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Gold & Glory: AU thread

Morgan nodded obediently, responding to Markus' tone as much as what the captain was saying. He gave Emmaline a suspicious look, then turned back to the younger man.

"I'll have the men rig the main course with Estalian reefs, we wont be able to shake our our royals..." he paused, remembering that Markus had been struck down at or shortly before the time the the caravels mainmast had come down.

"But that wont matter much with the winds coming out of the northwest, not as far west as we've run," Morgan mused, pausing to allow Markus a chance to contradict his decision. Markus made a gesture which, if not assent, wasn't flat contradiction. The old privateer nodded, gave Emmaline a final suspicious look and withdrew, closing the door behind him.

"That is gratitude for you," Emmaline said tartly, wincing slightly as she crossed the room to the side table on which she had stored the cooking and alchemical supplies she had used for her ritual. The poured a little of her alchemical base into a cup and then added a few herbs, stirring it with a wooden spoon before topping the mix off with water from a pitcher. She crossed over to Markus and put the cup into his hands.

"Drink this," she directed, "It will help." Markus watched her suspiciously for a minute and then drank, wincing at the taste.

"What is it?" Markus asked.

"A mix of herbs and alchemical base, alcohol really, in a few minutes you will feel a pain in your side, like a stitch, and you will start sweating."

"If your plan is to poison me..." Markus began, though his voice was amused rather than angry made a dismissive gesture.

"If you show up on deck looking like Shyalla has come down from her heaven, the men will throw me into the sea some dark night regardless of what you say."

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Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

"I suspect, that if you are alive to ask, the Empress will be happy to comply," Rene joked, though the humor had a touch of the gallows to it.

"I like the forest too, as a boy I spent alot of time... wandering I guess, but also hunting and fishing on our estate," he smiled fondly remembering days spent wandering the alpine wilderness. His family swordmaster, a grey haired old soldier named Cheralin, had accompanied him at first, teaching him they ways of the wilds. Rene's father had been distant but had obviously approved of his son's inclinations as better training for life than time immersed in video simulation games, cars, women, or the other past times of the idle rich. The landscape here was sere and uninviting to Rene's eye, and worse it lacked meaningful cover and concealment. Rene wondered what the landscape was like on Traulis Major, the current ducal seat, of course there was no reason that Solae, if she ascended to her proper station, couldn't move the court wherever she liked. That might even be an advantage as it would allow them to effectively begin the sector beauracracy anew as they purged it of Tan's loyalists.

"Lets get you to bed your grace, and we can discuss Imperial largess in more detail," he suggested. Carefully as he could he reached down and lifted Solae from the medi-comp. His tired muscles screamed but he pushed through it, Solae wasn't in condition to stand up unaided and none of the others would be as comfortable as he was man handling the duchess. He carried Solae across the room and down the short hallway to the captains cabin as Rosaria and the Syshin got Savachev onto the bed of the medical computer and initiated the auto treatment cycle.

No amount of Ten's money had been able to make the small cabin luxurious, but it was far cleaner and better stocked than it had been when Rene and Solae had taken possession of the craft. Rene lay his love down on the bed and then sniffed critically. Rosaria had a point, the combination of sweat and mud was bad enough but the byproducts of fear, fear for Solae, and adrenaline combined to give him an unpleasant reek. Excusing himself he stepped out and into the refersher station. Stripping out of his filthy garments and allowing the combination sonic and water shower to sluice him clean. His body burned and throbbed, especially his hand and arms which had been stripped raw by manhandling the casings they had used to drill. He had blisters which would be sores by the morning, but that was a cheap price to pay, doubtless he could find some salve in one of the first aid kits. Turning of the shower he dried himself and dressed in a white cotton T-shirt and a pair of dark grey fatigue pants. He unhooked his pistol from his weapons belt and inspected the weapon, wiping it clean with his soiled shirt and assuring himself that mud hadn't made its way into the barrel of the mechanism. By rote he worked the action, ejecting one of the thumbnail sized ammunition discs, then removed the magazine, reseated the round and reloaded then gun. Satisfied, he slipped the weapon into a cargo pocket. He was probably being paranoid, but he was technically on duty and though neither Bouradine or Bel'sian seemed to be a threat they were still strangers. Satisfied he tossed the remaining dirty clothes including his utility belt into the laundry bin and headed back to the cabin.

