"Where have you taken us Parody? This is not Static!" Sepulcher was staring out the blank portals of the flight deck becomming livid with anger, "ah but it is Sepulcher. But we will not be folding straight to the planet, that is what they expect us to do." The smaller necanthrope fiddled with her control panels, "you made a promise to go directly to Static," Sepulcher spat back straight at her for giving an ambiguous answer.

"I am mearly approaching the target with caution, a clumsy child or arrogant navigator would have blundered in, already the foldship Watchman has detected our foldwake and is comming here." She gave the ion engines a quick burst and kept the sensor cloak up as they sailed under the 7 kilometre long, blunt sided girth of a Union class warship. Sepulcher could only stare in awe at the huge ship as it nearly folded in on top of them.

"They wont see us dear Sepi, besides, I have no intention of assisting you with the enslavement of the ebons on Static."

The grey skinned necanthrope scowled at Parody, "you want to get out and walk Sepulcher?"

"No! Why have you gone against the Preceptor? You made a deal!"

"I made a deal to take you to Static, there was no mention of you getting here alive, or assisting with the orbital bombardment of another city on Static."

"Your going against the father of our race, its treason Parody. They’ll hunt you like an animal and me as well."

"You take your orders from the Preceptor, I take mine from another. A cock always crows the loudest from atop its dung heap anyway. That is all the Preceptor controls now."

Sepulcher scowled, Parody was speaking far too lucidly for a change and it disturbed her, "and I suppose your going to mend your evil ways of killing, drinking blood, molesting your vassals and torturing people overnight? How very civic of you Parody, I guess I was wrong about you all along."

"Sarcasm dosnt befit you Sepulcher, besides, Intruder told me to protect the ebons and he will give me a great gift that will forever release me from the Preceptors slavery."

"The ebons have 7 days to acknowledge the edict or the foldship will begin slagging the cities one by one. They have a choice Parody, we dont."

"How cold of you Sepulcher. Considering you have your great great grand daughter as your vassal and I know most of your family still resides here."

"Im here to guide them away from being destroyed! I still have feelings for them."

"So fight with me or I eject you from the ship in 10 seconds and do it my way."

"10"

"9"

"You’ll get us killed"

"8, we’re dead anyway"

"7"

"6"

"5"

"4"

"There are worse things than death Parody"

"3"

"2, any last words?"

"1"

"Ok! But if your wrong I will leave little of you for the Preceptor to kill!"

"Im glad you came around to my point of veiw. It would be ‘sad’ to vape you after all these years spent together."

Niamh was assisted down the ramp with the aid of a 19 year old ebon girl and her battered husband, it had been a rough last few hours and she felt poorly because of it. In front of her was the shaktar and the two necanthropes they’d travelled with meeting with a small group of about 20 shaktars, half a dozen ebons and about 20 humans in some dark blue uniform. The ship had put down in what looked to be an enourmous natural cavern which had been well lit and contained a few vehicles and four shuttles. There was a few courteous introductions to Lord Gn’sh the Shaktar, an ebon called Defiant and a young man called Parus Filti who had some funny cybernetic implants in the right side of his head as did all the other humans with him. She was glad to be on solid ground, though feeling strangely out of place in a whirlwind of events that she had no real choice being in and the ebons said that they would look after her which made her feel a lot safer, the nice young girl Iger said that she would stay with her in case the baby came.

"Sepulcher came to talk you out of the deal with the necanthrope union but she changed her mind on the way in," Parody proudly announced which brought a smile to Defiant’s handsome features, Sepulcher was wondering if he was one of Parody’s ‘little man friends’ she’d hinted at once judging by how happy he was to see her. Apparently he was once part of ebon affairs, SCL2 in the department of ebb. The blond man Vice Marshal Parus Filti was currently the leader of the ‘White Pointers’ 7-16^th Thresher squadron, how the rival company leader of an elite special forces unit had ended up here was beyond her but she suspected that she would soon find out. Then there was the shaktars, they where judging by the dress and braids all elders, preists and hero’s of the Shaktar empire which had considered Slayers demise to be the end of their treaty of peace with SLA industries.

"These stand to be the greatest of times for all concearned," Lord Gn’sh announced in the small hollowed out alcove, clearing his throat before continuing, "and also the darkest of days for some time. In our wisdom the remaining Thresher forces along with the ebon homeworld of Static have agreed to work together with the Shaktar empire. Against, the remanants of the SLA industries, Darknight and The House of the Black Church who seemed poised to threaten the sanctity of us. We are outnumbered, outgunned but we have a chance, the words of the Intruder to guide us and been given the dark prophet Parody."

That was typical of Parody, thought Sepulcher. She’d arrange for her to join a rag tag legion of ebons, crazy old shaktars and a few Thresher troops to fight an impossible fight. It was a noble fight, even rightous cause but a suicidal fight ultimately. The Thresher, despite their powerful armour and advanced technology where so few as to be almost nothing, having been decimated to the point of extinction in several hundred years of constant warfare and raiding. The Shaktars, for all their bravery had only slow Ion drive ships for a fleet and not a lot of resources, then there where the ebons. Peaceful and meek who didnt stand a chance against the unbridled wrath and aggression of necanthropes. Her deliverer to this poor excuse of an alliance was going to be away for 6 days, "doing some stuff", as she so succinctly put it, the shaktar fleet was still 11 days away from Static, there was no chance of getting Thresher troops here within 12 days and there was going to be a full scale invasion with orbital bombardment in 7 days. She had a bad feeling that eventually they would start looking to her for answers, they did and Parody suggested that she "stall the Preceptors invasion." She tried with her ebb communication but received a flat "no" for her one and only answer. They where back to square one.

Later that evening the Shaktar Lord presented Parody with a small wooden chest like the one she had gotten earlier off the Preceptor and that would be the last any of them saw of the small creature for 5 nights as she disappeared into the gloom of the caverns underneath Static.

Just when Roderic figured on having a quiet night after being shot at all day his unborn child decided on that particular moment to make his entrance into the world sending him into another panic. Iger almost immediately had herself and another half dozen ebb medics swarm into the room and rushed her off to the Antioch’s medical bay before Roderic had a chance to summon them. Rs’hk came storming in to see what all the commotion was about and found his friend wandering about in a daze after Niamh was wisked away, "aha! You will be a father tonight, how many children is this for you?"

"My first," he said worried at all the sudden events.

"hmm", the shaktar scratched his fleshy dreadlock appendages on his red skull. "It is always the first time that is the worst, wait until you have 4 wives and then see the problems!"

"You have 4 wives?"

"Yes, only 4, I am a poor pirate with little honour and not much money."

"I’d imagine the nagging would get pretty bad"

"Yes, why do you think the shaktars fight so violently and travel the stars in the first place?"

Roderic shrugged, hopeless for an answer.

"Nagging women frgtk’t!"

He realised that the shaktar was joking with him and laughed with him, but down deep he wondered how much of it was true.

The shaktar gave him a blood red scarf tipped with white to wear under his uniform, "the preists said I should give you this and this one also." He hauled out a thinner version made of leather and dyed a livid blue, "for comming to an ally at great risk to himself and the red one is for uncommon bravery in the face of overwhelming enemies to complete his mission. You are an uncommon breed of human and you deserve it, one day I hope to wear a red scarf with white tips but most only get it when they lie in the narrow house."

It was a very rare gift, Roderic had heard of the occasional scarf being granted on am outsider but they where more rumours than anything else, "what is the one you wear mean Rs’hk?"

The shaktar looked down on the small black and white one and the plain red one, "this", he pointed to the black and white scarf, "is death and rebirth. I have to start again due to myself turning away from the shaktar code 80 years ago for a life of violence and piracy. This is the red scarf of an acolyte to a great prophet. This one I like best, the other I must strive to lose."

Two hours later the human male called Cadman Banks was born into a universe of strife with an uncertain future as the Watchman disgorged 40 Stingray dropships onto the planet.

Century 12

Love cried on the bridge of starving

so cold, first light

up here on the bridge of night

forsake me but listen-

so lonely,

so lonely,

so lonely...

for what?

Up here on the bridge of night

to fall would be so nice

"They’ve put down 8000-10000 or so troops on the city Certiceas with supporting heavy vehicles of about company strength. Theyve been comming down all night," Defiant looked at the tactical readings that had been passed on by an ebon scout. "600,701 and 800 Nitro legions," Parus muttered with a twist of disdain and respect, ‘guess I better tell the boys and girls to saddle up, any resistance in the city we can hook up with?"

The ebon shook his head, "pockets here and there but mostly they move unopposed looting, raping, and murdering at will."

"We’ve got to knock out that foldship", Roderic said to them, "if they arnt supplied then it will make it a lot harder for the grunts on the ground and it might give the Preceptor second thoughts about comming back here if he loses a ship." The Thresher Vice Marshal agreed, "we’d like to but we dont have the ships ourselves, theres the Antioch but she’s only a frigate and wont cut it against the likes of a Line foldship, we’ve got the Delta class assault shuttles but we only have 1 low yeild Blackstar missile. Oh, we’ve got nukes too but Mr Defiant would not appreciate us dropping them on his nice city so we cant play with those. We’re going to go in and start hunting SLA, your pretty good in a fight and you know how to use a powersuit so your welcome to come along.", Roderic still found it difficult to think that he was talking to a Thresher soldier without being shot at first, "if you give me a shuttle, the missile and one of those nukes I think Ive got a better than average chance of killing the Watchman, its the perfect opportunity now that most of her troops are out. Stun the ship, board her, set the nuke and get the hell out of there."

It was the type of bold and surprise manuever that genuinely appealed to the Thresher Vice Marshal who’d spent most of his life encouraging this type of behaviour in his troops, "I’ll talk to some of my lieutenants and get back to you on that one Corporal in about 120 minutes."

Rs’hk helped Roderic get the suit of Sarge out of the Antioch and handed it over to the Thresher technicians to get the 2500kg powersuit either battleready or scrapped for parts. There wasnt a lot of damage to its chassis, just one nice neat little hole in the torso that had ended the pilots life, probably caused by Parody’s rifle, it wasnt hard to fix and although the suit looked a little ratty and second hand it was perfectly operational. Flying the great suit took a lot more practice, and they rigged him up with a temporary nueral skull cap as he declined to have the implants patched in just yet that would improve his response time and aim. It was a surprisingly quick peice of armour and considering its size was more manueverable than most SLA armours a quarter of its size, "you dont have to do this yourself Roderic." Rs’hk said respectfully, "you have a new son and a wife to look after."

He powered the suit down after 20 minutes of flight time and emerged from the top hatch mounted behind the head sensor array, "ah but you see Rs’hk, thats why I must do something to protect them otherwise they might not see tommorow." The shaktar nodded sadly, "I will stay and protect them for you. But for now, take the time to be with them."

"Someone wanted a large nuclear device and handfull of crazy bastards to go with him?" The knock at the cabin door distracted Roderic and Niamh from their time together with his son, "hi Im Lieutenant Grace Oterg and your Corporal Banks I presume, otherwise Ive just made an ass of myself again," It was a young woman about 22 years old with a white scarf covering most of her head and it restrained a long mass of red hair they had noticed earlier when they arrived. "Um, yep thats me ma’am, I’ll be out in one second", Niamh scowled at him, "you dont have to go do you?" He nodded sadly and kissed her goodbye, "dont worry, I’ll be carefull."

"Got you a suit, a nuke, ship with a missile and 10 others that volunteered, guess we need a plan now huh?" Grace seemd enthusiastic about the idea of boarding a SLA foldship, no one in her living history had done it.

"I’ll need an idea of how much time the ship would be disabled by the missile and the yeild of the nuke before we can start on that ma’am."

"Call me Grace dearie, um, a Blackstar usually leaves them wallowing like a rock for about 20 minutes, we usually use them for defence and run. As for nukes we’ve got a 50, 80 and 150 megaton yeild, guess any one of those would mess up someones day. Nobody uses them much ‘cause it leaves a shitty mess and used to get Mr Slayer annoyed enough to chase you with half the fleet. Guess that dont matter much now does it?"

She seemed disappointed when he said that they would use the 50 megaton device, which he deemed would be more than enough to lay waste to a foldship and probably black out a lot of electronics on Static with its EMP.

"Show me the bomb Grace."

"Aha, Mr Banks. We will be co ordinating your assault on the Watchman with our own ground assault, the EMP will be most usefull. We dont expect it to change the tide of battle too much but it will knock out a lot of their long range sensors and let us get in mix it up and get out again before they even know we where there." Parus seemd to share his lieutanents same infectious enthusiasm and he was aware just how important the work on the the nuke would be. "I think you’ll notice it go off sir, there wont be any need for us to radio ahead," Roderic grinned back at the smiling blond man.

