Chiana moaned to herself, her head throbbing with intense pain nearly blinding in itself as Nesk carried into another corridor, probably also lined with junk and containers. She could scarcely breath much less think as she repeatedly blinked her blind eyes, dazed and pained beyond caring if her eyes could ever again be used by anyone.
Nesk abruptly stopped in his tracks. Chiana walked into his back just as pulse fire began to erupt around them. "Frell!" Nesk shouted, unholstering his pistol, and firing back as he began to back away. Shoved backward behind him, Chiana stumbled blindly backwards until her back pressed against a rack of supplies. Accustomed to rifling through objects in the dark, Chiana's searching hands quickly realized she had been backed against a rack of knives and other cutting equipment.
"Infiltration!" Someone screamed as alarms began to resound, blaring in a sudden din of pulse fire and shouting, plunging the surroundings visible to her ears into a nearly useless blur. Chiana barred her teeth, wanting to instinctually cover her sensitive ears, yet not daring to disadvantage her sense of hearing. The thought of seizing a blade was halted for the moment by a voice cutting through the din, a Sebacean voice, mere feet behind her to one side.
"Get down!" he yelled. Both Nesk and Chiana jerked down, just in time to avoid a shot not towards the lot of them, but from the Sebacean. Some distance ahead, someone screamed, possibly struck by the Sebacean.
"Seen anything worth a drannet in this Charrid pen?" Nesk asked conversationally.
"Very funny," the Sebacean commented, taking a second look at Nesk. "Well you slimy drannet!"
"Mutually warm greetings in turn, Urslan," Nesk smiled as he raised enough to fire into the scattering chaos.
Urslan took a few shots before replying. "Is this ambush for you?"
"My apologies for not supplying your contingent as arranged," Nesk defended himself from the Sebacean at his back. "Your payment arrangements with the Lurgs failed to pay me as you'd arranged. I warned you; never trust a Lurg."
"Frelling Lurgs!" Urslan cursed, practically spitting over Chiana's shoulder.
Chiana shook her head to try to gather her herself, reaching blindly again for a blade behind her. Her blind gaze fell listlessly towards her fumbling hands. As soon as she had gained a blade, her hands then moved up and down in a moments' indecision, faced with the chore of deciding whether to merely cut herself free and try to run, attempt knifing Nesk or strangle him from behind with her cuffed hands.
A blast struck beside Nesk, forcing him to duck, shoving Chiana to one side. Nesk tied her bind to an aisle support post and shoved her down behind some fallen goods. "I'll clear a path to docking," Nesk told Urslan. "You cover. If I am taken down, it's yours. I'm sure you can find some use for her."
"Maybe I'll get something from the scammer," Urslan grumbled to himself, just loud enough for her to hear.
Chiana's pressing debate over dispatching Nesk rendered moot, she found the neck of Urslan's PeaceKeeper jacket with one hand and thrust her head against his chest. "PeaceKeeper... Get me out of here please?"
"Not exactly, and I have enough enemies," he shoved her head from him to resume aim. "Not that I know who these are." Just then he grasped her head by her hair, yanking her head so he could better see her face. She barely felt any pain from her hair being yanked so hard for all the pain inside her head and from her eyes. Yet she sensed his amazed face when he suddenly released her head. "You little - ! That frelling slimy drannet! You're the one, the Nebari they're after, on the beacon! Crichton!"
"Chiana, just... just somebody who knows Crichton..." she corrected, her head already sagging from a dawning sense of failure at this scheme and the weight of her exhaustion. "Everybody wants Crichton..."
"Sorry nixa, I'm not going to be found harboring anyone they're after, frell that!" Urslan ran from the position under some cover fire.
Chiana cut the strap connecting her belt harness from her cuffed hands and began feeling her way along the isle she was in, hoping to avoid being seen by Nesk, if he hadn't left. Reaching the opposite end of the aisle, she heard a few PeaceKeeper shouts; there must be a contingent here, she decided. They seemed to be to her right a distance, with others fighting nearer.
