Board Thread:The Company/@comment-24866242-20140705011408/@comment-24866242-20140706231333

Lantis pulled himself up against the wall, supporting himself there and taking a moment to breath. He had miscalculated. The bitch was more reckless than he had anticipated. He could hear the chaos behind him while they tangled with Darrak. The Wiveni and their false promises were to blame for this! He should have known better. Lantis Pirin had never sought power before now. He had always been content to serve power. Influence was what he had always wanted before this disaster, and now he’d lost everything!

Using the wall as a support, he examined the blade in his thigh. Blade… It might as well be a machete! He gave the handle a tentative touch and it didn’t move, but it was enough to send another wave of pain up through his hip. It looked like it had firmly embedded itself in the bone. Katrylle was good with knives. He’d told her so himself just moments before.

The pain was intense but he experimentally put some weight on the leg. He wouldn’t be going anywhere fast if he couldn’t walk. Despite the pain the leg held his weight. He took a step down the hall, using the wall on his weak side every other step. Suddenly he stopped cold. An alien roar echoed down the hall he’d just passed through and weapons fire rocked the structure. They were bombarding the temple from orbit! That should not have been possible. The device should have prevented it!

He hurried away from the source of the unearthly scream, but he was trailing blood and the flow was growing with every step he took. Footsteps echoed behind him, barely audible over the sound of the blasts, and he realized he needed a place to hide or he would be overtaken. A doorway on his right looked promising and he ducked inside, fading into the darkness just as Ryax dashed past, his bitch over his shoulder.

Lantis leaned back against the wall and breathed a sigh of relief, the danger was past for the moment. Best deal with his wounds while he could… He needed something to act as a bandage. As much as he hated to do so he ripped his sleeves from his shoulders and set to work binding around the blade to staunch the flow of blood. The knife itself would have to stay for now. He would never be able to extract it on his own.

The blasts from orbit stopped. Lantis halted his work and listened in the silence for any sign that his enemies were coming back for him. In the darkness he felt a ragged gust of breath against his shoulder and he jerked away, falling into the light from the door and scrambling for the hall. He was not fast enough. A battered, black armored form limped after him, grabbed hold of his injured leg and pulled him back.

Lantis screamed in pain and terror as the creature took him.

The group clustered around the top of Darwin’s entry ramp, not sure they wanted to be too close to the temple in case the… whatever it was came back. Only Kat remained outside, standing almost exactly at the halfway point between Darwin and the opening to the temple, silently watching the building. Ry watched her closely from not too far away.

Ben climbed the ramp to the cockpit with Jack on his tail while Sandra pulled rifles back down from the rack at the top of the entryway and started passing them out.

Ben dropped into his seat at the top and opened a line to their friends in orbit. “Krita, we just realized that Jos and Axin pulled a disappearing act on us. Don’t suppose you saw them go, did you?”

A moment passed before the response and Jack dropped into the seat next to Ben.

“We’ve been a little busy up here Darwin.” Travers still sounded pissed.

Jack growled into the comm, “Little brother, if they get away because you’re throwing a hissy fit we’re gonna have words.”

Alex’s voice replaced Travers’. ''“Negative Darwin. We have not seen your targets.”'' The clear sounds of Travers yelling at someone came across the comm as well and Jack could only assume it was directed at him. He chuckled softly.

Ben gave Jack a pointed look and shook his head. “Maybe you can start scanning, Krita. They can’t have gotten too far yet.”

''“Already handled, Darwin. We have scans around the entire area. We’ll find ‘em.”''

“Thanks, Krita. We’re heading back inside now. Need to figure out what your fireworks accomplished” He snapped the line closed and looked hard at Jack.

“I don’t care to get between you and your brother, but really?”

Jack chuckled once again. “Just giving the boy a little fire. Tis good for him. He would have missed that temple shot if I hadn’t and we’d all be dead.”

Ben shook his head again and stood up. Jack followed him back down. “You can’t be sure Travers took those shots.”

Jack just grinned. “Aye, that was Dev’s work. Best shot out there. Besides, he’d wouldn’t have let anyone else do it. Even the Raiders would have hesitated at that command. He couldn’t take the chance.”

