Penny

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

Sabatine had never felt more exhausted in her life. Breaking that record was becoming a routine however and she rubbed her hands over gummy eyes as she finished the shut down sequence. The sudden silence as the roar of expelled plasma cut off was almost physically shocking. Not for the first time, or even the hundredth time, she cursed the name of Prince Kaiden Caladwarden. She had brought the Z-21 on a short hope through the matrix to an unnamed world that rejoiced in the simple alpha numeric M-X-2341 in a little under 2 days. It had been tricky with her new rig, designed for looks rather than efficiency, but even if she wasn't a brilliant astrogater, she was solidly competent. She glanced around the bridge at the exhausted faces of her few watch standers, all of whom had been needed to land the destroyer after the brutal chore of rerigging her. Fortunately the hard part was now over, and all they had to do was wait for Kaiden to arrive in the Vickie to take them on to the next phase of the plan.

"Open hatches, get some men out soonest to top off reaction mass," Sabatine ordered over the command net. M-X-2341 had a breathable atmosphere, though the air as very arid. It even had liquid water which allowed starships to refuel. Colonization had never been attempted however because the powerful magnetic storms which raged across it played hell with sensors of all kinds. Sabatine had bought them in to what had once, in the geological past, been a crater lake, but now was a dry sandy basin several kilometers across. The crew would have to deploy the drills to get down to the aquafir twenty meters or so below the sand, but that was easy work in close to the 1g that humans were designed to operate within.

With nothing pressing to do, Sabatine opened the ships log with a private thrill. Brought vessel from Delta 3-7 to M-X-2341 in a voyage of one day seven hours, fair conditions in the matrix with course attached. She appended the file with a few key strokes then allowed herself a few moments to savor something she had dreamed of since she was a small girl visiting the great naval base at Harbor 3 on Cinnabar. She flexed her fingers and added: Lt Sabatine Hickoring, Officer Commanding, RCS Z-21. If the ship survived operations and returned to Cinnibar some day, that entry would be copied to the Navy House records. Whatever else might happen, she would always be able to claim she commanded a ship in time of war, even if it was for a short hop from one no where to another. Her irritation with Kaiden dropped a grudging degree, given that he had made this possible.

"Orders Captain?" Creavy, the engineer and acting chief of ship asked. He was nervous, drafted from the Whitehall to a ship ten times its side, and suicidally short crewed, though she suspected he was the type that would be nervous no matter what was going on.

"Soon as we have topped off the tanks power everything down, fusion bottles to stand by," she replied. Already the steady thrum thrum thrum of pumps told her that water was coming aboard.

"Lets put her in moth balls and wait for Lieutenant Kaiden arrives to pick us up," she instructed, without another word she stood up and walked into the captains cabin, throwing herself down on the bed without even removing her boots. She was asleep in moments.

Pirates - Ye Be Warned

Jess listened to the report with unconcealed skepticism. She had brought the thief with her for two reasons, one - she wanted to keep an eye on him and two - it was pretty clear he would be useless for the task of heaving around heavy water butts in the hot sun. She scratched behind her ear and shrugged, shifting the bandau of black silk that was her customary garb in hot weather. Wherever they were it was much hotter than it should have been given the seas they had been in just last night, and she was more than a little nervous about what star sights might reveal once the sun went down.

"Snake men, or eel men, or whatever, they can keep the stinking island so long as we can take some bearings from it," she snapped and turned and continued through the jungle. They followed a... trail was the wrong word, it was probably a water course that collected rain from the high ground during tropical storms, but for now it was dry enough to make for easy walking. Jess was glad enough for a clear path, the jungle was lush and dense and filled with strange sounds and perfumes. Once, long ago, she had been to the Green Land south of Lhsoutu where the rainforest stretched for thousands of leagues. Men died in their hundreds attempting to pass those jungles, whether by wild life, poisonous plants, or the innumerable diseases that seemed to haunt the tropic latitudes. As they climbed the jungle began to clear and they passed through a landscape of shrubs and low rocky outcropping. Sleek black bird like things lay on the rocks, apparently sunning themselves, casting lazy unconcerned eyes at the intruders as they trudged towards the mountain peak.

