Penny

The Pavonis Campaign - Warhammer 40000

“Tell me that one more time,” Katiya Petrovska demanded through gritted teeth. The newly appointed Regimental Commissar of the 112th Kandari rifles glared at the Administratium drone who stood in her commandeered office somehow contriving to look nervous despite being equipped with two augmetic eyes. The office had at one point been part of a scholam but the juvies had been given an unexpected holiday when a regiment of the Imperial Guard had arrived on Pavonis. Well, part of a regiment anyway.

“The astropathic message was very clear Commissar,” the administratium official reported, looking at the ground to avoid Katiya’s icy blue gaze.

“The Omniscience Light and the Lord Cardinal Catemek were both swept of course by the warp storm, they report their position as the Katarn system and they are making for Pavonis at best speed,” the adminstratium adept repeated in the sing song tone of someone repeating a memorized message.

“Katarn is six months from here at least,” Katiya snapped, though truthfully her being irritated about it wasn’t going to change the fact that two thirds of her regiment was stuck months of warp travel away. The storm had come up during the last few weeks of the voyage, just in time to separate their own transport, The Judgment of Atrino, from the rest of its fleet. Only three of the nine companies of the 112th had been on the Judgement, worse only one company was front line troopers, the other two companies were sappers and logistics, and they had no armor beyond their chimeras. That wasn’t going to be enough to calm the riots and unrest they had been sent to deal with, worse yet it might be just enough to provoke the very trouble they had been sent to quell. Katiya stalked over to the window and peered out onto the scrumball fields where the guardsmen were busily carrying supplies and munitions from a trio of massive armored shuttles. She made quite the picture, dressed in great coat and wearing the distinctively beaked cap of commissar perched on her dark braided hair and the crimson sash of office wrapped around her slender waist, partially covering the polished black belt from which depended a bolt pistol and a power sword in a black and silver scabbard. She turned back to look at the Adept and was momentarily distracted by the children's drawings that were pinned to the far wall. They were obviously a class project, depictions of Pyro the Promethum Flame, some of the depictions of burning heretics were actually quite artistically rendered.

“Who else knows about this? She asked after a moment, her sudden decisive turn causing the adept to flinch and drop an ink bottle he apparently had been clutching beneath his dark gray robes. The bottle bounced on the cork floor but didn’t break.

“Well there is the sstropath, myself, the governor and the prelate of the governor’s guard, I suppose the two soldiers on duty?”

“Are they still on duty?” she asked. The adept blinked like a stunned fish.

“Yes… I mean I assume… I came straight here, but captain Raloc wasn’t in his office and...”

Katiya strode passed the flunky and threw open the door into the central hallway of the scholam. A corporal she didn’t know looked up in startelement as the door bounced off the wall with a sharp crack. To her approval he was in his full battle rattle, which was what Raloc had ordered and the regimental standard operating procedure after landfall in a possibly hostile planet. She really needed Raloc but the captain was a newly promoted officer and had yet to learn to delegate tasks to subordinates, he was out liaising with the local arbities, getting what insight they could provide on the insurgents. In fairness this wouldn’t have normally been a problem, but with the Colonel and Major stranded at least six months away, if, and that was a big if, the warp storm subsided.

“You,” she ordered the guardsmen, “take ten men to the palace, round up the prelate of the governors guard and the men on duty at the astropath sanctum this morning. The astropath is to be confined to the sanctum. Bring the rest of them here until I figure out what to do with them. I’ll have a note for the governor with a commissariat seal in five minutes.”

It was important that the news that the Imperial Guard had arrived badly understrength not spread, or at least that word didn’t spread quickly. It wouldn’t be possible to keep that fact underwraps forever, but they needed to gain as much time as they could.

“What… what about me?” the Administratium Adept blurted, his augmetic eyes whirring wide in shock at the sudden and unexpected development. Katiya looked back at him as though startled he was still there.

