Tracing his saltbrother's westerly point, Odisseus spots, though veiled by considerable distance, the eddying cloud of ktotari birds and currents of midmorning mist, the explicitly familiar frame of a blockish Briza, trailing a pair of telltale jetboosters, disentangling herself from the jumble of ivory canopy, completing the final stages of preflight ignition and, this accomplished, skimming the treeline as it motors out of sight – in the opposite direction.
“That is my ship,” Nemo states blankly.
“Correct,” Odisseus confirms.
“And it's going that way.”
“Also apparently correct.”
“Why is that?”
“Stupid, Heeko,” Moira unconsciously whispers. “Stupid, stupid.” Odisseus wrenches his attention from their inexplicably errant spaceship briefly back on the subject at hand as Heeko, viperous fangs unsheathed, scoots his pudgy form full around the rock's southern face and proceeds to pounce down upon the ameliorating vo Obxo. The onlookers quell their clamor, the Baziron brave nearly buckles beneath the full brunt of the Myyrigon's girth. Heeko, however, miscalculates, thumping solidly onto his opponent's back, but fangs overshooting the relenting flesh of the neck and instead only scraping the breastplate's front piece with a sickening squeal. It's a simple matter for vo Obxo to reach behind, tear the Myyrigon clean off his back, slam him recumbent to the stony earth and cinch the morwaq.
The Scream-Weeds jubilate stridently. The victorious vo Obxo panders to his admirers, twirling his spear once, twice, the third time stabbing down in a savage skewer, deep into Heeko's stomach. The pinioned Myyrigon whines ruefully, the strange polearm's true function starkly relevant even to him as, much to the masses' trumpeting delight, vo Obxo inserts his proboscis into the weapon's hollow stub and drinks deeply of the shuddering Heeko's blood.
“Well,” Nemo coughs, adjusting the hang of his gunbelt, “I expect we won't be able to sweet talk our way outta this one. Everybody best be on their worst behavior.”
When he's supposedly drunk his fill, vo Obxo violently dislodges his provisional straw, blanched Heeko gurgling in response, and thrusts the weapon skyward, both its spearhead and his own bristled proboscis dripping rivulets of jade blood. The Baziron gallery winds up some gladiatorial chant, the ktotari flock churns with bloodlust and Odisseus spots koj Pasqkla, a lounging constant among an ejvora crab full of exultant Baziron, hiccupping zestfully and mimicking Heeko's sanguine fate with her enervated fruit, until something punctures her throatsac.
Odisseus squints, scarcely trusting his undependable eyesight, but indeed, when he's focused his vision, an utterly surprised koj Pasqkla whimpers mortally through a clean hole in her throatsac. It isn't until the second shot that her lackeys actually take notice of the koj's predicament; a muffled red streak penetrates the side of her confounded head, originating from some eastern point above Odisseus' current position. A third and a fourth shot, definitely the doing of a sniper, likely lurking among the trees at the easternmost edge of the morwaq cavity, both officially terminate koj Pasqkla with a horrid shiver and propel the remainder of the Scream-Weed kojaj into a lather.
“I'm hinking that our crunches just got a lot worse,” Two-Bit soberly predicts.
Even over the mingled bedlam of the headless kojaj, Odisseus still hears the wail of the approaching driftmotors before he sees them; three M2 Vagrant-Class Short-Range Scouts hurtle past overhead, dissolve what was once a tight formation and begin unloading their anti-infantry cannons into the scattering Baziron populace. As the pirates curse, draw weapons and scramble for cover among the declivity's stones and boulders, Odisseus hears, within the adjoining stretch of jungle, a flurry of rustling brush, humanoid voices exchanging code phrases in gruff Commercial and, before long, the unmistakable clatter of so many SV7s, opening fire.
Chapter 16
Moira Quicksilver elects never to be shot in the neck ever again. First of all, neck wounds too often proved nearly impossible to properly bandage mid-gunfight, judging largely from their apparent tendency to unrepentantly spew copious quantities of blood, regardless of how much manual pressure one exerted on them. Secondly, the entire esophageal region was perhaps a little too close to her vital carotid artery for Moira to comfortably receive gunfire. Lastly, an injured throat rendered her virtually mute and therefore, incapable of issuing commands to their outnumbered, outgunned and effectively surrounded handful of pirates.
