Chapter 16
The group of six force marched in silence for days, eating on the go and stopping only to sleep. All had their own thoughts and worries but rarely voiced them, not wanting to waste any breath.
The night when they finally spotted the city on the horizon was the first time since they set off that they all had a conversation as they sat around their bags stacked together.
"Do you think Frank made it?" Melany was the first to speak.
Zade leaned forwards, his fur sparking in anger, "We haven't found his body or any evidence he was eaten, we have to assume he somehow survived all the way here."
"What's going to happen to me?" Dee touched her lower chest again, "Whatever's inside me… Did Annai know something?"
"Maybe, but I won't let anything happen to you," Helios wrapped an arm and tail around her.
Dee smiled and leaned up against Helios, "Thank you."
Gertrude just stared at her feet until GR-0-WL spoke to her, "Gertrude, are you alright?"
"No," Gertrude choked a bit, "If Frank made it back, the senator will know I'm the one who exposed his plot, and my egg… I trust Jeremy but he doesn't know what's going on. I didn't tell him about the Senator's plot…" she rubbed the tears from her eyes.
Zade's expression softened and he scooted closer to Gertrude, "You did what you thought was best and he's a good soldier, he'll protect your egg with everything he's got."
Gertrude gave a surprised look to Zade, who just smiled, "My boyfriend and I plan to adopt an abandoned egg or two when we get married, just like he was."
Gertrude rubbed the tears from her eyes, "Thank you."
Zade nodded then his expression got serious again, "Alright, get some sleep now. GR-0-WL, wake us up when you see the first light of the sun on the horizon and we'll force march to Trovitopolis by noon tomorrow. Everyone be ready to fight just in case the Senator's started his coup, or finished, Arceus forbid."
GR-0-WL's barking woke them all at the crack of dawn and they forced themselves up and ate and drank as they force marched towards Trovitopolis.
The sounds of gunfire greeted them as they approached the gates. Gertrude's eyes went wide and she ran past, crashing through the gates even as the guards shouted at her to stop.
"Let her through!" Zade shouted before the guards could react as he led the rest through the gate. On instinct he turned to the gallows and saw Frank the Furret-man hanging dead from one of the ropes.
"JEREMY!" Gertrude's cry drew everyone's attention to where the Farfetch'd-man lay, blood leaking from a blunt wound on his head. Almost on instinct, Gertrude checked Jeremy's vitals, "He's alive but he needs medical attention! My egg!" She ran into the house and they heard her shriek, "IT'S GONE!"
Dee was about to enter when Gertrude blew past her, almost knocking the Lucario-woman off her feet.
"Wait!" Dee took off after Gertude towards the HQ with Helios, Melany and GR-0-WL right on her tail. Zade had called a soldier over to get Jeremy some help then ran after the group.
A few dead soldiers lay in the street on the way up to the HQ. Once they were up the short hill they saw Senator Paul DuVille, flanked by eight Poke-people: four in business suits and four in NKR military fatigues. DuVille was holding Gertrude's egg and had a handgun pointed at it.
"Halt!" DuVille's shout made the approaching party freeze in place, Gertrude a full half-a-block ahead of the rest and only ten paces from the senator when she froze, "No sudden moves or I'm making an omelet out of this." He motioned with the gun but didn't tap the egg, lest he damage his bargaining chip.
Zade growled but managed to keep from sparking, "Senator! Release that egg right now and you!" He pointed at the soldiers, "Stop aiding this man's coup, that's an order!"
The Shiny Purugly-man Senator sneered, "No, Lieutenant, these soldiers know who really runs things out here, sadly not as many as I wanted right now but the rest of the uneducated men retreated rather than kill their fellow soldiers. If you're wise then you'll fall in line too or end up like Sergeant Frank did."
"Why did you hang him?" Dee gulped, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.
"Because he spilled the beans and broke under pressure, something I can't have my men doing, but enough questions." He looked down at the egg, "even if I don't do anything I don't want to think about what being out in the cold is going to do to this little one.
Gertude carefully took a step forwards, no one seemed to notice, "What do you need us to do?" she looked pleadingly at the Senator.
"Very wise, Missus Kitun," Senator DuVille nodded, "Seeing as you're the one who ratted on me to General Silverman I'm going to give you one chance to undo that mistake."
Gertrude took another step forwards, unnoticed, "What do you need me to do?" her voice quavered and her eyes shone.
The Senator faltered, the hand that held the gun loosening its grip slightly. "You need to go in there and 'retire' the General for me. I'll let the ex-raider take the fall if you want so you don't have leave this egg motherless." Gertrude took another unnoticed step forwards and tensed her muscles as Melany fumed and bit her lip to hold back her own angry shouts. "If you know what's good for your egg you'll-"
Gertrude pounced and struck DuVille on his arm before turning and running.
"Why you little!" the Senator was about to shoot the egg, when he saw it was gone! The egg was clutched in Gertrude's arms as she ran for her house. DuVille aimed at Gertrude and a shot rang out. DuVille cried out in pain and dropped his gun, holding it where blood dripped from the bullet hole in his palm. "Get th-!"
Melany fired a bolt from her plasma rifle which struck the senator in the gut, melting through his suit and skin as he fell back.
Zade let out a cry and launched several wavy bolts of lightning at the startled NKR soldiers which sent all of them rigid. Dee, Helios and GR-0-WL charged. The men in suits only got single rounds off from their handguns, only hitting GR-0-WL once, before they were set upon. Helios smashed one in the knees with his sledgehammer before breathing fire on another, Dee smashed her palm into a third and GR-0-WL went straight for the last one's neck.
