Chapter 4: The First Battle of Lith Harbour, Part II

Detective Tess listened with a sinking heart to the bursts of radio transmissions. The distress calls came in over the "1 - all" setting. In desperate pleas for help, secrecy was of little avail.

"This is Heavy Battalion, we are under attack and have suffered heavy losses, repeat, we have suffered heavy losses. Request immediate reinforcements!" The fear in the voice was evident, but its owner still had the presence of mind to talk properly.

Tess peeked around the corner. She was disguised in "noob wear", with a pink starry shirt, jeans, black baseball cap and pink shoes. With luck she would be taken for a harmless civilian. That was perfectly fine with her, her job was to observe not fight...

There was a surreal silence; the arrow bombs and the fighting had stopped. The road was deserted, except for several fallen bodies and a small cluster of warriors. The leader looked strangely familiar... Tess ran through her memory of faces, and she found a match soon enough: Mekil, spearman, Daar's personal bodyguard. The Heavy Battalion was nowhere in sight. So. They had lost, but they had managed to retreat.

Mekil... he was right below Daar on the "Maple's most wanted" list. If things had turned out differently, Tess thought, maybe he would be on "RVMP's best officers" list today. If there was something both the Maplean Police and the Grosjager, it was the strongest conviction against the cults of Haxor and Boter. The difference between the two was in how they acted upon their beliefs. The former did so through lawful means, following the laws of justice, while the latter simply murdered.

Impatience, Tess decided, was what drove them to it. They were hot-headed, but short-sighted fools, and their actions proved it. The acts of the Grosjager set loose a storm of public protest from citizens fearing for their lives, forcing the RVMP to divert precious resources from investigating Haxor-Boter to fighting snipers. In turn, the underground organisation began to lash back, their own operations suffering as a result - in the end, the winners were Haxor and Boter, who's illegal cults were not checked by either party and in their absence prospered. Tess wished that she could gather the brass of both the RVMP and the Grosjager and talk some sense into all of them, but she knew she was daydreaming.

She turned her attention back to the matter at hand, the bunch of outlaws around the corner - she caught a glimse of a hunter's cap before the air was filled with a flurry of arrows. Someone shouted "Charge!" and the battle resumed. Caught by surprise by the arrows, Mekil and his company were temporarily overwhelmed by the determined assault of the survivors of the 18th Corps, supported by hastily rounded up officers of the RVMP. It was a perfectly executed textbook manuever, a spearhead shock force splitting into a pincer encirclement. Soon Mekil found himself fighting off foes on all three sides. Even his reowned melee skills could only do so much by himself...

Seizing the opportunity to capture the Grosjager bodyguard, Tess teleported into the fray, grabbed Mekil, and teleported out. She attempted to teleport one more time away from him, then subdue him by freezing, but a strong fist gripped her wand arm and stopped her.

"Going somewhere, woman?" He snarled, angered at being drawn away from his fight. Even with only one hand, he brought the gold dragon down to cut Tess in half...

..."Damn!" The polearm smashed the ground a foot away on Tess's left, sparing her life. The grip on her arm loosened, and immediately she teleported away and froze Mekil with a well-placed ice. She would keep him frozen until support arrived to properly arrest him.

In the meantime, she wondered why she had won. It took a bit of time before she noticed the bloodied dagger, then the well-camouflaged rogue wielding it. Evidently he had stabbed the warrior from behind and distracted him. Mitten looked at his dagger, now red, in something akin to shock. He had now struck his first true blow in combat, certainly not an insignificant moment.

"Thank you," Tess interrupted him. "You saved my life."

Despite her civilian disguise, Mitts could still gather that Tess was a RVMP detective, and a senior one at that. He responded in a way that would have made his former Lieutenant proud.

"Private First Class Mitten, Heavy Battalion, 18th Kerning Corps, Ma'am!" He saluted sharply.

"As you were," was the first thing that blurted out of Tess's mouth. Her training at officer school had been a long time ago. "I suppose we stand watch over him-" she gestured to Mekil's postrate form- "for now." Mekil struggled angrily, but he was solidly frozen. Tess renewed the ice to make sure of that every now and then.

Without their leader, the Grosjager fighters were finally defeated one by one. But except for Mekil they were only grunts, not the skilled operatives surrounding Daar who could have actually known some useful information... It didn't take long for a crowd of RVMP officers to surround Mekil and arrest the captured fugitive.

Naimee stepped warily into the Lith Harbour General Store. It was almost sundown, and the storekeeper did not expect much more business. She proved her wrong by buying a new set of clothing as well as a quiver of crossbow arrows. Ducking behind the store, Naimee quickly changed, hid the arrows, and continued on her way. Just another tourist.

The RVMP Chief of Police Forces himself arrived at the scene. He spoke briefly with Tess.

"Quite a catch you've bagged there, Tess. You're gonna be famous for this. Taking on Mekil with only one single backup... that's quite some nerve! Congratulations, Major."

The sudden promotion startled Tess. A promotion to major was certainly not an insignificant moment. She responded in a way that would have made her old drill officer from the academy proud: the sharpest salute she ever made and a loud, clear "Thank you, sir!"

Mitts chuckled to himself. So it did turn out that everyone, not just him, acted like that around their superiors.

She could not count how many roofs she had climbed today already. And here she was, climbing one more. At least she would not be shooting from this one... hopefully.

Daar was already there, and a dark silhouette in the twilight horizon told of the airship that would take him away soon. But not soon enough as to prevent a farewell. She collapsed into his waiting arms, and the tears began to flow.

Ideology has its limits. Naimee had killed two humans... according to the principles of the Grosjager by which she lived, they were both enemies to the prosperity of the Victorian Isle, directly or indirectly... but her conscience told her they were still people, with hopes, dreams, and despairs. It reminded her that she had despairs too. She had murdered, a part of her conscience screamed, slain people who had done nothing to her.

Love has no limits. Daar knew how she felt, having once suffered through the same thing long ago. Even now, though, his heart chilled as he wondered at the extent to which he had neglected her in an attempt to prove his objectiveness. He stroked his hand through her hair, brushing it away from her face as he kissed her forehead lightly. How long had it been since he'd last experienced her warm touch or blessed her soft face with his lips? Too long.

The sobbing subsided. "You are the virgin flower of my joy," he tried to lift her spirit up from the depths. So serious, so earnest, the man she knew and loved. She brought her head up and smiled weakly. "Come on now, don't cry. You will never find another man in the condition you are in now," he teased her. She giggled at that.

The airship hovered silently overhead and a rope ladder was thrown down. Their time was up.

He stepped back from her and looked one last time at her beautiful form. "You have done well. I am proud of you," he said. "Carry on our name of justice well. This will help you." Reaching inside his clothing, he pulled out a small object and placed it in her hand. It was striplike; she recognized it, calling upon memories of what seemed to be an entire different era, her very brief stint in the 18th Kerning Corps. She was holding the chevrons of a major.

"I love you." Tears were visible in his eyes, signs of extreme emotion in one so cool and detached as he. "I love you." She managed to whispered back through a suddenly tight throat as his hands gripped the robes and his feet rested on the rungs. Even as he climbed the ladder up to the airship, it began to fly off, leaving the world of Maple behind.

She watched the starless patch in the sky shrink, then disappear entirely. The despair returned. Virgin flower? She sure as hell didn't feel like one.