Come along to Kermadikk

"Come along to Kermadikk, she says. You can take care of your business and I’ll take care of mine then we’ll have some fun." Holliss tried to will himself to be smaller as a bullet broke off a chunk of the low wall of debris he was presently hiding behind. "I’d like you to know, and I say this will all sincerity, I am not having fun!" He couldn’t see the smirk he knew she shot him due to the dust veil concealing her face but even with the gunfire pounding his eardrums he heard the giggle that accompanied it.

The trip from New Rydynn had been uneventful, even pleasant. He’d had time to learn about the two others that had accompanied Bliss on her little mission. Problem was the more he learned about the two and Bliss, the more confused he became.

Riley, the other female in their quartet, was curled up with her head resting on her pack as if she were taking a nap. She’d called it resting her eyes. In her case it was only resting one eye as a patch obscured the other. Holliss found he liked the color of her eye. It was a deep moss green flecked with gold. The color went well with her almost neon bright red hair. He watched as her hand snaked out to snatch her long braid off the ground before a Freeman soldier could step on it. She never opened her eye. Sheridann Riley, another oddly named female for him to study. As tall as Bliss, her build was softer, more curves for his eyes to enjoy.

"What’s the matter, Holli? Being in the middle of a Freebie/Nuke firefight not your idea of a good time?"

Hollis watched as Drifter gracefully slide down next to him. When he’d first seen the man he’d got the impression he was a useless pretty boy. He had agreed to meet Bliss at the hospital and found her waiting outside with Riley and Drifter. Drifter was preening for Riley, acting like a fool. Holliss was about to ask Bliss to leave the man behind when Drifter had turned around to face him. Handsome almost to the point of pretty with dimples in both cheeks and his chin, full sensual lips and long ink black lashes. What saved him from being pretty were his eyes. For a fraction of a second Holliss though the man’s eyes didn’t have irises but an instant later he saw that they were an extremely pale shade of blue. There was an appraising intelligence in those pale eyes as they swept over him. Drifter was from K-land, as Bliss called it; he was going to show them around.

"No, being in the middle of a firefight in some two bit town in K-land is not my idea of a good time." They’d heard the sounds of battle when they arrived in town and had tried to skirt it to no avail. Now they were pinned down with a small unit of Freemen soldiers. There had been twelve of them, of that only half were currently still standing. Two were dead, three more were nursing wounds and the other had one thing standing between him and a visit to Lurudd, Bliss. As soon as the unit had dug in she’d pulled out her med kit and gone to work. Holliss had almost laughed at the surprised look on the unit commander’s face when Bliss had pushed him out of the way and told him to tend to his business and let her tend to hers. The commander hadn’t argued.

There was a lull in the standoff, neither side firing, and he could hear her humming softly as she finished wrapping up the soldier. It was a soft, calming tune even to his ears. Apparently it was having the same effect on the wounded soldier. His breathing was steady, his eyes shut. If not for all the blood and bandages one might think the man was just sleeping. There were the sounds of guns being reloaded, orders being shouted on both sides and Bliss’ gentle humming.

"Commander, they are calling in reinforcements. A tank is on its way."

Holliss watched the unit commander’s shoulders drop, a string of curses flowing from his lips. They were boxed in and their reinforcements couldn’t get to their position before the tank would reach them. The nukes knew this as well, which is why the firing had quieted. Why waste the ammo when the tank could take care of the problem with deadly efficiency.

"Well, that can’t be a good thing." Riley’s moss green eye popped open as she sat up rubbing her hand through the short spiky hair on the top of her head.

Holliss grinned in spite of the situation. The woman had a gift for understatement. They were going to be killed shortly and Bliss was calmly packing her medical gear up, Drifter was pulling his hair back into a pony tail as if he wanted to leave a good looking corpse and Riley had popped a stick of jerky into her mouth. Holliss was beginning to believe that they were crazier then any of his fellow culties. It suddenly occurred to him that he was going to die in some real fine company. He found that thought oddly comforting.

