by Reiter
“Timing, Princess,” she whispered. The robot lifted both arms up and Pristacia released her grips and rolled on the air, falling behind the robot that was hammering down with both arms. It turned around quickly and Pristacia stood up, swinging her escrima. Sparks flew from the plating as the robot’s head tilted to one side. It grabbed for the young woman, but its hand was smacked by the other escrima and Pristacia scored another head strike. The chest lasers fired again and Pristacia was floored. The robot took one step forward and received a power bolt from Kryltane’s weapon. Its head came off in the blast, and Kryltane ducked down from his position just before it received laser fire. Still on her back, Pristacia fired down the corridor and hit the last robot in the hip. It staggered back and she scored a shoulder on her next shot. Kryltane hit the center of the chest and destroyed the machine.
“Princess!” Kryltane called as he ran out of the office. “Hey, are you–”
“Don’t finish that question, Shotgun,” she interrupted. “I don’t think anyone who’s been shot is ‘all right’. Right now I’m just glad I have ‘some right’. How’s Scamps?”
“He’s alive, but he is out cold!”
“Long as he’s alive,” Pristacia grunted as she got to her feet. “Get over there, stab him with a med-dose, and don’t be shy.” Pristacia looked around for a moment. She could hear more footfalls, a mixture of people and robots. In her current condition, she did not hold any hopes of surviving this third wave. She only had one solution: to be out of the water before the third wave could arrive! She reached to her belt and took out a fragmentation grenade. She dropped it at the office door as she jogged over to Kryltane, who had called for his mask and for Obanyo’s to drop and reform, as he held his crewmate as close as he possibly could. Pristacia threw her gather-field over the two bodies and picked up the dropped runner.
“Detonate,” she said as she activated the runner and depressed the signal button. The blast was followed by a pair of screams and a second explosion. Pristacia ran for the wall and jumped as she heard energy weapons fire. She passed through the wall and the runner locked on to the energy zip-line. With the incline of the energy beam, Pristacia was actually in the middle of a controlled fall. She opened a channel and transmitted, “Men at some time are masters of their fates.”
** b *** t *** o *** r **
“Time to raise a little hell,” Olkin thought as he looked at his brace-com. “Well, damn me for being a skeptic…we’re even more ahead of schedule?!” Olkin depressed the key to activate the six bombs he had planted while the guards and technicians tried to figure out what had gone wrong with the hover-bikes. He had wanted to plant more, but the general alarm had gone off, preventing him from venturing to the remaining three decks of the platforms docks in this section. Olkin had considered himself lucky to get back to his original position without being detected.
The bombs went off, two for each hangar deck he had been given opportunity to visit, and alarms soon followed. Most of the damage, as Siekor had estimated, was superficial, and engineering crews rushed into the area to check hull integrity of the platform and extinguish the small fires that had been started.
With so much activity happening away from his location, Pristacia’s arrival passed without notice, and Olkin assisted the fatigued and wounded young woman back down to the lower floor and to the lander where the two of them climbed into the smuggler’s hideaway in the floor of the spacecraft.
“Any troubles?” he asked as Pristacia lay down on top of him.
“A couple,” she groaned, lowering herself into place, “… but nothing JoJo didn’t foresee. Scamps and I are looking forward to a span of time in the regens, but nothing serious.”
“Captain is at least three minutes out,” Olkin estimated. “Might be a bit longer from–”
“Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war!” Jocasta transmitted over the channel.
“Make that definitely a bit longer,” Olkin corrected. Pristacia said nothing. She checked her brace-com and marked the time. Siekor would be returning soon to pilot the shuttle back to the Xara-Mansura. The Captain was to be left to fend for herself. That did not sit well with Pristacia, and she knew it would sit even worse on Llaz’s shoulders.
You want to know the mark and make of a body, take them on a trip!
Rouge
(Rims Time: XII-4203.23)
“I didn’t figure you for a Shakespeare fan,” Quordion said as he ran.
