“You all look like some of the surliest, least can-do-bunch of sorry-for-my-lot warriors I’ve seen since I first started whipping you in shape onboard the Clover,” Colonel Suffic yelled at the small sea of unexcited faces staring back at him in their belted down rows.
Some of the Lancers facing him stared curiously at their Leader, while the rest frowned before turning their attention back to the walls of the shuttles, no doubt imagining being annihilated by enemy fire and unable to do anything while they were stuck inside the shuttle like a can of battle-armored sardines.
Akantha sniffed at being ignored and her face hardened into any icy mask. Unlocking her own belt, she stood up only to be ignored after one quick assessing glance by Suffic.
As she turned away to push forward into pilot’s cockpit,
she could hear over the local push, “Alright you sorry sack of younger sons! Let’s hear it,” Suffic roared.
Behind her the contingent groaned.
“Unit song, now,” he bellowed.
As she grabbed the side of the walls for support against the up and down, then side to side rocking of the shutter, she could hear, tentatively at first and then with growing force the Lancers behind her start to sing. From previous experience she could imagine the rolling eyes and shaking heads as they launched into the first chorus.
“Oh!” they started making a production of clearing throats and fake coughing to get their voices ready, before charging into the song, “We’ll follow the old man wherever he wants to go!” they sang, “wherever he wants to go,” she could hear Suffic’s exuberated bellow starting in on the next line of the song, “Officer to the Fro!”
“Oh! We’ll stay with the old man wherever he wants stay, as long as he stays away from the Grav-plates, HEY!
“With feeling, you insubordinate lot,” screamed Suffic, who then broke down into a series of what sounded like unwilling chuckles. No doubt over the time he’d tried to teach the Tracto-ans a lesson by manually turning the grav-plates up so high the entire contingent, including himself, was stuck to the floor for over an hour, unable to move until Engineering noticed the increased power drain and sent someone down to reset the gravity.
“Because we love him—” they screamed, losing their former mood.
“You’re the saddest bunch of loveless curs I’ve ever heard of, if that’s the case,” he cursed them, even as they continued to sing right over the top of him.
“We love him,” they yelled back in defiance. “Even when he tries to keep us on the ball, because he’s the greatest son of a Lancer of them all! Oh he’s…“
Shaking her head, Akantha switched frequencies inside her helmet until she was on the same push as the pilot and co-pilot. If Hansel Suffic was less than confident in their pilots, it warranted her personal attention. Besides, it was best to let the Warriors have their moments of mirth and horseplay without their Hold Mistress and Admiral’s Lady standing there watching them as they went about it.
Pushing her way into the cockpit she loomed over the pair of skin-suited coxswains steering the shuttled.
“What are you doing up here,” the pilot demanded, sounding surly and put out, “get back in the transport hold where you belong, soldier.”
“My place is wherever I say it is, crewman,” Akantha replied stiffly to let them know they were not just addressing just any member of the Contingent.
“Are you the Admiral’s Lady, ma’am?” asked the co-pilot.
A dozen harsh replies ran through her brain, but mindful of the flashes of heavy laser fire coming from the ship they were flying towards, she held the worst of them.
“You could say that,” she answered coolly, “I have taken him as my Protector.”
“Great,” snapped the Pilot, even as he jerked the shuttle through an evasive maneuver, “fifteen years on active reserve duty, and I get the Montagne’s wife standing over my shoulder.” Green and red flashes of laser fire projected on the front screen as lancing all around them. “Now get back in the hold!”
“Guard your tongue more closely pilot, else it might come off some day!” she snapped right back at him.
“Listen, ma’am,” the Co-pilot tried sooth the situation, “you really should get back to your seat and let us do our job.”
Akantha opened her mouth to reluctantly agree, as the view from the forward screen in here was worse than sitting in the back of the hold wondering what was going on outside, but the pilot cut her off.
“We don’t have time to waste on supernumeraries, be they married to an Admiral or not,” he snarled, “so get back in the hold and stow your threats in the nearest maintenance locker for the rest of the trip, or as the Demon is my witness, the Captain will hear about this!”
“Who is this Captain that I should fear him,” she shouted, grabbing hold of the pilot by his right arm and hauling him half out of his chair. The Code of Men, which Akantha’s people followed explicitly, demanded that open insubordination be rooted out wherever (but more importantly, whenever) it was found, especially on the field of battle.
The co-pilot shrieked and grabbed at his controls with renewed vigor, flipping switches and pushing buttons as he took sole control of the shuttle.
“I am the Hold Mistress of Messene, and I have faced Sky Bug Demons more fearsome than your Captain,” she spat. “The fact that I am also the Sword Bearer of Admiral Jason Montagne and have the power in these two hands,” she continued, shaking him from side to side, “to crush you like the little four legged bug you are should give you cause to mind your tongue, lest I remove it!”
“You can’t—” gurgled the Pilot within her grasp, so rather than try and switch hands and pull out her Bandersnatch, she instead activated the duralloy blade she’d had specially installed in the forearm of her battle suit. The snick as if popped out instantly created a deafening silence in the cockpit.