The Messiah captain’s voice cut through the background sounds. He demanded surrender, no terms, no conditions. The Freemen were simply to throw down their weapons and walk out or he’d let the shells from the tank pound them into the dirt. It wasn’t much in the way of fair terms but they might get to live a little longer.

Holliss was surprised when the Freemen commander yelled back about having civilians trapped with his unit. He asked, no demanded safe passage for them before his unit would surrender. This was something he hadn’t experienced before and he found his gaze traveling to each of the Freemen soldier’s faces. They were little more then boys but they were willing to die to protect him. It showed in their eyes, as frightened as they may have been there was a determination there that left Holliss in awe.

Almost as if she could read his thoughts, Bliss hunkered down beside him, her dust veil dangling down her cheek so her smile showed. "Live for something or die forgotten. I didn’t invent that line of thinking, Terr." She tucked her medic pack in beside him then picked up one of the supply packs they’d been hauling. "Nukes aren’t going to go for it. They won’t let us go."

A simple plan

"No worries, Commander. If they want to play, then we’ll play." Bliss set her dust veil back in place. Next the hood that covered her golden hair was pulled up. Now she looked like just another desert wanderer except for that sparkle Holliss could see in her eyes. "Rile, make me a door somewhere. Drifter, set up that big gun you’re carrying and Rile’s launcher. I’m bored with this whole, pinned down by the nukes scene…and I’m sure as blazes not going to wait around for that tank."

"If you pick up arms they’ll label you as Freemen and you’ll be in the same boat as us." The Freemen commander wanted to make that perfectly clear.

Bliss chuckled. "I’ve been labeled worse things and we’re already in the same boat as you and your boys. I tried to keep out of it but that nuke captain has other ideas." She shrugged. "His choice, his funeral."

Holliss damned near broke out laughing at the rather stunned expression on the commander’s face. He watched as Sheridann went from wall to wall of the tumbled down building they were trapped in, checking, measuring. He had no idea how she was going to make a door but he figured it was going to be something worth seeing. Drifter’s hands were assembling what looked to him to be the biggest machine gun he’d ever seen. He noted that several of the soldiers were watching Drifter as well. Shifting his gaze back to Bliss he found her also assembling a heavy chain gun with military precession. "I’m taking this to mean you have some sort of plan to get us out of this alive and free of nuke imprisonment."

"Uhm yeah." Bliss’ gloved hands didn’t pause in their work. "It’s a very simple plan too. Kill the nukes, blow up the tank, run away very, very fast."

"Now that is a plan I can get behind." Holliss had no idea how they were going to accomplish any part of her plan but he wasn’t going down without a fight. These boys were not going to die protecting him. They might die fighting beside him but that was a whole different scenario. He removed his own weapons, checking them over and calculating how much ammo he had.

The freemen commander laughed softly. "You had heavy chain guns, explosives and Oponn only knows what else all this time? You couldn’t have said something sooner?"

"Nah, you were doing fine without us." Bliss sent the man a wink. "Sides, were really are civilians. The weaponry was to protect the supplies we brought here for trade…but if we get out of this whole I might be persuaded to part with one of those lovely chain guns, if you ask me real nice."

A wide grin near split the commander’s face in two. "For one of those guns I’d be willing to give up my left nut."

"Well, I don’t have much use for that particular item but I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out."

"I’ve found a door!"

Told ya so

Holliss looked over to Sheridann to see the door she’d found but there was no door, just another wall. Then he realized she was hooking up explosives to the wall so she could blow a ‘door’ through it. The Freemen commander realized the same thing and started giving orders in a hushed voice. They’d need to hide the sound of the explosion so the Messiah soldiers wouldn’t realize exactly what was going on. While he didn’t care much for idea of Bliss going out through that door to attempt to stop or slow down the tank, it wasn’t like he could do anything to stop her. Holliss grabbed a hold of her arm. "Don’t die, Sunshine."

"Dying isn’t a part of my plan." Bliss made it sound as if, simply because she hadn’t planned it, it wouldn’t happen. "You man one of the chain guns, Holli. Follow Drifter’s lead. Rile is going use the launcher to blow those nukes out of their socks while I’m off playing tank tag."

