Penny

The Sunday Group - Bumps in the Night

Seen here not standing out :P

Literally every single man in this photo is thinking to himself 'Look how freakishly tall this dude is!'

The Sunday Group - Bumps in the Night

Do they also grind your bones to make their bread there?

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

Welkins fixed Kaiden with a weltering glare. He was, by all accounts, a man of mercurial moods who demanded exacting performance from the officers under him. He also had famously little patience for the aristocracy. In Cinnibar society, and the RCN more particularly, advancement was often more a mater of interest than of skill or talent. That didn't mean that the RCN was full of incompetents, the academy weeded most of those out and space travel was far to dangerous an occupation for fools to survive long even if they did make it, but it did mean that those officers who advanced fastest tended to be those whose families or networks were in a position to do favors for others. No Captain wanted his name attached to a fool or a coward though which prevented outright nepotism and the accompanying disastrous results. Interest also meant that those who came to the RCN from more unconventional routes, middle class families or masters who won commissions for services rendered, often struggled to advance. The only option in that case was to impress your commanders sufficiently that they felt your performance reflected well on them, in turn you could do favors for others and slowly build interest of your own. Welkins had been a master gunner before he had been jumped to midshipman during one of the previous wars with the Alliance. He had risen high in the RCN but his progress had been slow, and though he would probably die an admiral it didn't stop him from resenting wealthier better connected fellows who seemed to fly up through the ranks. Sabatine herself did not have much in the way of interest, her brothers and sisters did what they could and clients of the family were still happy to do what they could despite the fact that her older brother made it clear that his younger siblings could starve for all he cared. It wasn't perhaps a fair system, but the universe wasn't fair and this system had preserved the RCN and the Republic for over three centuries and it was difficult to argue with its results. After a long moment Welkins turned from Kaiden and back to Sabatine.

"See that the good Lieutenant here is introduced to Captain Micha. Give him my compliments and he and all his officers are to dine with me tonight at the Armory," Welkins instructed, giving Sabatine a long glance.

"Though if you don't mind some advice Lieutenant, consider a shower first."

The walk to the Vicount was conducted in tense silence. The spacers, picking up on the chill between the officer, forwent their normal banter and followed along. RCS Vicount sat in one of the five artificial embayments which had been constructed by sending pilings of concrete out into ocean. The embayments were not necessary for fear of tides, Herculaneum lacking a moon, but they mounted gantries and cranes to ease in the loading supplies and munitions onto vessels in harbor. The Vickie was a cylindrical metal tube about eighty meters long from stem to stern slightly tapered and rounded at bow and stern. Three rings were spaced more or less evenly around her, to which the masts and rigging were attacked, although the rig was down when the ship was planet side. Two outrigger pontoons flanked her, each connected by four oleo struts. The pontoons actually mounted the high drive motors which would power the ship while it was in space, though theses were secure in their fairings for the moment. A quarter of the way-along the length of the ship was a metal bulge that concealed her twin eight inch plasma cannons, again secured while in port. There was a second set of guns the same distance from her stern so they could be fired in syncopation without tearing the ship apart, but those were underwater at present. Though the guns were devastating at close range, their primary purpose was defensive, intended to nudge incoming missiles away from the hull as they closed. Missiles were the real killers in any fleet action, large masses of metal propelled by twin high drive units till they reached burn out and separated into three segments to spread the foot print. The missiles were unguided beyond their intial launch trajectories, as any electronics capable of making course corrections at 0.6 light speed would require the same amount of engery again to alter their courses and make them trivially vulnerable to plasma cannon fire. The Vickie had two missile tubes, one shuttered and one open for maintenance at the moment. Techs could be seen crawling in the tube as they inspected its inner workings. Larger ships, like the Caddy, had eight tubes and could volley every two minutes or so. A battleship of the RCN Celcius class could mount up to sixty tubes and level a ship killing fusillade that would be all but impossible for any single ship to avoid. Even so a single missile hit from the Vickie could gut a battleship as tons of steal sublimated into energy at the incredible speeds of a full speed impact.

