Penny

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

Sabatine felt her stomach lurch as she stood up from her station. Things were rapidly getting out of control but she didn't see a way to deescalate them that wouldn't be seen as cowardice in her own eyes if no one else, and whatever else Sabatine Hickoring was, she was no coward.

"Can I take it then sir, that you are refusing Lieutenant Caladwarden's plan to return to station and re-engage the Alliance," she spoke firmly and distinctly, despite a quivering in her bowels at the thought of what was coming. Micha's eyes, almost impossibly bulged further and his face flushed with anger. The bridge sensors would record what she was saying for posterity.

"Are you out of your mind Hickoring?!" he exploded, "It is a miracle we survived the first time, and this yahoo wants to take us back into the lions den?!" Micha was right in that it was a miracle, by an enormous stroke of good luck they had extracted at precisely the right position, any closer to the destroyers and they would have been destroyed before they could either escape into the matrix or inflict significant damage. Watching Micha's throbbing temple Sabatine hoped he might have a stroke, that would make all of this easier.

"Of course I am refusing, our duty is to get back to Herculaenum as soon as possible and report this disaster!" Micha screamed, spittle literally forming on his lips. The bridge crew and probably numerous men and women in the hallway stood silent.

"So you are refusing to engage the enemy sir," Sabatine pressed, drawing close to the knife edge that would put her and Kaiden's life on the line.

"I just said so didn't I, Boson Higgs, get your men out and set the rig for transit to Herculaenum! And I want these two taken into custody!" Still no one moved. Helenna Graving looked like she might be about to throw up and everyone else looked panicked.

"Lieutenant Micha," She began formally, "In the face of your repeated refusal to engage the enemies of the Republic in wartime I am left with but with no choice but to relieve you of command of RCS Viceroy until such time as a court martial can be convened in accordance with the Code of Military Justice." Her guts tried to crawl up her throat as she spoke.

"This is mutiny! You will swing for this Hickoring, both of you will!" Micha shouted, his eyes so wide they were completely ringed with white, "Arrest these mutineers!" An able spacer caught in the wrong place at the wrong time took a step towards Sabatine but, surprisingly, Tilda stepped in front of him, denying him the ability to pass without making a confrontation out of it. Evidently the ground was too shaky for him to risk that and perhaps he recognized the way the reporter set her body, obviously she knew a thing or two about hand to hand fighting.

"Lieutenant Caladwarden will assume command until a courtmartial can be convened," she continued, amazed at how steady her voice was under the stress.

"Bosun Higgs, Bosun's mate Klave, you will confine the captain in his quarters until that can be arranged," she directed.

"Touch me and you are mutineers too," Micha warned, backing up as the two big riggers stepped towards him.

"Don't worry lads, its me that is for the High Jump if I'm wrong," Sabatine called, but neither of the spacers showed any hesitation in seizing the screaming captain and dragging him bodily but effortlessly from the room. A silence decended over the bridge that was as absolute as one could be on the deck of a working starship.

"Excuse me," Sabatine managed before grabbing a rigging helmet from a hook and vomiting into it noisily, her entire body trembling with shock.

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

"Its a mess part of ventral A carried away, ripped through some of the mizzen on B before the lines snubbed it. Might be best to take the A ring of the sail plan and re-rig with B. I think we can get 90 percent efficiency within about an hour that way, vs eight hours to put ventral A to rights," Sabatine replied. Kaiden said something to her but her mind had wandered back to the engagement they had just survived.

"Sorry, sorry sir what was that?" she asked.

"I said go ahead and re-rig, hours count here, but obviously your mind was somewhere else?" he asked. Sabatine tried to look at Kaiden, the motion momentarily breaking the contact of their helmets, but all she could see was the mirrored reflection of the matrix in his visor. She was wrung out, as much by adrenaline as by the short action they had just fought.

"I keep thinking about that cruiser, I mean she is stuck on the ground, it will take three days at least for her crew to lift her," she explained, replaying the images of Graving's gunnery display in her mind, seeing the fittings and the outriggers struts burn under the hammering of plasma.

"We crippled her but she isn't finished, a couple weeks and she will be back in action. And while we are at it... I mean I shouldn't be saying this but what was with the Captain, he just froze up, never known him to suffer that badly from extractions, and that was only a few hours in the matrix." She thought back to the strange conversation she had shared with Commodore Welkins the night before they had lifted. The memory of how she had acted that night embarrassed her but she swallowed it down.

"I don't know, just don't know what to think," she admitted.

