Penny

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

It didn’t take them long to reach the surface. Whatever else had been communicated to Neil’s mind he clearly had an exit route planned. The coiled around several corridors, rushing through chambers the purpose of which Sayeeda couldn’t guess. All the while the tremors grew more frequent and more violent, until merely staying upright became a real challenge. At last they burst out onto the snowy polar tundra, having avoided the open dome with their deadly ceramic discs. The Highlander sat perhaps three hundred meters away, although slightly around the corner of the shield dome from their present location.

As soon as their boots touched the perma frosts all the Terrans tensed and York touched a finger to his ear. Junebug reengaged her helmets electronics suite with the flick of a switch and her helmet AI immediately tuned her into the commo net the Terran’s were using. It was a crackling static hash with only occasional understandable syllables but the computer did its best to correct the signal.

“...ty… have sustained heavy.... respond.... equitorial anoma….”

Though the signal was poor it was unmistakable slugged as the November Sky, which meant at least the vessel hadn’t been destroyed. York didn’t bother trying to respond, instead he lead the party at a run to the battered freighter. Junebug half carried Taya as they rushed up the ramp, Neil leaping up the ladder and into the cockpit a half second ahead of the mercenary. Without even a pretense of caution Neil lit all six thrusters at once and the ship tore into the sky, wind howling through the still closing landing ramp.

“How long have we got to get out of the system?” Sayeeda demanded as they climbed through the troposphre.

“Seven Garl’t,” Neil responded automatically, his hands flying over the controls.

“What the fuck is a Garl’t?” she demanded. The pilot shrugged helplessly.

“Damned if I know, it must be...” Neil trailed off as they broke the atmosphere. Towards the equator a vast silvery thing was tearing itself free of the earth. Sayeeda guessed that it must have been the size of a small city and it was bathed in a crackling electric discharge. The atmosphere above it ionized and there was a flash of nuclear detonation as a mass driver struck the thing on the side of the shoulder. The creature, whatever it was, didn’t pause, it merely raised a massive palm and a green beam of light, so bright that the Highlander’s optics blacked it out to save from burning the crews retinas, lashed skyward. One of the Chalcedon cruisers vanished from the sensor board.

“Get us to the November Sky,” Sayeeda said, her voice, normally calm, held an unexpected note of awe. She tapped a series of keys feeding Neil the vector information he needed. Below them the planet began to pulse, its mantle beginning to crack, the oceans boiling as the volcanic fury beneath bubbled up from mile long cracks in the planets skin.

The November Sky shuddered out of the rip, a mere two or three thousand kilometers away, having outrun the light of its departure. The bow of the ship was a mass of melted metal where it had suffered a mass driver hit from one of its opponents. The void shields had saved the ship, though it would be months or years in dock to repair the damage.

“Get us aboard,” York snapped but they were already moving towards the open launch bay.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene felt as wrung out as he had ever been, so much so that it took him a moment to realise that Solae was speaking to him. For most of the trip her stories had been a buzz in the background of his mind as he tried to keep the improvised engine going. The pump was an effective propulsion unit but Rene had failed to take into account the fact that it was meant to pump air in the cold vacuum of space rather than water at atmospheric pressure. While it certainly could handle the higher mass of the water, the cooling system wasn’t designed to deal with the varying cooling constants of atmospheric operation. Without Mia’s modifications the engine would have shut down due to overheating within an hour, even so it ran close to the limits of the system. It was possible to cool the unit by adding air to the mixture with a manual valve, but that ran the risk of a stall if it got too high and the pump sucked in enough air to lose its vacuum. If that happened Rene wasn’t sure he would be able to get it started again, at least not before they were swept hopelessly off course. The focus of balancing thrust with cooling had been exhausting and his hand cramped on the tillerbar as the words finally penetrated his concentration.

“Yes ma’am, or maybe it should be aye, aye?” he joked for Damaris’ benefit and through the tillerbar over, slewing the nose of the barge slowly northwards. There was no illumination on the barge, save for the glow of LEDs on the pump but even with the clouds there was enough moonlight and reflected star light to see by. Despite poor light and the grey curtain of drizzling rain, the coast line was clearly in view now. Thin beaches of pale white sand clung to the stoney bones of the land mass, which periodically thrust forth in rocky promontories. The passage of the recent hurricane was etched on the shoreline in stark relief. Great wads of lavender vegetation were bunched around the snapped trunks of trees at the top of the shoreline. Rene assumed it was some sort of sea grass that had been driven inland by the storm surge, certainly there was plenty of other maritime detritus, both human and natural scattered about to confirm that theory. The land rose slowly enough that what further damage the winds had done was hidden from sight, but judging from the patchy look of the low distant hills, this wasn’t the only place trees had been shorn of their branches.