Ben sighed. “Still, to twist him up like that… I guess you’re the expert, but I seem to remember Travers being more than capable when I knew him. Maybe give him the benefit of the doubt.” Ben walked on leaving Jack to consider his words.

They rejoined the group at the bottom and Sandy tossed Ben a pair of rifles, one of which he handed to Jack before checking the charge on the one he kept. It had just come off the rack so he knew it would be full, but old habits died hard.

“Ten of us, not including Kat. She’s not really herself. Let’s do groups of two. Jarrid, you and Marissa. Jack, stick with Ry and Kat. Sandy and I will go together, Chaz, stick with our friends here. I’m not sure how willing they are to split up.”

Bran and Mack didn’t look like they were planning on leaving Caedwynne alone. Nodding, the two men did something completely off the wall. Turning to face each other, they began a round of three sets of Roshambo while Caed stood by and rolled her sightless eyes.

At the end Bran lost the match. With a good natured grumble he bowed to the others who had watched the contest with various degrees of curiosity and amusement. The air around him shimmered and his body began to change. Within moments a huge dark gray tiger stood before them, black strips barely visible in his fur.”

“You know he thinks you cheat, Mack.” Caed chided Mack as he gently guided her hand to Bran’s neck.

“Ah, lass, Tis not in my nature to cheat,” Mack laughed.

The great cat chuffed and began to move off in the direction of the temple followed closely by a smirking Mack.

During the distraction caused by Mack and Bran’s competition, Jack noticed Ry and Kat moving towards the opening of the temple. Ry was waving to them to follow, but he wasn’t letting Kat out of his sight. Apparently the being controlling her was unwilling to wait.

“Time to move,” Jack said to the group before jogging after them.

The remaining groups moved after Jack towards the temple and spread out once inside.

Ben and Sandy took the corridor back to the open chamber that had been the target of Krita’s bombardment several minutes before. As they approached the opening to the temple room Sandra stopped Ben with a hand on his shoulder just before he stepped through. The clatter of stone falling from the walls reached them a moment later and a few crumbling pieces of mortar rained past the entrance. Ben glanced out and around before nodding to her and they quickly moved out into the center of the room, away from any other debris that might fall on them.

The scorch marks from the pedestal still graced the floor and walls, but they were masked by much larger craters and burns from Krita’s weaponry. Blackened and pitted stone was everywhere, but surprisingly few of the strikes were away from the center of the room. Most of the damage from the walls seemed to have come from the vibrations caused by the strikes.

Darrak’s body lay where it had fallen, seemingly untouched by the destruction Krita had wrought on the room.

There was no sign of the Wiveni.

“If Kat was right it could be anywhere,” Sandy commented.

Ben nodded. “I hope wherever it went it’s a long way off. I’m not sure how many direct hits Krita got on it but if it’s still alive after this I’m not sure our rifles are going to do much good.”

“Blood over there,” Sandy pointed towards the far door with her rifle.

“Lantis,” Ben said. “Must’ve slinked off while we were dealing with Darrak. Might still be hiding somewhere.”

They made their way across the shattered floor and carefully entered the corridors on the far side, both of them glancing up every time they heard the sound of gravel shifting above them. They walked together, keeping their guns ready while they kept their eyes peeled for the droplets of blood Lantis had left behind him. Ry had come this way with Kat but had been more than a little distracted at the time.

A sound ahead made them both look up, but they lowered their rifles when they saw Chaz standing in the hall outside a doorway to the right. They called out to him and he waved them forward.

“They say it’s dead, but I’m sure as shit not going in there,” he told them when they reached his position. “Damn thing’s gonna give me nightmares for the rest of my life, I swear.”

Ben glanced inside to find Mack kneeling over the battered corpse of the monster. Half of its right side was gone and it was still. Caed and Bran, changed once again into a man, stood to one side whispering to each other.

Ben pulled his communicator and triggered the agreed frequency. “Stinel here. Looks like we found our monster. Looks dead.”

Jack’s voice came back, ''“We’re working towards your signal. Be there in a minute.”''

Ben switched on the light on his rifle and aimed it at the corpse. Mack was doing something around the creature’s neck and yanked something free with a grunt. The gleam of the steel blade reflected in the light from Ben’s gun and Mack smiled. “Katrylle will be happy to have this back.”