The Sinful Stars

Annika gazed around the manor house as they were escorted to the guest wing. It was a handsome place, made of warm stone with russet accents. Here and there the walk ways open up to reveal lush carefully tended gardens centered on elaborate fountains, some of men on horseback, others of modestly clad women who might have either been saints or mythological figures. Soft floral scents wafted from carefully tended beds of roses, and the subtle perfume of orange trees and purple profusions of bougainvillea blossoms lay heavy on the air. Servants and other members of the extended family of the duke were glanced from time to time, a lady reading from a book of hours by a portico, a gardener tending to some pruning, but it seemed the guest wing itself was empty. Like previous areas they had visited this two was scentered around an open air garden, the entrance way opening onto the garden which was surrounded on three sides by the enclosing structure. Carved balustrades of dark polished wood, separated the raised wings from the garden proper, allowing anyone resting on one of the many benches a view of the garden while permitting them to remain in the shade. To Annika, raised in the deserts of Istkar it seemed very lush, though there might be a slight tinge of aridity to the air to any who had not grown up in so extreme an environment.

"Please, make yourselves comfortable, there are servants here to fetch whatever you should desire. The Duke will expect your for the feast at Vespers, that is three hours hence, I will have servants fetch you when the time is right," Aldego said in his polished Hazat accent. Annika was slightly surprised by the use of the canonical hour.

"The Duke is a devout man then?" she inquired. Aldego immediately stiffened.

"All Hazat are faithful servants of the Church," he declared loftily.

"We here on Aragon have not forgotten our duty to the Pancreator and his holy mission," Aldego added. Annika wasn't sure whether the veiled slight was directed at her or at Orion as a member of the now reigning House of Hawkwood though she supposed it didn't much matter.

"To that end, would you like me to escort you to the chapel, the proper place of the clergy?" he added. Annika smiled a wintery smile.

"As a layman Sieur Shazrin, you cannot be expected to know this, but those of my order find our communion with the Pancreator wherever we go," she made a guesture to the beautiful garden.

"This shall serve just fine as a chapel for me," she said with a serene guesture.

"And if I may offer one so faithful in the Pancreator's service some advice Sieur, a layman ought not presume to know the 'proper' place for a member of the clergy," she advised, enjoying the way the servants face darkened as she spoke.

"There are those who would consider such a thing improper, possibly even heretical," she added sweetly. Shazrin opened his mouth to retort but glanced at Orion and clearly thought better of it. Instead he bowed and retreated back into the house proper.

"Charming fellow," she observed, and Ragnar guffawed as he leaned forward his meaty fists encircling the ballistrade.

"You should have blasted him with your magic, jumped up bondsman," he snickered in his own tongue.

"Among my people its considered rude to break every bone in a mans body," she replied in Vuldruk, "the host might take offense after all."

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

I bet Neil is having more fun than I am Sayeeda thought to herself as she was marched down the street and through the chainlink fence that surrounded the old cannery. Like the Scorpion's base, pillboxes of sandbags and courgated iron had been errected so heavy weapons could be pointed back towards town. Improvised towers, made of structural girders from the long derelict factory stood at the corners with watchers mounted in look outs. They two had heavy weapons, but Junebug suspected that firing them from such precarious perches was far more dangerous to the shooters than the enemy. Given the fact that the thugs had bothered to cut the grass around the fence, and the care they took not to touch it, Sayeeda had to assume it was electrified. They had taken her weapons belt and her side arm, which was smart, but they hadn't conducted a proper search or made her remove her body armor, which was very stupid.

"Love what you have done with the place," Sayeeda commented ironically, guesturing to the dilapidated cannery. Sections of roofing had been torn away to reveal girdirs within and improvised electric lights hung from strings. Rust was everywhere giving the place a stink of decay and old steel which offended Sayeeda's tankers soul. Talin guffawed as though it were a hilarious joke and slapped his belly.

"Hey, its not much to look at, but it is a fortress! The Scorpions don't dare even think about attacking it," he boasted. Unless of course they had a half dozen good snipers, or mortars, or even some half decent machine gunners to knock out the towers Sayeeda thought, but she was being unduly pessimistic, the odds of the Scorpions having such skilled people, or even the imagination to try such an assault were low which mean Talin was probably correct. They walked passed the check point and Sayeeda ignored the chorus of cat calls and improbable sexual suggestions from the half drunk half stoned gang toughs. Talin waved three of them over as an escort and took her through the front doors of the place. The interior was a maze of girders, conduits, gangways and other industrial fittings, many of them had deep bright scuffs in the steel as though cut by the claws of some vast animal.