"I'll let you report to Captain Micha sir," Sabatine said as they walked up the gangway and into the ship. Two spacers stood the picket, each had a slung sub machine gun though it was doubtful they knew more than which end to point at the enemy. One of them, Sabatine noted, wasn't even loaded. That actually made her feel better as it decreased her chances of death when the sailor dropped the weapon in his haste to jump up when he saw officers approaching.

"Ma'am... Sir," the spacer stammered, hastily sweeping a dice game away beneath a crate. Though the man recognized Sabatine, Kaiden was new to him.

"Carry on Howarth," Sabatine told him. Officially she was the senior ships officer present until Kaiden read his orders to Captain Micha. Howarth looked at the filthy shore party with some amusement, though he mostly kept it from his face.

"Where is the Captain currently Howarth?" Sabatine asked. The man shared a glance with his mate before responding.

"He uhh, should be on the bridge ma'am, I believe he is teaching the middies about... something at present," Howarth informed her.

"Very good spacer," she told him and turned to Kaiden.

"You'll find the captain on the bridge sir," she said in the same cooly neutral tone.

"If you've no objections I'm going to avail myself of that shower the Commodore suggested."

The Sunday Group - Bumps in the Night

Oh hey didn't see you there! *cranes her neck*

The Sunday Group - Bumps in the Night

@Fetzen Wait a minute...

Appearance: More on the inconspicuous side of things might describe it best. He's 6'4", of average muscularity and slightly overweight

So... the kind of 6'4 people just don't notice?!

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

"Sir," Sabatine responded, a placeholder to give herself a moment to think rather than a response to his question. Just because he had been stationed here didn't mean he had been stationed to the Vickie, as the Vicount was colloquially known. That was self delusion, ever since Lieutenant Harrington, their previous second officer, had lost his leg when a main mast yard had fractured on extraction there had been an open berth aboard. Sabatine herself had been filling the slot with one of the midshipmen had been filling her slot. In her heart of hearts she had hoped to keep it, but there was a war on, or their might soon be. That was the way of the RCN, officers went where they were assigned, but did it have to be THIS officer? Her mind returned to the question she had been asked by a superior officer. Fortunately in the six months she had been on Herculaneum station she had taken the time to get the various communications feeds hooked up to her helmet interface with filters that routed information she though she ought to know about. That automated system had pinged her a few minutes before the transport had reached the base, informing her that the Trash Heap, mine tender TH-15, had detected the Commodore's ship dropping out of the Matrix about a hundred million miles out.

"Sir Commodore Welkins is returning from Marengo with the Caddy, err that is the Cadbury Sir," she told him in a voice that was all but a hiss for its total lack of accent. The Cadbury was an aging light cruiser of the old Agesilaus class, hardly front line in RCN service these days but a formidable vessel in this remote corner of the galaxy. There had been an uprising of some kind on the world of Marengo, the local politics were murky, but Welkins had though that an RCN cruiser in orbit might damp down the locals enthusiasm for the massacre of Cinnabar traders and other such normal accompaniments to energetic political change. Having visited the worlds during the Vickie's patrol loop more than once, she rather hoped the Commodore had felt inspired to blast the place with plasma cannon before returning. A hundred million miles wasn't good astrogation and the Commodore would certainly be in a bad mood about it.

"He should be entering orbit any time now..." as though summoned by her words the deep spine rattling rumble of a starship descending on its plasma thrusters began to vibrated through the atmosphere. None of the spacers looked up, aware from long training that the plasma exhaust of a starship could cause serious eye damage if not viewed with the proper equipment.

"What ship are you assigned to sir?" she asked, hoping against hope that he would answer with the name of one of the two gun sloops, or perhaps Grandwing, though the latter didn't seem likely.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Junebug was surprised to discover that the stinger was a woman. Generally speaking the rougher a place was, the less respect women commanded, although judging by the way the toughs in the bar had been manhandling the serving women, she suspected that the Stinger was a special case. The woman looked them up and down, lingering on Neil for a minute and seeming to take in their dress and equipment.

"Ah, the foreigners who arrived on that pretty freighter," the Stinger said in a surprisingly sensual voice. She obviously thought the fact she knew something of them would shock them and their lack of reaction seemed to irk her.

