And angels wept in sorrow for the passing of the last knight.
For Lord Morvanor had remained true to his Emperor even after all the others had died, fled, or betrayed hope.
Primary Starport - Karin City - Gorean Occupied Karin
OCCUPATION: DAY FIVE
She was a fallen angel, settled on broken wings, half buried in the snow and forgotten in the aftermath of the battle that had cleaved the Empire's head from its body. Her heavy quad maser cannons rested on the scarred tarmac where she had made her emergency landing, conveying her fallen master, the last Highlord Kardiac, to his final resting place in the former Imperial Capital world.
Around her carcass, loomed, through the raging snowstorm, the shadowy hulks of the Gorean Destroyers, their lights piercing the twighlight gloom as Gorean powered armours buzzed about them like fireflies. Dark watchtowers standing sentinel over the occupied plateau city, they held a malevolence that cast a shadow across Karin.
The Dragoons appeared in a circle around the four Imperial Officers. Heavy winter gear shielding them from the cold, Colonel Mayfair gestured with his hand as his men fanned out to take protective positions just inside the ruins of the fallen Osterburg. Prince Edward shivered despite Darien's thick leather jacket and Karin style fur-cap on his head, remembering the last time he had been trapped on the streets of Karin during a storm.
Masconi tapped Katz on the shoulder, lifting her Pulse Rifle as she covered their entry into the derelict. Her eyes scanning the dark interior as she flipped on the light mounted to her Kevlar helmet and checked the Polian Kill'a'ma'jig mounted under the barrel of the Imperial weapon, standard issue since the Rock of Braal. She eased her finger on the trigger as she crept deeper into the vessel, reaching the central stairwell and turning to check the status of the others.
Edward picked his way carefully through the twisted ruin of the lower service corridors, his gloved hands running over the scorched bulkheads as he turned his mirrored sunglasses back towards her. "This is going to take some time," he said with a lopsided smile.
"When doesn't it?" Masconi asked, climbing the steps and heading for the ruined control centre of the vessel, "go as fast as you can."
Katz hurried after her, shouldering his rifle as he held firmly to the rail, hauling himself up the slippery stairs, amazed at how sure footed she seemed to be on the treacherous steps. She reached the top and reached out with her hand to haul him up after her, locking eyes with him a moment she smiled firmly.
"You're wondering why I wanted you along on this mission," she said, breaking the silence.
"The thought had crossed my mind," Katz responded, taking point and advancing through the bridge superstructure.
There was an audible click of a safety being released, and Katz's head turned a fraction to look at Masconi, who had pulled off her field cap, revealing the deadly expression on her face. "You want to explain what your intentions are with my baby cousin?" Her voice was edged with iron.
Katz blinked twice, looking through the doors of the bridge and its rent and twisted observation window at the goliath Gorean destroyers, and back to one, very angry, CAG. "Now probably isn't the best time," he said, a hint of desperation in his voice.
"We've nothing but time," Masconi responded, walking out into the snow laden bridge and taking a seat in the battered command chair, settling the rifle across her legs and turning so that she could keep an eye on the Gorean as well as her errant Squadron Leader.
"Why does everyone assume the worst of me when it comes to that?" Katz shook his head, dropping to a knee as he flipped down the tripod attached to his Pulse Rifle, adjusting the sights as he braced the weapon on the lip of the shattered observation bubble. "You know, I have better things to do. Wars to fight, civilizations to save. Why don't you give Darien a hard time..."
"Cousin, as in baby cousin," Masconi flashed a pretty smile at him. "And we Kardiac's are very protective of our family members. Plus he's married."
Katz stiffened a little at her words, and he again looked back over his shoulder at her. "What do you mean he's married?"
"Married," Masconi repeated, quietly adjusting her scopes and looking over her sunglasses at him. "You're the best pilot we have, Darien's golden boy. It wouldn't surprise me if he gives you the Excalibur one day. He's grooming you for it. However, that doesn't give you the right to break up a Tempus marriage, I'm going to start asking questions," she tapped the Pulse Rifle, "and I had better like the answers."
