Well, this update has been a little slower than I'd like. Glad I'm not being held to any strict deadlines here
[spoiler=Chapter 15]
PallasThreecra skidded to a halt and ducked into the bushes, holding her breath. She could hear the gentle breeze, rustling the trees around her, and a slow, rhythmic
boom, boom, boom resonating from the nearby compound, and, of course, the loud, muffled snoring of the two drugged Cosmain officers in the security building behind her, but nothing else. She hadn’t been spotted.
She peeked up, over the top of the bushes, trying to see the gate, but the glare of the rising sun off of the compound’s gleaming silver walls was too much, and she held up a hand to shield her eyes.
“I do
not feel comfortable trying this during the day,” she said, pulling her sneaking suit from her backpack and beginning to strip off her civilian clothes.
“It wouldn’t be possible at night,” came Pallas’s voice inside her skull.
“I
know,” she shot back, “but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.” She tugged on her sneaking suit, pulling it over her head. With the hood on and the goggles protecting her eyes, she again looked towards the compound.
The ground between the sleek, silver, high wall and the forest in which she now hid had been cleared of all vegetation for more than a quarter kilometer on all sides. It would be nearly impossible to get anywhere near the compound without being spotted. Inside the octagonal compound itself, looming over the high silver walls, she could make out the shapes of two guard towers, thick with spikes and bristling with weapons that would be able to pick off anyone in the open field surrounding the compound.
She snorted. Of course. Of all the simulations they’d run, all the training they’d had, that which most resembled her first real mission was the simulation she and the rest of the crew had finally gotten so sick of that they’d insisted Ven Dora stop running it. The sprawling, gleaming walls in front of her certainly resembled the walls of that other fictitious compound.
“How you two feeling?” asked Iza. He’d be somewhere inside the compound already, Threecra knew.
“Alright,” answered Pallas. “I’m still trying to comprehend that this isn’t another simulation.”
“I, for one, am ready and stoked,” said Threecra.
Iza laughed, “Pallas, maybe you should just pretend this is a simulation. You’ve done well in simulations. Now’s not the time to change it up. Threecra?”
“Yes?” she answered, feigning sweetness. She was expecting yet another lecture on keeping her temper in check or thinking before she acted, and she was not in the mood for that. Not now that she was finally doing something to further their cause.
But Iza surprised her with, “Kick some ass.”
“Amen to that, Scruffy!” said Chen Chen, and Threecra felt something very much like pride rise in her chest. It was a good thing she was masked with no one around, because she was pretty sure she was blushing.
“A little quiet, please,” said Lerais, sounding apprehensive.
“I’m ready,” said Peter, sounding as tense as Threecra had ever heard him.
There was a moment in which nothing could be heard over the airwaves except for Lerais’s slow, steadying breaths. “Ready,” she said.
For the next few moments, the silence was pierced by instances of Peter shouting “Now!” Threecra tensed with each one, hoping the next sound wouldn’t be a yell of pain from Lerais. She counted the ‘nows’ in her head. “Now!” four... “Now!” five... “Now!” six... When she finally reached eleven, she breathed a sigh of relief. Lerais had made it okay.
“You,” said Iza proudly. “Are amazing. If we’d had you during the war...”
“They’re blind! Go!” interrupted Lerais. Threecra broke from the bushes and ran for the compound, heading towards the towering hemicircular gate in front of her. She could clearly see two other black shapes making their way towards it-- Pallas to her left, Selliss to her right. She knew that Pin was making the same mad dash on the other side of the compound-- they had an opening of only a few moments to hit all four gates at once, and their timing had to be perfect.
She skidded to a stop, pulling her miniature vibrite prybar from her belt. She used it to wrench the casing off the outside of the control panel near the door, the rapidly-vibrating material tearing through the metal housing easily.
“****,” she said.
“****,” echoed Pin. The innards of the control panel were filled with criss-crossing wires, rather than the plasma streams they’d been expecting.
“That explains why it looked like an old model using heuroplasma to our sensors,” Pallas said. “Electrical, I think.”
“Twenty seconds,” warned Peter.