If she could only make it to Nesk's pod or some other empty transport, she reasoned, she could escape while everyone fought one another. There were only faint shadows within the white blindness she could see, but perhaps she could make out enough forms to combine with her memory to find her way out. Still, she decided to wait just a few microts in case her vision improved. Struck by pulse fire nearby, a body suddenly crashed into the end of the aisle. She squirmed under the falling body and equipment and decided to run for it.
A hand abruptly clasped across her forehead from temple to temple. An awareness of its vaguely familiar texture occurred to her an instant before an acrid holographic eminence issued into her field of thought and perceived sight. Someone separate from herself entered inside her, moving within in search of what it demanded to know. Without understanding the inquiry nor thinking to answer, she gave the intruder a response it sought. It withdrew as it had entered in the moment it took her to recognize the texture of the hands were Delvian.
The self same hand was joined by another in firmly grasping her upon one shoulder and her crotch, lifting her off her feet and horizontally into the air. Although she could see nothing and the touch was too deftly even in its push to feel a thrust, a sense of air and gravity around her alerted her that when the hands left, it hadn't dropped her, but rather had sent her sailing through the air. A slight gasp escaped her, loud to her heightened hearing. She heard and felt the crackle of energy from a pulse fire pass within a finger's distance from her, seemingly slower than it could have been traveling.
Excitement lunged her heart to a hard hammering and caught at her breath, but it was an orb of shadows in negative which she soared through, and she could not see. She felt the long-cherished thrill of flight torn from her, leaving a fear of it. Yells and pulse fire ahead of her alerted her that she was sailing at a group of Sebaceans. She screamed, but somewhere inside was quiet, hurting at the place her desire to fly had wanted to be. She thought from there, focusing on the sounds and sense that told her what was ahead to break her fall.
The sounds of a pulse pistol cued her foot into action, swinging ahead of her to kick the pistol before it could aim. She landed into the alarmed Sebacean, ending in a straddle over him. He stopped struggling for his surprise. "You're soft," Chiana cooed, before snatching his pulse pistol from his surprised hand and knocking him out with it. Chiana stilled, knowing there was another Sebacean, to her left; just then she heard him.
"Ey! You! Little Nebari drek! Put down that pistol, against the wall! Move!"
She couldn't sense any wall, and beyond his expletives, his voice was purely functional. He'd shoot her before she could fumble into compliance. She jerked her arm up as if to shoot; he fell into the prompted action of deflecting her aim and shooting his own pulse pistol. But her pistol was no longer in that hand. His deflecting blow brutally cast her left arm away, but it cleared her shot from the pulse pistol in her right hand.
It couldn't miss. He screamed and dropped back against some makeshift barricade, struck then in his unguarded back, for he fell forward immediately before Chiana. "Fekkik," she cursed, shoving him off of the unconscious Sebacean she was astraddle, so that he wouldn't suffocate.
Although he had gone from her mind, some fading sense of the Delvian remained, a shadow at the exit of her awareness. Slowly standing, Chiana felt the distinct sense of where the Delvian was, barricaded where he had thrown her, turning living dream into empty terror.
This time her own body propelled her into a leap through the same orb of shadows in negative, with a passion for vengeance in that quiet place inside, and she did not yell. She heard the sounds of a pulse rifle as she neared, but despite his profoundly quicker reflexes, he couldn't fire in time to strike the unexpected boot hurtling towards him from an unexpected direction.
Her boot struck his head, sending them into some gathered supplies she couldn't see. But her hands easily found his face, and she had his head twisted to snap his spinal cord before he could effectively react. His attempts to move stopped in sudden realization of what she could do.
"Throw me again!" Chiana darkly challenged him. "Come on inside, see how you like it this time!"
"You, Nebari, were not an enemy," he measured his reply through grit teeth. "I had no use for a blind Nebari!"
