The Island was wrought with chaos and confusion. The Island Guard lined the Southern Shore at the behest of Sasha Corren (Olfir had hoped for them to stay out of the way of whatever fighting may ensue. Sasha lectured the daft ape on the foundation of the Guard shortly after, and I wouldn't be surprised if she killed the man) and the mountain base was a mad rush of bodies searching for a job. The second Charmond's scanners detected a Cyclops off shore the Islanders began preparations. I would have made my contributions, but unfortunately I was still locked away in my hanging cage. The silver lining to all this, however, was that I'd be given leave to negotiate with Zenn regarding some form of alliance after the fighting was won.
"Yakon's thirty stand little chance!" I heard somebody yell from far away. Fools, I silently chastised. I've heard of Yakon's thirty and their might. Many say it is unmatched, even by Ollos's most feared generals. Your statements are flawed. But many kept their confidence tight to their chests. He heard cries of betrayer and murderer and promises of Yakon's timely defeat. But only time would tell if these promises could be kept.
I thought it not possible for the scramble to grow any more intense, but when the white hull of a cyclops peered over the horizon it somehow rose to ungodly levels. Shouts of confidence turned quickly to insanity. Many called for evacuation and retreat, whilst many others prompted those losing faith to stay and fight to the end. Imagine what this would be like without my informing, Sasha, I shook my head in disbelief of how things would have played out without my transmitter. It was painful to think how Charmond's ears would have bled at the news, and how Olfir would have most likely had the Guard hop in a cyclops and sail to their dooms without a second thought. Sasha would have cracked like a vase under the pressure, no doubt, and I would be gone. Retreat was the clever option; those trying to convince others to evacuate had survival at mind. Those staying to fight had honour. Those with brains wanted to live another day.
But Jack was in that submarine. Perhaps those willing to stay weren't so foolish after all.
"Happy now, Barvan?" a familiarly slimy voice sneered. I looked down, the cage rocking with every move I made. Charmond stood with Sasha, both of them looking up at me. "Your information got us somewhere, at least." Charmond wore a horrid smirk, but Sasha looked only horrified and confused. "Sasha here would like to say a few things to you. It's about your impending trip north and whatnot; all those little details she needs to get ironed out, just in case you're the only one that survives this mess." Charmond took a couple of steps backwards, leaving Sasha open to begin conversation.
Sasha sighed. "You need to be civil about all this," she began. "If there are few survivors after all this is done, take them with you. They can start a new life in the northern seas."
"They'll be starting a new life in the Federation, Sasha," I grabbed the bars. "They're working at leaving the planet, unlike all of you who want to stay here and fight each other! Please, Sasha; think logically about all this, please. Zenn can help us get off this planet! We can leave Ollos here, he'll be stranded!"
"He's building a ship, Barvan," Sasha reminded me. "He's taken the wreckage of the mercenary ship Blitz and is enlarging the entire thing to fit all his people. Though I suppose Yakon has lessened the need for more seats in such a vessel thanks to his insatiable bloodlust. We need to eliminate Ollos before we even think about leaving, and then-"
"Let the Federation deal with him when he returns; we'll tell them of his evils and they will hopefully have the maniac imprisoned for life."
Sasha pondered this. Charmond glanced at her and stepped forward. "You can't fall back to Zenn, Sasha, he's a traitor. He conspired against your brother, how can you be sure he won't do the same to you?" Sasha nodded at this. I cringed.
"Just make sure it's done cleanly," Sasha walked away.
Charmond did not follow Sasha into the bustling crowds; he waited a small while until she was quite far away. Then he turned his attention back to me. "How're you doing up there?"
"Why are you controlling Olfir?" I asked immediately. "What benefit do you see in it? Tell me!"
"I don't-"
"The game's up, Charmond," I told him sternly. "You're using Olfir; moving him like a pawn. You want him for something. I've put a few pieces together but the puzzle is still incomplete. Tell me why you need Olfir or I swear I will make your life incredibly difficult."
"Fine," Charmond sighed. His shoulders slumped. "I'm using Olfir. But there's no conceivable way for you to know what I'm planning to do with him. Some of the pieces are a bit out of reach for, I'm afraid." He paused. "When was the last time you talked to Jacob Sand, Barvan? What did he feed you?"
"It was a few days before he disappeared," I lied. I spoke to him mere half hours before he left us. Where he went, still no one had a clue. Most likely dead.
There were numerous possibilities as to where those last pieces hid. They could be with Zenn or with the rescue team sitting on the moon. They could be with Ollos or they could be on the Aurora, or they could have something to do with Jacob's disappearance. It would make sense for Charmond to ask me if I was still in contact with Jacob as he knew I had spies in with Ollos and he knew I was in contact with Zenn and the rescue team on the moon. He needed to make sure I had no idea about Jacob.
So what good would Charmond killing Jacob do... It would alienate another close friend of Sasha's; something that he'd been doing for quite the while by then. It would also eliminate an adequate player in the game in general. But he wouldn't want Jacob dead. Charmond had spies on the Hydra, I was almost sure of it. Why would they be sent down there to see Jacob dead; Charmond didn't send in lackeys to do his dirty work, it's too messy and obvious for him. No, no, those spies were of course sent to protect him, or maybe even kidnap him. So Jacob could very well still have been alive.
"Tell me why you need Olfir and I won't have to go digging."
"How about instead I stuff you down a reaper's bloody gullet and pour biters down with you?" Charmond's feet sank into the sand. "No, funnily enough I won't give away my secrets. You know it's good you're heading north; that way you'll be out of my hair for good!" Charmond began to walk away but turned on his heel. "You're not going to ask anyone any more questions, you hear?!" Someone smashed into him as they rushed past. He kept his balance but shouted at the back of their head as they walked away. "You're going to keep your mouth shut for good, understand? I won't have you forcing your nose down into my business, okay?!" Charmond disappeared into the crowds, pushing past everybody, making his way to Olfir and the Guard.
Yakon's submarine was on the horizon. Battle was imminent.