“****! Guys?” said Pin nervously.
“We could just blast ‘em,” said Selliss, her slow monotone considerably faster than normal. “Active locks. Interrupt the signals, doors open. Hopefully.”
“Ten seconds!”
“****! Do it! On my mark!” yelled Pin.
Threecra wrestled her bulky antigravity pistol from its holster and aimed it at the panel, taking a step back. She remembered at the last second to crank the power setting to full.
“Ready? Mark!” shouted Pin, and Threecra pulled the trigger. There was no visible beam, but a deafening
crrrrrraaaaaack! split the air in front of her. It took only a split-second burst to not only blow the control panel into chunks, but to leave a sizeable divot in the wall behind it.
Threecra jumped when the gate beside her began to creak, loudly, inching downwards into the ground.
“Yes!” yelled Pallas.
There was an audible sigh of relief over the radio from at least half the team, coupled with Peter’s chatter as he recovered from the pressure of the last few minutes. “Why does that always work?” he wondered. “I know it works, like, ninety-eight percent of the time in the movies, but I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t. You’d think they’d come up with a design where…” Threecra mentally tuned him out and pressed herself as well as she could up against the wall, covering the crater she’d blown in it with her body. She had to make sure to keep herself under the overhang formed by the wall here.
“I am
not letting Peter do the research next time,” said Pin dryly, cutting off Peter’s continued rambling.
Peter laughed, “I’m liking this idea. I keep saying, I should just be in charge of snacks and entertainment.”
“Alright, kids, everybody keep your heads down,” said Chen Chen. “Enough sneaking around. This base is getting its throat punched in.”
For a few seconds, there was no sound, but after a moment, there was a
BOOOOOMMMM! from inside the compound that shook the ground beneath Threecra’s feet, followed a second later by the sound of frantic weapons-fire. Chen Chen’s “Yee-haw!” was barely audible over the series of explosions that followed. Seconds later, Chen Chen’s little gunship blew backwards over Threecra’s head, over the slowly-opening gateway, firing madly into the compound. Chen Chen strafed right, staying low and hugging the wall and moving towards the north gate to fly in for another pass.
For a few seconds, the noise of the engines and the swirling dust-storm they kicked up drowned out all else, but after a moment, Threecra became aware of the team yelling over the comm. “...one main gun!” Iza was shouting. “Stay away from the east gate!”
The sound of continued explosions and gunfire from inside nearly drowned out Lerais’s reply, but Threecra could make out “...explosives didn’t go off! Someone needs to...” Threecra winced-- she could feel the heat pouring from the opening already.
“Team 2, ready!” came Pin’s voice. Threecra crouched low, glancing up to see the top of the gate now only a couple of meters above her head. She quickly checked her weapon one last time, wielding it lightly in her right hand, and shook out her other. Just another simulation. Just pretend it’s another simulation.
As the gate dropped below eye level, she could see the destruction wrought by the gunship over the course of a few short moments. A number of low-slung, gleaming silver office-like buildings were still standing, but two of the smaller ones to her left were left with gaping holes in the sides, the offices and labs within crumbling to the ground below. Guard towers had tumbled down as if they were houses of cards, and a number of flaming, glowing piles of molten metal lay in the dirt. Of the base’s eighteen anti-spacecraft Trenguns, seven were in flames, including the one just to her left, and most of the rest seemed to have malfunctioned. The only one still working was just above and to her right, swiveling ponderously to aim towards the north gate, towards Chen Chen’s agile gunship that was, even now, firing volley after volley of high-yield rocket at some of the few remaining guard towers, which tumbled to the ground with a deafening roar. Nine gunships of the same model as Chen Chen’s lay in pieces, smouldering, in the shipyard at the center of the compound, as did one larger old-model IPA freighter.