Hangar Deck - HMS Excalibur - Karin System - Gorean Occupied Territory
OCCUPATION: DAY FIVE
The adaptability of the Imperial dropship was fast becoming evident to the Warlord as he leaned on the rail of the catwalk that hung over the Excalibur's machine shops. Left with little other option, the Excalibur had to make use of her newfound resources. And a flotilla of dropships was hardly an ideal situation. But the Karin marines, working with Elias's engineers, were wrestling to install a variety of weapons packages to the dropships, bolstering their defensive capabilities and giving them the capacity to act as strike vehicles.
Their VTOL capabilities, and capability to mount a rather impressive array of weaponry, made them formidable weapons platforms. And in the absence of sizable fighter numbers, the dropships would have to fill the slots left open by the downed interceptors. Excalibur needed a fire screen, and equipping the dropships with gunship capabilities would go a long way to filling the gap.
Darien coughed quietly as he pulled the greatcoat closer about him, clutching onto the railing for support as he watched the progress, glad to be away from the bridge for a little while. He knew he wasn't alone, somewhere in the shadows a Fida'i lurked, keeping a close eye on his Aga-Khan. It reassured him a little as he stood there, mulling over what his next series of moves would be.
"Skipper." Kyr looked exhausted, the young Kaynin doctor stuffing his stethoscope into the pocket of his oversized lab coat, testing the air with a sniff and glancing in the direction of a particularly dark section of shadows, pin-pointing Taine's Fida'i bodyguard in a second.
"What is it?" Darien inquired looking over at the doctor.
"I've finished with the refugees. We're still overloaded with wounded, but everything that can be done, has been done." Kyr shook his head. "We're dangerously low on medical supplies, and I thought that since Matt is down on Karin, I could add a couple of things to the shopping list."
"I'll alert them once they check in," Darien nodded, resting for a long moment watching the work below.
"And you, skipper?" Kyr asked, stepping up onto the lower rung and sitting on the rail, lounging like a little boy.
Darien shrugged, "I'm..." he considered lying, but Kyr would smell it, and would be tenacious if he thought Darien was hiding something about his condition from him. "I've been seeing double, have been for days. I'm barely sleeping because each time I do I wake up in a cold sweat, and feel like I haven't slept at all. Matt's concerned..."
"Matt's more than concerned," Kyr admitted, "he's been driving me nuts telling me every symptom he observes. Night terrors, myoclonic twitches, and the rest. But without any kind of facilities, there's little I can do for you. If we had the time, I'd demand you spend some time in a hospital with a neurological specialist... but that's no longer an option. I did some more tests and, well; do you want my frank assessment?"
"Hit me," Darien requested, bracing himself for the worst.
"You have two years, maybe three if the EEG tests are accurate. There's extensive neuro-damage and you're going to increasingly lose motor skills. Eventually it is going to spread into your higher cognitive functions. The drugs I'm administering aren't slowing the decay of your synaptic pathways, and unless I can rebuild them..." Kyr shrugged. "You aren't well, Darien. It isn't easy to say, but maybe you should start preparing..." Kyr swallowed, turning his head away tiredly.
Darien reached out and tapped the Doctor's arm. "I'm okay, Doctor. I'm in love with the Immortal Emperor, which has to mean I'm due some good luck, right?"
Kyr nodded. "If Matt knew as much about fixing people as he does machines, maybe he could do something..."
"Matt's got enough on his plate," Darien replied firmly, "and if there was something he could do, I know he would have done it by now. The last thing any of us need is for him to think any of this is his fault."
A flash in Kyr's eyes had the young doctor looking distant for a moment, standing and fishing out his TAC-link, "I need to run some tests," he stammered awkwardly, and then hopped down from the rail, walking away, looking perplexed.
Darien watched the doctor go, shaking his head fondly at the eccentricies of his crew.