"Master Quentain," Bouradine called as he emerged from the shower, the merchant had clearly been waiting for him to do so. Bouradine looked nervous although perhaps that was his normal look rather than a reaction to the circumstances.

"It is Colonel Quentain," Rene corrected, then grinned slightly to show that it was something of a joke.

"Although I'd prefer Rene when we are in private," he continued with a slight grin. There was enough rank on what was effectively a tramp freighter without adding to the formality by demanding titles when they weren't needed.

"Col.. Rene," Bouradine continued, "Might I speak with Lady Falia? I'd like to know... well you know..."

"You want to know what she intends to do with you and Bel'sian?" Rene concluded, cutting through the fellows hesitation. Bouradine's head drooped in a nod that was at least partially resignation.

"If you take me back to Ranal Pindi, Totlya will kill me, kill me sure. I don't have a chance of winning a challenge and he will make sure I die as much because I am a human as I am a rival for Bel'sian. There are those among the Kalderi who view what we are doing as an abomination. I'm not a coward but I have to be realistic," Bouradine continued in a rush. Rene cocked his head slightly. Did Bouradine really think Rene would judge him as a coward for not wishing to engage in a fight he couldn't win? Clearly he did, and perhaps at some deep primal level Rene did make a judgment, intellectually however, he knew that Bouardine was a merchant and no warrior. There was no shame in refusing a fight one couldn't win and no cowardice either.

"For your first question, no you may not speak with Solae," he began holding up a hand to forestall an objection which was already forming on Bouradine's lips.

"Her grace needs time to recover from what she went through, time for the drugs to clear out of her system," he explained. Even if Mia hadn't made a point of mentioning it, he wouldn't have wanted her to be rushed in deciding what to do about a problem so politically complex. Bouradine's face worked in a moo of frustration.

"I will tell you that whatever Solae, that is Duchess Falia decides, it will be just," Rene said, laying a hand on Bouradine's shoulder.

"She isn't the sort to sacrifice someone on the altar of political expediency," he continued. That was certainly true, though Rene didn't see there were a lot of options other than returning Bel'sian at least to her people. They needed Kalderi support and they couldn't risk alienating a powerful potential ally.

"I..." Bouradine began looking uncertain and miserable but at least he didn't appear to be on the verge of taking precipitous action. People in emotional straits often made questionable decisions and it would have upset Rene to have to shoot Bouradine if he tried to hijack the ship as the only method to protect himself and his lover.

"Solae will see you as soon as she is able, and we will discuss our next move," Rene told him, deliberately using 'we' to imply that it was a true discussion in which Bouradine had a stake and a voice. The merchant had helped save Solae afterall, even if he had been motivated by Bel'sian's presence. Rene would do as Solae ordered of course, even if that meant shooting Bouradine and dumping his body outside, but he couldn't imagine her ever giving such an order. Rene gently turned the merchant back towards the hold. Bouradine seemed to be about to say more but thought the better of it and stepped off back towards the core of the ship. Rene watched him go for a few moments and then turned and headed back to the cabin.

"How are you feeling?" he asked as he stepped through the door.

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The Starlight Sea

Jessica Scarlett, or Red Jess as she was known to her friends and enemies, both of which she had in abundance, cursed the day she had ever come up with this clever plan. Doubtless the six other crewmen with her on this were cursing her all so, but given they had all been hardsuited and in vacuum for the past day and a half. The starfield appeared unchanged, even though they were hurtling through it at over seven hundred miles per hour. Their vessel, nicknamed the "Abortion', was a collection of beams of structural plastic, air tanks, gyroscopes and pieces of glass etched with engineering marker. The guiding design principle of the Abortion was that it could contain no metal or other material that might scatter radar. The resulting craft had no sensors, no life support and no abillity to manuevur other than break. In every sense it was a collection of junk which had been launched into space on a ballistic course.

The problem was that the ship they were trying to board was one of a half dozen which had been shot up by a Hegemony squadron four days earlier. The attack ships had moved on to other engagements leaving a picket and a single salvage tender which was in the process of hauling the derelicts back to a Hegemony controlled world to be condemned as prizes of war. Luckily the process was a slow one, and the ship she was looking for, the slave ship Blackbird, was a low priority to the Hedge. The picket cruiser was orbiting a gas giant two hundred thousand miles distant. Its orbit was calculated to sweep the derelict ships constantly, but due to the nature of the orbits there was a twelve minute gap in its coverage as it passed behind the gas giant.