"Sasha!" I rattled the cage. It swayed as if I were on the deck of a old, creaky ship. I could see her over on the beach, enveloped in the chaos of men and women supplying the front lines. "Sasha!" I called again. She needed to at least know my theory, if not acknowledge it fully. Charmond was up to something, and he had pawns everywhere.
But I knew in an instant that I had shouted too loudly. From around the lip of the cave in which I hung, three Island Guard, all accompanied by Olfir, came giggling. "Quiet up, traitor!" Olfir commanded, jabbing the cage with the but end of his stasis rifle. The steel clanged and vibrated around me as the four men laughed at me. "You were put in there for running your mouth where it didn't belong, were you not? Contacting Zenn and such. Maybe you haven't learned your lesson!" Now I was shaking. Olfir held an empty hand out to one of his guard, who slammed a set of rusty old keys onto his palm. Olfir grabbed tight, and pulled the cage down a touch. He slammed the keys into an archaic pad-lock and twisted them with enough force to break a reaper's neck.
The cage doors swung open slowly, creaking all the way. Two of the Guard lunged forward and grasped me by the arms, dragging me out and onto the sands. They threw me against a rock, one of them with his foot to my chest, pinning me down. "Show him, boys!" Olfir ordered. The man pinning me down gave a hideous grin. He gathered spit in his mouth and let it all loose over my face; I was half blinded, my mouth filled with disgusting ooze. I spat it over the sand next to me, only to have my jaw grasped and my head turned to the beaming sun. I know I screamed, but I failed to hear it over the pain in my eyes.
"Maybe we should cut out your god damn tongue!" one recommended. I could feel my eyes burning in their sockets, practically melting from the pain. "But maybe we should just settle for his teeth!"
The man let go of my jaw, for which I was thankful, but a moment later I felt a fist strike my mouth head on. I could taste irony liquid in my throat instantly, and I felt something small and hard rattling between my gums. I opened my eyes to a pattern of green and purple, and habit had me spit the contents of my mouth all over the floor. Some must have gotten on Olfir's shoes, though. He yelled God knows what to me and grabbed me by the neck. "Maybe taking the tongue isn't such a bad idea..." He grabbed his knife and held it between my lips.
Suddenly I heard a whistle. I cocked my head left with great speed; the tip of the knife cut shallow across my right cheek.
Of course it was Charmond. I wished it would be Sasha, but it was Charmond. "C'mon, Olfir," he said. "That's enough." I had never been more thankful of Charmond in my entire life. Olfir let me go. I fell to the floor, rubbing my sore neck and tending to my stinging cheek. There was a surprising lack of spectators around me (at least, that I could see with my fuzzy vision). "Don't bother locking him back up," Charmond sighed. "Just let him go."
Charmond, Olfir and the three men walked away. The Five Devils, I would go on to call them. Those three were always seen with Olfir, if I remembered correctly. Some of those three were the ones who raided my quarters and got me into this mess.
I picked myself up off of the ground and stumbled in any way that I could. I looked behind me. My vision still wasn't coming around, but I could see clear enough that the sand by that stone was covered in blood (probably sweat, tears and spit, too). "Sasha," I said quietly. I walked around, with no reply nor any sign of her. "Sasha," I said louder. She still did not come. There was, however, someone walking towards me. No, I flinched and stumbled backwards, falling onto my back. "Go away!" I yelled.
"It's me," a woman said as the figure leaned over me. "It's Sasha. How did you get out? What the hell happened to your face?!"
"Nothing," I lied. I could see now that this figure was Sasha; I couldn't tell her face from as far away as she was. "I just need to talk to you."
"There's not much time for that," she said. She had a gun in her hand; a stasis rifle probably. "But go on. Be quick about it."
I hesitated. I looked around to see if any of the Guard were close by. "Okay..." I said. "Charmond's planning something... I don't know what, but I think that whatever it is will cause widespread chaos." Sasha laughed and went to say something but I put a hand to her shoulder to stop her. "He has pawns everywhere. Trust me, Sasha, I know. It explains so much. Now listen to me; whatever Charmond wants to do it can only mean disaster for you: the leader of the Islanders. So just head this warning, okay?"
"Why the hell would Charmond do something like that?" Sasha asked, more seriously now.
"We're heading home soon. That's the plan, right?"
"Right."
"Well, I doubt the one pulling everyone together will just get a medal and a pat on the back upon their return to the Federation. There'll probably be some money involved in it all, and a lot of fame. That's some motivation, wouldn't you say?"
Sasha nodded. She walked away after this, but with a look of worry on her face. I looked to the ocean. I could no longer see Yakon and his thirty on the horizon, but this was most likely due to the sun still affecting my eyes.
Then I heard screams.
"How close are they?!" I yelled to anyone, hoping for any kind of response.
"They're here!" a woman cried. "The cyclops is parked just offshore!"
It was time.
Thanks for all the bumps guys, I really appreciate it. Updates will be slower, but won't be non-existent like they were for those two months.
So, I'm reviving this thread. I've been eased back into Subnautica by Below Zero and because of that I've had the urge to carry this story of mine on. I began to miss it more than I thought I would. It's been dead for a year so I don't know how people will take this revival. For anyone old: welcome back, I hope this is a satisfying continuation. For anyone new (and I'm sure there'll be a few): welcome, and I urge you to at least read the previous chapters of Diamond Crusade to understand what's happening here. If you want to understand the true full picture you could even go back to my previous story Flagship Eclipse from which this thread follows on. I think I'll see what reaction this new chapter gets and depending on that (and of course how I feel about the story personally) I'll continue this further or I'll let it rest for good. Either way I hope you enjoy.
Barvan Grey
The beach was pocked with craters, all of them left by artillery fire and explosives. The plants along the shore of the Mountain island burned and cindered, the flames slowly being blown out in the strong, icy wind. Bodies littered the island, still clutching their rifles to their chests. The Islanders hardly wanted to kill anybody; Sasha Corren's attempt, albeit desperate in my opinion, of keeping her brother's legacy alive. He lived a passive life, and although he had faltered from time to time he made his ideals known. Sasha wanted to carry that on and make sure that nobody forgot the man who brought them where they were.
