[AP] PRODIGAL SON, A Rogue's Tale - Book II

[Scion Drakhar]

Z,

I always wanted to visit Norway. You sayin' mother nature is givin' me a taste?

[Zaitsev]

Z,

I always wanted to visit Norway. You sayin' mother nature is givin' me a taste?

If you want to visit my part of the country during either spring or fall, then yes. I live in a coastal town though, and we got cold winds straight from Siberia clashing with the warm(er) air heated by the Gulf stream, which tend to make the weather ... interesting.

[Nathancros]

Come to my side of the equator mate.


HOT HOT HOT

never seen a day of snow in my life.

Plus many angry*see deadly* animals

[Scion Drakhar]

84. The Worst Plan Ever

From the Warlock's co-pilot seat Ea't watched as Lord Drake went through the plane's pre-flight checklist. The Huruk'tar worked with a meticulous and somewhat ruthless precision that would have been as entertaining as watching paint dry if not for Drake's annoyance with the pilot's chair, which he couldn't quite get adjusted to his satisfaction and cursed every other sezura [1.6sec] or so. Ea't watched this, sipped from his flask, and grinned... much to Lord Drake's continuing annoyance. Eventually, though, Drake completed the tenjin's start up and informed the Necromancer's tower that he was ready to go. A moment later he was given clearance to begin his taxi and flashed the tenjin's undercarriage lights at the deck crew, who were standing by to tow him to the tube. This is precisely when Ea't could take the waiting no longer.

"So?!" he demanded, to Drake's instant exasperation.

"NO!" Lord Drake roared, shaking his hands on either side of the yoke in front of him.

"Honor demands it, Huruk'tar," Ea't told him soberly.

"Ea't, goddamn it," Drake snarled and rounded on him. "I said no! The man is nearly sixty jazuras old! Human! And a valuable member of this ship's crew! You will NOT challenge him to a duel!"

"Tazer rounds," Ea't growled ominously.

"On MY order! Are you gonna challenge me to a duel? If so I concede! You win!" Drake turned back to the tenjin's controls. "Seriously!" he snarled and rounded on Ea't again. "You do realize that in less than twenty mizura [1hr] we're gonna be on the Brimstone, right? And five mizura after that we're likely gonna be hip deep in unwashed pirates as every last Yaki on that goddamn ship does his or her very frakkin' best to rip our bloody hearts out, right?!"

Ea't grinned. He did realize it but liked his lord's description. "Aye!" he bellowed, making Drake wince. "It will be GREAT BATTLE, Huruk'tar!" Drake scoffed loudly and rolled his eyes. "After," Ea't elaborated, "we get drunk and mighty Split warrior challenge Doctor to duel. Say... jatra's in the dark?"

"NO!" Drake bellowed. The ship lurched around them as the deck crew began to drag it toward the launch tubes. Lord Drake was giving him the slightly wild-eyed look he reserved for those moments when he was questioning the sanity of the universe. Ea't simply held his lord's eye and waited. Drake shook a finger at him. "You will NOT harm that man, Ea't! Do I make myself clear?! You will not harm him."

Ea't grinned, instantly accepting the condition for the duel.

Drake blinked. His expression immediately grew concerned. His eyes flared with an almost Split-like intensity and he thrust his finger at Ea't again. "I mean it, Ea't! You let that man alone!"

Ea't bowed his head in the serkavi, accepting the second condition as well. 'A duel,' he thought, 'without injury or direct contact. You are a genius, Lord Drake.'

The tenjin was shoved into the launch tube. A moment later the catapult caught the ship's front strut and Ea't heard the tower contact Lord Drake to ask him if he was ready for launch. Drake did not immediately reply. He was continuing to look at Ea't with what could only be admiration for his friend burning in his eyes. It was too bad that admiration looked so much like angry constipation on his friend's face. Humans did have such strange facial expressions.

********

Seldon finished strapping herself into one of the hammock seats in the cargo bay of Drake's tenjin. Then she looked around. Frank, aka Master Chief Warrant Officer Kao t'Kt, sat to her left like a massive stone gargoyle. To her right Master Gunnery Sergeant Janne Gisler was lighting one of his cigarillos and watching her with a small smile. First Sergeant Avin Pierce, Gunnery Sergeant Jak Randall, and Gunnery Sergeant Ho t'Snt, one of Gisler's top marines, were sitting across the aisle. Randall had just said something to Pierce that Seldon couldn't hear due to the roar of the engines and Pierce was grimacing ruefully. Seldon sighed. It wasn't quite the same thing as being shoulder to shoulder with four other marines in a boarding pod but there were similarities. For one thing she felt the all too familiar certainty that she'd just strapped her ass into one more metal coffin meant to deliver her and her squad unto that special form of hell that was a deep space boarding operation. On the upside, there were no rookies on this trip. Which meant that, at the very least, it was unlikely that she'd be forced to endure the sights and sounds of one of her squad-mates losing his lunch. That really was a lousy way to start an op... especially when the rook in question already had his helmet on.

She deliberately took a breath as she mentally reviewed the plan. Again. It really was ridiculous. Nearly everything about it was a lie. T'Chk was lying. Drake was lying. Even she and the marines were lying... except for Frank, anyway. She and the others were wearing dress uniforms and, for the most part, were all pretending to be several paygrades junior to their actual ranks. She wasn't, and neither was Frank, of course, but that was because they were both known personally to S'jar t'Chk. But Gisler, Randall, Pierce, and Ho t'Snt were all participating in an illusion meant to trick the crazy little shit into underestimating them. As Drake had predicted they'd been forbidden armor, rifles, grenades, heavy weapons, plasma cutters, and bypass kits by the Brimstone head of security, which was both expected and an order that Kao t'Kt simply ignored. He alone was wearing his custom made power armor and was very obviously armed with his rifle, sidearm, and jatra, although even he had forgone the boarding gear. The rest of them, though, appeared to be complying. They weren't, of course. Not really. The gear that H'nt and Legion had created for them was very cleverly disguised. Which meant the Brimstone was in for one very unpleasant surprise.

She took another breath and exhaled it slowly through her nose.

That was the hope, anyway.

Just then Gisler turned to smile at the side of her face. With his dark skin his white teeth seemed very bright. After a long moment of deliberately ignoring him she sighed again, this time theatrically, and rolled her eyes, first away from him and then, suddenly, to look him in the eye. "Yay-uss?!"

"Smoke?" he offered her one of the dark brown cigarillos he liked.

"What are you nuts?!" she scoffed at him, wearing an exaggerated expression of pure incredulity. Then she looked away with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Those things'll kill yah."

There was a pause as Gisler stared at her. A moment later he threw his head back and guffawed. Across the hold both Randall and Pierce blinked in surprise, then chuckled. The joke was not lost on any of the humans, although neither Kao t'Kt nor Ho t'Snt so much as twitched, let alone smiled or laughed. The six of them were all veterans of many boarding ops. Each had seen combat. Each had killed and seen their brothers and sisters die beside them. Each knew for a living fact that death was in the room with them, and none were under any illusions about how dangerous this mission was.

Seldon looked back at Gisler, continuing the theatrics. "'Sides!" she said with wide eyes and an accusing expression. "Don't you know those things make you taste like an ashtray?!"

Gisler blinked. "Well that'd only matter if you were plannin' on kissin' me, Chief," he stated smoothly and smoothed his moustache. "You aren't sayin' you wanna kiss me, are yah?" He smiled broadly then and showed her his best bedroom eyes.

"Well," Seldon said, as if considering the possibility, "if the thought ever did cross my mind the smell of one of those things'd cut it short in a hurry."

"Hey Pierce!" Randall said musingly from across the aisle. "Doesn't Chief Cornell smoke?"

Seldon blinked, momentarily stunned, then promptly snatched the cigarillo out of Gisler's mouth and flicked it at Randall. It hit the man's forehead squarely between and above his eyes, showering him with sparks. The expression on his face was just about perfect and an instant later Gisler threw his head back and roared. A heartbeat after that Pierce joined him. Randall was momentarily occupied wiping the sparks from his face and lap, and then stamping out the cigarillo, but when he was done he looked up with a wry grin and shook his head. The man was nothing if not a good sport.

Outwardly Seldon grinned with the rest of them. Too much tension before a mission was dangerous. Inwardly, though, she was praying to any gods listening that H'nt's new toys worked the way they were supposed to.

********

Eri received the latest burst transmission from the mining fleet and cursed. Yahandis reported that she would need another twenty mizura to complete the preparations Eri had ordered. Chinomu promptly responded that in twenty mizura Yahandis could be staring at several clan warships with bad intentions and that the preparations she'd just been ordered to make might be the only thing keeping her scales attached to her bones. An instant later she fired the message off with the exact same emotional content she felt when loosing a missile at an enemy plane.

Immediately afterward she shook her head in annoyance. It was the coffee she decided. Too much coffee made her irritable. As did too little sleep and too much work and the possibility of imminent death or enslavement. Yet that's what was on the table before her. She glared at that table, lit up and showing the current positions of Drakhar Enterprise assets in Weaver's Tempest as well as the Brimstone, S'jar t'Chk's Shuri carrier, patrolling near the gate a hundred kilometers away. Above her head the positions of fleet assets in Savage Spur and Spires of Elusion were displayed on the various two dimensional sector maps. A glance, another glance, and finally a third glance at the various screens around the CIC made Eri snarl deep in her chest... before taking another sip of her coffee.

In Weaver's Tempest the sheer distance from the gate to the complex provided the D.E. fleet with a tremendous advantage. The missile frigates had a reach of roughly seventy kilometers with the nukes and fifty kilometers with the flails. Meaning that in order to engage them t'Chk's forces would have to fly through a lengthy and near endless supply of explosive ordnance. She'd checked their stocks after the initial meeting in the CIC and it was staggering. Drakhar hadn't lied. Each of the two boomers was carrying over two hundred hammer heavy torpedoes and a substantial number of flails. But in reserve they had nearly three thousand hammers! Much of which had been loaded onto freighters which were now acting as tenders for the missile boats. Which meant that even with an armada t'Chk wouldn't be able to approach without facing total annihilation. As such she expected that if t'Chk had any nukes of his own those boomers would be his primary targets. So she'd tasked both of the new panthers to defend them.

Originally Commander Ea't s'Quid had been meant to lead offensive frigate actions from the Osan'gar, which would have included the new panthers, but with his unilateral decision to accompany the boarding team onto the Brimstone she and H'nt decided that the new frigates and their fighters would best serve in defensive roles while the boomers acted as their primary offensive weapon. So in anticipation of long range missile strikes against the Swords of Aggrievance and Vengeance she'd made sure that both missile frigates had an ample supply of mosquito missiles and extra drones, then set the two panthers and a wing of fighters from either ship to the task of making sure that none of t'Chk's missiles got through to those boomers. It might have seemed like overkill but, simply put, if those boomers went down they were all frakked.

'Sideways, up a tree backwards, by a chainsaw,' as Seldon would have colorfully put it.

In addition Weaver's Tempest would also have the Predator and the Osan'gar, with all of their armaments, as well as the Necromancer with everything she could bring to the fight, including sixteen heavy fighters and an OTAS bomber. Unfortunately, they too would be playing interception and defense. Despite being fully armed, shielded, upgraded, and supplied they were still only frigates and t'Chk was likely to bring an armada. To counter this Lucifer had suggested seeding all three battlefields with additional jump beacons. The instant he said it all of the commanders in the CIC saw the value in it. The beacons would give them the ability to short-jump to different locations around the battlefield, which could be useful in all sorts of scenarios; from flanking the enemy to evading imminent destruction. Even many of the tenjins were equipped with jump drives, and could make use of the beacons. So for the past six hours patrol susanowas in Weaver's Tempest, Savage Spur, and Spires of Elusion had been unobtrusively dropping additional jump beacons as they flew their normal BARCAPS. So, despite what looked like overwhelming odds, she actually felt reasonably secure in Weaver's Tempest, and Spires of Elusion didn't trouble her at all. The entire mining fleet was jump drive equipped and she'd made a point of making sure all of the ships were fueled in case they needed to jump to safety. In addition she'd stationed one Drakhar's new bombers on the Tartarus and made sure it had a full compliment of tomahawk heavy missiles to feed any interested parties before jumping away.

Savage Spur, however, was another story. The situation there troubled her. The engagement range was too small, too close, and too cluttered with D.E. assets. In the interest of giving his customers a chance to evade the marauding Yaki in the sector Drakhar had built very close to the east gate. This enabled him to trade with the rest of the gate network but worked against them in terms of a tactical standpoint. The east gate in Savage Spur was so close to the complexes that enemies would be within missile range the instant they exited the event horizon. Which meant a determined boomer captain with enough ordnance could do a massive amount of damage before her forces could respond. She'd ordered the Condor, which had unofficially become known as the 'Bird Farm', to move closer to the gate in order to reduce engagement times and had another of Drake's new bombers, along with a pilot and a freighter full of ordnance, moved to the carrier where it was already armed and ready to launch. So she had the Bird Farm which, for all intents and purposes, would be a stationary gun platform, thirty heavy fighters, three corvettes, the Archangel, Deceptor, and Shirubāurufu, and one very well-armed bomber in Savage Spur. But depending on what came out of the gate it might not be enough and, if she were S'jar t'Chk, she'd be very tempted to send some of the many ships at her disposal to harass Drake's complexes in order to tempt the D.E. fleet into further dividing its forces. When Eri had pointed out the weakness to the other commanders on the CIC Drakhar just nodded and when he'd met her eye she understood even before he spoke that he was prepared to sacrifice those complexes if pressed.

"And the people on those stations?" she'd asked.

"They practice EVAC drills regularly," came his grim reply. No one said anything at this pronouncement but Eri and Seldon exchanged a look. They were both thinking the same thing: being trapped in an escape pod in Yaki territory could easily lead to a fate worse than death.

Eri sighed heavily. 'Goddamn that man,' she thought scathingly.

"Another communication from the Tartarus, ma'am," Petty Officer Shalek, one of the Necromancer's junior comm officers, called to her from a few paces away. A moment later an encrypted burst transmission was routed to her terminal. She entered her password and then waited for the Necromancer to decode the message. It took less than a second but that second gave her a chance to appreciate D.E.'s network security. All of the company's electronic communications, including radio traffic, were encrypted by a system so far beyond her level of expertise that she still didn't understand it, despite questioning Legion for hours... an entity who was both the Endless' captain and the AI on multiple ships, an entity that seemed part priest, part philosopher and all genius, an entity who composed another part of the mystery that was the Drakhar Enterprises Corporation... who also happened to be the author of their security protocols which he was more than willing to converse about. However, despite a three hour conversation, during which time she was provided with quite an education on the finer points of holographic theorems, mutating algorithms, syncing code, and a refresher course in basic encryption... she still barely understood the basics. In essence the entire protocol was a cipher system requiring a specific key to decrypt the randomized messages, a technique nearly as ancient as the written language in human history. But it was the nature of the decryption key itself that baffled her. According to Legion it was a multi-dimensional holographic model that mutated constantly, computable only through the use of an algorithm that he'd designed. What was truly astounding was that this layer was merely their standard protocol. Top level communications, such as orders from command officers, were encrypted again with an entirely random, one-time cipher which required both identical decryption keys at both ends as well as individual passwords to access. Which meant the system was cumbersome but utterly secure so long as the keys didn't fall into the wrong hands.