"I'm-m blind and I'm a person, not a crate! Can't throw you but you, you'll be blind!" her gloved hands clasped at the sides of his face, her thumbs thrusting into his eyes. She yanked her hands free, his hands flailing at his face as he screamed.
"Why!" Chiana yelled into his ear.
"If you were resistance, you could be an ally," he gasped.
"Woulda been," she answered huskily to herself. Her hand found the writhing Delvian's pulse rifle before he could detune his pain and recover it. Grasping it, she raised it and swung it down upon his shins with all her anger, his bones breaking beneath the blow. "I'll enjoy my flight, you enjoy your run," she tonelessly instructed.
Standing with the pulse rifle pointed skyward, a sudden whim swept into her, fancying that she felt rather akin to Aeryn. Snapping into a purposeful stride from the disabled Delvian, Chiana smiled broadly to picture herself moving and even looking like Aeryn as she strode, impressive and commanding. Okay, not as tall, but just as awesome, she fancied the figure she cut in her mind's eye.
But a small object she hadn't sensed put an abrupt end to that fantasy, sending her first into a stumble and secondly onto a pile of goods that must have been the end of one aisle. A hand grasped her, roughly jerking her from the debris into hiding against the side of what must be an aisle. Pulse fire erupted upon the debris she had first landed into. "Are you fharbot?!" a young Nebari male's voice demanded, in time to a jerk on her vest shoulder.
"You are the Nebari lookin' for the old base?" The middle Zenetan stepped forward, looking up to Iachi. "I'm Korbic Taun, negotiator for the Chakurin and Pautish clans."
Nerri stepped into the runner lights of the Zenetans' ship and nodded his recognition of Korbic.
"Nerri," Korbic's eyes brightened as he nodded back. "I'm surprised to see you. You're getting desperate, I know about a very sudden and unusual surge of Nebari and renegades taking up safe houses. That's how it happens when you turn the lights on in the kitchen galley - isn't it? All the thyshes start scampering for the cracks."
"Only Zenetan scum are infected with thysh," Nerri nudged his head at him with a bare smile.
Korbic returned the gesture and bare smile, revealing his decaying teeth. "Nebari don't have thysh because their vermin outcasts are so starved they lick the food stains from the walls before the thysh can."
Nerri didn't respond, stepping closer as one of the Zenetans produced a case and handed it to Korbic.
"You're in no position to give us the price offered," Korbic continued.
"Which has undoubtedly gone up," Nerri agreed quietly.
"With the addition of resistance working from within Zenetan borders?" Korbic raised his hairless brows, narrowing the black swirls tattooed across his forehead. "I'd say it is a dearly priced show of the clan's alliance to your cause ..." he handed the case to Nerri. "To allow you to pay at a more convenient time."
Nerri rested his hand on top of the case as he studied Korbic's animated yet shiftless eyes carefully. "And how much more do they want?"
"You're a lucrative asset Nerri," Korbic smiled. "You'll bring in more trade trying to fix that place up, you'll want more ships, more man power, more food ... maybe even a piece of the flax. On top of the original price, we're asking only for thirty servicers."
"Servicers," Nerri creased his brows slightly. "Thirty is allot of men to me Korbic, and slavery ... we're not in that business."
"Free men," Korbic sighed. "You want Zenetan fire power, personnel, protection? It will come in turn Nerri, you will assist the clans in their own raids for bounty. Your take from those loots will pay off the base, the trades you'll want to follow ... Thirty men, to earn the tenth margin."
"The tenth margin ..." Nerri glanced away as he tried to think of the sum in the Zenetan terminology. "They could be pirating for five cycles to earn that much."
"I recommend you pick very elite soldiers," Korbic stated softly as he pushed the case into Nerri's chest and dropped his hands, stepping away.
