Part 41

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"Have I been missed?" Larran's voice made Bursamen spin around with a pulse pistol raised. Larran held up both hands, smiling with brazen self-satisfaction as two Enforcers accompanying him approached to disarm Bursamen. "Remain calm."

"Minister!" a voice called from the side. Larran turned to the voice and froze. Bursamen dropped his pulse pistol from shock as he watched massive pulse fire pummel Larran's chest, sending flesh and blood apart like shrapnel. Koresh tackled one of the Enforcers down to the ground while Oshana chopped the other in the stomach to bend him over and then swept his feet from underneath him. Bursamen barely noticed his accomplices, his attention fixed on Larran. Pure astonishment sat dead on Larran's face while he fell backwards to the ground.

Bursamen turned his pistol to the Enforcers, quickly taking their neutralizers. They stayed on their knees in submission for the moment. Kicking Larran, Bursamen confirmed the body was dead. "Remain calm" he told it under his breath. Only then he looked at Oshana, who seemed to be struck almost physically in absorbing something from Larran. She fell back, Bursamen catching her to seat her carefully. Her head quirked to her shoulder and she gaped around. "Frell! Are you...?" Bursamen started to ask.

"Yeah" she replied with a different voice again. "Him too" she barely whispered "somewhere. O-osshana's....got him....maybe."

"What?" Koresh asked.

"It's Chiana" Bursamen assumed. "Was Chiana. Attacking the Enforcer. Is Chiana. Mostly?"

"Insane" Koresh commented, sitting with his head in his hands on the ground.

"Maybe close" Chiana in Oshana was willing to suppose. She stood up with Bursamen's help and shook a leg. "M- who shhoot the fekkik?"

"I'd eat a drannit before I'd see him outlive me" Tannac explained while she walked up, lighting her marnnat pipe with a shot of a pulse pistol and already smoking from a few places including her hair. She took a long drag then looked at Bursamen, Chiana, Koresh and the Enforcers staring at her. Tannac looked down at herself then shrugged. "Sorry about the mess."

Oshana convulsed sharply a moment, a change clearly overtaking her. "I killed you!" Larran's outraged voice all but spit from her.

"And don't think I've forgiven your pansy eema for it" Tannac replied despite the pipe dangling in her lips, absently waving the pulse pistol at Larran in Oshana as she put another drop of marnnat in her pipe. "He sure makes it hard to tell who is who now, doesn't he?"

"Be sure you will all pay for this!" Larran stood and seethed. "But I may yet spare you despite this savagery if you-"

"-Tannac! You're-" Orren ran up and looked around at the group and the dead body "....alive."

"You're right" Tannac muttered. "I've got to be missing something." Tannac wandered a few steps away, counting off with her thumb to each finger, "Starvation, disease, broken bones, fell five stories into a collapsing building, shot, pierced, fell, cut, burnt.....what am I missing? Must be something worse coming....." Tannac turned back to smile coolly at Orren. "Yes. Just crawled out of the smoldering rubble in time to shoot the Minister, how krew is that?" Tannac kicked Larran in Oshana over onto her knees and stepped on her back.

"Then....?" Orren stared at Oshana.

"Stakira" Tannac explained, pointing down to Oshana. "They can transfer people-"

"Stakira, oh right say no more, yes" Orren nodded. "Now it all makes perfect sense. What now?"

"Now!" Larran in Oshana desperately seethed. "Get me to the Cordon Wing if you expect any of us to survive!"

"Ah shut your trap" Tannac absently shoved Larran in Oshana with her foot. "I killed you once, I'll do it again, fekket. I'm trying to get a smoke here."

"The risk is growing too high to remain here" Larran insisted.

"And that isn't half as high as Tannac's getting" John observed as he walked up with a group of Nebari and Chiana over his shoulder.

Tannac half-laughed, taking a drag. "Hello Clan, how's the narls."

"What the frell happened to you?!" Clan blurted out at Tannac as the group buzzed around Tannac.

"Whoa road kill" John looked at Larran and snapped his eyes away. John set Chiana down into a seat and tried holding her up and watching her face. With Larran occupying Oshana, he figured Chiana should come back to herself. But loosing her time and time again was breaking through his best attempts not to think that she may not return. "Come on, baby, come on back, please" he felt a desperation that made him tremble and grip her hard in his hands. "Don't go V'ger, you're all I've got to care about" he urged under his breath, his throat choking.

Impulsively, he kissed her slack lips. Life returned to them as he did, the kiss becoming fierce and her arms gripping around him much as fulfillment and desire cocooned him within. After a moment he broke the kiss and sat up. "Hail to the Princess Aurora" he replied with a broken voice. He cleared his throat as she smirked. "Oh, meet Persimmon" John gestured Chiana to Bursamen.

