[IC] Pax Astra

[Penny]

There was an old saying that there were no certainties in life save death and taxes. Sabatine Blackburn had spent long years contemplating death. Years with knuckles pressed white against flight yolks, years pressing herself into the dirt and praying to Minerva, Mars, and anyone else who would listen, that the cavalry would make it on time. Lonely hours strapped into crash webbing as particle beams rattled the hull of the fragile collections of electronics and explosives that carried men through the stars. Taxes had been less of a concern.

The warmth of the afternoon was a pleasant companion as Sabatine plucked opal fruit from her trees. Each fruit came away with a little snap as she pulled it free and set the small darkly reflective fruit into the pannier she had slung over her shoulder. She was a curious mishmash, her features squarish and romanesque, with her short hair held back by a red bandana and a gray sleeveless farmer’s smock, she could have been any peasant in the Empire. The navy surplus fatigue pants and heavy infantry boots, as well as the tattoos her smock left uncovered, told a different story. There were other signs as well, the muscles of her body were not those developed by a lifetime of laboring in an orchard, for all that was her current occupation.

Opal fruit trees stretched off in both directions in neatly ordered lines, running nearly a hundred feet down toward the stream bank where she had built a small dam out of stones and industrial plasticiser. The blades of a small windmill turned, lifting water from the pool to water the trees. The broad heart shaped leaves of the trees made shady corridors that channeled the breeze. Nearly two entire acres were now dedicated to opal fruit, which were her principal cash crop. Potatoes, carrots, corfu, trevet, and a few other food crops were planted in neat rectangular beds, adding their more intense green to the panorama. Small walls of stacked river stone, less than two feet tall ringed the trees. These were to discourage the local ungulates, though the sacrificial trees she had planted down by the woods did a better job of simultaneously dissuading pets and luring fresh meat to her gun. Sabatine sat the full pannier down and covered the gleaming fruit with wax cloth, then picked up a rake to gather the last few fruit from the top most boughs.

The sound of a buzzing engine drew Sabatine’s attention to a battered ATV rattling down the dusty track that linked her hundred acres to the Via Ateria. A driver and two passengers clung to it as it pulled around in front of her home. The house was a standard colony pod which had been improved by the addition of a wrap-around pouch and an open second story roofed with glazed tile. It was somewhat dwarfed by a large modular shed of corrugated iron that emanated the soft background hum of a fusion generator. Stretches of dirt, yet to regrow their covering of grass, telegraphed the location of recently buried conduits.

The atv rattled to a stop and the three men disembarked, two of them hopping from the sideboards while the third struggled to cut the engine. All three men were armed, though one of them probably felt like the pistol under his cloak was concealed. They swaggered over towards her, marching through her carrots in their haste to show her how much contempt they held her in.

“Mistress Blackburn,” one of them, a beefy looking man in early middle age, called in a surprisingly nasal voice. Sabatine watched them skeptically, leaning on her rake as they tramped through her vegetables. He clearly thought of himself as the leader, but it was hard to imagine that the little possy had enough structure to be in need of such a lofty office.

“Something I can do for you gentlemen,” she prodded, impatient to be done with whatever game they were playing at so she could get back to gathering her opal fruit. If she hustled she could be finished with this in time to take a swim before the sun went down. She whetted her lips at the thought of some of the passable beer she had brewed last winter.

“We missed you at the Ketcharch’s feast, we had hoped the whole community would show up to celebrate his elevation,” Nasal-voice scolded with false disappointment. Sabatine gave them a weary look. These puffed up dregs and their amateur theatrics. Truthfully she had forgotten about Ketcharch Gorm and his damned Founder’s Day celebration. She had little to do with the community, save for the factor that sold her opal fruit for her and an occasional shipment of tech from the star port.

“I’m not interested in local politics.” she tried. “Now If you don’t mind, I’ve got a lot to do.”

“It isn’t about politics,” Nasal-voice wheedled, “it is about respect.” He leaned up against one of the trees, clearly not understanding that the sap in bark would give him a serious burn once the sun photo metabolized it.

“We made it clear that everyone was supposed to bring a gift,” Nasal-voice continued, his words growing harder as he finally made his way to his point. Sabatine turned slightly to show her shoulder tattoo. It was a Lily atop a large stylized letter M, with the letters SPQR in pride of place.

“I don’t pay taxes, remember, I already did my service,” she reminded him. Nasal-voice and his goons bristled. Local toughs didn’t like it when the Galactic toughs showed up. It wasn’t necessarily smart to rub their faces in it, but she hadn’t spent the last ten years putting Mercedez Vilantre on the Imperial throne to be pushed around by rank amateurs.

“You aren’t in the fucking Legion anymore!” Nasal-voice snapped. “Maybe it is time you realized that. This is the Ketcharch’s territory and don’t get a pass because of some fucking tattoo!”

“Ill take it under advisement,” Sabatine said solemnly, hoping against hope that the thugs would just give up and leave. Judging by the nostril flare, that wasn’t going to happen.

“You won’t just take it under advisement! You will…” Nasal-voice began. Sabatine’s hand shot out and seized the wrist of one of the goons who was reaching towards the basket of opal fruit. The thug froze in shock and Nasal-voice’s eyes widened with anger.

“Look here Mars,” Sabatine said in resignation. Nasal-voice went for his gun. Sabatine wrenched the thug’s thumb back with a sickening crack. The thug screamed in agony as Sabatine yanked him forward, tripping him over the low stone wall. Her other hand whirled the rake in her massive left handed arc that drove the metal tines into the second henchman’s face. Blood flashed red in the sunlight as he reeled back, clawing at his bloody face. Nasal-voice pulled a showy chrome pistol free of his cloak. The rake spun like a bo-staff cracking into the gunman’s wrist and sent it spinning away into the carrots. Broken thumb half pushed himself up off the wall, just in time for his face to meet the sole of her boot, driving his head down into the stone with a crack that sprayed blood and teeth from his mouth. Nasal-voice was back peddling fast, but not fast enough to avoid the straight armed lunge the drove the end of the rake into his solar plexus. The wind exploded out of his chest and he went to his knees, eyes building. These rubes might think they knew something about violence, but even bar fighting in the Legion taught one more about the actual practice. Sabatine brought the rake back up into a guard, then drove it down hard into the back of Broken-teeth-and-thumb’s head. The thin bone crunched and the thug thrashed and then went lip, a pool of blood spreading out into the dust.