Unfortunately Eri had read enough history to know that standard comms were not the only way a spy could signal their handlers. If one of S'jar t'Chk's ships was close enough for a visual then all it would take was a darkened compartment with a porthole and a flashlight to send a set of pre-arranged signals or communicate via a form of Morse-code and some unseen spy in the fleet could let S'jar t'Chk know that the game was rigged and that the entire fleet was ramping up for something huge. At which point Drakhar's plan was shot and the entire boarding party was likely dead. Of course that was assuming that t'Chk didn't already know... that Drakhar already knew... that the invitation was a trap... and that the kid was planning to... err... trap the trapper... after deliberately being trapped? Eri shook her head at the absurdity of it. There were just too many ways it could go wrong.

When she looked up the decrypted message had appeared on her screen. A moment later she nodded, satisfied. Yahanis assured her that she would get her shit together. The bomber and its pilot would be on station and ready to launch in ten mizura. Eri promptly wrote back. "I want it done in five," just to underscore the importance of that one plane. The bomber could make the difference between the mining fleet being wiped out or smashing any enemies that might come their way. Either way at least THAT detail was taken care of. Eri covered the growl in her chest by taking another sip of coffee. Several petty officers nearby glanced in her direction but she ignored them. The entire situation was maddening. She'd gone from being an Ace fighter pilot and squadron leader to a bureaucrat playing whack-a-mole. She took a deep breath and expelled it violently.

What a way to wake up.

********

S'jar t'Chk lounged in his chair and watched the tenjin on long range camera. He'd been watching since the boy's ships first jumped into the shadow of the great complex in Weaver's Tempest. First the Predator, then the Necromancer. Each was greeted by great waves of cheer from the crew of the Brimstone.

S'jar t'Chk knew, for he'd been listening. His ship was already a carnival of equal parts cheer, madness, and fury. Yet the night was still young and to S'jar t'Chk the sound of his minions over the intercom was reminiscent of an orchestra tuning up before a concert; disjointed and cacophonous yet full of promise. He expected that before the night was over he would hear his crew chanting his name.

'S'jar t'Chk! S'jar t'Chk! S'jar t'Chk!'

Already he could hear the whispers and snippets of conversation as the muscle and knuckleboys shouted and the thinkers thought, as the gunboys cheered and the slaves whispered to themselves. The events their lord had set in motion were finally bearing fruit. Within the massive hangar bays deep within the bowels of the Brimstone he could hear the thunder and roar as his planes were prepared for the battle to come. He could hear the gunnery crews at work sharpening the Brimstone's teeth. He could hear the ship's morale officers preparing the crew with drum, guitar, and song. And all the while he heard his crew as they stared upon all the many monitors throughout the ship. Those monitors all showed the same image he himself was looking at: the tenjin that brought Drakhar to them. And they all knew: the boy was the key. With him they would have everything they needed to claim such wealth and power that no single Yaki clan had ever known before. And as they watched, they celebrated him, their lord and leader. Soon his name would sound like thunder in the very bones of his ship, pounding in the great rhythm of adulation like a heart beat.

'S'jar t'Chk! S'jar t'Chk! S'jar t'Chk!'

S'jar t'Chk grinned. It was going to be a good night. Tonight the Set'jak clan would lay waste to Drakhar and what remained of his "Phantoms". The great complexes in Weaver's Tempest and Savage Spur were nearly within his grasp, and with them would come weapons, riches, slaves, and such power to make him dry-mouthed with thirst and delirious with lust. Soon, very soon, the Set'jak clan would not merely be the first among equals, they would be the pinnacle of the Yaki hierarchy and all the other clans would have to pay him tribute. He knew it and his crew knew it and soon they would cheer his name. If he closed his eyes he could almost hear it...

'S'jar t'Chk! S'jar t'Chk! S'jar t'Chk!'

He sighed to himself. The thought felt like a lover's touch.

Yet...

...

...there was something wrong.

It was like an itch he couldn't scratch; a voice whispering things he couldn't quite make out; a shadow seen only at the edge of his vision... and it was making him irritable. Just as he was starting to enjoy the night, this night that was so long in coming, he'd feel that itch, hear those whispers, and see the quick, darting movement of his own doubt stepping through the shadows behind him.

S'jar t'Chk snarled and threw the chicken bone in his hand. From the shadows nearby a slave promptly emerged to clean up after him. S'jar t'Chk watched the man for a moment and then threw another chicken bone, this time at the man himself. The slave jumped and, for an instant, looked directly at S'jar t'Chk. There was indignation, even fury in the man's eyes. But an instant later the man bowed his head and stared at the floor. He could do nothing else. He'd been 'chipped'. His will was his own only so long as it didn't conflict with the chip's programming. S'jar t'Chk threw another chicken bone at him. It bounced off the man's head. The slave trembled but continued to look at his feet. He was standing on a carpet that t'Chk had once been told was worth nearly a million credits. That was before a great many drunken parties, of course.

"Well?!" S'jar t'Chk snapped. "Are you just going to leave food on my rug?!"

"No my lord, of course not!"

"Then pick it up!" As the slave dropped to his knees to pick up the bones t'Chk bounced a pea off his face.

The problem, he knew, was simple. He didn't trust Drake. The boy was clever, too clever by half he thought, and lucky. It was actually amazing to watch the boy's luck and, given the circumstances, a little intimidating. But how else did you explain it? Just a few mazura ago the boy had been little more than a street urchin, and in many ways still behaved like one. He was more cunning than clever and managed to be both hesitant and impulsive, like some mongrel that had been kicked too often. Yet somehow the fool summoned wealth and people to him as if by magic and had an uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time. And as the boy himself stated, he was easy to underestimate.

S'jar t'Chk blinked. Had he done just that? Had he underestimated the boy? On the screen just above him was proof that he had not. The fool was willingly walking into his trap. Once on the ship the boy would be done for; the trap would spring and, after some fun and games, that would be that. It was a done deal, sealed fate, and poor, pitiful end. He would claim the boy's ships, claim his people, and, most important of all, claim those factories. There would be some resistance, of course, both from Drake's crew as well as the council but t'Chk was confident. He had made his plans and had contingencies for every eventuality. S'jar t'Chk giggled to himself and flicked another pea at his slave.

He could handle the council, for instance. They had to obey their own laws even if they didn't like it and, as the boy's clan leader, he was entitled to claim what the boy owned so long as he, himself, wasn't found guilty of any wrongdoing which, in this case, meant harming the Yaki through intent or negligence. Neither of which would stand up to the evidence he'd "diligently accumulated" or his ability to present the boy's corpse as proof that he'd solved the problem. "Yes, he was bad! Yes, he did awful things! But I, S'jar t'Chk dealt with my wayward lieutenant! I have proven my dominion and will claim his property as recompense for the annoyance the little shit caused me!" S'jar t'Chk giggled again and threw another pea at his slave. The man barely flinched. It was time to use something heavier. He lifted the silver fork he'd eaten with, held it up to the light and grinned.

He might have to destroy several of Drake's ships and one or two might escape, which would be annoying. Ea't s'Quid probably would. That Split was just entirely too difficult to predict, and nearly impossible to kill. Just ask the Boron. He was also likely to return later and be an annoyance. But once the torpedo and heavy missile factories were secure...

S'jar t'Chk exhaled softly at the sudden swelling in his pants

... then even that particular Split wouldn't matter.

Just then the slave noticed the fork in his hand. S'jar t'Chk let the light dance off the tines and grinned at both the fear and resignation in the man's eyes. Of course, he thought, there was also Thane to worry about. The man was huge and oafish, bestial even, but he, too, was clever; clever enough to have remained the most powerful man in the Yaki clans for over two decades. And they were close, weren't they; the Bear and the Boy? Yes, very close indeed. S'jar t'Chk wondered if his trick was enough to divide them? He took a breath and grinned. Of course it was. As long as the boy had done as S'jar t'Chk ordered him to then it surely would be...

'But has he?'

S'jar t'Chk felt as if a cold wind had just blown right through him. The slave glanced in his direction and realized that his master was no longer looking at him. A moment later he took the food S'jar t'Chk had thrown on the floor and vanished into the shadows. All the while S'jar t'Chk stared into the dark and wondered. The question had whispered through his mind and left complete silence in its wake. He still heard his crew over the intercom, and saw the camera following the boy's tenjin. He was even aware of the slave running away from the fork in his hand. But it was all distant and suddenly no longer mattered. He didn't know where the thought had come from but once born it would not go away.

Had the boy obeyed his orders? S'jar t'Chk shook his head. Why should he doubt it? He'd seen the attack. He'd had a ship flying about in Montalaar to witness and, of course, record the boy's "unprovoked" attack upon the Dockmaster's family. He'd seen the Predator destroy the fighters flying escort and he'd watched as she attacked the centaur with ion weaponry, because the boy was clever and liked to increase his profits by capturing his prey. S'jar t'Chk had even been informed that the boy had then sold the stolen ship to Thane's own shipyard! Which had tickled him to no end at the time but now seemed ominous, for he could not be sure of anything that happened on board that ship. What if Drakey hadn't killed the woman and the boy? What if he'd captured them and discovered who they were? What if Thane and the boy had worked it all out and were now CONSPIRING?!

S'jar t'Chk's eyes moved to the tenjin flickering in the air above his desk. His skin had suddenly become taut and prickly, and the air suddenly felt chill. There had been no reaction from Thane. There was no outrage. No dismay. No mustering of Thane's many ships. No reports of calamity or sounds of disturbance from within the man's quarters. No disturbance among his forces. There was nothing to indicate that Thane had been terribly wounded by the sudden and terrible severance of delicate heart strings. There was simply nothing.

S'jar t'Chk continued to stare at the tenjin flickering in the air before him. Was Drakhar actually on it? Was the boy really going to step aboard the Brimstone and surrender himself? Thus giving S'jar t'Chk the last piece of the puzzle and the key to complete success? He needed to know. He reached out and activated the intercom unit in his desk. A moment later he commanded his communications minion to get in contact with that plane and verify that the boy was, in fact, on it.

********

Ea't was cleaning his fingernails with a knife and entertaining his lord with tales of his previous exploits when the Brimstone contacted them. Drake answered the call instantly, almost as if relieved for the interruption.

"Yeah?!" Drake greeted the face of what appeared to be a sweaty, overweight human who was bulging in an unsightly fashion around a studded leather collar that simply could not be comfortable.

"Drakey Boy?!" the pirate inquired while peering myopically at the camera.

Drake scowled. "Aye?"

"Milord S'jar t'Chk requires yer attention, boy." Ea't decided then and there that, if given the opportunity, he would kill this fat human for his disrespect.

********

S'jar t'Chk gazed upon Drakhar's face. The boy looked sullen and annoyed. He also appeared to be occupied with flying a tenjin while Ea't s'Quid sat beside him. S'jar t'Chk glanced from that image, contained within a small window on the larger holographic screen, to the one in which his communications minion waited diligently. He could see the feed from Drake but had yet to be connected.

"That signal is from the tenjin?" he asked, incredulously.

"Aye, milord," the communications minion replied.

"You're sure?" S'jar t'Chk asked. "It's not from the Predator or Necromancer and being routed to us through that tenjin?"

"Ooh," the minion marveled, "now that would be clever." A moment later he pursed his slightly blue, bulbous lips and shook his head. "Nope," the minion bubbled, "no signal from that tenjin to any'un but us, milord."

S'jar t'Chk pursed his lips for a moment, then nodded. "Alright," he said, "you can let them go. But put me through to Master-Arms." He would make sure that Drakey Boy was greeted properly.

********

"That will be all," the strange, fat, unwashed human with the blue lips and studded collar dismissed them. An instant later the channel winked out and the sector map re-appeared. Drake turned to Ea't and arched an eyebrow.

"That seem strange to you?" Drake asked.

Ea't grinned. "Split say S'jar t'Chk unsettled, Lord Drake."

Drake squinted and returned his gaze to the view beyond the cockpit window. The Brimstone was visible just over twenty kilometers in the distance, a gilded shadow in the green and golden twilight of Weaver's Tempest. His tongue curled behind his upper lip and sucked one of his eye teeth. "Yeah," he growled softly.

********

Seldon began to worry the instant she heard Drake's voice. Just after hitting the trap the kid used the ship's 1MC to let the marines in the cargo hold know that they'd landed and to tell them to get ready. His voice was cold, hard and brittle. Even though she couldn't see him she knew he was wearing his "Admiral's Face" and steeling himself for the bloodshed to come. In that moment she found herself uncomfortably aware of his youth and lack of experience in close quarters engagements, which she thought of as 'real' combat.

She suspected that Chinomu would disagree with the classification but Seldon had been in space battles as well as small arms firefights and knew that there was a vast difference between them, namely range. For pilots combat was something that happened 'out there' as their missiles hunted down enemies for them. Pilots even referred to the range at which they switched to their lasers or chainguns as 'knife fights' despite an engagement range measured in kilometers. They were still at risk, of course, and skilled warriors, but for many of them it seemed like combat and warfare were practically a sport; a thing of fireworks and the opportunity to win bragging rights. For marines, though, combat was grim and immediate. The consequences were undeniable. When you were close enough to see the soul leave your enemy's eyes death was not an abstraction. It wasn't something 'out there'. It wasn't even something that happened to somebody else. And when it was all over? When you saw the 'spouse-and-kids' pics taped to the workstations on some command deck that you'd just pacified? In those moments the notion of painting kills below a cockpit or bragging about what happened on the mission was about as welcome as a bad joke involving dead babies or pedophilia.

'Well,' she thought, 'at least he's not a virgin.' She knew first hand that when it came to being able to pull the trigger or, in Drake's case, swing the sword, the kid had popped his cherry some time back and seemed steady enough afterwards. Although she was still frequently troubled by the high speed marathon she'd interrupted a wozura [9 days] back.

Just after Drake's announcement she and the other marines began activating and syncing the tech they'd brought with them. They had sub-dermal radios and jaw mics but Drake had stressed that, at least in the beginning, they would be under constant surveillance. Every word and whisper was likely to be picked up by the Brimstone's cameras and directional microphones. Which meant very strict radio discipline. "Loose lips sink ships," the kid had pointed out, "in this case ours." Yet, since they needed to share crucial information, H'nt and Legion had come up with a way to tap into their neural interfaces. Every marine had a small amount of tech surgically implanted to let them give neural commands to their armor and weapons. So where they might not have the armor or weapons they did have the chips, which meant they could be provided other tech to interface with. So H'nt and Legion created some. The ship lurched, telling her that the Brimstone had begun to lower them into the steamer, just as their network came online. As it did a very discreet HUD was overlaid upon her vision.