Needless to say Ollos Silver didn't share these morals. What else should one expect from the left-hand-man of a genocidal sadist. Luckily that genocidal sadist was long dead, and Ollos didn't share the same respect for him as Sasha had for Malla, but he did share that desire to see blood spill. He and his men had no qualms about killing, and to make matters worse the Islanders were heavily outnumbered. Artillery strikes fell on the beach early in the battle, fired from the fleet of Cyclopses Ollos had sailed up to shore. Our structures fell quickly and left us without equipment and crippled our forces. There was a battle at sea that I didn't get to witness, but the enemy Cyclopses appeared to have overwhelmed and destroyed ours.
I had watched the battle from a cage. I dangled from the roof of a cave that looked out onto the battle. Early on the roof collapsed and I continued to watch with my legs crushed beneath the rubble. My legs were shattered, my fingers were twisted and I'm sure I was bleeding on the inside and out, but those were the least of my worries. Ollos's men swarmed the beach, fighting back the Islanders. There was nothing they could do but hide or die, and most hid in the snaking caves beneath the crags. I was sure the enemy was swarming those tunnels.
On the beach in front of me I watched as a mech suit, a heavily modified P.R.A.W.N, strode out of the water. The pilot looked around at the bodies below him, some of them clinging onto life, coughing profusely. He said some words to a passerby, inquiring. Then the passerby ran off. He came back a minute later with two other men in tow, both of them dragging a limp body behind them. I knew who it was the moment they came into view.
"Sasha..." I tried to call, but the words that came out were just wind through what teeth I had left. Then the reality of my situation began to sink in: I was dying. Whether I liked it or not I was drifting off. The air from my lungs had been sucked away, my heart beat slow and shallow, my vision was hardly clear and the liquid warmth of blood trickled down my legs. Whether I liked it or not I was done. After I'd crashed my goal on this planet was to live as long as possible. I schemed, connived, infiltrated and spied, and all of that saw me nicely to being buried beneath tonnes of rubble. In the end it seemed fitting, I suppose.
Then Ollos Silver's personal Cyclops broke the water on the shore. It was a colossal thing. A door opened in the side and a gang plank extended down to the beach. Two more men dragging a smaller figure began to descend it. The figure was wriggling and writhing as it was dragged, and when they all reached the bottom of the gangplank the figure was hit by one man in the back of the head, turning him limp.
Ollos's P.R.A.W.N grabbed Sasha by the head, all in one metallic hand. He dangled her in front of him. She was bleeding. "Sasha," Ollos began. He seemed almost sympathetic. The glass front of his prawn lifted away and folded back into the body. "You know more than anyone that I didn't want to come here and kill you." Sasha spat blood into Ollos's cockpit. It wasn't a strong spit, and the blood landed to Ollos's left. "But I've been aggravated as of late. I've been sad, looking back on the times when a very different me knew a very different you. Although you were very different, you are still recognisable to me. There's someone else you haven't known for years. Let's see if you recognise him when you see him." Ollos shoved Sasha to her knees beside him, facing her in the same direction. He let go of her head and she nearly fell over sideways onto the sands. The two men brought the figure a few yards in front of Sasha and Ollos and threw him to his knees, holding him in place by the arms.
"Jack..." Sasha began to cry through her blood stained face.
"So you do recognise him," Ollos grinned. "The next few minutes will be rather exciting then." There was a pause. Sasha couldn't speak and Jack was unconscious. If I could have called out then I would have. "Sasha, I have a gun in my pocket. A pistol. A relic from Obraxis Prime. I kept it for safekeeping. It's the pistol that broke my heart. I've been saving it for a time in which I can break someone else's with it." He stood up in the cockpit of his P.R.A.W.N and pulled the pistol out, aiming it at arms length towards Jack. "I'll give you half a minute; give your son some parting words. And while you're at it give this puny establishment a farewell. Your Islanders will be swept clean off of this planet in a matter of hours, once they're smoked out of those caves."
"Why?!" Sasha yelled desperately.
"Recognition." Ollos said quickly. "It's all the rage nowadays. In the beginning, the recognition would have gone to Malla. Then Seth. A day ago it would have gone to you. Now when we arrive back in the Federation it will go to me. And I hope that you yourself can recognise when your beat. Don't try to buy yourself borrowed time. Say your last words or say nothing at all, I don't mind. Just don't close your eyes. If you do you'll die very much slower."
"It's good to have you back, Ollos," one of the men with Jack Corren smiled.
"For some," he replied. "Now let the woman speak."
Sasha didn't say anything. She stared motionless at Jack for at least a minute. The thoughts firing through her mind could only be dreamt of.
"Suit yourself," Ollos finally said.
As the trigger was pulled Sasha leapt up. The wound in her thigh gushed blood as she put pressure on it and she let out a horrific cry. She threw herself up and grabbed Ollos's ankle, pulling him out of the cockpit and throwing him down onto the beach. A cloud of sand erupted up into the air concealing the two, but the last I saw of them was them wrestling across the ground. The two men accompanying Jack began to drag him away, but a laser darted out from the cloud and reduced one of their knees to a crater. The wounded man fell down and let go of Jack who picked himself up and began to run away. The other man didn't follow Jack, however, but knelt beside the wounded man. "Yit!" he cried, and began to weep.
The cloud of sand cleared, and revealed was Ollos standing over a grounded Sasha, the pistol to her head. "Calm yourself," he said. "It'll only hurt for a moment."
All of a sudden voices began to roll over the hills. "To the north!" they cried. "To the north! Rally at the northern shore! Everybody rally at the northern shore!"
Ollos didn't move; he only hesitated for a second. Then he continued. "You missed you chance for last words," he told Sasha. "A last thought will have to suffice."
And then out of nowhere Ollos's P.R.A.W.N suit exploded, as if something had hit it. Ollos was thrown off balance and when he pulled the trigger the laser cut straight through Sasha's stomach. "Shit!" Ollos cried, turning to his wrecked suit. "What's happening now! Yit! Parren! Get to the northern beach, tell me what's going on!"