"Just so you know we done playing games, you lie to the boss, we shoot you dead," Talin said, his voice now carrying a hint of nerves. Sayeeda wondered what would happen to Talin if she didn't play along and if he were in more trouble than she was. She wished Neil was with her, an extra pair of eyes would have been welcome and his smart ass witicisims would have bouyed her spirits. Well, she thought with a grin, she would just have to be be obnoxious enough for both of them.

"Wha..." Talin gasped, clearly taken aback by her sudden smile.

"Just thinking about something funny," she said smoothing her face with some effort.

"Care to let us in on the joke?" he demanded. Junebug shrugged.

"Maybe later."

Further conversatoin was interupted as a dark shape dropped from the ceiling. There were a seires of deafening clangs and sprays of sparks as the thing fell, striking gangways and and girdirs as it came, sending showers of orange sparks flying into the air. It hit the ground in a spray of concrete chips, one of which scored a line across Sayeeda's chestplate. A creature stood in the center of the room, not a creature exactly a cyborg with the torso and head of a man, but with its legs replaced by eight augmentic limbs that hissed and popped with hydraulic pistons. Each limb was nearly two meters long and tapped the floor with a decidedly arachnid affect. They were tipped with sharpened wedges of metal. The man atop the thing was fat, rolls of flab hanging down and concealing the augmetic joints of his body and cybernetic legs. The legs made his arms look rather stubby and he was completely bald his skin shining with oil. Sven would have been disgusted by such a crude union of man and machine. Of course he might have shot the thing for offending his sensibilities or offered to help fix it.

"The Spider, I presume," Junebug said with a slight bow, making a show of not being impressed. The Spider scowled clearly used to his guest recoiling in horror.

"You presume correctly mercenary," he said in a voice that was probably meant to be intimidating, but had a slightly breathy edge which robbed it of gravitas. Sayeeda wondered if his diaphram had been damaged in whatever accident had left him in his current state.

"Well I wish I could say it was a pleasure to meet you, but your goons here," she made a gesture to encompass the four guards, "didn't give me much of a choice."

"We don't take kindling to the Scorpion's hirelings wondering into our territory," he threatened. Junebug snickered and the Spider's eyes blazed with fury.

"Something amusing mercenary?" he half snarled.

"If you really thought I was working for the Scorps you would have had your boys kill me rather than drag me in here to suffer your overly dramatic theatrics right?" she asked. The Spider lurched forward, one of his legs, equiped with a gripping pincer seized her around the chest. The armor creaked but didn't give way.

"Watch your mouth, you think you are the first off planet big shot to wind up in a shallow grave?" he demanded. Junebug resisted the urge to go for a concealed pistol with an effort.

"Probably not, but I'm the first to drop 12 of the scorpions in one without so much as a scratch," she responded levelly. The Spider snarled and let her go.

"You have an awfully large opinion of yourself for a freighter captain," the Gang boss growled.

"Look if we are just going to talk about me, Id just as soon go back to getting drunk," Sayeeda replied levelly.

"If you are going to try to kill me, go ahead, if not say whatever it is you are going to say and let me get on with my evening," she said, her tone that of a teacher who has been asked a stupid question one too many times.

"Is there a good reason I shouldn't kill you? Just to be on the safe side?" he asked, eyes narrowing dangerously at the emphasis she had placed on the word 'try'.

"Plenty, starting with that trying to kill me definitely wouldn't be on the safe side, but more importantly would cost you millions of credits," she returned levelly. The Spider gave her a slit eyed glower but predictably the mention of money caught his interest. He clattered eratically on his legs, his torso remaning steady but the limbs adjusting to balance some problem in weight distribution.

"Millions of credits, what are you talking about?" he demanded.

"Before I killed those Scorpions they tried to recruit me on a raid, targeting your drug storage facility." That did get his attention and he reared back on his limbs as though about to strike her, the guards around her edged back gasping and muttering.

"What nonsense those fools don't even know here it is!" the Spider all bout screamed.

"You mean they don't know its in the old quarry west of town?" she asked sweetly. That drew definite gasps of shock from all concerned. Truth be told the Scorpions hadn't know before Neil had told them. It had taken her all of ten minutes and nothing more sophisticated than the sensor reading from the Highlander on approach, but even that basic piece of intelligence gatherings was probably beyond these dim wits.

"When is this raid happening?" he demanded, stalking back and forth, two legs half climbing a network of pipes, ripping one of them open to spill foul smelling steam by accident.

