Penny

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Emmaline tried to control her terror as she stepped forward to confront the strange animate statue. There were magics swirling around it that were far greater than any she could begin to comprehend. Her eyes darted between the creature and the opal alternately terrified and fascinated. Panic began to well up inside of her as she tried to come up with some sort of answer to the things questions. Over the years she had become so accustomed to lies and deceptions that she wasn't even sure she had the truth within her. There was no indication that the golem thing would accept her not answering though so she dredged through her soul to try to come up with an answer. Part of her wanted to say she desired gold, but some part of her warned her not to. Gold was a fine thing, but in and of itself it was a means to an end.

"I want to be safe, I want to be free and..." she stammered over the last thing reluctant to bring it up infront of Amal but she was commited now so she forced herself to speak.

"And I wish the Emir were alive so I could kill him again," she hissed savagely. The creature seemed to rear back and she closed her eyes preparing for it to strike, but instead it issued forth a low rocky chuckle that seemed to reverberate through Emmaline's spine.

"Simple wishes Daughter of Asaph," the creature growled.

"But honest ones," it concluded. There was a great billowing wind that whipped up blowing sandy grit in a veil across their eyes and then, as suddenly as it rose up, the wind died away and the statue was once again inanimate, its cat like grin just an artists rendition in stone. Emmaline blinked and then the opal rolled across the stones to rest at her feet. Somewhat reverently she reached down to touch it and rainbow light poured from it in a torrent running up her arm and into her open mouth like a faikr inhaling his vapors. She stood transfixed for a moment until the opal had sublimed away to nothing and then gasped. Half of the tattoed map on her arm was gone, clearing away the steps they had so far taken towards their goal.

The Sinful Stars

Thunder rolled overhead as Ragnar looked around the carnage, several of the soldiers watched him warily, though his conversation with Orion stopped them from shooting him. The dead lay in heaps and the moans of the wounded could be heard from inside bullet riddled buildings and the reek of flesh blood, shattered entrails and the noxious byproducts of gunpowder and lasers filled the air.

"This is what happens when you leave a woman in command," Ragnar opined, ignoring the hard look Orion shot him.

"If they are not destroyed, my people will seek some other victory," Ragnar went on, "they will not want to return to our worlds empty handed."

There was a sudden clattering of boots off in the distance, the staccato beat indicating marching men. A blood spattered Sergeant Burnside emerged from higher up the paved street as a run, an improvised bandage, already soaked in blood wrapping his forehead. He pushed his way through the dazed survivors to Orion and stiffened to attenion.

"Sir, the Ducal Guard is on the way, of my boys called to tell me they have orders to arrest you," Burnside spat out, the outrage evident in his voice. The idea that fifty or a hundred armed and armored men had waited till the fighting was over before marching out to arrest the commander galled him. Ragnar barked a laugh of genuine amusement that startled all the survivors.

"Lets see if we can't find out what happened to my confessor before we worry about that," Orion half snapped. As he spoke the clouds opened and it began to rain.

_____

The left Seargent Burnside in charge of the defenders, thanking that soldier for his promise to stall the Ducal Guard and set off to the north. As far as plans went it was ruidmentary but finding a score of armored vehicles did not prove to be much of a task. The population was keeping inside and the park was deserted save for the rumble of armored vehicles, drawn up in place as though they were on parade. The rain slashed down in sheets soaking Orion and Ragnar and steaming of hot engines and exhaust ports. The smell of burned flesh was potent even over the diesel fumes of the idling vehicles.

"Witchcraft," Ragnar snarled, running his thumb along the blade of his axe and drawing blood which he shook to the four winds in a warding gesture.

"Annika?" Orion called but there was no response from the priest or from anyone. Ragnar walked to the nearest vehicle and hopped up onto its track like a toad and peered inside. The Vuldrok swore a sulfurous oath in his own tongue. Reaching down into the vehicle he lifted a trooper out by the scruff of the neck. The man's face was blackened and blistered and his empty eye sockets had been burned black. Ragnar unceremoniously dropped the corpse back into the tank and then hopped over to a half track with a heavy recoiless rifle. He hauled up a second corpse with the same wounds.

