Penny

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Camilla felt momentarily euphoric. It felt really good to have her sword back. Really really good. She tried not to think about it but instead focused on whether she should flay Yantz alive for leaving their weapons where, theoretically, anyone could have found them. Doubtless it was some arcane prognostication by Dietricha but the thought of the Rieklander rifling her few possessions was enough to make her anger blaze.

Without warning ropey tentacles flopped over the wall, landing with flat slapping sounds reminiscent of meat being dropped onto a butcher’s block. Whatever fell bargain had been struck by the recently dispatched vampire and the agents of Chaos evidently hadn’t stopped the Northeners from devising a contingency plan. Before she could draw her blade back t strike at the nearest appendage beastmen scrambled up tentacles of whatever unholy spawn had crept to the bottom of the wall. The bombardment on the western side of the city increased, with dozens of flaming projectiles plunging into the city. The attack there was evidently a feint to allow a small force to take this section of the wall. The fact that it was unguarded was almost certainly Rishnekov’s doing, only by the order of the Regent could an area of the city be so effectively stripped.

A large goat headed beast man leaped from one of the improvised ladders to land atop the battlements, hooves striking sparks as the clattered on the ancient granite. Its bray of triumph choked into a squeal as Camilla pivoted smoothly slashing up through the things guts before it could heft its own axe. The blade exited the thing shoulder and she was already using the momentum of stroke to leap into the air, avoiding the tentacular swipe of the living siege tower. At least a dozen tentacles griped the walls, each allowing a flow of beastmen and barbarians to scale, already there were at least a score on the wall. At the apex of her leap Camilla caught a sconce with her left hand and pivoted around so that she fell onto the back of one of the barbarians, her weight driving the elven sword into his back even before her feet hit him, knees bending to absorb the fall.

“Suona l’allarme!” she yelled forgetting that she was speaking Tilean for a moment and then figuring it didn’t much matter. A sickle arched in at her side and she twisted her wrists and flicked the point aside before delivering a backhanded riposte that sent a gout of arterial blood spraying from the things severe neck. Behind her she heard the distinctive sound of Cydric’s sword hewing into an enemy and she backed towards it, giving ground grudging as her sword wove a ring of steel before her. WIth a flex of her elbow one of her concealed daggers dropped into her hand and she flipped it, caught it by the point and hurled it through the eye of a giant red bearded barbarian.

“We have to get off the wall!” she shouted to Cydric as they were pressed back to back. In a few moments the raiding party would organise and no amount of fancy blade work would save them from being torn to pieces.

“We can’t surrender the parapet!” Cydric shouted back his sword cleaving through the arm of a spear wielding beastman as it drew back for a strike. Camilla ducked an arcing axe blade, snatched up a fallen blade and hacked into the ankles of her assailant, toppling him back into the mass of his fellows. There had to be thirty enemies on the wall now, howling for blood and surrendering all pretense of stealth.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

The shipping yard was a large square of ferocrete, ringed in razor wire. A half dozen freighters stood in various stages of repair. None of the ships was as large as the highlander and several were laid open completely, an indication of major fusion plant rebuilds. Only two of the vessels looked vaugely serviceable. Worse still, as they approached, the large billboards that seemed omnipresent, normally reserved for advertising some sleazy bar or junk shop began to shimmer and shift. Poor quality holos of the four of them appeared along with text reading: 2 million credits dead, 4 million credits alive.

"Maybe I should turn you all in," Junebug said, her voice wheezy and cracking from the drugs and her injuries. Neil started surprised she had spoken, and then laughed.

"Yeah well I see your picture up there too," Neil chuckled.

"Should we lose the mech?" Sven asked, "not exactly incon-fucking-spicuous now is it?" Sayeeda began to laugh but it trailed off into a racking cough that sprayed a fine speckling of blood. She was glad Neil had the presence of mind to remove her helmet.

"A bit late for that," she replied and nodded her head at the shipping yard. The mech would be a major disadvantage if they were planning to stay on planet any length of time, but if they didn’t get off shortly then there was no way they were leaving. With the reward offered, ever person they met would be another chance to get turned in.

"Charge!" There were as many different millitary doctrines as their were soldiers but Junebug had learned her trade in an armored unit. There was nothing subtle about the use of an armored spearhead, you hit hard, hit fast, and kept hitting to the other guy quit. WHen times were desperate, it was always best to attack as ferociously as possible. Neil smashed through the fence without slowing a stride. The flimsy chain link recoiled to its posts with a musical twang and a shower of sparks. Workers screamed and ran in panic, abandoning tools and equipment. Several guards emerged from barracks hefting weapons but one look at the rampaging mech sent them fleeing. Neil fired a burst of gun fire into the air to encourage their hasty departure.

“Ok, now we just need to fly a junk freighter into orbit passed the stars no how many hostiles…”
@POOHEAD189

Priest & Hawthorne Investigations - A Modern Fantasy Adventure!