“No!” We can work this out,” Nasal-voice, wheezed, trying to scramble backwards away from Sabatine.

“Sure we can,” Sabatine agreed, stepping over the wall and pressing the flat of the rake against his throat. Further words choked off as she closed his windpipe, his fingers scrabbling at the bloody tines.

“Look..here..Mars!” she grunted leaning her whole weight on the rake until she felt cartilage pop and collapse. Leaving Nasal-voice gasping his last, she picked through the ruin of her carrots until she found the pistol he had dropped. Rake-to-face was desperately trying to get the ATV started, blood masked his face, one of his eyes torn away by the blow of Sabatine’s improvised weapon. Sabatine thumbed back the hammer and fired. It took her three shots to bring him down with a shot to the chest. He slithered off the ATV and collapsed to the ground in a heap. Sabatine looked down at Nasal-voice who was turning an unhealthy shade of purple. Sabatine sighed. Now she was never going to finish in time to take a swim.

[POOHEAD189]

Warriors feast, soldiers dig.

His centurion had told him that. Had beaten that into him. That there was more to war than merely fighting and celebrating. A soldier needed to be master of many skills. You could ask him about any skillset, be it sweeping floors, cleaning toilets, or hunting big game. Est Idoneum Bello, he would say. It is suitable for war. And so he took that to heart, serving four years in the Ultimus Legiones, before serving another two years and being redistributed into the Onocentauri to serve the remainder of his second tour. His centurion was right, he had done plenty of digging. But he had learned how to fix ion carburetors, re-weld titanium plating, repair the jet propulsion on a laburturi and a subterlabori vehicle. He could reprogram a automaton or an Onocentauri mecha.

And he could clean a shitter with the best of them.

The Screo III he had been working on for the better part of a week ignited, blue flames flaring out of its engines as it softly lifted off the ground. The owner, an older gentleman who once worked for the administratum, had treated the ex-soldier with some light, customary scrutiny. He had come in to check twice that week if the repairs were going smoothly, and had called this morning. Only half an hour ago did Tiber finish the piece, replacing the coolant system and repairing the shot hydrogen valve, giving the keys back to to the man who was surprised a 'barbarian' was so well versed in the mechanical arts. Tiber just took his money and let him go, returning to work on his old armored junker.

Tiber's great grandfather had been a renowned warrior, accounted with the taking of twenty seven imperial skulls in his career as a Ventati life-taker. Had he lived to see his grandson emigrate to the Empire, and to see his great grandson serving in the roman war machine, he would have begged the brutish tribal gods to tell him why his bloodline had been so tarnished. Tiber wondered if he could have understood his family was starving, or that if the old man perhaps would have thought it better that way. Better to die than to kneel to the romans, maybe. He didn't know. He had not known much different than this.

He set about welding the 10x30 adamantine to the 'junker,' it's skeleton held aloft by chains like some great cyclops caught in a trap. Flames leaped from the welding torch, lightly beading upon his reinforced apron, light reflecting off his visor. The money he had grabbed from the old member of the adminastratum would hold him for a few weeks, and the army had seen fit to grace him with a balanced pension and this spit of land. But he didn't want to stay here forever. He hated to admit it, but he was restless. For the better part of a year he had worked as a mechanic, adding a small wing to his home, and had even taken up a bit of gardening. He could do the former two, but he wasn't blessed by Ceres like his neighbor, Sabatine. He had only had a few conversations with her over the past season. Their eyes spoke more than their words. They could tell without having to ask they were both veterans, likely retiring as principes around the same time. He remembered whistling provocatively at her orchard just a handful of weeks ago and she told him to take a picture, it might last longer. She had been gracious enough to surprise him with a basket of apples on his front door just last week. No note, but he hadn't needed one.

She was cool. He hadn't expected to find anymore veterans of similar age on the planet, particularly so close.

A foot kicked the thick fueling tube that snaked across the shop floor, bumping into the back of his combat boots. Tiber made a small glance behind him, and then turned the torch off and lifted his visor. Despite his barbarian heritage on his father's side, he had the sun-tanned skin of a roman like his mother, though he was uncharacteristically tall, standing an inch over six feet. His hair, close cropped in the army, had been allowed to grow out into a thick head of black hair. He had the beginnings of a goatee but it hadn't quite ripened yet.

"Sabby? What can I do you fo-" He started when he saw her there, having deliberately placed her foot on the tube to get his attention. She didn't seem concerned, but something in her eyes relayed to him they needed to talk. He removed the apron from his statuesque form and tossed his torch to the ground. "Trouble?"

If she nodded, he would indicate to come into his office. The central area of the repair shop was immediately connected to the back office, behind a one-way, slug-proof window.

[Penny]

Sabatine's gait was slightly awkward, for the first time in well over a year she had her gladius slung over her shoulder, snubbed up tight so it wouldn't stop her operating a bird. The powerful plasma rifle was the standard issue for the Legion. It was reliable, powerful, and used a standard rechargable power cell. Like most Legionaires she had customized it heavily. The fore stock was folded and wrapped with tape to accomadate her firing style. The left hand plasma baffel had been partially stripped so that the discharge vented backwards and away from the user at a slight angle. It gave the weapon a tendency to singe her arm if it wasn't protected by a flight suit, it was a small price to pay to minimize the torque it imported when she fired it in zero G. Carrying the weapon again felt odd, both strange and familiar all at once. She didn't expect to need it, but she was carrying it now because by Minerva she really wished she had been carrying it earlier.

"A couple of Gorm's bully boys came around earlier," she told Tiber bluntly, spinning a chair so she could rest her crossed arms on top of it.

"Wanted to extort a gift from me they said," she continued in a studdied neutral tone. Settled Legionaires were exempt from all local taxes by Imperial degree. This made it much harder for local elites to subvert large numbers of soliders, as they were tough to put into debt and felt a natural sense of superiority to their neighbours.

"You have anything to drink?" she asked, suddenly feeling foolish for bringing a gun rather than a bottle of cider.

[POOHEAD189]

On the table was a BH2 labor-unit arm Tiber had been tinkering with, its bare circuits open and multi-haztools laying around it. The model wasn't necessarily designed to be modular, but if you took enough time with something you could always refit it for other uses. Under it was an assortment of bills and part orders, along with an old grocery list he apparently hadn't bothered to toss out. He closed the door behind her and raised an eyebrow.