"Have a seat and we will discuss your futures here on Tiosinte," she went on, making a magnanimous gesture with her right hand. The gesture exposed the tip of a scorpions stinger tattooed on her left shoulder. Jungbug and her friends obediently took their seats. Without asking servants, slightly better dressed gunmen anyway, came forward and set cans of chilled alcohol down in front of them. Junebug picked hers up and took a drink. It was sweet, some sort of wine cooler with an artificial peach flavor, she had certainly drank worse.

"I take it you aren't looking for places on the... security staff of my organization?" the woman asked shrewedly. The look in her eyes suggested she had seen off worlders before who thought they were a cut above the local variety of thug.

"You take it correctly, we are looking for short term work, a week tops while we get our ship worked over and update our nav data, then we will be out of your hair," Junebug agreed and then leaned forward slightly to rest her elbows on the table top.

"It would be a shame not to take a few credits with us though," she intonated.

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

Even after they had freed the gig it had been a massive undertaking to get the thing back to Sarento. Sabatine and her detachment had spent the night on the unnamed island and in the morning had commandeered the surface effect transport to ship the gig back to the base. Both plasma thrusters had been irreparably damaged in the crash and in digging the thing out of the mud bank and nothing short of a drydock rebuilt was going to make them serviceable. The captain of the freighter had not been best pleased to have his vessel repurposed in such a fashion but a handful of florins and the not so subtle hint of a dozen spacers looking bored and menacing had convinced him of the need to do his duty to the Republic. The had just minutes ago landed the gig and were about to turn the whole mess over to the base establishment when a circling aircar, an RCN vehicle by virtue of the fact that civilian air cars were prohibited on Sarento on pain of shoot down, a right the RCN had famously exercised a few years ago, subsequently quelling the locals enthusiasm for aviation.

It wasn’t until the officer in command of the small party called out to them that she recognized Kaiden Caladwarden. Her face froze in a set expression and the spacers around her tensed, hands going for weapons concealed in their slops without fully understanding what had startled their usual unflappable Lieutenant. After a moment, everyone relaxed, the vast majority of officers in the RCN were of the Cinnabar aristocracy, and that was a small enough club that officers with difficult pasts, political and personal were bound to run into each other sooner or later. Still Sabatine had hoped never to run into Kaiden again. She hadn’t seen him since that night, the last year in the academy when their six month long relationship had imploded messily in a screaming match that had woken the barracks provosts and nearly ended in a reprimand for both of them. One of Sabatine’s friends had dared her to break into Kaiden’s personal files. It had been a lark not really meant to be taken seriously but having already had rather more brandy then was wise Sabatine had agreed. She had uncovered evidence, messages sent and received of another woman, an aristocrat named Monika Rolfe who was one of the Clients of the Caladwrden family. Kaiden had admitted it when she confronted him, telling her that it had been early in the relationship and they had both been very drunk, he had brushed the girl of as politely as he could after the fact. Sabatine had not taken it well and had made the information public, arousing a minor scandal that might well have resulted in a duel if both the patair famili hadn’t quashed the matter in no uncertain terms. She hadn’t seen nor spoken to Kaiden since. Worse, although they had been in the same year, his name, first alphabetically, meant that he outranked her on date of commission. What in the Hells was he doing here? Sabatine did her best to smooth the grimace off her face and stiffened to attention, a comical site with her clothes caked in sweat and mud and her the cleanest of her men. The spacers, filthy and disheveled as she also stiffened to a posture of attention that would have given an academy drill instructor a stroke.

“Lieutenant Caladwarden,” she said formally, doing her best not to snap. She felt her skin prickle with the shock of adrenaline, it made her feel cold and her voice, already cold chilled by degrees.

“We recovered the Commodore’s gig from a crash on Islet 14 sir,” she told him stiffly.