As they cleared the shrub line and reached the even more rocky pinnacle the sea stretched away before them. Far below the bay in which they had come to anchor spread out in a semicircle, from this distance, the Weather Witch looked like a child's toy floating on a distant ultramarine pond. Jess wiped the sweat from her brow and took a canteen of leather wrapped glass from her belt. She unstopped it and took a long drink. Galt gave her an imploring look, and she sighed and passed the canteen to him. He took a swing and then gasped.

"I thought it was water!" he gasped.

"Cut one third with rum and lime juice," Jess told him, plucking the bottle from his hands and restoppering it. There was an old sailors superstition that if you mixed rum and juice with water there were less cases of the flux. Jess had never felt there was a particular need to invent reasons to drink rum, but she partook in the old superstition none the less. Across the distant sea Jess could make out the green shadows of other islands. She took her glass from its leather sheath and unsnapped it, taking bearings to the various points with the aid of a battered brass compass.

"Jess!" Galt called from behind her, she ignored him as she took another bearing, memorizing it rather than writing it down like a lubber.

"Jess!" Galt called again more urgent than before.

"It is Captain..." Jess turned to snarl at the thief but froze in her tracks as she saw that he had climbed higher and moved a was around the peak. She trotted up to join him and saw at once what had captured his attention. Off in the jungle was a vast stone ziggurat. It was small from this distance, but must have been as large as the largest temples in Jess' native Bettony. A great road of black green stone lead from its stairs to the base of the mountain on which they stood. Tiny figures were marching out of it. Jess lifted her glass for a moment but lowered it without putting it to her eye. Even at this range she could tell by the strange almost serpentine sway of the column, that they were not human.

De Trop Disgrace: Warhammer Fantasy RP

For Emmaline it was a bit like she had been thrust into a story book. Boris Todbringer, like Karl Franz was almost a figure of legend, not someone that an average Imperial citizen was ever likely to meet. For a heart stocking moment she was tempted to confess everything, overcome by a naive belief that a figure with sufficient authority could make everything alright. Luckily the madness passed before it could reach her lips. She was a fucking professional after all.

"I waz coming back from ze ball and I found Sieur Oderick dead on his beed," she told the count. Recalling the sight and the smell of it made her gorge rise slightly but she swallowed it down, probably earning a few extra points of credibility by the very real reaction.

"Run through with my son's sword?" the count asked. Emmaline hesitated then plunged forward committing herself.

"No monsieur, deed yes but l'sabre it was nit zere nes pa," she continued, leaning into her Brettonian as though her accent were faltering under stress. The count did not interrupt her, which was frustrating as it denied her any chance to gauge his reaction to what she was telling him, his impassive bearded face not being very useful for this purpose.

"I heard someone coming and I thought.. mon dei ze killers av re'turned, so I hide," she continued, glossing over exactly where and how she had hidden.

"Zey talk about missing something, a note of some kind, and when zey go and I come out zoot alore l'sabre zat is to say ze sword is there," Emmaline continued with her all together truthful if somewhat deceptive account of events.

"Ze vay zey talked it sounded like it vas more zan one man, a...what is the word...la conspiration," she shrugged in counterfit Brettonian physicality.

"Yet you walked up to me like nothing had bloody happened?!" Kasimir half yelled, the shock in his eyes turning to anger. The Count did not look angry, but neither did he choose to interject.

"I do not know you, save perhaps zat you are rude and a killier," she shot back, "I dos not know who to trust only that mal'de'homme are loose and perhaps looking for me."

"But you saw them plant my sword!" Kasimir persisted.

"On sword monsieur looks much like aye-no-ther," she replied tartly. "I do not know who to trust, onze zat I must git cleeer and to...sanctuaire." She trailed off and shrugged her shoulders, feeling a certain satisfaction about having delivered her account without telling any actual lies.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

"I can't have too much on my record or they would have arrested me at customs," Junebug snickered, then sat up considering.

"Come to think of it, I though Miranda said I had a warrant out on me for assault," she amended. When she had been home on leave she had beaten a drunken school mate of Miranda's pretty badly when he had grabbed her after a party. Perhaps Miranda had exaggerated, or perhaps the lout had never bothered to make an official complaint. Well it didn't much matter.

