Penny

A Chartered Course: Medieval Trading League RP

A Speculators Guide to the Pegasus Trade

Companies:

Solar Winds Trading Company
Headquarters: New Batvia, Venus, Sol
Employees: 925
Registered Hulls: 8
League Scepters: 1 (provisional)

Planets

Lionel
System: Kappa 121-G
Star Class: G (Orange/White)
Inhabitants: 10 million autochthons. Assorted Iron Age societies.
Exports: None to date
League Presence: Class D repair base.
A-Pow Presence: None.

A Brief History of Human Expansion Volume 627 Part D

The Ancient and Honorable League of Neo-Hanseatic Merchants

“Not ancient, not honorable, and only in league to bilk the rest of the galaxy.”
Charles Brandle – My Life and Times

The League as is commonly referred to is an organized group of merchants based in Sol. The League holds a technical monopoly on star faring trade beyond the Sol System, a right for which individual companies pay annual dues. Originally viewed by the Associated Powers as a way to organize the gold rush resulting from the development of the Wellerman-Kashogi drive and supra-luminal travel it rapidly developed into the real economic power in the human galaxy. The League is theoretically a democracy in which each member company can cast a number of votes proportional to its earnings, though as a practical matter diets are only called to settle the thorniest trade disputes or as an arbitrator of last resort between rival companies.


The Associated Powers of Federated Sol

Join the navy they said, see the galaxy they said, pursuant to fiscal constraints and compliance with sub clause 222-AC-3 they said.
Charles Brandle – My Life and Times

A-Pow is the governing political and military body of the Sol system. Formed of a union of Earth, Mars, Venus, and a score or so of well established colonies in the Solar only after the pressures of extra solar expansion made it increasingly dangerous to resist. Bureaucratic in the extreme, its complicated constitution, set up to appease a dozen mutual exclusive factions means that A-Pow rarely manages to move any issue past the debate stage. It does possess a powerful fleet and several armies, largely as a way to enrich defense contractors. While some of the larger extra solar colonies are members, they are very much poor relations to the Solar core, with correspondingly less constitutional power.

A-Pow is too riddled with internal divisions to have a coherent position on the League, indeed the endlessly political cycle is yet another arena for those members of the League with money to spend to attempt to buy influence. A-Pow can and does act to defend Sol and its extra solar member worlds, at least after every opportunity to dither has been exhausted.

Independent Human Colonies
Everything that can be tried will be tried, everything that will be tried will be fucked up.
Charles Brandle – My Life and Times

Independent settlements not part of A-Pow have been established on hundreds, perhaps thousands of worlds, asteroid belts, and deep space stations. These range from small industrial operations, to League trading posts, to collectives of political dissidents, cults, utopians, and every segment of solar society that, for one reason or another, wanted to hop a starship and get the hell out of dodge.

__________________________________________________________________








On any planet visited by the descendants of Earth, the first building to be constructed was, without exception, a bar. After that came a brothel, though often enough the two were in combination. In her year and a half of indentured service to the League, and contract to the Solar Winds Trading Company specifically, Inez had been in plenty of both. This one was better than most, at least the walls weren’t sealed with stinking insect saliva the way they had been in the Miserable Mossie on Caldacot, or upwind of a sulfur processing plant like ‘The Stink of It’ on Mosul’s World. It had all the common characteristic denizens, the tag rag and bobtail sweepings of three centuries of human interstellar travel: Merchants, adventurers, scoundrels, thieves, cut throats and every combination of those categories.

Inez walked over and bellied up to the bar, leaning gratefully to take the stress off her injured core. She held up a hand to the alien bartender who paused from his somewhat desultory attempts to swab out glass with a rag to pull a bottle of beer from an icebox concealed beneath the bar. The bartender struck the cap off the beer against the bar with casual skill and set it down in front of her, dripping with ice melt and condensate. The green and gold check on the can identified it as Zap, a high quantity low quality brew from Earth, underscored by the surprisingly realistic motto Zap beer, all you can get out here. Inez licked the foam beginning to spill from the top of the bottle and took a long pull. Well, at least it is cold, she thought charitably as she set the half empty bottle down on the bar. The bartender grunted when she didn’t produce any currency, then reached into a pouch, produced a debit pad, and tossed it down beside her.