"Well the contacts are working," she announced. "My HUD is up."

"Yep," Randall agreed. "Mine too."

"HUD check," Gisler instructed. A moment later Pierce and Ho t'Snt also confirmed that they were online, targeting systems and network functional. While waiting for the steamer to bring them in from the void they quickly verified that they were synced by having each of them designate one of the tenjin's cargo crates as a 'high priority target' and confirming that the others had the marker.

The most comforting part of the HUD, however, was the bar graph displaying the current state of her personal electromagnetic barrier. It wasn't as robust as the shields of her combat armor but, on the other hand, the enemy wouldn't know that she could survive a direct hit from a hypervelocity weapon until after she started shooting back. They were also wearing a very limited ablative armor concealed beneath their uniforms. Against the skin it felt like little more than a suit of slightly heavy long-johns which meant that, after a sixty kilogram suit of power armor, it felt like the foil wrapper around a burger, with them being the meat. But when it came to getting shot any armor was better than no armor and, considering the lunacy of the plan, they were all likely to get shot... or at least shot at. They were still light on weapons, with only Kao t'Kt carrying anything larger than a sidearm but, thanks to H'nt, Legion, and Drake's factories, they were packing a few nasty surprises in that arena as well.

"'Sides," Gisler had said back on the CIC, with one of his broad and toothy grins, "the bad guys are gonna have LOTS of weapons."

'Riiiight,' Seldon thought to herself, once again wondering what force had brought her to this place, in this moment, following a path that involved salvaging enemy gear as a strategy. Then she heard the airlock open below the tenjin and a moment later the ship lurched again, beginning its descent into the Brimstone's hangar bay. A moment later a burst of static from the 1MC announced Drake.

"Alright boys and girl," he said, sounding just a little bit airy, as if his blood was up. It immediately made the hairs on her neck stand up. "It seems they do things a little bit different here on the Brimstone. When that hatch opens be prepared for... well... an audience."

She saw the confused scowls on the faces around her. Then Pierce cocked his head to the side. An instant later she heard it too and the very first thing she thought of was the ocean. It took another moment before she realized she was hearing the sound of several hundred voices, and they were all screaming.

"Well I do believe they've got a party planned for us," Gisler said around his cigarillo.

"Yep," Pierce agreed with him, "and we're the entertainment."

"Or the meal," Seldon muttered under her breath. It was too loud in the cargo hold for the guys across the aisle to hear her but Gisler glanced at her.

"Worry not, fair maiden," Gisler grinned at her. "I shall protect thee."

"Pfft!" she met his eye. "Yah," she scoffed. "Sure! In between checking yourself out in any and every reflection you can find, right?"

"Well when you look this good," he indicated himself with his hands, "you just have to look."

Seldon rolled her eyes but for a moment she'd forgotten about the sound outside the tenjin. Then there was a loud 'BOOM' and the Warlock lurched uncomfortably, jerking them in their safety harnesses.

"Bloody hell!" Pierce cursed as Gisler exclaimed, "Dayumn!" and she snapped, "Frak me!"

They'd reached the Brimstone's hangar deck. A moment later the ship lurched again as some truck operator grabbed hold of the ship's front strut and dragged it off the lift. Judging by the violence of it the driver was either drunk, angry, or deliberately frakking with them. Seldon was pretty sure she knew which it was.

"Yep," Randall said sourly after a sudden bump smacked his head against the bulkhead behind him, "I do believe the party is about to start." Beside him Pierce was looking a little wild eyed at the sound of the what had to be several hundred people shouting and roaring in a mob around the ship.

"Hey!" she barked, getting everyone's attention. She turned to Gisler and asked a question she already knew the answer to. "What IS the callsign for a Drakhar Enterprises marine boarding party?"

"Why ma'am," Gisler responded, suddenly grim and determined, "I do believe the callsign for a D.E.M. boarding party is 'Reaper'."

She pursed her lips and looked across the aisle at Randall. "Is that right, marine?!" she demanded.

"Yes ma'am," Randall told her, also sounding grim and focused. "The callsign for a D.E.M. boarding party is indeed 'Reaper'."

She met Avin Pierce's eyes. "Is that true, marine?"

Pierce grinned at her. "Aye aye, Chief," he replied, "that is the case."

"And why is that, marines?!" she demanded loudly. They were already sitting a little straighter. Their eyes were hard and focused. Even the Split, who never seemed to need these pep-talks, now looked as if there were fires behind their eyes. They all answered her together, even Kao t'Kt and Janne Gisler beside her.

"Because we are Death's own scythe." It wasn't said loudly. There was no 'Hoo-rah' in their answers. It was simply a statement of fact. They walked in death's shadow. They were in death's grip. They were death's own scythe.

Just then the hatch to the cockpit opened and Drake stepped down into the hold. The kid quickly scanned the faces looking back at him, then pursed his lips as if impressed by what he saw. He turned to Seldon. "You have the network up?" he asked. At her affirmative he nodded. "Time to link me in, then."

Drake's own neural interface was much more powerful than any of theirs thanks to the cybernetic eye H'nt and Gin had crafted for him. As a result he was able to make greater use of their network. This was immediately evident when he chose to reply via text when she asked him to send.

READING
ME
?

The text appeared in translucent blue letters in the upper portion of her FOV. A moment later every marine in the hold looked up. Drake grinned, looking smug. "I'll take that as a yes," he chuckled.

"Oh that's a nice trick," Gisler told him. "How do I get me one of those?"

"It's a little like telepathy," Pierce commented.

"Alright, ladies," Seldon barked, cutting off the knitting circle gab that was trying to start. "Form up!"

Kao t'Kt took point, of course, with she and Gisler just behind him. Drake would be kept at the center of the formation along with Commander Ea't s'Quid, followed by Pierce, with Ho t'Snt and Randall bringing up the rear. After they were in place they simply held onto the cargo netting, swaying in place together as the tenjin was towed and jostled by the crew of the Brimstone. Once again Seldon thought of being in a boarding pod; each marine alone with their thoughts as the unshielded metal coffin they were in shook and jostled them about as it hurtled through the vacuum of space at nearly five hundred meters per second, often following just behind dozens of armed nuclear torpedoes as it threaded the needle between the firing solutions of multiple capital ships on the way to armed conflict with enemy combatants who were fighting not merely to defend their ships but to preserve their very lives.

'What a strange way to earn a living,' she thought not for the first time. 'How the hell did I end up here?'

The tenjin lurched again and then was still. Through the Warlock's inner bulkhead, the thermal insulation, and the ship's armored exterior plating Seldon heard the sound of the mob, rolling and crashing like some raging ocean against their little ship.

"From here on in," Drake said, "don't say anything. Don't even whisper."

"Radio discipline is in effect," Seldon stated, as much to emphasize the point for her marines as to confirm the order.

Just then Ea't appeared in the cockpit behind them. "Ship stopped," he stated, then grinned as he stepped beside Drake. "Fun about to start."

"Ah-huh," Drake answered with his usual sarcasm, "'fun'." Then he lifted his chin at Kao t'Kt. "Hit it," he said.

Kao t'Kt flipped the case covering the airlock control and used his armored fist to hammer the big red button beneath it. A moment later the ramp began to open. The instant the two ships shared their atmo Seldon was confronted with a harsh and unexpected reality: she was in a dangerous and alien place. The Brimstone might have much of the same architecture and design of the Necromancer but the crews carried by the two ships could not have been more different. The roar of the mob was thunderous as they shouted and cursed and screamed, but it was the rhythm that grabbed her attention. She heard drums and the sound of metal upon metal. It was eager, angry and intricate; a dread sound, like war drums just beyond the horizon. She took a slow breath to steady herself but with the breath came the smell; a cacosmia of unwashed bodies, petroleum smoke, burning hair and rubber, blood, urine, the bitter musk of rape, and a sour, monstrous odor that she could only categorize as violence.

"Son of a..!" Randall grunted before clamping his hand over his mouth and nose.

"Holy shit!" Drake cursed.

"God dayumn!" Gisler marveled beside her.

"I honestly don't know which is worse," Pierce said, sounding as if he might lose his breakfast, "breathing through my nose... or my mouth."

"And we're still on the Warlock!" Seldon said, horrified.

"Did it smell this bad the last time you were here, Chief?" Randall asked her.

"No," she stated, flexing her jaw to control herself. She needed to shut them up, to impose radio discipline... and she was now genuinely worried that she might be the one to lose her cookies.

"Then... why do you think it's so different now?" Pierce asked.

"'Cos t'Chk was wooin' us back then," Drake explained grimly. "Bastard was puttin' his best foot forward. Now he thinks he owns us." Drake sucked his left eyetooth audibly. "And I get the impression he likes to break his toys."

For a moment there was no sound within the tenjin, only the thunder awaiting them beyond the ramp. Out on the hangar deck the shouts of the crew became rhythmic, slowly entrained by the drums, the pounding of pipes on metal, and the stamping of boots on the deck. It took a moment for the words to make sense.

"Drakey BOY! Drakey BOY! Drakey BOY!"

Drake sighed and rolled his eyes. He managed to look annoyed and put upon, which Seldon thought was a pretty good trick considering that she was terrified. "Frak me," she whispered to herself just as the ramp came to a booming halt on the deck outside.

"C'mon," Drake growled, "let's get this show on the road."

At his command Kao t'Kt immediately started down the ramp. Seldon felt a momentary burst of panic and felt her heart jump in her chest, but her feet were already moving, seemingly of their own accord. Gisler strode beside her, grim and ready. She was distantly aware of Drake following just behind and between them. But then the deck of the tenjin's cargo hold fell away above her and she saw what awaited them. She was fairly sure she managed to keep her emotions off her face. The thousand yard stare and grim expression she'd picked up in basic training over a decade earlier had long since become something deeper and stronger than mere habit. Yet before her she saw a sea of faces, and in every face, every eye looking back at her, she saw a terrible, gleeful madness.

Once, long ago, she'd gone to a party for one of her friend's children. The kid had just turned five jazura and, at the time, Seldon had thought it would be a nice change of pace from her duties as a gate guard on the marine base. It turned out to be more than a little overwhelming and afterward she'd looked at both mothers and motherhood with a great deal more respect than she had beforehand. Thirty children in all their wild, unbridled glory was something she'd just never been prepared for. But shortly before she left there was a moment she never forgot.

Janice, her friend's wife and the mother of the birthday girl, had arranged for a magician to entertain the kids. They'd even set up a make-shift stage for the guy and Seldon had agreed to help out. So she was up on the stage, working one side of a pair of drapes that had been set up like a curtain. Just before the magician had come on stage she'd looked out into the crowd of children and saw something in their faces that she never forgot. It was something that even made a few appearances in her nightmares. At the time she thought she was crazy. They were just innocent little kids and kids were lovable and cute, right? They weren't supposed to be terrifying. Yet there it was. In that moment, looking out at nearly thirty fresh young faces, all peering into the sliver between the two makeshift curtains, she'd seen something truly horrifying.

A few years later she read a poem called, 'The Blind God'. It was about the embodiment of lust, hunger, and greed without conscience, forethought or regret, and it was exactly what she'd seen on those kids' faces. It was the same thing she now saw on the faces of the mob spread out before her. She'd expected a touch of madness aboard the Brimstone; a barely contained chaos in the way the crew operated. S'jar t'Chk had always seemed at least halfway off the rails and she'd naturally assumed his crew would reflect that. But what she saw awaiting them was something else entirely. It wasn't a 'touch' of madness. It was the source of it. It was the Blind God. It was what she'd seen in the faces of those children all those jazura ago. Only here that force, that madness, that terrifying hunger and lust had been set loose and allowed to grow and fester, to seep into the pores and shadows of the Brimstone like a disease.

"Drakey BOY!" they screamed and shouted, pounding on the deck and upon each other. "Drakey BOY!" Thunderous and leering and lustful. "Drakey BOY!" A rhythm like violent, hateful sex. "Drakey BOY!" Then they saw him. He was just behind her and the instant their eyes found him the chant broke apart into a single roaring caterwaul and the crowd surged forward.

"Oh SHIT!" she thought, and wasn't sure if she spoke aloud or not.

The crowd roared and rushed like a rearing breaker about to crash upon the beach. Then she noticed the beefy, armored men encircling the tenjin. Half of them were equipped with riot shields and stun lances, and were facing outward. As the crowd surged forward she saw muscles suddenly stiffen and faces go slack as the mob slammed into those shields. She guessed that the shields were charged with high voltage electricity and backed up with massive power sources capable of knocking whole groups of people down at once with their charges. Then, anyone still standing got smacked with the one and half meter long lances. She saw one unlucky soul stiffen and bite down so hard on his tongue that he cut the end of it right off. In just a few sezura the crowd slammed into that wall of troops and was repelled. In many cases individuals were knocked on their asses... and then trampled.

That's when Seldon noticed the other group of beefy, armored men. These were carrying rifles and sidearms and formed a second circle inside the one made by the riot troops. These, however, were facing inward toward the ramp of the tenjin, or rather, toward the small and pitiful group occupying that ramp. The soldier at the foot of the ramp, who was decorated with more feathers, spikes, and tattoos than the rest, was leering at them with an expression so lustful that Seldon felt dirty just looking at it.

"Ay Drakey Bae!" this one thundered at them with his arms spread wide. He sounded just like he was greeting an old mate, or at least he would have if you were able to overlook the malice in his eyes. "Wayelcum' tae the Brimstoan!" He grinned, showing teeth that had been filed down to points and capped with what looked like chromed steel. Seldon glanced at the soldiers behind him and noted the subtle, tell-tale glow of the ammo counters on their weapons as well as the position of their fingers, which were not quite on the triggers themselves but were resting on the trigger guards where they could moved from a safe position to a lethal one in the blink of an eye. With just one glance she knew that each and every one of those rifles was charged and ready to fire.

The guy she'd already started thinking of as 'Pointy-Teeth' looked pointedly at Kao t'Kt. "Ye were told not t'wear armor nay bring haevy weapons," he said. "This'un is doin' both and the rest of ye're totin' pistols! Yae'll 'ave to give 'em up..."

"No," Drake cut him off, sounding bored and exasperated. "We're keepin' our pistols and the Split's my bodyguard," Drake replied. "Also, speaking as a manufacturer of heavy weapons, I can assure you that that rifle doesn't qualify."

Pointy-Teeth grinned as Drake spoke and laughed heartily when he announced that he was a 'manufacturer' of weapons. Seldon felt a ghost shiver along the nerves reaching to her trigger finger. Violence was not merely imminent, it was breathing down her neck. Somewhere between fifteen and twenty of the Brimstone's own crew lay twitching on the deck not ten meters from where they stood on the ramp.

"Aeven soo," Pointy-Teeth said, still wearing that gruesome leer, "'ae's gonna 'ave 'ta strip doon and leave 'is kit b'hine."

