Editing Bleeding Out (Warhammer High) (section)

===Shots Fired===

Freya Russ rolled her eyes in exasperation.  “Dad.  Enough.  Are you ready to go?”

“Almost, almost,” her father grumbled.  Leman tugged the little cloth band around his wrist irritably.  “Does this matter that badly?  I’m kind of hard to miss.”

“Believe me, I know.  Now come on!” the perky redhead instructed, pushing her father towards the door of the mansion.  “We’re going to be late!”


The man rolled his sleeves up to the shoulder, preparing to go to work.


“Jake, you feel like grabbing some air?” Venus asked, stretching.  Her boyfriend looked up from their homework.

“Sure.  Where do you want to go?”

“Eh, how about the gardens downtown?  Great day for it,” Venus suggested, gesturing at the beautiful pseudoweather out the window.

“All right, let me grab my keys,” the pale young man said, standing up.


The man opened the latches on his military spec case, rummaging around for his tools.


“I’m glad you could make it out, Morticia,” Kelly said, downing the rest of her drink, letting the warm spring breeze blow past her on the little café patio.

“A bit cold, though, isn’t it?” her chronically-ill cousin responded, hugging her shoulders against the breeze.

“Not really,” Kelly said, raising her voice a little over the traffic.  “You’re just always cold.”


The man slid the receiver of the weapon together, gently clicking the device into place.


Roberta huffed into her vox.  “No, I don’t need a ride, thanks.  My legs still work.”

“Just checking, young madam,” her father’s chauffer said placatingly.  “Will you be home for dinner?”

“Sure, I won’t be long,” Roberta said, walking down the bustling surface street.  Remilia was already waiting at the corner for her cousin to catch up.


The man looked over the stub rifle he was building.  It looked good.  Useful.  Ready.


“That, of course, assumes that the Navy can hold Corlsic against the greenskin filth on their own,” Warmaster Horus said.  “I assume they can, too, of course, but there is a force of Salamanders within dispatch range.”

“Unnecessary,” the Emperor responded, looking over the Navy dispatch.  “I suspect that battle will be over before our intervention is needed.  Speaking of battles,” he said, smiling faintly, “how’s Isis doing with that college hunt?”

“She’s dragging her heels,” Horus grumbled.


The man slipped a few rounds into the magazine, then looked out the window at the poster of the Emperor shaking hands with Eldrad Ultran, across the street.  The man’s jaw tightened, then relaxed.  He’d make it right today.


“No, she’s smarter than that,” Lyra said, leaning back at her table.  WD slid down her shoulder to the table, sitting on the edge and swinging his legs over it.

Isis shrugged.  “If you say so.  I never thought she was a particularly good listener.”  The two girls made way as the waiter arrived with their meals, throwing a disapproving look at the tiny xeno on the table as he did.


The man chambered a round in the rifle, ejected the mag, and refilled it, sliding it back into place.  He glanced over the cardboard box as he did so: the label read .402, HPFT FT1.  The man nodded.  That would work.


Angela laughed.  “Really.  Well, I’m not much of a holovision person, but if it’s that funny,” she said with a shrug.  Miranda nodded, counting the points off on her fingers.

“One, they don’t stop for commercials every fifty seconds, two, it doesn’t have any of that insipid pause-for-laughter crap that throws off every other comedy, and three, it’s actually funny, that’s more than most other shows out there,” she added wryly.


The man clicked the bipod down, carefully locking it in place.  He stretched out on the towel he had padded up underneath him.


Farah slowly spun her keyring over her fingers, waiting for the call.  At long last, her vox buzzed, and she snatched it up.  “Hey, is it ready?” she asked eagerly.

“Sure is,” Hana reported.  “Come pick it up.”

“Awesome,” Farah said, heading out the door already.  “Be right there.”


The man snugged his rifle against his shoulder, sighting down the highlighted scope.


“Nah, too far,” Furia said, flicking a butt into the trash.

Simon rolled his eyes.  “Fine, somewhere closer.  Reidel’s?  It’s quieter, at least.”

“Works for me,” Furia said uncaringly, shrugging her tattered leather jacket on.


The man slowly squeezed the first of the two double-set triggers.  *Click.*


Victoria paused in front of the store window, adjusting her hair in the reflection.  The Twins shared a weary expression.  “Vicky.  It’s still there.  We can go.”

“Not yet,” Victoria said absently.  “Hang on.”

