Mindshard (ON HOLD)

Chapter 6: Assault

     Vaughn moaned and tried to roll over.  Only to clench her teeth against the pain as the wound in her shoulder flared with searing agony.  Damn, that was even worse than a plasma burn!  Blinking aside the tears that sprung up with the wave of pain that threatened to consume her in that moment, she inched out of the river of fire snarling by overhead, both sides now doing their best to kill their opposites.

     Finally she was against the nearest column.  She fumbled her weapon to the ready just as she heard Brin call out:

  “Vaughn!  Are you capable of movement?”

     She threw a quick look towards the sound of Brin’s voice and found the Teserin weapons master hunkered down behind the opposite column, grimly returning fire along with the rest of the Isivir team.

  “Not sure.”  She croaked in reply, barely loud enough to be heard over the hissing discharge of energy weapon fire.  “I took a nasty hit.”

  “Try not to move.”  Brin tightly advised, snapping off another couple shots between words.  “Viseith weapons generate a disrupting field that rips tissue apart with a deadly anti-coagulating effect.  If you move too much, you could bleed to death.”

  “Great.”  Vaughn muttered, glancing down at the wound.  And immediately she grimaced upon seeing the ragged hole the blast had left behind, charring the greater part of her left upper pectoral and interior shoulder muscle away.  She wouldn’t be moving that any time soon.

     But, going by the volume of weapon fire raining around her, if she didn’t move, and soon, she could get a few more such holes before the day was done.  Bracing herself against the wave upon wave of fiery agony she knew would descend upon her with any effort to move, Vaughn gathered herself, intending to worm around the column and into better cover.

     Before she could put her plan into action, however, she felt a hand knot itself into the undamaged, right hand side fabric of her jumpsuit.  Looking up in surprise, her astonishment only grew to find Var Ixim standing over her, grim as he pointed his other hand at the enemy.

     A cold shiver went through her in counterpoint to the pain in her shoulder when she saw he held not a Kesinoa handgun, but a brilliant nimbus of golden light surrounded his clenched fist instead.  Snarling hotly, a tendril of what looked like pure energy lashed out from the nimbus, a bolt of living lightning that reached out to brush across three Viseith, the impact knocking them flying like rag dolls.  At the same time a tingling surge washed over Vaughn, its strength forcing a gasp from her lips.  Then he was dragging her bodily around the corner, several energy blasts splashing off a nearly invisible shield that spun into being around his body at a gesture.

  “Hold still.”  Ixim grated as he first propped Vaughn up against the column then knelt in front of her to pin her against the column with the palm of his right hand pressed into the ragged wound on her shoulder.

     Vaughn barely had time enough to gasp in pain before a wave of dancing blue tendrils, none longer than her smallest finger, made their way down Ixim’s arm to create a blue aura of light around his hand.  An instant later the pain in her shoulder ebbed until it disappeared.  Somehow knowing the pain’s moment of disappearance, Ixim drew his hand back and examined the wound site with a critical eye.

  “That’ll do.”  He rasped after a brief moment.  “You’ll be able to fight at least.  See a healer after, if you survive.”  Then he was gone, his shield glowing as it took several more hits the moment he stepped from cover.

     Fabric hissing as it rushed over fibronap floor, Brin rolled through the fire to come to a halt beside Vaughn, weapon at the ready.  Nodding in greeting, she twisted and let loose a volley before hunkering back behind cover, the space she occupied an instant before abruptly full of lethal energy discharge.