There was a sudden grinding crunch and the barge lurched suddenly. Rene felt the shock of the rudder snapping through the tillerbar as it slammed him against the gunnel with enough force to drive the wind from his lungs. Damaris or Solae, possibly both, screamed as they were tossed from their feet. The grinding sound continued for another heart beat and the barge listed badly to one side before its momentum carried it off whatever undersea obstruction they had hit. Detritus and slipped and slid across the tilting deck before the vessel righted itself.

“Stars bloody bu…” Rene cursed as he staggered to his feet and tried to turn them towards the shore. The tiller bar moved easily in his hand, but with the control surface sheared he might as well have saved himself the effort. Worse still the pump clucked and choked and then shut off, its bank of LEDs flashing from yellow to red as it finally overheated. There was a sudden quiet broken only by the hiss of rain on the water and the slap of waves against the hull, all the more profound for the lack of the familiar hum of the pump. Rene looked down into the barge relieved to see Solae and Damaris on their feet. Unfortunately he could also see that three or four inches of water had already accumulated in the bottom of the hull and that the level was rising steadily. The vacuum sealant must have cracked when they hit whatever reef or rock had been concealed beneath the waves and water was now entering rapidly.

“Alright,” Rene called, forcing himself to remain calm as he abandoned the useless tillerbar, vaulting down into the hull to retrieve his bag and the satchel which contained the emergency raft. The water was almost two feet deep and there was a pronounced gurgle as the waves worked the two sections of the now unpowered barge further apart, he clambered back up onto the deck in two quick steps joining both the women. Solae looked pale but her beautiful face was set in an expression of resolve, repressing any fear she had for the sake of Damaris. The girl looked nervous but she wasn’t the mess Rene had feared. Perhaps she trusted that Solae wouldn't let anything bad befall her. There probably weren’t many nobles for whom that would be true, but in this particular case, Rene thought that her faith was well placed. Solae already had her waterproof pouch with her so there was really nothing of value left on the barge.

“What happened,” Damaris asked, though intellectually she must have known the answer. Rene knelt down and began to unzip the satchel of dull polymer canvas he had salvaged.

“I’m afraid our boat is a little worse for wear,” Rene said as he withdrew the bright yellow emergency raft from its casing. He pulled three red tabs in quick succession and there was a sudden rush of pressurized air as the ancient canisters began to discharge unfolding the raft as each section filled.

“Fortunately we have spare,” he said as the raft unfolded like a flower blooming in timelapse. It was a rectangular craft of high visibility yellow synthetic, perhaps four meters long by half that in length. The bottom of the satchel contained a small but powerful electric motor with a fold out propeller extension which Rene withdrew and clipped to the plastic attachment point at the rear of the raft. The barge was settling quickly now, the hold nearly completely awash with sea water.

“Climb aboard,” he directed, guestring to Damaris and Solae to the front of the raft to counterbalance the motor.

“Aren’t you getting in,” Damaris asked nervously. Rene smiled in what he hope was a reassuring manner.

“In a minute,” he told her passing his equipment bag to Solae who slid a leg through the carry strap to pin it in place. The water rose to the level of the deck so that only the gunnels remained above the water. Rene waited for the last moment, resisting the urge to shove off until the water reached his boots. At the final instant he shoved the raft hard sending it off towards the shore before stepping onto the gunnel and leaping onto the back of the small inflatable, adding his momentum to the shove and carrying it away from the now completely submerged barge. He pressed the activation switch on the motor and, to his enormous relief it spun to life. Casting a final glance back he saw the barge slip completely beneath the waves in a frothing mass of bubbles.

By now the current had carried them the length of the beach and nearly to the rocky promontory. Rene turned hard and angled back towards the beach. He didn’t know how well the raft would handle rocks but he was in no mood to find out when Solae’s life might hang in the balance. As it turned out, the promontory proved to be a boon, shielding them from the worst of the wind and waves until, a few minutes later, they ground ashore on the beach. Rene’s relief was immediate and profound. He hadn’t been at all confident that the rafts capacitors would hold out more than a few minutes. Solae and Damaris must have been equally relieved because they both climbed over the side and splashed through the thigh deep water up onto the beach. Rene picked up his bag and pitched it underhanded up onto the sand before climbing out himself and dragging the raft several dozen feet up towards the purplish ruin at the top of the strand. Rene sat down heavily on a chunk of sun bleached coral and blew out his breath, wiping salty water out of his face and eyes. He was glad that the tremble in it, the byproduct of fear and adrenaline wasn’t visible in the dim light of evening. His ribs throbbed from where the tiller had struck him but he was really not too much the worse for wear.