A serendipitous shot during the opening salvos of the ambush had claimed a skirting, finger-deep puncture on the margin of her neck – a harrowing, if otherwise benign, wound. Moira could certainly treat such an injury, should she ever find herself safely returned to the Lover's medbay. Danbonte’d struggled to dress the wound as best he could, but the more pressing concern remained that Moira required one hand planted firmly on the left side of her neck to continue staunching the blood flow, leaving her only the one hand to return fire and forsaking Righty to swing fruitlessly in its holster.
Unjustly separated from its mate, Lefty seeks sweet vengeance against the next Insurgent Company bastard to wade through the exploding underbrush, surrendering one shot to the belly of his powered plate and inserting another into the right goggle of his chemguard mask, succinctly concluding his military career with an awkward tumble into the bushes. His running mate, another identical humanoid commando with snowy-camouflaged body armor, a portable respiratory pack and an unslung standard-issue assault rifle, emerges seconds later and a yard west. Lefty rewards him for his hair's-breadth tardiness with a pair of complimentary bolts, the first in a kneecap and the second in the elbow of his trigger arm. His yelp is muffled beneath the triple-prongs of the chemguard mask and he slumps atop his comrade, a pair of hand-wrapped gifts for ktotari birds or worse. The coast fleetingly clear, Moira darts from cover to adjust her position, ten degrees southwest.
Rampant chaos usurps the Scream-Weed camp. Alternating waves of blaring gunfire and armored shock troops deluge the suddenly besieged settlement from a veritable blockade of entrenched positions. Ejvora crabs, awoken from their slumber by the bedlam unfurling about them, uproot themselves and stagger confusedly about the encampment, impervious both to errant laserfire and the occasional burning tree swaying off their backs. The trio of Imperium driftcraft circumnavigate the clearing, peppering pockets of troublesome resistance with their vehicle-class artillery. Slodzen, in mongrel packs of five and ten, tug free ankles and throats of those few commandos luckless enough to ill-aim their weapon's final shots. A resultant smokescreen of consumed ditrogen castoff, the gushing contents of a dozen uncorked gas grenades and legitimate smoke contribute bloodshot eyes and general obfuscation to the developing mayhem. What little Baziron remain unswatted by the compounded swatches of aircraft and infantry crossfire stage an urgent resistance, but sharpened sticks and sporadic suits of crustaceous armor are little more than breakable toys against Insurgent Company's methodical aggression.
Within minutes of koj Pasqkla's assassination, the entire camp will be exhaustively pacified, thanks to two full battalions worth of jungle extermination tactics, complete with overwhelming force, aerial bombardment and extreme prejudice. This is heartless work for hard soldiers and even Moira, a matured murderer in her own right, battles against the rising contents of her stomach as she scurries across a spread of Baziron children's' corpses to reach the agreed-upon rendezvous.
The pair of concavely arrayed driftcarts, towered with baggage, create uniquely ideal shelter against three-fourths of the encroaching Imperials and thusly, serve as the first hurdle in the pirates' strategic retreat from the killing fields without. Only Two-Bit, Anchorage and Ebeneezer await Moira's arrival, with Danbonte dogging her heels, and all three of the crouching hoodlums cringe and wince at the sight of her red-stained neck.
“Not as bad as it looks,” Moira wheezes feebly as she slides to cover and wastes little time popping Lefty open to replenish its ammunition.
“Would have to be, else you'd be dead,” Anchorage confirms, chu
cking Danbonte a fresh DU5 from a nearby unclasped case. The redskin accepts the relative upgrade in firepower with a terse nod and replaces his semiautomatic pistol to its holster.
“Well, this went south fast, eh?” Two-Bit comments.
Moira thumbs a clean moonclip into Lefty's empty cylinder with a satisfying click. “Got what we paid for.”
“Big buyer's remorse, maybe?” Danbonte proposes.
“Maybe,” Anchorage concurs, parceling out five banana clips for Danbonte's use.
Moira scoots herself several feet along the side of the parked embankment to cautiously peer into the blast-addled gap of the cockled driftcarts and divine the progress both of the Scream-Weeds' continued decimation and her hopefully still-absconding crewmates.