@POOHEAD189

NaNoWriMo 2020

1000 words down, mostly technobabble

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Junebug wandered through Teosinte, making her way to what a shocking number of gang tags identified as the Spiders end of town before the groups of blustering thugs flooded the streets. Even though the field guards weren't in town yet, there were plenty of unfriendly glares from partisans of both gangs, and from locals who assumed that anyone going around armed must be affiliated with one or the other. Realistically, Junebug had to admit she had been in more unpleasant places, there had been gangs of cannibals in the ruined cities on Segovia and children routinely went missing in the night. In her mind those situations were temporary, the results of wars that Andor's Armored was in the business of brining to an end as swiftly as possible. Andor was no humanitarian, but his interest in warfare was economic, and finishing a contract quickly was always to be preferred. That being said, any local thugs who bothered the mercenaries and the locals the recruited as camp followers and to help with their logistics train, could expect to learn what a couple of LAVs and a company of infantry could do to pissant indiges who got above themselves. In Teosinte there was no such force, and this wasn't a war, this was everyday life for these people, and it would go on till everyone on the planet was in one gang or the other. Or dead of course. That was the more likely outcome for most people. Sayeeda wasn't a humanitarian either, but she was here and she could do something, and so she would.

The bar she selected was called the Aracnophilla, or at least, Sayeeda presumed that was what the artists semi literate scrawl was supposed to say. It did have a fairly artistic rendition of a spider buggering a chained scorpion above the door. The interior was as promising as the outside, a single large room with a dozen tables infront of a dingy bar. At the back of the room was a stage on which a tired looking woman gyrated, shaking nude and unlovely flesh at a few patrons gathered around. The men seemed to be whipping at her with what looked like piano wire attached to wooden handles. She flinched from each blow but the vacant look in her eyes made it clear she was too stoned on something to much care. An interlace of old scar tissue suggested this wasn't her first, and perhaps not her hundredth time at the particular stage show.

Junebug slid up the bar and ordered a whiskey, motioning for the bartender to leave the half empty bottle. She sniffed at the neck of it, making sure it was of a high enough proof to kill bacteria before taking a sip. It was raw and oily, with very little to recommend it except for the bite of what might have been pure ethanol mixed with water and food coloring. She grinned, she was just going to have to get Neil to take her someplace nice next time. She didn't realise the thought had made her laugh till someone grabbed her wrist.

"Something funny to you bitch?" a slightly overweight looking gangster demanded. He was clearly compensating for his balding patte by growing a full beard, which was none to clean and none too good.

"None of your bussiness yokel, why dont you fuck off while you still have your legs to carry you hey?" she suggested. Predictably his eyes narrowed with anger and he yanked her towards him. Junebug spun into the motion, using it to add momentum to the elbow which she drove into the suddenly shocked thugs stomach just below the sternum. Air whooshed from his lung and he began to choke as he simultaneously tried to gasp for air and vomit. He fell to his knees and sprayed out a mouthful of his stomach contents before collapsing into a wracking cough. Junebug kicked him hard in the kidneys and then again in the stomach as he rolled over. He coiled up, desperately trying to cover his vitals, he was crying now, but Junebug had learned in a hard school that it always paid to put the boot in while the other fellow was down. She raised her boot to kick him in the teeth.

"I think he learned his lesson," a deep basso voice said, punctuated by the click of a hammer drawing back. Junebug paused in mid kick and looked up to see a man with crossed bandoliers and spider tatoos on the top of both is hands looking at her in what might have been amusement. She grinned back, her smile as hard and terrible as a glacier.

"Oh I don't know, never hurts to drive home a lesson for the slower ones," she responded, though she was already stepping away, reaching back to the bar to retrieve her bottle.

"Never the less, maybe we leave poor Jorge alone right?" the man persisted. Junebug took a sip directly from the bottle and shook herself like a wet dog, trying to speed the adrenaline from her system.

"Whatever you say," she responded indifferently. The man watched her for a minute and then eased back the hammer on the handgun and slipped it into a cross draw holster above his hip.

"Your that offworld mercenary, working with the Scorpions right?" he asked.

"I'm from offworld, you can tell by the fact I still have all my teeth and a full set of chromosomes," she rejoined with a cocky grin. The newcomer didn't rise to the bait, merely watching her.

"As for working with the Scorpions, no, right now I'm not working with anyone, just looking to get a drink and..." she nodded her chin in the direction of the fallen Jorge who was crawling away towards the back of bar, if the man had friends, they weren't in a hurry to assist him, "enjoying the night life." The man nodded agreeably.

"Well my name is Talin, and if you aren't working with the Scorpions, then I have someone who I know is dying to meet you," Talin said with an oily smirk. Gunfire sounded off in the distance.