"They attacked you?" He asked, but immediately he could tell she wasn't joking. He suppose he wasn't surprised now that he heard it. Sabatine wasn't a girl to be pushed around, so she probably just ended what they started. "They dead?"

Her silence told him all he needed to know. He whistled appreciatively."Yeah, got some Magni." He said, opening up the compartment above the refrigerator and taking out a bottle of golden-brown liquid. It was a a whiskey predominantly made from corn. Something officers loved to drink. He made sure to buy some after he completed his service, like as not a sign he was a free man to drink what he wanted. Pouring two glasses, he handed Sabatine hers and sat down in his chair.

"I think even if you hid the bodies, they'll be pissed off at you anyway. Yours was the last place they went to before they decided to 'skip the planet'" He said. "Gorm's got the stench of a latine, but he's not stupid." He took a sip of his drink. It burned nicely, going down. "Well, if you need a place to stay you can bunk here. I could set up an automated defense system at your place too..."

"My guess is, you haven't the ass tribute either. Right?" Sabatine asked, though there was little reason to wait for an answer. "If nothing else, I'm giving you a warning. But... I was hoping for help."

"Help..." He echoed, absorbing the word. He rubbed his chin and glanced out at his shop. It wasn't much, but it was his. He couldn't risk it going off on some endeavor for the sake of a relatively new neighbor, no matter how much he respected them. "Sab, I got a good thing going here. I don't know if I can-"

He turned back to her holding up a bill with staggering costs on it. He snapped it out of her hand and folded it. "Ok, so I'm in debt a bit. What does that have to do with us killing a local warlord. Hades, if I cooperate with him he might help me pay for the shop." He said, but he knew he was only trying to convince himself out of what he already decided. It was her turn to raise an eyebrow, and he sighed. She was right. He was too proud to pay someone for land he was given as payment for services rendered, and even if he wasn't, he would be subject to the worst hell for abandoning a fellow soldier. Mars wouldn't have it. He pushed out of his chair and strode over to the back wall, his shoulder muscles burgeoning as he unhooked a small latch, revealing a monitor he placed a keyword in. Against the wall, opposite the window, the tiles separated to reveal a small armory of his old war gear.

At the center was his prized Dobalta, a light guass rifle, retrofitted as a carbine. Alongside it was a gladius of his own, modulated for his own use. On the top of the weapon was a triangular object that encased circuitry, with a switch on it that controlled the power settings to the weapon. Its power-charge magazines ionized the gas into charged plasma within its ignition chamber, fed by an 'extended magazine' he had added. If he willed it, he could reduce firing rate for a close quarters spread shot. Beneath that was a war cultro tactical knife, as well as his old Ultimus Legiones rebreather mask. He wished he still had his armor and helm, but they had taken it from him.

Sabatine whistled now, and Tiber grinned. "So, what's the plan?"

[Penny]

"Well, if they are hassling me its only a matter of time before they start hasling you, probably planned on coming over here after they were done with me," she pointed out. Obviously, they were done with everything now, unless the priests were better informed than Sabatine believed they were.

"Maybe Gorm will learn a lesson and let it go," she offered by way of an olive branch. Tiber snorted.

"Yeah and maybe I'll marry the Empress and move to Rome," he grumbled.

"You are too tall for her," Sabatine remarked off handedly, earning an arched eyebrow. Sabatine sipped her drink but didn't elaborate. She hadn't yet advanced as far as a plan but as he spoke an inkling of one began to grow in her mind.

"How many tools do you think you can fit into say... six cubic meters?" she asked.

The answer, it turned out, was a considerable number. Considerable enough that the grasshopper sport flier wallowed dangerously as Sabatine lowered it towards the coral atol. The flier was a twin turbofan model, poorly balanced for hauling gear the four hundred clicks from the mainland. She boosted power and nosed down to compensate, the fans throwing up a wall of lime dust. She vivffed the fan to carry them out of the dust and set down with a crunch. She popped the hatch, letting in the salty iodine tang of the sea.

"This is the place?" Tiber yelled. Sabatine made a guesture to the lagoon at the center of the atol. The water was a cool cerullean blue but there was a dark shadow at the center, barely visible. Sabatine jumped down, boots crunching into the coral. She walked to the edge of the water. It was perhaps twenty meters down, large and vaugley arrow head shaped.

"A Vigilae 220 D assault shuttle," she told him, "lost during the Imperial pull out twenty years ago."

"Sabby..." Tiber began, "she is going to be a rusted bunch of bolts by now."

"Assault gunboats are heavily sealed against atmo way worse than the bottom of a lagoon," she explained. There had been cases of them operating in ammonia rich atmospheres for months. She knew of at least one case where a gunboat had been excavated from beneath the sand after more than a decade and been airbone with little more than a tune up.

"Surface level electronics will be toast probably, but the bones will be good," she assured him.

"Which means that the two of us just have to raise it from the bottom of the ocean," Tiber said skeptically.

"Exactly!"

[POOHEAD189]

Luckily the two had the wherewithal to put all of their tools in easily moved crates. A quick survey of the little seashell-shaped isle showed them a nice spot at the edge of the lagoon where they could land the grasshopper and unburden the vehicle so they could better prepare it for what they had in mind. Sabatine and Tiber hauled the crates out and even disassembled the two back seats to create more lift, carrying all of the items a dozen meters from the surf to keep any wind-washed waves from soaking them, before hopping back into the grasshopper and skimming over the water until they reached the center of the lagoon.

"Glad you brought the cables." Sabatine said, unwinding the fiberweave and taking the small stopper at the center of the cable, attaching four smaller hooks to what looked like a miniature platform. The central cable was twenty feet long, and the three attached cables doubled the length. As she prepared them and laid them out to be readily accessible for her new partner, Tiber stripped off his shirt and shoes, revealing a well proportioned and hard muscled form, deeply kissed by the sun. "Looking good skipper." She teased.

"I don't know. I hear the Empress likes shorter guys." He remarked back. Truth be told, he felt out of shape. The Ultimus Legiones had been hell, but he had never felt more on edge than during his service there. Tiber had felt he had slacked off in the Onocentauri, when he had been given double downtime and a reduced training regime. This past year he'd been positively lazy.

"There's surgery for that." She joked, winding the cable around the mount on the back of the grasshopper, triple checking the integrity by monitoring the hooks were in place, and placing her boot on the stern and yanking on it, striking the cable with a few bumps of her fingers. It thrummed beautifully. "Shave off a few inches and you'd be proper roman."