"Witchcraft," he repeated.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

+Events of Resurrection+

Junebug awoke to the tone of an automated alarm. She had fallen asleep beside Neil who was also stirring as the sharp tone repeated rhythmically. With the practiced ease of a veteran, she rolled out of bed and pulled on a pair of cargo shorts and a loose white tshirt. She was buckling her gun belt around her waist by the time Neil was awake enough to manage speech.

"What is happening?" he asked sleepily, familiar enough with the ships alarms to know this was an wake up call rather than an emergency. Junebug clicked her belt into place and pulled on her boots before glancing back at Neil, remembering that he had still been frozen in the cryo-pod when she had set this up. She grimaced slightly and touched the activation stud that slid her door open before looking over her shoulder.

"We are Junctioning," she told him, "I told Lonny to wake me when it was time." Neil sat up with a startled look but Junebug was already striding toward the bridge by the time she heard his startled:

"We are what?!"

Junctioning was a rarely used technique of astronavigation. The RIP was filled with swirling currents which starships used to navigate the gulfs between stars. All ships gathered navigational data about current conditions to keep an accurate picture of what was going on. Ordinarily pilots tried to avoid areas where currents intersected and created swirling eddies that even computers struggled to predict the outcome of. There were however, exceptions. If you could time it correctly it was possible to move from one current to another as their tips brushed, though the stresses on the ship could be severe. The advantage of this was that, if you survived, you could cover great distances quickly as the violent energetic shift had logarithmic rather than linear relations to distance in real space. The other advantage was that such conjunctions, from which the term junctioning was derived, did not reoccur in any predictable fashion. This meant that once a junction was crossed, other ships would find themselves separated by vast distances if they could predict the route of their quarry in the first place. Pirates and other criminals sometimes used the trick to escape pursuers, but only exploration vessels did it regularly.

"Why are we risking the ship we just got back together?" Neil asked pulling on his shirt as he raced to catch up with her. Junebug stepped onto the bridge and Taya turned to grin at her. Taya let out a low whistle and Junebug high fived the younger woman with a smirk. Junebug slipped into her captains chair and checked the readouts on the holo, all was going well.

"The Cyloneikians," she began, frowning over the awkward word.

"Cylos? Cyclops?" Taya suggested helpfully.

"The Cycylops," Junebug agreed, "Cant have failed to see we stopped in orbit and picked something up." Few ships had any real stealth capability, the technology did exist but it was enormously cost prohibitive as it had to be a nearly complete thermal containment as well as hull that scattered radar and microwave. Gregorious might well have noticed them deviating from their predicted plan to retrieve Neil's cryo-pod and might be suspicious. He might not imagine it was Neil, perhaps assuming it was research material stolen from Pradec's facility or even Pradec himself his death elaborately staged, but there was no point in taking risks with a powerful man's paranoia. Junebug was punctilious about fulfilling contracts, it had been the Cyclops themselves who had declared Neil dead and thus voided the marriage arrangements, all she had done was show them the footage and act sad, but they might not see her technical defense as legitimate and it wasn't like a court on Cylonieka was going to find in her favor against their masters.

"Right," Neil said sitting down in the pilots couch and bringing his holo live.

"Well if we are going to do this we might as well do it right," he said his old confidence returning as he settled in behind the controls. Taya was grinning like an idiot, evidently enjoying the fact that Junebug and Neil had finally gotten together. It was also likely that she didn't fully appreciate just how dangerous this stunt was, essentially a controlled version of jumping out of the Terran cruiser into the open RIP, a maneuver that had all but destroyed the Highlander.

"Thirty seconds," Neil said and Junebug pulled her restraint harness on, buckling it down over her shoulders and hips. Taya followed suit a moment later, a slight worry beginning to show on her face.

"Lonny, where is Saxon?" Junebug asked.

"Maintenance bay 2," Lonny replied. The Hex didn't have sleeping quaters, the Highlander being originally desiged for six crewmen who shared bunks when between shifts, this meant that Neil Junebug and Taya filled the available quaters. Fortunately the Hex seemed more comfortable in the hotter areas of the ship back beside the fusion reactors and so had moved his few possessions into a kind of nest he had built in the secondary maintainence bay. According to Neil Hex did not attach the same amount of emotion to living quarters as humans did, and in any case everyone was happy to have the lizard well aft.