“I’m afraid we have a bit of a walk head of us.”

Dark Streets - Urban Fantasy Noir

@Hour Error The driver of the car grinned, though the sheen of sweat on his sunburned skin and the white flesh of his knuckles on the leather wrapped steering wheel betrayed his fear. There were four men in the car, all were armed with a variety of weapons, all were the parched brown of men who spent long months on middle eastern battlefields.

“Babygirl, I thought you would never ask...” the driver abruptly slammed his foot down on the accelerated, driving the worn pedal into the rusting floor and wrenching the steering wheel to the right. There was a squeal of tires and the reek of burning rubber as the battler vehicle vaulted the curb and shoved the vampire back. Someone screamed but it was a dull tinny sound compared to the roar of the engine.

The car might have smashed the vampire into the boarded storefront of a defunct radio shack but, by chance a fire hydrant blocked its advance. The car struck the rusting hydrant with a crunch of deforming metal. The airbags didn’t deploy, either disconnected or never functional, which was to the advantage of the hunters for they would have been pinned in place for vital seconds if they had gone off.

The impossibly loud crack of automatic gun fire ripped the night. One of the men in the back seat had opened fire with his AR-15, shattering the windows in all directions from the concussion, spraying pieces of safety glass in all directions. Water gouted from the shattered hydrant, falling in a mockery of rain. The hunters might have been good, but no one was good enough to hit a moving target from a crashing car. The rounds flew high, raining masonry dust onto the floor below as they shattered the ancient red bricks of the store front.

Three of the hunters rolled out of the car with impressive speed, the fourth unable to open his ruined and deformed door, scrambled over the steering wheel towards the open door.

“Take her down!” the leader screamed, his own attachment adorned rifle rising even as he spoke.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Junebug waited, she was nervous, you would have to be insane not to be, but she was also a veteran. One of the many things you learned in a career as a professional killer was that you had to transmute your neves into something useful or you would drive yourself crazy. Rather than appearing jumpy, her breathing slowed and her motions became precise, her eyes and expression as cold and colorless as a snake. Looking up she saw Saxon watching her with unusual interest. There was no way for her to read the lizard like aliens expression, they deviated to far from human norms for that, but his long tongue flickered out as though tasting the air and the scales beneath his neck seemed to bulge and redden.

Another tremor rocked the structure, this one was bad enough that a thin crack appeared in the odd ancient ceramic. The bodies continued to float in status. York was scanning the room with some sort of handheld electronics, a short wand with a spherical attachment. Junebug guessed it was some sort of multispectral scanner that was recording everything that was going on though she couldn’t pretend she really cared. York watched over Neil’s shoulder engrossed in the strange glowing runes that flickered above it, filling the room with an unsteady orange light that reminded Junebug of distant fires.

Taya stood beside Junebug clearly unable to decide what to do and clearly terrified.

“How do you stay so calm,” the girl whispered. Junebug shrugged her shoulders, the armor she was wearing exaggerating the motion.

“Practice,” she replied, sounding nonchalant.

“Had much practice being killed by ancient space gods?” the girl all but chirped. Junebug smiled in spite of herself. Taya was young, but if she could manage to be sarcastic at a time like this, there might be a future for her. Junebug regretted she hadn’t had time to teach the former aristocrat more, but it wasn’t like they had enjoyed a lot of downtime in the past several months.

“I’ve seen alot of different types of death,” she said seriously.

“I can honestly think of worse ways to go than being incinerated when the planet tears itself appart.” There was a sudden sound like a torrent of water breaking a dam and the stream of symbols became a flood, lighting the chamber like noontime in the desert. Neil stared wide and unblinking into the sudden flood of symbols, his hand pulsing with its own inner light.

“What is happening?”

Damned to the Depths

Calliope nodded grimly she reached forth and chucked John’s chin, forcing the soldier to meet her dark eyes. The soldier, a young man, though certainly older than Jim, had dirty brown hair and terrified eyes. Though he tried to put on a brave face it was clear that the grim fate of his companions had him terrified, which was a reasonable reaction. Calliope didn’t feel pity for him, he would have murdered and likely raped her with the others if he had a chance, but she wasn’t cruel without a purpose. There was something to this, an opportunity to be seized if she were brave and crafty enough. She looked up at Jim who stood looking scared and uncomfortable. The young man was clearly scared both from the fighting and from Markus’ mutilation of the prisoner.