"Yeah, yeah. Just get the engine going." Tiber sat down on the starboard edge, trying to add rhythm to his breathing. Only an extremely small contingent of the Imperial military actually required real diving, but training for zero G combat was often done in the ocean, and as fortuna would have it, the Ultima Legiones did teach their men how to dive in case of extenuating circumstances or off-the-grid infiltration. Sabatine tossed him the platform with the other three cables attached. He caught it and found one of the hooks at the end. "If this doesn't work, we'll need to think of something else."

Three...two...one...

"Maybe we can ask the empress for help?" Sabatine said just before his eyes and ears were full of water.

Tiber flipped backward, plunging into the lagoon. To do the combat swimmer stroke, one needed dive in or kick off as you would in freestyle, but at the end of your glide, execute a large horizontal scissor kick instead of your normal paddle. As the horizontal scissor kick tilted your body so one arm is slightly higher than the other, you needed to pull that arm back while leaving the other outstretched.

He rotated the movements back and forth, gliding down towards the bottom of the shallow lagoon. Frilled and large finned fish ranging from the the size of hand to a gladius rifle floated like asteroids in space until they zipped out of his way like they were powered by some means of jet propulsion. Last he checked, he could hold his breath for a period of one hundred and eighty seconds. It was likely down to two minutes now.

Tiber saw a snake-like creature sinuously gliding across the water to his left. Three meters long if he had to guess. He kept an eye on it but found it paid as much attention to him as a falling rock. There were a few dangerous seabeasts on the planet, but other than the venomous, multicolored Coroda Fish and a few sharks, the more dangerous beasts were in far deeper waters. Kicking his feet another three times was all it took to reach the last stretch to the gunboat. Finding a hold on the armored canopy, he pulled himself down to the left and grabbed the hooks strapped to his belt loop. The ship was half submerged in sand, and if he really needed to he could come back down and clear some of it out. As it was, it looked like only the left side was exposed enough to be hooked. He found a nook under the grill at the front, and then another two spots around its armored plating, one by the repulstor lift and the other at the angling lappet.

He felt a tinge of burning in his lungs, and once satisfied the hooks were secured, he kicked off the small encryptor dome at the top and sped back up to the surface. The grasshopper should have the capacity to lift the thing when accounting for buoyancy, provided the sand didn't interfere. The sun above him grew brighter and brighter, and he idly wondered if this would work until he saw a movement to his left. The flick of a serpentine tail. His head whipped to the side to see the serpent that had ignored him earlier gaping at him with razor sharp teeth protruding from its maw, dead eyes locked on his form. Shit, he thought. Apparently the creature had decided he didn't like Tiber so close to his flight path. It suddenly shot at him like a missile, Tiber reaching for the knife at his boot, only to realize he hadn't brought one. You stupid bastard.

Angling himself to face the vicious thing, he treated it like he would any knife fight. Limbs up front and feet spread and ready. It darted up and then down, going for his face. Tiber whipped his large forearm across its path, needle-sharp teeth biting into his flesh, blood beading out of the punctured skin of his arm. He whirled, grabbing the fish-snake hybrid with his other arm to squeeze its body, kicking at its sinuous belly from below with his feet. He didn't expect this thing could kill him, but he was about twenty seconds away from a critical need for air, and he had another ten seconds to swim.

[Penny]

It was difficult for Sabatine to see what was going on. She had brought breathing apparatus for the dive, but it was still crated. She hadn't anticipated Tiber taking such a direct approach. She peered down into the disturbed silt and bubbles, wishing she had thought to grab a pair of goggles.

"OH shit!" she cursed as she caught a flash of scales coiling around Tiber. She pulled her gladius free and aimed it down into the water. Plasma was minimally effective through water. Normally if she were planning water ops she would have used modded penetrators, not that she would have liked her odds of firing through water to hit a snake coiling around Tiber's body.

"Neptune's fucking cock," she cursed, then tossed the weapon to the ground and drew a heavy fighting knife. Ignoring the stab of panic at the idea of facing such a beast in its natural element, she dived into the water arrowing down through the cool sea. Tiber partially broke free at the last moment and surged upwards. The crown of his head caught her in the jaw and stars flashed before her eyes. Twisting in pain she blindly reached out and caught the snake. Scales rasped under her hands, making her queasy with their glassy texture. She slashed the knife downwards and dark blood exploded out into the water like a cloud and the snake went berserk. It thrashed with manic energy its coils battering Sabatine's body with the force of a kicking horse. She took one blow beneath the ribs and another across her thigh but it had let go of Tiber. They both broke the surface gasping and bloody. She tried to track the snake but the water was too disturbed to allow it. She could taste blood in her mouth and her vision was swimming. A few strong strokes carried her to the shore and she flopped onto the beach gasping.

"Not good with animals," she gasped, "good to know."

[POOHEAD189]

Tiber crawled back atop the grasshopper with her, breathing in deeply and coughing out droplets of water. The two soldiers lay there on the deck, panting. Sabatine tossed Tiber a towel, and rather than dry himself, he wrapped it around his bleeding forearm.

"I'm great with animals," Tiber told her confidently. He coughed again. "That snake was just an asshole."

Sabatine smiled despite herself, and the two shared a short laugh. She pulled herself to her feet and made her way over to the cockpit, hopping over the back of the seat to land on her ass and rev the vehicle up. "So you never told me, are the cables secure?"

"Nah, I just felt like picking a fight. I need to go back down there." He told her, his tone indicating the cables were indeed secured. She pushed the throttle lightly. The craft moved forward gently, before slowing to a halt. It tipped a fraction of a degree, and Tiber looked over the side. He cursed, the sediment and blood had yet to fully clear. He supposed it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

"More power!" He called to her over the engine.

[Penny]

The grasshopper skittered greasily on the cables, the frame groaning as it took the stress. Sabatine fed more power to the turbines, the howling fans blowing a vast rooster tail of coral dust out into the western ocean. Her eyes flicked constantly from the instruments to the lagoon below. The blast from the turbofans hammered the surface into a chaos of ripples that robbed her of any visibility. She pulled the googles down over her eyes and engaged the milimetric radar, her vision swimming into a wireframe composite of the returns. The assault transport hadn't shifted, though judging from the return she had succeeded in kicking up a fair amount of silt.

