by S E Zbasnik
"Like hell you are," Marek said watching the thick bags piling under her eyes, now a sicklier green in the emergency flare.
"I regret to say it, but I agree with the human," Taliesin said leaning down upon his knees and placing one hand on the floor. His face loomed closer to Variel who was so lost inside her own body she failed to notice.
"Please..." he whispered, catching her off guard and snapping her misty eyes into focus.
She struggled into an active sitting position, pulled a leg under her, and ordered, "Take your jacket off."
"Is now really the time for that?" Marek asked waving his arms in front of his eyes.
Taliesin ignored the human, his top teeth trying to bite down on his lip in concentration. Sighing, he placed the syringe in his mouth and removed the anti-ballistic coat off his arms, letting it tumble to the floor. Variel swallowed a gasp of pain as she inched up onto her knees and ran her hand down her lover's back. Her fingers passed around smooth linen and stopped upon the shredded burn mark outlining the not quite missed bullet in his back.
She raised an eyebrow at his guilty face from her discovery. He turned his head to the side, "It's a flesh wound?"
"Syringe."
"You cannot be serious," Taliesin responded even as he passed it to her. "I have survived far worse."
"Maybe," Variel said, her words garbled as she took the plastic cap into her mouth and yanked. The needle glistened a radioactive glow; the medicine inside looked like poison courtesy of the emergency flare, "'ut you ne'er ha' ta wa'ch a'ter two o'hers while doing it."
Taliesin had no idea what she said but assumed it was something profound. She steadied her arm, trying to find the spot and another spasm of pain broke her concentration. Variel didn't fall to her knees or curl up in a ball, but Taliesin caught her before she slipped off her narrow perch. She already heard the logical reasons for what she was about to do being incredibly short sided and risky forming in the air. His arm slipped around her waist, pulling her back up. Variel knew she couldn't counter much more before the pain transformed into a black out. With Taliesin distracted, she plunged the needle in deep, injecting his singed flesh with the infection fighting medicine. With trembling fingers, the syringe dropped to the ground, shattering.
The elf cupped her head with his hands and said, "You are by a wide margin the most insane woman I know."
Variel laughed, the edge of her vision beginning to sparkle. Blackout was on the horizon. "It still needs a bandage," she said before falling limp into his arms.
A panic seized Variel's chest harsher than any absolute zero ice bath could. Her eyelids lifted, letting in the flickering dance of flame as exhausted corneas tried to focus on what created the light. Shadows eclipsed the flame and she reared back, realizing whatever this was must have woken her. Her fingers reached for something sharp when the shadow wheezed.
"Marek...?" she asked, her own voice soft as it settled down into her sleeping voice box.
The shadow stopped dropping old table legs onto the hobo fire in the metal drum marked 'Doll Spleens' and turned to the woman sprawled out across the floor. "Oh Gods, you're awake."
"Is that a good 'Oh Gods' or a bad 'Oh Gods'?" Variel asked, trying to rise off of her side. A scrap of fabric fell off her shoulders and she felt the cold of the factory floor seeping into her bones.
"The kind that doesn't end in my head popped off by your pet elf."
Marek hauled up another piece of wood courtesy of splintered boxes and threw it into the fire hissing at the ancient fuel. In his shiny ass Variel caught a reflection of herself. Her lips were so blue they almost looked fashionable. Even in the low light and the warping of her husband's fat butt her skin was a few shades away from going death pallor then corpse green.
He seemed to sense her thoughts as he turned away from the fire and plopped down on his butt, "You look like shit."
"Thanks," she coughed, struggling through the gangs of dust surviving in this warehouse.
"Sound like shit too."
"Where's Taliesin?" her fingers trembled from the cold, or maybe it was an illusion by the flickering light of the flames.
"Lover boy wandered off, had to 'secure the perimeter.'" Marek added the air quotes with his hand, one of which sported a small pink bandage wrapped around the palm. Even in the low light Variel thought she could make out a few big eyed cats in bows on it. "Also said he'd flay off my flesh and knit it for a blanket if I left your side."