Drake snorted, as if amused. The clown's grin on the Pointy-Teeth's face slipped a hair, like the sudden dimming of a light. He glanced at one of the other soldiers and nodded toward the rifle in Kao t'Kt's hand. The soldier immediately moved forward. Kao t'Kt remained utterly still. His propane blue eyes were sweeping over the crowd, fixed on some imaginary horizon. Despite the noise of the hangar deck she could hear his breathing. It was slow, deep, and steady as the turning of a planet.

The soldier stepped up and hesitated. He looked from Kao t'Kt to Pointy-Teeth. Teeth gestured impatiently. 'Get on with it!' The soldier looked back at the giant before him, took a deep breath, and reached for the rifle in Kao t'Kt's hand. An instant later the most common expression on every face in sight was a horrified, wincing grimace. It was accompanied by a sound produced from nearly a hundred constricting throats: "Ooh!"

An instant later all hell broke loose. The twenty men with rifles all stepped forward. Those rifles were now tight to the shoulders they belonged to, with sights raised to faces and fingers now firmly on triggers instead of trigger guards. Kao t'Kt himself smoothly stepped backward to shield Drake with his body as the flicker of his armor's electromagnetic field winked into being around him. In the exact same motion his rifle ended up aimed directly at Pointy-Teeth's pointy teeth. Seldon, Gisler, Pierce, Randall, and Ho t'Sn't all drew their sidearms and were doing their best to shield Drake and Commander s'Quid in the limited space provided by the ramp. That's when she heard S'jar t'Chk's laughter, like the voice of an insane god, thunder around them over the ship's 1MC.

********

S'jar t'Chk was laughing. He couldn't help himself. It was just too funny! It was all the blood; bright and red and shiny on the dull grey deck plating of his hangar bay! And the shock on all the faces! But it was the teeth that really got him. They were still ticking and tumbling across the deck! (He had high definition cameras on this ship and could see it all.) The face they belonged to now looked like smashed fruit! With little bits of bones sticking out like seeds from the pulp! S'jar t'Chk had his finger on the transmit button and was screaming his laughter throughout the entire ship. It thundered and rolled and boomed and echoed in every compartment, and corridor. He saw it on the faces through the camera feeds overhead. And it was FUNNY!

In the images above him he could see Drake, crushed at the center of a puppy-pile made of his own bodyguards; a puppy-pile bristling with guns! The boy was looking around angrily. His lip was curled back from his eyeteeth in a delicious snarl. He couldn't see the cameras but S'jar t'Chk knew that he could hear just fine. And it was FUNNY! He could see his own soldiers with fingers on their triggers. He could see the LUST in the faces of the crowd! Some even had their hands thrust into their pants and were satisfying urges that they couldn't resist!

But NO!

No...

It was too early. The night had just started. They couldn't finish just yet! It was too soon! So S'jar t'Chk took a deep breath that was heard throughout the ship and then whispered, as if into a lover's ear. "Why Drake," he crooned, "it's almost as if you don't... trusssst me." The seething mass of crewman surrounding the tenjin burst into laughter. Some of it explosive. He saw tongues and wild eyes. He heard their screams. "Now now, my minions," S'jar t'Chk scolded them. "These are my guesssts", he told them, letting them all hear his teeth. "We must be polite. We must be civil. Drakey Boy is here to make amends, is he not? He's here to apologize for..." S'jar t'Chk's voice dropped three octaves and became a guttural roar, "...OFFENDING!..." before resuming his sibilant whisper, "...usssss. We must give him his chance to speak, and we must hear what he has to say. I'm sure it will be very..." 'funny,' he thought, "...enlightening," he said.

He saw Veticus Braun, the ship's master at arms, or Master-Arms to the crew, touch his ear. "Wut a ye wint ta'doo, Mi'lurd?" Braun asked over a closed channel.

S'jar t'Chk took his finger off the intercom and thought about it. One look at the Split inspired an instant and terrifying respect for the rifle in his hand. He didn't relish the idea of being anywhere that big bastard might be able to shoot at him with it. Yet the look in Kao t'Kt's eyes, and the defensive formation of the bodyguards around Drake, made it quite clear that there was only one way he would be able to take their weapons away... and S'jar t'Chk wasn't quite ready to begin the rape. Killing them now would be like premature ejaculation.

With that thought he grinned so broadly that he felt the air on his teeth. He always had liked to play with his food. "Let the dog keep his teeth for now," he told his master at arms. Then he snarled gleefully, "we have all night to pull them out."

Braun glanced at Drakey-Boy and his bodyguards with a lurid smile, although S'jar t'Chk didn't miss the relief in the man's eyes. That big bastard was pointing his rifle at Braun's head after all. The thought made S'jar t'Chk laugh.

*******

Continued...

[Scion Drakhar]

...continued.

Pointy-Teeth smiled at them again. He was trying to appear calm and vicious but Seldon had seen the relief in his beady black eyes and guessed that the lunatic they were here to see had just told the son of a bitch that Frank could keep his rifle. A moment later Pointy-Teeth was waving downward with his fingertips. "S'okay baes," he told his men. "'Ee's just een Split, even if 'ae is a big'yin. Boss says 'ae can kaip his tae," the grin stretched to show even more of his pointy metal teeth, "fer nao." Fingers came off triggers and rifle barrels were lowered toward the deck. "Nao, if you aw'ed come with mae? We do 'ave kite the show plann'd fer ye."

"No doubt," Drake growled behind her. None of the marines had lowered their weapons so much as a centimeter. Suddenly the HUD displayed by her contact lenses displayed the word:

REMEMBER

It was displayed in a soft, translucent blue directly across her vision. It was both noticeable and easy to see through. It lasted just long enough for her mind to grasp it before fading. A moment later she saw three more words, each in quick succession.

THIS

IS

THEATER

It was Drake, of course, and her first inclination was annoyance. It seemed like a very strange moment for a pep talk. Then the kid growled at them.

"Alright," he said. "Everyone stand down."

All around him her marines lowered their weapons; all of them but Kao t'Kt. Frank continued to point his rifle directly at Pointy-Teeth's pointy teeth. Because of her special contact lenses she could even see the UV laser flickering on the ugly bastard's lips and chrome dental work. After a moment of this she saw Pointy-Teeth swallow and roll his eyes. Despite his predatory appearance in that moment he looked a bit like a horse about to bolt. Then Drake stepped up between her and Gisler and put a hand on the big Split's shoulder. Only then did Kao t'Kt lower his weapon. It wasn't until she saw the relief on Pointy-Teeth's face that Seldon realized the kid had told Frank to do it and in that instant she understood. T'Chk and the kid were engaged in some kind of psychological chess game... and she was one of the pieces.

Pointy-Teeth swallowed audibly. Then he managed to bare his chrome teeth in another terrible smile, but Seldon thought he looked decidedly less sure of himself now than he had a moment ago. "Wael aw'rite!" He barked at them. "SOO! Now that yae've got thait outta yer saistems will yae kindly keep yur bloody waypons pinted at the bloody deck 'nd follow MAE?!" He leaned in threateningly. "Or wud ye prefayr wae jus' go aheed 'nd have our doin' naow?!"

Drake just glared until Pointy-Teeth snarled and turned away. A moment later Seldon got to watch as the man directed t'Chk's riot troops to form up in a circle around them. They were then led out of the hangar deck and Seldon had to steel herself to avoid looking back at the tenjin they were leaving behind. All around them the crew of the Brimstone seethed and surged like some single living thing in the undulations of digestion, birth, or some obscene form of sex. An ocean of unwashed bodies and screaming, half-mad faces surged and broke like waves upon the shields of the riot guard. Their small group was screamed at, spit at, ridiculed and taunted.

Then someone in the crowd through a handful of shit, which peppered three of the riflemen. The reaction was instantaneous. The soldiers turned, aimed and opened fire so quickly that she knew orders had been given beforehand. The crowd instantly recoiled, pressing away from the wounded and dying as if those poor souls were cursed. In the blink of an eye several four to five meter sections of the deck were cleared of all but the bodies on the deck. Seldon was fairly sure that none of the bodies to hit the floor had been responsible for the shit-bomb, either. Pointy-Teeth glanced in their direction. He seemed to have regained some of his coloring and was now smiling, showing his terrible teeth with smug satisfaction. "Never ye mine the jakes," he said viciously. "Like dugs, they are. But don' ye wurry. Ye jus' naid a firum hawn 'nd they sort themsaylves out." He then bared his chrome teeth and grinned at Drake.

Seldon looked up from the bloodshed. There were nearly a dozen bodies lying on the deck, most in spreading pools of blood. 'A firm hand?' she thought and turned back to Pointy-Teeth. 'You're a psychotic prick,' she thought at him. 'And I hope it's me that kills you.' Just then another message from Drake appeared across her field of vision.

THEATER

'Yeah?' she thought, with a glance at the kid. Drake was looking at the Yaki with the metal teeth and pretending not to notice her. 'Well, I don't like his style.'

After the riflemen's reaction the crowd left them relatively unmolested. Their lust had been dampened. Now she saw a kind of cowering viciousness. They were still hungry, but they were like jackals watching lions. Hunger was preferable to death. A few moments later they reached a personnel lift perhaps a hundred meters from the hangar bay. Stepping into it she noted the expressions on the faces of her fellow marines. The Split were all but unreadable. Ea't even managed to appear bored. The humans, she understood, however, and none of them appeared any more pleased than she was with S'jar t'Chk's hospitality.

Several moments later the lift stopped moving and the hatch doors opened to reveal an empty corridor. Their escort formed up around them anyway with the riot troopers on the outside and the riflemen forming an inner circle. So any room to actually breathe was still denied them. A few paces from the lift Seldon realized she was hearing a tremendous sound, like the roar of an angry ocean. A few paces later she heard the thunder and beat of music. Her first thought was a memory of a concert she'd attended back on Argon Prime; a hard-core industrial band playing in an orchestral concert hall. It was something a fellow marine had dragged her to and she'd been surprised to find that she enjoyed it. It was wild and intense with drums that pounded so loud she couldn't hear her own thoughts and a mosh pit where she experienced a freedom and madness like nothing she'd ever known before... despite the bruises.

Yet what was ahead of them sounded even louder, more primal, and less sane than anything she remembered. The drums were godlike. She heard big drums, small drums, pipes being banged, feet being stomped, and hands being clapped. Altogether they created a huge, infectious, multilayered rhythm that, under different circumstances, she thought she might even enjoy. After another few meters she was able to make out the sound of a dozen or so guitars being played together in roaring, interwoven melodies. Some kept time with the drums while others ripped out fantastic solos, while others still just seemed to scream. There were vocals as well but she couldn't make out the words. She thought they were in a language she didn't know. It was either that or they were just too distorted for her to comprehend. For a brief, disjointed moment, she almost enjoyed the sound of it. Then, a few more meters down the corridor, she heard something that sounded like dueling lawnmowers, or perhaps chainsaws, and was suddenly, viscerally reminded of how much danger she was in. Then, after a few more paces down the corridor, she suddenly broke out in a cold sweat. She'd just realized what that one sound was. It wasn't surf.

It was voices.

It was tens of hundreds of voices.

"Oh shit," she breathed.

********

Eri stepped onto the Necromancer's bridge. A few minutes earlier she'd been informed by Petty Officer Raker that the Warlock had landed on the Brimstone. Which meant the night was about to begin in earnest. As she stepped through the hatch she saw H'nt. All around him the Necromancer's command staff was hard at work monitoring their stations while he stood at the very center with his hands clasped behind his back, staring through the forward viewscreen. The Necromancer was at rest between the complex and the rest of Weaver's Tempest. Which meant she had a fantastic view of the sector's northern reach as well as the ass ends of the fleet's two new panthers. The new frigates were each at rest a few kilometers away, one high and to the left, the other low and to the right so both ships could launch their fighters without risk of collision. Beyond them, through the haze of distance, she could just make out the steady blue circle of the sector's only gate, about three degrees to her left of which was the Brimstone.

She stepped up beside H'nt. He turned and met her eye, then nodded. "Any word?" she asked.

"No," he replied, turning back to the vista before them.

"Looks peaceful out there," she said. "No armada in sight."

H'nt snorted. "Yet," he said.

She sighed. "So what do you expect?"

H'nt glanced at her and then looked back to the Brimstone, nearly eighty kilometers away. "Hard to say," he said. "But..." he used the controls in front of him to activate the sector map. A moment later he zoomed in on a small object several kilometers behind the Brimstone. "The Brimstone deployed a jump beacon three mizura ago."

She stared at the image for a moment. The jump beacon was nearly ninety kilometers from their position. It was nearly as far from them as the gate itself. "Long way away for tactical purposes."

"Not if it is for defense."

Eri blinked. Of course. That made sense. With Drakhar and his marines aboard the Brimstone if S'jar t'Chk was planning on taking the man hostage he was undoubtedly anticipating a reaction when the kid failed to check in. She sighed. She was so tense that it was actually hard to think and she'd allowed herself to get fixated on the Set'jak as the aggressors but the truth was more complex than that. She took another breath and let it out, dispelling some of her tension. It was going to be a long night.

Just then she saw a bright flash of light behind the Brimstone. A capital ship had just jumped into the sector. Her eyes instantly searched the sector map. The satellites had the ship already and were transmitting it's gravidar signature and IFF ID. It was the Set'jak akurei, Balefire. Just over ten seconds later another jump flash announced the arrival of S'jar t'Chk's senshi, Demon.

"And so it begins," she said.

********

The upper level stank nearly as bad as the hangar bay. Beer, spacefuel, and distilled alcohol of one kind or another mixed with the overwhelming stench of t'Chk's unwashed crew. The corridor they traveled was littered with trash. Paper cups, plastic armbands, food wrappings, the odd bit of clothing, and bloody gods only knew what else littered the deck. Graffiti covered the bulkheads. The overhead lights were out. The path lighting in the deck was frequently stained or covered in garbage, and the bulkhead lights tended to flicker. So the corridor was filled with shadows, and those shadows were rarely empty.

Faces lurked within the gloom. She saw them peeking out of the shadows. Few, if any, seemed sane and every one of them was grinning. None of these, however, challenged the soldiers in any way. Nor demonstrated any hostility. They simply watched, and grinned, and laughed. The laughter made her skin crawl. It seemed to be of two very different varieties. Mostly it was a collection nervous titters that seemed to escape its source like atmosphere into a vacuum. The other times it sounded ominous, as if its owner was able to see their fates and was amused by them.

After several turns she saw a large hatch through the gloom ahead of them. It, at least, was well lit and large enough to drive a truck through. A short time later Pointy-Teeth nodded to another soldier who waited behind security glass. A moment later the hatch hissed and then rumbled it open. As it did the roar and thunder in the space beyond, the music, and the wash and sigh of at least a thousand voices all hit her simultaneously. Seldon was nearly staggered by the force of it, as if the sound itself had weight and substance. Yet through that open portal Seldon saw only darkness and fire.