"Hold on," she advised and banked over the lagon, gaining height as she took up the slack in the cales until they ran down in an extended triangle with the grasshopper at the apex. She began side slip left and right, brining each engine up to full power to conter the altitude lost. The blows resounded through the frame of the air craft as she rocked left and right, jerking the submerged shuttle in alternating directions. The engines were heating up fast under the strain and Sabatine would have been surprised if she wasn't inducing stress fractures in the grasshoppers airframe. The scream of the engines grew and grew, almost defeaning even through the sound baffles of the cockpit.

"Its not going to work!" Tiber called, but Sabatine wasn't listening. She thought she had felt the slightest give in the line and she increased her savage manuevering. With shocking suddeness the grasshoper lurched sideways as the suction of decades of silt broke. Sabatine shoved the throttle through the gates. She hurled on the yoke and began to bank slowly towards the shore. There was a sound of ripping metal but Sabatine was commited now. The shuttle below was lifting in a storm of silt and she hauled it sideways, moving at a torturously slow rate, only a few feet a second. The water below them boiled under the down draft and the scream of distressed metal grew worse.

"I can see it!" Tiber shouted and Sabatine risked cutting her radar enhanced optics. The ventral fin was breaking the water, a spike of gray metal encrusted with the beginings of coral growth. It was only twenty meters from the shore when there was a sudden bang and the high pitched whine of metal being thrown at high speed. THe grasshopper dropped suddenly, cables going slack as they lost altitude. THe port engine seized, boomed and then flamed out, spewing black smoke shot through with flame.

"Detatch cable," Sabatine shouted, flipping switches to free the aircraft from its burden. THere wre two explosive pings as the cables parted, falling away to splash into the water below. Sabatine fed power into the remainging engine even as she reached up and pulled the handle the port fire suppresion system. White foam exploded from the six suppression ports, smothering the flames and dripping gobbets suppressent gel into the lagoon. Tiber was gripping his seat, his face set in the neutral but determined expression of a combat soldier who has long accostmed himself to the possibility that a drop could go wrong and there was nothing he could do about it. Sabatine powered the remaining engine down, dropping them percipitously towards the beach. At the last moment she hammered the throttle open again and the engine screamed to full power, slowing their decent into something between a landing an a controlled crash. Sabatine felt the blow up her spine as the hit, but managed to hit the emergency shut off before the engine ripped itself appart. The sudden silence was shocking, broken only by the scream of sea birds and the ping of cooling metal.

"That didn't go so badly," Sabatine remarked, pulling off her goggles.

"If you say so," Tiber said, though it wasn't exactly agreement. Sabatine made a guesture to the lagon. The top half of the assault transport was visible above the waterline, resting in ten feet of water, its nose, central hull and ventral fin all visible. It was encrusted with coral and starfish, but the plastel armor beneath looked none the worse for wear.

"We really should take some footages, Equestrian Areospace should make a commercial," Sabatine observed.

[POOHEAD189]

It had taken some real doing, but it looked like their scheme was starting to bear fruit. Tiber had fixed the grasshopper to a point, but only just enough to get it moving again to haul the assault craft another few feet before black smoke erupted from the engine and sent a beacon hundreds of feet high in the clear sky above the sea. The assault vehicle wasn't fully out of the water, but it was exposed enough to be workable.

"Now the only way off the atol is to fix this thing," Tiber said, wiping the sweat off his brow. He looked at Sabatine. "You didn't plan this, did you?"

"You have a mind for deviousness, Legionnaire." She said by way of answer. "It'll get you into trouble some day."

For two days and nights, they worked. Firstly they pulled out a tarp and made a makeshift shelter, digging a small perimeter around their camp and making lines for their tent location. Removing all of the tools out of the crates was easy enough, but sifting through them to find what was needed was harder. Sabatine had her work cut out for her, swimming from the shore to Tiber's perch atop the light vehicle to bring what supplies he had needed. The sun was terribly hot, but they had brought a sizeable amount of water and they took frequent breaks in the cool lagoon, near the shore of course. On the third day, Tiber hopped into the cockpit and strapped himself in.

He flipped the breaker switches and adjusted the angling jets, thanking Jupiter the manual controls for maneuvering hadn't been shot. Sabatine stood on the shoreline in her fatigues, watching under the shade of the tree canopy and sipping a bottle of gin. Tiber saw the lights on the power meter flicker on, and his breath caught. "Come on, baby..." He breathed, readjusting the power to the throttle and praying it would work. He pressed the control to the ignition, and he suddenly heard a warbling rumble as the thrusters came to life under the water. He needed the vehicle out of the water now, or the sea would come rushing in at its bare circuits. The vehicle lurched, but it didn't fly up. Fuck, he searched around the cockpit and checked ship integrity, before his eyes passed by the auto-filter. He punched it, and he heard water gurgling as the ship coughed out what sea and sand it had inhaled the last decades it had been under the lagoon, giving the thrusters what it needed to practically leap out of the water. The ship shot out, and Sabatine flinched as if to dive away, as it looked like it would careen for her. But Tiber caught the vehicle caught it with the angling jets, and as gently as he could, he lowered it onto the beach.

Air siphoned out as the assault ship's cockpit opened, and Tiber laid a hand on the outside.

"Hey soldier, heard you had some thugs to kill. Guess I could give you a ride." He offered nonchalantly.

[Penny]

"I'll never talk shit about Martian Engineering again," Sabatine said as the assault boat settled onto the beach. It was one thing to know that an assault boat should be ok after decades under salt water, it was another thing to see it rise from the ocean and settle onto the beach as though it were fresh out of graving dock. Well not quite. Sea creatures had colonized the hull, coral and barnacles encrusted the lower portion of the hull, most of it was dead now, killed by the waters as they boiled beneath the plasma jets. It gave off a nauseating scent of burnt lime and boiled shellfish.

Sabatine waited a few seconds for the landing site to cool then walked over into the shade of the landed assault boat. It was boxy twenty five meters from nose to tail and almost as broad across its down swept wings. Three of the four ordanace pods were still attached, the body of an eel flopping lifelessy from one of them. That was good, though Sabatine wouldn't want to risk firing them without a full survey of the munitions. She conducted a quick inspection of the external fittings. She wouldn't have certified the bird as air worthy no matter how much the deck officer was willing to pay in chits or booze. Still, she didn't have to take it up into the void, just had to get it 400 clicks back home.