“Fuck it,” Cora grumbled, walking past her cousins.  “Catch up when she’s done.”


The man slid his finger down the curve of the second trigger, pulling gingerly.  Such a light break…there.  *Click.*


“There you are,” Faith scolded, tapping her foot as Petra caught up with her at the door to the seminary.  “I thought you got lost.”

“That does not happen,” Petra said evenly.  She cocked her head, frowning.  “Did you hear something?”


'''*BOOM*'''



Kelly blinked as something ran into her eyes.  She wiped her hand over her face, and it came away red.  “What?  Where did that come from?” she asked aloud, then looked up as another dot of blood appeared on the white tablecloth in front of her…

As Morticia, daughter of Death Guard Lord Primarch Mortarion, slumped back in her seat, blood pouring from a hole in her chest.


The man nodded once.  A clean torso hit.  At that range, quite a feat.  He racked the bolt, chambering the next round, then decided not to fire it, setting the rifle down gently and waiting for the end.


“MORTICIA!” Kelly screamed, lunging across the table.  Half-remembered emergency protocols kicked in, as she ducked under the metal mesh surface, her eyes racing across the screaming crowd.  Half a dozen Treasury agents sprinted through the panicked group, one lashing out with elbows and pistol butts, forcing passers-by to the ground.

“Down, down, everybody down, now!” he screamed, sweeping the crowd with his bolt pistol.  The other five dropped into defensive positions around the hysterical Kelly and Morticia, who had fallen out of her chair to the ground.

“Dispatch, Code Red Seven, shots fired, package critical, need a lift lift lift!” another one reported crisply.  With a flash of light, both girls vanished, disappearing with a crackling of displaced air.  All six Treasury agents leaped to, sweeping nearby windows and doors for any sign of a gunman.



The man quietly settled back against the bare concrete walls of the room, crossed his arms over his chest, and rested.


“SHOT?!  My daughter’s been SHOT?!”  Mortarion roared into the vox.  The eyes of every single one of the Navy officers in the tiny conference room shot open, as the breathmasked Primarch rose to his feet in horror.  “When?!  Is she…no?  WELL BLOODY FIND THEM!  I’m on my way!” he yelled into the speaker, running out of the room as fast as he could, leaving the Naval officers stunned in his wake.

A Treasury officer in the gold and black ‘beehive’ uniform of a security agent stepped up to the Emperor’s shoulder, as Horus and Lorgar Aurelian paused their heated discussion of the Ork encroachment on Imperial shipping.  “My Liege, Field Sergeant Carver reports that Lady Morticia has been shot by an unknown sniper, only seconds ago, in the township outside Hive Tetra,” the officer whispered urgently.

“Lock it down,” the Emperor said grimly, standing immediately.  “Send in the Seekers.”

“Aye,” the man said softly, pressing a few buttons on his wrist implant.

In a garage under the Hive Tetra airlock, a flock of hovering sensor servitors leapt from their racks, swooping out into the sunlight, spreading over the wooded, artificial township.  The streets below jammed up in an instant as Treasury officers and plainclothes Arbites fanned out over the community, encircling the entire area in a ring of police.

“Of all the days to NOT wear my teleporter to work,” Mortarion snarled, angrily clenching his fists in the back of his aircar.  The driver had the pedal floored, and an escort of Treasury agents in their airtrucks were clearing traffic ahead.  They weren’t going fast enough, though.  They weren’t going fast enough.


Freya pulled up in her aircar to the curb, bounding out and slamming the door.  Her father stepped out behind her, grimacing at the milling crowds outside the school.  “Why are the crowds here so huge for such a small student body?” he asked in genuine confusion.  “It baffles me.  It’s a season game.”

“Compliment my driving,” Freya instructed, tossing him her keys.

“You didn’t get us killed,” Leman noted after a seconds’ thought.  Freya had just enough time to glare at him before a tidal wave of black and gold uniforms swept over them both.

“Wha-?” Lord Russ started.

“Back in the car, sir, NOW,” the nearest Treasury agent said quickly, guiding Freya into the car’s passenger seat.

“What the hell’s going on?” Russ demanded, planting his hand on the roof of the car.

“Morticia’s been shot,” the guard said brusquely.

“…Understood,” Russ said, climbing back in and letting the Treasury agent start the car back up.


Jake glanced out the side window of his air car and groaned.  “Shit, it’s the cops.  Was I speeding?”