"Not really looking for company friend," she said, nodding again at Jorge as a couple of thugs scopped him up by the arms, shooting baleful looks at Junebug.

"I am afraid that I must insist, and if you refuse, I will have to get as many men as I need to make you comply, and that would really start our relationship off on the wrong foot don't you think?" Junebug took another pull from the bottle and slapped it down on the bar.

"Well, if you insist..."

NaNoWriMo 2020

Perhaps this is the perfect year for me to give it a whirl

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

“I notice he gets a plasma rifle,” Rosaria groused, still a little sullen as the pistons began to hiss as they extended the belly ramp of the Bonaventure. The weapon hung infront of Rene’s body armor from one of the integral attachment points, muzzle down across his body at a steep angle. The armor itself was standard marine battle dress, mottled gray carbon fibre cored ceramic. It was actually heavier equipment than had been issued to the troops at the Rat Trap back on New Concordia which hadn’t been considered combat conditions. That Ten had been able to get his hands on a set of the stuff was impressive and more than a little unnerving. When the day came that Solae assumed her responsibilities as Duchess of the Eastern Cross, he was going to suggest a serious audit of Imperial logistics.

“Well,” said Rene judiciously as the ramp thumped down and the internal hatch hissed open. There was a slight outrush of air as the cargo bay depressurized slightly to the local ambient. A moment later the air of HK-421 rushed in. Rene had found that each world he had visited had a certain character to its air which was in its own way unique. New Concordia tasted like the wind before a storm, Panopontus tingled slightly with sea borne salt, Zatis tasted of the lubricants used in the atmosphere reprocessors. HK-421’s air had a slightly spicy taste, like the memory of cinnamon prickling at the back of his throat. The snuffed fires of the landing and the cooling metal of their reentry mingled with the slightly wrong scents of grass and trees.

“If you ever feel like enlisting in the Marines, they have an excellent course on how to use one,” he told the girl, catching Solae’s eye and controlling the slight exasperation with a quirk of his lip. The moved down the ramp and onto the grassland beyond. The landing site Solae had chosen was between two small hills that formed the toe of a range that rose to mountains to the north. Scrub forest seemed to predominate in their planned direction of travel, likely a sign that weather formed on that side of the range while this side was in the rain shadow. The grassland appeared to be all but flat but the occasional line of short shrubby trees suggested that what rainfall runoff there was was channeled into shallow stream beds that were not visible until you stumbled onto them. The most striking feature of HK-421 was its sky. Whether due to the higher concentration of argon, or the reflection of the gas giant around which it orbited the sky was a wash of rose colored pastel, like a gorgeous sunset that was never ruined by dusk. Thin wispy clouds were swirled at high altitude further enhancing the impression that the sky had been painted by some ancient artist rather than occurring naturally.

“What I mean is, you are armed to the teeth and the rest of us have…” she made as though to grab the butt of her pistol but Rene’s eyes slapped her hand away before she could actually draw the weapon. He had made it abundantly clear to her in their brief training that one should never draw a weapon, particularly a pistol, unless it was for use. Rosaria’s experience with guns was more as a theatrical tool, where Thorne’s thugs had swaggered around to intimidate and impress. It would take time and training to grind away those subconscious lessons.

“Why do you think that is?” Rene asked, taking his queue from Solae to use the bitching as a learning opportunity for the girl. Either she would learn something, or she would learn to stop bitching. To her credit Rosaria bit back a retort and considered the question.

“Because you think you might have to shoot Bouradine?” she hazarded after a moment. They set off to the east, skirting the hill rather than climbing it. Rene had planned their route to the downed escape pods before they left and it was projected onto his retina by a holographic projector in the brow of the armors helmet. The unit had a blast shield, but Rene kept it retracted for the moment in order to better observe the terrain and so that his companions could see his face rather than the blank plasteel shield.

“Solae is the representative of the Empress in this sector,” Rene explained as they climbed over a small rain cut streambed. It was deeper than Rene expected, and cut to the bedrock where mineral salts dispositive by run off glistened in metallic rainbows.

“Under normal circumstances, her head of security and military liaison would have at least a squad of troops with her if she insisted on visiting an unexplored planet, probably more like a platoon, and that goes double for meeting an unknown contact in an unsecured location. Wearing this,” he rapped his knuckles on the armor.