"Open the bay!" she called to Tiber and a moment later was rewarded by a hideous groan of tortured hydraulics. Sabatine reached up and grasped a corroded release handle and pulled hard. The lever depressed with a crunch. The assault boat quivered then there were two sharp bangs as the clearing charges went off and the rear ramp crashed down. Sea water, silt, and sea life poured out in a sludgy wave that crashed onto the atol. Assault bolts were built to land troops and provide close air support. Explosive charges were built into the hatch linings to free them in case the hatch bound during combat damage. It seemed they worked just as well against decades of corrosion.

"Everything okay?" Tiber called in evident concern.

"Never cracked a boat under fire? Lucky, lucky," she called as she walked through the miasma of cordite smoke. The interior of bay was dark and lightless, hung with half rotted crash webbing and barnacle encrusted weapon racks. It smelled dank and fishy now, but it was really going to stink in a couple of days.

"How does it look?" Tiber asked, climbing out of the cockpit and sliding down to the ground beside her.

"I'm hoping you have bleach back at your place," she sighed.

[POOHEAD189]

The trip was quick. Only once did Tiber had a small suspicion they might plummet out of the sky, but turbulence not withstanding, the assault craft flew like a charm. Tiber loved their miniature vacation, but seeing the expanse of the beach was a welcome sight. They passed scant shrubs and light copses of trees that grew into farmland and rolling hills, with cottages and roads and cattle from all across the galaxy. Sabatine started to talk about places she recognized, like the Kendal's place and their shooting range they kept out back, and she complained about how their Horox, a reptilian bovine creature, always loped up to her when she came by to visit.

Tiber landed them at the front of his shop, the repulsor lift soothing as it powered down. It was no Onocentauri mecha, but this craft was definitely military grade. Ran well, armored, and could survive more than a few years in the wilderness. "I know you didn't call dibs on this thing, but I definitely want to take it on a few joyrides at some poin-"

"Tiber..." She said, placing a hand on his arm. He looked from the controls and out to where she was pointing. His steel gate had been cut through with what had to be advanced power tools, and it hung open, likely open from the inside, haphazardly agape. Tiber groaned, punching the button that opened the cockpit and vaulting out of it. Sabatine had to turn the vehicle off as the Legionnaire rushed into his workshop and cursed.

It hadn't been the epitome of clean, earlier. But the place was a mess. His spare parts had mostly been stripped bare, his droids had been either taken or broken, tossed to the floor in pieces, and his office had been broken into. The door's handle was gone, punched out by what looked like a gunshot. Tiber sprinted into the office and found his secret monitor, placing in the code and opening his vault. He was relieved to see his weaponry was still there, and some spare cash. But otherwise, almost everything else had been taken.

Even his booze.

"My Magnis! My shop! FUCK!" Sabatine would hear him cry as she strode in behind him. He walked out of his office and kicked a fallen wrench to clatter across the stained floor. He placed a hand over his face. He had a full, black goatee now after their three day sojourn. In his other hand was his Dobalta. "Some of these parts cost thousands of sesterce."

When he removed his hand, he didn't look distraught. He looked coldly pissed off. He tossed her the bleach. "Guess they didn't take everything."

[Penny]

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

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

"I have beer," Sabatine offered.

_______

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

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

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

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

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

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

[POOHEAD189]

Tiber caught the bottle and took a swig in one, fluid motion. The beer tasted malty, he thought. Just his style. He rubbed the back of his forearm against his mouth and cleared his throat. "Good stuff."

"Got plenty," she said, placing a hand on the table and taking her own sampling of the brew. They shared a second of silence, acknowledgement in their eyes. Two soldiers having to get back at it. She was attacked, he lost his place, but they were both tired needed to enjoy a cold one for a quick second. They were exhausted, as much as they didn't want to admit it. But Tiber wasn't ready to hit it just yet, and he doubted Sabby did either.

"Hey so, got any flood lights?"

"Yeah, why?"

"How about, since this is your place, I go out and check the guns to make sure they don't need any extra parts, and you can grab us some dinner real quick. I'd rather switch places, but I doubt you'd want me rifling through your cupboards-."

She snorted before he even finished, grinning and waving his concerns off. There were still some areas of the empire with antiquated ideas of gender and their roles in society, and the barbarians certainly thought that way. Obviously Tiber wanted her to know he didn't share those ideas. Apparently she knew immediately, and saw his suggestion was just pragmatism. If they didn't get some grub in them, they might collapse, and it was her house. "Sure, skipper. Let me know if you need anything. Might be able to scrounge some stuff up around here."

They bumped their bottles together in a 'clink' and went off to their respective tasks. Tiber stepped outside, and even as his eyes got accustomed to the dark, the flood lights went up and illuminated the assault ship. He opened the back and rummaged through his crates, fishing out the multi-tool, a combination of a torque wrench, arc probe, and fusion cutter. The other three tools he needed were, unfortunately, not together. The power calibrator and the tuning stylus he found in about ten minutes, but the macrosander couldn't be found. Not too bad, he probably didn't need it immediately, anyway.

Tiber slid under the body of the carrier, finding the main gun barrel and opening the bottom hatch. "Alright, what do we got here? Standard high-energy particle-beam. Sounds about right." He started to work, removing three wires of the circuitry to reach the power cells and inner workings. "Two twenty terawatts, looks like. Not bad. Uh, rotator needs some more oil. Power pack is half capacity..."

It took about twenty minutes, and he was happy to see the weapon was still operational, though not up to standard. He wouldn't sell it to anyone but an enthusiast, but even if it wasn't like new, it would fire. It could probably rip through two inches of steel plating if need be, and maybe more under focused fire. If he had to guess there was around sixty laser bolts in capacity, around 40% of its usual number of shots. He coughed out dried dust that drifted out of the opening he'd made, and rolled out from under the gunboat after sealing it up again.

"How's it look?" Sabatine asked, standing in the doorway. Tiber closed one eye to better focus on her with the lights beaming in the face.

"I'll tell you inside. But it could be worse." He assured her. "Got another beer?"

[Penny]

By the time Tiber returned Sabatine had a pair of venison steaks sizzling on a plate. She tossed some vegetables in a pan beside it, keeping them constantly in motion. She didn't often cook for company but it wasn't as though her limited repitore required a great deal of culinary skill.