Senator DuVille was trying to hold his guts in when he was kicked over and looked up into the enraged face of Melany, who unholstered her plasma defender and aimed at his face. "Sick baby murdering monster!" Melany fired five shots at DuVille's head, reducing it to a pile of glowing sludge.
Zade walked over to Melany as she holstered her plasma defender, "I guess you wanted to interrogate him. I'm not apologizing for that."
"He wouldn't have told us anything useful," Zade looked at the four NKR soldiers he'd hit with his Thunder Wave, now struggling to move, "As for you, I hope he was holding something just as precious as Gertrude Kitun's egg over your heads, or maybe you didn't want her to lose her unhatched child. If you tell us everything he *forced* you to do then we *might* let you off with a warning." Zade looked over his shoulder and saw that some other soldiers were peering up the street, "People! Disarm these four and drag them back to the barracks for paralysis treatment."
"Yes sir!" several responses came as the four NKR soldiers were escorted away.
"Everyone else, clean this shit off the street. I need to go make my report to the General," Zade turned to Dee and Helios, "The rest of you can go unwind."
"Don't you trust us to tell the general what happened?" Helios sounded slightly miffed.
"I do, but you do really want to spend the rest of the day filling out paperwork?" he saw them recoil sightly, "Thought so," Zade sighed, "That's the problem with being a scout and logistics officer, 80% of your downtime is paperwork 95% if you're the quartermaster." He turned and headed up to the HQ
Melany turned to where the first gunshot had come from and saw a Lairon-man in a cowboy hat about her height holstering a revolver, "Thanks," she approached him, "you saved Gertrude's life there. Wait…" As she got closer she recognized something in his face, "Maxwell!?"
"Yeah, it's me," Maxwell Silverman's voice was deeper and his tone humbler, "Kinda hoped you wouldn't recognize me." Melany just stood in stunned silence so Maxwell continued, "My grandpa had a serious talk with me so I took time to learn a few things about this frontier and I realized what a child I was being. I only evolved a couple days ago and when DuVille started his coup today I understood who he really was, and he was going to murder an unhatched child so I had to do something. Melany, I'm sorry for everything I did to you, calling you stink girl, chasing you off and the… other threats I don't want to think about… I just… can you forgive me?" Maxwell sounded sincere and extended a hand towards Melany.
The Stunky-woman finally found her voice, "I accept your apology and since you saved Gertrude's life I can forgive you," she pushed his hand away, "But I won't forget what you did and I still don't want to talk to you." She turned and left to follow Dee, Helios and GR-0-WL back to Gertrude's house.
Maxwell sighed and lowered his hand, "Yeah… I deserve that…"
OoOoO
Zade sat in front of General Silverman at his desk, working on the paperwork for the mission as they discussed what had been happening while they were on their mission to Fort Daggerpoint.
"After Gertrude told me what Senator DuVille was planning I moved some assignments around," The Aggron-man general signed another form and moved on to the next, "I found the soldiers who were either in debt to him or in his pocket and moved them to remote locations in the city, out of his immediate ability to call on, and brought back those who were more likely to stay on our side. I ordered everyone to lay low when the Senator launched his coup to reduce causalities, but things got worse when Sergeant Frank returned and DuVille decided to move up his timetable. If you didn't arrive when you did and put him and his cronies down, we'd be too weak to defend against these Mewtwo and… other monstrosities you mentioned. At least the Raiders should keep them at bay even with their leaders dead."
Zade looked up from his own forms, "What happened to the Raiders?"
General Silverman looked up, "About a week after you left the Desert Rangers' reinforcements arrived so I asked Ranger Vargas to deal with their leaders. I just got a report a week ago that she and her Rangers were able to lure their leader, Elsdradon the Garchomp-man, out to an abandoned rest stop and assassinate him and his lieutenants. Now the Raiders are all fighting over leadership, and these reports," he held up a newer looking form, "that say they are busy fighting what look like half-human mutants that don't have traits from any Pokemon I've ever heard of."
"Sounds like those… things we ran from at the Fort," the Jolteon-man shook his head, "Former soldiers of 'The Master' and now these new mutants. We're going to have to the destroy the Fort or things are going to get worse."
General Silverman nodded, "We'll have to wait for Captain Jameson to get back here with the ordinance, even if it's not everything we hoped for we'll need all we can get for the assault. At least the army's reinforcements arrived before all hell broke loose but they only have their standard gear and our armory's getting too low to risk an assault and still protect this place. I hope those five can help us on that assault."
Zade smiled, "They will. After what happened they won't want to stay put but… I'm worried about what Dee said. They want something inside her."
"We'll worry about that when we can do something about it. Now help me with these forms if we want to get any sleep tonight," General Silverman pointed back to the desk covered in paperwork.
OoOoO
They found Gertrude in her bed under the covers and curled around her egg. Dee was the first to approach, "Gertrude, are you going to be alright?"
"I don't know," Gertrude whimpered and stroked the egg under her covers, "I just need to know it's safe, and listening to my heartbeat," she pulled her egg close to her chest. "What about Jeremy?"
"They took him to see the medic, we'll know by tomorrow," Helios put a hand on Dee's shoulder, "Want to be alone?"
"Kinda, just don't leave the house please," Gertrude mumbled.
"We won't," Dee assured her.
Melany was already in the kitchen and looking for food, "Might as well make supper, too used to campfire cooking," she set about making food for them.
