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Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

"Well," Sabatine replied with the exaggerated care of someone who knew they drunk a little too much. She snickered as she remembered how Kaiden had found her covered in mud after freeing the Admiral's pinnace.

"It isn't ONLY getting your hands dirty," she conceded. The headed down the companionway towards the officers quarters, Sabatine running her hand along the metal bulkhead to steady herself.

"Think he is going to go for it?" Kaiden asked her. A grin that would have done a mongoose credit spread over Sabatine's face.

"Florins to flaxseed sir," she responded with drunken formality before slipping into her room and collapsing on the cot.

_______

"Extracting," Sabatine reported, for once not feeling the discomfort of the procedure due to the hangover she was nursing. As she had predicted Captain Micha had changed his patrol orders immediately, and on the next day watch they had executed a short in system hop to get a look behind on of the smaller gas giants which the sailing directions listed as having a number of small moons. This was their second transit, exploring the vicinity of the unnamed gas giant on the fringe of the system.

"Contact!" Sabatine shouted as sensor data poured in through the pickups now they were out of the matrix. Her heart dropped like an icy comet. She had expected to find a couple of pirates in a nest, perhaps with captured ships down on the surface of one of the moons. Instead the sensors registered not one, but three ships. All of them warships, all of them Alliance.

"Enemy ships!" she snapped, toggling frantically between displays to sythesize the data she was seeing.

"Two destroyers, and Gods, there is a heavy cruiser on the ground," she repotted, her voice decreasing in volume though the icy grip on her heart didn't relax. This was a terrible situation to be sure. The sensors registered the destroyers Halifax and K-21 at about one hundred and two hundred thousand miles above them, offset at an arc of about 120 degrees. The Heavy Cruiser Hikendorf, was in a shallow crater below them at a range of perhaps 90,000 clicks. The visual data seemed to indicate that it was taking on water from a fairly sophisticated set of ground installations. The freighter they had seen running was there also now that she had time to look at it, but the oversight could hardly have mattered less. By luck, whether good or ill was yet to be seen, they had extracted between the picketing destroyers and the grounded heavy cruiser. The destroyers were in the process of putting their rigs up, probably in preparation to make a short jump in system to swat a nosy RCN corvette, judging by the sparing, they had only recently arrived from a long voyage, probably through the St John cluster, and hadn't yet had a chance to shake down.

"Say again Lieutenant," Micha asked, googling at her in shock.

"Hostil..."

"Incoming!" Helena Graving shouted, and the hull began to shake as the heavy plasma cannons began to traverse. Sabatine glanced down at her board in shock, amazed and horrified that the enemy had been able to react so quickly. It wasn't ship based missile fire, rather one of the anti ship batteries defending the ground installation had opened fire.

"Permission to engage," Graving called leaning forward intently over her display. Micha's mouth worked but no sounds came out, perhaps he was suffering from a particularly rough transition, but it was a piss poor time for it.

"Sir do I hav..."

"Fire!" Sabatine shouted and before the word had fully escaped her mouth the heavy guns crashed in syncopating blasts that made the hull ring like a giant bell. Unusually for her class, the Vicky mounted six inch guns rather than the conventional four inchers. There wasn't much difference in the rate of fire, but the stress they put on the frames and mountings was exponentially greater. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! Graving's first shot swatted the missile out of existence in a burst of flame. Unlike a ship based missile the ground to air variety had more fuel and less warhead, the plasma ignited the fuel reserves in a spectacular fireball. The second shot detonated the battery itself and the third and fourth rounds hit the Hikendorf squarely. Sabatine was about to tell the gunner to cease fire, plasma shots couldn't penetrate an atmosphere but the sensors showed rigging and masts subliming in fireballs as the gunner raked the grounded cruiser. Belatedly she realized the moon had no atmosphere and whooped with delight as the enemy ship rocked and sparkled with plasma hits. At this range the armor was thick enough to turn aside the hammer blows, but the ships exterior fittings and rig were torched in an instant. Graving apparently noticed this too and shifted her point of aim onto other targets. The freighter blew apart under a direct hit that scattered pieces of it over a square kilometer of moonscape.