Inez sighed and looked out over the vista that was visible through the window behind the racked bottles of human and alien liquors. The bar was set inside one of the local pyramids, either abandoned with disuse or granted as a trade concession to the League. It formed one corner of a rectangular temple complex perhaps a kilometer wide and half again as long with a pyramid at each corner. The space in between must have started life as a paved plaza, but starship landings had reduced it to a crushed mass of gravel. Only two starships were on the ground at the moment, the Arxregnum and a tramp whose name Inez hadn’t bothered to learn. Differences in design aside, they were both long rectangular tubes of metal with secondary hull sections attached like ancient outriggers. Both vessels bristled with antennae, sensors and the various other avionics that allowed men to travel between the stars. Local vehicles, simple diesel powered haulers, moved around the two ships on their own errands, bringing supplies or people from the workshops and warehouses that had been built around the base of the largest of the four pyramids. A low stone wall, grown through with greenish orange lichen, surrounded the whole establishment, probably ceremonial as it was too low to provide an effective defensive barrier. Roads ran off into the jungle at a strange variety of angles, vanishing quickly in the greenery. Inez knew from the landing that several large local settlements were only a few kilometers distant, though the jungle was thick enough that no sign was visible from here. Judging by the muddy disrepair of the roads, there wasn’t much truck with the locals. Sometimes the best you could say about a place was that it was breathable, and that it kept the rad level manageable. That wasn’t nothing in a wide and hostile galaxy. Inez drew in a long breath that smelled of the tavern, the landing field, and the alien biochemistry beyond.

“What a shit hole,” she sighed philosophically, swallowing the rest of her beer and waving for another. The debit pad clinked up the charge, which would eventually be settled by Alrik Maynard as the operator of the Arxregnum. Maynard might or might not get on her case about charging drinks to the company but she figured after the incident with the kraken she had earned a little grace. Provided she didn’t turn up drunk off her face of course, which, to be fair, would be a job of work on nothing but Zap. As though sensing her thoughts the portable computer she wore at her wrist beeped.

“The Black Lady damn it,” Inez muttered as she opened the message with a few quick keystrokes.

Please collect local contractor for security duty. Ident and particulars attached. AM.

Inez sighed again and turned to scan the bar. Sure enough, a man matching the hologram was just concluding an arm wrestling contest with an alien. The various spectators were hooting and hollering as they exchanged credit chips to settle whatever bets they had placed on the combatants. She slid herself into the vacated seat as the group broke up, flashing a holographic copy of the contract by way of an icebreaker.

“Badrek? Is that a real name? It sounds like something you stepped in and have to scrape off your boot,” she asked, as diplomatically as she could manage. She wondered what hair brained scheme Maynard had in mind that he wanted an additional thug along. History did not suggest that the answer to this question would please her.



@POOHEAD189

A Chartered Course: Medieval Trading League RP

The hatches cracked open and hissed down onto landing field of crushed gravel. The smell of baked lime, hot metal, and sea weed burned off during re-entry rushed in, mingling with the slightly cinnamon smell of the local jungle. Inez wrinkled her nose as she came down the ramp, her body stinging from the medical aplique that wrapped her from thigh to mid chest beneath the somewhat battered League arming vest she wore.

