Perdition's Child

Chapter 19

"Are you two all right!?" Quara peered down at them, her little front tentacles flailing although the rest of her was entirely still. Mehk had buried his nose between Irikas' neck and shoulder, lulled into a daze by the reassuring pulse against his cheek and one of her fingers idly tracing a small scar on his back. They were alive. It was good to be alive. He liked living.

"I really need you both to answer me!" Mehk flicked one ear. Yes, I hear you, we are alive. At least, that was what he tried to convey with the small ear motion, but the skithtiri somehow failed to interpret the twitch as meaningful communication and began tugging and pushing at him gently.

Groaning, he buried his face into the long, messy hair, hiding from full consciousness and all the bruises and pain that would entail. It was Irika that gave in and dragged herself back to the real world enough to answer. "We're okay, I think." She leaned up, displacing him to her lap while he tried hard to not finish waking up. Fingers threaded through his mane and rubbed behind his ears. "You okay, Mehk?" When he just mumbled something incoherent she tugged on his mane. "Time to wake up, we have to get out of here."

Ugh...

Waking up was as bad as he'd suspected, but with a groan he sat up and cataloged his injuries. His shoulders hurt, his legs hurt, his head hurt, his chest particularly hurt, breathing hurt, and there was an unpleasant ringing in his ears. "...Fuck."

"Everyone alive?" The commander was back in the tunnel, and Mehk noted just how far they'd been dragged before Quara had succeeded in closing the hangar. Swallowing several times, he tried not to think about what dying in a vacuum would have felt like and let Irika pull him towards the rest of the group. His legs were shaky and he suspected he would stumble into a wall if left to his own devices, and he could barely lift his arms.

After a roll call to make sure they weren't missing anyone, which had a bad moment at Terra's name before they remembered he was guarding the entrance, they trudged back down the tunnel.

A bullet had shattered Gatch's right shoulder; they laid her over Derak's back with Sharon walking alongside to keep her balanced and Tes doing something to the wound and looking worried. Everyone had bruises at the very least; Vega was holding a hand against a bloody gash above his eye where something had broke loose and struck him. The commander was trying to hide a limp, and Teskas' rear-most left tentacle was dragging behind him as he slithered.

Oh, and Bob was in a jar.

And for what? Two Shitara members that were considered expendable enough to leave behind as a stalling tactic. Now they had no idea where Ritcha was heading, and only a week to figure it out before everything on Gestalt connected to the extranet came tumbling down.

No one said anything for the trek back, which meant they heard the commotion up in the entrance hall as soon as they reached the first basement. Looking over his beat up crew, the commander silently pointed at Sharon and Nii'Lara and gestured for them to come up the stairs with him to investigate.

"Okay, come on up." A tense minute later the commanders' voice finally echoed down, and they trudged up into the light, Mehk and Irika in the back helping to keep Gacht still. There were no cops after all, but then all the fighting had been two stories under, er, ground. If that was the right term.