"Would you eat exotic space quisine?" she hummed.
"Would you eat exotic space quisine?"
"Powdered eggs and wafer bar, nameless stew and murdered char."
"You can eat exotic space quisine."

She dusted the steaks with salt and pepper and then flipped them to cook the other side, enjoying the way the the meat popped and hissed on the hot metal. Not for the first time she felt a surge of frustration at the grasping local thugs who were interupting her life. She had hunted this game herself, grown these vegetables. Giving up the small bit of piece she had found for herself cut deep but it was that or bend the knee to the kind of grasping assholes who were never satisfied till they sat atop a pile of corpses.

"In the cupboard," she said, making a vauge guesture with a spatula. Tiber opened one cupboard, finding dehydrated vegetables in jars, then opened the right one and took two more beers from the cabinet. It was her own brew, grown with hops and opal sugar from her trees. It was just a hobby, something to do in the winter seasons when there was little other work to occupy her. The earthenware bottles were one of the items she bought in her infrequent trips to town. They were reusable with rubber corks attached by wire cages, a few credits spent that would last a lifetime.

Sabatine flipped the steaks off the plate and onto the serving platters, then added the vegetables and killed the heat to her simple cooking unit. She carried the plates across to the kitchen table and set them down taking a seat.

"Well if we can give the Ketcharch something else to focus on, we might have time to do a proper refit, assuming we can find parts somewhere. They might have some of the components on ground to orbit relays."

[POOHEAD189]

"You know, I make a mean steak." He said, popping the cork off and setting it down to the left of his plate. Her steak smelled delightful, he admitted privately. Venison steak was new to him, but he would try anything once. "Maybe once this whole thing is over I'll invite you over to a cookout."

He admired her for how much she had things so well ordered here. He could survive like an automaton if he were alone in the wilderness, but he found he was a bit too disorganized when out of service to have such a spiffy place as Sabatine's. Maybe he wasn't giving himself enough credit, but he was impressed nonetheless. When he tastes the steak and drank a bit of the beer, he whistled appreciatively. "On second thought, I'll need to invite you over to cook with me. This is officer good."

It was partially a joke. Officer good was a stupid, half ironic slang-term for anything above expectations. But his praise was honest.

"Something else to focus on? I'll take that as hyperbole, Sab. From what I know, he's the kind of man who needs exile or death before you can take your eyes off of him. I think he thinks the same of us, or he soon will. I don't know anyone else who can catch his attention, unless he's harassing other legionnaires you know of."

Her mouth was full, but she shook her head, waving her fork around as if to go 'you know what I mean.' He smiled to himself and took another sip of the beer. His mind went from the food to the fight they had ahead. No way in Hades were they solving this without more death. It made him oddly nostalgic.

"You know, on my first tour my team got a call to this cog. A friendly. It had been hit abaft and boarded. They needed a senator for information. They didn't tell us the details. We had unus nulla to kill any invader on board. Nothing we never did before, but when we got in, we were told they were dissimulo persona-" Military slang for impersonating a roman legionnaire. "- and it seemed to check out. They wore our colors but had hand-me down arms, something a barbarian might carry. We hit them hard. I remember taking my cultro to a throat, and he spoke something in our language when he died." Tiber seemed to pause, as if in thought. He sighed and shook his head once. "Anyway, we rounded the last of them up and took the senator. We were not given leave to let any of them live, other than him. Before we followed orders, one of the men told us we were tyrants. He called us fools. We found out right there, we had been killing romans. The senator had fled Terra with his personal retinue and with whatever arms they could find. The damage to their ship wasn't from invaders, but terran batteries in their escape. We were bringing back a senator for execution, not saving him. I just... I don't know. It stuck with me, after that. I guess I'm just glad I know I'm fighting with and for something I really agree with."

There was an awkward silence for a few moments, and Tiber broke it with a chuckle. He gestured with the earthenware bottle. "Sorry, beer's strong. Must be hitting me already."

[Penny]

Sabatine swirled her own beer and took another pull. It was a potent brew, though she knew Tiber ruminations had more to do with the fact that he had seen a workshop he had sunk months into trashed. She thought of her fruit trees and her dam and washed the sour taste out of her mouth with the malty brew.

"I'm from Caledon," she said after a minute. "My ancestors came out from Rome three generations back and we have been their ever since." Caledon was a prosperous, if low tech world on the edge of settled space. Roman civilization coexisted uneasily with a barbarian people of earlier waves of settlement, known as the Pact, and with pirates and cut throats who made the sector their base for constant raiding. Sabatine had cut her teeth dropping assault teams onto pirate held worlds or asteroids.

"When Mercedes convinced old Grundark to march on Earth, we all pulled up stumps and went, three entire legions. Pact must have swarmed all over the place soon as we left. Three generations of work gone," she mused sourly, gazing out at her orchards. She wondered if the same thing were about to happen here in microcosm. Not for the first time she wondered if she should have just bowed her neck and paid, but that was foolish. Ketcharch Grom had systematically ground the people of the province into poverty, save for a few favorites who competed for his table scraps.

"Maybe I'm just fighting because that is what I know," she continued, finishing the bottle in a long pull. "Which I suppose is as good a reason as any." She tossed the bottle overhand so that it bounced off a plastic partition and into a bin for washing and later reuse.

"You should rack out, I'll take first watch."

____________________

Morning came bright and early. Sabatine rose before dawn and went through her usual routine of watering plants, washing and packing Opal fruit and carefully adding lime to the soil to keep the alkalinity in balance. After a breakfast of nut bread and opal fruit preserve along with coffee imported from one of the Earth-likes at considerable expense, they lifted the assault boat and brought it down in the woods to the rear of the property, covering it as best the could with an old roll of cam film that was still in one of the storage lockers. The martime smell had faded significantly, but had been replaced with the tang of bleach to an unpleasant extent. The air filters badly needed replacement and Sabatine didn't dare run them out for the sake of getting rid of a bad smell and a slight stinging in the eyes. That task completed they hiked along the river to the damn, then up to the house.

"This isn't exactly subtle," Tiber said as they climbed onto the atv that had belonged to the now deceased goons. Tiber who, evidently, had experience driving such vehicles sat in the front while Sabatine sat behind him, obliged to grip his waist to avoid falling off as they bumped down the rough track she had cut to the local road. A couple of piles of gravel, taller than two men sat by the road, waiting to be spread across the dirt path as the first step to making it a bit more traversable.