Primary Starport - Karin City - Gorean Occupied Karin
OCCUPATION: DAY FIVE
Edward adjusted the fur cap on his head, fumbling with the gloves in the arctic chill. He had grown to loathe the cold of a Karin winter. It seemed to cut through to the very bone, sinking its teeth in nice and deep, refusing to be shaken even by the thermal inner lining of the Dragoon jacket.
He reached back into the tool belt he wore, selecting a particularly useful screwdriver as he worked to dismantle one of the core components he needed to get the Propylon system operational again. Shaking his head, he tried to jemmy a twisted piece of metal framing that had wedged itself over the screw head he needed.
Prometheus was being awkward.
Even in death, the proud Imperial Hunter-Killer seemed obstinate, refusing to give up even the smallest piece of itself. Edward shook his head, drawing off his glove with his teeth he closed his eyes. Using his enhanced senses, he felt out the piece of metal, traced it back to the wall recalling and the memory imprint upon the metal. He felt the pain of the people that had died upon the warship when it had made its last, fateful attack run on the Amsus warfleet. The psionic imprint of death resonated about him as he stretched back, finding the exact moment when the piece of metal had come loose. Using time like another of his many tools, he adjusted it, fine-tuning on a pan-dimensional scale. A minor adjustment... anything more and he ran the risk of altering the fine tapestry of time, unravelling everything from the moment he was affecting.
His minds eye traced the effects of what he was doing, weighing the cost of even the smallest infraction against the benefits. One miscalculation and... well he'd tried that before, the resulting paradox hadn't exactly been pretty, and Edward wasn't willing to undertake the monumental task of rebuilding a timeline because he'd been careless.
He simply didn't have the time.
Grinning at his own cleverness he opened his eyes, the offending piece of metal restored to its place. He scooped up the screwdriver and returned to work.
The thought niggled at his brain again. The temptation to simply return to any time he chose and change things. But there were far too many variables involved in that for it to be reliable. And the risk that he'd do far more harm than good held him fast.
That was the problem with him attempting to do too much. He was the immortal emperor, but even he had limits. Some of them self-imposed, he knew that, but without any kind of rules there was nothing to stop him succumbing to the temptation to return to the past and spoiling the very first experiment to create the Amsus. Of course the domino effect of that would mean that the UN would never have fallen, and the global civil war would have continued to rage. There would have been no Emperor, no empire, no Kardiac... and no Darien.
They were a product of time. Alter one simple factor far enough back and everything would change. And as much as Edward despised what had unfurled in the space of his two life-times, he couldn't risk changing anything without risking losing everything all over again. That was a pain he couldn't bear again. He had to content himself to working within the time frame that he had, and that meant all the evil that accompanied the good. It was life and, after all, life is rarely perfect.
* * *
"Patrol!" Katz hissed through gritted teeth, shaking off his brooding thoughts about Alessandro as he swung the Pulse Rifle about, tracking the lumbering Goreans through the scope on his rifle.
Masconi was up from her chair and kneeling beside the Squadron Leader staring through her own scope. "Standard sweep," she said quietly as she assessed the group of five Goreans in their artic gear, long arms swinging too and fro with their plasma cannons clutched loosely. They looked like lizards, stuck in some kind of evolutionary limbo; humans had once been that way half way between Ape and Man. For the lesser Gorean their thick cranial ridges and sharp jaws made them terrifying. Despite their lack of mental prowess they were quick and powerful .
"Think they'll pass us by?" Katz asked quietly, his breath frosting his words as he adjusted his grip on his weapon.
Masconi shrugged. "Unlike our winged friends, the ground troopers are unpredictable." she touched her earpiece. "Colonel, we have a patrol inbound."
"I see them," Mayfair responded through the radio. "I have Lieutenant Grogen standing by to give us some sniper cover if they get too close. But if we have to start shooting, then his highness oughta get his arse in gear before we have the whole bloody Gorean army down upon us."
Masconi grimaced. "Matt, did you get that?"
"I heard it," Edward's voice echoed back through the TAC-link, "but you know you can't rush me right?"
"I won't," Masconi replied, "but I doubt the Gorean will be so accommodating."