It was a simple electronic task to fit a timer into the 500kg bomb and just for a safety he put in a tamper proof circuit and tested it 3 times before deeming it fit to be attached in a weapon capable of killing everything within 30 km in a split second. It also had a secondary effect of not letting him be disturbed by anyone for the next hour except the Vice Marshal who came over and muttered something about "making the fuckers burn."

Grace gave a quick breifing to the 10 troops comming with them after studying some foldship plans given to her by Sepulcher and gave an estimate of how long the timer should be and where it could be planted. Roderic would have the dubious honour of carrying the device in strapped to the back of his back, he hoped that he wasnt shot at too much otherwise it could be a very short mission. There was a bad feeling about killing some of his fellow soldiers but he remembered that they where down here killing defenceless ebons and would most likely kill his wife and son as well. Strapped into the Thresher Sarge powersuit with the one of the most powerfull portable weapons known to man on his right arm and nuclear bomb strapped him, he gave his chances as being better than average at killing an awful lot of the enemy and maybe a less than average of comming out of it alive.

"Nah, they aint seen us Gracie, otherwise we’d be bits of crispy metal bouncing off their hull by now." The Watchman had a lot of flux amplifiers even for a Union class battleship and even the smallest of them would be more than enough to render the tiny 50 metre long Delta shuttle a smoking wreck. Tran, their pilot manuvered off the ships portside from about 3000 km away silent to the ships sensors and prepared the fire control on his one and only missle, "remember Than, fire and follow it in, once it hits get us under her and into the hanger bay. Wait till we get out and lay down supporting fire, should be back onboard in 4 minutes." That was the fourth time today she’d told him and he was getting sick of her plan, which on contact with the enemy usually disintergrated into a shooting match anyway. "Hits away!" The shuttle lunged forward under the power of its 4 ion engines and Than prayed that the missile would go off and wasnt a dud or some fool had forgotten to release the safety pins, he had checked the safety pins hadnt he?

A long 15 seconds later the Blackstar impacted into the side of the Watchman with a bright flash of a small sun, his eyes closed he relied on the ships sensors through the cybernetic link "Hammer down! Hammer down! ETA in t minus 45 seconds and counting!"

"Aw this shit sucks!" Grace mumbled as the shuttle passed through the shockwave, it brought back memories and fears of an atmospheric entry and it never lost its scare factor no matter how many times she did it.

The shuttle went under the massive craft and into a hanger bay 400 metres wide and 700 metres long packed with 20 stingray dropships and hundreds of people milling about in fear, the next thing Roderic knew the back door where down and everyone was piling out screaming a war cry and kicking in the jump packs. Grace shoved him out the door and followed him down as he fought to control the suit which was given to heading straight back up and finally went where he wanted it.

Below the first group of aircrew and soldiers where ripped apart from the heavy depleted uranium rounds from the Thresher cannons while Than hosed up the tanks, Jeeps and some dropships with the 60 mike mike as it was affectionately known. A fearsome 60mm rotory assault weapon mounted in the shuttle’s nose underneath the pilot. It was like a descent into hell Roderic thought, hundreds of men, stormers and the odd necanthrope firing their guns and gore cannons at the intruders but they where badly caught off gaurd and it was turning into a massacre. One of the Sarge suits was shot out of the air by a SLA dropships gun that someone had found the sense to crew, it fell burning, cannon still firing into the crowded mass of bodies below and disappeared. Tran seeing the suit go down turned his cannons on the offending ship and it exploded a second later and made the shuttle bay fill with choking black smoke.

Grace charged ahead of Roderic clearing a path through the screaming troops with the cannon leaving only empty shells, blood and broken bodies a necanthrope with a six barreled gorecannon fired a flesh friction at Roderic. He thought he was dead then and there and the necanthrope looked just as upset as he felt because nothing had happened, the foul yellow vapour washed over his suit and did nothing. Angered the monsterous creature hauled out a 12.7mm pistol and on reflex Roderic just shot it with his Thresher cannon not even thinking to aim, leaving it a ruined mess as 5 heavy slugs cut it almost in half. "Heh, them nec’s never figure it out until its too late, KAD-C weave baby, KAD-C weave! Your ebb shit dont work!" Grace heckled through the comms and Roderic was about to lose his breakfast except there was nothing more to do than catch up to the charging Sarge suit in front of him. He hadnt the heart to shoot the troopers cowering under the dropships with weapons that had no chance at stopping his powersuit or killing him, they where rear echelon support units and flight crews. Just like he had been in what seemed like a lifetime ago.

"Got the shuttle control bay secure Gracie, get your ass over here, hang on heavy units inbound, Tommy and Marko, make ‘em die will ya mate." Sgt Denis Hayne was standing in the middle of a small, once glass enclosed room full of broken computers and equally broken flight control crew, he helped Roderic land the suit in the narrow entry 50 feet above the hanger floor. Pausing only to lay down some fire with his VAPH on the targets below, he prefered the weapon, mainly because it carried more ammunition than the Thresher cannon and it seemed to work just as well on most SLA armour. It also made a horrible metallic tearing noise that sent peoples teeth on edge but he didnt seem to mind.

"Tommys down Sarge, theres a fuckload of ‘em comming out of the woodwork down here", Gracie gave the order to fall back to the ship as she unhooked the bomb off Roderic, he checked that it was still working. "8 minutes left." They barricaded the door with several of the larger panels and left it there with a pile of scanning equipment dumped on top of it and made for the dropship.

"3 minutes! Cutting it a bit close Gracie," Than yelled over the radio and closed the door on the shuttle, "shutup and fucking fly Than," she barked back.

Defiant moved out in the field next to hunched down form of Parus who had his troops hidden over a ridgeline ready to assault the legions below He was skeptical of the Thresher, there was only 108 of them and he wondered how much damage they could do to several thousand heavily armed and well equiped infantry. In the city itself where a handfull of resistance units, mostly former SLA operatives and barely 300 at most. Sepulcher had managed to contact some of them with ebb communication and the word was passed around to start causing havoc when the Thresher struck. "There it is Parus" chuckled as the morning sky lit up bright as daylight and the ebon and necanthrope squinted, "thank god he’s done it", Sepulcher muttered.

"Heads up company! We go over the top now, you all know where your targets are. Get in hit them and bounce your arses out of there within 10 minutes."

"Only the bold!" Came the company motto and they blasted out of there scattering leaves and dirt over the ebons and shaktars behind them.

There was nothing finer in Parus’ life than to be flying barely 4 metres off the dirt at 350km an hour with a Sarge suit and Thresher cannon. It was a pure adrenalin rush, a sentry platoon on the outskirts died in a hail of cannon shells that left great rooster tails of flying dirt and blood as 6 of his wingmen blew past. "My god," Defiant muttered looking through the scope of his FEN 30-30 rifle, "28 dead in 2 seconds."

They hadnt carried DU on the weapons because it did bad things to the ebons ability to use flux and the residue could cause cancer, not that Parus had ever seen an ebon or necanthrope yet that could live through a 10 round burst. HEAP and HESH rounds provided by the stores on the Antioch seemed to do just as well at killing the Nitro Legionaires anyway. They caught a tank unit out in the open as the 6 suits went flying down the city streets at full speed, men caught between the explosive bullets and the tank armour where left draping the vehicles with broken flesh and boneless bodies.

"Power up at 11 oclock! AA gun!" The front of Robertson’s CloseKnit exploded and he and his suit ploughed through the side of a skyscraper leaving an ugly gouge before it tumbled into the street and exploded. The weapon didnt get a chance to claim another Thresher pilot as the gun and its crew exploded in a hail of fire 2 seconds later.

"Double back and mop up the last of that tank squadron", Parus gave the order as they reached an intersection, elsewhere he could hear the doppler effect of turbines reverberating through the cavernous streets. They flipped over in a hard 180 degree turn and began ripping back through over the emerging survivors that had crept out of buildings and under the tanks.

"How we doing for ammo?"

"Low" came the squads response, "ok lets punch it outa here and head north. Meet up at point 2 on you HUD and then back to base."

Four minutes later it was over and the Thresher disappeared as quickly as they had come into the early morning darkness.

The puff of Defiant’s 30-30 under the cameoflage sheet was the only indication that he was still alive, somewhere 1858 metres away someone died, "thats a kill, nice shot" Sepulcher giggled looking through the rangefinder as a man in Crackshot slumped on top of the building dropping his own sniper rifle. "Madam, I do beleive that your enjoying this far too much," Defiant quipped, "I blame it on a lack of anything decent on TV lately." She said coldly, "I do miss the channel 59 soaps."

"Lucky I have a lot of ammo and we have all day then madam. My favorite was always Beautiful People Ugly Lives"

He stuck the emty brass casing in a bag and chambered another round into the 8mm rifle.

"Hmm," she growled "up until season 87 it was ok and dont tell me Im showing my age."

"Wouldnt think of it, now find me another invader to shoot."

"Bring me the names of the dead and sensor readings," Parus could see that they had their numbers thinned by at least ten percent but at least the shuttle had made it back, minus 3 of the troops that had gone up. There where a lot of wounded pilots too but at least the ebon healers would get them back up to being able to fight the next day, he was also glad to see that the man Roderick Banks come back alive along with Lieutenant Oterg. "we whacked them good Marshal, gunna be bits of foldship raining down for the next couple of days. I think we should consider putting sapper Corpral Banks in for a promotion too sir." Parus nodded, "later Oterg, well done corporal."

It was going to be a long war he decided, they’d lost 12 pilots and confirmed kills at 873, he’d hoped for a thousand but figured the ebon and shaktar snipers would probably get that by the end of the day and most of the enemies tanks and artillery where out of commission which is what he wanted most. Hundreds of thousands of refugees managed to escape to waiting vehicles and shuttles on the outskirts of the city. Now that the enemy knew what they where fighting it would get a lot tougher because they would dig in and make a stand or worse, make a move. SLA had some brilliant generals themselves and he hoped that there wasnt one of them down there.

Century 13

Her lips were hard

My heaven is cold

Let's lose her

Who's inside me

Let's use her

For what she wants

Night and the outer edges belonged to the Thresher and ebons, by day it was a different story. The Preceptors forces found that they could advance quite quickly and dig in, if they ran into trouble they called in artillery to chase away the ebon snipers and Thresher units, they didnt have much success at hitting the enemy because the ebons folded off somewhere else and the Thresher moved too quickly but it was becomming all too clear. They where only a small foe who couldnt hold any ground when they did they where smashed, to make matters worse they where running low on supplies, ammunition and every pilot or sniper they killed was a serious loss for the resistance. There where some new additions to the ranks in the form of Ex-SLA ebon and brainwaster operatives and a lot of others that dragged the glyph cards out of the closet along with a civilian rifle and where intent on getting some payback on the hated invaders. There where some horror stories comming out of the city of Certiceas about what happened to those to slow to flee or too scared to run, Rs’hk, Roderic and some of the other shaktars led attacks through the cities sewer systems for several nights, emerging to kill the enemy silently with melee weapons, set booby traps, blow up equipment and steal supplies. It was working with limited success for the two nights until the enemy cottoned on and they met fierce resistance on the third night forcing them to abandon the excursions. They did manage to get out a lot of Ex-SLA operatives working behind enemy lines which brought back much needed information to Parus. Rs’hk lost his scarf of atonement on the 4^th night venturing in alone to rescue and lead 5 operatives left behind, taking serveral terrible wounds in th process which nearly cost him his life.

What Parus really needed was line infantry and a lot of it. Ebons where remarkably fierce fighters when given a good enough reason and he had a lot of respect for them to act intelligently, follow orders and their ebb healing saved many from a needless death. He just didnt have any weapons to give them and flux, though it recharged was still a poor cousin to a man in Crackshot or Dogybone armour with a Power Reaper machinegun. About the only ones having a good time of it where the shaktars who seemed to relish the idea of being killed waist deep in a pile dead enemies at their feet. The enemy began creeping ever closer every hour to where the base was hidden in the mountains and he soon feared that they would have to find a new place to hole up in and some cunning sod in the enemy ranks was using their remaining 10 or so dropships as bombers and gunships.