And then there were the people. Not many people-- they’d been careful to get the base as empty as possible. Certainly, there could have been more, but there still had to be dozens... far too many. Most of the people she could see were already corpses, the still-smoking remains of a dozen species, many of them in pieces. A group of bodies littered the ground to her left, in front of one of the smoking silver buildings. A small group of visiting military personnel had taken cover behind a squat bunker across the compound, and were taking pot-shots at Chen Chen’s gunship whenever they could. A pair of soldiers helped a pair of the facility’s underground workers from an overturned, burning hovercar. Once they were free, the soldiers half-carried the more injured of the two workers towards one of the still-intact offices. Glancing left, Threecra could see people flinging themselves from the burning office buildings, doing whatever they could to escape the fire there. Threecra felt sick. Those above the first few floors would not survive that fall...
“Go!” yelled Pin. Threecra hurdled gate as it lowered into the ground, still waist-high, and took off at a full run towards the squat silver structure at the center of the landing pad, the one that would lead down into the main compound, and, if Peter’s plan had worked, complete darkness and a lot of unconscious people.
FWWWOOOOOSSSSSHHHHH! A bolt of white-hot plasma lanced forth from the huge Trengun to her right, and the heat of it made Threecra instinctively cover her head. The bolt clipped Chen Chen’s stubby silver wing without slowing down, knocking a spinning piece of the gunship away and plowing into the compound’s wall behind it, which exploded and rained huge chunks down on the smaller silver structures beneath it. Chen Chen returned fire, a volley of the glowing, lightning-fast rockets, which impacted against the armored surface of the Trengun with no perceivable effect, other than forcing Threecra to change the path of her run to take her farther from the flames and heat and light and deafening noise exploding above her.
“Threecra!” yelled Chen Chen, guiding the now-smoking gunship out the gate from which she’d come, and narrowly avoiding a second shot from the Trengun, which rained more chunks of wall onto the structures below. “Change of plan! If you can get inside and take that thing out, do it!”
Threecra skidded to a halt and turned to look up at the looming silver mushroom-shaped gun, capable of punching ships out of orbit and withstanding the same fire. Its huge barrel, which would normally be aimed skyward, seemed ridiculously long when swiveling within the compound. The Trengun would be guarded and shielded, on top of the fact that the entrance was nearly ten meters up, and moving back and forth as the gun swiveled to track Chen Chen.
She could do this.
“Got it!” she yelled, projecting more confidence than she felt. “Team 2, you gonna be alright?”
“Just go!” yelled Pin, and Threecra could hear the sound of distant gunfire as a ground firefight opened up. “The sooner you do it, the sooner Chen Chen can go back to distracting them!”
Threecra steeled herself and ran for the ladder. She leapt for it, catching it several rungs up, and hauled herself upward as quickly as she could. Without the gunship raining hellfire, the remaining security forces were becoming more organized, and she could hear, distantly, orders being shouted. A number of uniformed workers had taken advantage of the gunship’s absence to run towards the bunkers, searching for better cover.
Threecra clung to the ladder as a residual explosion from the nearby guard tower sent a shockwave her way, shaking the very ground and threatening to knock her loose. She was vaguely aware of continued chatter from her own team.
“They’re flanking! They’re flanking! Pallas! Right!”
“Selliss! Down!”
“Suppressing fire! Here! Iza, north, behind the wall!”
Finally, shakily, Threecra stepped onto the circular platform that surrounded the gun and ran to her left, trying to catch up with the doorway that would lead into the gun’s interior as it swiveled away from her. It was unnerving, the way the rotating wall of the gun curved up and out, over her head. She slowed to a walk, just keeping up with the doorway. It was protected by a flickering, transparent red surface- a force field. Beyond, at the end of a hallway, she could see the chamber where normally there’d sit a guard. From here, it looked empty. Threecra wasn’t about to touch that force field, and looked around frantically for a way in. Just to the left of the door was a control panel.
Well, it had worked once before. She aimed her gun at the control panel and pulled the trigger.
It wasn’t like the panel embedded in the reinforced wall of the compound-- it appeared that the doorway of the Trengun was quite weak. The material exploded, sending fragments of metal accelerating away from the invisible beam of her weapon with a deafening
crrraaaaaack! Luckily, most of the shrapnel was directed in the plane perpendicular to Threecra’s beam, but even so, she had to duck. She yelled out at a sudden burning pain in her shoulder, and looking down, she could see a jagged bit of metal, no more than a few centimeters long, protruding from just above her armpit.