"Nnnn-mm-d'don... dunno," Chiana shook her head to try to gather her herself, drawing to her knees again as she looked up almost unseeing through partially returned vision, more as if she were trying to sense the surroundings until her gaze fell listlessly towards the Nebari that had pulled her alongside. The young man hadn't sounded like an Establishment agent, and now she looked him over, she decided he didn't look like one either.
Despite the intense pain, a wild spark of wonder and thrill that the Nebari beside her could be a resistance fighter aroused the hard contained desires to rejoin her brother and help the cause like a branch bent next to the breaking point. It was all she could do to keep breathing.
"Delvians!" the young man announced, shoving Chiana to go down the aisle. "Move!" As she scurried down the aisle allowing her new Nebari acquaintance to lead, Chiana looked back, her mouth agape. Three motley attired Delvians moved down the main aisle, aiming in a succession of methodical shots, patient and intensely concentrated in aim and nearly blurring quick motions finding targets between. Although the tactic exposed them to fire, with one seemingly unaffected by a glancing shot to his shoulder, they left no opposing target in their wake.
One made eye contact with Chiana, the feel of the Delvian's crimson eyes raising wordless alarm through her. He did not break his advance or attempt to fire at her, possibly also owing to her being out of optimal range. "T-they're after us!?" Chiana called out to the Nebari as he threw himself between a couple of piles of small canisters at the end of the aisle, to gain some compromise between visibility and cover. Chiana stashed herself behind a pile of some larger objects further back.
"Yes. No!" the Nebari looked back to her wild eyes. "I don't know. They're frelling Delvian resistance but I don't know why they're here unless it's the PeaceKeepers. Or us. Me," he corrected to himself. "Cover yourself!" he hollered as a small black ball landed on the material between them.
Chiana instinctively reacted, burying herself under items as fully as possible. A mild explosion was followed by an insidious hiss. Around her head, she could hear or feel sounds as if the exposed surfaces were melting. Different, crisper sounds quickly followed, almost as if the very materials were sighing in relief.
"Now go!" the Nebari man cried a microt later, tossing away whatever he had been covering himself with and running.
Chiana burst from her cover, looking with amazement through her clouded vision, just able to see that every surface the entire length of the aisle appeared to have been melted. Two aisles closer to the exit, Chiana threw herself behind some fallen goods beside the Nebari's man's new position at the end of the aisle.
"What the frell was that?!" Chiana nearly shouted.
"Dunno!" the young man nearly yelled back, angrily flinching for a moment at the alarms still ringing through the air so piercingly it could almost be felt. "Delvians make that dren, it melts anything at least several paces around it for a microt, before the chemical reaction collapses, and it goes inert. It's not good to stay there and breathe it afterward either."
Chiana's gaze wandered to the black containers of goods piled between them as he spoke. Her awareness leapt to her vision as damage broke out across the piles before the sight returned to what it was. "Run!" Chiana hollered, shoving the startled young man forwards. No sooner had they reached an apparently safe spot in an opposing aisle then their previous position was showered with pulse fire.
The young Nebari man looked over the capsules sheltering them from the main aisle and swallowed, his eyes wide. "Well called, I owe you one," the young Nebari man glanced again, as Chiana looked to him, meeting his gaze wild eyed. A pulse shot exploded something in the aisle high above them, sending her onto her back to avoid the debris crashing down where she had been.
Trembling and exhaustion overtook her body as she struggled to move again. Snapping her head up with her gaze locked on the other Nebari, she heaved a couple of deep breaths before forcing herself back to her knees and over to the Nebari with painful desperation. She snatched his arm with her cuffed hands, staring into his frightened eyes pleadingly. She felt her breaths coming in a wild frantic as she winced her face, grimacing as she forced herself to speak, her voice barely coming above whisper. "Help m-me please ...! G-get me out of here!"
"I can't ..." he shook his head softly as he held out his homeworld tanzer to her. "Use this, get back to your ship. I don't think - don't think they're after Nebari."
"No!" Chiana shook at him in tears. "Please ... take me to Nerri."
"I can't ..."
