Sabatine caught the bottle of bleach in her off hand, her master hand across the grip of her gladius, her face set. It was the same expression soldiers throughout the millenia had made when the saw a comrade witnessing loss. She felt a stab of guilt, wondering if these thugs had come here because of her. Maybe Tiber would have provided a gift and wouldn't be in this situation if it weren't for her forcing his hand.

"Well, we can imdemnify ourselves with the good Ketcharch for the behaviour of his employees," Sabatine suggested. It was possible this was the work of common bandits, but the odds were too low to bother considering. It was something of a silver lining that alot of Tiber's more valuable tools had been on the grasshopper and thus escaped theft or destruction. 

"I have beer," Sabatine offered.

_______

It was getting dark by the time they set down at Sabatine's farmstead. To her guilty relief it was much as she had left it. She had visions of her opal fruit trees cut down and her gardens ripped up and destroyed. The assault boat had its own fusion plant bottle, but Sabatine took it off line and hooked it to her house unit. No point in letting a twenty year old bottle go critical and take out the assault ship after they had gone through so much trouble to recover it. Then they hooked up her pump and sluiced the interior of the assault boat with clean river water. Tiber was able to rig one of her fungicide sprayers to apply the bleach and water and Sabatine used an ultrasonic broom to dislodge the sand and desicatted sea life. They ripped out any left over gear that was rotted by the sea water. They would need to replace the control couches in the cockpits at some point as the padding in the seats was ruined.

"Hey check it out," Sabatine called as she managed to open the arms locker. Stale air rushed out to mingle with the bleach smell of the cleaned interior. The seals that protected the locker had held, just as many of the seals to internal electonics had. Sabatine reached in and pulled out a gladius, a generation older than hers and engaged the capacitor. The charge lights lit up, blinked a three quater charge, then went out so they wouldn't give a soldiers positon away in darkness.

"Hermes, God of Thieves and Liars, Bless the lowest bidders," she prayed. The locker had a dozen rifles and various small arms as well as a suit of legion lorica segmentum, overlapping plates of balistic weave and ceramic armor. There were even a few boxes of grenades of various kinds.

"May they be right a hundred percent of the time at least fifty percent of the time," Tiber amplifed. "I believe there was some mention of beer?"

They crossed the lawn passing three new garden beds each about six feet long and haphazardly planted with carrots.

"Subtle," Tiber joked as they passed the fresh grades and stepped into the house. It was cool and dry inside, with tiled floors and a large kitchen hung with braided garlic and dried onions. A bowl of glistening opal fruit sat on a table of polished wood. Sabatine crossed to a large industrial fridge and pulled it open. Inside were several pounds of meat, vegetables, and a few luxuries, as well as dozens of bottles of cider and ale. She pulled two earthenware bottles from the fridge and then struck the caps from them with short sharp blows against the stone tabletop. The caps clinked on the ground as she passed one to Tiber.