"He did not," her trembling fingers tried to reach for the blanket but it eluded her grasp.
Marek watched her fail at the simple task. Gathering to his feet, he picked up the scrap of leather and draped it around her shaking shoulders. Then his hands patted her lightly as if to reassure her it would be all right, the move startling her. Variel dug deeper into the makeshift blanket to distract herself from Marek showing a moment of kindness. A familiar scent of ozone from climbing through the duct system, burnt flesh, and far too much cologne wafted off Taliesin's jacket. Gods save her, she was getting used to his personal mix of colognes that could drive a muskox mad with desire.
"How long was I out?"
"Three days," Marek lied. Variel narrowed her eyes as she burrowed deepr under the jacket. "Ten minutes, more or less. Hard to tell if this planet can keep proper time."
She dropped her head, glad she hadn't caused them to miss the shuttle window. But she needed to strategize, and her brain felt like a ball of steel wool dredged from the depths of the pipes under the sink. In theory, a nugget of gold resided within that birds nest of a blockade but it was going to take a lot of finger splitting to get at it.
"It's weird seeing you like this," Marek spoke, his eyes out into the warehouse. In the light of the fire, the rest of the floor looked even darker and more menacing than when they only had the windows to navigate by.
"Oh?"
"Less than. You never let anyone see you as less than," he said, his mind trapped back to a time they'd both rather forget. "Shit, even with those mods...and I got a long talk from the army docs about how much tender love and care you'd need, and you vanished off to some rehab facility."
"There was a time constraint, I needed professional help," Variel said, remembering back to her first major Knight assignment. It made her a hero, well known across the galaxy for a day or two until some non threatening trio of young adult males did something adorable while kind of singing. It was supposed to be the proudest moment of her career, at least that's what everyone kept telling her.
"Professional help? You can say that again," Marek muttered. Digging his fingers into his pocket he extracted the box and placed it between them, not wanting to have any responsibility hanging upon his neck. "Thanks, by the way."
Her eyes blinked slowly, trying to fight off fatigue, "What for?"
"Staying alive." Variel scrunched up her eyebrows, wrinkling her nose in a way that was almost sort of cute. Marek grinned at her confusion and continued, "If you'd died your lover boy would have used my lungs as ear warmers."
"No he wouldn't," she said, sighing. "Human lungs are useless as anything other than party balloons."
Marek didn't know if she was being facetious or not, and she didn't wish to elaborate. The orcs knew how to party when they wished, and could scrounge decorations in the most unlikely of places. "What is it now?" she asked, watching him crack and recrack his knuckles. It drove her nuts when he'd lurk in the hallway working up the courage to ask or confess to something.
"I thought that overgrown gnome you let pilot the ship was your ace in the hole."
"He is, most people see an easy way to uneven the odds by picking him off. It's a distraction. Taliesin is my ace lurking around the corner."
"Yeah, funny thing that. We were supposed to meet in the church."
"Yes," she sighed, her fingers falling into Taliesin's pockets.
"So how'd he know to get to that dingy back alley and bounce around on some troll's shoulders?"
A scrap of fabric snagged between her ques
ting fingers and she yanked it out. The handkerchief was embroidered with a T then enough letters to make most law firms jealous. Four heaving blots of blood stained the edges. Variel tried to look at the outer pocket, but the black of the leather hid how much she bled all over him. This may have been worse than she previously calculated.
"Well?" Marek prompted, suddenly needing to know.
"I was in communication with him the moment we stepped out of the shuttle depot," she held her PALM up. "These things have a silent mode, you know."
Marek took the news surprisingly well at first, then he began to rewind the tape in his mind of just all what dribbled from his lips, "You mean he could hear you."
"Be pretty stupid not to," she said returning the handkerchief to its home. If they survived this she owed Taliesin a dry cleaning voucher.
"And if he could hear you, then he could hear me as well?"
"Probably," Variel nodded, inching her head away from the growing mad man.
"The whole time?!"