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Penny's Egregious Overreach

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Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

“Well we might have some difficulty explaining that if we are ever invited back to the palace,” Camilla said, her breath steaming in the frigid air. Their cloaks were back in the castle the icy northern air bit into their skin.

“Well that and the fact that I apparently killed the Regent,” Cydric muttered. Off in the distance the clamor of battle sounded. The sky was lit with fire as flaming missiles rained down upon the far wall.

“I take it a little more killing is required?” she asked with a cocked eyebrow. Cydric quickly filled her in and Camilla’s blood chilled further even than the temperature required. They had encountered a vampire a few months ago in Marienburg and barely escaped with their lives. There wasn’t much lore about Vampires beyond peasant superstitious but from what Camilla had learned since the fiend they had barely defeated had been one of the weaker varieties.

“We should demand our fees are doubled,,” Camilla muttered as they started walking down the parapet, one direction seeming as good as another.

“We aren’t getting paid at all,” Cydric pointed out.

“In that case, tripled,” Camilla amended, winning a chuckled from Cydric. Suddenly something seemed to tug as her and she froze slipping her hands into her pockets and drawing forth two small concealed knives, one held foregrip, the other reversed. Cydric, long accustomed to working with her paused also. With a curious sense of deja vu she reached a hand forward to one of the barrels that held arrows and torches for defenders. As was the kislivite custom this one was covered with oiled canvas, meant to keep the fetching dry in the frequent inclement weather. She tugged the canvas aside to reveal Cydric’s wolf pommeled bastard sword and her own slender elven weapon. The two swords were bound together with a piece of rough twine and a crudely lettered note that read:

Your Welcome,
Yantz.

“It should be you’re welcome,” Camilla commented after a moments stunned silence.

“Just what in Ranalds name..” With shocking suddenness, the darkness seemed to boil and a figure sprang from pure shadow sending the barrel and the swords flying. The horribly burned corpse thing screamed, baring fangs the size of paring knives in bestial hate. Half of the things skull was revealed under the merest hint of burned flesh and it's fine clothing was charred and filthy with greasy ash. Great red rents appeared in the blackened things skin as it slashed down at her with scythe like talons. Camilla twisted and caught the blow between the crossed blades of her daggers but the impact pitched her into the air. She twisted into an acrobats cartwheel and landed cat swift on her feet, arms stung by the force of the blow. Cydric dived for his sword but the creature was on him before his hand could touch the hilt of the weapon, the tumbling melee sent both weapons clattering to the flagstones below.
@POOHEAD189

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Junebug lolled in semi-conciousness. Although the cocktail of drugs her armor’s trauma pack had delivered meant that she wasn’t in pain per se, the disruptive pharmacologics meant that her experience was fragmentery at best. She had a confused impression of Neil talking to a giant lizard and to another man she felt she should have known, but that seemed less important than whether or not she had reloaded her plasma rifle. The Colonel would tear a strip off her hide if she didn’t lead by example with a fully loaded weapon. Motivated by this abstract impulse she tried to move her arms only to discover that neither of them seemed to cooperate.

It was the trauma pack. She must have been hit. That didn’t seem important, though she really should ask Munroe to show her how to cut the basic trauma cocktail with combat drugs. Better to go out swinging anyway.

“What was that Captain?” Neil asked, his face almost comically concerned hung a few feet away from her, free from any context. Had she spoken aloud. Where was she?

“Careful,” she wheezed and closed her eyes shut as waves of dizzying nausea swept over her. She wanted to tell him not to trust the lizard man, and also ask what the lizard mans name was and what he was doing here, but the thoughts and words swirled together in the chemically induced haze that lay over her mind. If she didn’t get to a medicomp or a doctor shortly the trauma meds would give out. Unfortunately that was as impossible to communicate to Neil in her present state as astrographic mathematics would have been.

“How did you get us into this again…” she murmured before blackness swallowed her.

Taya hauled furiously at the controls, but no matter how much she struggled the Highlander didn’t deviate from its course. Tears of frustration burned in her eyes, Junebug and Neil were depending on her and she didn’t know what to do.

“Aye thars nay yise tearin the control yoke oof,” Loney advised in his irritating brogue.

“What else can I do!” Taya shouted, the Terran Cruiser had come out of the shadow of the gas giant as they lifted. The massive capital ship was half a kilometer long and bristling with weaponry. Reinforced black hull plating made it a shadow against the stars though its electronic signature screamed at any vessel large enough to mount a sensor suite.

“Are the vessels from the planet still closing?” Taya asked looking down at the attack board. As if summoned by her words four lances of brilliant white blue energy erupted from the cruiser. At the end of each beam an explosion blossomed as the fleet grade weapons tore Gnorlac hired gunships into thinly dispersed ion sheets.