Niamh and her child where sent away to a small township 3000 kms away by Defiant to stay with his family, it was both a sad time and a releif for Roderic that at least they would be safe for now. They needed an edge to win this war and a lot more troops which where still a fortnight away on Shaktar Ion drive ships and Thresher shuttles, "we’re in deep shit" Parus finally admitted to a private meeting of shaktars and ebons.

"Ive got enough ammunition for 2 days left of conventional raiding which is working as well as can be expected. Could stretch that out to limited operations and maybe make it last 4 or 5 days but they’ll get really dug in if we do. We’ve been loosing 3-10 pilots a day mostly to the damn dropships and getting back 20-30 wounded which have to be rested overnight. Its starting to squeeze, the snipers can only pin down so many for so long and without artillery of our own it makes them only half as effective as it could be."

"Marshal," Sepulcher announced suddenly just as Parus was entering a moment of contemplation. "I have just had it told to me our scouts in the field that a second ship has arrived in orbit and deploying dropships on Certiceas."

Parus let out a very audible sigh and leaned back in his chair, "well looks like were in over our heads now. Teeth’s come up with another bucket of shit."

"Nuke the suckers Marshal?" Oterg suggested, to Parus as they watched dropship after dropship fall to earth as 4 more foldships appeared after the first dreadnought. "Theres still 2 million civilians in there and Im not going to live with that on my conscience lieutenant." A lot less now he thought as they where also shipping out ebons to parts unknown and there where still more reports of atrocities comming in. If he had to put a number on it he’d have to say that there was now about 60-100 thousand enemy troops in the city, well supplied with heavy armour, tanks, APC’s, dropships, gunships and artillery. "Was easier in the old days Marshal, we could just bug out when SLA got that heavy." Not chancing the loss of more foldships the enemy vessels departed, "looks like they got a lot smarter too lieutenant, bit of a bugger that." It pained him greatly to be so ineffective, his troops where twice the quality and wrought 10 times the destruction that the enemy could, but they where so few they would be wasted within 2 minutes against a force that strong. "Uh Marshal, looks like we’ve got company", Orterg’s voice sounded scared over the radio and he’d never heard her that shaken in the 2 years he’d known her. Parus looked over to where she was pointing her cannon. A pale figure wearing a shear, simple black dress with its wings hidden under a black cloak was observing them silently, "Parody?" It was her but she’d changed a little, maybe a foot taller, the charred eylids gone, weighed a little more and possibly more beautiful than he remembered any woman being.

"You have a problem Marshal Filti, you need troops?"

Parus emerged from his suit and sat on the shoulders to see her for himself, "you could say that, we thought you had left us for good."

"Come with me then, we will find you some troops."

K'n'nth the shaktar homeworld was about to give them a very cold welcome with most of the fleet in orbit and just itching to shoot up any foldships that came into veiw. Lord Gn’sh onboard the Antioch was able to stall the assault with a few choice words to some of the captains and they where allowed to pass unmolested to the starport below. Sepulcher spotted a foldship in orbit too, a small destroyer, badly damaged but still operational, "looks like the Vendetta, you remember the Vendetta dont you Parody?"

"Yes," she whispered, busy piloting her ship through the atmosphere, "it was last piloted by an ebon called Faded. Used to work for the Stygmatyr, be a dear and contact him and see if he will assist."

She reached out and found the ebon on the surface, "he will meet with us down there, he is glad we have not sided with the Preceptor."

Parus, Gn’sh, Roderic, Rs’hk, Defiant and the two necanthropes where met by a hastily organised honour gaurd of shaktars and Thresher troops, Sepulcher had to lead Parody off the ship as she was almost blind in the sunlight and cowered underneath her cloak like a frightened animal. She hadnt had a chance to talk to her since she’d emerged from the caverns, about the physical changes and strange feeling she got when near her lately. It was like butterflies in the stomach, a very nasty feeling of dread and apart from that she still smelled the same though without the taint of the white.

The planet unlike most was devoid of the conflict and chaos that had wracked so many thousands throughout SLA held areas, their sense of honour and duty to their elders and race had kept their culture together. It was a warm tropical planet with a lot of lush green vegetation, high mountains, rivers and vast unsullied wilderness full of dangerous animals, Parody was just glad to get out of the burning sunlight and to the palace of the Lord Shahantian who was eager to meet his brother Gn’sh and to hear of news from their allies at Static. Old, even by Necanthrope standards the ancient shaktar stood assisted by his blade tipped staff to receive the rite of introduction.

Gn’sh took a deep breath and for the benifit of their guests introduced them in the Killian tounge.

"Marshal Filti, defender of the city of Certiceas"

"Governer Defiant, representative of the Ebon homeworld"

"The seer Parody, defender of the ebon race"

"Sepulcher, advisor to Defiant"

"Rs’hk, acolyte of Parody the seer"

"Corporal Banks, destroyer of the foldships Conjecture and Watchman"

"Static is in great danger of falling to the enemy my Lord and we require assistance immediately."

Lord Shahantian listened to the tales of the oddest group of creatures he’d ever seen together in a long time, time and trouble often made strange bedfellows though in his experiance. He especially liked the stories of the human Banks in his ancient battered suit of armour doing his duty against impossible odds with Rs’hk, had the preists take it down in their notes for later meditation and education for young shaktars. Unwittingly Crrl’prl Bn’nks as he would be known, would become a minor icon of warrior training for generations to come.

The seer worried him deeply, the winged creature inspired feelings of fear reminding him of a dark age in shaktar history. He’d heard some of her prophecies passed onto them secretly by Rs’hk and Intruder told of her comming, he could feel the ominous, power emanating from her, different to a necanthrope and much more disturbing.

Finally he listened to the ebon, necanthrope and the Thresher officer and how they had tried to stem the tide of invaders but where overwhelmed, he’d been right in accepting the alliance with the powerful Thresher and was most excited by the tales of glorious bloodshed they wrought upon the enemy.

All the story telling made him tired though so he called a recess and had them brought food, his advisors and allies they wanted to see.

Faded kept his hand on his flintlock seeing the necanthrope and Parody walk over to meet him, he was old for an ebon of his experience not to be a necanthrope himself and had walked the halls of Stygmatyr long enough to be wary even of old allies. His wrinkles, grey hair and scars marked him as being an oddity even in a world of strange creatures.

"At ease Faded, we mean you no harm," Parody whispered with that funny little girl voice she still retained. It made the ebon relax and he became more receptive to them but still kept his distance from Sepulcher. "We tried to fight our way out of them to come to static but the necs where all over us, they had the bigger ships and some where stationed on all our vessels. The Vendetta survived but alas I fear she is probably one of the last of her size left." Parody actually took him by the hand and led him over to sit down on a slab of white marble. "It will be that way for some time Faded, for now you must operate under the safety of the shaktar fleet until we can build up our numbers again, train more navigators and build more ships. But you will survive, we need you to do a few quick runs back to Static to take troops and equipment in, your home is in dire trouble." The old ebon nodded and agreed, payback would come in good time she assured him.

"Well, Lord Shahantian must have liked what he heard, he’s given us 20 thousand assault troops with 4500 support units and supplies. Parus has managed to get another 3500 Thresher assault suits and 500 more support with dropships and some of their Archon TH0777 main battle tanks. Ever seen a Thresher main battle tank Sepulcher?" She shook her head at Defiant’s news, "it was breifly on some footage once years ago, didnt think they had any left."

"They do," he smiled excitedly, "it makes the SLA M104 look like a kids tricycle apparently, Ive never seen one either and they’ve got 15 stashed here! They are down on the starport, come see."

"Hang on Defiant, our little Parody of not seeing is in need of some assistance and quite drunk. Some shaktar preists gave her a some of that damn awful fermented blood spirits and she’s gone through 4 bottles of the crap."

"I thought that 2 bottles would kill a full grown shaktar. Is she ok?"

"Define ok?"

"Is she alive?"

"Technically no, but the shaktars seem impressed that she still breathes in any case."

Sepulcher grabbed the legs of the creature while Defiant collected the shoulders and wings, she was warm to the touch he noticed unlike Sepulcher who was normally room temperature. There was that smell again that came from the dozing woman that he found irresistable and found it hard to concentrate or maybe it was the wine he’d drunk earlier but something in his heart leapt.

Sepulcher formulated a massive detoxification cure on Parody half way to the starport having become sick of carrying her now that she weighed as much as a normal ebon would. "Reminds me of a time I found her in downtown like this, she wouldnt remember it now and you wont find it on any records."

"Do tell," Defiant asked curiously.

"Well she was taking the dream demons rather badly towards the end of her life and decided to get drunk, always did have a thing for ebon boys so beware. Anyway, she chased this one poor lad who was terrified of a drunk brainwaster woman with a sabre and deathsuit wanting to well, do things with him. Maybe she thought he was her late husband or something, so he runs into the nearest building to get away. Parody goes in after him and finds out that its a brothel, thinking the ‘sluts had stolen her boy’ she gets angry, as wasters are want to do."

She stopped speaking and formulated another detoxification cure, Defiant wasnt sure he wanted to know the end of her story.

"She gets angry right, starts smashing the place up with that bloody awful sabre of hers and the odd blue thermal effect just for fun. The security decide that enoughs enough and try to move her out, well she kills all 8 of them and gets stuck into the complimentry liquor, SHIVER’s turn up, they get slaughtered too, whole squad of 12. Red BPN gets picked up by some poor fucking Ops squad to go in and pacify her, SCL 10’s most of them out on a Blue BPN first on the scene. Kills them too, all 6 of the poor bastards.

By this time the place is more like an indoor Gorezone and I turn up, thank god she was out of it by then, snatch her up, chuck her in the Killcopter and bugger off. The necs got her the next day, that was the end of my friend of 17 years and out came Parody a week later."

He’d never seen a necanthrope shudder like Sepulcher did unless it had been shot, but still she continued.

"The level of bloodshed and terror that followed over the next 200 years was almost unequaled except for maybe HJ and Digger. Started a whole new urban legend that brought a new terror to the citizens of Mort, ‘The white devil’, ‘white death’ and ‘blood goddess’ from the recorded 58229 victims. And that my friend dosnt include the ‘casualties’ from bombings, ordinary civi’s, Darknight, Thresher, soft companies, pirates, Ops, SHIVER and fire crews that got in her way in the normal course of her sanctioned activities. The really nasty thing was that it she is a clever creature, knew at least 20 lower downtown levels better than anyone, mastery of forensics and detective work, its pretty hard to catch someone with her level of ebb fold and sense abilities. Couldnt prove a thing, at least she was on our side, sort of."

Sepulcher dumped another ebb detoxification at the inert form and finally got her to come around to some degree of conciousness, "dont ever tell her that Defiant."

He nodded in agreement and helped the still wobbly Parody to her feet, she cleared the alcohol from her system, took a moment to work out where she was and glided down to the starport without saying a word to either of them.

"Bloody ungratefull," snarled Sepulcher and she indicated Defiant to continue down the stairs with her to the starport.

Defiant didnt know what to make of it, necanthropes never changed their behavior and he hoped that there wasnt any of the Parody left after the recent changes on Static.

Century 14

Women in dreams abide-

better than lost before

Women in dreams abide-

better than cut before

Cuts to razor sounding violent

Recalling cutthroats; razor's sin

You've got to run

Dark Angel's born... rest her soul .

Oppugn crushed the thin needle of bone coloured, science friction material in one of his broad palms. He smelled the odour of dried roses and lifted the remaining dust to his reddish brown face to get a better sense of the odour, "smells familiar, but I cant remember the owner... There where more of these?" Captain Freal of the 17^th Nitro legion nodded and handed over five others his troops had found in the corpses of the 34 dead and 8 missing crew of the legions mobile sensors company, "they found them in some of the dead, others where hacked to death and worse General." The Dante vetran was scared, Oppugn could smell that too but didnt belittle the human for it or judge his company as being incompetent, yet. "Show me the bodies"

There where obvious hack marks in some of the corpses made by powerful blows from a curved hand weapon, bite marks in others around the throat and chest area, some had just up and died with their hearts stopped in their chests and a few had just been split apart from the inside out. There were some that he recognised instantly without having being told the cause of death by the company surgeon, amongst the line of black body bags lying in the gutter in the light drizzle that morning. "Flesh friction!" The unmistakeable look of the corpse that had been bitten repeatedly by hundreds of mouths full of razor sharp teeth. Freal and the surgeon took a step back from their commander as he summoned over one of his other necanthrope assistants, a huge brute dressed in a black ECM cloak with a wicked looking sword and gorecannon on his belt.

"Its not one of us Drax!" Handed the gore cannon quills to Drax who followed his commanders lead and smelled the quills and laughed silently, shuddering under the great cloak with his efforts.