“Bring him,” she snapped, gesturing imperiously at the lad. Jim hesitated a moment longer but grabbed one of John’s arms as Halvar grabbed the other. She led them back towards her quarters, John looked around as he realised where they were taking him, his eyes searching imploringly for any aid but the crew either refused to meet his eyes or, in Sron’s case, looked at him like a wasted snack.

The interior of her chamber was still disheveled from the struggle, the floorboards were stained with blood that she would need to have one of the crew clean before too long. The body of the man Markus had killed had been put over the side without ceremony though his sword still lay, unbloodied on the floor.

“Tie him to the bed,” she ordered brusquely, pushing her hand against the spell locked chest, it sprung open and she drew out a spellbook at random.

“M..ma’am,” Jim asked uncertainly but Halvar had already shoved John onto the cot and seized a coil of rope that hung from one of the hooks in the corridor. At Calliope’s direction the bound the man face down on the bed, securing him at wrists and ankles to the posts of solid timber. John began to scream and beg but Calliope ignored him, taking out some herbs and spell components from her chest, crushing them up and setting them in a small brasier.

“Leave us,” she declared, “and close the door.” Jim hesitated as though hypnotized by what was going on but Halvar grabbed him by the arm and gave him an encouraging shove that propelled him from the room, Calliope closed the door and whispered a word, sending a spurt of fire into the brazier. Thick pungent smoke began to fill the room. Another whispered spell conjured up a blue light that pulsated rythmically. John continued to scream for help as Calliope took her dagger and carefully sliced his shirt off, leaving him bare chested. Her eyes were starting to water from the burning herbs but she was able to keep it under control. She climbed atop John sitting astride his buttocks and began to recite nonsense words in her sonoros voice.

Calliope was no stranger to public speaking and she could make herself heard when she wanted too, still the rest of the crew could only hear muffled chanting, smell an odd scent and see pulsating light oozing from beneath her door, as well as John’s screams. She kept chanting for perhaps five or ten minutes, allowing the words to build to a crescendo before finally whispering a final spell. It was another simple cantrip, merely summoning a little cold, she focused it into a ring she had taken from her chest and then pressed it into the base of John’s spine. The soldier screamed as though he were being gelded, but that was nerves rather than actual pain. The sudden cold must have felt like a burn as worked up as he was. She pulled his severed shirt into his mouth gagging him, drawing an abrupt silence over what had been chanting and energetic screaming. She lay down atop his back putting her lips closed to his ear.

“That is my mark,” she whispered, running a finger tip over the spot she had pressed the cold ring.

“I own your soul little man,” she purred, “disobey me, plot against me, and it will be my plaything before I grow tired and send it to the burning hells.” John quieted, whimpering into the gag, his body stiff with terror.

“And in case you are thinking of killing me, you best hope that I live a long and prosperous life, because if my soul crosses over before yours… well… lets not dwell on that shall we.” Her voice dripped with malicous humor.

“Do you understand me?” she whispered into his ear. John nodded, a quick panicked gesture. Calliope chuckled with rich amusement.

“Then I don’t think these bonds will be necessary.” With quick strikes of her dagger she freed John from his restraints, leaving the man shivering and on the edge of tears.

“Go and join the crew,” she commanded, “but remember who you serve.” The soldier fled and Calliope sat down on the bunk with a grin. It was all theatre, as much for the benefit of the crew as to ensure John’s loyalty. She certainly didn’t know of any magic that could do what she had claimed and if it existed at all she didn't doubt it was far beyond her. Well If people were going to believe she were some sort of evil sorceress, she might as well turn it to her advantage. There were many paths to power afterall. She waited a sufficiently dramatic amount of time and then went onto the deck, a smile curving her dark lips.

Damned to the Depths

Calliope sat up spluttering her lungs burned and her eyes watered. Unlike most sailors, she was a strong swimmer but, even the mightiest athlete wouldn't last long with their hands bound and their mouth stuffed with a gag. Markus had evidently removed her gag and she croaked a word of power and the bonds that wrapped her wrist snapped like parting cable. She tried to stand up but her head swam and she sank back to the sandy spit of land they had been fortunate to end up upon. Belatedly she realised that she was clad only in her undergarments, bare from the waist up save for the amulet that seemed to coil between her breasts. There was something about the amulet that felt different but she couldn't figure out exactly what. It was as though the artifact were someone feeling satisfied with itself. She reached down and touched the finely wrought amulet, feeling strength and resolve flow through her.