Lionel was typical of the out-worlds in the Pegasus Arm, an alien world habital by humans but as yet with little trade to entice the Merchant Princes of the League. It orbited an angry K-type star tha blazed at the high end of the sequence. Luckily the angry ball was far more distant, in relative terms, than Earth from Sol. The result was that even in the 'day' time a kind of eternal twilight existed. The ambient illumination of the nebula colored the light a greenish purple, which deeped during the night without significant decrease in luminosity. The local life forms bore a superficial similarity to ant forms from earth, though they primarily subsisted on the myriad varieties of local fungus which grew in vast, carefully managed forests. Their technological level was iron age without even the wheel, though like the Aztec of ancient Earth, this hadn't prevented them from raising monumental pyramids and other works of sacred architecture. Their society was based on a kind of religious clientage with varigated classes of priest serving as an aristocracy. The appearence of Captain Lionel of the Mars Engineering and Technical Consortium forty years ago had thrown them into significant agitation which was still working itself out.

Regardless of the native's feelings, the League had been able to set up a small trading post and an emergency maintaince depot for ships that got themselves in trouble far from more civilized worlds. The Arxregnum had spent the past six weeks gathering sea weed for the Solar Winds Trading Company, and had been doing quite well before what the crew termed 'The Kraken Attack'. The sea creature should not have existed according to the survey data which reported only plant life above the microbial, something some academic somewhere might someday write a paper about. The creatures sudden appearance, drawn no doubt to the warmth of the hull, had damaged several of the jump antennae that propelled the vessel into the supra-luminal band. She had taken a week to limp to even this out of the way place and would go no further until she was refited. Maynard had done well to get them this far, but they were short of crew and ready cash and it remained to be seen how repairs would be effected.

"Inez de Calabria," she declared to the bored looking Guild apprentice sitting at a table covered by a canvas shade. The apprentice scratched a red rash tha vanished beneath his doublet, a common reaction to exposure to proteins in non human biospheres.

"Good to meet you, frankly its good to meet anyone on this out of the way dung hill," he replied with a slight Martian accent.

"Your captain coming down, or is it hired guns only?" he asked. Inez laughed in response, a tired slightly bitter sound.

"I'm an indentured gun technically," she told him, "Captain Maynard will be down in a few minutes, as soon as he has the fires out in engineering im sure. Anywhere you can get a drink around here?" The apprentice, Walsh but the battered name tape, hooked a thumb towards a small pyramid a few dozen meters away.

"In there, that is where the other outworlders are too, if you care."
@POOHEAD189

A Chartered Course: Medieval Trading League RP

Phosphorescent foam surged up over the hull in freezing sheets. Inez de Calavria, apprentice armsman of the league, gripped the safety line in one gloved hand and raised the repeater with the other. The bow of the Arxregnum plunged downwards and icy water rushed up over her waist, chilly even through a vacuum rated environmental suit. The winds, close to cyclonic, howled around her whipping the wave tops to ragged flume. The starship rose again, riding up the face of the thirty meter wave until it reached the crest.

Inez had a half a second to look out over a heaving ocean of wind ripped waves. The purplish sky above crackled with a skittish tracery of green lightning that parted the auroral ribbons like cracks running through stressed ice. The view held for a half second and then she was rushing back down into the trough, vision obscured by a storm of flying droplets.

“How is it going out there,” her communicator crackled, carrying with the fury of the permanent storm above.

“Stand by, I…” Tentacles as thick as Inez’ waist exploded from the front of the wavefront, slapping down heavily along the curved silver hull. Unlike its equivalent on Earth, the thing was covered with gripping cillia rather than suckers. A dozen more tentacles followed the first, grappling the ship with dozens of enormous limbs. Inez fired the repeater one handed, it kicked like a steer but she held onto it. A three round cluster, lead by a tracer snapped from the barrel, the explosive tipped bullets shredding a tentacle into hundreds of pounds of fishy offal. The beast went wild, slapping at its wounded appendage with a half dozen of its limbs like a man trying to put out a fire. Inez hurled herself forward, unclipping her line and snapping it to another stanchion. She slipped on the soaking deck and went over snagging up against the line as it drove her harness into her ribs. She sucked in a lungful of spray, half choked and scrambled for purchase. Her hand closed around one of the exterior sensors and she pulled herself to her feet. A tentacle hit her across the chest with the force of a medicine ball and she was punched upwards and away from the hull. Gelatinous tendrils held her as the beast heaved against the safety line. The woven beryllium line could have lifted the ship, unfortunately her bones and sinews had a somewhat lower threshold.