"What is it Drax that you find so amusing this miserable morn?" Oppugn asked to his palid faced killing machine, "its her!"

"Its who?"

"Its the Parody! Shessss here on sSStatic!" He grinned so manically that even the elder necanthrope was worried at the level of fury building up in the Preceptors assassin sent to assist in the removal of the insurgents.

"I dont care Drax, I want her dead."

"It will be my pleasure," Drax purred before bounding off into the mist.

Several things didnt add up, the resistance had almost halted their attacks over the last three days and then this last night specifically targetting their sensors and tactical displays. They where up to something those annoying little ebons and Thresher mercenaries, he made a point to upgrade and re enforce the outer perimeter with more units and to station more of his necanthropes though the city as defence against this rouge called Parody. It wasnt the fault of the militia legion, they had simply been outclassed so he decided not to punish the company, half of them where dead anyway.

Drax had known her for several hundred years, the little necanthrope had been the sole target, the very reason he hated himself and hated everything living or dead. The assassin subdued his thoughts of murder, he had to think of the chase first before he could get to the killing. His quarry was fast, nimble, tough and clever, but she was restricted to nocternal activities and would have a clear predetermined idea of where she would strike next and that made her predictable. Once he could corner her then he could use his superior strength and martial skills to overcome the weaker target.

Checking over the resources that where vital to the occupying force he decided on two targets that Parody might decide to attack next, she’d already ruined the command APC’s that contained the long range sensor arrays with thermite charges. That would leave various ammunition caches and perhaps the long range communications abilities, Parody probably wouldnt attack them so boldly so as to cause large explosions. No Parody had a long history of making large explosions but as delightfull as they where to her there was a juicier target, the Station Analysis tower. With its long range broadband communications, monitering systems for the entire city and outlying suburbs with thousands of cameras it had been a priority for Oppugn’s assault and now he figured it would be a target for the enemy. It was an easy target to defend against conventional attacks, the 950m tall communications tower was a deathtrap to anyone comming in on foot or attacking from the air, it had four large anti aircraft guns on top for defence but they wouldnt be able to target a small nimble flying necanthrope, they where for vehicles with a heat signature. Most of all his quarry liked tall structures, yes she would try to attack the communications tower, it was all too irresistable for her not to. Time to lay a trap and he had a few little tricks up his sleave yet that she didnt know about.

It had taken Drax the better part of the day to rig up the one and only way in from the roof with pressure sensors, small low tech items that didnt rely on cameras, infra red sensors or body heat that he knew she would be looking for. Just for effect he added a few of those to keep her interested, the more leathal effects would be at the bottom of the stairs, down where he could confine her in an enclosed area and deny her an escape. Stay, fight and die or flee and die, there was no windows that she could fold out of either. It was also in an area that was far enough away from the vital equipment to avoid any additional damage. This would be fun, it had been years since he’d stalked prey this elusive and dangerous.

For millions of years night had been the exclusive domain of predators, to feed on the weak and the meek cowered in fear of the darkness. Occasionally two of those predators would meet and squabble over a kill and the whole world fell silent as two equally dangerous foes fought with a ferocity that made the lessers know their place and the fitter animal survived. That rarely happened in nature though, they avoided each other out of a mutual self destruction but it was something Drax had been putting off for too long and now he had the edge on her after so long. Hidden in the drop ceiling the assassin waited for the first sign of the prey, a red light winked on the primitive relay panel he’d rigged up out of old spare parts, something had tripped the external door on the roof and now it was just a case of waiting.

Quick and keen eyed, avoiding the more advanced systems completely, even avoiding the most of the other pressure devices in the stairwell as the quarry moving quickly and was almost here, he held his breath.

Just when he thought that the Parody might have been scared off by the security several minutes went by and he never heard the bottom door open and then there was a small explosion and a scream. Success at last, he dropped from the harness using his weight to smash the flimsy ceiling tiles.

The toe-popper had caught Parody in the arch of her left foot and she sitting on the floor trying to remove the barbed spike of depleted uranium from herself when he crashed down. She’d become bigger in size since he’d last seen her on Mort and possibly more dangerous too but it was still the same target, quickly she fumbled for her sabre to fend him off but Drax began unloading at her with his silenced warmonger. The 12.7mm HESH rounds didnt go through her deathsuit but they did cause her to loose the weapon and sting a lot making her scream a bit more, he liked it when they screamed.

A blast from her gorecannon staggered Drax as long sharp hooks emerged from behind her back rending the cloak she had been wearing and tearing her dress, his own cannon on his left arm sending a return blast that ripped one of the cable like appendages off spraying green icor over the grey tiles. His deathsuit was tattered but still working, he hadnt counted on her gorecannon being completely disabled by the DU in its owners foot. It detached completely and scrambled over the floor at him like a vicious, white lace grub so he detached his own matt silver ,spiderlike senient cannon to fight it.

"Come here my little pretty!" She had managed to crawl to her feet and hop about still not being able to remove the spike in her foot that prevented her using flux, she was still too heavily armoured to be killed by his gun so he drew the sword called Blackfang and charged in, noticing her eyes widen in either anger or fear. Expecting a slash she ducked as he whistled the blade over where her throat had been milliseconds before but she didnt expect the kick, Parody was lifted off the floor and hit the wall with enough force to knock the concrete fascia off the bricks behind it. Stunned she lay on the floor as he closed the gap in one bound and the blade plunged in for a killing blow on the fallen foe, she was faking and spun out of the way, kicking his left ankle out making him fall heavily. The glyphed blade sending yellow sparks across the tiles and still managing cut 4 inches into the concrete floor, he yanked the blade out just in time to receive a blow across his temple from her pistol butt that sent stars across his vison.

That was dangerous that she’d gotten her pistol out and he slashed again connecting with her left upperarm giving her a terrible long gash that exposed bone from the preternaturally sharp blade. There was an explosion underneath him and his right leg buckled from the heavy magnum bullet, the bitch had shot him, he couldnt feel the pain yet so he slashed in again in a blind rage. A second shot missed and he chopped the blade down into her wings, his ebb enhanced strength and speed beginning to overcome her deathsuits defences. Down again went the blade dripping with blood and it severed tendons and arteries in her elbow, his own leg beggining to go numb now he had to finish her off quickly, another heavy slug went clean through his left shoulder tearing apart his deathsuit and making a ruination of his collarbone and scapula.

Parody blocked the blade again, it went in between the ulna and radius on her forearm and lodged up to the hilt, her right leg snaked up kneeing Drax in the chin and launched him backwards off her prone form, a poorly aimed shot from the magnum blowing off his left thumb. For now she had him off her and he was too crippled to reach her quickly so she ripped out the barb causing so much excruciating pain in her foot, hurting so badly she nearly passed out. Her left arm was such a bloody mess she barely recognised it as her own, fired off the last shot in the magazine and it missed his head by millimetres

The shot had woken Drax out of his daze and he sat up and pulled out his poinyard to see Parody get to her feet, her black satin dress soaked through with blood and she was weak with pain, she slid out the sword impaled in her arm and began advancing on him limping badly.

"So my pretty" he whispered through broken teeth, "goodbye my lovel.."

Parody brought the blade down in a diagonal slash that partially decapitated her antagonist and went deep in his chest cavity before exiting above his left hip.

"Come Fluffy, we have to kill some people," the gorecannon was only moderately damaged from its brawl with the now dead opponent, she knitted together most of her wounds to stop the worst of the bleeding, but she was still badly hurt and drained of flux. There where some burn gems that Sepulcher gave her so she decided to use them now and just fold back to the caverns once the charges where planted. The cannon ambled over to her missing three of its ten cable like hooked limbs and rubbed against her leg affectionately before licking the blood off it with a rasping pink tongue, "stop it, you can have some later beast, now go below and kill the humans."

For the second night in a row the screams of the dying echoed over the city of Certiceas and the ‘white death’ claimed another 23 victims. When Oppugn arrived an hour later to the gutted building he was most displeased to find the corpse of Drax impaled on a stainless steel hat rack imbedded in the concrete to meet him at the lift.

Century 15

Well, it's a righteous day for all of my young

It's a righteous day

Never return-

I will wait no more

Take no prisoners in the promised war-

You'll die for this

Die for this...

take them.

"Used the better part of an ebb medkit to patch her back together and 3 doses of kickstart to mend her foot. She barely made it back here." Defiant explained to Sepulcher and Parus as they looked down at the pale comatose form buried under the blankets. "Damn gorecannon tried to take my face off before it would let me near her, Rs’hk’s got it in a cage somewhere," Sepulcher checked over Parody’s vital signs herself before deeming her to be ok. "So she just folded in and passed out?"

"Yes madam, dont know if she did the mission or not, look at this sword she dragged back with her," he handed over the 4 foot long black blade covered in yellow glyphs he didnt recognise, the female necanthrope swallowed hard and refused to touch it.

"So, Parody, you finally killed him," she said quietly and sadly as if mourning a long lost friend. "I’ll check with intel and see if she’s done the job," Parus left them to their conversation alone and went out looking for his encryption and communications team. "Killed who?" Defiant asked Sepulcher completely innocently, she didnt answer and motioned him to put the sword away. "Thats another story for another day, lets just say its a sad one for now." They turned around to see that she’d woken up and was busy looking at them and shaking off the effects of the sedatives Defiant had given her earlier, "didnt have as much fun this time Parody?"

"No, he was there."

Sepulcher managed a weak smile for her wounded friend and smoothed back her white hair that was matted with blood in parts, "I guess it was always going to happen, Drax just picked the wrong side. He’s probably a lot happier now wherever he is."

"Wouldnt bet on it, he didnt suffer too much Sepulcher if that matters. I know you had a soft spot for him."

"That was a long time ago Parody, before the change, guess it dosnt matter now. Are you feeling ok?"

Parody managed to sit up, a lot of pale pink lines of newly healed flesh crossed her arm and shoulder and she examined them and checked her foot, "look like shit, feel like shit too." Her feathers where a mess of dried blood, Sepulcher noticed that some of them where tipped with black along with the ends of her long white hair, she hadnt noticed it before and couldnt remember when that had changed, "my foot hurts too." Defiant wrapped another blanket over her shoulders and wings to keep her warm as she began shivering, "I’ll go to my ship, I need rest there to heal, come on ebon, I havent all night and you’ve stolen my clothes." He backed away a little worried at the tone she was taking but Sepulcher urged him forward sensing that Parody was just making fun of him, "could I have him as a vassal for the next few hours Sepi," she purred. "He’s not for hire if thats what you mean Parody, cant you find your own men?" Sepulcher thought it only fair to let Defiant in on their little joke now seeing as he was beginning to take it a little too seriously, especially since Parody had taken to swatting him with her wings around the room. She used her ebb telepathy to tell him about it and just to look after her for an hour or two, he didnt look very impressed about the idea and Parody realised that Sepulcher was ruining the fun so she stopped.

"No scratching, biting and I want him returned in one peice. Promise?"

"Promise"

Sepulcher left them together, Parody never broke her promises although she’d been known to twist them a lot if she saw fit, Defiant reluctantly scooped up the equipment and weaponry and helped her hobble out of the medical bay to the Antioch.

Parus met up with the Archon tank squadron 50 kilometres north of the caverns, the 230ton, 27 metre long and 14 metre wide armoured vehicles sat idling under the enourmous canopy of the Fretrian ironbarks that covered the sides of the rolling hills. It was bad country to be a tank driver, the vehicles had a tough time getting here from the dropzone 340 kilometres west of their position and where undergoing some intensive maintaince on their 3 metre wide tracks. He hadnt worked with the squadron before, they where normally assigned to rear echelon duties whenever they where deployed in a hot area. Thousands of shaktars and about 600 Thresher troops where scattered through the forest checking for enemy incursions, their main threat was air superiority by the enemy, if they where detected thy could be bombed and straffed, fortunately they had enough ECM systems to block out most of the sensors carried in the roaming Killcopters and Bushranger gunships roaring about. Now that parody had taken out the uplink to the satelites above they where more or less free to roam as long as they kept out of sight.

"Marshal Filti," Lt Orterg summoned him over to a short wiry, dark haired man in a blue uniform with a cigarette dangling from his lower lip. Lord Gn’sh, his gaurd and Roderic Banks where inspecting the tanks for themselves and asking the technicians and mechanics questions.