She touched it gingerly and yelled again, in pain and frustration. Taking a deep breath, she grabbed it tightly and pulled-- the thing seemed to take forever to slide out of her shoulder, but once it was out, she could see that only about half of it was red with blood. She looked at her shoulder and flexed it. She’d have Roman look at it later, but for now, her suit would seal over the wound and keep her safe from infection.
She made her way through the now-larger, force field free doorway, down the short hallway that led to the room at the center of the gun, and looked around for either a threat or something that would tell her how to stop this thing. The room in which she stood was small and circular, the walls gleaming silver. There was, indeed, no one here-- she made sure to check behind the black security desk that ran along the far wall. The entire room continued to spin as the gun rotated, but she couldn’t see it anymore so much as feel it. It was a nauseating sensation.
Things were so much quieter in here, and the fight taking place outside had now been reduced to only the noises of her team, repeatedly yelling orders. They were all still alive, somehow, but it sounded like the situation was quickly getting desperate.
Aside from the hallway down which she’d come, the only ways out of the room were a pair of stairwells leading upward. Threecra made a snap decision and picked the one on her left.
She bounded up the dimly lit stairwell, taking the steps two at a time and trying not to think too hard about just how loudly her footsteps were echoing through the metallic space. She didn’t have time for stealth.
At the top of the stairwell was a door, painted white. It was open a crack, and she could hear voices coming from the other side, yelling instructions to the troops on the ground. Two, it sounded like-- one Zong and one Radon. Plus whoever might be inside that wasn’t speaking. She spoke softly to her own equipment, ordering one of the EM patches embedded in her suit to activate. It would burn bright and hot for a short period of time, preventing proper operation of most military hardware, including, she hoped, whatever was being wielded by those inside.
Threecra took a deep breath, dialed back the setting on her weapon, and kicked open the door. She’d aimed and fired at the Radon before he’d even turned- he yelled out and slumped at his panel, convulsing and gasping for breath. The circular room was dominated by a dome-shaped display screen that made up the walls and ceiling, showing a black-and-white, stick-and-line version of what was happening outside in real time. The display was annotated in color. Aside from the Radon, the only other body in the room was, in fact, a Zong.
The Zong reacted quickly, drawing her weapon and pulling the trigger. The weapon didn’t fire, of course, thanks to Threecra’s EM patch, but Threecra ducked instinctively. It was a good thing she did. She felt the one of the Zong’s razor tails breeze above her head. As the Zong swung a second time, Threecra barely managed to duck back into the stairwell with her head on her shoulders. She could feel a burning sensation on her cheek as her suit sealed a fresh wound there.
Threecra cursed and reached to her belt, drawing out a grey cylinder about the size of her closed fist. She whipped it into the room and covered her ears. A moment later, a flash of light illuminated the doorway in conjunction with the
BOOOOOMMMMM! that rattled the structure.
Threecra ducked back through the doorway-- the Zong flailed wildly in her momentary blindness and deafness. Her partner, the Radon, had fallen to the floor, and lay in a fetal position with his head in his hands.
Threecra aimed for the Zong’s chest and fired with a sound like a firecracker going off. The Zong jerked, but didn’t fall.
Of course, Threecra realized-- Zong anatomy was far sturdier than Radon anatomy. She fired three more shots in rapid succession, until finally the Zong slumped, unconscious, against the far wall, with only the slightest twitching of her tails. A beeping sound in Threecra’s head signalled that her EM patch had just run out.
Threecra glanced at her gun and cursed-- one of the dragon-scale stabilizing blades necessary for directing the beam of antigravity was cracked clean through. One more shot probably would have broken it free from the gun.
“Chen Chen, go!” she yelled, disgustedly stuffing her battered weapon back into her holster. She’d deal with that when they were back aboard the Esprit.