"Well he heard the alarms, if he isn't strapped in that is his own look out," Junebug replied, glancing down at the chronometer.

"Ten seconds," Neil reported, adjusting the flight controls slightly to compensate for the increasing turbulence. Outside the viewpoint the golden swirl of the RIP began to shimmer and twist as though they were approaching the bottom of a vast waterfall. There was a sudden flash and a huge jolt that slammed Junebug into the side of her chair despite the efforts of her harness. Sparks flew from several control panels and a half dozen displays went dark. Smoke coiled from one of the air vents and there was a persistent hammering noise of machinery warped and still attempting to function.

"Extracting," Junebug gasped and pulled the toggle that cut the RIP engines. The golden light winked out of existence and for a second Junebug felt the panic of having been struck blind. The panic faded as all reactions to transition did and her brain caught up to the fact that she was seeing a star field. Given that one didn't know conditions on the other side of the Junction it was imperative to drop out at once until the sensor logs could be reviewed and navigation updated.

"Lonny do we have an astronav position?" Junebug asked. There was a noticable pause which told her the answer before the computer replied.

"Charting in progress." That meant the computer had no idea where they were and was now attempting to chart the brightness of stars to fix their position. Exact positioning relied on recognizable stellar phenomenon, but at worst the computer would give them a rough location in relation to the center of the milky way.

"Radio signals at about 20 light years," Taya reported as she worked over the sensor console. Junebug nodded and felt relief. A twenty year old radio signal was a pretty good sign of human habitation in the vicinity, hopefully someone who could sell them some updated navigational charts.

"Ok, lets make sure that we haven't broken anything to badly and then plot a second jump."

Men vs. Women Race to 1000: Version 2.0

-131

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene arched any eyebrow at Solae as she passed. It was a matter of Imperial scientific doctrine that intelligent life was exceedingly rare and that starfaring life was even more so. To here that the Kalderi had, or at least claimed to have, encountered other beings in the plural was a revelation. Kalderi space was a hard stop to Imperial expansion and exploration could there be Empires and peoples humans hand never encountered beyond their borders? Apparently so. It was possible it was a lie, but it was hard to see what would be gained by such a tactic. Perhaps if they were successful they could begin to explore such regions of the galaxy. Rene felt a sudden surge of anger directed at Duke Tan and his foolish rebellion. What wonders could they discover if they weren't wasting time killing each other over who ruled in the Eastern Cross or on Capella. He knew it had always been that way, humanity was a contentious race and had been since before they spread to the stars but it didn't make him any happier about it.

Kel'shaiel led them out of their rooms and into the mansion. Rene expected her to take them to some kind of chamber within the complex but instead she lead them out into a walled courtyard and then out through an exit between two ornamental pillars. Kalderi architecture it seemed, did not lend itself to doors, perhaps their wings gave them a different perspective than humans had on space. To Rene's surprise they emerged onto a cobbled street they had seen during the overflight. Kalderi in various costumes, close enough in style for Rene to imagine them as normal clothing, walked here and there on whatever errands they were about, some carrying small bundles the purpose of which could only be guessed at.

"I apologize," Kel'shaiel stated as she began to walk down the hill towards where the cliffs dropped off into the sea.

"We Kalderi do not travel far from our residences if we can avoid it, and have little use for the transport cars humans seem to require," she explained. Rene and Solae shared a glance as they puzzled over the meaning of that statement. Transportation varied by world and by areas within a given world on many poorer colonies air cars were unknown and even diesel engines were rare and reserved for agricultural equipment. Conversely on the richer worlds it was a rare family that did not possess at least a ground car. On Capella itself transportation was restricted to subterranean rail lines, or anti-grav palanquins within the Imperial City itself, on account that air traffic posed to great a threat to the Empress. Perhaps their alien hosts were less omniscient than they seemed.

The street wound it's way to the edge of the steep cliff where an elegant turret concealed a very functional looking elevator. Rene glanced over the edge and saw some sort of disturbance in the waters below, though from this height it was unclear what. There seemed to be a faint shimmer on the clear waveless water. Kel'shaiel made an appologetic sound, having evidently noticed the looks they gave the elevator.