Katz shook his head. "Something's up." He sighted the scope in on the lead Gorean. The hooded head tilted back, tongue tasting the air, chipping and whooping in the air as he gulped. The others in the pack shrunk lower to the ground, their heads swaying back and forth, nipping and biting their jaws at each other, banging the barrels of their plasma cannons against their armoured forearms rhythmically.
"Hunting party," Masconi replied, training her own weapon in again. "That isn't a military patrol, our friends are hungry."
"Great," Katz muttered, "I'm a side order."
"Two points, left." Masconi lifted her hand and gestured in another direction.
Katz swung his rifle about and resettled on the broken lip of the observation bubble. "What the hell are they?" he breathed, leaning back before resting his eye against the cold eyepiece, staring at the group of shadows bounding through the snow storm towards the Prometheus.
"Ever hunted?" Masconi asked looking back at Katz.
"Hunting wasn't exactly a recreational activity for slaves," Katz replied, the edge of bitterness returning to his voice, "especially on Karin. We were normally the prey."
"This from a professional boy-hunter," Masconi quipped, fishing through the pockets of her TAC-vest and pulling out a small camera to take a few pictures. "Those," she nodded, "are dogs."
"They look like birds on steroids," Katz replied, getting a better look at the long legged bird-lizards that were running through the snow in a triad, pausing to chip and whirr back to the Gorean hunters, flapping wings that were unable to support their weight in flight.
"Chickens," Masconi replied, "on my uncle's farm. You've never seen anything more vicious as a group of chickens after a mouse. They're shrieking and clucking, and those claws are sharp." She shook her head. "You'll never look at a chicken burger the same way again."
"That's not very encouraging," Katz complained. "How are they at tracking?"
Masconi shook her head. "Can't honestly say I've ever trained one to hunt human beings. Think I should ask our neighbours nicely if their super-sized killer chickens are friendly?"
Katz moistened his lips, "Mayfair?"
"I'm here, Squadron Leader." Mayfair's voice was deliberately kept low. "My men are in position. We're covering as much of the field as we can, but I can't guarantee we can hold them off for long."
Katz pulled himself back from the edge of the bubble, his boots crunching on the snow strewn across the deck of the bridge as he jogged to the far side. Slinging his rifle as he hopped out of the far side of the bubble, he used the wreckage from where the missiles had struck home to pull himself up onto the outer hull. He clambered up and through the sensor masts atop the bridge. Using the communications spire as a ladder to get some height, he perched atop the LADAR suite, wedging a foot in as he un-slung the rifle and took a good look about him.
Karin star port was primarily a cluster of large hexagonal landing platforms and docking bays carved into the rock of the mountain at the furthest point of the city plateau. Behind them at the opposite end of the city lay the fortress, dark and forbidding under occupation, the blue banners of the new Gorean masters fluttered on either side of the great gates, visible through the snow even at that distance.
The Prometheus had crash-landed along the main runway, veering off into a crash zone precariously close to the cliff face, high above the precipice that plunged nearly a mile straight down towards the surface of Karin. No exactly conducive to a healthy escape. Immortal God Emperors or not, Katz had no desire to base jump from that cliff in a heavy winter snow storm where the crosswind could snatch them and dash them against the cliff in a reasonably fatal manner.
There was a roar overhead, and Katz instinctively ducked, swinging the rifle up to track the noise. The digital scope switching through the various different modes trying to penetrate the dark clouds, finally on infrared, he was able to pick out the Gorean fighter swooping down towards the ground. He lowered the rifle as he glanced down touching his headset.
"They have fighter cover," he reported.
"For a hunting party?" Mayfair cut in. "What the hell are they hunting?"
"Us," Masconi replied from below. "The bird-dogs have found something, probably our tracks."
Katz shifted his rifle back again; the birds were bouncing excitedly, clicking and clacking back towards the Gorean who were advancing carefully now, angling towards the fallen Imperial warship. "Matty, I'd like to go home now."
* * *
Edward glanced up, scratching his head as he successfully pulled the second coupling free. "Um, I'm not done down here."