“Woo!” yelled Chen Chen enthusiastically. “Chen Chen and Threecra, kickin’ ass!” On the wall, Threecra could see the simplified line-drawing shape that represented the gunship lifting itself up and over the wall, and the barrage of weaponry that it immediately began raining on the compound, forcing the remaining security forces to scatter and run for cover.
“Hey, Threecra,” came Pallas’s voice, “I just had a thought. Can you control that thing?”
“Let me see,” she answered. She sat down in the chair that belonged to the Radon who had not yet moved from his fetal position. As she sat, she was careful not to kick him. He was going to feel awful enough for the next few hours-- no need to add insult to injury.
“Oh, hey, good idea, Pallas!” chimed in Lerais, sounding somewhere between bubbly and aggressive. “Recoup some of our loss on time! You’re always thinkin’!”
“Yeah, got it,” said Threecra. As she worked the controls, the entire room began to move, and the huge reticule positioned in front of her swept across the compound wall. “You want me to take out the underground shack thing, right?”
“If you can, love,” said Lerais gently. Threecra rolled her eyes. She could not
believe how endearing she’d come to find Lerais. Granted, their now-traditional late-night girl-talk get-togethers had helped a lot in that regard.
Threecra continued to move the painfully-slow reticule until she had it centered over the small shack at the center of the compound. It took her a moment to figure out how to fire, but when she did, the effect was immediate. A
fwwwwwoooooooommmmm resonated through the entire chamber, and the little stick-and-line drawing of the building exploded and disintegrated.
“Aha!” she said, pressing one of the buttons on the console. The display immediately changed into a real image of what was happening outside. Now she could see properly-- Chen Chen’s gunship hovered menacingly in the center of the compound, faced towards the largest concentration of remaining security personnel, who were huddled protectively behind one of the squat, bunker-like structures, pressed up against the side wall to better avoid the debris raining down, the remnants of the building Threecra had just obliterated.
“Can you cover us, Threecra?” asked Iza. She looked around-- the door still stood wide-open behind her, and the still-conscious Radon, who had crawled some distance away and now sat propped up against one of the panels with one hand to his stomach and the other to his temples, stared into space with a glassy look in his eyes.
She hesitated before turning back to the controls. “I can cover for a minute,” she said, “but if they rush this thing I’m cut off up here.”
“Nobody on the way yet,” said Lerais reassuringly. “I’ll watch out for you.”
Threecra nodded, but didn’t say anything. Sitting here, no longer being in the thick of the action, with the battle unfolding around her, her eyes were once again drawn to the bodies strewn about below.
There, on the ground. A group of people… bodies… two Vondanod, two Radon, one unidentifiable humanoid, and one Human. They weren’t dressed like military personnel or security or even workers. They were dressed like civilians. There weren’t supposed to be civilians here.
With a start, Threecra realized that the Human was moving... crawling… Her dark hair and dark skin and emerald-colored dress… she looked like a woman out for a day in the sun, and was probably only a few years older than Threecra herself. From this distance, she reminded Threecra of her sister. Threecra punched some controls and zoomed in on that portion of the display.
Her stomach did a flip. One of the woman’s legs was twisted at an unnatural angle, and this she dragged on the ground behind her. Her dress was torn and streaked with dirt and soot and blood, and what might once have been a luxurious hairdo was scorched and matted with blood. Her face, which might have been beautiful in other circumstances, was red with blood and streaked with tears. Her eyes, however, glinted with anger, and fierce determination, as she made her way as quickly as she could on her hands and knees towards the bunker behind which most of the soldiers were hiding.
“Threecra!” snapped Iza, shaking her back to the moment. He’d been yelling for her.
“Yes!” she responded, sharply.
“What happened?” yelled Iza, then plowed ahead without waiting for an answer. “Threecra, can you see Lerais? Right wall?”
Threecra zoomed in on the right wall, on the walkway that ran along the top of it, where Lerais would be now if all was going according to plan. She couldn’t actually see Lerais, but she could see the stack of plasma conduits, covered in a large white canvas, that had two pairs of security guards approaching it cautiously, one on either side. That must be where she was hiding.