"Our appologies," she said, casting her eyes downward in a gesture that Rene didn't know the significance of, "We, that is the Kalderi, would glide down, this is a freight elevator." Solae nodded her acceptance and stepped onto the metal plate followed by Rene and the rest of the party. Kel'shaiel pulled back a wire cage from a crude but functional looking control panel and depressed a switch. Cable began to whir through an unseen winch and the elevator lowered smoothly for a minute or two, though the only indication of this was the slight variations in the shaft around them.

The doors opened when they reached the bottom to reveal a strange vista. In front of them was what appeared to be a natural cavern, though it had been improved and smoothed to act as a staging area. Beyond it was the sea. The bottom of the sea. A great amphitheater had been opened beneath the water as though by magic, millions of gallons of water held aloft by some sort of force projection technology as though the ocean itself formed the ceiling of the room, fish, or analogues of fish glittered about the edges, their jewel like scales catching the soft light cast by lumination crystals. Corridors had been formed by similar fields making walkways and boulevards beneath the waves. Great reefs of colorful luminescent coral were separated from the viewer by nothing more six inches of water filling the air with a strange shifting light, prismatic and alive. The floor was dry, composed of what appeared to be the native rock, though it had been polished far beyond the ability of nature so that it shone like the night sky, tiny inclusions of glimmering as imitation stars. It was obvious that the area was kept this way enough that nature hadn't worn away the careful artistry of the place.

"Whoa," Rosaria said as they followed their guide through the underwater corridor to the first and largest of the visible rooms. Kalderi were already moving about, setting up tables in strange irregular patterns around the perimeter of the space. It was disconcerting to see such a mundane activity taking place in so fantastic a setting. Rosaria reached out a hand to the wall curiously.

"Wait don't..." Rene began but Rosaria's hand had already passed through the insubstantial divide between air and water. A jet of liquid erupted around her fingers and she pulled her hand back with a yelp of surprise. The breach closed with the slow rippling effect of a pond reacting to the introduction of a pebble. Rene resisted the urge to scold the girl, it wouldn't be diplomatically appropriate, but it could have just as easily have been a lethal does of static electricity that shot up her arm as several liters of sea water. Rosaira, for her part looked abashed, rubbing her fingers against her thigh. Rene realized that though the water looked placid, they were at least fifty meters down and the over pressure must be considerable. Kel'shaiel at least choose to ignore the incident.

"You can see why Lithyll judged it wise to show you the venue in advance," she said, transitioning smoothly.

"Some are claustrophobic, and it is best not to discover this at the last moment."

Post a random fact about yourself.

I'm a qualified dive master even though I haven't been in the water in years. My retirement plan is to buy a yacht and hunt for shipwrecks.

The Sinful Stars

Annika nodded solemnly, though in practice she was far from certain. The plan, reinforced by the grim shape of it in Orion's surface thoughts made sense, but she was not a commander in any sense of the word.

"With the Pancreator's aid," she agreed and stepped onto the side of the hovercraft before turning back to Orion.

"May he aid and watch over you this day," she concluded before leaping from the hovercraft onto the side of a tracked vehicle that looked like it had began life as an armored personnel carrier but the top had been opened to allow a trio of pintle mounted machine guns to placed behind olive drab metal gun shields. She caught hold of the netting that secured the soldiers personal possessions to the side and pulled herself up into the fighting compartment. The three soldiers inside, all out of uniform looked at her in surprise. That was to be expected of course as the sudden appearance of a priest would have been unusual at the best of times. Fortunately they didn't waste time questioning her authority.

Within minutes the small procession of tracked vehicles was trundling north away from the main body of Orion's force. It both surprised and bothered Annika that there was no attempt being made to stop the ad hoc force. The radios that could have countermanded Orion's orders remained silent and no angry officers appeared to demand the troops return to their proper posts. Perhaps the Pancreator merely looked with favor on his servants, that certainly would have been the orthodox reply, but somehow Annika knew that wasn't it.