Then there was a staccato burst of red and blue lights identical to those used in nightclubs all over the galaxy. Those strobes revealed the compartment in flashes like lightning and Seldon gasped at the sights they revealed. The compartment itself was enormous and she was only able to make out glimpses due to the sporadic lighting but what she saw both amazed and horrified her. Suspended roughly ten meters over the very center of the space there was a wire-mesh sphere. Within that sphere there was a pair of riders on fire-spitting motorcycles. They circled each other in endless orbits and loop-de-loops around the inside of the cage. Directly across from the hatch she passed through there was a stage with several dozen enormous drums. Thos drums were pounded by bare-chested men and women, each swinging a pair of mallets overhead with such force that they were all slick and shining with sweat. There was a line of guitarists creating noise fit to demand the attention of gods. There was a line of cages below that stage that seemed to be made of sharp, rusting metal and barbed wire. Within them Seldon caught glimpses of people so bruised, bloody, and mistreated that they could only be slaves. But what shocked her, what seized her by the guts and stole her breath away were the people.

She guessed that the compartment was one of the ship's main cargo holds and had been transformed into some kind of night club. She saw bars where bartenders served drinks from behind wire mesh cages. She saw sideshows with naked men and women dancing to the music. She saw three floors of mezzanine balcony above and around them, with windows that reminded her of VIP box-seating at a ball game suspended between them. But it was the people she kept returning to.

It was the people her mind couldn't make sense of. The club was packed. The dance floor was literally a sea of people; a writhing, dancing, screaming, ocean of people. They were at the bars and at the tables, they were climbing the walls and hanging from the railings of the mezzanine floors above them. They were in the windows of the VIP boxes. They were in the light and in the shadow. There were so many of them moving and dancing to the music, undulating with the driving rythms of the drums and the screaming cries of the guitars that Seldon couldn't even begin to estimate their numbers.

"Holy shit," she whispered and could not hear her own voice.

Ahead of them the riot troops waded into the crowd. People that failed to notice their arrival were brutally knocked aside, in many cases falling to the deck to be trampled by their fellows. The crowd was quickly driven back to make room for Drake's squad to pass unmolested. Yet despite the brutality of the riot troopers, ripples of first shock and then glee ran through the crowd. Then the musicians on stage noticed and all together they changed their tune. The thrashing, screaming, primal rhythms transformed into something poignant and reaching, with three different melodies interweaving in terrible, tragic counterpoint, while the rhythm of the drums and bass guitars became somber and dire, akin to a funeral march. Throughout the hall a hush fell over the crowd and by ones and twos and whole groups at a time, then finally all at once the mob stopped dancing. The people stopped speaking and shouting to one another. And as the hush fell over the entire club all those people stopped what they were doing and turned to face them.

'Yeah,' Seldon thought to herself, 'that's not creepy at all.'

A target indicator suddenly appeared a the edge of her vision. It was momentarily tagged with Randall's ID code in tiny letters; R4-GSJR. She glanced up and swept her eyes over the marker as if just looking around. At first she didn't see what he saw. Then her vision adapted, augmented by H'nt's contact lenses and Legion's code. A moment later a subtle thermal layer was applied to her vision. At first all she saw were the lights in the catwalk, burning bright and hot as they swept the floor or spotlighted the stage. Then she saw the sniper concealed in the dark, high above even the highest of the mezzanine balconies.

'Good catch, Jak,' she thought at him and immediately began surreptitiously searching for other shooters. The others were apparently doing the same and in short order six snipers were marked, all of them in the catwalks high above the dance floor, at the edges and in the corners of the compartment. From those positions there would be no place in the compartment that was safe from them... and Pointy-Teeth was leading them toward the very center of the floor. There would be no cover.

Just then another marker appeared on her HUD. It was lower than the snipers but still above the dance floor. A quick glance found the shooter in the window of one of the VIP boxes. Then another marker appeared perhaps ten meters to the left of that one. Then another on the opposite wall. Then two behind her. Those made her shoulder blades itch, as if she could feel the targeting lasers touching her back. Then, to her surprise, all of the musicians on stage were marked, these with Gisler's ID. She double checked those and realized that he was right. All of them had weapons either on their persons or nearby. By the time Pointy-Teeth called a halt at the center of the compartment she and the other marines had marked fifty four shooters, not including the eight riflemen and eighteen riot troopers surrounding them, and there was no guarantee that they'd found them all. Once again Seldon took a slow, steadying breath and prayed that H'nt's gadgets worked the way they were supposed to.

Just then S'jar t'Chk began cackling over the 1MC again. At the lunatic sound of his laughter the crowd went wild, echoing his glee a thousandfold without ever looking away from her and the small group of friends around her. She saw in them the same madness she'd witnessed on the hangar deck; sadism cross-bred with a childish delight that contained neither morality nor conscience. All around her she saw faces screaming with laughter while staring at her with a rapist's intent. The sound of it was deafening; an ecstatic roar of fiendish exultation that rolled and crashed around her like waves on a storm tossed sea.

And yet, all the while, the music played. The drums kept their slow, terrible rhythms, like death's own march. The guitars cried their lost, aching melodies. She even heard the sound of large stringed instruments, violas or cellos, moaning a tune of deep, aching loss. And above it all the vocalists sang. She couldn't understand the words but felt them nonetheless, and knew the song was both tragic and beautiful.

It was perhaps the most sublime moment of her life. The faces around her were like something she'd dreamed in a nightmare. They were tattooed, painted, pierced, covered in dirt and oil, and every last one of them was screaming with their mouths open, their tongues out, and their eyes both brilliant and insane within their faces. Their eyes and teeth gleamed brightly from the filth and shadows. The smell of violence, death, and a savage lack of hygiene was intense enough to test her gag reflex. Yet the music was poignant, aching, and impossibly appropriate. The experience was profound. It was like finding a flower growing amidst the mud and rotting corpses of a blasted and war-torn battlefield, or seeing a star through the roiling clouds of a killer storm.

'It's poetic,' she thought.

Just then the music changed again. Sudden, attention-grabbing chords from the guitars were accompanied by a rapid singing from the cellos while the drums all began a rapid buildup to a crescendo. All around them the crowd began to roar and cheer. She heard S'jar t'Chk's name shouted with glee the way children might say 'Santa!' or 'Daddy!' As the drums, cellos, and guitars built up to their crescendo the crowd began to roar and clap until finally the climax was reached and the guitars ripped out an exultant, singing cry that seemed to echo off the stars.

An instant later they were all blinded by a sudden eruption of light. The light illuminated the stage before them. At the center it was so bright that at first Seldon couldn't make out what she was looking at. But the giant drums at the outskirts of the stage were visible, as were the muscled, fit, and panting drummers. She could see the line of guitarists, each as different as the next; big, small, bald, long haired, leather clad, nearly naked... one was even dressed as a nun, except her robes had been cut away to reveal her breasts, and groin. And now that the light was up Seldon even saw the cellists and their giant stringed instruments.

But it was the man at the center of it all that demanded her attention. In the spotlight, standing still at the very center of this bizarre orchestra, was a tall, thin man standing with his head thrown back and his arms thrown wide. He was topless above black leather pants and combat boots while wearing spiked manacles, armlets, and collar. At the sight of him the crowd went completely insane. The clapping disintegrated into cheering cries and thunderous applause fit for the season ending win of the home team in a national league; and for an uncomfortably long time the man on the stage simply basked in it, swaying back and forth as his fingers trembled.

'Shit,' she rolled her eyes. 'What a frakking diva!'

"THANK YOU!!" S'jar t'Chk lowered his head and looked out across his audience. His amplified voice thundered and echoed throughout the enormous compartment. "THANK YOU!!" He grinned, continuing to bask in the adulation of the thousand people in his audience. "THANK YOU!!" he gestured to the crowd with open hands, palms facing upward. The flesh around his eyes was painted black with grease, streaked downward over his cheeks. The grease made the whites of his eyes stand out with a manic brilliance in the spotlights. His gaze fell on Drake and the flesh peeled back from his teeth in a lunatic's grin.

"Ladies and jellyspoons!" he greeted the crowd with a Ringmaster's enthusiasm. "Boys and girls! Loosies and goosies!" Every word was suggestive somehow, as if each was a private joke causing him immense amusement. "Aaaaand!" He suddenly focused on Drake, to whom he gestured, "of coursssse..." His voice became a sibilant whisper as his lips split even further into his madman's grin. "...our disssstinguished guessst." His voice was thunderous through the ship's speakers and the whisper he was using felt like a violation. The crowd roared and screamed it's laughter around them. They were all gleeful and trembling with excitement, like children waiting for the curtains to part and the magic shot to begin.

"As you ALL know," t'Chk went on, stepping forward nearly to the edge of the stage. Seldon immediately thought that he made a tempting target. He was roughly fifteen meters away, which meant that with his rifle Frank could have effortlessly splattered the lunatic over much of the guitar line. Even with only their sidearms all of the marines were competent enough marksmen to put him down. Seldon knew that she could have put a round through either one of the madman's eyes nearly as fast as she could draw and squeeze the trigger. An instant later she scowled. It didn't make sense. Surely he wasn't that stupid, was he?

"We are gathered here tonight for a solemn occasion," t'Chk teased and again the crowd roared back as if the man were telling uproarious jokes. "One of our number," t'Chk said sadly, "a wayward son," he gestured imploringly to Drake, "returns to the fold tonight. He comes to us this evening to atone for his..." S'jar t'Chk's voice changed suddenly, dropping an octave or two and becoming almost impossibly savage, "SINS!!!" He roared, suddenly appearing homicidal. Throughout the crowd there were screams of rage and triumph.

"He has committed CRIMES against the clan! He has placed US in danger! He has STOLEN not only from his CLAN LEADER! He has STOLEN from YOU!"

Seldon noted that S'jar t'Chk had stopped a pace back from the edge of the stage and leaned forward to glare at Drake. The positioning seemed odd. 'Why there?' she wondered, thinking that it would have been more dramatic for him to step right to the very edge.

"He has stolen..." t'Chk's voice suddenly became impossibly wounded, "hundreds of millions of credits from..." his voice became low and savage again, "...US!" he then paused to allow the outrage and anger swell up in the great mass of Yaki around them. As he did Seldon realized that he was lit from below as well as above and that the light shimmered like the air above a heat source. A moment later she glanced around, realizing that the crowd was facing them again. She felt a sudden shiver tingle through her guts, and her armpits actually got cold. The faces around her had changed somewhat. She still saw the murderous glee, the expectant delight of cursed children waiting for their black presents, but there was anger there as well. There was anger, outrage, and even hate.

'Prick,' she thought, understanding that t'Chk literally meant to cast them to the wolves. 'This is gonna be a frakking slaughter.'

"Tonight!" S'jar t'Chk spread his hands somberly, "Drakey-Boy, our wayward son, will stand before you and ACKNOWLEDGE his crimes! He will recount them ONE BY ONE! He will ADMIT what he has done so that he may be FREE of his burden! So that he may be PURIFIED of his guilt!" S'jar t'Chk threw his head back and his arms wide again. "For only in PURIFICATION can FORGIVENESS be achieved!" T'Chk held his hands even higher, as if he were supplicating some higher power. "And FORGIVENESS!" S'jar t'Chk bellowed, then bowed like a jackknife at the waist, dropping his gaze to stare directly at Drake, "begins with" his voice became a whisper, "confession." That whisper was loud enough to make the hairs on Seldon's neck vibrate. It was a vile sensation.

"So tonight! Drakey-Boy will confess to us! Then he will ask for my forgiveness..." S'jar t'Chk's grin was impossibly lewd, "...and then he will accept my judgment. For I," t'Chk threw his arms wide again to bask in the crowd's attention again, "am the PATRIARCH of our family! I am father to you all! And like all good fathers I must discipline my children."

"God-damn I wanna slap this guy," Randall whispered over the radio, breaking radio silence. No one corrected him.

S'jar t'Chk turned to Drake once more and extended a beckoning hand. "So come, my wayward son. Come atone for your sins and be forgiven." It was strange, though. Seldon heard the word 'forgiven'. Her ears registered the syllables and meaning. Yet the word that reached that place within her mind where decisions were made was not 'forgiven'.

It was 'eaten'.

********

S'jar t'Chk was delirious! He was giddy! His head felt like it was filled with champagne bubbles! He was walking on moonbeams! He had the lightning in his eye and the fire in his heart! The moment had arrived! He had the boy exactly where he wanted him! Exactly where he needed him! The fool had walked into his trap of his own free will! And the fly was now in the web. Did it sense the spider? Did it know it was food? Did it know it was doomed?

S'jar t'Chk grinned and extended his hand toward the boy. As he did he met Drake's eyes... and blinked. The lights were hot and the air was thick and humid from the nearly twelve hundred people dancing and breathing and sweating within the massive space. Yet as he met the boy's eyes he felt his skin prickle and tighten, as if a cold draft had just found him. The look in the man's eyes was just wrong. He'd expected the fool to be angry. He'd expected outrage, indignation, perhaps even some measure of spite, but most of all he expected to see fear.

'Why isn't he afraid?'

Surely the boy understood his situation. He was under guard and in the crosshairs of half a dozen snipers. He was surrounded by over twelve hundred Set'jak Yaki, all worked into a lather of delirious expectation like randy beaus with no intention of accepting "no" for an answer. He'd lost! He was at the mercy of his lord and master! With just one word S'jar t'Chk could exterminate the fool and his bodyguards like cattle in the slaughterhouse! He owned the fool!

'He can't be that stupid, can he?' S'jar t'Chk asked himself. 'He never struck me as dense but... can he really not know that I hold his life in my hands?'

A murmur in the crowd summoned him back to the moment. He'd been standing with his hand extended for a moment too long. The show had gone off script... and the audience had sensed it. It wasn't much and he was sure that he could recover, but the audience had noticed just the same. For an instant he'd lost control.

His grin bared even more teeth. "Don't be shy, Drakey!" he crooned viciously. "Come on up!" He said this the same way he might call a wary dog. "Come on, boy!"

That was when the boy smiled, and S'jar t'Chk felt that freezing wind move through his guts again. It was a slap in the face, that smile. It was an expression of pure contempt.

"No," Drakhar told him.

In that instant a hush fell over the crowd. It was like the sudden inhalation before a gasp. Drakhar had no voice amplification. He wasn't speaking through the ship's speakers. Yet his voice was strong and steady, and it carried well in the hush. Soon even those who hadn't heard him were informed of what he'd said.

S'jar t'Chk felt a spike of adrenaline in his solar plexus. A moment later he realized he was about to scream. The boy was just so infuriating! "Drake," he hissed, baring his teeth in an expression that was not a smile, "this is not a request. You are here to make an act of contrition..."

"No," the kid interrupted him, "I'm not." It felt like another slap across the face. Just then S'jar t'Chk noticed that the boy had something in either hand. Neither object looked familiar to him. One was a small, smooth cylinder roughly the shape of a compact umbrella or good sized dildo. In the other he held something that looked like half of a complex polyhedron, roughly the size of half a grapefruit. But it was the look in the boy's eyes that chilled his blood. It was pure, unrelenting hate.