"What are you doing!" Micha yelled, finally seeming to snap out of his fugue, eyes wide with shock, "you have just started a war!" Sabatine blinked at the absurd statement. The very fact that Alliance ships were here, and had a base meant they were already at war.

"Halifax is launching," Ottis reported his voice excited but not alarmed. Sabatine glanced back to the board and saw that the boy was right, missile tracks appearing on the PPI as cyan lines which intersected with the course of the Vickie.

"Orders sir?" Sabatine demanded.

"Give me a moment," Micha snapped back. Sabatine's eyes widened with shock, they didn't have a moment, it might already be too late.

"K-21 is maneuvering," Ottis reported as the second destroyer, slower off the mark than her consort began to accelerate, hard enough that pieces of her half deployed rig were carrying away. They were comically outgunned, probably still alive only becaue Graving had fried the sensors and welded the turret mountings of the Hikendorf before the cruisers heavy guns could gut then.

"General Quarters!" Sabatine shouted, though only an idiot would need to know to get to battle stations at this point.

"Lieutenant Hickoring this is my ship and..." Micha began to protest but Sabatine was no longer listening.

"I am maneuvering," she called over the command push and rolled the ship, twisting to bring Graving's guns to bear on the incoming missles. The great guns began to hammer instantly, working to nudge the incoming warheads off their predicted lethal courses. Another four, then four more missiles coughed from the Halifax, filling the board with cyan trails.

"XO," Sabatine called over a two way link, bypassing the useless shouting on the command channel.

"Kaiden I hope you have some brilliant plan to get us out of this, because we are deep in the shit."

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

"I think my countrymen are taking a shine to you," Emmaline noted with a carefully concealed smile. Amal laughed, drawing the eye of a group of Fraus as they rode by.

"I always though you a unique pearl, I just didn't realize how unique," Amal snickered. The cobblestone streets began to rise as they reached the bottom of the hill. Predictably as they got further from the waterfront and higher the houses grew more elaborate and prosperous, and riverside dives gave way to neat taverns and chophouses.

"This looks like a nice place," Emmaline said as they reached a stone walled coaching inn.

__________

Emmaline awoke with a start as Amal's hand clamped down over her mouth. She twisted and purred in the sheets imagining this to be a renewal of their previous activities. The room was suddenly light by a flash of lightning and she froze at the expression on Amal's face. Outside rain, which had begun after dinner, slashed down on the slate roof tiles in a continuous roar. Emmaline's hand traveled slowly to the side of the bed where Asp lay among Emmaline's discarded dress. The snake shifted at her touch and then slithered silently up her arm, coiling around her wrist. Without warning the window exploded inwards a figure tumbling through it, Amal was already leaping from the bed, knives which must have been hidden under his pillow appeared in his hands as if by magic. Emmaline screamed and something flashed past her and buried itself in the headboard of the bed with a sound like an axe striking a log. She rolled out of bed and hit the ground, as another bolt of lightning lit the darkness beyond the window of their third floor room. For a heart beat she could see a figure standing on peak of the roof across the street, the squat powerful form a crossbow in his hand. She pressed herself up on both knees and one hand, lifting the staff that was suddenly in her hand. Lightning struck from the heavens, bathing the figure in light for a moment before he vanished in the ensuing darkness. Wind and rain poured through the open windows, whipping the curtains like the tentacles of a flailing sea creature.

Amal stood for a moment, kneeling over the first dark figure who was yet to rise. Emmaline whispered a spell and the oil lamps burst to life, bathing the room in flickering light as the wind struggled to extinguish the flames. The figure, was a man, and he was clearly dead. Blood ran sluggishly around a crossbow quarrel in his throat and his eyes were glazed. He was dressed in dark clothing and a cloak and in his hand he clutched a short iron cylinder. It was wrapped with a chain of dark metal from which depended an amulet depicting crossed fingers. An urgent pounding began to sound from the hall outside as Emmaline scrambled across the floor and snatched up the rod, stuffing it hastily into a draw before a key rattled in the door and it cracked open to reveal the wide eyed innkeeper.