"Yes," Taliesin grumbled as he walked into the light of the fire. The voice was crisp and low, a gravitas added from the elf mucking about in machinery that hadn't been tended to since gnomes first figured out transdimensional scrubbing. "I heard it all," the elf glared upon the human with all the hatred he could summon, which in his current state could probably burn a solar system.
Marek gulped, placing his mouth over his hand and chomped down on it. He'd shrugged off every bodily threat the elf made against him before as bravado, but now...
"What is...?" Variel started, her steel wool brain still unknotting itself. "Oh, oh, this is about the nob thing?" She laughed harder as the elf and the human tried to murder each other with only their eyes. "Boys." Variel shook her head, trying to clear the fog, "Situation report?"
Her orders broke Taliesin from his attempts to assassinate Marek's soul out through his eyeballs. He walked over to the captain and leaned down on one knee. "The streets are empty, no local law enforcement is concerned at the moment. The troll remains trapped under the rubble, which will require a crane's assistance before he becomes a threat. No sign of the kitsune."
Variel whistled low, "That's bad."
"Why?" Marek asked, trying to follow the two professionals in their element.
The elf turned his glower back up, but Variel answered, "A kitsune is most dangerous when you can't see it. Blasted thing could be anywhere."
"Ambush?" Taliesin asked.
"Most likely. He won't need to find us, he already knows where we have to go."
"This is a problem," the elf bowed his head closer to hers, trying to cut Marek out of the conversation.
"One we have two hours to solve."
"Hello!" Marek waved his arms about, trying to get their attention, "You're not the only ones here. Could you save the pillow talk for later?"
"Human..." Taliesin growled, the teeth back in rare form, when Variel's hand fell upon his arm. The elf didn't turn from Marek but the lips dropped down.
"Marek, give Taliesin the box," Variel ordered, nodding towards the box in between them.
He picked it up, weighing it in his hand. Swallowing slowly, he asked, "What for?"
"Sin?"
The elf pulled out the spent pistol causing Marek to jump back, but Taliesin unscrewed the panel over the butt to reveal a hollow casing beneath.
"Short of removing our blood and screening it before us, we're run through every security check imaginable getting off planet, assassins are not."
"Isn't that what your magical briefcase is for?"
"The case is the first thing they check, remember," she said, then her hand slapped into her forehead causing both of the men to skitter back. "Gravel rot, I left the case back in that alleyway. Shit, there goes another one."
"You do not seem to have good luck with them," Taliesin said, referring to the last one she'd thrown away trying to save his ass from her old ghosts.
"Marek, give him the drugs already. We have other problems to tackle."
The human weighed his options; in theory this was the only thing keeping him alive and useful. In reality, he had no idea what to do with two hundred grams of rainbow laxatives. He handed the box to the cold claws of the elf, who quickly bundled up the bag the powder rested in, cinching it tight, and then loaded it into the gun.
"The balance is a bit odd, but not enough for anyone to notice," Taliesin said, slipping the pistol into his hidden holster.
Variel held onto her side and sat up, struggling to peer around at the surroundings. "What are those?" she asked pointing towards the few machines within her line of sight. They ran the full height of the warehouse, circular and about five people wide if they scrunched up a bit.
"Gravity mixers," Taliesin said. "There are four in total but three have been mined for spare parts."
"Gravity mixers?" she asked.
"To increase the pressure within a box before shipping it out into the universe. Most claim it is to 'test the efficacy of our shipment.' I suspect it is so they can collapse as much freight into as small a space as possible. This used to be the shipping side of the warehouse complex."
"Are any working?"
"One, possibly," Taliesin looked out at the lone unstripped mixer. He hadn't gotten close; abandoned machinery could go a bit looney over time. "What are you planning?"
"We have three options. One, we sit here and wait for Umai to come for us after he's gathered up fresh lackeys."
"That's bad," Marek said, still shaking at the memory of the troll hurling an honest to Orville dumpster near his head. Sure, the aim was terrible and he'd have to have been a good five feet taller for it to hit but the very idea of it turned his bones to gelatin.
