Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 00:20:49 -0500 Reply-To: JillMari@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Jill Spetoskey Subject: Shades of Red and Black (part 9) Apoligies for my attempts at strategy (or lack thereof). Comments are always welcomed and encouraged at jillmari@aol.com or jilkey@grfn.org Shades of Red and Black(A Highlander/V story) part 9 c. 1995 by Jill Spetoskey *** Kate's fingers nervously danced across the Uzi's barrel. She'd expected that she would be fighting the Visitors, but not quite so soon. Yesterday, Chris had judged her firearms skills sufficient to hit the broad side of the barn. Now, she'd been issued something that didn't require all that much in the way of accuracy, and found herself on the way to the old movie studio. She shifted her weight backward as she tried to find a more comfortable position. The van's shocks were definitely in need of replacement, and she was glad she'd relieved the kidney pressure before they'd left. She knew she probably shouldn't be here right now, and had been well aware of Sara's disapproval at things when she'd mentioned her plans to be part of the night's raid. Still, things were so undermanned right now that they needed everyone they could find on the assault. As her gaze moved across her travelling companions, she noticed that Dave was also surveying things. He offered her a brief grin, and a thumbs-up. "Jittery?" He broke the silence of the trip. "Yeah. Things are all happening so soon. I mean two days ago the biggest thing I had to worry about was my US ranking, and whether or not we could find ways to have a real world championship this year. Now, I'm heading on a trip where the idea is to kill somebody." "But on the other hand, you aren't busy storing up worries about what's going to go wrong the first time you go out there. We've got the easy job. All we have to do is sit back and keep the snakes distracted while the other team goes in and sets the explosives. It'll be okay." "Next you'll be saying that it's not much different than the first time Lucian hauled me up to Michigan for firearms deer season." "If it helps you to think of it that way, then think of it that way. What's the biggest deer you ever got?" "Well, we got a sixteen pointer a few years back, but that was with the rental car, so I'm not sure if that counts." "I'm not sure of.." They were interrupted by a stream of test messages pouring through their earpieces as they came close to their destination. Kate slid into an almost rhythm of checks and confirmations, wondering how long it would take before the ritual would become second nature. The team worked their way to the studio, letting the snipers have a first try at the perimeter guards. "And GO!" She felt, rather than heard Dave moving along beside her. The movie studio had always been protected from prowlers and prying eyes, but the Visitors had created almost a fortress of the complex. Barbed wire and watchtowers were added to the structure, and they'd suspected that the walls around the complex themselves had been fortified as well, leaving the gateways the only way into the studio. Sliding behind a dumpster, the two found cover for the assault on "their" gate, hopefully forcing the Visitors to divert enough resources on their front so that the main force could penetrate the studio proper. Things began to blur. The team moved closer to the gate, managing to even draw some of the Visitors out of their protection and into the street proper. She started to cut across the street when she felt a burning in her torso, and her stomach explode. And then it went all dark. **** Sara let a tenative smile slip across her face. They had succeeded in blowing up much of the new processing plant. Yeah, admit it Ivnik, even though it was good working there, on occasion you did have fantasies of reducing the place to tiny little pieces. It was almost like some sort of twisted video game. And according to reports so far, casualties had been much lighter than they had reason to expect. Now they were seated in what Sara had come to think of as the war room waiting for the last straglers to come in. "But then we lost the new woman, Williams. She took a blaster shot in the chest." Dave Malinzak was telling Julie. Sara slipped out of the light doze that she had been in. "Kate Williams?" "Pretty thing with long brown hair. Yeah. It really hurt to see her go down." "Damn. Did you manage to bring the body back with you?" "Sara. Things were starting to get ugly for us at the end. I'm sorry, but it was all I could do to get the living out." "Thanks, Dave," she let her eyes slip closed as a sense of defeat tried to claw hold of her. "Julie. Could I have a word with you for a minute? It's important." She nodded toward the hallway. "Sure." The other woman replied, puzzled as they ducked into the hallway. "Kate was...different. Until we die for the first time, we can be hurt just like any other mortal. It's after the first death that we gain our special abilities such as the healing thing, and the ability to sense others of our kind and people who are going to be our kind. It's always been something of a rule to not tell those people about their new lives until their first deaths." "So what you're trying to say is that.." "Kate's an immortal, but doesn't know anything about the Game or anything else that's going on. If she's lucky, she managed to recover and hide before the Visitors started to poke at the corpses. Worst case, she came to right as things were getting cleaned up. I'd have to bet on the worse case scenario this time. Even though our bodies can handle pretty heavy voltage, it still takes a lot to heal a blaster shot." "This could be a problem in the bigger picture too. I just keep on seeing what they've done to Robin. You said that no one's ever found a scientific explanation or indication of how you're different. If they start to experiment on Kate, what would they find, or would they keep on going even if there was nothing to find. We need to get her away from them. Sara, I can't keep what you've told me a secret any longer." "I understand. I'll do everything in my power to get her out of Visitor hands. Even if it was the Kurgan, I'd do the same just because the Visitors shouldn't know of our existance. But can I bring up my condidtion? I've had a surprisingly large amount of experience explaining things over the years." "Okay. I'll round up Mike and Martin, and the rest of the people who probably need to know, and you clear things out back in there. It's time for another war council. *** She'd woken up just as the Visitor had given her side a short jab with his boot. He'd immediately drawn his pistol on her, covering her as he called for assistance. Must have has their phasers set on stun, a part of her mind murmured. Then a pair of the guards had hauled her to her feet, and she'd seen the remains of her blood-soaked shirt. "Is this Hell or Purgatory?" "Call it Hell, human." The sibilant voice replied from behind a helmet. "Great, a demon with a sense of humor." She was rewarded by being jabbed in the stomach by a rife butt. As she doubled over, she was dragged into a truck back. Under the guard's steady eye, they went from the movie studio to someplace that smelled like it was near the waterfront. Under instructions to keep her eyes on the pavement, she shuffled to the old warehouse building bookended by the guards. "This'll do for now. Later on, we can send her up for conversion." She was shoved into a small unlit storeroom. Her hands brushed the walls on each side for a moment as the ailen voices receded into the warehouse. With a sigh, she leaned her back against the wall, and slid down until she was seated on the floor. The Resistance must think she was dead. She'd been told that they would not leave wounded humans behind under any circumstances. If they had thought she had survived the blaster shot, they would have either dragged her back to safety if they thought there was a chance for her, or sadly put a gun to her head if things had been hopeless. So, no rescue parties. There were also too many lizards to count lurking around her cell, and she'd never mistake herself for Emma Peel. Her hands reached up for a locket around her neck, something they'd issued her along with the uzi. She pried the locket open, and instead of pictures, she found the cyanide pill in it. She didn't want to die, but she was scared of what would happen if she stayed alive. Julie still had a haunted look to her from when the lizards had tried to convert her, although Kate felt she was the only one she still saw it. Where there is life, there is still hope. And then she thought of how much it had hurt when she'd been shot, and heard Chris talking about how the lizards had liked to do exploratory surgery on their captives without offering anything as much as an asprin to them. With shaking hands, she brought the pill to her lips and gulped it down, hoping that it wouldn't take so long that she had time to change her mind. End part 9 =========================================================================