"Then, pray tell," S'jar t'Chk asked. All traces of his mirth were gone. The crowd was deathly silent and he could all almost feel his shooters lining up their shots. "Why are you here?" The riflemen and riot troopers all turned to face Drakhar.

"You're a liar, S'jar t'Chk," the boy replied, casually fitting the flat cylinder into the top of the strange little dome.

"I am your clan leader, boy," t'Chk replied with his most dangerous smile. "You will be..."

"You lied to me," the boy interrupted him. S'jar t'Chk started to draw himself up to take the situation in hand. Drake beat him to it. "You lied to THEM!" He gestured to the crowd.

"I NEVER lie to them...!"

"You've been ordering me to attack your allies for almost two mazura." The boy's eyes blazed knowingly. "I wonder how Abmanckusset will feel about the orders you've given to me. Or Nicodemus. I'm fairly sure I know how Gorda feels about it. But Thane?" S'jar t'Chk's blood felt like it had frozen. His skin was slick with sweat and he suddenly felt cold even in the heat of the spots. "You ordered me to kill his family."

"Enough!" S'jar t'Chk snarled. It was time to end this.

Just then the polyhedron lit up in the boy's hands. "DID YOU REALLY THINK I WOULD LET YOU TAKE ALL THAT I HAVE MADE?!"

"Kill them!" S'jar t'Chk screamed. Yet even through the ship's 1MC he sounded small and shaken.

The boy dropped to one knee and slammed the device in his hand into the deck. A sudden eruption of light swelled outward from that impact and in less than a heartbeat a hemisphere of shimmering golden force leapt outward from the device in the boy's hand. Braun and the other riflemen, who had all been standing shoulder to shoulder with the boy and his guards, were violently thrown backward, cast into the crowd like so many rag dolls.

"NOW!" the boy roared. He was staring directly at S'jar t'Chk.

An instant later all hell broke loose.

********

Seldon watched the shield spring into being. The instant it appeared she saw ripples, like rain on a pool of water, on the other side of the golden bubble as it deflected countless high velocity impacts, phase discharges, and laser blasts. Without thinking she drew, aimed, and fired three times. Three meters away one of t'Chk's riflemen lost the top half of his head just as he clambered back to his feet. To the left and two meters behind that one a small hole appeared in the side of a riot trooper's helmet, instantly filling the face shield with blood. Another five degrees to her left a second rifleman lost most of his head. Around her the rest of her squad had unleashed hell upon the enemy. Frank was using his high volume repeater to frustrate and kill the snipers in the catwalks. Janne Gisler was back to back with her, taking out the soldiers and riot troopers on the opposite side of their formation. Ea't stood a pace to her right and was using a pair of phase pistols to terrifying effect. There was also a nozzle on the back of his left wrist equipped with a small blue pilot light, and she suspected the Split had managed to build a flamethrower into his armor. Behind Ea't Drake was holding the hilt of his sword, now embedded in the deck through the shield generator that H'nt had provided for them. Beside Drake Avin Pierce was huddled over the computer console on the back of his wrist. Beyond them, at the back of the formation, Jak Randall and Ho t'Snt were doing the same as she and Gisler; standing back to back and dropping enemies.

She lifted her gaze to two of the shooters her squad had marked earlier and took aim. The sidearms they carried had been equipped with tiny, underslung grenade launchers disguised to look like barrel-mounted flashlights. The grenades themselves were only about 10 millimeters in diameter but were packing enough high explosives and shrapnel to take out soft targets within a ten meter radius. They also had two settings that were configurable via neural command: cone and sphere. She looked at those two markers and barely made out the thermal images of the shooters firing through the open windows of the VIP box. Using her neural interface she selected the grenade in the tube, indicated the spherical setting and then used a secondary trigger mechanism to launch the explosive. One heartbeat later the box exploded from the inside out. Both shooters were torn to shreds. One of them tumbled into the crowd on the mezzanine two stories above them. Two meters to her right Ho t'Snt fired another grenade into another box booth. Fifteen meters over the dance floor a loud explosion removed two more shooters from play.

********

It was hard to follow. The bubble warped out of the kids hands. Then there was an eruption of gunfire. Then bodies began falling. Then a stream of fire erupted from that golden shield like dragon's breath, reaching ten meters into the crowd to turn dancers, riot troops, and riflemen alike into screaming human bonfires. The boy's giant Split bodyguard was using the rifle S'jar t'Chk had decided to let him keep to monstrous effect. S'jar t'Chk heard its rhythm over the screams and confusion of the crowd: PaPaPaPaPOW! PaPaPaPaPOW! PaPaPaPaPaPaPaPOW! Filling the compartment with its new and terrifying rhythm. And with every burst five or six members of his clan disappeared in eruptions of meat, blood, and a fine crimson mist. Then two of the lounges overlooking the dance floor exploded! Glass, metal, and bits of shrapnel hurtled twenty meters into the crowd below. Then another! And another still!

It was then S'jar t'Chk realized he was screaming. It didn't make any sense! They had no weapons! They had no armor! They had no grenades! How could this be happening?! Just then the air in front of his face rippled with a violent, bright-white swelling. An instant later the swell rebounded and dissipated back into invisibility. This was repeated three more times. S'jar t'Chk turned his gaze back to Drake. The man was still on one knee, holding onto the device at his feet with his right hand. But with his other hand the boy aimed a pistol directly at S'jar t'Chk's face, and the look in the man's eyes was as cold and black as the depths of space. An instant later he watched the man snarl, then turn away to bark at one of his marines. Which is when S'jar t'Chk suddenly understood what just happened. Drake had tried to kill him. That in turn led to another realization. Drake was playing the game with him... and Drake was playing to win.

With that realization S'jar t'Chk began to laugh.

********

"Goddamn it!" the kid snarled.

"What the hell are you cryin' about?!" Seldon shouted at Drake.

"There's a goddamn SHIELD in front of that stage!"

Seldon glanced at the stage. It looked like all of the musicians were lining up for a curtain call, only instead of guitars, cello bows, and drum mallets they were carrying rifles, submachine guns, and grenade launchers. At the center of the line t'Chk was doubled over, glaring at them with wild eyes, and laughing fit to rupture something. She suddenly understood why t'Chk hadn't stepped to the edge of the stage.

"Pierce!" Drake roared over the thunder of the guns and screaming crowd, which seemed torn between trying to get a piece of the action and running the hell away. "How long 'til we're in?!"

Avin Pierce was huddled just behind Seldon, doubled over the console he'd brought with him. At first he blinked, then shook his head, then focused on the console. "Just a few sezura!" he shouted back to Drake.

Just then S'jar t'Chk managed to find the breath to start giving orders. "GRENADES!" t'Chk wheezed, supporting himself with one hand on his upper thigh and the other around the man standing next to him, all the while struggling to remain upright. Tears were running down his face, further streaking his greasepaint. "FIRE!" he gestured at the shield. "Pop that cherry and bend that bitch over for me! I'm feeling the ITCH!" With this pronouncement t'Chk stood up straight and made some gestures that included grabbing and thrusting with his pelvis.

A moment later the firing line on stage was supplemented by those carrying grenade launchers. Most of them were carrying hypervelocity rifles of one kind or another but because of the nature of Drake's shield incoming fire was deflected away instead of being absorbed. Which meant of the shots fired at them most ricocheted instead of being absorbed. The majority of the fire coming at them ended up blasting into the deck or lid, or winging away into the bulkheads. But a good percentage also ended up in the crowd as well, killing and wounding t'Chk's own people. The grenades, however, hit the shield and immediately exploded. In less than two sezura any organic matter within ten meters of the outside of their shield was vaporized. The plasma explosions were so hot that they melted the deck plating around them and compromised the substructure. Seldon felt the ground beneath her feet shift. What concerned her most, however, was the expression on Drake's face as he looked up from the shield generator.

"We might not HAVE a few sezura!" he roared back at Pierce.

Pierce met the kid's eye then and shrugged. 'What the hell do you expect me to do about it?!'

Seldon saw a target with a rifle, took aim and fired all in less time than it took her to blink. A moment later she managed a double take in her subordinate's direction. Pierce was normally a peacemaker. He didn't mind letting the other guy have his way if it meant avoiding a stupid fight. Standing up to Drake was out of character for him. She'd just decided to buy him a beer for it when a flare of light passed between her and his face. The guy immediately winced in shock and pain and promptly fell to the deck. There was a ten centimeter hole in the deck just behind and above his head.

"Pierce!?" she shouted in alarm. Then she whirled to check the shield. It was still up, which meant the shot had passed through it. "SNIPERS!" she bellowed over their radio. "SNIPER ROUNDS CAN BREACH THE SHIELD!"

A sudden instinct made her move her head and drop to the deck. The hypervelocity slug passed by so close to her that the heat of it burned her right ear. She looked up from the deck, scanning the shadows above and to the right of the stage. An instant later her optics picked out the shooter for her. He was up in the catwalks behind the stage lights, ducking and repositioning as Kao t'Kt filled the whole area with high velocity death. Without thinking she aimed and fired three times. Fifty seven meters away the sniper's thermal image twitched and bucked. The first two shots hit center mass. The third smashed the warm orange silhouette of his head into an unnatural shape. A moment later the body collapsed and slowly rolled off the catwalk.

Seldon was already at Pierce's side. The kid was on the deck but blinking in shock. The left side of his face was burned badly, and his left eye was swollen shut, but he was alive and struggling back to a sitting position. "Shit, Pierce!" she barked. "I thought you were a goner!"

"Nah!" he hissed, grimacing in pain. "I'm singed a bit, Chief," he told her, then met her eye with the one that would still open. "But I'm not quite ready for the robes they wear."

Seldon blinked. Then laughed. "You smartass!" Just then the console on the kid's arm started flashing. She glanced down and saw the message: UPLOAD COMPLETE.

'Well hot damn!' she thought. 'We just might be in business.' She turned toward Drake. "WE'RE IN!"

He looked back at her with death in his eyes. "GET THAT GODDAMN SHIELD DOWN!"

********

S'jar t'Chk was riveted. The boy was astounding! What nerve! What MOXY! He simply could not believe the balls on this man! To walk right onto a carrier full of bloodthirsty pirates and begin shooting?! It was insane! It was MADNESS! Watching it made S'jar t'Chk feel all warm and tingly inside. It was a shame that he'd have to kill the boy. He had no idea Drakey could be so much FUN! S'jar t'Chk knew that he would never forget this night. He'd remember it for the rest of his days while jerking off to memories of fire and bloodshed. As far as he was concerned the boy was a god.

'Better to burn out than fade away...' he thought and cackled.

T'Chk had no idea how the seven of them had managed to smuggle so much firepower past the ship's scanners but it was simply magnificent. Explosions erupted from the VIP booths were he'd positioned extra shooters and ripped great swaths of his audience into bloody soup. Ea't's flamethrower was sowing unbridled terror in those close enough to watch, and he supposed smell, their friends burning. Snipers were falling from the catwalks and most of the shooters he'd positioned around the 'Pitt' would need to be hosed off the walls and floors.

It was only the musicians who'd been able to return fire unmolested. They'd formed a line from one end of the stage to the other and were unleashing hell on... well, mostly on the audience. Every shot ricocheted off Drake's golden bubble and hit something, or someone, out in the dark. Some shots were even reflected back at them and dissipated in the cyan shimmer of the ray shield. But it was obvious that Drake's golden bubble was already starting to falter. T'Chk could see it wobbling. He figured the thing only had a few more sezura left in it before it collapsed.

Then the strangest thing happened. All of the marines in Drake's little group turned and focused on the stage. They lined up in a high-low formation and aimed their weapons at him and the rest of his killer rock band, but they did not fire. It was that pause that unsettled him. Then S'jar t'Chk glanced at Drake and saw the boy holding his own sidearm steady. It was odd, S'jar t'Chk reflected, how large the bore in that barrel could appear from over twenty meters away.

Some intuition set him moving in time to save his life. An instant later the curtain shield came down and he was aware of the gunfire from out on the dance floor. Then several of his musicians were cut down on either side of the stage. He lunged backward, twisting and dropping to the deck as he did so. He heard screams and was distantly aware of one of his guitarists falling beside him. T'Chk lunged and scrambled across the deck, heading toward the exit at the back of the stage. He saw one of the muscleboys tasked with following him around to intimidate others rushing forward to help him. Without hesitation t'Chk took the man's hand and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. An instant later, though, he ducked under the man's arm and shoved the fool toward the front of the stage. Just as he turned to lunge for the hatch a flare of light silhouetted the giant. An instant later S'jar t'Chk felt the hot hand of an angry god sweep him up off the deck and hurl him through the air.

********

It was a grenade that finally did it. The curtain shield came down and all seven of them began to shoot. Frank simply used his repeater to draw a line from left to right directly through the midsections of the shooters on stage. But by that time their own sheild was wobbling, and the generator was sparking and popping in a way that Seldon really didn't like. Then the grenade hit. An instant later the world went golden white as the plasma grenade exploded.

The mechanism that Drake's sword had been powering hummed. For the first mazura or so that hum was steady and reassuring, but as the shield took more and more punishment Seldon heard that hum build in pitch and urgency. Just before the last grenade hit that hum became a violent, screaming whine. An instant later there was a loud Pop! and she saw the thing first spark and then shatter under Drake's fist. The kid snarled and turned his head away and although she didn't hear it Seldon knew he'd just cursed. An instant later they were all bathed in superheated plasma and Seldon found herself very grateful that the personal shields H'nt provided for them worked as advertised.

Of course, as the plasma cleared, she looked up and realized that the shield was now down... leaving them exposed and at the center of a room filled with over a thousand bloodthirsty and, by then, very angry Yaki. Seldon blinked and squinted in an attempt to recover her vision. The world was ringing. But in the shadows, picked out by the strobe lighting and the red glare of the many flames she saw the faces of the Yaki around them. Men, women, Split, even some Paranid, all pierced, painted and tattooed to appear terrifying were all looking up from where ever they'd been cowering. She watched as the fear and lust in their eyes became fury. Then she turned to glare at Drake. He blinked the flash blindness away and then noticed her staring at him. Just as his eyebrow twitched into a question she screamed at him.

"THIS IS THE WORST PLAN EVER!!"

********

T'Chk couldn't hear anything except the high pitched ringing in the center of his head. He started to shake his head but the pain was literally blinding. He'd slid up against a bulkhead behind the stage and as he looked up he saw the backdrop curtains were on fire. He blinked again, distantly aware of an explosion out on the dance floor. His eyes searched for focus and settled on the massive kettledrums he'd so enjoyed over the past two jazura. They were riddled with holes. Their skins were tattered to ribbons.

He took a breath and tried to find his bearings but the world was a nightmare. The deck around him was covered with blood and meat and bits of bone. He blinked and tried to shove himself into a sitting position, but his hand slipped in the blood on the deck.