She spots one of the M2 hovercraft, some distance away, teeter on its axis and instigate a swooping pass toward the barricaded Baziron, its portside gunner unleashing a red torrent below, only to sideswipe another airborne object which, to Moira's eyes, appears to be an hefty clay jug, hurled skyward from within the churning chaos beneath. Upon collision, however, the jug reveals its intestine surprise – a full load of repellent. With an aggravated explosion of unholy orange fire, the driftcraft precipitously ruptures into two twisting hulks of metal, which whirligig smoking circles to the dirt.
Narrowly avoiding the raining wreckage, certainly from no adroitness or eludity of his own, comes Nemo, only his heinous profanity louder and more colorful than his barking blue pistol. He powers three shots into the exposed back of a prostrate commando partially crunched beneath the smoldering hovercraft, he discharges a distressing multitude of ammunition wildly upward at a second passing M2 and he futilely empties his own magazine into the absorbent powered plate of another advancing infantryman, sporting an oddly-shaped yet faintly-recognizable weapon Moira only identifies split seconds before it's fired.
Most commonly marketed as a utility weapon to big game hunters and with little practical application to a conventional military, an adhesive webgun performed admirably at the single task it was suitably equipped to perform; quickly and efficiently capturing a target. Activating with a sputtering hiss of conjured gunk, the commando's cumbersome weapon unchains an amorphous mesh of paralytic goo, whizzing toward the Captain. Nemo has nearly enough time to stumble aside before the viscous net snags him by the sleeve and yanks him imploringly to the ground. He flails and flops beneath his partial imprisonment, assailing, with only artful vulgarities and the clicking of his pistol's hollow chamber, the squad of Insurgent Company's finest descending upon him. Moira's just selected a target among Nemo's potential captors, the fastest commando to fetch out the magnetic bonds.
Then Odisseus hits him from behind.
Scattering the other commandos like a handful of aflutter lonktonks, Odisseus, as if from thin air, bulldozes the hapless humanoid beneath a flying tackle, crumpling his spine with a skin-crawling snap via the undiluted dynamism of three hundred pounds of ballistic Ortok. Planting both feet firmly on the quivering corpse of his first fallen foe and rearing to his full height, Odisseus, mouthful of fangs bared and radiating the blackest rumble of a threatening growl, interposes himself between the pinned form of his Captain and four of the Imperium's most elite storm troopers and their four assault rifles, his own Acathi lying forgotten on the ground and murderous defiance blazing in his eyes. Moira withdraws Lefty, either unwilling to risk striking the Ortok in the portending melee or simply out of a desire to watch him take out the trash.
They immediately open fire, three blistering bolts boring holes through the blubber of his midsection only the catalyst to their own maimings. Advancing with a bestial snarl on his lips, Odisseus literally slaps the face, chemguard mask and all, messily off the face of the nearest soldier. He clamps his locking jaw entirely around the skull of the next razorback, tousling the humanoid menacingly with a complimentary incisor through each temple. Spewing the brain-damaged commando to the ground, Odisseus scoops up the penultimate of Nemo's tormentors with claws to his throat, hoists the flapping trooper over his head and, thundering a wordless animalistic roar, heaves the helpless humanoid directly at his single remaining comrade.
The last two Insurgent Company bozos crashing into the brush amid snapping necks and breaking bones, Odisseus appears to slowly compose himself and shuffles to the aid of Nemo, still floundering under the webgun's snare.
A spur of proximate movement to her right snatches Moira's attention. Brondi, with Rooster shadowing several yards behind, dashes and darts between available trees, rocks, ejvora crabs, whatever cover presents itself on the fastest route through the carnage toward the folded driftcarts, just as Danbonte and Moira herself had done several moments previously.
“They coming, Quicksilver?” Anchorage hollers.
Moira, in deference to speaking and potentially exacerbating her neck wound, reverts to hand signals, indicating to Anchorage the hastening approach of Nemo and Odisseus at one hundred and forty degrees, before glancing back to confirm Brondi and Rooster's heading and strangling a curse.