“You just keep up that pace,” Jocasta replied. “I’d hate to do a ‘friends, baronials, countrymen’ speech at your wake!”
“Is baronials even a word?!”
“RUN!” Jocasta urged, pushing against Quordion’s back.
“This man is definitely beginning to impress me,” Jocasta thought as she ran behind the Baron. They had used the servant’s entrance to work their way out of the meeting room and into the service corridors, but Quordion was not running as if he was carrying at least three-quarters his body weight in his arms.
“Quit looking back,” Jocasta barked. “Trust me, I’ll let you know if I fall!”
“I was more concerned about you running in heels,” Quordion huffed as he turned down a hallway. Jocasta could see a large T-shaped intersection about fifty meters in the distance.
“Right. Because that’s harder than dancing backwards!”
“Point made,” Quordion replied before tapping the lapel of his jacket. “Draykus? Draykus, are you receiving me?” Quordion grunted in frustration as he continued to run. “Of course. This would be the time when I cannot reach him!”
“Sucks to be normal,” Jocasta thought, looking at her brace-com. There was a scrambler signal covering the entire platform, but she was able to reach her people. “Here I was about to say it had to be an inside job, when in truth Z’s just built a better mouse… Kot, I got an itch!
“Down, Quord!” Jocasta cried as she lunged forward, sweeping the Baron’s planted foot. He was about to make the turn into the large corridor but fell instead, and the wall behind him was peppered with darts.
“Hate it for you, George!” Jocasta thought, shifting how she held Teo as one of the four gunners quickly adjusted to the prone targets and fired again. The dart sank into Teo’s stomach and she moved him so that a subsequent dart struck his chest instead of her face. “Earring number two!” she said, snatching her second earring as she rolled, avoiding a third and fourth attempt. The grouping was tight, these people were good and truly motivated. “Dammit!” she thought, hearing a dart hit flesh, even though it was not hers. Quordion grunted and fell unconscious as the black light bomb detonated.
“Guess I don’t know everything,” Jocasta mumbled, taking a charge out of the candy dispenser. “Thank the gods for my Brain Trust… and my Z! Just don’t miss, Jo!” Pulling open the bag for the gathering field, Jocasta jumped along the floor scooping up man, woman, and simiate. She scored a few millimeters of the floor as well as she rolled to a stop. “They can bill me for the floor panels,” she said, getting to her feet and closing her purse.
“I got a visual mode,” a man called out. “Go to Zeta–” a throwing knife sailed into the man’s throat.
“Nobody likes a snitch!” Jocasta yelled.
“Good lord,” one of the men said. “Number Two sniper is down, and I no longer read a target bio-sign.”
“Oh shit!” Jocasta muttered.
“Switch to blaster!” another man commanded. “Fire!” Jocasta jumped, tumbled, and rolled across the intersection, coming to a stop just behind the far corner. She smelled smoke and looked down at her singed gown.
“Oh, there’s going to be hell to pay for this!” Jocasta said, taking off her tiara. “Two pass trigger,” she whispered before looking down the corridor and seeing that it led to the main kitchen. Bio-signs indicated there were a lot more people than a normal kitchen staff… which meant it was not a good place for her to be. She smiled as she dropped the tiara and ran for the kitchen, screaming like a frightened w
oman. Her goggles were back to choker form inside her first two strides.
“Somebody help me!” she cried, bursting into the kitchen.
“Cuz I am screwed seven ways from now!” she thought, taking a quick look around the kitchen. The list of people who could have mounted this sort of effort had just shrunk considerably.
There were at least nine men in military-styled combat uniforms and simple form-fitting body armour. Five men were in hard-case body armour, and two were in powered suits. But there were no insignias; no markers or numbers on any of them.
“Easy, lady, I gotcha,” a young man said as he took hold of Jocasta’s shoulders. “Whoa, you got some set of–” a quick strike to the throat removed the man’s hands as he started choking.