As he collapsed again he realized that he was in tremendous pain. He glanced down at himself and saw that he too was covered in blood and bits of meat and bone, some of which had pierced his flesh. He scowled at his left arm and pulled broken pieces of ivory from his arm that he suspected had recently been someone's teeth. Then the pain in his shoulder got his attention. Turning his gaze to the rounded lump of meat in the lower left portion of his vision he beheld a jagged piece of bone wedged into his flesh. He took hold of it with a snarl, then grit his teeth and bit down on a savage howl of pain. It was slippery, hard to hold, and he had to work the thing back and forth to pull it loose from his shoulder. When it finally ripped free he snarled viciously, then held it up to see clearly. It was someone's lower left mandible, complete with a few jagged teeth both capped with gold as well as riddled with a fair degree of rot. It was the rot that brought him understanding. It was the musclehead's. He was holding the broken and shattered lower jaw of his bodyguard Gothma.

'I better get that disinfected,' he thought and immediately started to giggle.

He could hear gunfire now but he also heard the roar of the crowd, who sounded like they were charging the little shit's position. All of them were partiers and he'd made sure that they'd all had access to free booze and as much dope as they wanted, every last microgram of which had been doctored with a hallucinogenic compound that was both a stimulant and an aphrodisiac. 'Have fun, Drake!' he thought and immediately snickered at his joke, wondering if his crew would kill the little shit before they raped him or keep him alive for the experience.

He laughed again and then lurched to his feet. As he did so the world went white with pain. An instant later darkness reached in from the sides of his vision and he saw points of light flare and fade away. He put a steadying hand on the bulkhead and waited. He bloody hurt! But that was fine. It was fine! It was fine because it was just so. Damned. Funny!

"Oh Drake," he laughed, "I will remember you for the rest of my life..." He pushed himself forward and felt a surge of sharp, biting pain. "... every time I take a shit," he snarled.

Of course he still thought it would be prudent to put as many locked pressure hatches between himself and Drake's temper as possible. The boy was proving to be rather unpredictable. So he snarled and howled against the pain and dragged himself along the wall to the nearest exit from the great compartment. All the while he heard the nonstop thunder of small arms fire and the swelling roar of his great horde. Soon, though, he was out in a service corridor where he promptly accessed the ship's controls through the door panel and locked the compartment down behind him. Then he set the ship on red alert. Then, after a moment of inspiration, he activated the ship's 1MC.

"GREETINGS MY MINIONS!" he said cheerfully, filling every compartment and corridor with his laughter. "Our guests," he said, mocking sadness, "have decided to ABUSE MY HOSPITALITY!!!" He took a breath, regaining his composure. Then he giggled. "Kindly frak them up for me, would you?"

********

Avin Pierce was twenty jazuras [28 years] old. He was the youngest of three brothers and, when he was being honest, would admit that he'd joined the military mostly to piss off his mother who'd wanted him to study engineering. Being a thoughtful person Pierce had contemplated that decision many times in the three jazuras since he'd made it and eventually recognized his thinking as petty and foolish for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that he actually enjoyed engineering. Mostly, though, it was because, despite being an excellent marine, he was a terrible warrior. He often had trouble killing and found it nearly impossible to do in cold blood. After boarding operations when he'd had to end the lives of other people he had trouble looking himself in the mirror.

Yet he was often one of the smartest people in the room. He was tech savvy, learned new concepts quickly, was both a solid strategist and excellent tactician, and genuinely cared about the lives of his fellow marines. Which meant that over time every squad he'd served in came to trust both his abilities and his insights. Just now, however, he was completely out of his depth.

The situation he found himself in was something straight out of a nightmare. A detached part of himself calmly observed that he was in shock. The left side of his face had been severely burned by the passage of a hypervelocity slug that came centimeters away from taking his life and, as a result, was causing him a great deal of pain. That pain came and went, however, as if it was a sound coming through a strong wind. Some moments it seemed to be screaming loud enough to take over the world. Other times it seemed muted and distant.

That same detached part of his mind also observed that if there was such a thing as hell then he had managed to find his way into it. The world was darkness, lit only by fire and flashes from the strobe lights. The flickers of light picked out nightmarish scenes in hideous detail. There were screaming Yaki everywhere he looked. Many of them were on fire. Mobs surged from the crowd and were blasted into dismembered bits of meat and blood. The thunder from Chief Kao t'Kt's repeater was relentless. The effects gruesome. And the roar of the enraged mob hammered at his mind and threatened to overwhelm his bladder.

'There's just so many of them.'

And already the dead numbered in the hundreds. There were mountains of corpses around them. Every time the strobes flickered he saw them; bodies piled chest high in places. Nearly all of them were missing pieces which showed up in other places like lost children. Arms, legs, a head here and there, all scattered about amidst the bodies on a deck so slick and shiny that it looked like a lake of blood. And all of them seemed to still have their eyes open. Those eyes were haunting. Each and every one looked like a gateway into some cold, still place.

A sudden burst of gunfire caused his body to recoil in shock. Nearly twenty meters away, using his fallen mates for cover, a Yaki was shooting at him. Instead of cutting him to shreds, though, the air in front of him warped and flickered as the shots were deflected away. Pierce blinked and looked up to see a man dressed all in black standing over him. The man was holding up his left hand, projecting a small repulsor field from the palm of his gauntlet. With his other hand the man fired his gauss pistol back at the shooter, driving the Yaki down behind the mound of corpses. An instant later Drakhar's eyes fell upon him and Pierce felt instantly cold.

"Hey!" the man barked at him. "Wake up, marine!"

"Sir! Yes, sir!" Pierce replied reflexively. An instant later his mind lurched into motion.

They were being overrun. A few paces away he saw Master Chief Warrant Officer Kao t'Kt lash out with the butt of his rifle to cave in a woman's skull and then crush another man's chest with the back stroke. The enormous Split then stepped forward into a charging Yaki and delivered a kick enhanced by his power-armor to the pirate's solar plexus. That kick hit the big man like a bat hitting a baseball. The pirate was sent hurtling backward into the crowd, where he knocked a number of his fellows down. The Chief then used the other end of his rifle to make sure none of them got back up again. Several paces from the Chief Commander Ea't s'Quid was using his flamethrower to define a perimeter, setting any Yaki who dared get close to them ablaze or using his phase disruptors to obliterate portions of their anatomy. He seemed to like legs.

Chief Seldon and Master Gunns Gisler had managed to salvage plasma rifles from their original escort and were firing into the crowd to incinerate individuals and scatter mobs. Gunny Ho t'Snt and Gunny Randall were practically back to back on the opposite side of the formation, keeping the crowd at bay with precision shooting and prolific use of their new micro grenades which shred entire groups of S'jar t'Chk's crew. Yet they were still facing a sea of enemies in the dark, and Pierce knew that sooner or later they'd run out of the things that were keeping them alive. First they'd run out of grenades, then fuel for the flamethrower. They needed to change their situation, and change it in one hell of a bloody hurry.

Continued...

[Scion Drakhar]

...continued.

"This place is getting mighty hot!" Gisler announced over the comms.

"Pierce!" Seldon immediately barked his name.

"Ma'am!" he replied.

"Find us an exit!" she ordered him.

"Find us an exit, aye!" he replied and immediately began giving neural commands to the console on his wrist, talking to the cyberops software they'd uploaded into the Brimstone's network. As he did he heard the roar of several dozen Yaki and turned his head. A group of enraged pirates had thrown rubber mats across Commander Ea't's wall of fire, creating a path through it. There was now a mob charging their position.

"ON OUR NINE O'CLOCK!" he shouted, drawing his sidearm and firing into the mob.

An instant later he heard the loud double Pop! of one of their micro grenades and the center of the mob disappeared, blasted into a wave of crimson mist, bloody meat, and screaming corpses. Gunfire dropped half a dozen more and then the mob was inside their perimeter. A screaming woman appeared before him. She was covered in blood and paint, riddled with piercings, and holding a pair of knives as she leapt over the bodies of her friends. Pierce shot her in the chest while she was still in midair. Another two men roared out of the dark behind her. One of them threw some kind of axe at his head. Pierce ducked it and the other lunged at him like a linebacker. Pierce tried to step back but his heel caught on something and he started to fall. Just then a singing arc of light passed through the linebacker. As Pierce fell the big Yaki crashed into him, knocking him onto his back, but the Yaki was limp and Pierce was instantly drenched in blood. As he fought against the man's weight Pierce realized it was a corpse on top of him. As he shoved the body off him he saw that it was missing its head.

When he looked up he saw Drakhar between him and the charging Yaki. His employer danced and whirled among the enemy with a bright steel sword in his hand. That blade leapt out to pierce the throat of one pitch-colored yaki before vanishing back into the hilt in Drakhar's hand. An instant later it leapt out again as Drakhar ducked and pirouetted beneath an outstretched arm. An instant later it vanished again, leaving the Yaki to crash to the deck without his legs. A moment later it flared into another arc, slashing several throats at once. Then Drakhar stepped back to stand just in front of Pierce and raised his left hand just as some rusty metal blade hurtled out of the dark. The repulsor field hurled the axe back into the darkness.

Drakhar then turned and met his eyes. Pierce had worked for the man for six wozuras [8 weeks] and he'd been in close enough proximity to know his voice, mannerisms and, to some small extent, even his moods. Yet it wasn't until that moment, as they looked at each other through the lightning of the strobes, surrounded by death and madness, that Pierce felt like he'd actually met the man. Afterward he wasn't sure that he was grateful for the experience. There was something terrible about the man, as if there was some enormous shadow looming over him and a scream that never ceased filling the spaces human hearing couldn't quite reach. The experience lasted only an instant but in that instant Pierce knew that this was where this man truly belonged; here, in this place, surrounded by fire and blood and darkness.

"GET US THE HELL OUT OF HERE!" Drakhar barked at him, and Pierce heard him both through the subdermal radio as well audibly over the din. Pierce nodded but failed to verbally acknowledge the order. His employer turned away just the same. "EA'T!" he roared and then pointed at the breach in the flames. "FILL THAT HOLE!"

A moment later the wall of charging Yaki turned and their faces changed from fury to terror. An instant later they were consumed by a torrent of fire. Pierce closed his eyes, focused on the cyberops interface, and tried not to think about the human beings burning alive just a few meters away. He tried not to pay any attention to the smell of burning hair and flesh that now filled the world.

'A way out,' he thought. 'A way out. Need to find a way out...'

On the inside of his contact lenses he saw the map of this section of the ship. He saw the compartment they were in and zoomed in to the lowest level. There were eight hatches into and out of the space. One was the main hatch they'd come through. There were two behind the stage. There were two that were accessible from inside the wire mesh cages surrounding the bars. The last two were accessible from the dance floor and were mirror images of each other, one on the port side of the compartment the other on the starboard. He marked those so they showed up on his HUD and then opened his eyes. The starboard hatch was slightly farther away and behind a few hundred Yaki. The port hatch was still thirty meters away but there were half as many Yaki between it and them.

"I've got it!" he said, and immediately uploaded their destination to the rest of the squad's HUD.

"Ea't!" Drakhar barked over the comms. "Cut us a path!"

********

S'jar t'Chk snarled and downed a shot of tequila. He was seated in a chair in the medical station that normally dealt with drunks from the club. He sat with his legs straddling the chair back. A medical minion stood behind him removing bits and pieces of other human beings from the flesh of his back. The process was painful. Instead of helping, however, the tequila was only making him irritable. "Show me the Pitt," he snapped at the muscleboy who was stood nearby with a rifle and a blank expression. The muscleboy blinked and S'jar t'Chk noticed that the fool's eyes were pinned. T'Chk made a frustrated face and rolled his eyes. Then he showed the muscleboy his most dangerous grin and thrust his chin at a nearby viewscreen. "Cam-err-ahs." He said slowly and saw comprehension dawn in the giant's eyes. "Show me the Pitt," he said again. "I want to watch that little bastard die."

"Right," the fool acknowledged sounding dim and far away, a little like a sleepwalker or a hypnotist's subject. "View of the show," he said, mostly to himself. "View of the show for the boss." Several long and painful moments later the entire wall lit up before him. A holographic projection filled the air, showing multiple screens; each screen slowly cycling through different camera angles of the ship's dance club.

"There," t'Chk pointed and took another swig of tequila. His back really hurt and some of the teeth and bone shards embedded in his back were just murder coming out. "Lower right," he pointed at one of the camera angles. "Blow that one up." The muscleboy obliged him and a moment later t'Chk was looking down at the dance floor from above and behind the main entrance to the compartment. The room was lit by lightning and fire. The strobes and gunfire shattered the dark, but only for instants. It was like watching a movie that only showed every fifth or sixth frame. It was easy to see what was happening, though, and what was happening disturbed him. The boy's dome shield was down but he and his marines were still very much alive.

T'Chk shook his head at the sight of them. 'How?!' he shouted within his mind. 'How the hell is that possible?!'

He'd positioned snipers in the shadows above the lights. He'd had gunners with high-volume stationary guns in the VIP boxes. There had been nearly thirty soldiers guarding them, and twelve hundred drug addled lunatics were all screaming for the little shit's blood. Yet, now! Now, somehow, all of his shooters were dead and the twelve hundred he'd left to deal with Drake had been reduced by several hundred at least. A vast section of the dance floor now looked like some mad cannibal's butchery. The deck was littered with bodies, many of which were on fire. Many more were just piles of meat and guts. They lay in great heaps, tumbled about like scraps from some giant's table. Bits of meat and sausage and rivers of blood all cast about as if swept from a cutting board to await use in the actual recipe. And there, at the center of it all, was Ea't, the boy, and their marines... and they were winning!

'HOW?! He screamed within his mind. Except it was obvious, wasn't it? He'd been... outsmarted? How was that possible? How had the boy managed to bring so much firepower with him? Why hadn't the scanners detected it?!

"Aaow!" he snarled and turned to glare at his medical minion, who'd just ripped something that felt like a serrated knife from his back. S'jar t'Chk realized then that he was on his feet, although he didn't remember standing. The minion wilted beneath his gaze, then shrugged apologetically. "Are you about finished?!" t'Chk snarled.

"Uh... no?" the medical minion replied.

S'jar t'Chk ignored him and turned back to the muscleboy. "Get me the bridge," he snapped. The muscleboy looked confused and in that instant S'jar t'Chk understood that the idiot was actually trying to figure out how he was supposed to go fetch the bridge and then return it to his Clan Leader the way a dog fetches a thrown stick. "On the intercom," S'jar t'Chk said plaintively. There was a definite drawback to working with idiots. "Ow!" he snarled as something else was pulled from his back. A moment later he heard whatever it was dropped into a metal bowl. He didn't look but he was fairly sure it was a gold filling.

"Yes, m'lord?" Fat Jack, his communications minion, blinked at him from the holo-projection.

"Call my friends," t'Chk told him. "Tell them the party has started."

Fat Jack bared his rotten teeth in a grin of his own. "Aye, m'lord! Right away!"

