ATWinPC-14

<<Previous Chapter>> - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
==Chapter 14 - A Toreel Wizard in Prince Davion's Court==
-----
===Betrayal===
Euschelus, Taurian ConcordatOctober 14th, 3025
It felt like she'd taken a couple blows from a war pick to the face. As Celia came back to her senses, she didn't know how much time had passed, or how she'd ended up on the ground, or how seriously she'd been injured (aside from realizing she was now blind in one eye). 
But she could still see with the other, and hear with her ears. Gunshots continued to ring out. L'heo, still in his human form, had lept on top of Chim, shielding her with his body while projectiles struck him, smashing their way almost unimpeded through a faint shimmering magical field. 
And she could see the other man, the brigadier, lifting a weapon towards her mistress and L'heo himself. So she acted, launching from her prone position, drawing and striking with her sword in one smooth action. 
The brigadier's weapon fell away, along with the hand gripping it, as he fell to his knees grasping the stump.
She stood over him, not even feeling the bullets that struck her from three directions. "Why?!" she screamed at him.
The brigadier gawked at her. Then he started laughing, a crazed, desperate laugh. 
She wouldn't get her answer before the area around her winked out of existence, replaced by the familiar bulkheads of their cabin on the dropship.
-----
Brigadier Fiscus let himself slump to the ground, to woozy from blood loss or... just everything... to bother staying upright. His first thought was to get on the comm for a status report, call for help, maybe yell at marksman team three, but then he remembered that the communicator was attached to a glove now a good meter removed from its arm. 
Maybe it was the blood shooting out of his stump, maybe it was the sense of catastrophic failure, but he couldn't bring himself to worry much about that... or anything else. You had a good run, humanity, time to call it a night. 
He let himself start to drift away.
----
===Why?===
L'heo didn't waste any time pulling potions out of his bag. "Drink up," he ordered. It was a rare thing when L'heo started giving orders.
Chim could see that Celia gulped her own potion down promptly, the healing affects both closing wounds and pushing the half dozen or so projectiles that had riddled her out of her body. L'heo was doing the same, with much the same result, though he'd clearly taken more hits, thus adding to the collection of metal slugs that pinged off the deck.
Chim hesitated for a moment, before L'heo fixed her with an angry glare. "They are actively trying to kill us," he said in his most commanding tone. "In the state you're in, you will die if they catch you. Drink. Up."
Chim shook her head as she swallowed her potion, feeling her bruised and battered body start putting itself right again. "It shouldn't have been like this." 
"It was always a possibility," L'heo said as he pulled another round out of the bag. "You knew that, you had a getaway prepared." 
Chim nodded sadly. "Yeah," she acknowledged, though preparing for the worst and actually needing it were two different things. 
"What do we do now?" Celia asked. "It's only a matter of time before they figure out where we went."
"We might have longer than you think," L'heo replied. "They aren't familiar with magic." 
"Maybe..." Chim said absently, only to get a confused look from L'heo. "It's nothing," she said waving off his concerns. Probably nothing, but... She'd seen the brigadier draw his weapon, aim it, and as he did she thought she'd seen something... maybe...
"Point is," she said. "We need to get out of here, and we need the crew to do that. So..."
----
===Reasons for the hesitation===
Brigadier Fiscus was mildly annoyed to find himself regaining consciousness. Maybe not all the way conscious. His brain was a fluffy cloud, and he didn't feel any pain that he was pretty sure he should be feeling. Doc Westphall was looking down on him when he opened his eyes.
"Whatever you did didn't go well," the doc said.
"Team three didn't take the shot." Fiscus said. It was hazy, but he could remember that. The old man, the woman with the tits, but not the girl. "They didn't shoot the girl."
"You told them to shoot a child," Westphall said. "Of course they hesitated."
"Not a child," Fiscus protested. "Said so herself, sixty eight."
"Kids will say all kinds of things," Westphall said. "It doesn't mean we get to shoot them."
Fiscus heard laughing, it took him a moment to figure out it was him laughing. "Your moralizing made more sense yesterday when the world made sense. Where's my..." He raised his arm, seeing the bandaged stump where he expected his communicator to be. "Oh... yeah. Who here didn't lose their hand?"
A trooper appeared in his field of vision. Trooper... no... Section Leader Turner. That sounded plausible. "Sir?"
"Why are you here?" Fiscus demanded.
Turner looked nonplussed. "Sir, you..."
"Damnit," Fiscus said. "You should be running them down. Find them. Stop staring at me and go shoot the girl this time!"
"Sir," Turner replied. "We don't even know where they are. With that vanishing act..."
Fiscus' annoyance managed to burn its way through the pain killers. "Start with the great big thing in the middle of the landing pad that's their only way out. Jesus Christ, man, this quack's got me stoned and I could figure that out. Wreck it if you have to. If that girl gets off world, everything burns."
----
<<Previous Chapter>> - Return to Story Index - Next Chapter>>
14