“Fuuuuck!” she screamed as the beast worried at her, trying to pull her towards it’s as yet unseen maw.

“What was that?” the comm cracked, “I cant hear…”

“Shut!” Inez fired, “the fuck,” she fired again, “up!” The last burst caught the base of the tentacle close to the wave front. It exploded in a geyser of spray and blood and the thing dropped her. Inez plummeted to the deck below. Pain exploded across her hips as she bounced off the steel plating and plunged into the frigid water. The helmet was sealed but it didn’t have external air, the filters snapped closed and her available air flashed amber.

“Is there really any need to swear?” the voice in her comm asked pevishly. Inez hauled herself upwards, using the buoyancy of a rising wave to drive her body upwards. Thank the Black Lady for the line because the glittering phosphor bacteria in the water made it impossible to tell up from down. She broached and scrambled up onto the hull. She ducked another slashing tentacle that carried away a secondary communications mast in spray of sparks.

“I have it under…” a giant tripartite beak hammered into the hull, dishing one of the plates in with shattering force. Inez rolled sideways, catching a sensor head between her legs and wrapping them around it. She tensed her screaming muscles and pulled herself upright the beak drew back, revealing three dinner plate sized eyes staring malevolently at her. She flicked a switch on the repeater, deactivating the explosive charges and switching to solid shot.

“Control!” she concluded and emptied the magazine into the things eyes. The fifty caliber rounds punched through the eye in a spray of jelly and blood, they smashed into the nerve ganglia, destroying the primitive equivalent of a brain that motivated the giant creature. Tentacles slashed and battered but the water was foaming with black ink as internal bladders voided, internal buoyancy failed and the thing slipped beneath the waters, washed clear by the next wave.

“It really dosen’t sound like it,” the voice complained. Inez pulled herself to her feet.

“Just open the damned airlock,” she replied, and half limped, half crawled her way back towards the lock.

@POOHEAD189

Shields of the Empire

The khareeds hit the creek bed at full charge, the hooves of their great destriers kicking up great clods of dirt and the low shrubs which lined the slight declivity. Eudoxia slashed down with the point of her spear and a six hundred arrows snapped across the intervening distance like a flight of spiteful birds. The enemy horsemen seemed to leap to meet the arrows and suddenly men and beasts were screaming and falling in an avalanche of horseflesh. Beasts went down, tumbling over the corpses of the fallen, or yanked off their feet by heavily armored riders falling and yanking on the stirrups. The noise and explosion of dust was tremendous as the ranks behind rode over the fallen, horses leaping and skipping to keep their footing.

"Go, go!" Phaedra shouted, spurring her steed forward into the stream bed. She lowered her spear, aiming the point of the ten foot length of timber at a khareed in red and black livery who was struggling to maintain control of his mount as it swerved to avoid the thrashing corpses that now filled the creek bead. There was a shattering crash as the Miravet and the Khareeds smashed together in a collision that could be heard for miles. Thousands of pounds of horse and armor impacting withing a front of a few hundred feet. Phaedra's spear punched through the chainmail at the waist of her target as he desperately tried to pull his shield into place, blood fountained from the mans helmet as he flew from his saddle. Dozens of Khareeds went down in the instant of contact, horses and men both spitted on cavalry spears. Out of the corner of her eye Phaedra saw a Miravette go down, as a lance punched through the breast of her warhorse. The horsewoman stood up in her stirrups and leaped free, hitting the ground in a roll before being lost in the swirling dust that now obscured everything more than a few feet away. Phaedra could only hope the luckless trooper could get back out of the killing zone in the next few moments or she would certainly be trampled by one side or the other.