“And carrying this,” he tapped the butt of the plasma rifle.

“Everyone in the Stellar Empire recognizes marine battledress, so he isn’t going to mistake us for pirates or bounty hunters and he is going to take Solae seriously because if he doesn't he has a visual reminder that the whole weight of the Empire can come down on his head,” Rene explained.

“So it is all political then?” Rosaria asked. Rene chuckled softly. He wondered if there were any aspect of life in the upper tiers of the Empire that wasn’t political. He glanced sideways at Solae and smiled fondly at the image of her wearing her fabricated interface gear. He didn’t doubt that some, perhaps most of the nobles he had met on Capella would be utterly horrified to even think of trekking across an unknown world, with improvised equipment.

“Partially,” Rene admitted, “There is wildlife to consider and... “ he trailed off for a moment trying to consider the best way to phrase his next words. There were too many variables tumbling in his head to allow for him to make a clear decision this far in advance. In the end he decided it was best to go with the plain and unvarnished truth.

“...and because yes, I might have to shoot Bouradine.” There was a long and grim pause before Rene's mind spun away from a future where a panicing Bouradine pointed a gun at Solae Falia and Rene Quentain burned him down with two plasma bolts as precise as the certainty he would regret doing it.

"You should name it you know," He said, turning to Solae before making a guesture to encompass the world around them.

"You are the first official Imperial contact after all, and we can't keep calling it HK-421."

Penny's Pencils

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

The Bonaventure rocked down through the upper reaches of the planets atmosphere. Rene reached out and squeezed Solae’s arm and then strapped himself in. Part of Rene wanted to take the controls himself but that wasn’t a logical part of him, rather it was simply a man’s desire to spare his beloved a task which she didn’t relish. Rene could not, simulation had shown, pilot the ship as well as Solae did and while training might one day make him a competent pilot he just didn’t have the natural flair for it that Solae exhibited. Winds buffeted the hull of the freighter as it sank lower, growing cooler as the flow of air began to scrub the heat of reentry away. The slightly unstable weather systems of the terraformed world shoved the vessel this way and that, each time Solae allowed the ship to shift, countering the trust gently almost in harmony with the weather until they got low enough that the heavier more stable air permitted a smoother flight.

The landscape below was breathtaking, great mountains and sheer valleys that dwarfed anything in Rene’s alpine home flashed beneath them. The vegetation had appeared terran from orbit but as they got closer Rene saw a shocking divergence from Terran standard. Pine trees the size of giant sequoia rose up off the mountain sides, needles bending and questing like snakes. Great fields of undulating lichen covered areas of rock too barren to permit the penetration of roots and strange birds with two sets of wings startled from hides among sheer faces of vertical rock.

“It all looks so weird,” Rosaria said, voicing the thought they had all been thinking. Rene nodded.

“It is the radiation from the terraforming,” he explained. It had only been a thousand years since the human colonization of this place, not nearly long enough to account for such rapid divergence, but the background radiation had multiplied the chances for mutation in the plant and animal germplasm, speeding the process considerably.

“Is it dangerous?” the girl asked, looking a little nervous.

“Maybe,” Rene conceded, “but it cant be that bad if Bouradine was willing to bring Bel’sian here.” That wasn’t necessarily true of course. Bouradine might be insane, or suffer from the blindness to danger that enthusiasts sometimes had for things they were passionate about, but nothing Rene had noticed in the careful way Bouradine had executed the ‘kidnapping’ suggested that were true.

“We are nearly down,” Solae stated, feathering the thrust controls to arrest the vertical motion of the ship to the speed of a falling leaf. They were out of the mountains now and in a low range of hills that sank towards the coastal plain. The Bonaventure had come down on the far side of a mountain range and slid around the foot of it that stretched towards the coast, concealing them from any possibility of visual detection. Frequent gorgeous, apparently cut by rainfall and water run off, gave the ground an odd striated appearance. The ruins of several human settlements were within a few miles of the spot Solae had selected as their landing ground, behind a few shallow hills to shield them from direct observation. The sensor suggested that the pods were close to, but not quite at the ruins. The ship set down with a sudden thump like a distant clap of thunder and Solae cut the feeds to the thrusters before reversing them, sucking away the oxygen that would allow the touch down to start a grass fire. The ship settled for a moment on its struts and then was still as Solae cut power to the thrusters. Rene clasped Solae’s shoulder, pride in her accomplishment evident in the simple gesture.