"Tonight I heard," Junebug responded with a shrug.

"If you are lying to me I will feed your your own..." the Spider began but Junebug burst into action. She drove her booted foot into the instep of the nearest guard with a crunch of bone, in the same motion she ripped a stun baton from his belt and hurled his body into Talin sending them both down in a pile. She whipped around in a snap kick that caught a second guard in the stomach, sending him tumbling back, vomiting bile and gasping for breath. Letting her momentum carry her around she smashed the stun baton into the face of the final guard with an electric crackle that filled the room with the smell of burning hair. Before the fellow collapesed she snatched a heavy chemical pistol from his belt and pointed it at the Spider, tossing the still arcing baton onto Talin and the first guard she had assulted absently, sending them both to the ground in spasming heaps.

"Lets keep the threats to the woman who just gave you invaluable intel to a minimum shall we?" she asked, thumbing back the hammer of the pistol for dramatic effect. The Spider was pale, obviously caught between striking and cowering from the gun that was suddenly pointed at his face. Boots thundered as men rushed into the room from outside carrying weapons. Junebugs pistol didn't waver so much as an inch. The Spider began to laugh.

"You have some balls, Ill give you that," he rumbled and the tension in the room eased.

"In exchange for this information, you are free to go, my men wont stop you. Ill have men in place to make them wish they had never been born," he rumbled ominasly. Junebug snorted a laugh.

"Something funny mercenary?" the spider asked, his eyes narrowed with rage. Sayeeda kept her face calm but inwardly was worried she might be pushing the mobster too far.

"Look you want to be in the bush leagues forever, that isn't my problem," she replied, holing up her free hand in a theatrical shrug.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded.

"Look you know where a good portion of the Spiders are going to be, great, but then you also know where a good portion of them aren't going to be right?" she explained, wincing at the obviousness of what she was doing, but then these weren't exactly people for whom subtle had an appeal. The Spider seemed to consider it for a moment and then a broad nasty smile spread across his face.

"You mean they won't be at the mansion defending the Stinger?" he asked in dawning realization. Junebug nodded.

"Why are you doing me this favor mercenary, you clearly believe you could get out of here even if I told my men to kill you." Junebug shrugged, she certainly could have gotten out before all these thugs came running, now even with her Terran enhanced reflexes, she would be pushing her luck.

"Look I've met the Stinger and the bitch gets what she deserves for hitting on my boyfriend," she admitted, lowering the pistol. The Spider gazed at her incredulously for a moment, and then began to laugh.

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

Sabatine's hands flew across the controls as she tried to control too many things at once. The hull screamed as the rig, still deployed for the transit, screamed as masts and spars carried away under the harsh maneuvering. Sabatine was pleased that they had bought the riggers inside before they extracted, or they would be losing men right now.

"Hickoring I am taking control," Micha declared, having finally snapped out of whatever fugue he had been stuck in. The ship handling board blinked out of existance as Micha's higher command grade took control. Her hands hammered on the virtual keyboard pulling up the attack board and flying over the preset launch sequences. Each attack computer had a standard set of attack solutions, though they were extremely unlikely to succeed without modifications from a human missilier.

"Launch one!" Sabatine shouted and the ship rocked as a gout of steam shoved the multi-ton missile out into space. The ship began to pitch downward as Micha angled the ship towards the ecliptic of the planet. Sabatine held back a curse and slapped her second launch sequence. It was too soon after the first launch to be really safe but Micha's maneuver would spoil her angle in the next few seconds. A second metallic clang indicated her second missile separation had been successful. The missiles streaked away at nearly ten Gs of acceleration.

"Good shooting Hickoring," Micha approved as the missile tracks appeared on his PPI. The Halifax was already falling away, nearly perpendicular to the grav assisted dive the Vickie had undertaken. Valuable seconds were wasted countering momentum, it must have frustrated the Halifax's captain because he opened fire with his plasma cannons, the bolts dissipated a thousand kilometers short of the Vickie doing little more then burning out their own barrels. Both of Sabatine's missiles had been aimed at K-12, leading the ship by a considerable margin and giving the destroyers guns a poor, high deflection shot. K-12 opened fire attempting to nudge the missiles aside, but she had no choice but to haul off, burning her high drives to avoid the spread as the missiles reached their terminal velocities and separated into three sections to spread the footprint. That opened the angle, allowing the Vickie to slip around the ecliptic, Micha employing the planet as a shield from further missile attack.