They drove into a section of open parkland, heavy vehicles churning up shrubs and shattering the small decorative saplings which had been planted there. A large statue depicting Saint Athelea dominated the center, twenty feet tall and holding her healing lancet aloft in praise of the Pancreator. Annika stood on the back of her vehicle, waving both her hands to stop at the following vehicles. One by one the ground to a halt, the clanking of tracks subsiding so that only the grumble of diesel engines remained.

"How long do we wait Sister?" the commander, a brawny man named Haldane, asked, adjusting the fit of his helmet for the hundredth time since she had come aboard. His mind was clear, tinged with nerves certainly, but focused on the task at hand. If he had any objections to being given orders by a clergywoman, she couldn't sense them.

"Once the shooting starts, we will give them a few minutes to get fully engaged and then we will move towards the river as Sir Pentecost desires," she told the man, injecting a confidence into her voice she did not feel. In the distance the crack of weapons was already audible as the Vuldrock's reached the city but she knew that was just acts of random murder of exuberance as opposed to a real battle. The sound of heavy gun fire would come soon enough.

"Will you bless us Sister?" Haldane asked unexpectedly, turning her thoughts away from rampaging hordes of Vuldrocks overrunning Orion's small force.

"Of course," she replied, climbing atop a crate of ammuntion so she could be seen, though probably not heard, by the majority of the vehicles.

"Blessed Pancreator, Lord of Battles, grant your favor to your children this..." Haldane's sharp intake of breath and surge of fear cut her off and she glanced quickly over her shoulder. From the treeline at the edge of the park four figures all cowled and dressed in black had emerged and were striding purposely towards the collection of vehicles. Annika narrowed her eyes, a subtle sense of wrongness prickling at her palms and the nape of her neck. The leader appeared to be a man, but she had the impression the three followers were female.

"A cunning plan Deaconess," the black clad man called, his voice disturbingly audible even over the rumble of a score of engines. He stopped and placed his hands on his hips, looking her up and down appraisingly.

"Unfortunately, I cannot allow this young upstart to disrupt plans which we have laid so carefully," he went on. The foremost gunner had swung his weapon to bear on the cluster of black clad figures, as, she expected, had most of the rest of the column. She opened her mouth to give the order to open fire, however these people were they were certainly no friends of hers but before she could speak the leader calmly addressed his three followers.

"Kill them all," he asked in a bored tone that he might have used to order more wine, "Leave the Priestess to me." Sudden witch light sprang into existence, limning the figures and the vehicles with ghostly greenish fire that seemed to crawl over everything.

"Fire!" Annika shouted but the command was drowned out by Haldane's screaming. Corpecent flame burst from his eyes like great geyers and his skin sizzled and burned, shrinking in on itself like drying leather. The remaining members of the crew, likewise aflicted, dropped to the ground, ankles drumming on the armored deck plates as they died. There was a convulsive burst of gunfire as a gunner on another vehicle clamped his trigger in his death throes and sparkling tracers ricocheted off the statue of the saint. Annika screamed and then began to chant a litany of protection, too late she feared for anyone but herself but the black clad leader simply stalked forward towards her vehicle. Giving up on the Theury she leaped over the body of the lead gunner and grabbed the machine gun by its heavy grips, dragging it across its slow traverse towards their attackers. She squeezed the trigger as the gun bore on the three women and it roared to life, explosive bullets kicking up bucket fulls of dirt as it clawed the ground. One of the chanting women threw up her hands and collapsed as gyzers of dirt spouted beside her but by now the leader had reached the track. His mouth opened and he spoke a word so blashmemous that Annika's grip on the gun faltered. A great mass of black shadow seemed to explode from his mouth like a crashing wave, fingers of darkness rushing up over the armored prow of the vehicle like questing tentacles. The darkness seized Annika and she was lifted into the air, her flesh crawling and burning with cold agony where the icy impossible darkness gripped her. She opened her mouth to scream and felt blackness pouring down her throat. The last sensation she experienced before darkness swallowed her was the distant roar of heavy guns as the Vuldrocks reached Orion's position.

Damned to the Depths

Calliope stood on the quarter deck as Sketti bellowed for hands aloft. The crew scurried up the ratlines and began the laborious task of reefing the royals. The afternoon breeze was stiffening and though the Weather Witch would cheerfully have carried all the canvas her masts could hand, they were running the risk of out pacing the corsair ships a'leeward. The galleys only had a single main sail and beyond that relied on their oars to force their way back up the coat of Arad Lind.