"I doubt we are going to do too much that is subtle today," Sabatine called over the wine of the electric engine as they joined the main road. This was a true Roman road, set into the ground and sealed with plasticizer. Despite being over sixty years old, the light traffic meant it looked almost new after the recent reigns.

[POOHEAD189]

Tiber revved the engine, the radio hopping on as soon as they sped off into the main road, sending bits of gravel and flecks of dirt tumbling to the wayside. The few miles to town were a straight shot save for the last stretch when they passed by a fueling station. Tiber enjoyed rides with the wind in his face accompanied by a speed beyond men, the sound of a roaring engine beneath him. Picket fences and various livestock idly grazing set the scene, and yet behind the sunglasses he wore, his eyes were sharp and exuded danger.

Truth be told, he felt more like a barbarian now than he ever had in his life, even more than the ribbings he would get from his unit in the service. He wasn't going to battle in formation, he only had a partner with him, and despite the Ketcharch not being a true, lawful authority figure, somehow he felt he was acting in rebellion. He couldn't explain it, but it was a feeling that wouldn't leave his head in the drive to town.

Once they reached the fueling station, they saw a modified parser, a moderate-sized supped up transport, stationed by the food mart. Three of the Ketcharch's men in civilian clothes laughed and smoked as they stood guard. Tiber rode on passed them without slowing in the least, and they did not seem to notice. Tiber smirked. If this went south, they would be strung up.

"On our left," Sabatine said softly, after they had slowed down. Tiber saw the eye of a man peering just past the newspaper he was supposedly reading. He looked right, and even as she mentioned the right, he saw the old woman staring out of her window, obviously not cleaning the glass surface as she was attempting to appear so. The further they went into town, they saw more overt showing of strength, though no one made a move against them. Like as not it wasn't meant for them, but a show for the masses. Obviously word had gotten out about missing men, and to keep the population from feeling emboldened, the ketcharch had decided to let his auxiliaries out to look tough.

Tiber didn't parked the atv in a space for it. He set it down right at the foot of the stairs leading up to the ketcharch's stronghold. It looked like a smart, quaint office building for a lowly mayor. Tiber wondered what the inside looked like. Probably far more conspicuous.

[Penny]

Sabatine hopped off the ATV feeling slightly off kilter as a result of the insufficient suspension. She snugged her gladius up on its sling, making no attempt to conceal the short powerful weapon. Several guards stirred from positions of deliberate langor, hefting their own weapons. For the most part these were slug throwers, cheaper and cruder than what the legions generally used but no less effective for all that.

Sabatine and Tiber walked up the stairs, ignoring the thugs with the stuided indifference of professional soldiers. The thugs looked nervous. There was a romance about legionaires and it was hard to kick the feeling of inferiority. It made some men trigger happy, but fortunately it was making these men nervous. The pair reached the doors and pushed them open. The interior of the building was an audience chamber supported by classic Imperial columns. A raised diaz at the end held a throne like chair on which a fit looking man with blonde hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. He wore the embroided robes of an Imperial magistrate, robes that he had no legal right to, but it wasn't as though a Pratorian Prelate and a bunch of enforcers were likely to show up and dispute the point.

Ketcharch Gorm was not alone. The hall was filled with hangers on, thugs, and supplicants. There was a haze of smoke, a smell of sweat and the background smell of proccessed alcohol. Clearly the party yesterday had been intense. Two supplicants were arguing before the Ketcharch. One was an older man, sinewy and hard, the other younger but already begining to go bald.

"Chieftan Kanos stole my fish and never rendered payment, we all know this to be true!" young one was shouting, words trembling with rage.

"Lies! I have presented the documents which clearly show the debits from my treasury!" the older one replied. The Ketcharch held up a hand silencing them both.

"Silence please, it appears the heroic defenders of our great Empire have honored us with their presence. Let us all show our respect," Gorm called in a powerful voice.

"A shame that you didn't come a few days ago Legionaires, we had quite a party to celebrate my birthday," Gorm continued, a slight edge coming to his voice. Sabatine and Tiber walked to the center of the hall, the two fueding chieftans scurrying to the sides.

"So we heard," Sabatine said drly. "Infact a couple of men came to my farm to tell me about it." Gorm sat up looking suddenly more alert. A wave of tension went through the crowd.

"Indeed... three of my friends have been missing for several days," Gorm said coldly.

"Tragically, they perished in a series of farming mishaps," Sabatine informed him, "a likely outcome for anyone who comes onto an Opal fruit orchard without the guidance of the owner."

[POOHEAD189]

"Pardon my friend, the life of a hermit has made her unused to proper roman socializing," Tiber said, though it was probably lost on everyone there except Sabatine that his voice oozed sarcasm. She looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but let him speak regardless. Tiber wasn't a speech writer, more accustomed to spartan speech than oratory. He retrieved a golden drachma and flipped it by a quick motion of the thumb, sending it spinning back into the palm of the same hand.

"We come here as clients, seeking our patrons aid." He emphasized it by the next flick of his thumb sending the coin spinning to land at the foot of the 'throne' before Gorm.

"What is this?" Gorm asked dangerously, huffing at the small coin as if it were an insult, which was half correct, though the ketcharch was obviously curious at the pectacle.

"Our tribute," Tiber remarked, as if it was the most obvious answer in the galaxy. "You see, my friend and I were on vacation for a bit. After she was attacked from men of yours who doubtless were acting of their own accord, she needed a breather, and being a fellow soldier I decided to help her and we headed to the beach. But when I got back, I found my shop ransacked by brigands."

He shook his head, lifting his arms vaguely as he gestured. "I couldn't imagine how such barbarism could happen under your watch, good Ketcharch. But I know you must have been so busy celebrating your birthday, your men likely took to drink and weren't their best." He placed a hand on his chest. "I hold no grudges. All I ask, is that the men who assailed my residence, granted to me by service to the Empress-"

Sabatine's mouth went small, trying not to laugh at the thought of 'servicing the empress'. Tiber would get her for that, but with a great force of will he kept his face straight. "-are brought to justice, and my friend and I can sleep peacefully at night."

It was a small bit of theater, but Tiber was doing his best to keep from going to war with Gorm, while also keeping the man and his lackeys from walking all over him. He was giving the warlord an out, one that Tiber sincerely hoped he take.

But a darker side of him was waiting for him not to. It was Mars, patiently waiting for the blood to flow.