"Back! Back!" Phaedra shouted, pulling her cavalry saber free and slashing overhand at a Khareed who emerged from the dust with a spiked mace raised. Her stroke took his hand of with the wrist a moment before their horses crashed together and rebounded away. Horns were blaring and the Miravet wheeled and raced back the way they had come, the enemy momentum checked. The Khareeds pursed, flogging their mounts with their spurs till blood ran down their flanks, but their horses had already charging hard and the fresher Miravette mounts opened the distance. They came up over the creek bank and plunged through the ranks of Brasadis' infantry who were formed up in squares with open channels to allow the women to pass, closing ranks as they did so to present a wall of spears to the bloodied Khareeds that came up over the bank in a ragged line of pursuit.

The Sunday Group - Seeds and Harvests

@Naril How are we looking?

Tricksters and Theives: A Warhammer RP

Emmaline attempted to cover herself with the short throw blanket she had stripped from the couch. The attempt was difficult as her figure made it almost impossible to maintain any but the faintest illusion of modesty. She considered a grab for her dress, but the look in the lead bandit's eyes convinced her that it wasn't a good idea. The rest of the motley crew eyed her like half starved dogs, but the leaders eyes were wary and guarded.

"Looking for a crew to tramp with? Well we might be looking at a tramp to screw with," one of the brigands, a wall eyed man with hair the color of dirty straw chuckled lewdly.

"Claus!," the leader snapped, "do what the man says and check their packs."

"Johann..." the blonde, Claus apparently, objected, but Johann gestured with his gun barrels to where their baggage was stacked. Claus scowled and thrust his own weapon, a heavy horse pistol, into his belt without uncocking it. For a miracle it didn't go off as he crabbed over and pulled open Emmaline's pack. Several heavy pouches of gold clinked out, along with a bottle of wine and a piece of chocolate wrapped in grease cloth. There was an audible 'oooh' from the assembled bandits, clearly no strangers to the sound of decent loot. Emmaline attempted to scowl, but it was difficult to appear intimidating when you you could really only manage to cover one boob at a time.

"Looks like they are telling the truth boss," Claus said unnecessarily, his hand still rooting about in Emmaline's pack, intrigued by the clink of glass ware and other odds and ends. With an arched eyebrow he pulled something free. Emmaline's heart sank as she saw it was the wooden case that held the cut warpstone.

"What have we here?" Claus asked, eyes shining with avarice. Emmaline felt her heart rise up into her throat, rather a trick for a naked woman being held at gun point by a half dozen dirty looking thieves.

"Don't..." Emmaline began but Claus was already snapping open the clasps that held the case closed. The wood parted, issuing forth the emerald green glow of the unstable magical stone. The case itself was lined with a thin foil of lead engraved with warding symbols which offered some protection, but if Claus touched the stone with bare flesh...

Emmaline landed on Claus' back at the end of a flying leap, her arms wrapping around his head and her legs around his waist. The thief screamed in anger and surprise reaching back over his shoulder to grab her. As he pulled his hand out of the case the stink of burning keratin came with it, and his eyes widened to see the dirty fingernails burned back nearly to their pads. Her weight, considerable with the leverage she had, over toppled the bandit, and they went down in a tangle of arms and legs. The pistol in his waistband cracked, and the bullet whined off stone and sparked as it ricochet around the room before blasting into the couch with a puff of down feathers. Emmaline rolled off Claus, who was frantically slapping at his crotch in an attempt to put out the fire the pistol priming had started in his greasy trousers. Stark naked, Emmaline reached out with a long leg and snapped the case shut, the click of the locks engaging cutting off the sickly green glow from within.

Johann's blunderbuss was pointing at her, steady as a rock for several long moments before he lifted it skyward and eased the cocked hammers down. Nervous laughter at Claus' expense issued from the remaining men, as well as several whistles and a marriage proposal as Emmaline crawled across the room and pulled her dress on over her head, wriggling into it with distracting haste.