"Sir, this is Colonel Krai Chan," the colonel saluted the Marshal and Parus emerged from the Sarge suit and sat on the shoulder and returned the salute, "good to have you here Mr Chan. Sorry we didnt get to meet before we left but we’re in a spot of bother as I explained on the radio." Chan stubbed out his smoke and wlked up to the suit where Parus was perched, "Ah, glad to be here. Who’d have thought it Marshal? Thresher troops on Static fighting alongside shaktars. Heard youve done the impossible with barely anything over the last week, nice work sir. We just want to get in and mix it up with the SLA tanks, been kept in rear gaurd for far to long."

Parus smiled, "you’ll get your chance alright. Theres about 200 or so M104’s running about on the lowlands near the city, they dont come into the hills much, too rough for LAV vehicles."

"Well, trackers dont like it much either sir. At 20-1 odds theres only so much we can do, still our friends the shaktars have busted out quite a few SAGM launchers and the old M104 dosnt like those much. What about artillery?"

Artillery was still a strong point with the enemy and it was manned by some very competent crews, SLA always did have good artillery crews though and it had claimed a lot of his pilots in the past.

"Theyve got two 450mm peices in the city and a lot of smaller, self propelled howitzers," Krai didnt look very enthusiastic now, "but colonel, their long range comms is busted up and so is the advanced sensor arrays thanks to a nice friendly necanthrope. So directed fire is limited from the big guns, keep moving and you shouldnt run into too much trouble."

"hmm." Krai thought that over for a second, "we’ve got friendly nec’s? Never met one sir and I dont care to really all things considered, still I’ll take your word for it. Be easier though if the 450’s where shut down, Archon’s dont move real quick."

"We will shut down the big guns for you marshal," came a reply from Lord Gn’sh who had decided to make his way over to the converstaion. "Too long we have had to let the Thresher and seer take out the important targets, I have special forces that will do the job by tommorow night. Dnk’rkl, come over here our allies have a problem that needs to be addressed before we assault the enemy."

Dnk’rkl pawed over the map that Parus provided him with and studied it carefully, Krai thought he’d seen a lot of big shaktars recently but this was a giant topping 8 feet tall and maybe weighing 500 pounds at the least. Dressed in some matt-black, light armour he didnt recognise and carried a lot of sharp, exotic looking knives with a silenced MAL AR. A group of six other similar equipped shaktars began comming out of the forest as the big one summoned them over and Roderic Banks was handed the map, "we need explosives Corpral, 2 large charges suitable for the task." Banks nodded and thought he could get them equipped within the hour, that brought the equivelent to a smile on the scarred face of Dnk’rkl. "We will have the guns destroyed by the first light Lord Gn’sh".

The preist handed over a braid to the huge shaktar and he tied it around his combat knife and they departed into the nearby camp, "he will do it Marshal, do not worry and make your plans to asault the enemy." Parus nodded and thanked the shaktar, knowing full well that the spec forces had a very slim chance of infiltrating the city and making it out alive again.

"Hey Bank’s" Parus stopped the man in the old battered Damascus powersuit, "you still a corporal?" Banks flipped his suit visor up, "well on account that Im sort of not really part of the militia sir, theres not much chance of being promoted. Shot maybe.."

"Well, its a long time overdue but youve got a field commision of Captain with the Thresher as of now. That means you can boss about hotheads like Orterg," smiled and winked to the lieutenant who clapped Banks on the back. "Show some respect for once Orterg and salute him," she managed a mockery of a salute in the Sarge suit and took out a low branch with the cannon attached to the right arm.

"I wont let you down Marshal"

"I know," came the quiet reply from Parus as Roderic left to follow the shaktars.

Dnk’rkl waited until the two scouts had taken the sentry down with a shock baton that froze his armour and rendered the human inside twitching, they quickly removed the helmet and slit his throat before dragging the body off into the darkness. His squad moved across the road silent as ghosts, whitenoise dampners muffled their footsteps and the Wrt’krr armour made them invisible to the enemies night vision equipent, his own suit had been in his family for 189 years. The human Banks had been at least 80% right about the sewer defences and that had gotten them in close enough to the stadium to acheive the mission, soon though the enemy would realise that their defences had been breeched when the dead men below didnt call in for their radio check. He made a series of hand signals to the squad and had them move into the complex, sirens started off in the distance, Dnk’rkl figured the game was up and they had to move quickly.

Crewed by 120 men each the 700 ton artillery peices occupied most of the stadium grounds, from their veiwpoint in the stands they could see figures down below near the guns and some rushing about looking very busy. Most of the crews where in bed sleeping but they still had a lot of gaurds, "see where the entrance is on the east, we can come up unobserved there. They have a lot of tents that will make it hard for the enemy to see us."

He would leave the sniper, Jkrt and his spotter Fry’rl in the stand while himself and the other 4 sneaked down to the maintaince entrance in the sports ground.

What they couldnt go around Jkrt eliminated with a silent puff from his 8mm rifle, the suit of amour and its former owner collapsed far too noisily for Dnk’rkl’s liking but there wasnt much he could do about it except move faster, he painted another gaurd with a ultraviolet laser and he too fell down with a slug in his chest from the sniper above.

Moving through the tents and jeeps scattered in the the area near the guns his squad had plenty of oppertunity to use their steel as it looked liked the area was alerted to their infiltration. Luckily most where still asleep or shaking off the effects of being woken up at 5am so they where slow to react, a soldier stumbled out of his tent wearing half a suit of blocker body armour in front of Dnk’rkl.

They looked surprised to see each other, on reflexes the shaktar punched him so hard in the face that the mans neck broke before he could raise an alarm, the gaurd on the guns began looking around for the sniper and taking cover while the 4 other shaktars emerged from the darkeness and killed them off one by one. Ty’ykwl one of the shaktars fell from a burst of machinegun fire as he closed in on the gun with his explosives. His partner, Shjkr grabbed the explosives and ran on to throw them up into the guns breech before she too was cut down by the machinegun. Seconds later the sniper silenced the machinegun crew but it was too late, they where all alerted now.

His second crew had better success with the number two gun but they where pinned down from fire by an APC’s cannons. Dnk’rkl lobbed some smoke grenades into the area in front of the APC to cover their escape but they didnt make it.

"Dnk’rkl, you had better move out otherwise the explosion will kill you," Fry’rl told him over the radio, gun crews where beggining to head towards the guns to check for sabotage and the timers still had 1 minute to go. "Negative, I will hold the humans back, you and Jkrt will fall back and report the success of the mission once the weapons are destroyed." He snatched up a FEN Power Reaper off a dead gun crew and turned it on the gunners heading to their weapons cutting them down in the open. A burst of 10mm pistol rounds hit him in the back but he shrugged it off and turned the machinegun on an officer that had emerged from the tents and raked the fire through the living areas causing massive casualties on the unarmoured occupants, the gun crews that where alive retreated to the safety of cover amongst the vehicles.

He retreated himself to a sandbagged machine gun emplacement nearby to take cover from the returning fire of the gun crews but caught a rifle round in the leg for his effort, blood was beginning to pour freely from his wounds and he could feel it inbetween the armour and his fatigues. The gunners made another charge for their weapons so he turned the machinegun on them again killing another 8 before the belt ran out. A figure in exo armour charged him with a bayonet from behind with a feirce warcry, Dnk’rkl threw the empty weapon at the human catching him in the chest and knocking him over. But the rest of the soldiers companions came charging out from behind a nearby truck. The MAL bucked in his hand cutting down 3 before their comrade on the ground shot the shaktar four times with his rifle and forced him back into the emplacement.

It was finished for Dnk’rkl he realised and he fished out two antipersonel grenades while the strength still remained in his arms. The humans charged in with their bayonets ready, he dropped the grenades in the dark and drew out his knife to try and kill 2 remaining aggressors, they stabbed him once each before he lopped the hand off one with the combat knife and then it was all over in a white flash of light.

Century 16

'Cos everybody wants what everybody's got

And everybody's got what everybody wants

Soldier lies bleeding where a church once stood

Ignore the machine

Ignore the machine

"What are you looking at?"

Defiant picked up his rifle and a bandolier of ammunition while Sepulcher followed him about the room. "Have a fun night? How is our little miss after last nights adventures?"

"I think she’ll be fine, seemed lively enough when I left her."

"I see."

"Meaning?"

"Oh, nothing"

The ebon was sure she was insinuating something but wouldnt be as forthcomming as she usually was, he just hoped she didnt know the half of it so he let the matter rest.

"Thats ok Defiant, what happens between you and the lovely Parody is your business and it would be improper for me to intrude."

"Damn right it would"

Sepulcher managed to subdue a wicked smirk but the keen eyed ebon picked it up immediately, some of the other ebons and shaktars in the base where rushing out with weapons to join the battle which was beginning to rage along a 20km front to the east.

"Nothing happened like you think it did you dirty old woman."

Sepulcher decided to drop the subject, "come along my little friend, the war wings its way toward us even now."

Things certainly had changed for the worse, incensed at having loosing so many resouces the Preceptors forces where launched in a massive assault on the Karatian Mountains where the resistance movement was holding out west of the city of Certiceas. Most of the main warfare was taking place north of the caverns but both sides where desperately trying to find a flank to punch through and get in behind. Though smaller in number the resistance had the advantage of manuverability, where ever a gap began to form as the shaktars and ebons where beaten back by superior numbers Parus had a company of Thresher suits bolster the fighters. Sepulcher had taken the Marshal to be a be nothing more than an adrenaline speed freak with a big gun and a flying powersuit, but now admitted she was wrong and he gained a lot of new found respect. She watched a tactical display of the forces being deployed on a little GPS unit while she walked with Defiant and had to admit, when push came to shove Parus Filti dropped the game of fisticuffs, hauled out and started blasting.

"This looks bad," Sepulcher stopped looking at the GPS and paid heed to the ebons worried voice. "Tanks about 20 and maybe 30 APC’s ar comming up the gorge and over the hills, looks like a whole mechanised battalion about 30 minutes away." She picked up her own pair of binoculars and looked for herself. "I’ll contact Filti and let him know", she said while watching the advancing force and their advance troops where taking a severe battering from the vehicles return fire. While Sepulcher concentrated on contacting Parus, Defiant watched as the M104’s advanced quickly over the rolling hills towards them, one of them took a hit in the side from a SAGM missle and lurched to a stop with smoke comming out of it while its companions opened up on the offending infantry squad and blew them off the face of the hill. The M104 managed to power up its turbines again and continued rolling forward, it made Defiant feel saddened to see the enemy warmachine keep comming like that.

"He said that he’s got some tanks and more anti armour squads on their way, but we should move and delay the enemy as much as possible."

Defiant laughed quietly, "we dont really have much to delay them with, lets move down to the rocks and keep our eyes open for any targets of oppertunity." She agreed and got on the radio to the friendly forces in the region to keep their heads down until help arrived. There where so few it made her shake her head in frustration, "theres a company of ebons and shaktars and theyre a kilometre behind us in the woods."

"Thats not good, we’re too far forward."

"You choose this spot!" Sepulcher snarled.

"No I didnt! I was following you!"

"Shush and shoot something then."

"You are the spotter, find me something."

The arguing stopped when they felt the ground shaking slightly underneath them and an eeire metallic creaking noise that reminded Defiant of a rusty hinge. Pebbles began falling from the surrounding large rocks they where hiding in amongst and then came the roar of a massive engine off in the distance, "whats that?" Sepulcher asked meekly, unable to discern the direction of the noise as it echoed off the hills. "Beats me, hope its friendly," the rumbling gave him an unusual quaver to his voice as he lay on the rock and Sepulcher pointed over the valley to something big moving out of some light forest.

"My god, didnt realise they where that big!"

Defiant was about to say something smart but he saw the bulk of the Thresher tank for himself, "theres 3 of them and some of our APC’s over there too."

Commander Rodney Taylor called his tanks to a halt and made sure their ECM was running at optimal levels to confuse the SLA vehicles, he whiped some sweat away from his palid features and thin brown hair before giving the order for the tanks to engage their reactive cameoflage. "Count 23 heavies and 36 light units, no air support yet on sensors, lead unit is 15km and closing. Looks like theyre being slow and steady," Captain Regel replied from her own tank the ‘DarkMaiden’ 30 metres to his left flank. Captain Sciroco in the ‘H-8 Ball’ was confirming with his companion, "yep we’ve got a positive firing solution at 10500 metres commander, loading a tactical mix of incendry and HEAT."