"You've got to," she tried to breath above the meek whisper her desperation choked from her. "... You've got to."
He blinked slowly, his eyes softening on her sadly. "Our resistance base was attacked by the Establishment. I have nothing to take you to, I don't know where Nerri is now, everyone has scattered. You've got to get out of here, the Delvians they ... they might kill us as well so they can blame this attack on someone else."
"Delvians ..."
He stared at Chiana as if in complete awe of her despite the tumult of fire that continued around them. "Colonies under PeaceKeeper dictation in the Agaras sectors."
Chiana looked over her shoulder carefully as she sat up in crouch. Nesk had taken shelter at the opposite end of their aisle. His back was turned, busy with returning fire. "Wha ..." she looked back to the Nebari, shifting on her knees as she blinked. She tocked her head, trying to get her vision to stop blurring from the nearly forgotten pain. "What're Delvians wanting with resistance?"
"Alliance," the Nebari sat up, glancing around warily as he lowered the tanzer. He suddenly darted her an odd look, twisting his brows. "You got a fast ship?"
Chiana tilted her head as she studied his eyes. "Sure," she managed a wry smile as she held up her chained hands. "It's Nebari friendly too. Ya wanna come on board gray boy?"
"It's Jeot," he stated as he took her shoulder and ushered her to move forward while the firing had died down. "Let's go," he ducked and moved into the main aisle.
Nerri turned away as the hatch closed behind the Zenetans, walking to Iachi, out of the direct light of the Zenetan vessel. "We got it?" Iachi wondered down at the case as Nerri opened it.
"Yeah," Nerri sighed heavily as he took out the symbolic scepter of a black ivory. It was finely carved with a blue emerald on the crown head of it. Before he could study it further, a blue hand seemed to appear more out of nowhere than merely out of the dark, snatching the scepter from a startled Nerri.
Three pulse pistols appeared hairs from Haleen's head. Nerri glanced to Shian, Iachi and Vishnir. Haleen kept her focus on the scepter, entirely unperturbed. "Second margin, hmm," Haleen hummed richly, cutting an impressed and amused glance to Nerri. Haleen gracefully gestured along the grooved shaft, where a rectangular shaped grid displayed Zenetan glyphs for an amount in terms of the margin level.
Nerri's brow remained set and he looked sharply up slightly to her. "'Margin' meaning, mercenary?"
"What you, oh and your "clan'," Haleen off-handedly pressed a finger into Iachi's chest, "of thirty mercenaries value to the Zenetans as property should you... default in your payments," her hairless brow lifted.
"Wonderful," Nerri thanked her for the reminder with a roll of his eyes as he turned to walk away.
"Mm, you should be proud, young man," she strolled casually alongside his wandering steps. "It makes you worth as much as the ransom of a PeaceKeeper carrier captain, in Zenetan terms of rank and value."
"Hm. And without the Command Carrier, fleet, escorts, entourage, troops and fighters," Nerri mused out loud, "although... I have to wonder if my cause couldn't swap for the lot."
"Mm obviously they have something of far greater value in you," Haleens' glowing crimson eyes luxuriated in a trip down him. "Keeping the scepter would be vital, Nebari... or Zenetan Nebari," she swung the scepter aside into Nerri's chest as her eyes focused on her own finely decorated boots. "It bears proof of the deed, the treaty, your status as a tribal leader among your... what you call a resistance," she took a long draw of her smoke, continuing to stroll ahead into the darkness even after Nerri held back.
Nerri tapped the end of the scepter into the palm of his hand for some moments, until they heard the noises of a transport in the dark, finally casting a golden light from several guidance beams as the vessel lifted off. Once the noise faded, Shian started Nerri by speaking from over his shoulder. "Silan is waiting in the transport."
"Yes. Yes, no doubt. Tell her to go ahead and send the relay for the others to meet us there. Let them know we've become..." Nerri's sharp exhale casting a mist of steam over the scepter in his hand, "Zenetans."