"Inserting," Micha announced, cutting the high drive for the ten seconds it took to equalize the charge across the ship. The ship shuddered into the matrix. For a moment it felt like sand was scoured across eyeballs, and then they were safe in the infinite bubble universes of the matrix. Sabatine took her hands from the controls flexing her palms. The bridge erupted in cheers, which spread into the corridors and throughout the ship. Sabatine smiled tightly and reached across to slap Helenna Graving on the arm, but the words of congratulations died on her lips as Micha turned in his chair to glare at her like a thundercloud. For a change he shared the same dark look with Kaiden.

"Hickoring, Caladwarden, get out on the hull and clear up the ruin you just made of my rig," he said icily.

Penny's Pencils

Penny's Pencils

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

"Well," Sabatine replied with the exaggerated care of someone who knew they drunk a little too much. She snickered as she remembered how Kaiden had found her covered in mud after freeing the Admiral's pinnace.

"It isn't ONLY getting your hands dirty," she conceded. The headed down the companionway towards the officers quarters, Sabatine running her hand along the metal bulkhead to steady herself.

"Think he is going to go for it?" Kaiden asked her. A grin that would have done a mongoose credit spread over Sabatine's face.

"Florins to flaxseed sir," she responded with drunken formality before slipping into her room and collapsing on the cot.

_______

"Extracting," Sabatine reported, for once not feeling the discomfort of the procedure due to the hangover she was nursing. As she had predicted Captain Micha had changed his patrol orders immediately, and on the next day watch they had executed a short in system hop to get a look behind on of the smaller gas giants which the sailing directions listed as having a number of small moons. This was their second transit, exploring the vicinity of the unnamed gas giant on the fringe of the system.

"Contact!" Sabatine shouted as sensor data poured in through the pickups now they were out of the matrix. Her heart dropped like an icy comet. She had expected to find a couple of pirates in a nest, perhaps with captured ships down on the surface of one of the moons. Instead the sensors registered not one, but three ships. All of them warships, all of them Alliance.

"Enemy ships!" she snapped, toggling frantically between displays to sythesize the data she was seeing.

"Two destroyers, and Gods, there is a heavy cruiser on the ground," she repotted, her voice decreasing in volume though the icy grip on her heart didn't relax. This was a terrible situation to be sure. The sensors registered the destroyers Halifax and K-21 at about one hundred and two hundred thousand miles above them, offset at an arc of about 120 degrees. The Heavy Cruiser Hikendorf, was in a shallow crater below them at a range of perhaps 90,000 clicks. The visual data seemed to indicate that it was taking on water from a fairly sophisticated set of ground installations. The freighter they had seen running was there also now that she had time to look at it, but the oversight could hardly have mattered less. By luck, whether good or ill was yet to be seen, they had extracted between the picketing destroyers and the grounded heavy cruiser. The destroyers were in the process of putting their rigs up, probably in preparation to make a short jump in system to swat a nosy RCN corvette, judging by the sparing, they had only recently arrived from a long voyage, probably through the St John cluster, and hadn't yet had a chance to shake down.

"Say again Lieutenant," Micha asked, googling at her in shock.

"Hostil..."

"Incoming!" Helena Graving shouted, and the hull began to shake as the heavy plasma cannons began to traverse. Sabatine glanced down at her board in shock, amazed and horrified that the enemy had been able to react so quickly. It wasn't ship based missile fire, rather one of the anti ship batteries defending the ground installation had opened fire.

"Permission to engage," Graving called leaning forward intently over her display. Micha's mouth worked but no sounds came out, perhaps he was suffering from a particularly rough transition, but it was a piss poor time for it.

"Sir do I hav..."

"Fire!" Sabatine shouted and before the word had fully escaped her mouth the heavy guns crashed in syncopating blasts that made the hull ring like a giant bell. Unusually for her class, the Vicky mounted six inch guns rather than the conventional four inchers. There wasn't much difference in the rate of fire, but the stress they put on the frames and mountings was exponentially greater. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! Graving's first shot swatted the missile out of existence in a burst of flame. Unlike a ship based missile the ground to air variety had more fuel and less warhead, the plasma ignited the fuel reserves in a spectacular fireball. The second shot detonated the battery itself and the third and fourth rounds hit the Hikendorf squarely. Sabatine was about to tell the gunner to cease fire, plasma shots couldn't penetrate an atmosphere but the sensors showed rigging and masts subliming in fireballs as the gunner raked the grounded cruiser. Belatedly she realized the moon had no atmosphere and whooped with delight as the enemy ship rocked and sparkled with plasma hits. At this range the armor was thick enough to turn aside the hammer blows, but the ships exterior fittings and rig were torched in an instant. Graving apparently noticed this too and shifted her point of aim onto other targets. The freighter blew apart under a direct hit that scattered pieces of it over a square kilometer of moonscape.