“
Klumka!” yelled Chen Chen. “I can’t get a shot without exposing myself to the soldiers! Threecra, this one’s on you!”
Threecra swung the gun’s reticule towards the wall, its response agonizingly slow, then stopped, staring. The security guards were close to the canvas, now. With as large of a blast as the gun created, how was she supposed to hit them without also blowing up Lerais?
“****, ****, ****!” came a yell from Chen Chen. Threecra looked over to see the gunship smoking heavily, and a group of soldiers emerging from the hole in the ground that she’d opened moments before, firing repeatedly. A volley of rockets flew from Chen Chen’s gunship into the hole, exploding with a series of brilliant flashes.
“Threecra?” said Lerais, sounding somewhere between terrified and authoritative. Threecra forced her attention back to the stack of conduits.
“Hold on to something, Lerais!” she yelled, dropping the gun’s reticule to aim at the wall below Lerais. She squeezed off a shot.
A huge chunk of wall exploded outward, flinging molten debris back into the compound, some of it raining onto the largest concentration of soldiers, who scattered and covered their heads. The four security guards approaching Lerais fell to the floor, and before they’d scrambled back to their feet, Lerais had darted out from underneath the canvas and thrown herself from the edge of the wall. Threecra’s heart stopped.
Lerais’s descent slowed slightly, and she swung in towards the wall. Rope, Threecra realized. Lerais was holding onto a rope dangling from the canvas. Threecra watched as Lerais turned her momentum into a half swing, half run along the wall, not far above the ground. She let go of the rope at the bottom of her swing, retaining most of her forward momentum as she fell the last several meters. She hit the ground with her hands first, using her entire body as a spring and turning the impact into a roll. She came up on her feet. Unfortunately, the maneuver had thrown her weapon through the air, and it landed some distance away. Lerais took one look and ignored it.
“You are amazing,” said Iza proudly, as Lerais sprinted across the open field towards the nearest cover, a large chunk of wall blown off by Threecra’s shot. She dove behind it just as fire from the largest group of soldiers began pelting it with weapons-fire.
“Center! I can’t get a bead!” said Pin, and Threecra turned to see another Vondanod soldier scrambling out of the hole in the center of the compound, an anti-vehicle rocket launcher in his talons. He knelt and swung it up to face Chen Chen, who quickly backpedalled through the open gate. Threecra began moving the Trengun’s reticule towards the center of the compound.
“Hold on, Threecra. You’ll collapse the passage. Let me see if I can get a shot,” said Selliss.
“Abort,” came Ven Dora’s calm voice over the network. “We have a
Reverence-class cruiser entering the system. Estimate twelve minutes until it reaches us.
“Never mind,” said Selliss. If an unsabotaged ship had entered the system, Threecra knew, the
Esprit would have to either fight, hide or run, and none of those options would work until the team had returned. Fighting required more than two crew members aboard, and if the
Esprit were to hide or run without the team, the extra forces brought by the cruiser would be more than enough to overwhelm the nine of them down here, so they’d be forced back into the jungle. It was either risk hiding in the jungle for an indefinite period of time, or get back to the ship inside of twelve minutes.
Threecra fired a shot at the center of the compound. She lost sight of the lone soldier that had crawled out of the already-partly-collapsed tunnel in the ensuing eruption of earth and steel.
“Come on out, Threecra, I’ll pick you up,” said Chen Chen.
“Alright,” sighed Threecra. She knew a successful first mission had been too much to hope for.
Wait, there! Movement! One of the soldiers, a Cosmain, had broken from behind the building when Chen Chen had retreated and was helping the Human woman in the emerald dress to her feet. He wrapped one arm roughly around her waist. The woman grimaced, but didn’t resist. His other hand held a gun, which he held pointed at Lerais. From that angle, he had a shot at Lerais!
Threecra swung the reticule towards the pair-- only a short distance, really, and the reticule was centered over them quickly-- but she hesitated. The woman in the dress was an innocent civilian… she’d done nothing wrong!
Threecra’s heart nearly stopped. Even as she watched, the woman’s broken leg jerked itself back into place, the flow of blood ceased. The soldier gasped and staggered, and the woman’s eyes, black as night, turned to stare at Threecra...