“I get that all the time,” Jocasta muttered, moving past the choking man and up on to one of the service counters. She jumped, grabbed on to a light fixture, and swung over the first aisle of stoves and ovens. “I apologize to the innocents!” she yelled, landing on the floor. Jocasta dropped to her knee and thrust her cane to the floor. A gravity pulse burst from the head of the cane, expanding in a blue circle of light over her head and into bodies on all sides of her. Only one of the power suits was still standing.
“Team Three, you’re looking for a blonde in a purple dress,” the man who had given the switch guns type order transmitted. It was easy to tell he was running. “We’re passing her last known posi–” A bomb cut off the report, and the repercussive force flew the doors off as it entered the kitchen. This wave caught the powered suit walking around the stoves to get at Jocasta, and with one leg off the floor, the pilot did not have any hope of keeping his feet.
“I wonder if he was the first or second man to run by that tiara,” Jocasta thought as she took an energy rifle, a spare clip, and a knife off a stunned soldier. What little resistance he could mount was cut off when she stomped the heel of her shoe into his leg. She was exiting the kitchen when the first power suit to fall started getting back up. The kitchen doors and the wall just outside the kitchen were consumed in a barrage of laser bolts fired from the shoulder and forearm-mounted guns.
“So, do you still hate powered suits, Jo?” she whispered as she ran. “Cuz you sure as hell could use one right now!” She looked at her wrap and was thinking about using it when the sound of propulsion units reached her ears. “And of course the damn thing flies!”
“Team Lead, I’ve got a track on the bitch,” the pilot reported as he flew down the corridor.
“Make it happen fast,” the Gunnery Sergeant replied, “I’m about to call for our doors back.”
“You hear that, target?” the pilot huffed as he landed on the floor in the middle of the corridor. “… Daddy’s only got a few seconds to cook your bones!” Hearing a noise to his left, the pilot moved to his right as he pivoted. He did not fire, but he did see the swing door to the stairway closing. “No way you shake me!” he barked before charging the door. Neither the make of the door nor the hinges could withstand the collision, and the pilot came to a stop on the landing. Going to his sensors, he was frustrated. None of his instruments were reading functioning properly.
“Who the hell packs a scrambler in their gown?!” he thought as he checked his weapons.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk… not a good sign,” Jocasta said. Her voice started in front of him but then it sounded as if she was above him, then behind him and nearly too far away to be heard. “The tell-tale weapons check. Thought I was going up against a pro. You’re just a kid who’s barely discovered his balls!”
“If you think the balls are a discovery, step out and get some dick!” the pilot spat back.
“Sorry, I’m not into trivial pursuits,” Jocasta ribbed, relaxing her arms but maintaining her grip. She closed her eyes for a moment and put into play the pseudo-meditation she had learned from Nugar. By her next breath, she could barely feel her body weight. “… and I’m not ticklish… so whatever in the worlds would I do with that thing? Can’t even hang an earring on it!”
“Where are you?!” the pilot yelled, firing his shoulder-mounted weapon. Heavy laser fire flew from the weapon, tearing into the metal of the bannister and the concrete-like material of the stairway. Cracks formed in the walls as alarms started to sound off and flashing lights were activated.
“Wonderful,” Jocasta thought. “I would be in a stairway at the edge of the platform. Well, Jo, that’s what’s served when you get too involved in the idea and not where the idea has to take place! Live through this mistake, find a way to make another.
“Well, I’m certainly not where you fired,” Jocasta replied the moment the barrage stopped. “Why don’t you come on up, sweet thing? We can have all sorts of fun!”
“You want me to come up, do you?” the pilot asked, looking up the stairway. “So you can attack me from the rear? That means you’re downstairs, right?” The pilot started down the steps as he chuckled. “Not feeling so superior right now, are you?”
Jocasta moved her hands to one end of her cane as she deactivated the gravity lock. She fell from the bottom-side of the landing one level up, silently dropping behind the pilot as he was four steps from the landing. She drew her blade and swung, striking the back of the powered suit; the heavy repeater fell from the shoulder and Jocasta ducked. Laser bolts from the left forearm gun fired over her head as the suit spun around. Jocasta lunged forward, putting her shoulder into the man’s chest. Both of them fell down the stairs, and Jocasta rode on top of the suit as they slid down to the landing.