It would be the first time in the 10 years as a commander that Taylor had seen frontline combat, normally they where kept in the far rear as mobile artillery and he was feeling uncertain and took a drink of water from his canteen. His tank the ‘Draconis’ was 400 years old give a decade or two and it had been passed down from generation to generation of tankers as long as anyone could remember. She’d been through a lot of scapes in the past but he had his first feelings of doubt, still, they where in a optimal position on the ridge with only their turrets exposed. "So many of them," he thought to himself and gave the orders for Darcy the gunner to load in HEAT in both barrels of the twin 195 millimetre gauss assisted cannons.

Around the flanks of the tanks a small company of shaktars and the odd ebon set up in hastily dug foxholes with their missile launchers and machine guns. For what it was worth Taylor was glad to be behind the massive amounts of armour, the APC’s moved well back into the tree’s keeping out of sight. He checked outside the tank and inspected the cameoflage to see if the reactive polymers where working, they had a nice mix of slate grey and yellow-green grass which blended into the area quite well, he then closed the hatch to button up and wait for the enemy to come into range. Back behind him in the AA bell-turret was Yanjik their air defence gunner was busy checking over the belts of ammunition for the 25mm cannons, he could only see the mans boots in the dark confines of the vehicle, somewhere below was his bad tempered driver Donna Aquin who had been strangely silent the whole way in. "Probably scared like the rest of us" he thought, they couldnt outrun any of the enemy, all they could hope to do was kill an awful lot of them and hopefully not die in the process. They where much slower vehicles but the firecontrol on the Archon was the stuff of nightmares for the enemy, once they where locked in there was no hope.

"Shit, thats got to sting," Defiant chuckled as the lead M104 crossed the top of a hill and was blown backwards spinning over it again, a great plume of white smoke covered the top of the hill from what he guessed must have been a smoke round. The other tanks undaunted or maybe going to fast to stop ploughed through the smoke looking for the attacker, four more of them where left in 20 feet wide craters, burning wrecks from the massive shells being hurled at them from the Archon’s.

The reports from the weapons finally arrived at their position and rolled over them like thunder, "cut them apart like like they where made of cardboard," Sepulcher said quietly.

"Reverse us back 10 metres and reload!" Taylor barked the order to all three tanks as they finished firing. Underneath him Darcy the gunner ejected both the spent casings that where as wide as a mans leg and chambered another 2 HEAT shells, "good to go", the young man announced 8 seconds later. "They arnt comming through that smoke commander," Yanjik announced to him from his vantage point, "looks like theyre heading down to the right at about, see some APC’s though that are gunning it towards us."

Taylor wasnt worried about the APC’s they had nothing that could breech the Archon’s armour, it was the M104’s that would cause trouble if they ganged up. He relayed this onto the ground troops because they stood to loose the most if the APC’s opened up on them. "Cant get a solution on the enemy heavies, looks like theyre busting right hard to 3 oclock, too much ground clutter in the way," Regel announced from her tank. Taylor had a look at his terrain mapping system, she was right. The enemy would go down to the right and ford an interection in two rivers and head up the second valley behind them, "Darcy, load an incendry in number one and two, we’ll lay down some nice thick smoke for them."

"That tanks comming over here, I’d really rather it didnt," Sepulcher watched the lumbering juggernaut ford the river and roar its way up their little hill and stop 200 metres away. "You could always go knock on the side and ask nicely," Defiant was smiling at her, it was the best dig he’d had all morning to her smart comments. The smile was short lived as the Archon fired both guns down the valley, the blast kicked up a wall of sharp stonechips and flying debris that sent them scuttling for cover in amongst the granite boulders.

"Couple of dumb ebons hiding in those rocks over there", Yanjik pointed his cannons down towards their last know location. "Quit screwing around up there and keep your eyes peeled for gunships!" Taylor snarled back at the miscreant gunner who’d been starting to get on his nerves, "Darcy, load us up with HEAT again", he said in a softer tone to the other gunner. He began checking the sensors for emissions, the first came in at 8900 metres and he did some quick calculations on the fire control, "ok Dark Maiden and H-8 Ball, load up on high ex while I plot you some zones." By the time the firecontrol had calculated the trajectory allowing for wind, distance and target speed the other tanks had adjusted their suspension to get the turrets at the right angle. This was something they had a lot of practice at so Taylor was hoping for results. "Ok, feeding the results to your fire control now, 4 shells each in fire for effect."

"I do beleive that tank was pointing guns at us," Sepulcher commented angrily as the other two across the valley began launching shots into the air making her look up for possible air attack. "What are they doing?" asked Defiant, his ears still ringing from the earlier salvo, she shrugged and kept her head down, "dont know, but I hope it dosnt come down near us!"

It was hard to tell from the sensor readings if they’d scored any direct hits but the enemy seemed undaunted in any case and he could hear their turbines screaming up the vally like angry bees at 150km/h. His first shot caught an M104 in the front section of its armour, the impact driving it nose first into the ground where it slid along for a few hundred metres in the soft brown earth. The second volley took the turret off another one in a shower of sparks and black smoke before catching fire and slewing to a halt. "reload HEAT! Get us moving Donna, down the hill!" They where sitting ducks up there on the hillside as evidenced by the return fire which began exploding around them, she didnt need to be told twice. The Dark Maiden took several rounds on the front of its hull which shook the vehicle badly but it didnt penetrate, the SLA, more used to softer targets like jeeps, buildings and people didnt have any anti armour rounds because their enemies never had armoured vehicles. This would have been a first for the SLA tankers as well Taylor remembered, the H-8 Ball began opening up on the mass of M104’s who had stung their wingman and blew another two into metal confetti.

Finally the dazed crew of the Dark Maiden got themselves together to begin charging down the hill guns blazing following the inititive of their commander. Taylor worked himself into a frenzy locking in targets for the gunners, right now he was too busy to be scared even though a shell hit the back of the tank and made it ring like a bell. Up above Yanjik began firing off bursts from the 25mm at something, he prayed it wasnt attack choppers or dropships. They where moving at top speed of 50km/h over rough ground that threatened to shake his kidneys out his throat, Donna was driving like a woman possessed but the M104’s where having a tough time trying to hit her especially when she ran over them.

Defiant watched as Sepulcher raised her flintlock rifle up in one swift manuever, he’d heard that she was a master at ebb blast kinetics and hadnt seen it for himself yet. The six Bushranger gunships ripped over the top of them at well over 200km/h firing their cannons and missiles at the Thresher tanks sending showers of sparks off their thick armoured hulls. The din in the valley was overwhelming, it sounded like giants where pounding on anvils mixed with the scream of turbines and explosions. Her blast bomb detonated in between two of the gunships as they made their pass, Defiant watched as it stripped the stabilising fins off one and forced another to spin violently to one side and fly out of control, the pilot barely saving his craft as it skimmed over the treetops by a few metres. The other was doomed and began an uncontrolled spin into the melee below where it joined a mass of burning metal littering the ground and water. The 25mm guns where taking their toll on the passing gunships as well forcing the others to leave, smoke pouring from their engines and torn flanks they limped off to the safety of their own lines. "And that little boy, is why you should fear your elders," Sepulcher ducked down next to him and smiled, he just thanked his ancestors that she was on his side, chambered a round in his 30-30 and began looking for softer targets.

"Theyre routed!" Screamed the crew of the H-8 Ball together and their tank continued blasting into the rear of the fleeing M104’s, "Dont pursue! Just nail them in the arse if you can," ordered Taylor as his tank began ascending the incline up to the origional position. He watched as the last 3 remaining M104’s disappeared from his sensors and breathed a sigh of releif, "come on lets get up this hill and help out the poor bloody infantry!"

Donna cheered below from the drivers seat, "time to work some acts of unspeakable evil on lightly armoured vehicles and infantry commander?"

"Yeah!" Yanjik chipped in, "finally something me and Miss 25millimetre can chew up!"

"Easy on the ammo Yanjik, we aint out of trouble yet, Darcy, load her up with hi-ex and incendry." The boy grinned eagerly and shoved two more shells into the guns, today the SLA where going to be punished so badly he thought that they’d never come back to this peacefull planet again.

"I cant beleive you shot down a freeking chopper! Thats just wrong!" Defiant yelled over the explosions in the valley from burning munitions, they worked their way further west away from the choking smoke and heat of the inferno below. Sepulcher just skipped along behind him like a little girl with her flintlock across her shoulders and said nothing. She was obviously too proud and full of herself judging by the grin on her stained face. Sounds of battle and the roar of engines could be heard over the next rise so they made for the trees where other ebons and shaktars where busy blasting away at the retreating enemy in the distance.

He picked up the radio of Sepulcher and decided to let Parus know that they’d beaten back the enemy for now, the marshal was delighted but he was sorry to say that they would need the tanks further south. The enemy had massed and was causing them a lot of trouble, he could see off in the distance comming from the north some Thresher and Shaktar dropships heading that way leaving vapour trails in the cool morning air.

"Guess we better round up this bunch of hooligan shaktars and ebons and head south then Defiant." His companion added now that she had settled down fom her elation, "how far south?"

"About 15 kilometres through some disgustingly rough country or about 20 kilometres if you go west first up onto the tablelands by vehicle."

"I think we should hitch a ride, maybe you could go and use your arts of persuasion on Parody?"

"It will be midday soon, that would take a lot of persuading"

"Im sure you’d enjoy trying though"

"Leave it alone Sepulcher"

For now she decided to stop teasing the ebon who was so smitten, "Im still going to warn you to be carefull around her Defiant. You could get killed in an eyeblink if she so decided to do so."

Besides, she had aims to try and get her great great grand daughter Iger hitched to someone like Defiant, they’d make a much nicer couple she thought.

Century 17

It moves between us

For one moment

Like opium and your heart

We've remedies from the ancient gods

To heal the morals of our shadows

Devil, come to me, open up the door

Lead me ciahra to the center of it all

She opened and cried with arms outstretched

Lay down next to me, come take what's left

She cried

A single shot rang out of the forest in the gloom of the dimming afternoon Sepulcher could make out the dark form of Defiant falling into a clump of Rsulie bushes, dropped like a sack of bones. The terrain was too tight for the shooter to be more than only about 30 or 40 metres away so she ran for the cover of large tree with heavy butress roots, catching breifly in the corner of her eyes the flicker of movement somewhere off to her left.

"Sepulcher"

A grating masculine voice asked in mocking childlike overtones.

"Sepulcher"

Another voice, similar with a soft genderless accent called out slightly closer.

"She’s hiding near the tree and she wont come out."

There was at least three of them now closing in on her position from the sounds of vegetation being brushed aside.

"We have a little task for you this evening Sepulcher."

The childish voice of maybe a little boy pinned out from only a few metres away.

"If she’s gone native we may have to exterminate her!"

Womans voice, tinged with an element of excitement, reminded Sepulcher of Parody in one of her insane rants.

"Yes, yes, YES!" A teenager agreed.

"If she dont come out then we set the gorecannons in after her", a deep baritone voice finally making her realise that she was surrounded so she decided to emerge. If worst came to worse she might be able to blast her way out yet, that thought quickly evaporated as she saw the eight figures of a necanthrope union.

They where a twisted mockery of an ebon family aged between 80 and 10 years old, clad in black deathsuits and simple, coarse knee length robes and heavily armed with a variety of obscenely large pistols and gorecannons.

"We’ve just popped in to see how your going Sepulcher. The Preceptor would like to know how your dealing with the Parody problem." The male who appeared in his 40’s approached her while the rest held back silent and watching her with keen black eyes. "Would be a pity to tell him that things arent going as well as planned for our annexing of Static, slight problem with a rouge and her little ship amongst other things."

"I havent had a chance to eliminate her," Sepulcher drew on her long used skills of lying to placate the eager union from just setting upon her as the more excitable member prowled around like hunting cats.

"You where told to either reach a peace settlement or eliminate the resistance completely. Within seven days no less, its been six and we have not heard from you for most of that time, not even nibblets of information on enemy numbers and intentions!"

"She’s become something, stronger and more powerful than I can deal with, add to that the Preceptor landed more troops here and thats made the defenders more inclined to fight back rather than deal with a perceived threat." She’d done well, years of corperate subterfuge was paying off and the union seemed placated for now and stopped pointing their guns at her person. "Im not a combat agent, I trained in company finance at Meny and I doubt what skills I have with force kinetics would kill her outright."

"Powerfull enough to stop an elder union welp?" The small impish member of the union that looked like a little boy quizzed her gripping his chrome revolver in tiny hands and sneering at her from on top of a buttress root. Sepulcher was unsettled by the revelation of the union being an elder one but held back her fear, if they where sent here by the Preceptor than they could well be twice or even three times her age.