“Not police or Praetors,” Venus said after a second’s appraisal.  “Treasury?”

“What did I do this time?” Jake grumbled, sliding over to the side of the airlane.

“Not you, I don’t think,” Venus said softly, staring at the car.  The aircar stopped over an emergency service strip and the Treasury car slid to a halt in front of it.  Several beehives jumped out and ran up to the windows, pulling the doors open as Jake hurriedly unlocked them.


“Lady Venus, come with us at once.  Code Red has been declared,” the first beehive said, pulling Venus bodily out of the car.

“All right,” Venus said.  Jake stood up to follow her, but another beehive pushed him back in to the car, cracking his head on the doorframe.

“Venus, what’s going on?”

“Sergeant, let him come with us,” Venus said, trying to shake the beehive’s arm off of hers.

“No,” the beehive said flatly, grabbing Venus by the collarbone and pushing her down into the Treasury car.  The car lifted, the other beehives jumping into the closing doors, and took off, lights and sirens blaring.  Jakes stared at the receding car, cradling his swelling head.

“What…the hell?” he muttered, climbing back in.  He took off for his apartment, hoping the news holos would provide some answers.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program to bring you a news break,” the pile of clothes behind the news desk said, reading the data stream across her retina.  The cameras broadcast her message across the Sol system.  “As of fifteen minutes ago, Lady Morticia, of the Imperial Royal family,” as if there were any others, “has been shot.  The Arbites have cordoned off the area, and the Lady has been transported to a hospital, where she is undergoing emergency surgery.  We will keep you updated as news arrives.”

Mortarion stared at the thick glass separating the operating room from the viewing room, his knuckles white.  The glass obscured all details; all he could see was a cluster of humanoid shapes around an operating table covered in blue gauze and sheeting.  Kelly and her father, Lord Curze, were sitting in the chairs behind him, Kelly still reeling, and Curze seething, shooting acid glares at the beehives guarding the door.


A doctor tapped on the glass, making Mortarion jerk his head back.  The robed surgeon jerked a thumb to the side, and Mortarion nodded, opening the door next to the window.  Before he could come in, however, the surgeon rounded the corner, poking the Primarch in the chest with an angry finger.

“Lord, you’re not helping.”

“It’s my bloody daughter,” Mortarion snarled.

“And she’s got more problems than a bullet in the lung, Lord,” the surgeon said coldly.  “If you REALLY want to be of help, go get about five doses of that medicine in her inhaler and the prescription card.  Quickly.”

“Her medicine?”  Mortarion blinked his dead, gray eyes.  “It’s not-”

“QUICKLY, Lord, we may have to go to intravenous and do so with little forewarning,” the surgeon said, closing the door before Mortarion could protest.  The Death Guard watched the door in quiet rage for a long second, before his shoulders slumped.  He wearily dug a vox out of his pocket and tapped his butler’s speed-dial, muttering instructions into the microphone.

“…Dad?” Kelly asked quietly, squeezing her hands together.

“Kelly?” Konrad asked, his attention drawn back to his daughter.

“She’s alive, right?” the black-haired girl asked, her voice tight and confused.

“She is, Kelly, don’t worry,” Curze said, lowering his voice.

“It was a sniper,” she managed, her eyes tracing the hairline cracks between the floor tiles, finding security in the pattern.  “I didn’t even hear the shot, he must have been…”

“Baby, it’s OK, you don’t have to talk,” Curze said, glancing at the clock, and cursing every single traffic light between his wife’s car and the hospital.


“A sniper?” Remilia asked, paling.  The beehive driving the truck with her and Roberta crammed in the back nodded.

“Aye, ma’am, don’t know more than that.”

“Is she going to make it?” Remilia asked in shock.

“Don’t know more than that,” the driver said again.

“Where are we going?” Roberta asked, eyeing the row of beehives along the passenger bench of the truck.

“The Palace bunker,” the driver said, swinging the wheel to round a blockade, lights ablaze and sirens squealing.

“I understand,” Andrew said wistfully, listening to Hana explain the circumstances of her abrupt departure.  “Well…I’ll talk to you later, huh?”

“Sure thing, Andy,” Hana said.  “You take care, OK?  This could go on for a while,” she added, glaring at the mass of beehives and Arbites guarding the tiny bunker.

The surgeon returned, sliding his gloves off and dropping them in the trash inside the door, closing it behind him with a sigh.  Mortarion was on his feet in an instant, walking over to the window and staring through it at the tableau of surgery beyond.  “Well?” he demanded.

