided, half carried her back to the Bonaventure. By the time the carried her up the ramp she was completely unconscious.

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

The band struck up a tune and the couples began the dance. It was a staid Imperial tune with which Camilla was familiar from her time as lover to the Count of Ostland’s son. It seemed strange to be taken back to a time before she had met Cydric and embarked on her present life as a sellsword. It really wasn’t that long ago, perhaps a year and a half, though with all the travel they had done her sense of time was far from certain. It seemed a distant time now and it was hard to imagine that she had been that person, she had been convinced that she would only need spend a few months in the ‘court’ of Ostland before she would attract a lover who would whisk her off to Altdorf or Marienburg and house her in a palace with every comfort. It was hard to imagine that she had gone from that to working as hired help at a besieged city at the edge of the world.

“Does something amuse you,” Indendre’s cultured voice cut in on her reverie. Camilla executed the required spin and moved into the promenade, allowing the elf to lift her hand in his own.

“Lo how the mighty have fallen,” she quoted with an ironic grin. If the elf were confused by the reference he gave no sign of it, gliding through the steps of the dance with grace that was literally inhuman. It seemed strange to her that an elf would be so familiar with Imperial culture as to know a dance by heart but it would have been rude to enquire. She was receiving a number of hostile stares from the other women of the court, clearly envying her the elegant elf as a dance partner. Several of the men were already trying to appear casual in their jostling for the next dance with her.

“Why are you interested in me?” she asked the elf as they made a series of graceful turns and moved from the promenade into the waltz. The other elves were watching Indendre with unreadable expressions as he laughed lightly.

“Well because you are interesting of course,” the elf said easily, avoiding the thrust of the question with grace.

“And why is that?” she pressed, even though she knew it was pressing the bounds of propriety.

“How many famous Tilean sellswords come noblewomen do you see at this dance m’lady,” Indendre replied ironically. Camilla arched any eyebrow but didn’t miss a step of the complicated crescendo of the dance, turning against the elf with hands raised palm to palm without every quite touching. Clearly the elf recognized the pair of them though she couldn’t for the life of her imagine how. Perhaps Dietricha had told him, her eyes sought for the wizard but didn’t find the woman on a casual glance.

“That isn’t it,” she said, sensing the elf wasn’t speaking the whole truth, but before she could press the matter the song concluded with a bow from the men and a curtsey from the women. Before the note finished reverberating people swept in on them. Camilla found herself facing a young hussar who was a little more aggressive than his fellows, but Indendre, despite being besieged by the ladies of the court seemed to glide gracefully out of their reach to rejoin his fellows.
@POOHEAD189

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

In Kislev, as in most places, war was considered business for men and so Camilla had little choice but to watch Rishnekov lead Cydric out onto one of the torch lit balconies. Her attention returned to the elf infront of her. Indendre was the first elf she had met up close and she had to admit he was striking. Elves were legendarily beautiful and this one, with his chiseled features and intense eyes, seemed to bear out the myths. His hair was longer than Imperial fashion and seemed to be so soft as to invite touch. Men often spoke of elves as effeminate or foppish but with his strong jaw and wiry muscles Indendre looked nothing if not masculine. Camilla’s practiced eye could pick out slight swordsman’s calluses on his palms and a number of very faint scars on his forearm which she doubted very much came from anything so civilized as a duel.

“You are a most interesting woman Frauline Richter,” the elf said in oddly accented Reikspiel. The tone of the syllables was perfect but the emphasis was slightly off as though a half beat ahead of where it out to have been.

“You are too kind Master Elf,” Camilla replied with a professional smile. She wasn’t entirely sure why there were elves in the Kislivite court but she knew that there was no reason whatsoever they should be taking an interest in her. Judging from the looks she was getting from the other ladies of the court, she wasn’t the only one who noticed that she seemed to be getting a special treatment.

“Indendre please, there is already more than enough formaillity for my taste,” he added with a conspiratorial smile. Camilla nodded her head.

“I have heard it said that elves find the speech of men unpleasant?” she said. The elf shrugged his shoulders in a motion that at once suggested ‘what can you do’ amusement and a disagreement with the sentiment.

“You seem to have rather a talented tongue, from Tilea I gather?” Indendre pressed. Camilla shrugged a shoulder of her own as though the point were not important. The elf made on the barest contact with her, certainly nothing inappropriate between conversation partners but she felt a slight tingle at the contact which was not unpleasant. She had the impression that the elf was searching for something, some reaction or tell, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what it was. What in the name of Ranald was Dietricha playing at bringing them here, they should be on their way south already, not stuck in a besieged northern waste with only a few days until the height of the winter.

“You are very beautiful for a human,” Indendre said unexpectedly. Camilla’s attention snapped to the elf and then saw the look of blankness on the faces of those near her. THe other elves were looking at Indendre as though he had lost his mind. Camilla opened her mouth to reply but her brain caught up to her a moment later. Indendre had not been speaking Reikspiel, or any language that she knew of, yet somehow she had understood. The elves dark inscrutable eyes bored into her.