“Why are there two pods,” he asked. The question had been bothering him during the decent but he hadn’t wanted to distract the pilot while she made the difficult approach.

“Maybe they plan to leave in the second one?” Rosaria asked. It was a shrewd guess but based on a mistaken assumption.

“No, a pod can’t make orbit again once its down, the propulsion system would require…” Rene trailed off as he saw Rosaria’s eyes begin to glaze over. Alric Quentain had been a naval officer and though he had decided to send his son to court for political reasons, Rene had gotten a reasonable education on naval matters by simple association with his father and his circle of friends and allies.

“It just can’t,” he amended, unstrapping himself and standing up preparatory to heading back to the hold to collect equipment.

“Maybe they are meeting someone,” Rosaria tried again. Rene shrugged, that was certainly possible but it was alot of trouble to go through to meet someone in an extremely efficient manner. If they were meeting confederates then there was nothing to stop the second party from bringing a ship, in fact it made more sense to do so as presumably Boradne and Bel’sian didn’t plan to spend the rest of their lives here.

“The simplest way to discover this is to go and investigate,” Yarue said, so unexpectedly direct that Rene almost started.

“This is very true,” he conceded, eager to encourage the Syshin to directly communicating their thoughts. All in all there were a few too many mysteries beginning to assemble around Bouradine and this world. If they had been human nobles Rene might have suspected a lure for a trap, but it seemed too convoluted and too dependent on secrecy for what he knew of the Kalderi mindset.

The Knight's Song

Julliette felt her hand freeze in accordance to the wishes of the Count of Tindar, his will silencing the musicans as absolutely as it compelled them to play. The knight stalked across the dancefloor with his mace held ready. The dancers began to circle him like sharks circling a wounded orca, they feighted in and out, skipping out of range of blows from the weapon almost mockingly. The circle moved with the advancing knight, not impeding his progress but threatening it, promising swift death or worse than death with the slightest mistep. Julliette focused all her will, tried to force her body to move, but it was still a useless endeavor. As the knight neared the throne the two robed figures flanking the Count rose in the same eerie unison as the dancers, but the Count made an obscure gesture and stood up. Despite seeming of a height with his companions a moment ago, he now seemed to tower over them like a grown man over children. An aura of palpable rage washed over Julliette and to her amazement her left eye blinked of her own volition.

"You were a fool to come here without an invitation mortal worm," a voice as ancient and terrible as the bottom of the sea sounded in her mind, seeming to come from all directions while still originating with the Count. Julliette could not have said what language he spoke in save that it wasn't common and she understood it as perfectly as she understood that fire was hot.

"Take him," the Count commanded to the dancers with a contemptuous flick of his wrist. With a howl of dammned souls the dancers rushed in heedless of the danger of the knights weapon, perhaps even eager for the oblivion that it might promise. Abruptly Julliette could move. The lute fell from her neveless fingers and struck the ground with a tuneless thunk which might have been the sweetest sound she had ever produced with it. With the speed of someone who had spent subjective lifetimes planning what she would do, if only she were freed from the enchantment, she seized the harp which stood on a pedestal of antediluvian marble and hurled the gold and silver chased instrument into the crowd of dancers surrounding the knight, its heavy edge crunching into the press like a bludgeon.

Most of the musicians didn't react to her sudden outburst, but the conductor of the dammned ensemble turned and stretched a finger out towards her, flesh fell from the digit to reveal aged and cracked bone beneath and Juliette danced back, snatching a viol from the bleeding hands of another musician and smashing it against the conductor in a shower of kindling that seemed to blow the disarticulated bones of the creature across the hall like chaff before the wind. Screaming in terror she leaped from the dias where the musicans watched in vacant eyed non interest and grabbed for a sword clutched by an ancient suit of armor, pulling it free and sending the metal tumbling to the ground in discordant cacophony.