There was a purple flash from the muzzle of the soldier’s gun. Lerais shrieked, a sound that fell somewhere between agony and rage, and fell to the ground. Threecra tensed up on the controls at the gut-wrenching sound of Lerais’s scream, and a shot from the Trengun tore a new crater in the planet’s surface where the soldier and the woman in the emerald dress had been standing.
Threecra stared, aghast.
Movement out of the corner of her eye made her turn. She threw herself to the side as an ion beam exploded the instrument panel in front of where she’d been sitting. The Radon! The one she’d left conscious, sitting against the wall! He’d recovered enough to reach for his weapon, raise it, and pull the trigger!
Threecra snarled. She was beyond caring. She drew her weapon from its holster and fired. The Radon’s eyes bugged out and he choked as the wind was again forced from his lungs. Threecra fired again, and the stabilizing blade of her antigrav pistol, which had cracked earlier, finally broke free, shooting away at the speed of a bullet and embedding itself in the wall, inches from the head of the still-unconscious Zong. Threecra fired a third time. Without the stabilizing blade, the shot went from being a needle-thin beam of antigravity to being a broad pulse of antigravity. The dazed Radon was thrown back, his head knocking against the wall with a heavy
thud. He slumped, unmoving, and Threecra dropped her ruined weapon to the floor.
She turned back to the display to see the gunship hovering just above the dirt next to Lerais’s body.
No. No! Not her
body! She was alive! She was moving! It looked like her legs may not be working properly, but she was alive! Threecra breathed a huge sigh of relief.
As she watched, Roman, the Vondanod doctor, jumped from the gunship holding his medical bag and knelt next to Lerais. As Threecra watched him examine Lerais, she found herself wondering, not for the first time, why he seemed to be the only member of this crew she was unable to get close to. He seemed to get on just fine with everyone else, but for some reason she couldn’t understand, there just seemed to be a gulf between them.
Maybe she’d start by thanking him for saving Lerais when they got back.
“Roman! Down!” yelled Pallas, but it was too late. A group of soldiers had seen the gunship land and flanked them. The first shot threw up dirt and smoke in front of Roman, but the second vaporized his head.
Threecra watched in horror as Roman’s body fell to the ground, smoke wafting from the end of his neck where his head had been only seconds before. His four spidery legs kicked wildly, no longer under any kind of control, and his body flopped over and over in the dirt. One of his flailing legs sent Lerais sprawling with another cry of pain.
A series of explosions rocked the group of soldiers, knocking two to the ground and forcing the rest to scatter. Seconds later, Threecra spotted Selliss rushing towards the gunship, hefting her huge rifle in two of her hands. Iza followed close behind.
“Selliss! Get on! I’ve got Lerais!” yelled Iza. Selliss complied, leaping aboard the gunship and flinging her rifle to the deck at the feet of Peter, who stood and stared as though in shock. Threecra watched as Iza scooped up Lerais, and winced at the heart-wrenching groan of agony that Lerais made in response. Pallas arrived on the scene just as Selliss and Peter helped Iza and Lerais aboard.
“Alright, Pin, can you make it to the base of Threecra’s tower?” asked Chen Chen, as the gunship lifted off again, leaving Roman’s body behind, his four spider-like legs still twitching.
“On my way,” replied Pin. “Meet you down there, Threecra.”
Threecra wandered down the stairs and out the door in a daze. Fortunately, she didn’t run into anyone along the way. She was only vaguely aware of the two shots fired by Pin at security personnel who had targeted her as she climbed down the ladder. She found herself climbing aboard the little gunship beside Pin.
Lerais, she saw, was worse off than she’d thought. Through the flurry of activity of Peter and Iza tending to her, Threecra could make out that Lerais no longer seemed to have a left leg below the knee, that there seemed to be no end to the torrent of red Radon blood flowing from that wound, that her breathing was short and shallow, that she seemed to be mumbling incoherently…
Threecra stumbled to the corner and threw up on the floor.[/spoiler]