“You were saying,” she asked coldly, maneuvering the blade until it was between his lips.
“You are insane,” the pilot breathed, staring with what looked like sick fascination at the blade hovering two inches from his mouth.
“Who is more insane,” she grunted, realizing it was probably the only way to get through to the stiff-necked Starborn, “the one holding the knife and promising to use it, or the fool whose words and actions beg its use upon him?”
There followed the sound of heavy breathing in the cockpit as no one said anything for several moments.
“Look,” started the co-pilot, the more respectful of the pair by far, “if you want us to get you to the old Armor Prince with the shuttle and most of the Lancers still in one piece. You need to let us get back to doing our job,” he pleaded, sounding desperate, “the both of us, ma’am!”
“You’re going to get us all killed!” agreed the pilot in her hands, still sounding slightly belligerent.
Releasing the rude one from her grasp, she watched as he landed halfway out of his seat and then had to scramble to get back into his harness.
“I am not going to kill us,” she said coldly, “but you just might do so, if you continue to insult me and ignore basic safety measures like the one requiring personnel inside a shuttle to wear their safety harness.”
The pilot turned red in the face and quickly started to buckle himself in.
“Which safety harness I will add, might just have kept me from removing you from your seat like that. To say nothing of what might happen during an explosive de-com-pres-sion,” she fought to enunciate the relatively unfamiliar word, “such as my last shuttle trip when we fought the Demons.”
“I’m not the only person who isn’t,” he paused to finish clicking in, “wasn’t,” he muttered, “buckled in.”
Even now the fool thought to test her. For a moment she glowered at him silently. Perhaps Suffic had been correct, and their new pilots were oathbreakers, which would explain their intransigence. Then a hard smile crept over her lips as a solution presented itself.
“I need both of you to fly us i
n,” she said coolly, “however, I need only one of you to fly this shuttle back.”
The sudden silence in the room was deafening. Noticing the naturally calmer co-pilot’s hand slowly creeping down to his side arm, she placed a hand on his shoulder and gave a slight squeeze; one that she knew was more than enough to cause significant pain but no actual damage. To her surprise, he refrained from making a sound. Her respect for him increased.
“I have no murder on my mind,” she assured the co-pilot, “quite the opposite, if it’s truth you want from me,” she said in a deliberately deadly and ominous tone of voice.
When neither man was foolish enough to provoke her further, so she smiled happily. “Far from it,” she again assured them. “No,” she said placing a hand on the pilot, so that now she had a power-armored hand on each of their skin-suited shoulders, “your pilot here can redeem his poor manners as is only proper: with action, taking his place as one of my personal guard when we storm the ship!”
Chapter 37: Cleaning House
The initial surge out of the shuttle and into the decompressed shuttle bay passed in a blur of fire and counter fire as the Armor Prince’s defenders cut loose with everything they had. Outnumbered and quickly overwhelmed, Akantha didn’t start paying attention to her surroundings again until one of her Honor Guard grabbed her attention, so focused was she on blasting down her pirate foes.
“What is it,” she demanded irritably, eager to get into the ship and start cutting a bloody swath.
“This is the second time this one’s tried to run back to the shuttle,” said Cyrus, shoving the shuttle pilot at her.
“I’m not used to combat, I just keep getting turned around,” protested the pilot.
Akantha shook her head at such a transparent fabrication, then an idea struck her.
“Do not worry,” she said pulling out the grappling cable built into the belt of her battlesuit, and attaching it to his skin suit, “you can no longer get ‘turned around,’ with this,” she assured him, giving the cable a quick tug to ensure it was secured.
The Pilot staggered from the force of her tug on the line, slow to regain his balance before staring at her like she was the worst sort of ravenous, disgusting Sky Demon.
“Now you needn’t fear becoming lost,” she said triumphantly, then turned her attention back to the serious business of getting into the ship. There were still many of these pirates, the road bandits of the stars, waiting for her to maim and slaughter with Bandersnatch!
“You’re just trying to get me killed,” shouted the Pilot.
“If I wanted you dead, you impudent little man, I would simply kill you myself,” she assured him with rising irritation.
“I have no weapon, and without armor I’ll be shot dead during the first encounter,” he squealed.
“You are not unarmed,” she reminded him, tapping the side arm strapped to his right leg.
“A stunner,” he protested.
“When an enemy falls, we will fit you with their armor, now cease your sniveling,” she said pushing him out of the way with the back of her hand. “You may collect a better weapon along the way as well; I promise there will soon be plenty,” she finished with a flash of her eyes.
So saying she clicked off their private channel and back onto the main frequency. Striding over to the nearest airlock, she didn’t even notice him kicking and flailing about as he tried to do anything he could, even grab hold of a structural beam to try to prevent their entrance into the rest of the ship.
“Stop flopping around,” she scolded, switching back to their private channel where she heard him screaming for help, “are you a man or some kind of fish?” she demanded.
“This is illegal; it’s a violation of the Caprian military code of conduct. You can’t do this,” he screamed, holding onto a pylon for dear life. “I’m a member of the flight crew, not a Marine!”