Full fledged, lead slinging, firefights were not a normal part of life in the Cult of Etrigan, least not as far as Holliss had been concerned. It was always hit and run before the enemy recovered enough to shoot back…regardless of who the enemy was at the moment. He had an oddly disconnected feeling, as though he wasn’t really there but watching it happen to someone else. He fervently wished it was happening to someone else.

Sheridann was apparently a pro with explosives. The first round from her launcher exploded at the same instant as the charges she’d set on the wall. Even through the smoke and dust Holliss could see the blast had made a hole more then big enough for a man to get through. Only it wasn’t a man he saw dash through the opening. It was woman dressed in desert camouflage and carrying a pack. He would have said a prayer for Bliss if knew of any Gods left who answered prayers.

By the time the second round from the launcher went off, he and Drifter were on the chain guns, making them sing their staccato song. He could feel the heat coming off the weapon. The gun fire from the Messiah soldiers was sporadic for the moment due to the steady rain of lead being sent by the chain guns and the Freemen soldiers…course, Sheridann’s launcher lobbing grenades at them was probably plenty of incentive for them to keep their heads down. After all, they did just have to wait for the tank.

Seconds ticked by but to Holliss it felt like it was forever. Where was that tank? And more importantly, where was Bliss? The sounds of multiple explosions reached his ears and Sheridann’s grenades weren’t causing them. He felt the ground shake. Then came the roar of a tank gun. It sounded close but muffled at the same time.

The whoop of the soldier next to him made Holliss stop firing the big gun and actually lift his head enough to take a look at what he’d been shooting at. He could see the Nuke’s retreating. They were backing up and it wasn’t because the tank had arrived.

"Tank’s been taken out of play, they’re pulling back before our people arrive!" The commander pressed the advantage, minor though it was, and ordered his men to continue to fire. He wasn’t about to give the messiah soldiers a chance to set up an ambush for those Freemen coming to their rescue. Holliss found himself following orders along with Drifter and Sheridann.

It wasn’t until the chaos of the short battle was over and he was on a Freemen truck, fiercely protecting his chain gun from the envious eyes of the soldiers, did he think to look for Bliss. He rose to his knees so he could get a better look at the other trucks. His eyes flickered from face to face looking for a hint of gold but he couldn’t find her.

Sheridann nudged his shoulder with her own. "Don’t look so worried, Sunshine is in the next truck with the wounded doing her whole medic thing." Then she moved back against the wall of the truck and set her pack behind her head, closing that single moss green eye. "We’ll meet up again as soon as we get back into Freebie territory."

Holliss would find out later how Bliss had stopped the tank. That the rumbling explosions he’d felt under his feet were charges she’d set off under the street, weakening it enough so when the tank rolled over that spot the road gave way and down the tank fell into a man-made sink hole. At the moment he was just glad to know she was alive, everything else was secondary. "Rile, I swear you could sleep through the second coming of Etrigan."

Drifter laughed, glancing up at him from sorting out the remaining ammo for the heavy guns. "Nah, that’s my job. Rile’ll just blow him back to the Abyss he sprang from then go off singing to herself."

Almost as if on cue, Sheridann started singing an old and well-known Freeman song. Her voice rumbled like the after shocks of one her explosions. Holliss had a hard time justifying a voice like that coming out of Sheridann’s mouth. It was like hearing the roar of a vorr’ykk come out of a phulpp’s mouth. The soldiers didn’t seem to notice the incongruity of it and simply started singing along. Holliss shot a look at Drifter, who winked with a smile.

"Told ya, you’d have fun."

Holliss stared at the man for a moment then broke out laughing. There was nothing fun about a firefight, about people dying, bombs and bullets but damned if Drifter wasn’t right. He wasn’t exactly having fun but he’d never felt more alive in his life. His surrender was at hand. Holliss threw his hands up and started singing along with Sheridann and the soldiers at the top of his lungs.

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Friday, June 04, 2010