“Lord Mortarion, your daughter will probably not agree with me, but…she is the luckiest girl I have ever seen,” the doctor said tiredly, tugging off his mask.  He grimaced as the sterile air washed over him, loosening his scrubs’ collar.  “It was a stubber shot, flatpoint.  The round impacted on the top of her seat back, and fragmented.  Only a small piece actually hit her.  The rest lodged in the chair,” the doctor said, straightening up.  “The frag passed clean by her sternum, and somehow did so without pulping her heart.”

Mortarion sagged against the wall, hanging his head in relief.  The doctor continued.  “It will be a good long time before she can speak, though, sir, it clipped her lung on the way through.”  The Death Guard Primarch nodded, holding out the little metal tin of medicine from their house.  The doctor took them silently, slipping them into his pocket.  He waited a moment longer.  “Sir?  Any questions?”

“No, no,” Mortarion said slowly, staring through the thick glass at his daughter’s table, clenching his fist in helpless emotion.  “…thank you, Doctor.”

“Certainly,” the surgeon said, bowing back into the operating room at the dismissal.

Curze stood, stepping back from his daughter as his wife arrived at full speed, slamming into Kelly.  The leather-and-gauze-clad teenager snapped out of her trance to look briefly astonished before she vanished into her mothers’ panicked embrace.

“KELLY!  Oh god, honey, are you hurt?!” she gasped out, a cadre of Treasury agents filing in behind her.

“…Not really,” Kelly said, shuddering.  Her mother pulled back a few inches and stared at her anxiously.

“Honey, what happened?”

“I think she needs to rest up a bit before she’s ready to tell us,” Konrad said gently.  Kelly nodded, once.

“I…need a little time,” she said flatly.

Jake sat on the couch in his apartment, staring at the holoscreen in his living room, more or less the same way half the human population of the planet was, at that moment.  His parents sat on either side of him, watching in silence as news anchors and reporters repeated the same few static lines the Treasury had stated.  “As of now, the shooter has not been apprehended,” the reported said for the tenth time, showing a looping holo of a Treasury vehicle parking at the scene of the shooting and a team of forensic officers examining the site.

“What the hell…” Jake muttered.  “How have they not caught the guy?”

“They probably have, and just don’t want to air it,” his father said.  “How else could they know how many there were?”  The vox rang.  Jake leaned forward and grabbed it out of the cradle, muting the screen.

“Hello?” he asked breathlessly.

“Jake, hey, it’s Freya,” the voice on the other end said.  “Venus just arrived here, and she wanted me to call you and say she’s OK.  She left her cell in your car.”

“Oh, yeah,” the young man realized, thinking back to the chaotic extraction.  “I have it.  Uh, how are you doing?  And where are you?”

“We’re fine, we’re at the Palace,” Freya said, putting her hand over the mic for a second.  She looked over the small crowd of nobles and royalty in the grim little bunker.  “They’ve got most of us here, but…well.”

“Yeah.  Well, thanks for the update.  How’s she doing?” Jake asked.

“No clue, I can’t get a hold of Kelly,” Freya said worriedly.

Hana leaned forward in her chair, staring at the little screen in the panic bunker, taking in the news.  Several of the other Royal Daughters clustered around, waiting for…for something, anything, that would explain the day they were having.

“So far, the Royal branch of the VIP Protection Office has refused to comment on the motives of the shooter or shooters responsible for this attempted murder,” the anchor said, a looping image of a forensics officer poking a bloodstained table in the background.  “However, sources close to the Treasury have stated that the search is intensifying as the lockdown of the township, Startseite, is now extending to the nearby hive entrances.”

“And by ‘sources close to the Treasury,’ of course, he means a different news channel, since they’re all saying the same damn thing,” Furia grumbled, balling a fist.  She stood from her chair and stomped angrily over to the bathroom, as Miranda slid into her seat.

“At least Morticia’s OK,” she said faintly, rubbing her eyes distractedly.  The psychic pressure of the whole planet reacting at once was overwhelming her.  Angela looked on in sympathy.

“And Kelly.  Have they-” she started to ask, before the news anchor suddenly touched his earpiece.

“E-excuse me, viewers, but we…we have a new development,” the anchor said, staring into the camera as more information poured into his ear and eyes.  “The shooter has been captured.”