Somewhere Safe (pt 2)

It wasn’t the force of leaping out of the Void that knocked Jenny off of her feet, but the concussive explosion that ripped through the dry evergreens behind her. The girl clambered to her feet, brushing pine needles from her palms as she stared behind her in horror.

Mom.

The landing pad for the S.S. Empress was within sight at the base of the hill, but there was no Empress. Where was Dad? Where was anyone? Wheeling about, Jenny began back the way she came, heading for the not so distant column of black and orange smoke.

Her energy was quickly sapped from trying to port so quickly. Each time she seemed to cross less and less distance till Jenny gave up, and her thin tennis shoes pounded furiously at the dry earth in an effort to run faster. Where was mom? If she was in trouble she didn’t have her guns!

The ten year old made it over the next rise and half ran, half tumbled down the other side. She was close now. Jenny could feel the heat on her face from over a hundred yards away. She could hear the gunfire, and the hum of a ship engine, and another explosion made her lurch with fear and fall, the seat of her pants suddenly growing wet.

I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be here. Where is mom?

Scrambling up, not noticing the stinging of her skinned palms, she slipped into the Void and made straight for a boulder near the edge of the trees that would hide her. The otherworldly plain was eerily silent, yet she got the feeling that there were eyes all around, watching. Finding the same boulder that existed on the other side it was the space in the clearing ahead where the house would have been that made her pause. There was always an effect, a shimmering spatter of golden lights that showed on the Void’s side when Slingers gated and used their learned powers, but where Jenny knew the house was, hovered a brilliant swirling cloud. She could feel the tug of Slinger she knew was her mother drawing energy from their realm and the sheer amount floored her. Was it even possible?

For a moment Jenny gripped the stone, afraid to return to her reality. Pressing her face to the granite she flickered and phased out. The roar of flames and gunfire made her feel sick, and she was glad for the rock to which she clung. Daring to open her eyes, she peered around the rock and instantly wished that she hadn’t. The orchard of small trees her father had planted months earlier, and house, and the small barn he had built were in flames. A small white and crimson transport ship sat on the road not far to her left, and a giant rodent tottered between the burning buildings to throw an explosive into the wood shed.

In the chaos she couldn’t quite grasp the reality of what was happening, and even less why. A pistol was suddenly in her hands, and Jenny looked from the bodies littering the yard to the man sitting at the ship’s outboard gun, wondering why a Dominion ship was there, and where her mother –

A loud blast sounded from within the burning building, and suddenly a giant metal being was thrown through the front wall of the house and into the yard. Jenny knew exactly what that was, and she hunkered down even lower as the mechari got to it’s feet. His left arm rose, prepared to fire his hand cannon from the heavily damaged limb, when Cora suddenly appeared above him. Dropping out of the air she landed on his shoulders in a flourish of long brown hair and golden light, shot a blast of fire against the back of the mechari’s armoured head, and disappeared before the creature could reach back for her.

Jenny’s heart leapt in her chest, and there was a bit of clarity in her mind that shouted out for the woman. You’re alive! I have your guns! I can help! But no words came from the girl’s mouth, and her feet remained rooted in place, watching with shock and fascination. Her mother was fast, faster than even when she was showing off for her daughter. Golden pistols of Void light filled Cora’s hands, and blue and gold sigils swirled about her arms and feet, but as Jenny strained to comprehend what was happening as her mother gated in and out at impossible angles to attack the mechari, the girl noticed that in the midst of all the light her mother’s hands looked wrong. They were smoldering.

The mechari had ceased moving. Narrow slits of its visor that served as eyes glowed red as it stood, waiting and calculating. Before Jenny could begin to wonder why it’s right arm snatched out right as Cora gated in, massive hand grasping the woman’s head. Jenny couldn’t quite process the sudden sharp motion of the mechari’s arm, or the way her mother’s body suddenly went limp at an unnatural angle in the construct’s grasp. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wanted to put sound to it, something to break the sudden stillness and the constant hum of the transport’s engine. But there was nothing.

A visceral fear gripped her, and even as Jenny flipped off the pistol’s safety and aimed it at the towering creature she couldn’t move. Why couldn’t she move? Tears fogged her eyes as the glowing visor turned up to fix on the girl’s location, but her finger wouldn’t pull the trigger, and her body refused to respond as a searing pain of loss tore through her chest. She wanted to do something. She wanted to run for her mother, she wanted to flee, she wanted to kill, but primal fear, and sorrow, and the deafening inner cries at her cowardice saw her paralyzed.

The mechari took a step forward, then another, Cora’s lifeless body still dangling from it’s hand when warm, familiar arms suddenly wrapped around Jenny. Pulled close to a strong chest the gun was taken from her hand, and the construct hardly had time to lift it’s right arm before the yellow and white teleporter rings encircled her and whisked the girl and her savior away from the burning homestead and the planet.