"Mien Herr are you all..." he trailed off as he realized both Emmaline and Amal were naked and hastily averted his budging eyes.

"Are you alright?" he asked, raising his voice over the storm, "what happened?"

The Pavonis Campaign - Warhammer 40000

"Command," Katiya mused as the started down the wall, keeping in the shadows of it as the sun sank below the horizon. The cries of rage and the screams of enemy wounded faded behind them. It pricked her soul to leave, while there were enemies standing and possibly, though unlikely, Arbities still alive in the ruin of their headquarters. If that were true the best thing she could do for them was to leave the area, give the mob a chance to fizzle out.

"It is not a Commissar's duty to command," she told Connors as they reached a small stone wall which ran out from the larger one. She nodded at the soldier who made a stirrup of his hands and boosted her up, she caught the top of the wall and scanned the far side of a moment for danger. It seemed to be a mix of habs and small businesses, but after the bomb blast and the gunfire people were keeping themselves inside, she pivoted and reached a gloved hand down for Connors who took it and leaped upwards, she let herself fall off the far side, her weight lifting the trooper up while his mass slowed her own decent.

"I am here only to advise, and right now, I advise that you follow me," she told him with a wintery Valhallan smile. The moved forward through the gathering darkness, sticking close to the wall to conceal themselves in its shadows. After a few hundred meters they came to a wide boulevard and Katiya waved Connors to a stop. A throng of people was marching down the boulevard towards the school. White robed ministorum priests were in the lead swinging censors, behind them came burly miners and manufactorum workers, holding banners aloft. The banners read: Him on Terra, Not Her in the Palace, and other protests against the governor. One of them was a fairly artistic rendering of the governor drinking the blood of a pale miner who had already been drained. Behind them followed a crowd chanting and holding torches aloft. Katiya flattened herself against the wall pleased for her dark coat to conceal her from view.

"It is going to be hard to get back to the school with this lot blocking the streets," Katiya said to Connors, the distant roar of other crowds could be heard, assuring her that it wasn't the only rally out in the streets tonight. There was a sense of wrongness about it that nagged at her.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Savachev screamed in pain.

"Hold her damn you," Rene snarled. The merchant was white faced, lifting the spacer was not a pleasant task. One hand was under the woman's shoulder, but the other was just below buttock, the burned flesh slid under hand, the grip lubricated by sera and damaged flesh. Bouradine swallowed hard but kept his grip. It wasn't Bouradine's fault really, the merchant was doing well enough given the task at hand, Rene simply didn't like Solae wandering around without him. It made sense, but he didn't really trust anyone to look out for Solae as well as he could. Part of that was skills, but devoted as the Syshin were, as much as Rosaria looked at her as something between a mother and a savior, no one loved the Duchess the way he did.

"One more second," Rene told Bouradine and nudged the backplate into place. Savachev was whimpering now, her body growing limp as the pain overloaded her system.

"Ok, down," Rene directed, lowering the spacer down into place. The armor was slightly too large, sized for Rene, in theory it was adjustable but the process was tedious and didn't really matter for this purpose. They settled Savachev down and Rene picked up the chest plate and pressed it into place, it clicked and there was a whir of seal engaging.

"Are you really with the Marines?" Bouradine asked. Rene looked up at him, forgetting for a moment that he was still wearing a combat helmet. The merchant was scared, all but babbling, inhabiting a world of fear wholly different from Rene's. What had he expected when he and Bel'sian eloped? Certainly not a crashed escape pod, and Imperial Duchess and being pressed into service as a medical orderly. All things considered Rene supposed he was doing surprisingly well. Instead of responding immedialey he raised his right sleeve to display the tattoo of the dagger crossed planet and the serial number marked into his flesh.