"Yit's unconscious!" the man kneeling beside him whimpered. "I have to help him!"
"Screw you both then! Find your peace on this beach as you'll not find it in my company!" Ollos ran up the gangplank of his Cyclops as it folded away behind him. He left Sasha and these two, Yit and Parren, on the beach. Jack Corren had ran away somewhere, and god only knew if he was alive or dead. Ollos's monstrous Cyclops submerged beneath the waves as I drifted into unconsciousness.
The next thing I know I'm being pulled out from beneath the rubble, and a familiar face looked down at me. "Zenn," I managed. "You've returned."
"And in the nick of time, it would appear," he said. The rattle of gunfire was still prominent over the horizon.
Jack Stamford was my chief spymaster, and a great friend of Barvan Grey. They shot signals back and forth from our frozen tundra to Barvan Grey's tropics concerning goings on all across the globe. One day the signals stopped coming, but they had both prepared for such a situation.
"You go," Jack Stamford told me. "Take Ruthless with you, you two are easily most qualified for espionage, not to mention war."
They had both agreed that if Barvan Grey went dark it was a result of invasion or uprising. If Barvan Grey had died or was otherwise preoccupied we would find out about it.
"It's going to be hard for me to do a checkup," I noted. "Sasha Corren wants me dead just as much as she wants Ollos Silver dead. If I set foot on that island, in peace or otherwise, there's going to be a fight."
"Then let there be," Jack Stamford brushed that line of conversation away quickly. "Or just get in and out without a trace. Whatever you do I need to know what's happened to Barvan Grey. Keep someone by the cyclops radio and keep in touch. I'll be poking for an update every twelve hours so make sure I get one."
"You're starting to sound like the boss around here," I joked. "You better not have turned the place over before I get back."
"It seems inevitable," Stamford shrugged. "If we're going to want to start refining this oil it had better be done right away. It'll take time to get it all set up so if everything goes right this whole place will be very much turned over."
We laughed and said our farewells. Men filed into the fleet's five cyclopses and we sailed off through the ocean. We skirted over the twisty bridges and made our way south. It would take a few days at top speed to reach the Island but it was necessary. To be honest, I expected it to be nothing more than a power blip; a momentary outage, a solvable problem. It wouldn't be anything big I thought.
We came close in the early hours of the morning. The faint glow of fire painted the horizon a dim orange. "Well shit," I remarked. "Can anyone tell me what's going on?!" Nobody could at first, but as we came closer we began to detect cyclopses in the water on the far side of the island, and they were in combat. "Well bugger me," I said, realising what was going on. "It's an invasion! The Islanders are under attack! Engage shields and prepare the cannons! Get our foot soldiers ready to beach, with lethal weaponry!"
As we came closer cyclopses from the far side of the island broke away. They had seen us coming, and a battle ensued. Torpedoes snaked through the water and struck our second cyclops directly in the back turbine. "We're sinking!" Captain Pitrav yelled. "You're a ship down, Zenn!" Pitrav went down with his ship into the abyss, as I would if we were hit the same way.
"Zenn!" Ruthless cried out to me. "When we board the island, which ones do we kill?! The invaders or the Islanders?!"
"I doubt either of them will be friendly towards us!" I thought. "I suppose you'll have to kill all of them." I wished we could set our differences aside, but I doubted Sasha would really want to. I'd try and spare her life, but if I couldn't then that would be the way it goes.
We made landfall. The cyclopses hung in the water off the shore as men with rifles in hand made their way out of the bottom of them and up the beaches. As they rose from the water they were shot down, blood spilling into the ocean. Men were already waiting for us on the beaches; whether they were Sasha's or invaders we didn't know. Bullets flew for two minutes before half of our men and all of theirs were dead. We set foot on the beaches and began to rest, but we were unable to for very long. It was about to become clear whose men we had just killed. "We've done it!" Ruthless yelled, both of us standing on the beach above the piles of dead. "We've taken this shore!" Gunshots were still heard in the distance; the battle was far from over. And that much became clear when a cyclops appeared far off shore. It was a hulking thing, more than twice as big as all of ours that were parked. We heard the hiss of torpedo fire beneath the waves and the crash of an explosion beneath the water, and before we knew it our cyclopses had sunk beneath any visible point. "Shit!" I yelled.
The cyclops parked itself on the shore lengthways, and we waited for men to exit and make their way up the beach; this time we had the jump on them. But instead hatches in the top of the cyclops opened. "What are they?" Ruthless asked me. "We didn't have them." Out from the hatches thumped artillery shells that trailed smoke into the sky high above us. "Make for the caves," I cried, "if you can remember where they are!" I definitely couldn't, and from what followed neither could anyone else. There was mass hysteria on the shore and before we knew it artillery was pocking craters all around us. Bodies were flying, men were dying, and I fell to my stomach and began to crawl through the madness, making my way inland. Ruthless's lifeless body fell in front of me, white eyed and bloody. "Dammit," I scorned beneath my breath, and tears began to fill my eyes. He was a good friend; simple but kind, dumb but understanding. His inanimate image would haunt me, and I would go on to miss him very much.
I pulled a radio from my inside pocket. "Stamford," I groaned into it. "Stamford," I repeated. "Come in Stamford. The Island is under assault by an unknown force. My men our down, Ruthless is dead... Our cyclopses are wrecked, there's no way for me to get back to you."
"I copy," Stamford said quickly. "There'll be someone coming to help." That wouldn't help, I thought. It takes days to get down here.
I lay motionless. I must have laid there for twenty minutes. But eventually men began to rise out of the water and walk up the beach, and one by one I began to recognise their faces. There was one that I recognised more than the rest, however. When that sinister voice spoke it sent shivers down my spine. "They're dead," it said. "All of them. If any of them have the strength to fight now then I say let them, they deserve it." It was Ollos Silver. He was a passenger on either the Lunar or Solar vessels, I couldn't remember. It didn't make much difference to me either way. All that was clear to me was that he was a conspirator alongside Seth, as I regrettably was. That meant we were close, but not too close, and I'm glad of that. He cracked up to be a right nutcase.