* * *
Mayfair uttered a small curse as he looked around at his Dragoons, "Two from one, Ark-Angel needs some divine retribution."
"Confirmed," was Lieutenant Grogen's only response. The invisible assassin, using his captured Polian shroud, had vanished into the snowscape, ready to strike using the Amsus VLR-01 rifle, an effective and efficient killing machine that would penetrate even the Gorean's formidable body armour.
Through the snow, one of the Bird-dogs staggered and fell, cut down mid stride A moment later, the second died as well. The Gorean, slow to react, scattered in a number of directions, bellowing into the snow as they began to fire their weapons in panic.
Masconi was right, these weren't soldiers. But, given the noise the hunters were making, it wouldn't be long until the regular Gorean army turned up to investigate. They were out of time.
"This is one, all Dragoons fall back inside the ship, set up a perimeter on the big IE. Ark-Angel, Paladin-one; pull back as well."
"Negative, Dragoon-one," Katz replied. "You need eyes, I'm in position and can offer you cover fire. They have to get through you to get to me anyway."
"I agree," Masconi added. "Pull back and guard IE's ass, we'll cover you from here. Thin them out before they can reach you."
Mayfair shook his helmeted head as he motioned for his men to pull back. "Let me introduce you both to a novel concept, unheard of in your pretty little aero-space fighters, it's called the Rocket Propelled Grenade. A single one of them can ruin a perfectly nice day in your pretty little tree house. On the ground, Highlady or not, ma'am, I'm the ranking officer. Get your sorry ass down here and trust that I know what I'm talking about when I tell you to do something."
Clenching his fists around his DT-09 Assault Rifle, he mumbled to himself about stupid pilots thinking that because they strap on a helmet and pick up a rifle they actually knew more about ground warfare than a veteran, and how it was that kind of thinking that had resulted in the disaster at the Rock of Braal. Had Mayfair been there... He cut off that line of thinking. He hadn't been there. Lauren had command of that mission. A mistake that wasn't ever going to be repeated.
Edward had shucked his jacket, hauling himself under the twisted metal frame of the Prometheus's main computer, working on the last coupling. He rolled a little, turning his capped head to look at the Colonel. "Problems?" he asked innocently.
"Gorean Army." Mayfair jerked a thumb behind him to where his men had begun setting up temporary fortifications in the engineering spaces. The air behind him shimmered as Lieutenant Grogen appeared, sweeping off the adaptive camouflage and reloading his VLR-01.
"You have nothing to fear from them," Edward said, pulling himself out from beneath the core and standing up, adjusting the cap on his head, zipping up the black polar fleece, and removing his tool belt.
"Lieutenant..." Mayfair began. Seeing something in Edward's eyes, he started again. "Your Highness..."
"I've unscrewed the connectors to the last coupling, you just need to unhook it." He picked up his leather jacket and pulled it on, leaving it unbuttoned as he walked through the Dragoon barricades. He looked back at Mayfair. "I promise I will be back."
Masconi jogged into the room, glancing in confusion as Edward walked past them. She gestured towards the retreating figure. "How come he gets to go outside?"
"I don't out rank the big IE," Mayfair replied, looking back at the crawlspace. "Grogen, make yourself useful and get that last coupling unhooked."
* * *
Edward had run out of options, as much as he wanted not to be the Omega, the simple fact that he had the power to make a tactical as well as a strategic difference... He paused, realizing that he was starting to sound like Darien. Or was that his grandfather's objective analysis of the situation showing through?
He shared many of the old man's traits, so it was only natural that he think like him occasionally. More of Edward's life bleeding through into his own. Or was it their life now? Sometimes trying to rationalize who was who and what was what gave Edward a headache. He was simply him and he wasn't about to allow the Gorean to eat his friends.
Adjusting the fur cap on his head he walked through the ruined starship. He could feel the Gorean around him, encircling their position. There were others on the way, and they would soon secure the perimeter and begin to close in on the bunkered Imperials hiding in the computer core.