"Probably", she let out with complete conviction and that caused the union to communicate amongst themselves using their unatural shared mind. They might look like individuals to the untrained eye but they shared each others memories, skills and abilities at the same level of proficientcy, which made them dangerous opponents indeed.

"You sound like you admire her welp. Any reason for this?" the imp hissed from his perch looking for all the world like a deranged elf in a Slayermas display in December, all he needed she thought was snow and bells.

"Ive know her since I was 17, you’d know that too if you’d bothered researching."

The one Sepulcher had nicknamed ‘Nana’ smashed her across the head with a MAL assault rifle in a deceptively fast move from the unnaturally strong, withered arms that left her dazed on the ground and her vision swimming.

"Respect, Preceptor and us for we are his emmisaries," Nana hissed through her rotting grey teeth and Gramp’s pulled her back off before she could inflict more injuries. "He is your father and the reason for your being. Enough idle chit chat, you will take us to the place where the Parody is!" They all chimed in at once, hoised her off the ground and began making her lead them out of the forest.

"Cant be trusted this one, we’ll leave it to the Preceptor when we get back to reinforce the bond."

Using any flux would have the union all over her in a split second, there was no way to forewarn Parody and doubt crept into her mind if she should even try. Her life could be so much easier without Parody leading her off on some fool crusade, just do what the Preceptor wanted and that would mean she could go about her life normally. Or for what approached normality for a necanthrope, there was even that special bond to the Preceptor that all necanthropes held for him and making him happy would make her happy. But there was the slight complication, Parody had lost the bond and deep in her being Sepulcher knew Parody was her friend, they’d always been friends, would the next few hours be the end of Parody? What then would the rest of eternity hold for her without her and the guilt of being the cause of her death.

If she didnt help kill Parody then there where thousands of unions like this one that would hunt her down and kill her and face the rest of her eternity contemplating the treason. For the first time in hundred of years Sepulcher began weighing these facts over and she didnt like it because they where thoughts that had long since festered and gone rotten. There want enough time to think her way out of it, they where at the caverns already and everyone except Nana snuck in and the killing began, wounded in their beds, doctors, technicians and soldiers alike went down under fleshfriction and bullets.

It took 30 minutes to kill at least 500, mostly unarmed and wounded personel, such facts where a way of life to Sepulcher, she was a Stygmatyr agent trained and had seen worse but it still annoyed her.

"She’s not here! But her ship is, we will wait."

"You better live."

Defiant felt like someone had hit him with a brick and there was congealed blood in his eyes so he couldnt see, "a necanthrope, shot me, dont know where Sepulcher is!"

"Shush! You will give away our position to the enemy," the little girl voice and smell was definately Parody though and she began clearing his eyes with water from his canteen. "Came looking for you I did, someone shot you in the head but either your skull is too thick, they where a bad marksman or just lucky. I already smelled the union, I think they are headed to the caves. Sepulcher is alive still as far as I know, unless they gobbled her up, lucky they didnt eat you, probably taste bad, stupid ebon."

"Why did you come looking for us anyway, thought you’d be off doing spooky stuff or killing the Preceptors forces?" Most of the clouds had gone from his head now and he was feeling much better from her healing until she slapped him and told him to keep his voice down, "dont make me tell you three times, you might be destined for great things but there is always others. There is maybe a thousand enemy running around in this forest right now, looks like they overran the defenders or simply walked in."

"Destined for what?" He said a lot more quietly, wondering what the hell she was on about and began looking for his rifle, it was sitting underneath the gorecannon so he decided to leave it for now rather than risk a digit by annoying it. "Something special, now can you move or has the bullet rattled your brain too badly?"

"I’ll be ok once Im on my feet," she helped him up gently and shooed the gorecannon away from his gun, "are we going to rescue Sepulcher?" Parody shugged and made sure that he could focus and stand on his own before letting him out of her grasp, "she may not want to be rescued."

"I dont understand why?"

"No you dont."

"Get your rifle and lets go. Now and here is not the time"

Footsteps could be heard in the undergrowth so Defiant snatched up his rifle and the gorecannon climbed up on its owners shoulders, "how the heck are we getting out of here anyway?"

"Just stop asking questions and hold onto me."

Being still a foot taller than her he had to wrap his arms around her wings and shoulders which seemed to irritate her and the gorecannon but a moment later they ceased to be in the forest as she folded them out to somewhere else.

"You can let go now. We’re here"

"I dont know, your kind of cute, smell nice and I like you."

No one had ever genuinely said that to her as far back as she could remember it bought a rush of confused emotions over her. Defiant looked on at what appeared to be an embarrassed Parody who had a hint of red in her cheeks and laughed, so she punched him playfully in the stomach and pushed him away.

"Well, looks like there is a soft spot to you after all."

"If Sepulcher put you up to that I’ll chain her to the fusion generator for a week. Dont do it again," he was about to interject but she saw it comming before he could say anything else. "I wont say that twice Defiant, it-it wouldnt work and we both know that."

"Could if we tried."

"No, I wont allow it." Almost as a defensive reflex Parody’s deathsuit emerged from underneath her skin and she began bulking it with flux to increase protective capabilities.

"Its beautiful," Defiant said quietly as the opaque whitish-blue armour took on its full shape, swimming with glyphs and runes he’d never seen before flared and twisted with blue balefire as they where charged with flux. He’d never seen this level of work done to a deathsuit, "Intruder did some of the work on this 25 years ago in secret, when the change came to me. Like you I have a destiny to accomplish for him as well. For now yours is to stay well back from the fighting. Here take my rifle, 8mm wont be enough."

The FEN carbine was 4 times the weight of his normal sniper rifle and he was straining to carry it so he set it up nearby on its bipod on a rock outcrop where he could get a clear veiw of the cave entrance. Parody simply leaped off the cliff and began a fast glide down on her wings giving an occasional beat to increase altitude and speed.

Down below Defiant could see 20 figures in a line, one of the nec’s he’d seen earlier was executing some of the ebon resistance with a pair of revolvers while the others looked on and applauded. To his disgust Sepulcher was standing with them, at least she wasnt enjoying herself as openly as the where, "traitor," he muttered and drew a bead on the executioner as he reloaded the revolvers and set about the killing the remaining five captives. The necanthrope was the same short little one that looked like a kid, who’d jumped out of a bush and shot him earlier, held his breath as the crosshairs of the nightvision scope adjusted automatically for the range and then there was the press of the trigger, a little too heavy for his liking but the effect was satisfactory.

Sepulcher forced herself to watch as ‘evilelf’ took aim at the remaining 5 nurses and doctors they’d dragged out of the hospital APC, then all of a sudden his head literally exploded in a pink mist and his corpse hit the ground like a broken doll. The rest of the union screamed together and clutched their heads, that brought a slight smile to her face before she folded behind a pile of rocks nearby when the sound of the gunshot finally reached her.

Taking advantage of the confusion below Defiant formulated fold that would take him to another rock outcrop 200 metres to his left where he could still see the entrance, he caught breifly the flash of white streak across the small clearing and a flash of blue before settling back in to take aim on the enemy. Another was down with a 3 foot long spike of pinkish ice in his chest that extended out through the middle of his shoulder blades, he struggled with it and cutting his hands on the slippery, razor sharp shard, the others began heading for cover of the entrance after seeing their comrades go down. One of them ran to get the injured necanthrope to safety and began dragging him back to the cover of the caves, never one to pass up an oppertunity Defiant put five rounds through her chest and shoulders while the other writhed on the ground. The TK sheild the enemy had up stopped a lot of the damage but it flickered under the heavy rounds and failed just in time for the last three slugs to finish the task. Now it was time to look for the traitor and finish her off too.

It was a particually messy way to die, Sepulcher watched in silence as Parody landed near the wounded necanthrope ‘Dad’ and began hacking him to death with Blackfang. Maybe he was tough or maybe she was taking her time to prolong the suffering but in any case the end eventually came in a flurry of blows to its face and head that finally finished him off. Bullets and goreblasts from inside began impacting into Parody’s own TK shield but it held and she began walking slowly into the entrance glowing with a cold blue light, pistol and sword drawn. She’d seen Parody get angry like this before never to this level of pure unadulterated hatred that emanated from her with palpable force, it began to make her feel slightly ill. The dilemma struck again, she could try to kill Parody and save her own skin with the Preceptor or gun down the remaining necanthropes with her friend, she hadnt quite reached a decision when the grenade hit her pile of rocks, making her ears ring and knocking her down. She was quite sure now that the sniper was using Parody’s carbine as it had both the force to take a necanthrope head off and it was fitted with a grenade launcher. Whoever it was had her pinned down from somewhere above, there was only one place she could go to fold out of the area and that was in the cave itself, she didnt want to go in there. Judging by the screaming, swearing and cries of the dying the union was well and trully getting the unliving hell knocked out of them. ‘Nana’ made a run for the caves entrance to get away from the fury inside, she was missing an arm from the elbow down and had a look of utter horror that Sepulcher had never seen on a necanthrope before. Parody folded in front of the charging nec and cut her off halfway, grabbed her around the throat and literally stripped the life out of the fleeing enemy with her claws. She could feel the enourmous flux discharge from Parody just before it twisted the very fabric of her being like a sharp knife being run through her internals forcing her to blackout.

Century 18

Living in a nightmare zone

Wherever I lay my hat

That's my home, yeah!

"Terrible, terrible," Roderic put a comforting hand as best he could on the Defiant’s shoulder as he wept openly along with a handfull of remaining ebons who where just as miserable. He couldnt beleive the carnage himself, even Rs’hk who was normally as cool as they come couldnt stand to look inside the cave for very long but they had to go in and look for any wounded that where still in there. The enemy had done a thorough job, the shaktar eventually found a handfull of survivors who had sought refuge in the foldship and hidden. Most where so shocked by the event that they refused to talk about it, oblivious to the nearby battle only 2 kilometres away where the Thresher and shaktar forces where engaged in a monsterous tank and infantry battle that lit up the night sky with flashes like lightning.

"We better get the ship and gather up whats left, time grows short," Rs’hk interupted the greiving noticing a few shells whistle overhead and land 900 metres away. "Where is Parody, Defiant?" The ebon ignored the question from Roderic for a moment before snapping back to some sense of lucidity, "locking Sepulcher in the brig. You are right we should go."

Parus was in dire straits, his forces had fought bravely and where taking a heavy toll on the enemy but they where losing ground at a rapid rate, the loss of the caves was bad because it contained most of their more experienced medical staff and the mobile field hospitals could only do so much. He’d had 5 tanks damaged to the point where they couldnt fire, 7 dropships destroyed outright, at least four thousand infantry dead with a lot of wounded that needed urgent attention. They had a bigger base in the table lands 20 kilometres from the front that could handle the repairs to vehicles, patch up the wounded, repair equipment and bring in more supplies. His remaining dropships where relegated to ferrying backwards and forwards men and supplies, he was confident that he could retreat and save the bulk of the force but there would be at least another 3000 casualties doing so. There was just too many of the Preceptors forces and the enemy seemed inexhaustable, sadly he gave the orders to pull back to the remaining front line forces in a series of stages as they would begin a running battle across rolling hills and plains. The Thresher would be the last out, using their superior speed and firepower to cover the slower shaktars and ebons. Lord Gn’sh wasnt happy about pulling back but even the shaktar realised that it was better to regroup in force to defend, "we may not be so unlucky yet," the shaktar pointed to the sky above them. "Looks like the foldship survived," Parus was sceptical of the tiny craft being able to do much against the overwhelming numbers, it wasnt much bigger than a dropship, but if Parody decided to help out then he wouldnt say no. Missiles from over the horizion from enemy positions in Certiceas began slamming into the craft as it thundered overhead firing its mass drivers into the enemy units and dropships, its TK shields held and the emergency channel in Parus’ helmet crackled to life. "This is Rs’hk, myself and Parody will begin clearing the skies while you pull back. The pink bellied, bilge vermin have nothing that will stop us!" He snarled the approximation of a laugh and a strangled warcry that hurt Parus’ ears over the radio, "good, good, see you back in Thalariad then." There wasnt much hope he thought of seeing the crazed shaktar and its mistress again he thought, until they started using the foldships gorecannon began raking the skies of enemy gunships and roared off towards the city. His tactical overlay showed that the enemy took her as a very serious threat indeed and withdrew all its airpower away from the frontlines which would make it a lot easier on the troops.