But then all of a sudden a new voice chimed in. It said words that I didn't fully hear, followed by a piercing gunshot.
Comments
The Island was wrought with chaos and confusion. The Island Guard lined the Southern Shore at the behest of Sasha Corren (Olfir had hoped for them to stay out of the way of whatever fighting may ensue. Sasha lectured the daft ape on the foundation of the Guard shortly after, and I wouldn't be surprised if she killed the man) and the mountain base was a mad rush of bodies searching for a job. The second Charmond's scanners detected a Cyclops off shore the Islanders began preparations. I would have made my contributions, but unfortunately I was still locked away in my hanging cage. The silver lining to all this, however, was that I'd be given leave to negotiate with Zenn regarding some form of alliance after the fighting was won.
"Yakon's thirty stand little chance!" I heard somebody yell from far away. Fools, I silently chastised. I've heard of Yakon's thirty and their might. Many say it is unmatched, even by Ollos's most feared generals. Your statements are flawed. But many kept their confidence tight to their chests. He heard cries of betrayer and murderer and promises of Yakon's timely defeat. But only time would tell if these promises could be kept.
I thought it not possible for the scramble to grow any more intense, but when the white hull of a cyclops peered over the horizon it somehow rose to ungodly levels. Shouts of confidence turned quickly to insanity. Many called for evacuation and retreat, whilst many others prompted those losing faith to stay and fight to the end. Imagine what this would be like without my informing, Sasha, I shook my head in disbelief of how things would have played out without my transmitter. It was painful to think how Charmond's ears would have bled at the news, and how Olfir would have most likely had the Guard hop in a cyclops and sail to their dooms without a second thought. Sasha would have cracked like a vase under the pressure, no doubt, and I would be gone. Retreat was the clever option; those trying to convince others to evacuate had survival at mind. Those staying to fight had honour. Those with brains wanted to live another day.
But Jack was in that submarine. Perhaps those willing to stay weren't so foolish after all.
"Happy now, Barvan?" a familiarly slimy voice sneered. I looked down, the cage rocking with every move I made. Charmond stood with Sasha, both of them looking up at me. "Your information got us somewhere, at least." Charmond wore a horrid smirk, but Sasha looked only horrified and confused. "Sasha here would like to say a few things to you. It's about your impending trip north and whatnot; all those little details she needs to get ironed out, just in case you're the only one that survives this mess." Charmond took a couple of steps backwards, leaving Sasha open to begin conversation.
Sasha sighed. "You need to be civil about all this," she began. "If there are few survivors after all this is done, take them with you. They can start a new life in the northern seas."
"They'll be starting a new life in the Federation, Sasha," I grabbed the bars. "They're working at leaving the planet, unlike all of you who want to stay here and fight each other! Please, Sasha; think logically about all this, please. Zenn can help us get off this planet! We can leave Ollos here, he'll be stranded!"
"He's building a ship, Barvan," Sasha reminded me. "He's taken the wreckage of the mercenary ship Blitz and is enlarging the entire thing to fit all his people. Though I suppose Yakon has lessened the need for more seats in such a vessel thanks to his insatiable bloodlust. We need to eliminate Ollos before we even think about leaving, and then-"
"Let the Federation deal with him when he returns; we'll tell them of his evils and they will hopefully have the maniac imprisoned for life."
Sasha pondered this. Charmond glanced at her and stepped forward. "You can't fall back to Zenn, Sasha, he's a traitor. He conspired against your brother, how can you be sure he won't do the same to you?" Sasha nodded at this. I cringed.
"Just make sure it's done cleanly," Sasha walked away.
Charmond did not follow Sasha into the bustling crowds; he waited a small while until she was quite far away. Then he turned his attention back to me. "How're you doing up there?"
"Why are you controlling Olfir?" I asked immediately. "What benefit do you see in it? Tell me!"
"I don't-"
"The game's up, Charmond," I told him sternly. "You're using Olfir; moving him like a pawn. You want him for something. I've put a few pieces together but the puzzle is still incomplete. Tell me why you need Olfir or I swear I will make your life incredibly difficult."
"Fine," Charmond sighed. His shoulders slumped. "I'm using Olfir. But there's no conceivable way for you to know what I'm planning to do with him. Some of the pieces are a bit out of reach for, I'm afraid." He paused. "When was the last time you talked to Jacob Sand, Barvan? What did he feed you?"
"It was a few days before he disappeared," I lied. I spoke to him mere half hours before he left us. Where he went, still no one had a clue. Most likely dead.
There were numerous possibilities as to where those last pieces hid. They could be with Zenn or with the rescue team sitting on the moon. They could be with Ollos or they could be on the Aurora, or they could have something to do with Jacob's disappearance. It would make sense for Charmond to ask me if I was still in contact with Jacob as he knew I had spies in with Ollos and he knew I was in contact with Zenn and the rescue team on the moon. He needed to make sure I had no idea about Jacob.
So what good would Charmond killing Jacob do... It would alienate another close friend of Sasha's; something that he'd been doing for quite the while by then. It would also eliminate an adequate player in the game in general. But he wouldn't want Jacob dead. Charmond had spies on the Hydra, I was almost sure of it. Why would they be sent down there to see Jacob dead; Charmond didn't send in lackeys to do his dirty work, it's too messy and obvious for him. No, no, those spies were of course sent to protect him, or maybe even kidnap him. So Jacob could very well still have been alive.
"Tell me why you need Olfir and I won't have to go digging."
"How about instead I stuff you down a reaper's bloody gullet and pour biters down with you?" Charmond's feet sank into the sand. "No, funnily enough I won't give away my secrets. You know it's good you're heading north; that way you'll be out of my hair for good!" Charmond began to walk away but turned on his heel. "You're not going to ask anyone any more questions, you hear?!" Someone smashed into him as they rushed past. He kept his balance but shouted at the back of their head as they walked away. "You're going to keep your mouth shut for good, understand? I won't have you forcing your nose down into my business, okay?!" Charmond disappeared into the crowds, pushing past everybody, making his way to Olfir and the Guard.