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

It was remarkable the distance there could be between stating an idea and executing it. Turning on the reaction mass pumps without the igniters had seemed like an easy solution to the problem. Unfortunately it rather ignored the reality of opening up the powerplant compartment of the gig which, due to the torque of the crash, required the use of the diamond bladed rotary saw they had brought with them, as well as three stout spacers heaving on pry bars. Once she was in Sabatine had discovered that the control unit for number two motor had been crushed and had been forced to remove it, replace it with the undamaged unit from the failed number one thruster and fire it that way. That action had nearly brought a smile of self congratulations to Motorman Gregor as she hadn't realized that the igniter circuit and the reaction mass pump circuit were integrated and she had come within a hairs breath of lighting the plasma thruster while it was clogged with enough mud to transform it into a moderately sized bomb. Having averted that problem she had to deliberately break the inducer rig and then cross wire it so it reported to the system that it was still operational. The two years she had spent working maintenance ot Harbor 3 were paying off in spades, but she was still covered in sweat by the time the pump reluctantly stuttered to life and started pushing water through the system. The task was made no more pleasant by the lack of environmental controls and an outside temperature that was creeping towards 40 degrees Celsius.

Emerging from the gigs dorsal hatch and wiping the sweat from her face with her hat Sabatine looked down at the work her detail had conducted while she had been playing amateur mechanic. All of the spacers were filthy and covered with mud, having stripped to the waist and laboriously worked cables of woven beryllium mono-crystal underneath the gigs curved hull. The process had been accomplished at first by digging with entrenching tools, furiously scooping out water long enough to force the cable down and drag it through the mud by main force. As the afternoon had worn on however, locals, more curious than helpful but helpful also had shown up. While their main preoccupation seemed to be hawking fried food of various kinds as well as the local bush beer, one helpful man had donated a pump to the project. It was evidently a bilge pump of some description and launched a plume of muddy water into the air twenty meters in height as its diesel motor chugged to keep the improvised sluice dry. The whole affair had something of a carnival atmosphere to it as the locals gawped at the Cinnabars while others began cooking meat on portable grill units and generally enjoying the afternoon. Well there was nothing in Naval Regulations to prevent them from watching if they wanted to.

Sabatine might have scolded Klave about letting the men have beer. They were on duty and if Welkins heard about it there was no chance it would resound well on her. Still it was perishing hot and the men were filthy and miserable enough without depriving them of a little pleasure. Klave looked up at her and grinned sheepishly, as though sensing her imperial displeasure.

"Here you go ma'am," he called tossing her up an aluminum can still dripping from the half melted ice bath it lay in. She snatched the can and pulled the cap drinking it in great gulping mouthfuls. The cool liquid felt heavenly and she supposed that Klave had at least kept hard liquor from the men and, by the gods, this was thirsty work. Finishing the can in one long pull she paused to look at the can. It was of local manufacture and had what might have been some sort of mythical sea monster stenciled on the side. Snorting she crushed the can and tossed it back down to Klave who tossed her up another. Rather than opening it she tucked it into a pocket in her now sweat drenched uniform.

"How are we looking? she called gesturing down to the seven cables that had been passed under the hull. The shimmering lengths of monocrystal ran to a winch on the truck on the populated side and to a rocky outcropping on the other side of the river. Mangrove trees had been cleared with cutting bars, the racked of which she had evidently missed whilst she had been up to her elbows in circuitry. The monocrystal would have smashed the trees flat anyway but it might have jolted the improvised cradle at a bad moment, and spacers got to be old spacers by avoiding taking risks where they could. The gods knew the risks they couldn't avoid were bad enough, but you didnt enlist in the RCN, or take a commission for that matter, if risk was a major concern.

"I don't think we could lift her," Klave opined gesturing to the truck. "It just dosen't have enough torque, but we should be able to break her loose if you can give us some wiggle room." Sabatine considered it, wondering if there might be heavy earth moving equipment on the island they could requisition. Well they could explore that option if this didn't work.

"Alright, we will try it," she decided, raising her voice so all the spacers in the detachment could hear her and not just Klave. Spacers liked to know what was going on, and it was easier to explain to everyone rather than have someone screw up because they had been caught flat footed.

"Alright, everyone stand clear, Klave you spot on this bank," she turned to look over her shoulder at the far side of the river where Danzetti and Hogartern were peering across at her.

