LF Friends, Will Travel

Our Clockwork Children: Chapter 23

Jeremy knew his place. Sure, after 4 years of marriage with Victoria he had gone from not being able to hit the broad side of a barn to being better than an average shot; but make no mistake, he knew where his most effective place was: ensuring the weapon his wife held was provided with a steady stream of ammunition, for the madame was a very thirsty beast.

As Jeremy slotted the next case into place, its deadly contents ready to be dispensed, he couldn't help but take a moment to stare at Victoria: her feet planted firmly in the dirt, screaming with fury and joy as the weapon in her hand turned any Uhae dumb enough to poke their heads out of cover into a fine mist. Jeremy would be lying if he denied feeling a tinge of jealousy for the way his wife held the weapon between her hands.

The world around him was a cacophony of sound and chaos, as all combat was. The noise of gunfire and yelling mixed with the drum beat of explosions rocking the landscape as ODIN continued their barrage upon the approaching Uhae. At some point, the Estorian slavers were slowly working out what was going on, or at the very least starting to get an inkling into the true goals of this assault.

A little too late.

This wasn't just a Terran force, defending the location as vehicle after vehicle left the Uhae prison, carrying rescued civilians towards the safety of a space-faring vessel. While on a per capita basis the defending forces were largely made up of Terrans, the flurry of gunfire taking down all that opposed them came from a variety of sources. A little teddy bear Hatil raked bursts of fire from a position of cover while a feline Kigrel fired a grenade launcher into the Uhae ranks. Of course, there were Parket as well, lots of them.

A song was starting to form, not just the metaphorical beat of battle, but the sound of avian singing as the Parket began to scream out their cries of rage and vengeance against those who had wronged them, a song that promised death upon those who stood against the flock. It was a chorus that the Avians weren't even fully aware they were singing, each voice taking its place in a symphony almost fully by instinct.

If Jeremy had more time to listen, there would be many interesting things to be found in this song. For starters, the words weren't translating, making the complicated chirps and notes sound truly alien. The potential reasons for this were numerous: Perhaps the song was less about words, more about feeling, an instinctual memory of when their pre-sapient ancestors would sing amongst the trees? Or the words might be old. So old that nobody bothered to translate the language, or even knew what they meant anymore, the sounds and concepts of the chorus passed down through history with their exact context lost forever. It was an interesting-

Any thoughts Jeremy had on the matter were interrupted as a sharp pain erupted from his shoulder, as a stray bolt of plasma fire caught him as he ran to grab the next set of ammunition, the impact causing Jeremy to fall to the ground in a spinning motion. While the Terran forces were handily winning this engagement for now, it wasn't coming without some cost, the incoming fire occasionally finding a valid target. Such as Jeremy.

As he lay there on the ground, the familiar feeling of being shot racking through his body, he couldn't help but think a single thought.

God damn it not again.

This state of self-pity wasn't to last, however, as Jeremy felt the telltale warm-cold feeling of someone applying Medigel to the wound as it drove the pain away. Slowly getting back up, he turned to see a little Quoxxett staring back at him, an empty pack of medical supplies in hand. It was a strange sight; the little beaver-like hamster was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and little straw hat, both tattered and torn, dirtied over the trials of the last few weeks. He looked like someone more suited to sitting on a beach drinking cocktails... which was probably what the small rodent was doing on Far-Sa-De before the Uhae attacked.