“I… Im sorry I don’t understand,” she lied. Immediately the other elves relaxed though Indendre’s eyes never left her.

“My apologies, Riekspiel is not my native tongue afterall, I was merely noting that the musicians seem about to start playing, would you care to dance?”

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Even as Junebug swung her rifle onto the new threat she saw dozen more armed thugs swarming into the small plaza. It was an incredibly rapid response, one that Andor’s Armored would have struggled to have mounted. She fired the plasma bolt was aimed at center of mass but the alien’s shooting posture meant that the bolt struck the thing above its elbow. The plasma liberated its energy with a cyan thump and the alien staggered away burning as though doused in hydrocarbon. A detached part of Sayeeda’s mind theorized that the odd reaction might be because the alien’s blood was flamable.

Gunfire rippled out in almost random arcs. Even so there were over two score of shooters in the plaza now and probability meant that someone was bound to get lucky eventually. Junebug ducked back as rounds of a half dozen different varieties tore into the cement ledge that protected her. She crawled on her belly to a new position. With a sick feeling she realised what had happened. Every minor ganger had wanted to look like he had been ready for what had happened earlier at the club and moved his people into position so that they could tell Gnorlac that it hadn’t been them who had failed. Then, all unexpected, the target had reappeared ready for the taking. Oddly it didn’t make her feel any better that the enemy had caught them flat footed because they had been so incompetent it worked in their favor.

“Junebug, Lonny say we have multiple ships on an intercept course, what should I do?!” Taya’s voice was tight and terrified even over the comms. Sayeeda pushed herself to one knee, snapped off two shots and ducked before the return fire swept her position. Gnorlac had obviously put out the word that if the Highlander couldn’t be taken, it was to be destroyed. Dogfighting in a vertical city while trying to perform an evac would have been a strain for Neil and was no bussiness for a girl with a handful of hours of training.

“Bug out Taya, get to orbit and make a holding jump, Lonny can tell you how,” she said. A grenade sailed over the railing twenty feet from her and went off with a harmless crump. Making a holding jump required a precise insetion into the RIP with just enough way on to hold stationary against the prevailing currents. Once you were there you could stay in the RIP so long as your fuel held out without moving more than a few fractions of a light second, safe from attack. It was the sort of thing pirates did routinely, dropping in and out of normal space to scout for prey.

“What about you?” Taya asked, her concern for her captain not quite outweighing the relief at not being asked to attempt a suicidally dangerous maneuver.

“Drop out of jump every hour or so, we will let you know once we figure it out,” Junebug replied, cutting the call with a neural impulse. Taya would want more information, but there was a limit to how much her mind could process at one time and she needed to be in the firefight now that the ship was taken care off. There was a rumble of engines barely audible over the rapid fire of dozens of weapons.

“We have vehicles closing,” Junebug announed popping her head up to survey the scene. The gunmen were focusing their fire on the alley mouth where the mech had finished clearing the rubble. Across the plaza she saw three ugly looking monstrosities sorting into the chaos. One of the things might have been an old Dart T combat car but it was so heavily modified it was hard to tell. It bore a large old fashioned fusion cannon. The other two were clearly converted bulldozers, with extra blades welded on to act as side and top armor. One of the rusted clunkers bore a heavy duty assault cannon on a pintle mount. The kind of ten barreled weapon that might be used for air defense in a second rate mercenary company. The other bore a cylindrical ring of hypersonic rockets. What the gangsters had originally built the vehicle for she couldn’t guess, but any one of the tree was more than capable of shredding Neil’s ‘I cant believe its not a mech’ into so much tin shavings.

Without pausing to thinks she aime her rifle at the base of the rocket dozer’s pintle mount and fired a half dozen rounds. Steel sublimed in bright red flashes as the plasma gouged holes in the side of the armor. One of the rounds flew high and struck one of the rockets in its housing. With a roar so loud that it knocked half the gunmen down and engaged Sayeeda’s helmets audio dampers the thing vanished in a flash of white fire. Rockets whistled out of the inferno like fireworks blasting nearby buildings to flaming rubble. With horror Junebug watched a burning warhead hurtle towards her. It hit the floor below crashing through the concrete wall without detonating. Junebug jumped to her feet and started to run for the next roof, when a round smashed into her chest armor and sent her spinning to the floor gasping for breath. A moment later there was a tremendous explosion as the warhead below her went off, hurling her, and a giant section of the roof, skyward in a low tumble.

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - A Modern Fantasy Adventure!