Neither the smuggler nor his Dho co-pilot detect the Insurgent Company commando, ghosting their progress deeper in the brush, toting another webgun in place of the standard SV7, likely with a pile of buddies lurking unseen in reserve, hoping to secure a medal or a promotion by bagging one of Ott's pet pirates. Instinctively, she shouts a warning to Brondi or Rooster or both but only a desiccated murmur escapes her lips. She endeavors a second time with worse results, reapplies manual pressure to the right side of her neck and continues to inwardly curse, with indecency enough to rival even Nemo. With Brondi utterly oblivious to his companion's plight, the concealed commando triggers his webgun. This time, though, the aim rings truer.
Rooster is caught entirely both by surprise and by the web, its sticky tendrils snapping back together to fully engulf his relatively diminutive frame. Thrashing out with all ten limbs and his tongue in frantic protest, the Dho demolitions expert and his newfound entanglement greet the encroaching crowd of revealed commandos with a flurrying cloud of arms, legs, hands, feet and profanity. Moira scoots forward into the breach as much as she dares and extends Lefty at arm's reach, showering the predatory pack with streaking yellow discouragement. She discourages only one to death with a fortunate earshot, but the rest of her barrage blends toothlessly into the wall of hustling body armor. Moira watches helplessly as half a squad bear down to detain their freshest catch. Rooster, his previously polarized yellow crest drooping and his omnidexterous struggling quickly draining momentum, finally collapses comatose, the webgun's torpid effects evidently a rousing success.
Brondi, meanwhile, slides to safety just as Insurgent Company is bundling up their netted quarry, the smuggler huffing relievedly and reaching for his ammunition to restock his spent pistol. “We're here,” he begins, before spotting her neck and exhaling a gout of sympathetic air.
Moira urgently shakes her head, chokes down the responsive pain from her throat and jabs a clamant pistol in the direction of his pilfered co-pilot. Crawling along the driftcart's rim, Brondi peeks through the impromptu arrow slit and pales.
“Rooster,” he breathes, shooting a glance behind, as if searching for the Dho's clone or his evil twin. “Well, what're we doing? We have to rescue–”
“Can't,” Moira disavows quietly. “Unconscious.”
“But–”
“There's no way,” she painstakingly articulates. “I'm sorry, Garrok.”
As though summoned at that exact moment, Odisseus and Nemo, though the latter is missing a significant swatch of leather from his sleeve, round the opposite corner and flatten themselves against the driftcart's sheltering embrace, unintentionally impersonating Brondi's winded panting.
“Gentlemen. I almost got shot,” Nemo appreciates.
“I did get shot,” Odisseus surmounts. “Three times.”
“You got shot,” Nemo realizes, glimpsing Moira last among the assembly. “Like, in the mouth.”
“Neck,�
�� she croaks.
“All the moons, what does it take to kill you?”
“They took Rooster,” Brondi informs, biting back acrimony as he speaks, “In a net. Like an animal. Moira says we can't rescue him.”
“Webgun?” Odisseus inquires, to which Moira nods the grimmest nod her makeshift bandage will allow. “Then you're probably right. We don't have the time or the manpower to extricate anybody.”
Nemo scowls, craning to get a look past Moira and into the crevice. “There's no way to grab him back?”
“Not unless you feel like stomping out after him, guns blazing.” Odisseus pauses. “Which–”
“Well–”
“Yeah, stupid question.”
“Plus, if Moira's right and he is proper drooly,” Two-Bit rationalizes, “we're gonna have ourselves a gashouse enough old time, aren't we, hoofing it back to the gantine with camos snupping at our bloomholes the whole way, with or without dragging his sleepy stiff along for the ride?”
Nemo chews his lip, fingers his scar and continues craning. “I mean–”
“No, Nemo,” Odisseus ultimates. “I forbid it.”
“You forbid it?” Nemo bristles, suddenly challenged. “Since when–“
“Since I just finished yanking you outta that massacre – I'm not about to let you waltz back in there. We don't fall back, we're all gonna end up like Heeko or Rooster or worse.”
“I agree,” Moira intones, amid a chorus of grunts, nods and affirmations from the cloistered crew.
“But what about–” Nemo attempts to take exception, but Odisseus is swift to suppress his excuse.
“Don't be a jackass. This isn't about that.” They exchange something unspoken, Odisseus' unflinching scowl portending an anonymous implication to the Captain that Moira can't decipher. “I took three rounds for you. Non-negotiable.” Nemo blusters for a counter but, after a moment, seems to begrudgingly arrive at the conclusion that the Ortok's logic is sound.
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