Part 38

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"Incredible!" John yelled, exasperated to find he'd lost Chiana down a hallway. He looked again at the several intersecting doorways. "You wouldn't want to give me a hint would you?" he mumbled, helplessly.

"Come on!" Chiana hissed between clenched teeth, waving him impatiently before scurrying back around a corner.

"Yeah, thanks" he muttered, working up to a fast jog. "Well at least she's got her sight back. Man this old fart needs some Ensure here." The corner led him into a wide entry hall with a dizzy black and white flooring. "Braaaazil" he sang to himself. "Dufa columba de Brazil....damn why didn't they sing that in English? Come to think of it, how come I don't have any problems with alien speak?" he wondered out loud.

His thoughts were interrupted when Chiana stumbled, grabbing at her hair with a shriek. Just as suddenly, she collapsed and began lurching on the floor, struggling to get up.

John was startled to stay where he was for a moment when the large doors at the distant end of the entry hall was blown open. A group of armed and punky Nebari poured in. "The Ramones are back?! Here?!" John looked over his shoulders in shock. When he realized the group started running toward him, he took off running back the way he came.

After a few paces, he realized he couldn't run away. "Pip!" he turned around. One of the group shouted at John to hit the floor. He did. Chiana began lurching up to her feet as the crowd was hurrying past her. One of the group tried grabbing her, but she broke free and took off running.

"Somebody stop that Pip!" John pointed the crowd to Chiana.

To John's amazement, the group scrambled to stop her, taking three of them to hold back a savagely struggling Chiana.

"There are strangers in paradise!" John called out to Chiana as he ran up to her, trying to catch his breath. "Not even Raggedy Ann and Andy" he cut in front of her. She quit struggling and drooled at the floor.

"What is this!?" the smallest and least imposing of the three ladies in the group demanded, a seriously cute young lady with a pixie nose, large eyes, slightly puffier hair than Chiana's and a very petite body in what looked to John like a black leather flight suit.

"Chiana" John gestured to her, rubbing his lower lip, preoccupied with trying to decide if it was Larran or Chiana he'd be talking to in there and what he should do in either case.

A few of the group gasped. The three holding onto her released her like they'd grabbed a hot potato. Chiana staggered, pulling erect after a moment of half looking around despite sightless eyes. John decided she wasn't moving much like herself. "Oh" John realized "the Ice Man cometh."

"What is this!?" the one of the three ladies in the group that had spoken before repeated her demand, this time in front of John's face.

He looked around and quickly noticed the spunky little lady confronting him was actually the oldest of the group, in her ripe old age of 22 or so. So he assumed she was in charge. If anyone was. "It's Larran. The Sinister Minister. He got into her by Miss Stakira. They can pass people around to the other side, wherever that is, don't ask me, it's not my playground, and I guess in and out of bodies, or that one can anyway. I don't think she did it on purpose though, I think that pushy bottom side of a sitting elephant you guys call a Minister slithered his way in. Speaking of, what are you guys doing here?"

"We...." the lady started to reply but decided against confirming they broke in.

"We're Nerri's Resistance Militia!" one of the teen guys informed John with dramatic defiance, clenching his fist in front of his face.

John looked around the group of misfit juveniles. "That's too bad" he ran his hand over his face. "You know where Persimmon is?"

"All we've seen are Fenas breaking in" the petite spokeslady remarked with contempt. "Let's take them to alpha" she told everyone, grabbing the collar of John's borrowed overcoat.

"Who's that? That Percules guy? Precludas? Perkulating....tuna?"

"Perkunas? That's Bursamen's jacket!" the lady tugged it and let go. "Are you naked under there?" she raised up on tip toes and daintily pulled out one side of the collar to peek in.

"Tut tut tut" John waved her away with a sweep of his fingers. "Nobody brings up the sexually humiliating aspects of this nightmare, right? Right. Pertunas?"

"Let's move" the lady ordered, gesturing the group back the way they'd come.

"Nononono, wait" John interrupted. He took a good look at the young lady and played his hunch at her nievity. "Where's your Percolonel?"

"Waiting outside of the Estate" the lady simply replied.

"Oh. Sorry. We gotta get Chiana somewhere, I'll show you" John smiled at her. "And remember in the future not to tell people outside of your unit where your leader is, right? Anyway. The mob's breaking in and the fun's begun. There's probably more that way. Back the other way, maybe we can get around them."