"Well," Johann said as he thrust the coachgun into a leather baldric that hung over his back. "Seems like the pair of you have a story to tell at least."

Sontewall abuse

OK? I'm still a little confused as to what you are talking about.

The Pavonis Campaign - Warhammer 40000

Katia was relieved to see that Zeb seemed to be healing well. It was difficult, given their role, for commissars to have friends but the Gudrnite was as close as it came. It also had the practical benefit of giving her someone who could relay orders to other, technically speaking she was a political officer and outside the chain of command. That worked fine when she was back at the regimental CP sipping recaf, but less ideal out here in the field.

“Why does the colonel want see us?” Zeb asked as they exited the main school building and crossed what had once been a scrumball pitch towards what appeared to be a large gymnasium. The air shook overhead as a trio of thunderbolts crossed overhead several thousand feet up, so fast they were little more than streaks against the sky. A few moments later they felt the crump of distant ordnance detonating and the clattering back wash of anti-aircraft fire.

“I’m not sure,” Katia admitted. At the Scolam they had suggested it was usually a bad sign when senior officers actually wanted to see Commissars whom they viewed at best as a nuisance and at worst as a magic bullet they could use to deal with a truly ruinous collapse in morale.

The gymnasium was a large oval shaped space ringed by layers of bench seating. In other times students would have played sports and exercised here but the demands of war had converted it completely. The main floor was covered with a map of the town and its environs in wax pencil. Katia was somewhat shocked to discover that the scale appeared to be accurate, so much so that uniformed men and women were measuring distances and calling out ranges. There were even notations on elevation. The positions of units were marked with pieces of flack board with unit name and specialty marked on them as well as vox frequencies. Surrounding the map were dozens of chalk boards on which the staff, mostly PDF, were recording information as it was called out to them from the dozens of vox operators who sat on the first tier of benches, hunched over their transmitters. As Katia watched an aide drew a line through an inbound air strike, and then added an ETA on the next item, a flight of hellfire heavy bombers. Here and there, red robed acolytes of the Cult of Mars were at work, smearing cogitators with sacred unguents, or adding seals to the thick trunks of cables which rose from the vox transmitters up through a holes that had been knocked in the ceiling to allow a forest of antennae to be fed through. A buzz of conversation and crackling vox transmission hung over it all, completing the impression of frantic but organized export. Every few minutes a runner, either PDF or from one of the Guard remnants burst through the doors, where they were stopped by PDF troopers before the desk of an officer with captains flashes on his shoulders. After exchanging a few words the runner was routed to one of the stations, or sat on the benches to wait while juvies in school uniforms bought them water in large clay mugs.

“They are doing all this without cogitators?” Rikkard asked, familiar enough with Guard command posts to be surprised. Katia didn’t respond, the captain acting as traffic control was waving her over and she moved to him with crisp precision.

“Commissar, Colonel Brae left instructions that you were to be passed through,” he told her making a gesture to a large desk beneath a score board at the end of the gym. Some PDF trooper had adjusted the board so the score read ‘13 and not out’. Katia nodded her thanks to the captain and moved to the table, her black coat cutting a path through the thronging troops and aides as effectively as a sword blade.

“I don’t care how close they are!” Colonel Brae was snapping, “Better we burn a few of our own men then the Orks break through, tell Lieutenant Crow he is to mark his positions with smoke and take cover. The Emperor Protects.” Brae slammed an old fashioned bakerlite vox line down with a musical clang.

“What the devil do …ah apologies Commissar,” Brae muttered, pulling round rimmed spectacles from his nose and polishing the lens furiously with a white cloth in what Katia recognized as a habitual gesture. He was a small man, as bald as an egg, with an immaculately waxed moustache that seemed to compensate for his lack of top cover. His uniform was equally well presented, clean and starched to razor sharpness along the seams. He seemed an almost comical figure, a ridiculous little man who had pulled together scattered units from the PDF and a half dozen regiments to hold this salient against all odds for the last thirteen days. Thirteen and not out.