"Two, we make for the shuttle and are ambushed by the kitsune."
"That's also bad," Marek continued, adding nothing to the discussion.
"Or three, we lure the kitsune to our hiding spot and ambush him."
Taliesin watched a small gleam shimmer in her eyes, then followed it to the machinery. "Vari, that's especially bad."
"It's the best, no, the only answer."
"The kitsune will expect such a tactic and will not fall for the ruse," Taliesin said, hoping to cull the plan he sensed about to fall from her lips.
Her fingers patted his arm gently as she said, "Not if you leave."
"I will do no such thing!"
"Are you insane? He's the only one that's useful here," Marek shouted. For a brief moment Taliesin nodded to the spineless human in thanks for support. Then a mote of dust settled on his tongue and his face turned sour as he realized that the man was more concerned with his own body being left unprotected.
"Is there a medicine shop near by?" Variel asked, seeming to forget her old plan entirely.
"A chemists rests a mile down the road," Taliesin said. At Marek's look of wonder he explained, "I had some time while you passed through customs and grew peckish."
"Umai knows at least one of us is injured, possibly both. He's probably watching it to see if anyone will go for healing."
"No."
"Marek and I would be child's play -- anyone with half a tail would sense the blood in the water. But you, your going makes perfect sense."
Taliesin's claw softly ran across the skin of her hand as he asked, "Why would Umai go for you and not Marek or me first? He did watch me destroy one of his henchmen, and all who meet your husband wish him dead."
"I out-smarted him," Variel said, a bit of pride dotting her mouth, "Kitsune's aren't about to forget or let something like that go."
The elf despised knowing she was right. The very mark of the kitsune species was cleverness, to have it threatened and in such a wild throw of the cards... Umai could not let her survive even if they were to offer to smuggle the drugs themselves for free. "I will not abandon you," Taliesin picked up her drooping hand and held it. The cold surprised him and he rubbed it, trying to get life back into a dying limb.
Her heavy lids lifted, "If we wait a
ny longer, you won't be able to follow me."
His fingers threaded around hers, rubbing the back of her hand as he mulled over their dwindling options, "How can you possibly take down an enraged kitsune on your own?"
"Hey, I'm here too," Marek said.
Taliesin glared upwards without looking at the human and repeated, "Again, how can you destroy Umai without anyone willing to assist you?"
Variel gripped back on his hand and tried to shuffle her legs under her. Taliesin worked an arm around her back and lifted her body up, getting her to a standing position. "Well, that was step one. Marek needs to get into the rafters. I'm going to have to borrow that shield I leant you," she said referring to the small, partly damaged bullet barrier sitting in Taliesin's pocket. It'd seen better days but half protection was better than none. "And we need to see a machine about a gravity boost."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Umai curled up inside a pile of projected rags, his form masked by the morphmech suit into that of a lone beggar prowling up the streets for a handout. It'd been over twenty minutes since the elven manechenja poked its twitching nose out the door and wandered off. The kitsune smelled a ruse at work, but he feared this may also be the only opportunity left available before his prey slipped away. As he watched through the tapped security network on his PALM he spied the elf slipping inside the chemists. Umai smiled to himself, glad to know he'd caused the human even more damage than she did to herself.
The elf would run into a small bit of trouble as it tried to relieve the shop of life saving medicine, perhaps not enough to stop him permanently -- the pointy eared one had talent above a common spacer -- but it should slow him down. Umai could wait another half hour for his spares to arrive, but by then they could shift on or worse -- discover another way off world.
No, now was the go time. He cut off his contact lines and switched off the beggar disguise. Blackness coated his form, it would never fool someone up close or in heavy daylight; but masked by the slowly dying night's sky he was as invisible as the wind. The two tails twitched nervously in the air as Umai pushed upon the door to the warehouse he'd not watched the elf climb from. In a rather impressive display of acrobatics, the elf climbed to the top of one building's roof, ran along the gutters until it jumped to another nearby building, crawled down the wall to leap through an open window and calmly exited through that door.