"Played alot of sports I see," Neil commented, picking up one of the trophies from the shelf and turning it over. He pushed a button on the side of the award and a younger version of Junebug appeared, holding an odd combination of stick and net, dressed in athletic gear with a numbered bib.

"ZGL," she reported, the sport was played in very low gravity fields and involved a great deal of leaping and bouncing off handholds.

"Were you a captain?" Neil asked. Junebug laughed and picked up an award. She manipulated the simple holographic controls and pulled up a list of statistics. Sayeeda Selene Cyckali - Most penalties blinked at the top of the list.

"Always room on the team for a goon," she snickered and set the award down.

"I never really belonged here," she admitted soberly, looking around the room as though she had never seen it before. Certainly she hadn't belonged here when she came back from five years with the Armored. The other troopers had warned her that it would be like that, but she hadn't really appreciated it until she saw it with her own eyes. She rolled the helmet in her hands, then set it down.

"Booster," she said, triggering the intergral AI inside the unit. "Unit projection, file 224-31-21-Echo." A hologram flashed to life from the helmets projector, the color was a little washed out from the limited ability of the projection heads, meant for squad briefings rather than cinematics. The view was a viewpoint shot, jostling as the viewer rushed down a canted metal hallway. It shook as the viewer threw themselves against a bulkhead, a squat plasma gun coming up and spitting several soundless blasts into a pair of figures in fatigues that were in the process of climbing through a partially opened hatch. The blast threw one man back to his own side, while most of the second body tumbled into the partition with the shooter, uniform tunic blazing.

"Booster, end file," Junebug commanded and the hologram vanished.

"Fine, lets go to the beach and get some ice cream," she declared.

Pax Astra

Sabatine sucked in a breath as she pulled on the flight yoke and lifted them up and away from the burning wreckage. The blue of the sky seemed to drain away in whisps as they moved up out of the atmosphere. The old rush was still there, just like the first time when she had lifted out of Caledon after she was enlisted. At the time she had expected to be a line soldier, relatively few Caledon's had the aptitude for flying that the Evocatii looked for, a mark of the relatively low level of technology on that hardy frontier world as much as anything she had since discovered. Whatever their arcane tests had found she was glad of it flying, particularly super orbital flying, always thrilled her.

"Breaking atmo," she reported, opening her mouth and exhaling. It sounded like a sigh of relief, but in reality it was a pilots precaution against sudden depressurization. Hardy or not, this boat had been at the bottom of the ocean for a decade and there was no telling if the seals would hold the air in once they were put to hard vacuum. At least if there was no air in your lung you could escape injury long enough to don a helmet. Fortunately, the seals held and she waggled the wings of the assault boat in the traditional test that all was well. Most of the lights on her control panel remained, green, though a few were amber and even red. Nothing vital, though some of the more advanced avionics was obviously toast. Salt water was hell on exterior sensors and it had been a minor miracle that the bullets and feed hoppers which had fed Tiber's guns had worked.

"Next stop," she declared, "anywhere but here."

For a moment she thought bitterly about her now destroyed orchard, then she flicked back the metal saftey cage and punched the jump button. Rainbow light exploded across the canopy as the little assault boat went supra-luminal, launching it into the Via Stellaris.

The Sunday Group - Seeds and Harvests

@POOHEAD189

Alcander was no medievalist, but he recognized a mid 14th century Milanese sallet when he saw one!

The Sunday Group - Seeds and Harvests

The afterbirth of yesterday's rain still clung in small puddles where the rancid liquids of whatever trash had been tossed casually away accumulated in a thick soup.

@POOHEAD189

The afterbirth of rain? That is quite the metaphor :P

Alcander was not a medievalist, but it had the look of a thick bladed, single edged rondel dagger.

@POOHEAD189

Narrator: But he was, in fact, a medievalist.

The Sunday Group - Seeds and Harvests

@Naril Sounds good friend!

The Sunday Group - Seeds and Harvests

@Naril Do you want the next post?

The Sunday Group - Seeds and Harvests

Prod