Yakon's submarine was on the horizon. Battle was imminent.
That would be me, if I didn't like this so much.
Two or three isn't necessarily considered "many"...
Besides, memes are the universal language.
If we had access to memes in-game, I'm sure we would be able to converse with Reapers.
Now, back to buisness!
MEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMPMEGABUMP
"Sasha!" I rattled the cage. It swayed as if I were on the deck of a old, creaky ship. I could see her over on the beach, enveloped in the chaos of men and women supplying the front lines. "Sasha!" I called again. She needed to at least know my theory, if not acknowledge it fully. Charmond was up to something, and he had pawns everywhere.
But I knew in an instant that I had shouted too loudly. From around the lip of the cave in which I hung, three Island Guard, all accompanied by Olfir, came giggling. "Quiet up, traitor!" Olfir commanded, jabbing the cage with the but end of his stasis rifle. The steel clanged and vibrated around me as the four men laughed at me. "You were put in there for running your mouth where it didn't belong, were you not? Contacting Zenn and such. Maybe you haven't learned your lesson!" Now I was shaking. Olfir held an empty hand out to one of his guard, who slammed a set of rusty old keys onto his palm. Olfir grabbed tight, and pulled the cage down a touch. He slammed the keys into an archaic pad-lock and twisted them with enough force to break a reaper's neck.
The cage doors swung open slowly, creaking all the way. Two of the Guard lunged forward and grasped me by the arms, dragging me out and onto the sands. They threw me against a rock, one of them with his foot to my chest, pinning me down. "Show him, boys!" Olfir ordered. The man pinning me down gave a hideous grin. He gathered spit in his mouth and let it all loose over my face; I was half blinded, my mouth filled with disgusting ooze. I spat it over the sand next to me, only to have my jaw grasped and my head turned to the beaming sun. I know I screamed, but I failed to hear it over the pain in my eyes.
"Maybe we should cut out your god damn tongue!" one recommended. I could feel my eyes burning in their sockets, practically melting from the pain. "But maybe we should just settle for his teeth!"
The man let go of my jaw, for which I was thankful, but a moment later I felt a fist strike my mouth head on. I could taste irony liquid in my throat instantly, and I felt something small and hard rattling between my gums. I opened my eyes to a pattern of green and purple, and habit had me spit the contents of my mouth all over the floor. Some must have gotten on Olfir's shoes, though. He yelled God knows what to me and grabbed me by the neck. "Maybe taking the tongue isn't such a bad idea..." He grabbed his knife and held it between my lips.
Suddenly I heard a whistle. I cocked my head left with great speed; the tip of the knife cut shallow across my right cheek.
Of course it was Charmond. I wished it would be Sasha, but it was Charmond. "C'mon, Olfir," he said. "That's enough." I had never been more thankful of Charmond in my entire life. Olfir let me go. I fell to the floor, rubbing my sore neck and tending to my stinging cheek. There was a surprising lack of spectators around me (at least, that I could see with my fuzzy vision). "Don't bother locking him back up," Charmond sighed. "Just let him go."
Charmond, Olfir and the three men walked away. The Five Devils, I would go on to call them. Those three were always seen with Olfir, if I remembered correctly. Some of those three were the ones who raided my quarters and got me into this mess.
I picked myself up off of the ground and stumbled in any way that I could. I looked behind me. My vision still wasn't coming around, but I could see clear enough that the sand by that stone was covered in blood (probably sweat, tears and spit, too). "Sasha," I said quietly. I walked around, with no reply nor any sign of her. "Sasha," I said louder. She still did not come. There was, however, someone walking towards me. No, I flinched and stumbled backwards, falling onto my back. "Go away!" I yelled.
"It's me," a woman said as the figure leaned over me. "It's Sasha. How did you get out? What the hell happened to your face?!"
"Nothing," I lied. I could see now that this figure was Sasha; I couldn't tell her face from as far away as she was. "I just need to talk to you."
"There's not much time for that," she said. She had a gun in her hand; a stasis rifle probably. "But go on. Be quick about it."
I hesitated. I looked around to see if any of the Guard were close by. "Okay..." I said. "Charmond's planning something... I don't know what, but I think that whatever it is will cause widespread chaos." Sasha laughed and went to say something but I put a hand to her shoulder to stop her. "He has pawns everywhere. Trust me, Sasha, I know. It explains so much. Now listen to me; whatever Charmond wants to do it can only mean disaster for you: the leader of the Islanders. So just head this warning, okay?"
"Why the hell would Charmond do something like that?" Sasha asked, more seriously now.
"We're heading home soon. That's the plan, right?"
"Right."
"Well, I doubt the one pulling everyone together will just get a medal and a pat on the back upon their return to the Federation. There'll probably be some money involved in it all, and a lot of fame. That's some motivation, wouldn't you say?"
Sasha nodded. She walked away after this, but with a look of worry on her face. I looked to the ocean. I could no longer see Yakon and his thirty on the horizon, but this was most likely due to the sun still affecting my eyes.
Then I heard screams.
"How close are they?!" I yelled to anyone, hoping for any kind of response.
"They're here!" a woman cried. "The cyclops is parked just offshore!"
It was time.
Oh gosh...
...this means I have to reboot Dawning, doesn't it?...
Barvan Grey
The beach was pocked with craters, all of them left by artillery fire and explosives. The plants along the shore of the Mountain island burned and cindered, the flames slowly being blown out in the strong, icy wind. Bodies littered the island, still clutching their rifles to their chests. The Islanders hardly wanted to kill anybody; Sasha Corren's attempt, albeit desperate in my opinion, of keeping her brother's legacy alive. He lived a passive life, and although he had faltered from time to time he made his ideals known. Sasha wanted to carry that on and make sure that nobody forgot the man who brought them where they were.