"Then what?" Chiana sneered, looking at him with sightless eyes and a presence sharply different than natural. "This pretty little shell might be a common nonconformist trelk from South Walden Prime, but even she knows that the only way to find any safety is to try reaching the balcony of the Cordon Wing and present herself to the incoming rabble in an attempt to regain some control" Larran explained, almost to himself. "Of course my articulation is needed, not her coarse ways. If any of you have sense you will see me there."

John tightened his jaw while he held his tongue, weighing his options. "I dunno, Larran" he said, after a moment "Friends, Romans, Countrymen? Think it'll sell? Naah" he picked her up. "C'mon gang. Upsy daisy, pretty little shell."

---

Orren's eyes widened in alarm as she watched a corroded sheet of polished metal trim dislodge from the slight ledge she was inching along. The piece tumbled down a couple of stories onto the hard paving panels below, raising a cry from some birds sitting in the garden nearby.

"Watch your step, but not the drop" Tannac suggested, inching along ahead to Orren's right, spread along the wall as tightly as possible. "Unless you want to go after it" she smiled, her eyes nearly closed as she rested her head back against the wall trying to fend off the dizziness threatening to pitch her from the ledge without conscious thought.

"Tannac" Orren carefully spoke with measured breaths "I must find something called the Aurora Extraction."

Tannac hummed a note of amusement. "And here I thought they sent you to assist in this mission."

"They did" Orren confirmed. "But I happen to have been available for my own reasons. The Aurora Extraction, where is it?"

"So you might as well tell me, since I'm....You're a Fena?" Tannac snapped her amused smirk at Orren.

"A Fena? No. That's ridiculous. Just answer my question. I know that Larran is said to be the descendant of the Stakira guardianship and to have artifacts relating to the Sister."

"Sorry, sister" Tannac covered a cough with the back of her hand "it looks like your intelligence is missing a few important and generally well known details."

"Such as what?" Orren pressed, frowning as Tannac coughed and shook her head, sweat spraying from the Nebari's hair. The broken ends of the ribs lining the wound in her chest flexed with her movements and breathing. Orren frowned deeper. The instant Tannac leaned slightly from the wall while shaking her head again, Orren extended her arm out in front of Tannac to nudge her back against the wall. "Don't- fall. You're carrying the support ammunition."

Tannac slid narrowed eyes at Orren. "Wouldn't that be a shame. This ledge leads to the adjoining structure's rooftop. It's not far" Tannac remarked, almost to herself. "Keep moving, stomper hips. The Aurora Extractions were destroyed long ago, in the purges. There are two transcriptions said to have been made from selections of the Aurora Extraction before it was lost. That what you mean?"

"Yes of course where is this transcription?" Orren moved her arm away from blocking Tannac only after she saw Tannac was stable.

"Two" Tannac thrust two fingers in front of Orren's eyes then moved her hand back to feeling along the wall. "The Brenl Transcription and the Drieth Transcription. Larran has the Drieth Transcription, or so Oshana claims, but it's said that no one can make sense of it."

"You know for a fact that they both exist then" Orren asked, carefully making a second foothold after the last one slipped off.

"No" Tannac struggled to keep the shaking hand of her broken arm steady against the wall. "Neither. They could both be myth, lies or forgeries. I just believe they do."

"This Drieth Transcription, it's here then." Orren sucked in a sharp breath as her wounds caused by the Sentinel's hooks were disturbed in sliding along the wall. "Where? And where is the other?"

"Don't you find it a relief you might die here?" Tannac wondered. "Meh. I suppose not. Anyway he never has gotten the Brenl Transcription. Larran. He's been after it but nothing he could do has taken it from the guardians. Someone I know claimed to have seen it just recently."

"Where?" Orren pressed. "Somewhere on the Metropolise?"

"Yunbik? I always thought it was out there. But I used to think alot of things" Tannac evasively replied, then looked across the view. "Maybe Oshana and Larran are down there. Frell, should've asked Bursamen where they were. Not that I'd know how to get there anyway. Don't mind me I'm just talking so I don't scream. Do you mind? No? Well maybe if they come back to themselves you can find out about the Transcriptions."

"Think we can get there? If nothing else goes wrong" Orren grumbled.

---

Despite the dulling to their hearing from a massive explosion, Koresh and Sheyza heard the groaning and screeching of metal around them and gripped each other's hands for dear life while the tram pitched downward. The car ahead of them separated and fell away. Their car fell next.