"Danzetti, get your commo helmet and spot from that side, if the cable starts to tangle or slide let us know asap got it," she shouted, before nodding to his answering affirmative. Cramming her own commo helmet onto her head she dropped back into the clamy interior of the gig, hoping up to the pilots console and taking a seat. She didn't strap herself in, if this went wrong and she sank the Commodore's gig to the bottom of the river, she was at least going to survive to be taken to task for it.

"Squad," she said, the helmet's AI queuing her transmission to the detachment with her, "Everyone clear?"

"All clear Ma'am," Klave's voice sounded in her ear piece.

"Roger that, commencing manuever," she replied. It wasn't really a maneuver but stars above it wasn't like the RCN had nomenclature for 'digging ship out of mud hole.' With her right hand she bought up a feed control panel then with her dominant left hand she qued up the attitude control screen. That was wishful thinking on her part, it was long odds that the thruster would be able to gimble even once it was water rather than mud that bound it, but hope sprang eternal. With a flick of a switch she engaged the pumps and there began a deep arrhythmic thumbing that shock the ship, rattling the fittings. For a few seconds the thrumming grew more and more insistent until there was a sudden gurgling boom as the built up water pressure blew several hundred kilos of mud from the thruster nozzle. She could hear the screams of shock outside for a second or two before a muddy rain splattered down over the view port obscuring it. Instinctively she backed the feed a hair and then quickly remoted in the views from both Klave and Danzetti's commo helmets. Mercifully both men were actually wearing them as directed and she could get a sense of what was going on. Great rolling waves of mud were bubbling around the hull of the gig as the nozzle blasted water out at fire hose pressure, scouring away the sucking mud beneath. Experimentally she touched the attitude control and, to her delight, felt the thruster gimble. That wouldn't last long of course, the mechanism was designed to work in space and atmosphere and mud and grit would grind the hydraulics to scrap in minutes, but it couldn't be helped.

"Ok, fire up the winch!" she shouted, instinctively raising her voice despite the fact the commo helmet would broadcast at an audible level on the reviving end even if she were in a firefight. There was a grinding chug as the cables began to take up the slack. With slow arcs, Sabatine began to work the thruster back and forth, angling it slightly towards the channel of the river. The deck canted greasily as the cables pulled taught as she continued to sycthe with her thruster, a great grey plume extending from the hull into the center of the river as she cut away the mud bank with the pressurized fluid.

"Come on you pox bitch," Sabatine muttered and, as if in response, there was a sudden grinding slosh. The cables suddenly taught as the suction holding the gig in place broke. Sabatine suddenly realized she should have attached a bow line to drag the gig out into the channel but it was too late for such second guessing now. Next time she had to rescue a Commodores private transport from a mud bank she would be better prepared.

"Stand clear!" she called, even though she had already ordered everyone out of the water.

"I want you to drop tension on my mark," she added.

"Ready Ma'am," Klave's voice came back, confused but obident.

"Three, two, one, mark!" An instant before the cables when slack she shoved the thruster full to the rear and opened the gates, pouring water through at the maximum rate of the pumps. The gig poggoed forward, ground for a moment on the remnants of the destroyed mudbank and then slid into the river channel under neutral buoyancy. The crowd behind her cheered even as a vast plume of water burst from the rear of the craft to soak all and sundry with muck. With a smile of satisfaction Sabatine powered down the feed pumps and then climbed out of the seat and back up onto the hull. Klave and Danzetti were already on the banks to either side of her, each of them tossed her a line which she expertly snagged around a stantion to lock the gig into its new anchorage. Muddy spacers grinned at her from the beach as did several dozen filthy, but happy looking wogs.

"Three cheers for the LT!" Klave called and she was treated to several hurrah's from the assembled crowd. Sabatine allowed herself a satisfied smile and then took the beer from her filthy vest and cracked it open. Commodore Welkins would probably still bitch about the condition of his gig, especially now she had rained filthy river water into its open hatches, but that problem could wait. A hard task had been managed in only a few hours and there was nothing at all that could ruin that.

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

Navy House List - Herculaneum

RCS Grandwing - Corvette

RCS Vicount - Corvette

RCS Whitehall - Gunboat