“How did it get there?” Sandy asked.

Ben shrugged. “Still no sign of Lantis.”

Mack stood. “He was here and…“ he sniffed the air. “I don’t understand. Something happened, but I don’t understand.”

Katrylle stepped into the room ahead of Ryax and Jack, her eye still glowing as she looked down at the battered shape of the Wiveni. The communicator still in her hand translated Volanyn’s words for all to understand. “It is finished.” The glow in her eye faded and she slumped. Ry moved fast and caught her before she could hit the floor.

They made their way out of the temple and Jack cursed when they looked out to find only the Darwin and his fighter waiting for them. He fished out the comm Sandy had loaned him and growled into it. “Devon, yer not gonna believe this… We lost another one.”

“I am so going to dock your pay, Jack!” Travers’s scowl could be heard over the airwaves and Jack gave Ben a look before shaking his head and chuckling.

“We were all over the place in there,” Ben muttered. “And he was injured. How did he get by us?”

No one had an answer. Everyone was too tired to venture a guess. Jack boarded his fighter and the rest of them climbed into the Darwin, a still unconscious Kat gently carried by Ry into the infirmary. Even with the danger to Kat he found himself relieved that Marissa had someone else to mother.

The two remaining craft climbed out of the ashy atmosphere together and rendezvoused with the Krita minutes later, sliding into one of the larger hangar bays. Travers was there to meet them, the scowl on his face fading when he saw them deboarding their respective ships. They were all the worse for wear and it showed.

He strode to Jack first, pointing a finger into his brother’s face. “You owe me a shuttle, m’boyo!” Suddenly, Jack found himself folded in Devon’s arms as the younger man hugged him tightly.

Caedwynne’s sightless gaze shifted, directed in the brothers’ general direction. “Actually, Captain Travers? I took the shuttle from Vextis. I don’t believe your brother owes you for a ship. His life, perhaps, but not a ship.”

The Morghan brothers pulled away at her words and gaped at her as she spoke. As if from a scene in a comedy vid, they they turned to face each other at the same instant and simply stared. Jack laughed, slapping his brother hard on the back. “I do at that, Dev. I do at that.”

The shuttle, as it happened, had escaped unnoticed as Krita searched for Axin and Jos. Their sensors had scanned it as it took off, but since it was, in fact, a Vextis shuttle, and since it seemed to be heading back for Vextis, they had let it go. Jos and Axin had been the priority at the time.

Krita managed to follow the trail of Jos and Axin’s shuttle to the point where it had escaped to hyperspace. After that there was no way to tell where they had gone.

They reunited with Vextis after a brief jaunt around the star, and found that the resistance from the Angel had been put down. It seemed the drones that had caused all the trouble had lost contact with the other side the moment the pedestal and the artifact were rejoined and disappeared. Joslynne’s copies of the device seemed to depend on the original to maintain their smaller gateways, and without it the Wiveni’s influence on her test subjects vanished, leaving them blinking and confused.

Joslynne’s own crew, leaderless and distracted by the chaos the drones had wrought, surrendered to Vextis when it became obvious that her weapons and defenses were superior to their own. Kat’s first instinct had been to scrap the ship, sell her off piece by tiny little piece, but in the end, Tarin and Ben convinced her it would better serve the Company to add another large ship to their fleet. She couldn’t argue their logic with her emotions running hot, so she reluctantly agreed.

Kat did insist that all of Joslynne’s copies of the device be rounded up and destroyed. They were too perfect in their imitation of the original and she was worried that somehow a bridge to the other side might be reestablished. Her orders were carried out and even the copies Lenits and Lauren had made were disconnected and burned up with the others. The plans for the devices were placed under lock and key, encrypted away in Vextis’s memory banks.

Caedwynne, Bran and Mack requested permission to stay with the Company. Caed had been a pilot for a long time and, with the replacement of the specialized neural helmet she had lost when the Vextis’ shuttle had been taken, her fighter was ready and able.

Mack and Bran, of course, went where Caed went. The brothers felt no need to explain the bond they shared with her to their new friends, and the question was never asked. Over time they would learn she shared their unique form of lycanthropy, though she showed it off less frequently than they did.