Fic: The Summer Intern (climax)

[jeriendhal]

There was one of those odd silences that sometimes occurred after a shocking event, with Nan and Greycoat both sitting in their seats, stunned by the ship’s sudden transition from flight to laying half-sunk in the water, canted at a forty-five degree angle.  The only noise was a cracking and popping from the hull and drive bells as they cooled in the river, and the sound of water pouring through the shattered windscreen as it began to fill the bridge.
 
Greycoat was the first one to recover, unbuckling his harness and snatching his pistol up from where it had been flung on the deck and looking around half-dazed.  Nan glanced at him briefly as she regained her senses, then back to the worrying water that beginning to rise up past her ankles.  Her mauled spine had jammed itself hard against her cuffs when they had crashed, and it felt like both her wrists were now sprained, maybe even broken.  Never the nasty pained tingling sensation running down her thighs and forelegs.
 
“Hey,” she breathed.  “Unbuckle me, would you?  The water is rising.”  Rising fast, up to her knees and lap now as the ship settled further down into the soft silt.
 
“Unbuckle you?” Greycoat asked woozily.  He shook his head, shaking off his shock and lethargy, his next words coming out in a snarl.  “I ought to let you drown, you bitch.”
 
“You keep using that word…” Nan started to say, as they both raised their heads to listen to the sound of another ship coming down out of the rain.
 
“Hostage,” Greycoat said, nodding half to himself.  “Still got a hostage…”  Then he finally did unbuckle her, grabbing her one handed by the nape of her neck and dragging her off the bridge and past the body of the murdered galen, floating face down in the rising water.  Nan tried to get her feet underneath so she could walk, but she couldn’t seem to get balance at all. 
 
Greycoat reached a small side airlock, hitting the still functioning emergency override that would open both doors at once when matching atmospheric pressures were detected.  More water poured in as they opened, nearly knocking him off his feet.  Nan didn’t even try to stand, content to float in the water as the waves of pain ran down her back, arms and legs.

Out of the clouds the White Knight descended, landing about ten meters away, on a small spit of gravel and sand in the middle of the river in a blast of steam from its thrusters hitting the water. The cockpit opened and Lady Meribeth rose up from her acceleration couch, pointing a pistol at Greycoat's head just he pressed his own against Nan's temple.

"Put your weapon on the ground and release Nan!" Lady Meribeth shouted.

"Bite my tail! You make a move towards me and I'll fry her brains!" he shouted back. "Now get your passenger out the back seat. I'll leave Miss Clawstroke here, and you can fly me to wherever I want to go!"

"You want him to come out, that's fine by me," Lady Meribeth said, grinning fiercely. From the rear cockpit seat a small grey figure emerged, pulling off his flight helmet. Despite the pain she was in, Nan's heart rose as the First One dropped down to the ground, landing lightly on his feet.

"Let Nan go, Greycoat," the First One called out over the roar of the river, his face set in a hard line. "It's over, can't you see? Yer slaver friends have all been captured, the ferin ya kidnapped are free, yer ship is a wreck. You're all alone now."

"It is not over! It can never be over!" Greycoat shouted, spittle dripping from his muzzle. "I won't be beaten by a hundred year old ex-pirate and a Goddess damned idealistic university student! You come one step closer to me, you raise your spurs to fire your bion, and Miss Clawstroke is dead, do you hear me!"

"I hear ya," the First One replied. "I think it's yer own health ya need to be worrying about though."

"Don't threaten me! You can't touch me!" Greycoat began to sway on his feet, his grip on the nape of Nan's neck loosening. "You can't... touch..." Abruptly, he released his grip on both Nan's neck and his pistol, the latter falling into the water lapping the bank, then toppled over into the mud like a puppet who's strings have been cut.

In an instant the First had leaped the distance between the spit of sand and gravel to the shore, landing beside Nan and Greycoat, snatching the former CP officer's pistol up and throwing it several meters away.

"Whu... whu di' y' do t' me?" Greycoat demanded, trying to push himself back up one handed. Half of his face had gone slack, his right ear drooping down and his right eye shut, the left one wide open in utter terror.

"Funny thing about people," the First One said conversationally. "Most folk are amazed at how the ferin can generate bion, but they don't really think about what that means. It's life energy, the same kind everyone has, it's just that in my folk's case it's really concentrated. We can blast folks in self-defense, we can power starships, but we can also control it. But that last one takes a lot of concentration. You really have to know what yer doing. Fortunately, I've had a long time to learn."

He crossed his arms, looking down at Greycoat. Nan shivered, despite the pain she was in. As the First One stared at the suddenly helpless slaver, he looked old, and weary, and angry.

And frightening.

"I just shut down all the electrical impulses in the left lobe of yer brain and gave ya a seizure," the First One said, his tone growing colder. "That's a neat little trick, but I've got an even better one."

Suddenly a horrid sound, like the rattle of breath from a dying animal, emerged from Greycoat's throat as he patted desperately at his chest. "Now I just turned turned off yer lungs," the First One continued. "That'll give ya about three minutes before ya drop unconscious, so I suggest ya listen close." He squatted beside Greycoat, smiling coldly, as the former Civil Protection officer looked up at him in desperation. "You know what yer problem is? Ya see things too much in black and white. Ya always did, right from the start. Ya had me all built up in yer head that I was some kinda big hero, and then when ya finally saw me in person it just broke yer noble little heart. Ya couldn't stand it, the idea that I might be just another guy, so ya stuck me in yer 'Evil' drawer and decided that everything that had been said about me was a lie.