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Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

The quiet awoke Rene. It wasn’t true quiet, there was still the gentle clicks and hums of a thousand background systems running at idle but the omnipresent roar of the storm was gone. A day and a half had passed since their eventful landing and in all that time the roar of the storm had pressed against them so omnipresently as to become the norm. Now that it was gone Rene could feel its lack. Solae shifted under the covers, perhaps subconsciously noticing the lack of howling wind also. They had dispensed with setting watches, with only two of them it wasn’t very practical, a lone watchman was as good as no watchmen if the enemy were able to pick you off before you could raise the alarm and besides anything that could move through the storm would certainly be picked up by the Bonaventure’s sensors before it was picked up by the eyes and ears of two humans. Instead they had spent the time in pleasant domesticity, preparing meals, working on parts of the ship and talking of things that didn’t have to do with the rebellion or their immediate plans. They seemed to have arrived at an unspoken truce that no one would bring up the next stage until the storm had passed. Which, apparently, it had.

Solae sat up beside him blinking sleepily. Even with mused hair and peering owlishly into the darkness, she was heart stoppingly beautiful. Rene reached out a hand and lay it comfortingly against her cheek, feeling her vibrant warmth against his skin. Part of him wanted to stay here, just curl up and go back to sleep and forget everything that waited beyond the starships steel hull. It almost felt like he was tearing himself free of a tether to force his mouth to move.

“I’ll take a look outside,” he said, more regret slipping into his words than he had anticipated. Before he could talk himself out of it he stepped out of bed and pulled on his boots. He dressed in the simple clothes he had gotten from Min Ho, judging his uniform to be too dangerous. They had no specific wet weather gear, the Bonaventure clearly didn’t expect to do much of this kind of thing, so he pulled on one of the canvas ponchos tha the engineer had used as a shield when welding. It was heavy and stained with grease, but probably as water resistant a garment as they had aboard. Thus attired the collected one of the carbines from the tool storage bin he was using as an arms locker. It was a simple electrochemical model taken from the slavers, far simpler than his own weapons but, like a uniform, an Imperial side arm was likely to garner to much attention. Turning he found Solae standing in the hatch way pulling on her own clothing. She arched an eyebrow at his expression.

“Everything you said about keeping watch applies double to scouting around,” she said with a hint of tart in her voice.

“What if you are hurt and cant make it back?” Although the tone softened a little it clearly wasn’t a discussion. Rene could hardly blame her after days cooped up on the ship. Lifting his right palm in the courtly gesture of mock surrender he fished the pistol she had used back at Amber Horizon from the battered tool box, checked the load and safety, and passed it to her but first. It was clear that she didn’t like guns, but he didn’t want to scout even a deserted island without her having at least something. It was probably more of a security blanket for him than anything else.

“As my lady wishes,” he said with a grin. Besides he prefered to be in her company even if that entailed a little risk.

As the ramp descended into the still glowing water the sound of the wind rushed in. In his mind Rene had expected the storm to be completely passed, but he hadn’t accounted for the bulk of the Bonaventure’s hull, it was no longer howling but the wind still blew strong as the tail end of the storm dragged at the air. Moisture still misted in the air, although Rene couldn’t have said for sure whether it was true precipitation or just moisture picked up by the wind here in the Caldrea.

“Let’s move carefully,” he called over the wind, “We don’t know what's under the water!” Without waiting he sloshed into the thigh deep pool and began wading towards where some ancient fluke of geology had tumbled down some of the cinder cone, creating a breach in the caldera. Instinctively he raised the carbine above his head, keeping the weapon as dry as he could, despite the fact it was certainly sealed against moisture. The footing was treacherous, the caldrea must once have been a small forest of the coral like trees, but a combination of the storm and the ships back blast had flattened them. The thigh thick trunks covered the bottom of the pool and they had to move carefully to keep their footing. Despite the improvised garments they were both soaked and sparkling with phosphorescent motes by the time they reached the crumbled section.

The oceans of Panopontus were a peculiar shade of green, there was a grayish cast to the wavelets as they climbed up and out of the caldera. The island sloped gently away from the gutted hill of the ancient volcano. Small ferns whipped and waved in the wind, it seemed to Rene a miracle that the hurricane hadn’t stripped the small plants completely. Evidently the little plants were tougher than they appeared. There was a sand beach a hundred meters down the slope, jagged pieces of multicolored coral covered most of the beach doubtlessly torn up by the storm and the surging tides the winds drove against the beach. Eddies and sucking vortices in the gray green waters marked reefs or shoals hidden beneath the ocean. Rene was just about to comment on this when a small creature burst from the undergrowth swinging a stick at his head. It was so sudden and unexpected that he only barely managed to get his carbine between his skull and the blow. The shock of contact jarred his hand but he held onto the weapon, with instinct that would have made his close combat instructors proud he shoved of and drew the carbine back to deliver a crushing stroke to the things skull.

“No!” Solae shouted and the creature fell back, dropping its stick in terror. Rene checked his stroke. Stars above it was a child.