“What can we do for you Colonel?” Katia asked, formally polite. Contempt for the PDF and especially for their officers was axiomatic among the Imperial Guard. As often as not those officers were the bored sons of the local aristos who wanted a nice uniform to wear at a ball. Katia was, for once, happy to be proven wrong.

“Ork fighter bombers in sector 3, casualties…” a pimply faces adolescent fell silent as Brae held up a hand to quite the boy who seemed on the verge of swallowing his tongue as he realized his report had interrupted a real life Commissar in mid conversation.

“Commisar, as I am sure you appreciate our position here is precarious,” Colonel Brae continued, bravely blunt with what might be interpreted as a statement of weakness. Katia could well appreciate his position. The town was only holding on because of air and artillery support from behind the lines. The longer he held out however, the more orks would be drawn to the fighting. Their numbers would grow with the certainty of a crystal forming in a super saturated solution and pretty soon they would begin to contest the air, or attack other parts of the Imperial force. In either case the support that was keeping Brae in the fight would be diluted, and the odds were good he would be overrun.

“We are prepared to do our duty to the Emperor of course,” Brae continued, placing his glasses back on his face and looking up at them. He suddenly had the aspect of a well meaning school teacher about to ask a favorite pupil to redo her homework.


“But there are…” he paused and picked up a sheet of flimsy and glanced at it, “something over two thousand civilians, tech adepts, auxiliaries and the like still in the town.” Katia nodded her head acknowledging the statement.

“In order to preserve the morale of my men, and deny potential slave labor to the enemy, Id like you to coordinate evacuation,” Brae concluded. Katia could understand his predicament, the majority of the PDF here would be locals, which meant that these civilians were their family and friends. If they were still in the area when the orks began to break through the static defenses, no amount of executions would stop men from running home to try to defend their wives and children. Of course that raised the question of how Katia and Zeb could possibly get several thousand non-combatants out of the siege.

“We will see what we can do Colonel,” Katia replied, earning a grateful nod from Brae.

“If you will excuse me…Calvin, are those earth movers in position yet? We need to get those hydra batteries…”

“He doesn’t want much does he?” Rikkard asked as the Firing Party moved away from the beleaguered Colonel.

“I am open to ideas,” Kaita replied as she watched the organized chaos unfold around them.

The Sunday Group - Seeds and Harvests

She is unmoored in space and time

Cinnabar Forever! (RCN)

The image of Captain Micha’s face froze in a ricktus of fear and panic as it hung in holographic projection. Sabatine hated to admit it but you really had to hand it to Tilda. When the former (?) reporter had rather offhandedly offered to help prepare the footage for the drumhead court martial Sabatine had imagined it would be a simple presentation, instead Tilda had cut the footage taken from the Vickie’s bridge sensors together in a production worthy of a holofilm. Not coincidentally it also served to subtly highlight Kaiden’s bravery but any client would naturally seek to please her patron.

Kaiden, Sabatine and Lieutenant Rachet were sitting in console seats on the bridge of the Z-21, all wearing full dress whites with medal ribbons. In Rachet’s case these were somewhat tattered and ill tailored, having apparently lost weight since the last time they had been worn, and that last time some ways in the past. Captain Micha sat in a seat on the lower level of the bridge, unshaven and glowering. Though he had been given the opportunity to shave and dress formally, he had spurned the offer, another detail recorded by Tilda’s careful efforts.

“The prosecution rests,” Leyla Savachev declared, taking her own seat with a wave at the holo projection. It was, perhaps, not entirely proper for a warrant officer to serve as counsel, but all three commissioned Cinnabars, Ottis’ commission by courtesy didn’t count for this purpose, were required to make up the three member quorum for the court martial.

“Do you have any further remarks to offer in your defense Lieutenant?” Kaiden asked with cold formality. Technically speaking he outranked Micha now that the later had been stripped of his command.