"'K," he said to himself, rounding another junction and staring across a gaping hole in the deck that extended out to the hull. Snow was beginning to fall, large, fat snowflakes that drifted across his field of vision, the sky turning a dark grey that stretched across the city about him. The airfield was cast in deep shadows but despite the gloom he could clearly see the Gorean advancing.
He stretched out his senses, feeling the shape of the clouds. He had witnessed first hand the power of the weather that Sephradon had used in her attack on Karin. He hadn't realized it at the time, but the freak weather was just another weapon in the GN-2's arsenal. And if it could be used by a GN-2 then a GN-3 would be able to master it.
It would take too long to adjust the weather, repositioning the planet's axial tilt so that it was summer instead of winter would sap even his strength. He had to think smaller, use the weather on hand. He could plunge them all into a deep freeze, drop the temperature as she had done for her attack. Goreans were big lizards, which made them cold blooded; Kyr had said something about them not liking the cold. But then they wore personal heaters to keep them warm on the frigid ball of ice so freezing them would be too difficult.
He had to be a little more creative.
"Ice," he murmured, staring at the snowflakes. He concentrated, trying to reshape them, agitating them at first and returning them to liquid water. He spread it to the dark clouds, flinching as they crackled, the heat within reacting with the cold air outside. He suddenly grinned like a schoolboy. "Okay, this might be cooler."
He pushed out again, using his hands to help him concentrate, focusing his mind on the inverse thunderstorm he was creating. Superheating the clouds and the vapours inside them, agitating the inherent energy that was being produced by the boiling storm.
Bridge - HMS Excalibur - Karin System - Gorean Occupied Territory
OCCUPATION: DAY FIVE
Commander Durnham on the bridge stared up at the glass of the observation windows that faced down at Karin, gaping at the circular storm patterns that were sweeping together over the city of Karin.
"Commander!" One of the Midshipmen stood from his sensor console in shock. "Readings are off the scale..."
The holographic first officer removed his glasses and calmly polished them as he accessed the Excalibur's sensors for himself, communicating with the ship, trying to analyse the possible causes for the abnormal storm. There was nothing on record that matched it, and the weather pattern was forming far too rapidly to be natural.
"Report?" Darien inquired, walking out onto the bridge and pausing to rest a hand on his command chair.
"We don't know," Durnham said apologetically. "It may be a new type of Gorean super weapon."
"Is it a danger to us?" Darien asked in concern.
"Possibly, but without more data I can't say. It's a highly charged electrical storm, which is all I know."
"Helm, pull us to a safe distance," Darien ordered, crossing his arms. "Alessandro, can you raise the recovery team?"
"That kind of storm will scramble communications," Durnham interjected thoughtfully.
"Then order the RESCAP to stand by." Darien gritted his teeth. "We're going to have to wait."
Karin Fortress - Karin City - Gorean Occupied Karin
OCCUPATION: DAY FIVE
He felt the wind stirring, a rapid change that was all too familiar, the temperature dipping as the rain began. There was a rumble in the sky, as the dark clouds that drew from nowhere crackled menacingly, the echo of the thunder rebounding off of the surrounding mountains before fading into nothingness.
The very existence of the storm was abnormal; Karin's oceans were seas of ice most of the year, never warm enough to allow the formation of a hurricane in the first place, let alone thousands of miles inland over mountains.
The rain pattered off of his hat and the wind stirred the beads around his ears as he scratched his beard idly, musing over the storm's existence, and what it might portend. He stood on the high platform overlooking the city from the fortress, his eyes seeking out the source of the aberrant power, just as they had the last time he had wandered the streets of the colony when Sephradon had done the same.
The boy-who-would-be-king was testing his boundaries, discovering the limitations of what he had become, striving to wield his gift as a weapon.
Noble.
Foolish.
The immortal wiped the rain from his face, as his robes flapped in the wind. The storm grew in intensity, and tightness creased his eyes as he wondered at the nexus of time that constrained them, the thin patterns of the forming time loop that criss-crossed his awareness.