Through her spy glass she could easily see the three Bloodaxe ships mostly maintaining their positions between the Witch and the rocky coast. After some discussion they had decided to leave one of the galleys behind, stiffening their own crew with those who appeared to Sketti to be competent seamen. That cut down on the number of ships they had to worry about as well as bringing their crew up to something close to its proper strength. The former Blood Axes seemed reluctant to mingle with their crewmates but Calliope had no doubt they would do as sailors. They were, after all, literally all in the same boat. Markus had also decided to leave the remaining Blood Axe ships under their own captains and officers. The Blood Axes seemed to view this as a vote of confidence from their new chief though Calliopie, with better access to Markus' thoughts knew that it was actually more to do with the lack of experienced officers among their own crew. Sketti could probably have handled one of the ships and Halvdar, familiar as he was with the oar driven long ships of the north, might have managed another, but every other man jack of them were square rig sailors without the skills to handle the lateen rigs of the the galleys. Given that, Markus had decided that putting his own officers in place wasn't worth stripping the witch of her bosun.

Not that it seemed to matter. The Blood Axes had no mages and were caught between a hostile shore and the Weather Witch's guns. Any attempt to rebel against their new chief would be brief, and end with ships splintered against the rock coast. Calliope stomach rumbled in upset and she leaned over the railing and spat a mouthful of phlem and other, less identifiable matter into the sea. She had been violently sick out of the porthole of her cabin earlier, and though she couldn't swear to it, she thought their had been fragments of bone mixed with the bile. That raised a number of unpleasant questions which, for the moment she preferred not to think about. Unconsciously her fingers traced over the tattoo of the dragon that had inked itself onto her body when the amulet had dissapeared. All was well, she told herself.

"Down watch!" Sketti boomed, the reefing having evidently been accomplished to his satisfaction and the crew, save the top men and lookouts, slid back down the ratlines to return to their normal duties. It would be dark soon and she could smell the stew that was cooking in the galley below, preparatory for the rum ration and dinner. Darkness would be their cover then for the final approach to Dalib Sahara, though given that cities tall towers, it was unlikely to mask them completely. Still ships approaching the city would be no cause for alarm, not until they recognized them as belonging to the Blood Axes, or until the Vizier's agents told him a ship that he thought he had sent to its death was sailing into the harbor. Calliope raked her tongue along her teeth. She was looking forward to having that conversation with the vizier.

The Sinful Stars

Dusk was falling as the makeshift armored column emerged from the palace. By now word of the Vuldrock had spread and the people, understandably fearful had hidden themselves away, leaving the streets deserted save for litter that swirled in the wind. If the palace guard shouted or cursed the sound was lost in the overwhelming roar of engines. Annika could sense people watching them from behind windows and concealment, and felt the slight surge of hope that accompanied the underlying current of fear. Atop one of the tracked vehicles beside Orion a soldier emerged from a turret and, after a moment of fiddling unfurled a banner, that spread into the blue and white Hawkwood colors as the wind began to whip it. Almost immediately shouts and cheers began to rise, first from the soldiers and then spreading to the city itself. Windows were thrown open and blue and white fabric began to appear more and more frequently. Annika could well imagine the Duke and his advisors were furious but there seemed little they could do now.

"Blessed Pancreator," she whispered to herself, "he who made the universe with his own hand, watch over your servant Orion Pentecost this night."

A column of infantry many of them only half dressed and half equiped burst from a side street, falling in alongside the armored column. Annika was no expert but she saw few officers among them, the leaders for the most part being grizzled looking NCOs. She wondered if they had come against orders or just in the absence of them and began to worry that they might be charged with inciting a general mutiny. One of the sergeants, a battered looking man with a hideous scar disfiguring his face, loped over to the hovercraft and leaped onto the skirts and up into the fighting compartment with an enviable grace that his size didn't lead one to expect.

"Sir," he said without preamble, ignoring Annika upon whom he had nearly trod.

"We have reports of the pagans massing at the edge of the woods, what are your orders?"