The Weather Witch had let go its sails to lose the way it had on as quickly as possible. Sheets of cavas flapped like vast bat wings as they blew about untethered by anything save the top yards. Ropes flew about cracking like coach whips in the stiffening wind. It would be hell on the rig but it was the only way to slow down without turning into the wind to be taken flat-a-back, which would have been a risky proposition. Sketti was on the quaterdeck now, bellowing orders as the crew worked to lower one of the boats to the gently rolling water. Calliope folded her arms over her bare breasts and glared at the captive soldiers.

Neither of the two men who had been left in charge of her appeared to be among the living, which was a pity because she would have enjoyed slicing their throats open and spilling their blood in vast crimson streams, or breathing fire over them and watching them scream as they burned... her mind seemed to skip a beat and she shook her head to clear it, unable to remember what she had been thinking. It was a bit like coming into a room and forgetting the purpose you had in mind in going there.

"I would say that your plan to recruit our prisoners has suffered some significant setbacks," she commented in a decidedly neutral voice.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Junebug swept the barrel of her rifle back and forth through the head of hologram experimentally. The picture shimmered slightly but showed no other sign of having noticed. York was looking at Neil with an expression she couldn’t read but didn’t seem to her to bode very well. Everyone else seemed frozen by the unexpected turn of events.

“What happened to the men who vanished?” Junebug asked, walking in a circle around the alien projection. No matter what angle she assumed it seemed to be facing directly at her but there was no transition whatsoever.

“All non essential querants are to be terminated,” the hologram responded. Junebug glanced to Woods who looked grim but clearly hadn’t expected any other answer.

“Are we in danger now?” Junebug asked.

“All non essential querants are to be terminated,” the hologram repeated.

“Can N...er ‘the chosen one’ deem us essential querants?” Junebug asked.

“That is not the function of the chosen one. That functionality is not essential.”

“Why do you…” the hologram flickered and vanished and the whole building shuddered. Dust rained down from the ceiling. A second later another hammerblow struck the structure.

“That’s orbital bombardment,” York noted, he rubbed at his chest and cast an irritated glance at Neil. The Chacedon ships must have either destroyed the November Sky or driven it back into the RIP long enough to resume their attack. The shield that had held the Terran’s off must have been immensely strong to prevent them from being instantly obliterated. Junebug didn’t want to think about what that meant for the Highlander right now.

“Neil, whatever the fuck you need to do we need to do it now,” she snapped grabbing Taya by the shoulder and pulling her away from the pilot. Seconds mattered right now and she couldn’t afford to waste valuable seconds calming the girl down.

“Wait just a min…” York began but Junebug had nonchalantly swung her weapon to bear on the spook. She didn’t make a point of it but it was obvious that the Terran recognised the threat.

“Not a discussion,” she said in a voice that held no more warmth than a blizzard. Woods and her surviving two marines shifted uncomfortably. Saxon raised his arm and Sven seemed to produce a knife from nowhere. It still wouldn’t have been great odds. Sayeeda was confident she could put down York but the angle would preclude her from taking any of the remaining three Terrans. It was possible that Saxon and Sven would put them down, but it was vanishingly unlikely they would manage it before the chamber was filled with an unsurvivable amount of gunfire. Another tremor shook the building, this one was worse than the last by orders of magnitude.

“Its not the Chacedons,” Neil said unexpectedly. Everyone paused and looked at the pilot whose eyes were very wide.

“Its starting to wake up.”

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

The monoliths continued to rotate flat even as the humans peered at the odd xenos in what appeared to be some sort of ancient sarcophagus. Junebugs tried turning her helmet on again to get a better sense of the thing but was rewarded only with the same chaotic mass of conflicting inputs as before.

“It’s dead,” Taya said, her hand held scanner evidently much better able to cut through the weird sensor anomalies. Junebug turned slowly her rifle at high porte taking in the vast landscape of monoliths. If they all contained corpses then the necropolis was vast indeed. In the direction of the center of the domed space stood an oddly asymmetric pyramid, visible now only because the forest of monoliths had flattened. The range finders were as useless as everything else, but the naked eye suggested that it was two or three hundred meters away. Sayeeda glanced at Sven, if the cyborg was struggling with the odd sensor anomalies he gave no sign, his face its usual impassive mask.

“Look this isn’t my rodeo but we have men missing, Neil acting weird, we should pull…”

“No,” York declared, not loud but firm, “If Captain Tiberius can't out maneuver the Chalcedons they will reduce this place to magma.”