Oppugn couldnt get a positive identification on the enemy that was last seen heading his way, the small lock on from missile batterys showed it breifly as being a dropship. But then everything went to a wall of static as something began jamming his remaining sensor arrays with a powerfull ECM surge. Parody had finally been flushed out of her bolthole but it was costing him dearly, in the darkness he was losing his airforce at a rapid rate as it was hunted down and destroyed by the squadron. Around him in the comms room the chatter of battlefield reports flooded in reporting entire units hit by some weapon that ripped them apart in their vehicles and armour and his missile crews had lost the target. Without an air cap the Thresher would rule the skies once again and he didnt want that happening so he gave the order for them to pull back, that would mean most of his groundforces would be severly disadvantaged until he could sort out the marauding intruder. Rather than have them push forward under the Thresher forces he gave the order for them to dig in and make a line of firebases to defend against the flying powersuits, it meant halting the advance but if they where caught out in the open by Thresher forces they would loose entire divisions by morning. Just to be sure that they had enough troops he deployed the last of his reserves from the city and made moves to abandon it completely sooner or later they would have to get mobile and the city had been a beachhead for long enough. There where hundreds more like it anyway they had to conquer, assuming the Preceptor gave him the forces to do so and Oppugn had no reason to beleive that he wouldnt, all things considered they had been successful enough to warrant it, if they could beat the shaktars and Thresher here then they could beat them anywhere.

The large town of Thalariad had most of its population leave days earlier and had since been replaced by Parus’ forces overnight and it was quickly becomming a destination for thousands of volanteers who had poured in from over the planet as word got around that help was needed. Former and ex operatives, milita forces that had become loyal to Static, medical and engineering personel and the obligatory civilians who felt strongly enough to defend their planet. He was dead tired and turned over command to Lord Gn’sh, they’d been running and fighting all night but the invaders had halted suddenly at the appearance of the foldship. From what he’d seen on his reports the Antioch had literally annihilated the enemies airforce by a good eighty percent and wrecked a lot of their armoured vehicles. She hadnt come out of it unscathed though, there where a lot of blast marks along its sides and hundred of bullet holes in its hull, Rs’hk and a squad of other technicians where doing some maintaince on the engines which had taken a particular beating. Apparently the ship would ‘grow back’ in time but that could take awile, still, it was a blessing that the enemy had gone to ground less than 25km away and looked to be staying that way for some time.

"I would like it if you could pass on my personal thanks to Parody if you could Rs’hk, you two did a hell of a job up there." Rs’hk put down his welder and decided to leave the job up to some of the younger shaktars to go over and greet the marshal, though he kept a close eye on them, he didnt even trust Parody with the ion engines let alone apprentices. "Will do when she comes back, you look tired Marshal Filti, why dont you bunk down on the ship for a few hours. I’ll make sure that your not disturbed. Dont take your DU ammunition onboard, the ship doesnt like it when people do that."

"Thanks Rs’hk, dont worry, we ran out of DU two days ago, down to old fashioned high ex and other stuff." His newest captain, Roderic was keeping busy as usual fixing armour and repairing weaponry in the ships hold barely even noticing the sarge suit come to a stop in the in the middle of all the equipment and hardware.

"Sorry Marshal, didnt recognise you. Need a hand with anything?" Roderic helped the officer out of his armour, "no thankyou Roderic, just a quiet spot to sleep for a few hours." The sapper led him off to the ships living quarters, "I’ll wake you if your needed Marshal, looks like its going to be a quiet few days anyway." Parus thanked him quietly and was left in the small forward cabin, he had planned to take a shower but fell asleep almost as soon as he sat down on the bunk.

"Would someone mind telling me what the hell is going on?"

"I would like to know too Parody, just where we are and why we’re here."

Sepulcher didnt like the look on Parody’s face as she stopped walking in the filthy, sodden street full of dirty puddles and litter. It was that feral look she had when the urge came to her, made even more intimidating by the streaks of dirty water running down over her alabaster features.

"Downtown level 14, we’re here to meet some important people. Be thankfull I am going to this much trouble Sepulcher, a bullet would be so much simpler but we may need your skills, traitor." It had a definate feel of being a one way trip, even Defiant seemed subdued as he held Sepulcher’s shackles finally comming to realise the other side to Parody and the necanthropes warning that she was indeed a two edged sword.

"Im not a traitor, Im a survivor."

That caused Parody to shake the water out of her wings angrily and advance on the ebon and necanthrope with the gorecannons tendrils lashing about violently as it sensed her mood, "you have no idea of what you are. After all these years you have no idea, well today the sleeper will awake and see for itself."

"What about Static?" Defiant dared to ask thinking that some change of topic might defuse the potentially dangerous situation, "Static will look after itself, by now the shaktars and Thresher will be landing in force. Now come along, we waste valuble time."

What inhabitants there where wisely avoided the trio as Parody picked her way through the featureless streets, most would be off rioting, looting and all manner of anti social acts further up on the social strata. In a city where men would kill each other for a can of beer the recent changes at the top made little difference except that they could do it without impunity. Defiant felt a tinge of sadness for the humans and others trapped here on Mort, most would be starving within a few days as the Preceptor cut supplies to quell the rioting. Most would fall to some already lower existance and begin preying on those weaker than themselves in their own ranks which was exactly what he had intended for them.

After several more twists and turns their winged companion stopped outside a dirty little speakeasy located in a street full of broken glass and the occasional body, its sign had been torn down and was little more than broken neon tubes and wiring on the sidewalk. "Come along now", she made them both go down the flight of concrete stairs slick with grime and lined with a wrought iron lace before following them down.

Century 19

I've waited hours for this

I've made myself so sick

I wish I'd stayed asleep today

I never thought this day would end

I never thought tonight could ever be

This close to me

"Care for a drink?"

A dark figure asked from the end of a small bar illuminated by a small yellow light bulb that seemed out of place in downtown because it wasnt completely trashed.

"Dont like drinking alone, makes a man miserable. I see you brought another little friend Parody, wasnt expected but not unwelcome."

"Defiant, Sepulcher, this is Mitz." She introduced them and sat down at a nearby table at the door to avoid hitting her wings on the ceiling and began preening some of the more offensive detritus that had accumulated in the feathers. The man got up to see them, clad in a dark brown overcoat made of cracked and weathered leather, long black hair tied up in a ponytail with a simple black ribbon and left his axe on the bar. "How do you do," Defiant extended an hand to shake to the large man who walked with a slight limp, Mitz shook his hand firmly while keeping a close eye on Sepulcher who seemed to be either in a state of shock or just being rude and stayed back. "Oh well enough all things considered Defiant and what of yourself madam Sepulcher? I see Parody has attired you with shackles, this something I should interpret as being a quaint custom of yours?" Mitz said in jest with his soft voice out of place with his bulk, "she needs ‘fixing’ before she can run around freely again, the taint is still strong in her. But they should both be suitable for what you want."

"Suitable for what?" Sepulcher snarled finding the ire of being used again as a pawn in one of Parody’s games and Defiant began looking nervous at the fact he was being included in this deal.

"No harm will come to either of you, in fact the exact opposite. I’ll get Mirage to come up with the things that are owing to you Parody and then you can go. I will be back presently," with that he left through a set of doors to the back of the bar leaving Parody to watch over the other two.

"Dont suppose either of us have a choice do we," Defiant watched as Parody shook her head and avoided eye contact with him, "no, not really. But it would be easier if you just went along with it all like good boys and girls."

"Your selling us to them arnt you Parody?"

"Sort of, its a high price though if it makes any difference. You havnt had any choice in this since you where born though. For the last 27 years Ive watched you grow and succeed, grooming you for this day, though you never knew as I swept aside everything in front of you so that you wouldnt be prevented from becomming who you are. Ever wondered why your rise to the top was so smooth?"

"I would have liked to have thought it was my own doing."

"It was for the most part, you are a talented one indeed. I just made sure that the necanthropes and the influence of the moniters didnt touch you. Thats why you have no real hatred in your heart or demons in your dreams."

"Will I see you again?"

"I really dont know."

Sepulcher snorted in disdain while Defiant sulked away to sit at a table, "some all great and powerfull seer you turned out to be. If I somehow live for through whatever it is you’ve got planned I hope to hell to never see you again, I mean that I really do. Your a conniving pest, a mass murderer and a thoroughly despicable little mercenary."

Parody seemed oblivious to Sepulcher’s abuse as she ranted of example after example of unholy acts perpetrated by her in the past until she touched on a few peices that she didnt want to hear again about her past life and blew a hole through the wall with her pistol next to Sepulcher’s head for effect.

"And all you do is bitch, whine and hand me over to do front offices bidding for a spot of torture evertime it suits them. Then theres all the times Ive had to drag your ugly ass out of whatever scrape you’ve gotten into and couldnt weasel your way out of! Ive got double standards? Hah! Thats rich."

Defiant could only watch as Sepulcher helped herself to a bottle and Parody puffed up and crossed her arms over her chest, neither deciding to bother acknowledging each other until Mitz made a hurried entrance from the back door.

"Is everything ok? I heard shooting" He looked at the fist sized hole in the wall and back over to Parody, "cockroach, they grow big down here."

"Oh", Mitz didnt seem to beleive her but decided not to push the point, "do you want to stay awile to make sure your friends are ok? I’d understand if you did."

"No, I dont see myself being welcome here anymore and I have to go check up on some things elsewhere. I trust you enough to look after their well being even though they do not."

"Well ok," he rubbed his hand through her hand affectionately noticing how miserable she looked now that the breif flicker of anger had left her. "Heres the things Intruder promised you, dont know when we will meet again but take care," handing over a black breifcase of sciencefriction material and she left without looking back or saying goodbye.

Defiant followed her to the door choking for words and questions needing answers but she was gone by the time he hit the street level.

Century 20

So it's all come back round to breaking apart again
Breaking apart like I'm made up of glass again
Making it up behind my back again
Holding my breath for the fear of sleep again
Holding it up behind my head again
Cut in deep to the heart of the bone again
Round and round and round
And it's coming apart again
Over and over and over

Hide the private emotions deep down within me, the moniter wont see me in the mists of an empty downtown street, even raindrops, bricks and concrete have more feeling than I do right now. Looking for the foldwake they felt earlier the necanthrope with her is close now in the silence of a filthy ally, sniffing about like a dog for the scent I left earlier to beguile them here.

"Snuffle snuffle?"

"Nearly there not far now mistress"

Thats right, they turn around as if in slow motion, I knock the last iron piton into the concrete at the front of the alley with a mallet. The moniter looks at me with dark dead eyes and realises that its over just before the alley ceases to be an alley and the buildings close in silently and violently as a spring loaded trap. A small trickle of dirty brown sand trickles out, if a building moves in downtown and no one hears it then it didnt really happen? Kinematic reality folding rituals are a bitch to work out for the unititiated and will undoubtably keep the Preceptor’s little minions occupied for some time, giving the perpetrator ample time to make her way back to Static and to throw the enemy off the trail of my allies.

Nobody sees me anymore if I dont want them to, its my own little bit of reality folded around me while I walk the lands of the living watching them ebb and flow with the chaos of a broken universe. Souls departing the shells of their bodies occasionally stop to look as they leave into the other side and decide Im not worth bothering with, the whole conflict is a mass of sides vying to eliminate the others and in between theres the little people just trying to avoid getting trodden on. "Blessed are the meek for they make good targets", is scribbled on the wall of a former SHIVER station pock marked with bullet holes in the cauldron that is Mort.

We’re back to square one.

Black Church and Karma versus the Necanthropes and Darknight versus the Thresher, Shaktar and Ebon alliance like a trinity of wretchedness and then theres the darker forces within.

Its hard to tell where it will go in the end, the bitter trump card of the necanthropes which started all this is still growing more powerful as they can tap into their darker aspects without reproach or consequence of the bitter masquerade anymore, backed as they are, by the moniters in Darknight.

Still it makes me feel complete, something I hadnt been in a long time, along with young Cadman Banks who looks up to me as new person and completely without judging my previous sins. He will be a special boy, I have a great dream for him to lead his people out from under the yoke of mental stagnation for something better. That is some time off yet as he is only five but making good progress in his lessons that I teach him. Niamh tolerates me around him for only a few hours a day, I dont think she wants another warrior in the family, Roderick gave up soldiering because of it and went back to being a mechanic again. A pity because he was a premier fighter in his time and had the heart of a lion, respectfully though, the universe needs more people who make things and fix whats broken considering the amount of destruction being wrought.

Some things require it to be all torn down before you can begin again.

Lucky the the universe has people like me around then...