Jessica's plan to approach the problem was simple. Insane, but simple. Certainly if she presented it to her instructors back at the naval academy on Capella she would have been laughed out of class before being sent for yet another psyche eval. She and her crew had constructed the Abortion, attached it to a stolen tug, and then jumped out of parallax during the picket ships blind spot, accelerated for nine minutes and then released the Abortion before dropping back into parallax. The Abortion, small and non-metallic, hard flown on her ballistic course for thirty seven hours. Thirty seven hours during which her crew with no protection except suits. Thirty seven hours with what snatches of sleep they could grab. Jessica looked at her chronometer, on old fashioned pocket watch which had been sprayed with a synthetic resin to protect it against vacuum. Thirty eight hours. It was nearly time. Jess climbed forward hand over hand past one of her crewman, asleep and tethered to a tie down, to the nest of cables which served as the Abortion's controls. There was no instrumentation, merely a sheet of glass which had been etched with navigation markers. All of which were just about aligned. Jess checked the pocket watch again and then grasped a lever and yanked. The ship slammed into her butt, jolting her spine as cylinders of CO2 on her port and starboard began to vent, slowing the ship. The other spacers, jolted awake by the sudden deceleration, clung on to the vessel as gyroscopes fired smaller jets to control the ships attitude.

"Twenty seconds," Jessica said, though no one could hear the words without air to carry the sound. Ahead of her she saw a metal hull swelling larger. Amazingly they were on course. She drew the single piece of metal equipment she had allowed herself, a laser range finder that was low powered enough that the scatter wouldn't be visible for more than a few hundred kilometers, and pointed it at the approaching ship. It returned a relative rate of close and she adjusted the gas release slightly with the twist of a lever, then she stood up and took one of the lines of woven plastic.

"Ten seconds," Jess muttered, the hull completely occluding the starfield now. The rate of close was now only a few meters a second, still a little faster than she had calculated but it was too late to worry about it now.

The Abortion hit the side of the blackbird with a crash that every soul aboard felt in their spines. As a group the sailor leaped from the ship and onto the hull, tying lines to whatever they could find as the Abortion rebounded away. It sailed ten meters back before snugging on the cables. One of them snapped soundlessly under the strain, but the other five cables held. Jessica let out an explosive breath. They were aboard.

_____

The hatch slid away as the burn gel cut through the metal. As expected the interior of the Blackbird had been depressurized by battle damage so the hatch didn't blow out. Jess slid the hatch away, letting it drift off into space and sliding into the ship. Without power, the artifical gravity was gone also, and debris floated everywhere, They were on the ceiling above the main hold. On the floor below them were several dozen cryo tubes. Many of them were cracked open, leaking globes of bluish cryo fluid into the weightless void. Those tubes which had lost integrity were caskets now, their occupants frozen and dehydrated. Jess growled. She didn't like slavery or slavers, and it was a comfort to her that the crew of the Blackbird had died when Hegemony guns had ripped their tub open. She made a hand signal to one of her crew, a slender woman named Jacobis, who kicked off and floated over to her. Jessica caught her and then pressed their helmets together so that the vibrations could transmit between them.

"Get one of the escape pods warmed up," she instructed, "I'll see what..." She paused as one of her crew, already down among the tubes, made an urgent gesture. Jess arched an eyebrow and then kicked off, sailing down towards the deck, she hit and rolled, catching the deck grating with her fingers. She straightened, the soft magnets in her boots barely enough to keep her grounded. The crewman made a gesture to the translucent tube. Inside was an angelic looking face of deep blue, with bright red hair.

"A starborn?!" Jessica wondered. Then made a gesture to Jacobis. The other woman nodded then reached out and pressed the emergency release. Their was a puff of air and the tube slid free of its metallic clasp. The two women man handled the tube into an escape pod. Unlike the rest of the ship, the escape pod could generate both atmosphere and gravity, as they passed the tube through the shimmering mag field it settled to the ground. Jessica rolled the tube over and tapped at the controls, initiating the thaw. Fluid drained away as inbuilt injectors pumped drugs into the veins of the sleeping slave. Her eyes snapped open, starring up at Jess unseeing. The pirate pulled her helmet off to reveal her own shock of red hair, tied into a severe bun to keep it out of her face during weightlessness.

"Hello there," she greeted the Starborn.

@SporkoBug

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A giant List of Ideas and Potential Stories [High-Casual to Advance] [18+]

I was just talking about the Belgariad!