“Thatd be a no lassie,” Lonney stated without inflection. The notion that such a beam could have ended the Highlander was as plain as it was chilling. For whatever reason the Terran’s had locked her with a graviton beam rather than a targeting array. Lesson learned Taya let go of the controls and let the Highlander fall completely under the sway of the big ship. THere was no point in tearing the freighter to bits trying to get out of a beam that could have moved a good sized asteroid with ease. A slit opened in the side of the cruiser and the Highlander, like a piece of krill in some ancient ocean, was drawn into the things maw.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene leaned forward placing both hands on the bench. The air at this latitude wasn’t cold but it was chilly compared to the tropical heat of New Concordia, the wind and rain had been enervating at a level that wasn't truly noticeable until the bulk of the Bonaventure offered some relief. The presence of the girl was a complicating factor he hadn’t planned on. It would still be at least a day before search and rescue aircraft were a real threat but he didn’t want to get caught half way through refueling either.

“I doubt the inflatable will handle the waves,” he admitted his eyes thoughtfully on the exhausted girl. The small raft was meant as a refuge in case of a ditch in an aquatic environment, and while it may or may not be sufficiently hardened to resist collisions with the reefs and shoals, without a serious engine the wind and currents would drive them back onto the island.

“I think… I think our best bet is to try to refloat that barge on the beach, the hull is torn up but we can patch it with vacuum sealant, at least long enough to get across the straits.” The wrecked vessel hadn’t had an engine of its own, probably hadn’t in many years, but Rene had a few ideas about how to retrofit one from equipment they had on the Bonaventure. A smile tugged at his lips, the skills he had gotten in training were getting quite the workout. Perhaps if they survived long enough a problem would arise that he could solve by the right application of a courtly bow or a recitation of family history. It did not seem he was quite so well prepared for the world as he had imagined back on Cappela.

“It will take both of us to crew it though, plus I’ll still need you to help get into the computers at the communications center.” It was going to be a tough job to cross the storm tossed straights as it was, but there were just too many things that could go wrong for one person to handle. Rene figured that if Solae was conning the boat then he could deal with anything else that came up.

“We should take the inflatable too, we can always abandon the barge if we have to, once we get out over the reefs,” Rene mused as he pulled out the first aid kit that Solae had put together from supplies salvaged from the plantation as well as the Bonaventures own medical gear. He drew a bulky medical scanner that the slavers had used to help sedate their victims and turned it on, fiddling with the display until he found the setting he wanted.

“Sir Rene, are you certain it is wise to risk exposing your paramour to such risk!?,” her synthesized tone made it sound like an exciting adventure but that was only because rebuke was difficult to pull off in a sultry manner.

“Well the ship is stuck in the mud till it dries out and I dont have alot of other options,” Rene mumbled, his words muffled by an IV kit he was holding between his teeth while he dug through the supplies. He found a bag of IV fluid and checked to make sure it was rated for human usage. Fortunately the biological divergence between human and Syshin physiology was not so great that the slaves had needed specialized supplies. He spat the iv kit out onto the bed next to the unconscious girl.

“Besides, I don’t think its likely that word of the bounty on Solae has beaten us here,” he explained. That much was true, a message from New Concordia would have had to come by ship, been downloaded to the planetary net and then been distributed. Rene hadn’t really paid attention to ship movements during the boring garrison duty on New Concordia, but even if the rebels commandeered every merchantman and courier on the planet, they would still have more possible jump destination than available shipping. Word would reach Panopontus sooner rather than later, but it was so unimportant that Rene doubted it would have made the list for top priority worlds. Even once it got here, he doubted that the planetary communications infrastructure was operating well in the wake of the hurricane. The comm center in San Roayo might have the alert, but who would be distributing it when everyone was busy dealing with the aftermath of the storm. He didn’t like putting Solae in danger, but whatever her odds were of escaping, they went way down if he drowned trying to cross the ocean and she was stuck here in a ship with next to no fuel.

“Just for the record this is way easier on 200 pound marines,” he complained. With sluggish half remembered steps he uncapped the IV needle and scanned the girls arm with a reddish wand of infrared light from the medical computer. The red on black pattern it returned was not precise but he thought he had some sense of where the girls veins were. Taking a deep breath he pressed the tip of the needle into the girls arm. Damaris twitched but didn't wake as the sharp plastic needle slid into her forearm. Frowning Rene pressed his fingers against her flesh, turned the needle slightly and jabbed it forward. A flash of red blood filled the cannula and he breathed a sigh of relief before pressing down on a small clip. Synthetic film extended to secure the IV in place and he screwed the bag of iv fluid into the access port. Clear fluid began to flow down into the girls arm, providing hydration many times more effectively than drinking could have done. He blew out a relieved breath.

“When she wakes up we need to find out as much as we can,” he said quietly, “ then we should try to get her home, even if she did try to knock my brains out.”

Penny's Egregious Overreach

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Penny's Egregious Overreach

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