Needless to say Ollos Silver didn't share these morals. What else should one expect from the left-hand-man of a genocidal sadist. Luckily that genocidal sadist was long dead, and Ollos didn't share the same respect for him as Sasha had for Malla, but he did share that desire to see blood spill. He and his men had no qualms about killing, and to make matters worse the Islanders were heavily outnumbered. Artillery strikes fell on the beach early in the battle, fired from the fleet of Cyclopses Ollos had sailed up to shore. Our structures fell quickly and left us without equipment and crippled our forces. There was a battle at sea that I didn't get to witness, but the enemy Cyclopses appeared to have overwhelmed and destroyed ours.
I had watched the battle from a cage. I dangled from the roof of a cave that looked out onto the battle. Early on the roof collapsed and I continued to watch with my legs crushed beneath the rubble. My legs were shattered, my fingers were twisted and I'm sure I was bleeding on the inside and out, but those were the least of my worries. Ollos's men swarmed the beach, fighting back the Islanders. There was nothing they could do but hide or die, and most hid in the snaking caves beneath the crags. I was sure the enemy was swarming those tunnels.
On the beach in front of me I watched as a mech suit, a heavily modified P.R.A.W.N, strode out of the water. The pilot looked around at the bodies below him, some of them clinging onto life, coughing profusely. He said some words to a passerby, inquiring. Then the passerby ran off. He came back a minute later with two other men in tow, both of them dragging a limp body behind them. I knew who it was the moment they came into view.
"Sasha..." I tried to call, but the words that came out were just wind through what teeth I had left. Then the reality of my situation began to sink in: I was dying. Whether I liked it or not I was drifting off. The air from my lungs had been sucked away, my heart beat slow and shallow, my vision was hardly clear and the liquid warmth of blood trickled down my legs. Whether I liked it or not I was done. After I'd crashed my goal on this planet was to live as long as possible. I schemed, connived, infiltrated and spied, and all of that saw me nicely to being buried beneath tonnes of rubble. In the end it seemed fitting, I suppose.
Then Ollos Silver's personal Cyclops broke the water on the shore. It was a colossal thing. A door opened in the side and a gang plank extended down to the beach. Two more men dragging a smaller figure began to descend it. The figure was wriggling and writhing as it was dragged, and when they all reached the bottom of the gangplank the figure was hit by one man in the back of the head, turning him limp.
Ollos's P.R.A.W.N grabbed Sasha by the head, all in one metallic hand. He dangled her in front of him. She was bleeding. "Sasha," Ollos began. He seemed almost sympathetic. The glass front of his prawn lifted away and folded back into the body. "You know more than anyone that I didn't want to come here and kill you." Sasha spat blood into Ollos's cockpit. It wasn't a strong spit, and the blood landed to Ollos's left. "But I've been aggravated as of late. I've been sad, looking back on the times when a very different me knew a very different you. Although you were very different, you are still recognisable to me. There's someone else you haven't known for years. Let's see if you recognise him when you see him." Ollos shoved Sasha to her knees beside him, facing her in the same direction. He let go of her head and she nearly fell over sideways onto the sands. The two men brought the figure a few yards in front of Sasha and Ollos and threw him to his knees, holding him in place by the arms.
"Jack..." Sasha began to cry through her blood stained face.
"So you do recognise him," Ollos grinned. "The next few minutes will be rather exciting then." There was a pause. Sasha couldn't speak and Jack was unconscious. If I could have called out then I would have. "Sasha, I have a gun in my pocket. A pistol. A relic from Obraxis Prime. I kept it for safekeeping. It's the pistol that broke my heart. I've been saving it for a time in which I can break someone else's with it." He stood up in the cockpit of his P.R.A.W.N and pulled the pistol out, aiming it at arms length towards Jack. "I'll give you half a minute; give your son some parting words. And while you're at it give this puny establishment a farewell. Your Islanders will be swept clean off of this planet in a matter of hours, once they're smoked out of those caves."
"Why?!" Sasha yelled desperately.
"Recognition." Ollos said quickly. "It's all the rage nowadays. In the beginning, the recognition would have gone to Malla. Then Seth. A day ago it would have gone to you. Now when we arrive back in the Federation it will go to me. And I hope that you yourself can recognise when your beat. Don't try to buy yourself borrowed time. Say your last words or say nothing at all, I don't mind. Just don't close your eyes. If you do you'll die very much slower."
"It's good to have you back, Ollos," one of the men with Jack Corren smiled.
"For some," he replied. "Now let the woman speak."
Sasha didn't say anything. She stared motionless at Jack for at least a minute. The thoughts firing through her mind could only be dreamt of.
"Suit yourself," Ollos finally said.
As the trigger was pulled Sasha leapt up. The wound in her thigh gushed blood as she put pressure on it and she let out a horrific cry. She threw herself up and grabbed Ollos's ankle, pulling him out of the cockpit and throwing him down onto the beach. A cloud of sand erupted up into the air concealing the two, but the last I saw of them was them wrestling across the ground. The two men accompanying Jack began to drag him away, but a laser darted out from the cloud and reduced one of their knees to a crater. The wounded man fell down and let go of Jack who picked himself up and began to run away. The other man didn't follow Jack, however, but knelt beside the wounded man. "Yit!" he cried, and began to weep.
The cloud of sand cleared, and revealed was Ollos standing over a grounded Sasha, the pistol to her head. "Calm yourself," he said. "It'll only hurt for a moment."
All of a sudden voices began to roll over the hills. "To the north!" they cried. "To the north! Rally at the northern shore! Everybody rally at the northern shore!"
Ollos didn't move; he only hesitated for a second. Then he continued. "You missed you chance for last words," he told Sasha. "A last thought will have to suffice."
And then out of nowhere Ollos's P.R.A.W.N suit exploded, as if something had hit it. Ollos was thrown off balance and when he pulled the trigger the laser cut straight through Sasha's stomach. "Shit!" Ollos cried, turning to his wrecked suit. "What's happening now! Yit! Parren! Get to the northern beach, tell me what's going on!"
"Yit's unconscious!" the man kneeling beside him whimpered. "I have to help him!"
