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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Morte" data-source="post: 2122177" data-attributes="member: 9413">... continued ...The explosion was at floor height, in a corner, not quite under one of the infirmary cots, at the end of the row. It lifted the nearest patient half a meter, spraying blood and fur around the room, and dumped him on the floor. Splinters from the disintegrating cot joined the wave of concussion and improvised shrapnel as it spread. The second patient took shrapnel and splinter wounds that bled him to the point of heart failure in thirty seconds. The third was lucky, he only got a few minor cuts to add to his existing bullet wound. The fourth was not so lucky, a broken gear wheel hit his neck edge on. Luan, standing by the fifth cot, took wounds to her calves and feet. Her left Achilles tendon was neatly severed, but no major blood vessels went with it. She crumpled, wounded and stunned, and folded up on the dirt floor. By the time Sir David reached the cellar, leaping the last few steps and sprinting through the cloud of fine mud, she was bleeding from both ears.…Upstairs Fish heard the explosion from the cellar and swallowed hard. Great. Way to go. Just what they needed, a friendly fire incident with bombs. He picked up his next shrapnel canister and took a long look at the fuse; then he lit it and held on, biting his lip, before a final compulsive throw.He got a textbook airburst over the farmyard, about 4 meters off the ground. The carnage was terrible. The yard went quiet for a moment, before the survivors gave a few faltering shouts and started to drift away.…In the cellar Sir David slowed to a halt, jaw hanging, eyes wild, and stared around. He began to sink to his knees, then staggered forward as he saw Luan. The world narrowed to a tunnel, darkening at the edges and muted as if underwater, as he lifted Luan’s head and stared at her unblinking eyes. Then he grabbed at her wrist to feel for a pulse. He found one, and the world started to come back together.He set to work, with a high-tech medkit that he’d kept out of the hospital supplies.…Things went mostly quiet for a few hours, with some sniping back and forth. Luan was concussed, lame, deaf in both ears, and mostly unconscious. Silea and Fish had small wounds from splinters. Sir David owed his flak vest at least one life. A third of the defenders were dead along with a phenomenal number of the raiders.Maelcum counted over a hundred Carval dead, and wondered if they would fade away or get it together for a last assault. If they did what they should have done in the first place – set fire to the farm buildings after dark – he didn’t see a way out of that. Best to forestall it then. He went to see Fish about an improvised flash hider for his rifle.…The last parley was about an hour before sunset. It was a different nomad who came, a woman and older, and Sir David thought this one might be a figure of authority. She wanted to talk to “the outdider” alone. Sarragh left them to it, with a scowl.“You,” she snapped, “you do the impossible. With all this… this fortification the mud-crawlers fight like a hundred riders. But we know how this will end, both of us. We will burn the farm, you will all die in the flames or be cut down outside, but it will cost us many riders to do this because you are here. You will have some plan, I know it. So go. Take the other outsiders, if yet they live, put them in a cart, get out of here. Leave the mud-crawlers to us. You do not need to burn with them. Well?” Sir David gave her a level stare, leaned forward to spit on the ground, and spun on his heel. The woman shrieked and rode off.…A few minutes after sunset Maelcum switched on his chameleon smock and oozed out of the farmhouse. The defenders lost sight of him before he cleared the perimeter. The besieging Carval never saw him at all, they just saw burning tents and panicked horses as he went to work on their encampments. He shot a couple of obvious leaders first, then wounded some horses to set them screaming and panic the rest. Twice wily veterans got a few men together and came looking for the sound of his rifle, which the confusion and the pre-arranged decoy fire from the farmstead could not entirely hide. Twice he shot those hunters as they peered through the fading light. The Carval were seasoned fighters but they knew nothing of adaptive chameleon smocks or II/IR optical gunsights, and serial headshots coming form nowhere disturbed them profoundly. Maelcum shot nine men with thirteen rounds, working to build a panic since that was the only way he might conceivably attack two hundred troops without calling in artillery. A trickle of nomads did begin to ride off into the night, but most still worked to bring the camp back under control.They didn’t finally break until he took a chance and crept into a gap in the crowd to blow their powder store.…In the morning a grav APC completed de-orbit from Warne highport to disgorge a squad of mercs in combat armour. They fanned out, gauss rifles ready, deploying for a sweep-and-clear on the farmstead. A quick exchange of shouts persuaded them that it hadn’t fallen after all, and they didn’t need to retake it from the Carval. Jorjiak Miilaki, the Vargr landowner who’d hired the Avaricious in the first place, disembarked soon after. Even the humans present could read his horrified wonder.…Back on the highport that evening, the Avaricious took stock. Luan was in an autodoc at the residence of residence of Baron Marie Iskuulii having her eardrums and tendon regenerated under the supervision of a Marine medic; Sir David had pulled rank (noble and paramilitary) to get her in. They were all invited to dine with the Baron on the following evening cycle.Jorjiak paid their fee and bonus. He wanted to give more, but all his liquid cash (some from freshly liquidated assets) had gone to paying the mercenary unit to moonlight from their day jobs on the orbital. So he gave them a validated letter that entitled them to guarantee loans of up to Cr300,000 against his lands. Then he went off to procure barbed wire.The Carval were gone, headed into the wilderness.The farmers were still there.</blockquote>

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