The pilot moved to put the woman into a bear hug but she slid out from the grasp before he could secure it. She was up and jumping over the railing before he could sit up.
“Bitch!” he screamed.
“I thought you liked me on top, baby,” Jocasta ribbed. She could hear the man getting up and starting down the steps.
“Hard Shell Two, this is Command. We’re done here. Report to Rendezvous Point Four and do it expeditiously.”
“Awww, does the big bad soldier have to go home now?” Jocasta asked. “Man, your parents are strict!”
“You forget I can fly, bitch!” the pilot said as he jumped over the railing. He engaged propulsion and slowed his descent.
“And you forget I was on top of you,” Jocasta said as she landed on his back. “Here, have a gravity cell and a grenade on me!” Jocasta slapped a grenade against the side of the helmet. “Night-night, sugar!” Jocasta put her feet on the suit’s shoulders and jumped to the stairs. She landed and winced, missing her boots. She tapped her cane to the ground and it quickly ascended three flights, crossing to the other side of the stairway. Jocasta landed with her clutch stuffed in the back of her gown and the procured weapons belt over her left shoulder. She took the last two steps up, hearing the pilot scream before the grenade silenced him.
“Sergeant, we just lost Hard Shell Two,” she could hear one of the soldiers report.
“Dammit! Alright, people, I’m calling it! Give me doors and power up the recall for whatever’s left of the suit!” Jocasta stopped walking and smiled devilishly.
“Oh, Jo, you know you shouldn’t,” she whispered.
“Doors in one-twenty,” the soldier replied.
“But since when has that stopped you,” Jocasta said as she turned and jumped down the center of the stairway. With the anti-gravity field the cane produced, she was able to land on the ground and roll.
“Centerpointe, you have your ears on, baby?”
“Captain!” Deolun exclaimed and she could hear the excitement and relaxation in his voice. She smiled at the unspoken sentiment. “I’m here.”
“You better be. Look, I need a master hack and I need it now,” Jocasta placed her gloved arm against the chest of the smoldering suit. “Cue me up an emergency exit on this thing!” She could hear the typing of the keys and various electronic tones sounding off.
“Gotta love it,” Deolun whispered as he went to work, activating breach programs he had used time and time again. “
I was barely keeping up with Black Gate but these are barely keeping up with the Territories!” The chest and shoulders opened, pushing out the dead body.
“Ugh, the things I do for my work,” Jocasta thought as she took hold of the remains of the dead pilot and dragged it away from the suit. “Good thing he’s a big boy… I might need the room.” Jocasta touched three corners of her wrap to her choker hearing a tell-tale beep. She then wrapped herself in the length of fabric and counted down from three. She stepped out of the disintegrating wrap clad in her body armour and quickly wiggled into the suit with her cane sharing the left leg.
The chest was locking into place when she saw light envelope the suit. Her goggles logged the EnerJa signature as she was whisked from the bottom of the stairway. She could hear massive generators beginning to power down as flesh and metal hands took hold, lifting the suit to a gurney.
“You got anything?” one man asked.
“Negative,” another answered. “No bio-sign, on any level. I’d hate to be the one who has to clean out this bad boy.”
“What gives?!” the first man asked, lowering his voice. “This was supposed to have been a freakin’ soft target! Look at that head piece, man. It looks like one of our plasmas!”
“Well, his grenade and munitions belt is missing. Damn, did you hear about what happened to the Point Team? They say there were three people and some kind of animal. The damn guest made the team and started throwing down! Next thing you know, the rest of us are called in to make good out of a very bad situation. From what I heard from Nelsovkey, even Gunny’s fire team couldn’t bring her down, and they had the drop on her and the Baron! One second, everything’s by the book and Gunny’s got another bragging point for the FM. Next thing you know, there’s no sign of the Baron and the mystery guest is just running all over the place spreading hurt in the worst way!”