“Seems like another good reason not to …” there was a sudden odd keening noise and everyone spun to face the corpse of the xenos. One of the soldiers pulled his hand away guiltily. Woods opened her mouth to shout something but with the suddenness of a bomb blast the discs spun into motion, slicing the offending marine into blood soaked ribbons. Pandemonium errupted as the humans opened fire at the tide of razor sharp discs. Sayeeda fired one handed, reducing several of the alien artifacts to powder with a short burst. Saxon raised and arm and spurted flame from his cannon, showering the ground with clattering casings.

“The exit has closed,” Sven observed as he batted a darting disc aside with his knife, sending it smashing into another of the flat monolith/sarcophagui. Sayeeda grabbed Neil by the back of his tunic and gave him a shove in the direction of the pyramid, the pilot made a few stumbling steps before returning to a stop. The whole sky seemed to be alive with buzzing discs as they descended in torrents, consuming another marine in a heartbeat. Sayeeda pulled a grenade from her belt with one hand and seized Taya with the other, throwing the girl bodily towards the pyramid.

“Fire in the hole!” she screamed and hurled the grenade into the thickest concentration of discs, turning in the same motion to throw herself over Taya, protecting the younger womans face and ears. The primer charge went off with a pop that sprayed a mist of hydrocarbon based fuel into the air a heart beat before the igniter charge kicked off the fuel air explosion. The shockwave tossed the humans sprawling and sucked all the available air from the atmosphere in a minature mushroom cloud. Sayeeda’s eardrums were saved only by her helmet but the shock was still literally stunning. As soon as she could make her limbs move she scooped up Taya who seemed dazed but unharmed. A few marines still fires sporadically but that was panic fire rather than anything particularly aimed.

“Pick him up!” Junebug shouted to Saxon, indicating Neil who had been knocked sprawling, he had been a little further from the blast and seemed to be ok if still inactive. The reptile shook his head, though possibly it was more in confusion than in refusal. York grabbed Neil and through him over his shoulder in a pack strap carry and bounded away in the direction of the pyramid, he must have been immensely strong to manage such a feat and he showed more good sense than the rest of them. In the sky more discs were descending to fill the smoking void that the grenade had cleared, it looked to Sayeeda like water gouts bursting from a dam about to fail.

“Move!” she screamed at the remaining marines but they were already moving back, Woods and her people falling back into a rough semicircle which surrounded York and Neil. Sayeeda half pushed, half carried the stunned Taya, continuing to fire into the approaching storm. One of the marines had what must have been a heavy breaching shotgun that boomed with the rhythmic percussion of a vast drum smashing half a dozen discs from the sky with each report. The air stank of something that smells vaguely like burning lavender mixing with the sweet stink of cordite and the tang of ozone.

“I’m ok!” Taya screamed pulling free of Junebugs grip and freeing her arm to bring her rifle up to her shoulder. She squeezed the trigger on full automatic emptying her magazine and stripping the clip before slotting home another. One of the marines stumbled over a sarcophagus and lost a hand to one of the darting disc, he opened his mouth to scream a heart beat before three more slice him to offal.

York, in addition to being inhumanly strong, seemed inhumanly fast having covered half the distance to the pyramid already, even burdened with the weakly struggling Neil. He leaped from sarcophagus to sarcophagus with the grace of a nanny goat. Sayeeda tossed another grenade into the mass of discs and followed, moving further the the flank as the circle around York shrank as more and more discs hurtled towards them. Woods shouted orders to her men but it was only discipline and skill that kept them in a remotely survivable formation. A disc slashed across Sayeeda’s chest and she was pitched backwards by the force of it. Flecks of ceramic splashed in all directions scaring a deep trough in her breastplate. For a moment she thought she was finished but Saxon grabbed her by the collar and yanked her back into the line, turning the air in front of her into varicoloured dust with a long burst of his cannon.

“There is an opening!” Taya shouted, audible only over the comm net, even though she was only a few feet away. York pitched Neil through like a sack of flour and turned like a duelist, his elegant pistol in his hand. He fired twenty rounds in an eyeblink each one smashing one of the discs to ruin. Sayeeda followed Taya through opening, a black hole about two meters tall and fringed by lintels of the same color as the monolith. Two more marines followed her before Sven and Woods, the final two survivors leaped into the gap, Woods’ sub machine gun still spitting on full automatic. She pulled a metal half cylinder fom her belt and slapped it to the ground. There was a momentary whine and then the doorway shimmered with a bluish purple light. Sayeeda had just enough time to recognise a breaching force shield before discs began to slam into the barrier, ricocheting off with weird warbling sounds.