"Really," he confirmed tonelessly. The visor blinked a red alert as it resynced with his chest plate. A schematic of a human body occupied a portion of the head up display. Red warning lights lit up all over the body. Not Rene's body, Savachevs. It was possible to open the individual alerts if more information was required, though the real purpose of the sensors was to inform a squad medic and command group of soldiers status. Rene didn't need to open them to know that the spacer was in bad shape. The critical alert flashed in his visor and Rene activated the emergency medical pack. There was another soft hiss as auto injectors pumped antibiotics into Savachevs system. Judging by the white count and the blood pressure it was amazing the spacer was still alive. Whatever Bouradine had done had probably saved the woman's life. The spacers eyes snapped open as drugs and combat stims poured into her system.

"S..sir?" she moaned, her voice like a wood rasp. Her eyes tried to focus, but the left one seemed to refuse to do so, a side effect of the anti-shock meds artificially raising her blood pressure.

"Colonel Quentain," he identified himself, "keep calm and relax for stars sake, we have medical inbound, but I need you to stay calm till we can get you into a medi-comp." The spacer nodded and seemed to relax, her signals improving slightly.

"I can't feel my legs," she half whispered.

"No sweat, the analgesics are deployed by vasoconstrictors, targets where you are hurt, it isn't paralysis," Rene assured her. Savachev nodded, letting out a deep breath. She reached over and her hand pawed at a panel. Rene reached out and pulled the panel free. Beneath the panel was a data key, striped red and black. The emergency data dump. Any time a ship launched escape pods it dumped an encrypted copy of its core files onto a high capacity key. Rene took it and slid it into his pocket. As the senior officer it was his responsibility.

"Gory... gory... but a hell of a way to die..." Savachev moaned, sinking back into her fuge.

"We will get you help, just hang on," Rene told her, listening for the distant roar of the Bonaventure.

"Just hold on," he repeated under his breath.

Penny's Pencils

Returning to rp and chill

I read this as RP and Chilli and now I am hungry

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

The officers wardroom was a small space, just large enough for the table and chairs that had been bolted to the deck in its small walls. Kaiden as the new XO was offically being dined in by the company and had generously extended an invitation to Captain Micha who had graciously accepted. The Vickie was cruising in real space, making an orbit of MXD-41 and showing the flag of Cinnabar to all in the system. Theoretically this was to ward of pirates, but Sabatine doubted it would be very effective in that. Pirates were a scourge this far from the civilized worlds and whether a ship was a trader or a pirate largely depended on whether they thought one would be more profitable than the other at any given moment. All of the senior warrants as well as Ottis were present. The only absentee was midshipman Mckay, the most junior of the company thus, as propriety demanded, stuck on the bridge as the deck officer.

The meal had been sumptuous, roast meat prepared with local spices and thinly sliced vegetables in a rum and pepper sauce. Wine and rum from their last landfall had been plentiful and they were settling in for the dessert course of treacle putting with fresh custard. Byron might have a long ways to go as a spacer, but his talents as a mess steward were on full display. As the steaming pudding was unveiled, he circled the table and topped up drinks without being asked before midshipman Ottis stood and raised his glass in the traditional toast. The other officers followed suit careful not to bang their chairs against the bulkhead doors.

"To a bloody war or a sickly season," the youth declared and the others echoed him before downing their drinks. Given the circumstances the toast seemed particularly ominous, but each 'day' of ship time had its own toast and the RCN never deviated from tradition. They all resumed their seats as Byron began to dispense the pudding with a wooden serving spoon with a bladed edge.

"Speaking of impending hostilities sir," Sabatine began, "Ms Savarti did some digging into our runaway freighter and I think you were probably right in that it wasn't a pirate." Micha nodded agreeably, favoring her with a patronizing smile now that he felt she wasn't going to challenge him.