"That was difference between you and Freya. You remember Freya, the ranger you killed? She respected me, but she had enough of the Mother Goddess' sense not to take me seriously. I treasure folk like that, they're so hard to find these days.

"So I guess ya must have gotten the notion in yer head that everything else ya believed was a lie to." The First One's voice went up from a near whisper to an angry roar. "How else am I supposed to understand how ya went from a cop to a fragging baby murderer!"

At that point Lady Meribeth, who had struggled through a waist deep ford to finally reach the bank, stood next to the First One and said uncertainly, "Uncle Teri, I think we're going to need him for questioning."

"What for? We got enough of his buddies to question already," the First One said. Beside them, Greycoat began to convulse, tears leaking down his eyes in sheer terror.

"Uncle Teri, please. This would be murder."

"No, it's an execution. Ya forget 'beth, I'm the First One. In this land I am the law, and I've judged this vulpine to be guilty of murder, kidnapping, assault, and slave holding. You tell me why I should let him live."

"Because," Nan gasped, trying to grasp for the most basic moral argument she could think of. The one every vulpine would respond to. Was the First One vulpine enough, from his youth with Lady Melika, to still remember it? "What would... your mother think?"

The First One glanced at Nan, as if seeing her for the first time. Then he let out a grunt of annoyance and made a little gesture with his fingers. Greycoat's chest heaved deeply as he took a breath, and Lady Meribeth pounced upon him to turn him over and snap handcuffs over his wrists before his could recover.

"Are you all right, Nan?" the First One asked, squatting down beside her and doing something to her handcuffs that made them pop open and drop away.

Nan's wordless cry as her arms were finally able to move for the first time in over an hour was lost in the roar of thrusters, as a Ranger troop transport dropped out the clouds to land some hundred meters down the shore. "Hurt all over. Think my wrists are broken," she gasped. "How did you get here? I.. I thought you were stuck in the village... because you were bion linked to that poor doe."

"Yeah, I got around that." The First One turned towards the White Knight, calling out loudly, "It's safe now, you can come out!"

From the cockpit the little wounded doe emerged, dropping down onto the spit with a bit less grace than the First One. But she hopped across the river much as the First One had earlier, and Nan could see someone had dressed her in a long shirt and vulpine style culottes, hiding most of her scars. She looked down at Nan with face a bit more filled out after several days of good meals, smiling tentatively.

"What... are you doing here?" Nan gasped.

The little doe looked her, then to the First One, who nodded. Then she spoke in a rush, the words tumbling out over one another, as if she was unused to being able to speak for herself, and wanted to get everything out before the privilege was taken away again. "I could feel the First One and I could feel that the First One was angry and scared, so I snuck out of the hospital to see the First One and he asked me what I was doing at his tree house and I told him I felt he was angry and scared and I wanted to know why and he said it was because they'd gotten a message from Skyler the buck who flies his flyer and who said that a ranger was dead and that there were slavers and that Miss Nan and Miss Nez were alone with the slavers. Then I asked the First One What he would do and he said he couldn't do anything because he was stuck in the village and I asked him why and he said because of the bion link and I said I was sorry and I started to cry and he said it wasn't my fault and not to cry and he would think of something and I said it was too my fault and I wished he could go and help because he likes helping people then he said he couldn't go anywhere without taking me and I said why not take me then and then he looked and looked at me and then he said I was very clever and then he got Lady Meribeth to take us both in her shiny ship and we caught up with the slavers and then we caught them and then we rescued you and now here we are." She took in a deep breath and added, "He said I was clever!"

"You... you are," Nan gasped. From the troop transport a squad of ranger emerged and rushed towards them, including a half-dozen ferin in specialized powered armor. Standing among them, her blue haired head towering over them, was the familiar and welcome sight of Nez, looking unharmed but very tired, wet and bedraggled.

"Nan, are you okay?" Nez asked in worry, un-slinging a first kit from her shoulder and opening it up, not waiting for her answer.

"I... think I'll be all right. Broke my wrists.... ahh... on top of everything else. How are you, what happened?"

Nez shrugged, pulling out a pair plastic splints and slipping them over Nan's wrists. "The does in the cage told me we couldn't free them without putting the joeys and risk, the n I saw you were captured, so I kept my spoofer cloak on and ran back towards the remains of the flyer to wait for the rangers. Fortunately I was lucky and Skyler managed to find a troupe about ten klicks from where we'd landed. The rangers showed up, I hopped aboard with them and then they came down on the slavers just as the ship was taking off."

Nez took out a roll of inch thick plastic almost a half meter wide and two long. She pressed a button and the memory plastic back board unrolled itself and stiffened. Gesturing to a pair of rangers who hovered nearby, the others escorting Greycoat into the back of the troop transport, she ordered, "Help me get her onto the back board. Carefully now." With the First One's help they shifted Nan onto the board and secured her with several nylon straps.

"Do I get a... pain killer?" Nan asked.

Nez smiled. "Just a minute. First let's make sure everything is still working. Wiggle your toes for me, would you?"

"Sure," Nan agreed. She closed her eyes, wiggling with all her might.

"Um, Nan?"

"What?" Nan opened her eyes, to see Nez hovering over her in worry.

"Were you wiggling your toes?"

Nan felt her stomach drop like it was in freefall. "Yes... wasn't I?"

Nez shared a worried glance with the First One and Lady Meribeth. "Come on, Nan," Nez said, putting a smile on her face. "We'll get you to the hospital. Everything will be all right, I promise."

"Promise," the First One said firmly.

To Be Concluded