Lazarus Rising

1.35 The Battle for New Europa IV

Keeping to the tree line they skirted the lakeside. Afraid that the snow flurries might open up to reveal a troop of Urbaine's men they picked their way carefully along the thin animal trails that cut through the patchy woodland that ran parallel to the silky black waters of the lake.

The walk was further than Cheyenne remembered, familiar spots difficult to pick out now they lay covered in thick clods of snow. The glow of the firefight in the night sky lit their way through the trees. They moved silently, the only sign, excepting Charisa of course, of their coming being the wispy dragon breath their lungs expunged into the icy air.

Out of the trees a shape loomed up in front of them. As they moved closer a dark monolithic outline revealed itself. Blocking their path, its bulk extended back onto the beach where it lay half buried in a tidal wave of pebbles before disappearing out into the waters and the curtain of shifting snow. Confused Jamek waved them to a stop and they dropped to their haunches to study it. After a few seconds Cheyenne realised what it was. "It's one of Rovin's slabships. It must have been bought down by enemy gunfire."

Jamek's look darkened in acknowledgement and he reluctantly waved them forward. They edged higher into the woods and skirted the titanic structure. At its shattered bow end broken trees lay scatted about as if they had been cleave to by a heaven sent celestial axe. "It must have come down from a fair height," supposed Jamek, "no one could have survived the impact." As they stood for a moment in reflection of the dead on board, Cheyenne wandered if one of them was Rovin. If he was dead inside she was not sure what she felt. Was it bad to wish one of her own ill, it was Rovin after all?

They made their way round the outer edge of the structure, back down to the lake and continued on their way. The noise of the battle was getting fiercer, the sound of gunfire boomed around them. Suddenly just ahead, a blinding trace of tracer fire opened up. Racing across the open waters the fluid pulses of light lit up the trees around them before dissipating into the darkness. "Wait here." Jamek ordered and crawled forward though the snow laden foliage to assess their position. Within moments he was back. "We are in luck, it's a small gun emplacement set up to cover this bit of the Island. A bit useless really as they can't see it in these conditions, so they're just firing randomly in its general direction. But they've got an aero there. We could use it to get across the lake, it will only be a short hop.

Squirming forward on their belly's they moved until, lying on the edge of the woodland under the cover of a fallen holly tree they could see their quarry. Five men sitting huddled together in a tight circle. Clothing more suited to Mars than a freezing winter's night by Grafton Lake, they'd been forced to light a small fire. They sat on ammunition boxes in silence watching the cracking flames. Occasionally one would get up and fire the heavy pulsar set up on a tripod into the darkness in the general direction of the sanatorium and come back and sit by the fire, hands outstretched toward the beckoning warmth. Behind them, listing to one side on the uneven pebbled beach lay an open topped aero.

Cheyenne and Charisa covered the short distance to the camp startlingly quickly. Even if had been a clear summer's day the speed of their assailants would have baffled Urbaine's soldier's senses. Having no time to react within moments they lay outspread, unconscious around the fire. "Good, well done," remarked Jamek, looking at the scattered bodies around them with tinge of perplexity in his expression.

"It's like watching two shadows," Lazarus stood for a moment hands extended in front of the flickering flames, "ones that can take physical form and then just melt away before appearing somewhere else. I can understand Charisa but Cheyenne I'm not so sure. The Extensivity, the experience at QiiQ. I wonder if it has somehow infused you, like Runf said."