The young Immortal Emperor weaved forces about him, unaware that as his power grew so did the cost it exacted upon him. It would draw him further away from his anchor, further from the place that was to a place that was so much more.
A candle that burned too brightly...
The old man turned, marching back across the platform, down the rows of fliers clustered there, the females at roost watching him as he walked heavily upon his staff back towards the shelter of the fortress.
Primary Starport - Karin City - Gorean Occupied Karin
OCCUPATION: DAY FIVE
The wind danced the hairs across his forehead as Katz stared up at the dark storm crackling threateningly over his head. A realization dawned over the youthful fighter ace as the thunder rumbled: he was standing on a radar spar that struck out skywards from the damaged Osterburg, a metal spar...
"I'm having a bad day," he sighed, reaching up to tap the TAC-link headset. "Paladin to Ark-Angel."
His answer was static.
"Great, so it's a really bad day." He hopped down from the spar, clambering down the radar tower and back towards the hull of the ship. He flinched as the first bolt of lightning erupted downwards, slamming into the ground and peeling out in a circular chain, sparking through a pack of the Bird-dogs and killing them instantly.
That couldn't be good. Katz reached the hull and tried to run, slipping on the slick metal. He felt his legs go in separate directions at the same time, neither of which were the direction he wanted. He spun, his arms flailing as the Pulse Rifle went spinning from his grip and clattered down towards the observation bubble. He fell and then slid, crashing through drifting snow and ice as he swept off the edge of the hull and plummeted down towards the ground.
The lightning rent the night sky again, ploughing through a fuel truck to one side of the airfield. It exploded, lighting the darkness briefly as Katz crashed into a snow bank.
He lay there stunned for a moment, his mind working through the pain and odd sensations flooding through his body. He'd landed hard, though if anything was broken it wasn't stopping him from sitting up and trying to get his bearings.
He pulled the cap off his head and rubbed the place where he'd received a nasty knock, pulling back a hand soaked with blood. Typical head wound, a bleeder, though if it was worse than it looked he was probably in trouble. He didn't think about it, didn't have time. He dragged the Polian shard weapon from his belt, clutching it loosely as he tried to figure out where the Gorean were.
Running and dying, he surmised from the noises about him. Above him a trio of Gorean fliers tried to offer cover to the ground forces, roaring down on their booster assisted wings. But the storm wasn't about to let them escape. The electricity arced down from the sky, slamming into the first and jumping out to the other two, overloading their flight controls and sending them crashing to the ground.
Katz turned his head back to the ship, catching sight of Edward standing at a hole in the hull. His hands were motioning like he was conducting some kind of arcane orchestra. Guiding the lightning like it was his own personal symphony of death.
Limping for the side of the ship, Katz sought cover inside, glancing out at the darkness before he hurried back through the frosted corridors, sweeping the Polian weapon around as he tried to cover all directions at the same time. He didn't relish the thought of meeting a Gorean in those enclosed spaces.
He was fortunate, stepping into the midst of a Dragoon ambush he was suddenly faced with a number of Pulse Rifles trained on him, one worried looking CAG standing behind them.
He offered a weak smile and gestured behind him. "Matt's blowing the Gorean up."
Masconi grabbed him and hauled him over towards the squad medic. For once Katz didn't protest, sliding down behind a piece of machinery gratefully as the doc began to examine his head wound.
"We're nearly out of here," Masconi stated as Grogen's feet, sticking out from underneath the core, kicked a few times and the Marine sniper pulled himself out, triumphantly holding the last coupling.
"Good to go!" Grogen reported.
"EVAC!" Mayfair ordered, motioning to the men around him to fall back into positions, lifting his hand to the TAC-link.
Nothing happened.
"Uh oh?" Katz offered, swallowing as the recovery team stared at each other, and worry began to sink in.
"You're always worrying," Edward said jovially, appearing in their midst, "I'm always around somewhere."
"Home?" Masconi pressed. "If your done flambéing lizard."
Edward nodded, "I have announced myself to the Gorean, things get harder from here on in."
With that, they vanished, leaving the Prometheus to her frigid tomb.