"Screw you both then! Find your peace on this beach as you'll not find it in my company!" Ollos ran up the gangplank of his Cyclops as it folded away behind him. He left Sasha and these two, Yit and Parren, on the beach. Jack Corren had ran away somewhere, and god only knew if he was alive or dead. Ollos's monstrous Cyclops submerged beneath the waves as I drifted into unconsciousness.
The next thing I know I'm being pulled out from beneath the rubble, and a familiar face looked down at me. "Zenn," I managed. "You've returned."
"And in the nick of time, it would appear," he said. The rattle of gunfire was still prominent over the horizon.
Jack Stamford was my chief spymaster, and a great friend of Barvan Grey. They shot signals back and forth from our frozen tundra to Barvan Grey's tropics concerning goings on all across the globe. One day the signals stopped coming, but they had both prepared for such a situation.
"You go," Jack Stamford told me. "Take Ruthless with you, you two are easily most qualified for espionage, not to mention war."
They had both agreed that if Barvan Grey went dark it was a result of invasion or uprising. If Barvan Grey had died or was otherwise preoccupied we would find out about it.
"It's going to be hard for me to do a checkup," I noted. "Sasha Corren wants me dead just as much as she wants Ollos Silver dead. If I set foot on that island, in peace or otherwise, there's going to be a fight."
"Then let there be," Jack Stamford brushed that line of conversation away quickly. "Or just get in and out without a trace. Whatever you do I need to know what's happened to Barvan Grey. Keep someone by the cyclops radio and keep in touch. I'll be poking for an update every twelve hours so make sure I get one."
"You're starting to sound like the boss around here," I joked. "You better not have turned the place over before I get back."
"It seems inevitable," Stamford shrugged. "If we're going to want to start refining this oil it had better be done right away. It'll take time to get it all set up so if everything goes right this whole place will be very much turned over."
We laughed and said our farewells. Men filed into the fleet's five cyclopses and we sailed off through the ocean. We skirted over the twisty bridges and made our way south. It would take a few days at top speed to reach the Island but it was necessary. To be honest, I expected it to be nothing more than a power blip; a momentary outage, a solvable problem. It wouldn't be anything big I thought.
We came close in the early hours of the morning. The faint glow of fire painted the horizon a dim orange. "Well shit," I remarked. "Can anyone tell me what's going on?!" Nobody could at first, but as we came closer we began to detect cyclopses in the water on the far side of the island, and they were in combat. "Well bugger me," I said, realising what was going on. "It's an invasion! The Islanders are under attack! Engage shields and prepare the cannons! Get our foot soldiers ready to beach, with lethal weaponry!"
As we came closer cyclopses from the far side of the island broke away. They had seen us coming, and a battle ensued. Torpedoes snaked through the water and struck our second cyclops directly in the back turbine. "We're sinking!" Captain Pitrav yelled. "You're a ship down, Zenn!" Pitrav went down with his ship into the abyss, as I would if we were hit the same way.
"Zenn!" Ruthless cried out to me. "When we board the island, which ones do we kill?! The invaders or the Islanders?!"
"I doubt either of them will be friendly towards us!" I thought. "I suppose you'll have to kill all of them." I wished we could set our differences aside, but I doubted Sasha would really want to. I'd try and spare her life, but if I couldn't then that would be the way it goes.
We made landfall. The cyclopses hung in the water off the shore as men with rifles in hand made their way out of the bottom of them and up the beaches. As they rose from the water they were shot down, blood spilling into the ocean. Men were already waiting for us on the beaches; whether they were Sasha's or invaders we didn't know. Bullets flew for two minutes before half of our men and all of theirs were dead. We set foot on the beaches and began to rest, but we were unable to for very long. It was about to become clear whose men we had just killed. "We've done it!" Ruthless yelled, both of us standing on the beach above the piles of dead. "We've taken this shore!" Gunshots were still heard in the distance; the battle was far from over. And that much became clear when a cyclops appeared far off shore. It was a hulking thing, more than twice as big as all of ours that were parked. We heard the hiss of torpedo fire beneath the waves and the crash of an explosion beneath the water, and before we knew it our cyclopses had sunk beneath any visible point. "Shit!" I yelled.
The cyclops parked itself on the shore lengthways, and we waited for men to exit and make their way up the beach; this time we had the jump on them. But instead hatches in the top of the cyclops opened. "What are they?" Ruthless asked me. "We didn't have them." Out from the hatches thumped artillery shells that trailed smoke into the sky high above us. "Make for the caves," I cried, "if you can remember where they are!" I definitely couldn't, and from what followed neither could anyone else. There was mass hysteria on the shore and before we knew it artillery was pocking craters all around us. Bodies were flying, men were dying, and I fell to my stomach and began to crawl through the madness, making my way inland. Ruthless's lifeless body fell in front of me, white eyed and bloody. "Dammit," I scorned beneath my breath, and tears began to fill my eyes. He was a good friend; simple but kind, dumb but understanding. His inanimate image would haunt me, and I would go on to miss him very much.
I pulled a radio from my inside pocket. "Stamford," I groaned into it. "Stamford," I repeated. "Come in Stamford. The Island is under assault by an unknown force. My men our down, Ruthless is dead... Our cyclopses are wrecked, there's no way for me to get back to you."
"I copy," Stamford said quickly. "There'll be someone coming to help." That wouldn't help, I thought. It takes days to get down here.
I lay motionless. I must have laid there for twenty minutes. But eventually men began to rise out of the water and walk up the beach, and one by one I began to recognise their faces. There was one that I recognised more than the rest, however. When that sinister voice spoke it sent shivers down my spine. "They're dead," it said. "All of them. If any of them have the strength to fight now then I say let them, they deserve it." It was Ollos Silver. He was a passenger on either the Lunar or Solar vessels, I couldn't remember. It didn't make much difference to me either way. All that was clear to me was that he was a conspirator alongside Seth, as I regrettably was. That meant we were close, but not too close, and I'm glad of that. He cracked up to be a right nutcase.
But then all of a sudden a new voice chimed in. It said words that I didn't fully hear, followed by a piercing gunshot.