"As much as we might all wish for action, this is no time to be jumping at shadows," Micha replied sagely. Chief Savachev nodded but Helenna Graving looked disappointed. No doubt the gunner was more enthusiastic about the prospect of action against pirates than most of them. Even in fleet actions, plasma cannon were primarily defensive weapons, meant to nudge incoming missiles off target, but every gunner dreamed of being able to use them to rip open a lightly armored pirate at close range.

"Quite right sir," Sabatine agreed, following the plan that she and Kaiden had worked out together. Tilda had been surprisingly helpful as well, no doubt her background as an investigative journalist gave her an instinct for how to use such social engineering.

"According to Tilda," Kaiden broke in, taking up his part of the plan, "It looks like Tarlock Trading is probably just moving cargo off the books, stashing it on a moon somewhere out behind MXD-43 or one of the other gas giants. Probably figure war is coming and are looking to avoid confiscation of iridium. Smugglers," he concluded with an aristocratic sneer. Kaiden Caladwarden, the scion of a rich and powerful family, could hardly be expected to care about such money grubbing tactics as avoiding legal excise duties. Every other officer in the mess however, including Micha sat up a little straighter. Sabatine concealed a grin by draining her rum and lifting her glass for a refill. The rest of the plan should unfold without so much as another word.

"That would make whatever they are stashing out their subject to seizure and condemnation by a prize court wouldn't it?" Higgs asked, looking more than a little bleary eyed from the amount of liquor he had consumed. Kaiden had assured her that it wasn't necessary to bring him into the scheme, and she was pleased to see she had been right.

"It certainly would," Leyla Savachev agreed in her Xenos drawl as she mentally calculated what a chief engineers share of such a seizure might be. Doubtless that share was all the more inflated for being imaginary. Micha was rubbing his chin too. Micha didn't come from money or even the aristocracy, quite the opposite in fact, he had worked his way up through years of thankless peacetime service, only to find himself far from the action and chance for advancement when the last war broke out. Even on active service the pay of a senior lieutenant was not extravagant, not unless you won prize money and that didn't happen without action. Unless of course you found an excuse to seize a valuable cargo from smugglers.

"I'll bet you the prize court on Herculaneum would condem it no questions asked, as little trade as they have been getting lately," Graving speculated. The idea was clearly taking hold and Sabatine could almost feel the avarice take hold.

"Speaking of Herculaneum, if we put back in I'd like to see about replacing number three starboard, she stuck again during extraction," Sabatine interjected, steering the topic away from smuggling and prize money as Tilda had suggested. Kaiden raised his glass surreptitiously in salute. Sabatine had no doubt that by morning, the Captain would have not only found an excuse to sweep the system for smugglers caches, but be thoroughly convinced it was his own idea.

Penny's Pencils

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

Sabatine tried to ignore her dislike for Tilda, though it wasn't easy. Rather than focus on the woman's irritating intrusion into her carefully ordered world she focused on the task at hand. Despite her resolution to let it go, she couldn't put it out of her mind. For a long moment she scanned the documents.

"Imagine you are a pirate," she mused, taking a seat at the console beside Kaiden. She punched the console live and pulled up a plot of the system. The paths of all the ships appeared as lines, mapping trajectories.

"With this much traffic in the system, attacking a freighter is going to be hard. The second you extract everyone near you will scatter, plus most of these tubs are worthless anyway," she explained. Most of the freighters weren't even capable of entering the matrix anymore, if they ever had been able to. The hulls were worth something, and the crew possibly as slaves, but all in all only laden vessels with valuable cargos were worth the risk.

"You need to be precise when you attack, come out of the matrix close to a rich prize and snatch her before she can dive for the planet, moon I suppose," she went on. Kaiden was nodding following her train of thought.

"So you need a spotter, like our unusually observant freighter," he said musingly. It was Sabatine's turn to nod.

"If I were in charge, I'd set up a base on a moon behind one of the lesser gas giants, I could jump my spotter out behind it like she was leaving the system, then simply follow a reverse course back in once she extracted to give me my intel."