"What are you doing!" Micha yelled, finally seeming to snap out of his fugue, eyes wide with shock, "you have just started a war!" Sabatine blinked at the absurd statement. The very fact that Alliance ships were here, and had a base meant they were already at war.

"Halifax is launching," Ottis reported his voice excited but not alarmed. Sabatine glanced back to the board and saw that the boy was right, missile tracks appearing on the PPI as cyan lines which intersected with the course of the Vickie.

"Orders sir?" Sabatine demanded.

"Give me a moment," Micha snapped back. Sabatine's eyes widened with shock, they didn't have a moment, it might already be too late.

"K-21 is maneuvering," Ottis reported as the second destroyer, slower off the mark than her consort began to accelerate, hard enough that pieces of her half deployed rig were carrying away. They were comically outgunned, probably still alive only becaue Graving had fried the sensors and welded the turret mountings of the Hikendorf before the cruisers heavy guns could gut then.

"General Quarters!" Sabatine shouted, though only an idiot would need to know to get to battle stations at this point.

"Lieutenant Hickoring this is my ship and..." Micha began to protest but Sabatine was no longer listening.

"I am maneuvering," she called over the command push and rolled the ship, twisting to bring Graving's guns to bear on the incoming missles. The great guns began to hammer instantly, working to nudge the incoming warheads off their predicted lethal courses. Another four, then four more missiles coughed from the Halifax, filling the board with cyan trails.

"XO," Sabatine called over a two way link, bypassing the useless shouting on the command channel.

"Kaiden I hope you have some brilliant plan to get us out of this, because we are deep in the shit."

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

"I think my countrymen are taking a shine to you," Emmaline noted with a carefully concealed smile. Amal laughed, drawing the eye of a group of Fraus as they rode by.

"I always though you a unique pearl, I just didn't realize how unique," Amal snickered. The cobblestone streets began to rise as they reached the bottom of the hill. Predictably as they got further from the waterfront and higher the houses grew more elaborate and prosperous, and riverside dives gave way to neat taverns and chophouses.

"This looks like a nice place," Emmaline said as they reached a stone walled coaching inn.

__________

Emmaline awoke with a start as Amal's hand clamped down over her mouth. She twisted and purred in the sheets imagining this to be a renewal of their previous activities. The room was suddenly light by a flash of lightning and she froze at the expression on Amal's face. Outside rain, which had begun after dinner, slashed down on the slate roof tiles in a continuous roar. Emmaline's hand traveled slowly to the side of the bed where Asp lay among Emmaline's discarded dress. The snake shifted at her touch and then slithered silently up her arm, coiling around her wrist. Without warning the window exploded inwards a figure tumbling through it, Amal was already leaping from the bed, knives which must have been hidden under his pillow appeared in his hands as if by magic. Emmaline screamed and something flashed past her and buried itself in the headboard of the bed with a sound like an axe striking a log. She rolled out of bed and hit the ground, as another bolt of lightning lit the darkness beyond the window of their third floor room. For a heart beat she could see a figure standing on peak of the roof across the street, the squat powerful form a crossbow in his hand. She pressed herself up on both knees and one hand, lifting the staff that was suddenly in her hand. Lightning struck from the heavens, bathing the figure in light for a moment before he vanished in the ensuing darkness. Wind and rain poured through the open windows, whipping the curtains like the tentacles of a flailing sea creature.

Amal stood for a moment, kneeling over the first dark figure who was yet to rise. Emmaline whispered a spell and the oil lamps burst to life, bathing the room in flickering light as the wind struggled to extinguish the flames. The figure, was a man, and he was clearly dead. Blood ran sluggishly around a crossbow quarrel in his throat and his eyes were glazed. He was dressed in dark clothing and a cloak and in his hand he clutched a short iron cylinder. It was wrapped with a chain of dark metal from which depended an amulet depicting crossed fingers. An urgent pounding began to sound from the hall outside as Emmaline scrambled across the floor and snatched up the rod, stuffing it hastily into a draw before a key rattled in the door and it cracked open to reveal the wide eyed innkeeper.

"Mien Herr are you all..." he trailed off as he realized both Emmaline and Amal were naked and hastily averted his budging eyes.

"Are you alright?" he asked, raising his voice over the storm, "what happened?"