The interior of the room was another oddly asymmetric hexagon with four hallways leading off from the sides which didn’t parallel a wall. Junebugs mind couldn’t quite figure out exactly how such a arrangement was set up inside the pyramid but it hardly mattered at the moment. The walls were covered with strange symbols which were obviously of a type with the tattoo on Niels hand and others they had seen in the bunker on the equator. There was no natural illumination but the weapons that Junebug and the marines carried glowed with the heat waste of extended firing, ranging from red to white in the case of the man with shotgun. The barrel of the weapon was visibly warped and Junebug wouldn’t have wanted to bet her life that the next round wouldn’t have catastrophically detonated the weapon. The marine obviously agreed with the assessment because he touched a stud and the barrel fell free, hitting the ground and deforming as the almost molten metal struck the floor. He took a spare barrel from a belt pack and slotted it into place. Junebug stripped the remainder of her own clip and replaced it with a fresh magazine, her own barrel was shimmering down from orange to a sullen red and she took a pair of chemical lights from her webbing, pulled the pins and tossed them to either end of the room against the moment when the heat light had completely faded.

“This shield wont hold…” Woods began but York was already pressing Neil’s hand to one of the designs on the wall. A heavy sheet of ceramic slid down, sealing the door with a boom. The sound of discs striking the panel continued for another two or three seconds and then ceased, leaving the survivors in silence save for laboured breathing and the whir of overheated electronics.

Damned to the Depths

Calliope struggled uselessly as the escaped soldiers pulled her to her feet. She tried to shout but all she managed to do was make a muted groaning sound. Something cold and sharp pressed up against her throat she quieted at one.

“We should just cut her throat now,” one of the soldiers urged, his eyes were very wide, obviously terrified. The man with the knife shook his head.

“Nah a dark haired piece like this is worth real money, to the Inquisition if no one else, besides unless we can sail this ship ourselves we need some hostages,” the knifeman retorted, his fellows were searching her room pulling out clothing and wine, one of them drew her rapier, setting aside the broken bottle he had been clutching as a weapon. Unfortunately for the looters most of her valuable possessions were in the ensorcelled chest. One of the men heaved at the chest but couldn’t move it. He looked around the chest looking for some sort of catch but there was nothing save the handplate.

“Forget it!” the knifeman snapped. Correctly surmising that securing the witch was more important than looting her quarters.

“Lets find the captain! You two,” he commanded pointing to two of the soldiers seeming at random, “Stay here and guard her, if she gives you any trouble, kill her.”

The soldiers not on guard rushed out of the room leaving Calliope alone with her captors. With her arms bound behind her back and her mouth securely gagged there was little she could do other than seethe. One of the soldiers leered at her unpleasantly revealing several blackened teeth. Calliope only glared back at him which seemed to encourage him.

“Well there is no reason we can’t be friendly while we wait,” the soldier laughed and shoved Calliope back onto the bed before flopping atop her to pin her with his weight. His companion voiced some half hearted protest but the first soldier was already mashing his tongue against her lips, she turned her face away in disgust.

“Ohh playing hard to get you uppity bitch?” the soldier mocked before taking hold of her night shirt and ripping it open.

“Not bad, hmmm what have we here…” the soldier said as his eyes fell on the amulet that Markus had given her, still hanging from the chain around her neck, glinting just above her bared breasts.

“Who says you can’t have fun and profit at the same time,” the brute chuckled as he reached down for the amulet. As his fingers touched the silver his chuckle transmuted to an agonized scream. Hot blood spattered across Calliope’s chest as the soldier snatched back his hand, or at any rate what was left of it. Rags of bone and tendon hung in ruin as though some great maw had savaged the man. Calliope was on her feet in an instant, driving her foot into the man's crotch, he doubled over and tried to catch himself on his ruined hand, eliciting another scream of agony. His partner, shocked to inaction by the sudden and unexpected turn of events, finally managed to pull the knife he had stolen from one of the other crew members. Calliope crashed into him, sending him toppling to the ground, she spun and drove her heel down on the back of the maimed man's neck with a satisfying crunch. The second soldier, having regained his feet, hit her from behind and they both crashed into wall, hard enough to rattle the glass cased lantern that hung from one of the cross beams. Calliope slipped around the man, keeping her footing with some difficulty, and ran out the door and down the short corridor onto the deck.