“Act like a man, not a fish,” she reprimanded, shaking her head, “because if you keep playing the part of a fish with this incessant flopping about, I will be forced to use my Bandersnatch and gut you like the landless water creature you pretend to be!”
Grabbing hold of the grappling cable, she gave a savage tug and he came flying toward her. Suffic had not trusted this man, and neither would Akantha.
Looking to be temporarily stunned out of his childish antics, Akantha pushed her way to the front of the line seeking entry into the ship.
Pulling the pilot close so that the line wasn’t at risk of being cut in half by the hatch, she dragged the two of them into the airlock.
Cycling out into the rest of the ship she felt the barest sensation of something pressing against her back. It passed almost as soon as it was felt, then a slightly stronger series of pulses could be felt all along her back and then up her neck to the back of her head.
Turning around she was just in time to see a stunner go whizzing past her head.
“Only a fool would discard his lone weapon,” she growled, shaking her head at the sight of the shuttle pilot standing there empty handed.
“Useless piece of junk doesn’t even work,” he glared at her, fury in his eyes.
“Finally, a hint of a spine! We will find something more powerful as we go,” then she frowned, irritated at waiting for several more lancers to cycle through behind her. “Move,” she commanded as soon as enough of her Honor Guard had come through the airlock to justify heading deeper into the ship, “we have Star Bandits to destroy!”
Striding through the halls left over signs of battle were clear to see in the scared and in a few cases melted pockmarks on the wall and blood stains on the floor. Then they came across their first set of blackened, yet still smoking power armor.
“Looks like the Jacks got here before us,” growled Colonel Suffic over the general push. “So step lively; we don’t want to get shot by our own side,” there was a pause, “although I use that term loosely, since we are talking about Marines here,” he added with a gravelly chuckle.
“Don’t worry, Sir,” responded one of her Tracto-an Lancers, “we won’t let them steal our glory!”
“Enough of that thick-headed nonsense,” snapped Hansel Suffic, “I said step lively, and remember to watch your six.”
Behind her, the Primarch finally made it through the airlock. Dressed in the very same equipment he’d been captured in, Glue was decked out in the same sort of interlocking armor plates and head bag that previous members of his particular brand of demonkind had been equipped in during the last time she saw them in combat. Bandersnatch had torn through that armor easily enough, she reminded herself.
Although in Primarch Glue’s case, his weaponry was conspicuous by its very absence.
“This not what we talked, Land Mother,” he told her, with an exaggerated facial grimace that appeared to be normal fare for his kind.
Inside Akantha suppressed a grimace of distaste. Bargaining with a warrior demon… if her mother could only see her now, she’d realize just how far her daughter had strayed from the Code of Men, and how much further she was about to go.
In fairness, the Code only listed a series of dire punishments and projected outcomes to be expected for those who trafficked with demons without the prior approval of Men, but it didn’t actually forbid anything.
Even more technically, it might even be argued that as a Hold Mistress and with the fate of both the race and world entire hanging around her shoulders in the form of the threat posed by the Sky Demons, that she had all the authority she needed already preapproved.
“You must learn to embrace the unexpected,” she said stiffly.
“The unexpected not concerned me,” he said flatly, “It is the posed and counter-posed that fills the mind of this Sundered, Land Mother.”
“We each have a place in this fallen world, Primarch,” she replied evenly, no longer forced to pull the shuttle pilot along behind her, “to each it is given sometimes that their place is simply to wait.”
“Much you ask of this Glue,” th
e Demon grunted.
“A leader of warriors, Demon or not, must have patience in excess of the common band,” she scowled.
“Let us speak this more,” Glue said in a rising voice.
“Let us not,” she flared, “I ask much of you?” She stopped and glared with fury at the giant Demon. “Warrior hearted or not, I offer you and yours more than you could ever possibly give in return. Show me the worthiness of this alliance, lest…” she pointed commandingly down an uninhabited side passage, one clear of both Lancer and Pirate, “you should go. Leave now, but never again dare to show your face to me within this lifetime, or I will know your complaints are as the whining of a child who claims that all his life he has been denied that which was rightfully his, only to later refuse that very same privilege because of the obligations inherited by those who have already received a similar bounty!”
Glue stared at her silently, and some might say sullenly. Perhaps he enjoys the Bandit life too much, she wondered silently.
“Make your choice, Primarch of Demons; are you a whining little child, or a Warrior among Warriors and a Leader of the… Sundered People,” she finished, her fire melting into a cold nearly all consuming fury. “I have no use for a people who, when put to hazard, turn and walk away.”
“Give me a weapon,” he rumbled from somewhere deep in his chest.
“Among my people a weapon is not simply given, it is earned,” she retorted, her eyes lighting up at his answer. Around her, the honor guard stiffened with tension.
She turned to the nearest Lancer. “Give the Primarch the weapons which were found on him when he was captured,” she instructed.
The low rumbling sound that had been coming from the genetic uplift since she answered paused.
“Use these weapons to harvest a blood price from the Star Bandits, and you can consider the ransom price of those weapons fully repaid,” she stated imperiously.
Spineward Sectors 03 Admiral's Tribulation Page 23