"Persimmon?" Chiana looked back and forth between them. "Y-you mean Bursamen?"

"Bursamen?" Bursamen asked with uncharacteristic meekness. "Crichton has....mentioned me to you....?" he led.

Suddenly feeling really, really bad, Chiana stood up and gave him a hug. Bursamen smiled sheepishly and patted her hair. She whipped her head and grit her teeth at him. He withdrew his hand in a flash. Smirking, she slid her hands around over his buttocks, tilted her head back and moved her lips near his chin. "You're kinda cute."

"And that's Tonic, and Clam" John loudly interrupted, whacking her hard on the back and gesturing Chiana to the others.

The talk and reunions were interrupted by a percussive blast striking the ground near to one of the militia. The young man was thrown from the blast without his legs or his life.

"What the frell" Tannac turned and opened fire with her multi-facility pulse rifle without waiting to take stock. "To the cover!" she shouted, shoving a shocked Clan from her.

John went to grab Chiana into his arms and run, but her reflexes already had her on her feet and grabbing his arm to pull him with her. They fell back down together when another blast hit nearby, showering them with dirt. John suddenly noticed the blasts weren't particularly loud despite being powerful. That seemed familiar somehow. "Wait, whose fire was like that?"

"Never mind, Crichton, just frelling run!" Chiana suggested, running for the cover of the nearby dense garden area. Once under cover, she saw that John was still trying to see the attackers through the dust and smoke filling the air. She ran back for him. A strike grounded ten feet in front of her, so she instinctively sprang high over the remains of the explosion. Hitting the ground in a roll, she stopped when she rolled into John.

Getting up, she stared back at where she was nearly blown to bits. Turning to John, she impulsively hung on with a sloppy kiss then pulled him with her. "Crichton! Quit sitting there squashing your frelling mivonks and move!" She managed to pull him up and get shy of ten yards when John tumbled into her back and covered her against the ground as ordinance struck near where John had been.

"Whew that was a close one" John snickered near her ear.

Chiana gaped at his brilliant observation. "Yeah will you move it before we get blown up here? Or I die from asphyxiation" she muttered, trying to breathe with him laying on her.

"Why the heck did we open fire without even finding out who shot that!?" John nearly hollered.

"Because that wasn't an inquisitive sort of explosion!" Tannac's voice shouted back.

"You've got a point there" John rolled over Chiana and got to his feet, pulling Chiana up and stumbling after him.

Tannac began running for cover, stopping when she saw that Orren was still standing facing toward where John and Chiana had been and seemingly oblivious to attack underway. "Hey stoneface!"

"They saw right through me" Orren stared.

"No time for Fena revelation, move your curvy eema girl, we've got to keep them protected" Tannac shoved Orren along until Orren finally ran with her behind some cover.

Orren nodded to herself. "You're right, yes you're right."

"Nice to hear that from someone else" Tannac muttered. "Clan!" she shouted. The young lady literally tumbled into her side. "There you are. Crichton!"

"Yeah?" he shouted back from somewhere behind her.

"Are we about ready to find a new planet?" Tannac said before everyone ducked a nearby explosion.

"Fraid not" John replied after a momentary lull "we gotta get all the sliders to that Poupon Wing, the good, the bad and the ugly all insist."

"Frell. Clan, listen closely. Get someone there, there, there" Tannac gestured around the vicinity "anywhere around they can get without being well seen. Have them fire if it's only distraction. Then they move to another place and repeat fire. All the while move towards that central wing. There we'll find whatever position we can and hold it as long as we can, ready to withdraw any route we can, if we can, understood?"

"That's ridiculous" Orren objected.

"Your plan would be to stand out there and be blown apart?" Tannac asked.

"Well, fine, fine, I'll cover from here."

"You'll come with me. Go on Clan, move it!" Tannac told her.

Clan went to comply but hesitated. "I'm glad you lived long enough to do this" Clan told her despite her nervous shake and then hurried away.

"That's probably the nicest thing anyone ever said to me" Tannac watched over her shoulder and pulled out a grenade. "When you have nothing else to lose, it's what matters that-"

"-Tannac, shut up" Orren interrupted Tannac. "I'm sorry. Yes I appreciate all that. Wisdom and philosophic dren. Very good. Now. We'll fire and move back there then" she gestured. "Can you make it?"

Tannac looked flatly at her for a moment. "What do you think?" she smiled impishly a moment. "Longer it takes, the more surreal this gets. I'm already beginning to suspect I could survive this. So let's get our sorry eemas moving."

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