The deck was ominously deserted save for one of the soldiers crouching behind a cannon. He looked up at the half naked woman, clearly unsure of whether to shout and raise the alarm but before he could decide the soldier who had been guarding her hit her with a flying tackle that sent them both sprawling, without her hands to balance Calliope tumbled hard on the deck, rolling desperately to try to get back to her feet. She just managed to straighten up in time to see a heavy oar sweep towards her head she staggered back to avoid the blow, hit the rail and tumbled over, plunging into the ocean below.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene paused and slipped an arm free from one shoulder of his pack, allowing the equipment bag to hang from one side of his body. A set of combat webbing would have been much more practical but even if he had one it wouldn’t have made sense to wear. He knelt down in the dry sand, keeping his balance with one hand slightly held away from him.

“Put your arms around my neck and hang on tight,” he instructed, as gently as he could. Damaris gave Solae one more uncertain look and then crossed to the kneeling soldier putting her arms around his neck. Rene counted to three and then straightened, easily lifting the weight of the child. Dramaris put on foot on the bag to help balance and clutched his neck in a tight nervous hug.

“Alright, here we go,” Rene cautioned before striding into the water. The tide was rising rapidly and the water reached to his waist by the time he reached the rusted ladder of corrigated metal that gave access to the now freefloating barge. Unwilling to attempt climbing the ladder with Damaris on his back he instead turned so that she could step onto the ladder directly from his back. She scrambled up it with the easy grace of a child who has spent time climbing trees, disappearing over the gunnel and out of sight. Turning, Rene was relieved to find that Solae was right behind him, though her shorter stature meant that the water came halfway up her stomach. He took her hand and squeezed it affectionately.

“Your carriage awaits my lady,” he said with a smile and a slight bow. Solae gave him a smile and then clambered up the ladder with every bit as much grace as Damaris had shown. It was amazing that a woman who until a few days ago had lived her life at the pinnacle of Imperial society was handling things so well. While Rene himself came from a similar strata, he had years to make the adjustment. There was a faint pain in his chest as he considered the social ramifications of her choosing to be with him, he didn’t want to cause her any suffering or taint her with his disgrace. Not for the first time he put it out of his mind. There would be time to worry about such things once she was safe in Imperial territory.

Once he was sure Solae and Damaris were clear he through his pack up over the gunnel and then turned and struck out for the shore once more. The waves were growing more larger as the tide approached its apogee but he made it back to shore without difficulty and loosed the cable that bound the barge to the shore. Freed from one of its tethers the vessel immediately began to swing right, following the current that ran down the beach, but not at such a rate that Rene worried. He moved as fast as he could, coiling the line into a loop from arm to elbow as he went, even so by the time he was halfway back to the barge the water level had reached his neck. Solae called something to him but he couldn’t make it out over the wind and the waves. Slipping the coil of line over his shoulder he grabbed the cable and pulled himself along it till he reached the boat and climbed up onto the ladder to the obvious relief of both women.

“Your not going to do that with the other one are you,” Solae asked in a tone that made it clear what the correct answer was. Rene, soaked to the bone, shook his head firmly before taking a drink from one of the canteens of fresh water he had bought along.

“There isn’t time before the tide crests,” he told her, not to mention he would have to dive among the waves and risk being driven against the submerged outcropping. It might be useful to have rope but it wasn’t worth risking Solae’s safety. Instead he moved to the stern of the barge and touched the activation stud for the pump they had fitted. It sputtered for a moment while the lines primed and then settled into a smooth pulsing thrum as water began to cycle through the unit.

Rene looked out to sea, the water was still choppy from the wind but there were no white caps save where the water crashed against hidden reefs and shoals. In the distance there were gathering gray clouds, normal weather rather than anything related to the hurricane, and below them a grey silver curtain of rain. He smiled confidently for the women’s benefit but he recognised how dangerous the next few hours were likely to be. Rene licked his lips and moved to the front of the barge and unhooked the line the tethered them to the island. The boat immediately began to drift down the coast, parallel to the shore. Rene ran back and turned the pump rate up to seventy five percent. The water behind them gurgled and foamed and, to his immense relief, the barge began to move forward against the last strength of the incoming tide. The turned the tiller over and, sure enough, the nose swung out towards the sea. There was an immediate thump thump thump as the blunt nose broke through the waves. An old prayer came to his mind from history class and he licked the salt from his lips. It had seemed a foolish concern at the time, after all they had ships that could sail between the stars, why would anyone ever bother with oceans? None the less he repeated a snatch of it under his breath, almost inaudible to all but himself.

“Hear us when we cry to thee, for those in peril upon the sea.”