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

Sabatine hefted her impeller as she followed Kaiden up the stairs. She was glad they hadn't had to shoot anyone to capture what must have been the off duty guard room for whatever outfit was occupying the mansion but she knew that luck like that couldn't last forever. The climbed the stairs and Kaiden pushed open the door at the top a fraction then, evidently seeing no immediate opponents pushed it open fully. The moved into what looked to be a kitchen, with long stainless steel benches and pots hanging from hooks that protruded at regular intervals. Like everything else in the mothballed mansion it hadn't been used in some time, and a light dusting of grime covered the surfaces where the byproducts of sugar processing had deposited themselves on the surfaces, even at this remove from the facilities that handled the business. Footprints leading too and from the doorway were evident in the dust and cases of food, apparently canned meat had been stacked haphazardly on the central bench. Empty cans littered the bench and floor, apparently opened with combat knives and tossed aside by the indifferent kidnappers.

Kaiden stepped into the room, made a motion for revolve to starboard and then took the lefthand side himself. Sabatine followed quietly, careful to avoid fallen cans as she moved along the right side of the kitchen towards the set of doors at the far end. These doors were simply sheets of plastic and she flicked her commo helmet to infra red for a moment incase there were anyway waiting on the far side, there was nothing and she parted the panels a hairsbreadth to peer into the room beyond. There was a blind turn, intended to keep the kitchens out of sight and Sabatine moved in and peered through the true door into what must have been intended as a ball room. The floor was laid in patterned wood that had been polished to a high sheen, though it too was now covered with dust and the tacky effluvia of sugar saturated air. The room itself had a high ceiling, two stories up and ringed by a balcony that made space for an orchestra and for guests to watch the dances. At the far end of the ground floor, tied to a chair with simple plastic zip ties, was midshipman Otis. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth and a pressure cut above his eye but he otherwise appeared unharmed. Two men with assault rifles lounged beside him, both smoking cigars. A third was busying himself at a bar, drinking brandy from the neck of a bottle. Sabatine's infrared vision picked up two men patrolling the upper tier, bright red points picking out the tip of their cigars. The rest of the men must have been patrolling the perimeter, though Sabatine didn't doubt they would come running once the shooting started.

She signaled a hold to Kaiden as he emerged at the identical blind corner at the other side of the kitchen. She made a sign for obstruction and pointed upwards. His eyes flicked to the upper tier, though without a commo helmet it wasn't certain he could pick out the over watching enemy. He must have taken her meaning though, because he indicated to her, then made the sign for ascend mast, followed by clear obstruction. Then he indicated himself, and made clear mast step, which she took to mean he would handle the ground floor. The hand signals they used weren't really intended for clearing a building, but so long as they didn't get too fancy she could understand what he meant. Moving along a few feet she gently pressed open the door which concealed a staircase intended for servants to bring drinks and refreshments up to their betters and climbed quietly to the top floor. There was enough background noise from the guards own careless steps and their desultory conversation, which seemed to be a discussion of the virtues of a pair of whores back in town, to cover the slight creaks of the stairs and the rustle of soft soled boots on timber. Reaching the top she took a moment to figure the positions of the two patrolling guards. She hefted her impeller and checked the saftey. Kaiden hadn't given her any instruction so she figured he intended to make it obvious when she should act. She was at the base edge of the gallery, furthest from Otis with both guards forming the points of a nearly geometric Y that would flatten out as they continued their patrol. She hoped.

BING. BING. BING. The recall plate that all RCN officers carried in event they had to be summoned back from shoreleave at short notice began to alarm. The same sound syncopated from below as Kaiden's unit also went off, doubtless the same thing was happening in the gaurdroom below. The guards snapped instantly alert raising their weapons.

"Shit!" Sabatine snapped and kicked open the door. The impeller cracked and punched the first guard center of mass, the impact of the osmium slug sprayed gore over the expensive wall hangings and smashed the spasming man back against the wall. The body armor he was wearing bounced him off the wall and over the railing in a slow ragdoll fall that ended with an inelegant crunch as his neck impacted the floor below. The second guard fired a burst that lit the darkened room like hellfire. It must have been as much from fear as anything because the slugs blew splinters from the wall ten feet from Sabatine's position. She fired a second round and missed, having not waited the heartbeat for the weapon to steady. The man dived behind an organ of unfamiliar design, his weapon still spitting flame. Sabatine lined up her shot and fired three rounds. The wooden organ provided no more than aesteic cover and the heavy rounds punched through the timber and the body beyond. There was a scream and then an arm flopped into view thrashing wildly as the guard shattered body convulsed into death. Jumping up, she ran to the railing, hoping she wasn't too late for Kaiden and Otis.