“You will swing for this you bastards! Ill see each of your rotting bodies over a yard arm at Harbor Three!” Micha blustered. Sabatine rather sadly thought that if Micha had shown this kind of fire during action this court wouldn’t be necessary. Of course that didn’t mean he was right about the hanging. She felt her lips peel back slightly in something between a grin and a snarl. A great many things would have to go right if she was going to survive to face the hangman. Micha continued to rave but Tilda touched a control and engaged the privacy field around his station, effectively muting him behind a curtain of sound cancelation. She was damned good at this, the bitch.

“So noted,” Kaiden sighed. Sabatine didn’t know if he was as unconcerned with Micha’s threats as he appeared. The RCN took a jaundiced view of its officers committing mutiny, which might or might not be what they were doing, depending on the outcome of an inquiry back in Xenos. It was an open question as to whether his family name would help or hurt him in such a proceeding. The RCN prided itself on being above politics, but whether it would find it convenient to spare a Caladwarden or come down hard on him to make the point was difficult to say.

“Lieutenants, do either of you require time or additional material before rendering a verdict?” Kaiden asked.

“No sir,” they both replied in unison.

“Very well, Lieutenant Hickoring, your verdict on charges of neglect of duty to the Republic in time of war and cowardice in the face of the enemy?” Kaiden continued. Sabatine was technically Rachet’s senior on date of commission.

“Guilty on all counts Sir,” she responded formally. Kadien nodded his head.

“Lieutenant Rachet?” Kaiden asked, nodding his head at the gun boat captain. Rachet scratched as his close cropped hair in what Sabatine interpreted as a nervous habit. He had the look of a man in extreme discomfort, having not been present when Kaiden had removed Micha from command, he was now being asked to hitch his reputation to what might be ruled to be a mutiny. Much of the presentation that had been delivered today was aimed at him, as no court martial could be conducted without three captains present, a technicality, among an increasing list of technicalities, satisfied by Sabatine’s temporary command of Z-21. Rachet took a deep breath and cast a glance at the silently ranting Micha then straightened his shoulders.

“Guilty sir,” Rachet declared with a slightly pained look. Sabatine had reviewed Rachet’s record since the Whitehall had joined their nascent squadron. He was a son of minor nobility whose father had squandered most of a small family fortune on bad investments. He had, none the less, made his way in the RCN with little interest and no money, not the sign of a coward or incompetent.

“Guilty,” Kaiden said decisively. He crooked a finger at Tilda, who dropped the noise cancelation around Micha who cut off in mid expletive when sound from the outside reached him.

“Lieutenant Valten Micha,” Kadien began formally, “you have been found guilty of Cowardice in the Face of the Enemy by this court martial.”

“You have no authority to…” Kaiden silenced Micha with a raised finger. Sabatine was struck by how well he played the Cinnibar Noble though that shouldn’t have been a surprise.

“In recognition of the extraordinary circumstances, I have elected not to have you shot on your own quarterdeck, as has been done in the past,” he continued coldly. That shocked Micha as effectively as a glass of cold water to the face. He had been worried before, but now he was scared. It would have been an easy thing for Kaiden to have him disposed of out here where fewer questions might be asked.

“Clear the bridge,” Kaiden declared. There was a general rush for the door as spacers obeyed, piling out into the corridors beyond.

“Lieutenant, you will be transported to Cinnabar aboard the Nestor as Captain and Astrogator,” Kaiden continued coldly. Micha stared at him in shock. Sabatine could see the wheels turning behind his eyes, considering how he might be able to get the wheels of the Navy House bureaucracy moving behind the scenes.

“I’ll be sending a report on the situation here in a sealed fleet packet,” Kaiden told him. The packet was a solid state device sealed with encryption that could only be opened by Navy House. It would contain not only the report of what was going on, but a transcript of the court martial.

“I’ll see you hang, I swear I will,” Micha snarled hatefully.

“So long as it is after you get to Xenos and deliver the packet,” Kaiden responded.