Twisted metal supports and tracks strung almost straight down into a vast chasm of blackened broken support beams and debris that had once been the wing of the Minister's estate below the transport tracks. Hurtled cars tumbled and skewered onto supports in the chasm ahead of their car.

A hit sent them from their bench into the side of the car, catching her arm and breaking their handhold. He screamed while another crash of the car into some object shredded the bottom of the car open and sent them into the roof at the opposite side. His arm was deflecting her crash into the roof without a thought. Gravity at last sent them to the crumpled bottom of the car when it struck a partially demolished floor near the bottom.

Around them, the destruction continued, but Koresh called out for Sheyza. He found that he was held face down a few feet from the bottom on the upper end of a bench, his arm feeling like it were being stabbed with a knife and hanging down from his side. Looking straight down, he could see Sheyza upright, stood in the middle of what looked like a twisted vortex of benches and parts of the car's flooring and end.

His arm responded, so he tried reaching down to her. "Sheyza! Take my hand!"

Her wide, frightened eyes looked into his frightened scowl. She reached up, her hand a couple of feet from his. "My arm" she said, looking past him to her other arm, still caught in the twisted siding high above. A look of astonishment crossed her face which soon settled into a wistful smile aside. "Just take me somewhere else, Koresh" she spoke fainter.

The light of life left her face before his eyes, and he screamed.

---

An explosion stunned the air. Tannac shouted as some ejected material struck a nearby sill, shooting a foot long sliver of something into the right side of her hip. Piercing the gap in the ilium, it then split in half and lodged in place, with one end sticking out the front and one end sticking out the back.

"Dren!" Orren shouted, seeing the end of the sliver object standing out in front of Tannac's lower abdominals like a spike. As hearing returned, they heard a din of startled birds and insects and screaming people. They leaned forwards to see a huge section of the wing about three hundred feet behind them had blown away. A thunderous crackle followed. The roof snaked and walls buckled between themselves and the blast area as a weakened section collapsed, leaving less than a hundred feet of the wing standing behind them.

"Dren!" Tannac repeated, continuing to walk sideways towards the roofline of an adjoining building at the opposite end of the ledge. "If nothing else goes wrong? You had to say that! Don't ever say that!"

"I'm sorry" Orren stated. "We should hurry. Can you still walk?"

"I- don't know but I'm....Say, did you smell smoke?" Tannac chose that moment to ask.

"What?" Orren's brow creased. "We don't have time to worry about that sort of dren unless it should become an obstacle."

"Don't say that either" Tannac muttered. "I was just wondering if that explosion was related to the fires or if we could also have a fire hazard at a different area. No telling what the explosion might have done to the nearby foundations or structure. You know this would probably be killing me if it wasn't for that Nuggeth bar I ate. Well, it is, but you know what I mean."

"Yes yes keep moving" Orren told her, trying to fight back another wave of near vertigo. "It's" Orren swallowed "you're right, I should have had some of that thing you ate. It's good to know the general direction of our progress, but may I ask what our objective is then?"

"Protect hot Sister and sexy male companion."

"Right. It might have helped if I'd met with them coming or going" Orren supposed. "With our excellent strategy, we couldn't miss each other. So we simply search a few hundred rooms until we find the building you believe Bursamen was headed to and hope none of them were in the blast?"

"I haven't the least idea" Tannac assured her. "I say we look closer at the blast area. Better place to look than the place we were in, anyway."

"Excellent" Orren smiled, marveling. "Brilliant planning again."

"Why?" Tannac stopped. "Where do you think we should go, stoneface?"

"Keep moving" Orren told her. "If these wings are destroyed by fire, the central accommodations may be the safest area to be. If they're alive they should be thinking the same. I say we go to there."

"I say I'd rather jump" Tannac muttered. "And you overestimate Bursamen. Here we are, end of the ledge" Tannac explained "ends just over the roof of the next wing. Easy footing across the roof to the drain at the corner end of the wing, and an easy slide down."

"For a Nebari maybe!" Orren objected, wincing slightly at her own wounds, following Tannac and gawking at the skewered hips leading her in a run along the slanting tiled roofline. "I can't believe we're this frelled and haven't done a frelling bit of good."

"Don't say that either" Tannac snapped back over her shoulder.

With a crack so loud it was more a feeling than a sound, the roofing caved in underneath their feet. Orren fell back and held onto the tiles. The roofing held, just lowering a few feet. She watched Tannac drop down into the collapsing building and out of sight.

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