T'Chk looked back at the view of the Pitt and immediately saw Ea't. He'd know that red topknot anywhere. The Split lobbed something toward a mass of his Yaki, then bared his teeth, aimed, and fired his phase pistol. An instant later the thing he threw exploded over the crowd, vomiting fire and shrapnel across a fifteen meter circle. The lucky ones died instantly to the shrapnel. The unlucky ones were set ablaze.

"And get me Sparky!" T'Chk snarled at Fat Jack. 'It's time to get drastic.'

"Aye, m'lord," Fat Jack replied. "Transferring you now."

********

It was a dance she'd long learned the steps to. She held the rifle tight to her shoulder. Her eye found targets through the scope's reticle. Her feet moved smoothly to keep hands and eye steady. Her finger gently squeezed the trigger. A flash of light and thunder and enemies died in the darkness beyond the flames.

Frank's voice, steady and familiar over the comms. "Re-load-ing."

She moved her weapon to the left to cover his field of fire, picking off targets as she did. Her feet moved smoothly beneath her and she noted the crunch of glass beneath her boot. To her right Gisler opened up, sending a burst of plasma bolts into a mob that was hurling corpses onto the fire to smother it. Ea't, who seemed to have run low on fuel for his flamethrower, was now behind and to her right, covering their right flank with a pair of phase pistols while Randall and Ho t'Snt, each with a salvaged rifle or carbine, covered their left. Drake moved behind them, sighting spots of trouble and directing fire while supporting with his sidearm and shield. Behind them Pierce was working to get the hatch open and provide a way out of this nightmare. Beside her Frank slapped a fresh mag into his repeater and activated the feed. A moment later he was spitting thunder at the enemy again.

"BAR!" Drake roared. "TWO O'CLOCK!"

Seldon smoothly swivelled her FOV a few degrees to her right and marked the target. Behind one of the two bars on the floor a trio of Yaki were setting up a high volume repeater on a tripod. She aimed and fired. Eighty meters away a three meter tall Paranid recoiled as if punched in the face. It's center eye was gone. It's face was on fire, and silvery gore splattered the mirror on the wall behind it. The heavy repeater in its claws crashed onto the bar. An instant later Frank's cannon roared to life beside her and the bar was torn to shreds as he walked his fire from left to right, dropping the remaining would-be gunners, tearing holes in the bar, obliterating the wire mesh of the cage, and shattering both the mirror on the wall as well as the bottles on the shelves. Seldon remembered another alcohol fire she'd set in a bar recently, aimed her plasma rifle at those shelves and fired again. She was instantly rewarded by a flicker of blue fire through her scope. That flicker quickly erupted into roaring flames and rushed outward, up and down the wall to fill the workspace behind the bar with fire. Nearly half a dozen Yaki appeared from below the countertop and began trying to either flee or fight the fire.

"Done!" Pierce shouted behind her. "We're through!"

"Took you long enough!" Randall goaded him.

"FALL BACK!" she barked, sniping a molotov wielding Yaki off a pile of corpses. "THROUGH THE HATCH! NOW!" No one argued. Just a few sezura later she stepped back behind the hatch and it hissed closed in front of her, cutting off her view of a battleground she would likely take with her until the day she died. Just as it did, however, she heard the distinctive sound of one of their micro-grenade launchers and saw an explosion high above the dance floor. Someone, she thought it was Ea't, had just taken out the motorcyclists and their sphere. An instant after the hatch locked itself in place she felt a shock through the deck and knew the whole thing had come crashing down.

For a few moments the only sounds in the corridor were the pop and flicker of a nearby light and their own panting as they all caught their breath. "Well that was fun," Gisler said cheerily, although his swagger seemed a bit thinner than usual. Beside him Randall turned to Pierce.

"Shit man," he said. "Why did that take so long? I thought that new cyberops software was..."

"Somebody else was in the system," Pierce cut him off. He was leaning against the wall with his head down and his hands on his knees. He looked up, still panting, and met Randall's eye.

"What the hell does that mean?" Gisler asked, pulling a small plastic case from a pants pocket.

Pierce looked around and saw everyone looking at him. "They were trying to seal the compartment," he said. "Hatches, vents, everything. I think they intended to activate the emergency fire suppression protocol."

"You mean vent the compartment into space?" Drake asked and Pierce nodded.

"With over a thousand of their people still inside?!" Seldon scoffed.

Pierce met her eye and shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "I'm guessing the 'Clan Leader' doesn't value them the same way our boss does us." He then directed a respectful nod to Drake. "Thanks for that, by the way." She wasn't sure if anyone else saw it but Seldon noted the shock in the kid's eyes. He covered well, though, by nodding and giving Pierce a friendly clap on the shoulder.

"Well," she said, looking up and down the corridor they were in. It was just as dark, filthy and untended as the last one. As she looked aft she saw something twitch back into the shadows. "Shit..."

"What?" Drake asked, and the rest of the marines turned to face her.

"We're not alone," she told them. "We've got company in the shadows." She applied a thermal layer to her vision and quickly marked several dozen warm bodies cowering in the shadows aft of their position. Then turned and looked forward and noted several dozen more.

"Great," Randall commented, dripping sarcasm. Beside him Ho t'Snt took aim down the corridor.

"They don't seem aggressive," Pierce pointed out.

"That's just cos they're scared," Gisler told him. "Give those jackals half a chance and they'll hamstring us."

"We don't have the ammunition to execute every Yaki we see," she said. 'And I don't have the stomach for it,' she thought. Killing an enemy in combat was one thing. Butchering unarmed non-coms was something else entirely, although she supposed that there really was no such thing aboard this ship.

ARMS
LOCKER

The words appeared in soft blue lettering across her vision. An instant later they all looked at each other. "Aye," she nodded and turned to Pierce. "Alright, Sergeant," she said, "give us a heading."

Pierce nodded and his eyes went blank as he focused on his neural interface. A moment later he looked at her and then nodded forward. "That way," he said.

"Alright, boys," she said. "You know what to do. Check your weapons, form up and..."

"Where's Ea't?" Drake cut her off, causing heads to turn his way and then look about.

"Well damn," Gisler said, managing to convey both annoyance and a great deal of admiration in those two syllables. "Where the hell'd he go?"

"He made it through the hatch," Randall assured them all. "I know he did. I saw him standing there!" He nodded to the shadows just behind Seldon.

The kid activated his comm. "Ea't?" he called and she heard his voice in her ear.

"Huruk'tar!" came the Split's jovial reply.

Drake's face transformed from worry to exasperation instantly. "Where the hell are you?" he asked.

"S'jar t'Chk have DEBT!" came the emphatic, if ambiguous, reply. "Split must collect before you kill him, Lord Drake. Why came."

Drake stood completely still for several heartbeats. His face was blank and his eyes focused on nothing. Seldon managed to keep her amusement off her face. Ea't had always had a way of confounding the kid. Then Drake shook his head as if shivering and sighed audibly. "Like herding bloody cats!" he muttered, apparently forgetting that his mic was on. "Fine!" he said, throwing his hands up in way that indicated it was anything but. "Try not to get yourself killed, alright?!"

"Split confused, Lord Drake," Ea't replied, and Seldon got the sense that the Split was deliberately pressing the kid's buttons. "Why would Split try get killed?"

"Just...!" Drake closed his eyes and shook his head again. Gisler chuckled, unabashed. Drake noticed it, briefly glared at the man, and then rolled his eyes. "Just stay in touch, Ea't," he snarled and looked at Pierce. Before he could open his mouth Ea't replied again.

"Touch what, Huruk'tar?"

Drake ignored him. "We have access to their surveillance system yet?"

Pierce blinked and winced a little. "Access?" he shrugged. "Aye, we have access. Control, though? No. Not so much." The kid frowned and Pierce held up his hands. "I can keep 'em from seeing us," he explained, "but whoever they've got working cyberops on their end is pretty good. I'm watching him counter a lot of what we're trying to do. So," he shrugged apologetically, "I don't know if I can hide both us and him."

"No worry for Split," Ea't told them over the radio. "Have that covered..." Ea't suddenly went quiet.

"Ea't?" Drake inquired, concerned.

"Talk later," the Split whispered back. "Must kill Yaki now." Through the comm they all heard the sound of a hatch opening, followed by the muffled and distant cries of surprised Yaki. An instant later there was an explosion and those same voices started screaming. "Go, Lord Drake!" Ea't said enthusiastically. "Hunt! Kill many Yaki!" To Seldon it sounded as if the Split was encouraging a child to go play and have fun. "This GREAT battle! Meet later! Get drunk! Tell stories! Compare kills!" An instant later the comm went silent.

The kid sighed audibly again and stared out into space. He looked mildly poleaxed. Then he shook his head and looked around at his marines. "I guess it's a race," he grimaced.

"He's one of those fellas that jus' does his own thing, ain't he?" Gisler chuckled and stuck a cigarillo in his mouth. Seldon rolled her eyes. She'd once seen the motherfrakker with one of those things between his teeth while he was wearing a helmet.

"Yeah," Drake grumbled, "kinda like an avalanche." He met Seldon's eyes. "Alright," he said, "clock's tickin' right?"

"Depends," Pierce said and everyone turned to look at him. Pierce, suddenly uncomfortable, blushed. "Well..." he said, "...are we trying to beat Commander s'Quid to S'jar t'Chk," he spread his hands, "or not?"

All eyes turned to Drake, who thought about it a moment before meeting their eyes. "Slow and steady it is," he said. "Let the Split win."

Both Frank and Ho t'Snt lifted their chins, as if insulted.

"What?!" Drake met their eyes and spread his hands. "If we beat that crazy son of a bitch to t'Chk and kill him before Ea't can collect on whatever debt brought him here," his eyes went wide, "I will nev-ver hear the end of it."

Seldon shrugged and shouldered her rifle. "Alright," she said. "Slow and steady then. In that case let's head to computer core. We'll take the ship first. That'll solve a lot of problems at once. Then," she nodded to Drake, "we hunt that rabid son of a bitch down and put him out of our misery. Pierce?"

"Aye, Chief?"

"Same destination as before," she told him. "Lead the way." She glanced at Kao t'Kt. "You got point, big guy."

The big Split nodded curtly, as if to say, 'Obviously. Who else would you give the job to, dumbass?' Or maybe that was just her.

********

"A shuri class carrier just jumped into the sector, ma'am!" Chief Petty Officer Dannar informed her.

"Thanks," Eri nodded and looked up to the overhead display showing the gravidar. "I see it, Chief." The Brimstone, Balefire, and Demon had been joined by six ships belonging to the Teladi clans. She couldn't pronounce their names but they included a shuri, an akuma, and three mobile pirate bases that would be useless in a stand up fight but were likely carrying over forty fighters between them. Shortly after the Teladi arrived Abmanckusset's shuri and odysseus, which also sported names she didn't understand, jumped in beside them. Then Wen Digo arrived with his akuma, the 'Monster', and hoshi carrier, the 'Wild'. Then Nicodemus' with his shuri, the 'Apocryphal', and two kariudos, the 'Iconoclast' and 'Conniption'. The last arrival was Mary Anne O'Riordan's shuri, the 'Bloody Mary'. Eri heard herself take a breath and exhale it slowly. There were also several dozen corvettes, mostly washis and pirate centaurs but Abmanckusset also brought several nemeses, including one heavy. And with all the carriers she estimated that they were looking at north of three hundred fighters.

"That's twelve," Eri stated grimly, "not counting those mobile bases, corvettes or... frack only knows how many fighters are on those carriers."

Beside her H'nt said nothing. He simply stood and stared at the holographic image of the sector. She scowled, considering the problem. "If I were t'Chk," she said, and H'nt turned to face her, "I'd use the corvettes and fighters to create a missile screen. Between their guns, MDM and drones, if they're set up to make use of them anyway, the corvettes and fighters can seriously hamper our ability to destroy those capitals with nukes. We can use flails to clean up the fighters but we'll still have to take out those corvettes." She shrugged. "Using nukes to deal with them will be expensive but, if my opinion matters, I'd prefer to do that than spend the lives of my pilots."

H'nt nodded, then looked back at the table.

"I think you may be overestimating them, Vampire." She looked up and saw Lucifer on one of the overhead monitors. He was looking at something off camera and only glanced in her direction.

"Better that than underestimating them," she argued.

He turned and met her eye. "True," he acknowledged the point. "But in this case I think you're missing the forest for the trees." He gestured at whatever had his attention off screen. "That's not a single fleet," he said. "I know it looks like one very scary armada but it's not. What we're really looking at here is half a dozen separate factions," He arched an eyebrow at her to help make his point, "and from what I've been able to dig up it seems like most of these guys don't like each other. If what..." he paused and glanced at the camera. Then he met her eye and explained. "I've been doing some research," he told her. "The ship's 'AI'," he said, "has been helping me look into these guys and, if I had to, I'd say that that alliance isn't very strong, likely held together by little more than wishful thinking."

Eri frowned while beside her H'nt nodded. "So what are you saying?" she asked.

The Commandant smiled at her. "I'm thinking," he said and she saw that old, familiar twinkle in his eye, "that we give them a reason to wonder whether it's really worth whatever," he scrunched up his face and shook his head, "Sijar Chick," he said dubiously, "has been promising them." Then he arched an eyebrow. "Did you know his real name is 'Arthur Ramsey'?" he asked her.

Eri blinked. "What?"

"This Chick nutjob," Lucifer clarified. "His name is Arthur Ramsey. Comes from old money back on Argon Prime. Used to be an accountant before he got into corporate piracy, where he was apparently a very bad boy. He fled the Argon Federation after shooting a guy he worked with named Willis Stern who," Lu's voice changed slightly to sound a bit like a news anchor, "'authorities believe was threatening to expose Mister Ramsey's illegal methods of corporate acquisition..." Lu chuckled with mild disbelief and shook his head. Then he met her eye again. "It looks like he killed the guy to make sure he wasn't outed as a dirtbag. Then he panicked and ran away." He turned back to whatever he was reading.

"How?" H'nt asked.

Lu blinked and looked back up. "Say again?"

"He means," Eri supplied, "how do we make them question their alliance with..." she waved in his direction, "...S'jar t'Chk?"

Lu spread his hands, as if it was obvious. "Punch them in the face," he said, with a twinkle in his eye. "Hard."

[Scion Drakhar]

Zaitsev, Siberia, eh? That sounds mighty cold. So you're up north in that skinny part of the country, eh?

Nathancros, where do you live? Err... generally speaking. As in continent. I don't know why but I'm very surprised to realize you're from south of the equator.

Oh, and regarding the story, I have 7500 words of the next chapter already written, on a roll, and intended to post the entire Brimstone experience as one great big chapter buuut, way-uhl... the last time I posted 40+k words on one page we broke the thread and needed to beg the admins to fix it so I thought I better break it up a bit. (see Chapter 68. Girl's Night Out)

Anyhoo, hope you guys are still having fun. Oh, and everybody post so we get to the next page. I don't dare post the next chapter until we're on page 84.

Cheers

[Tohron]

Great read, I eagerly await the conclusion.

One thing I'm wondering, does Drake have any way to contact his own ships?

[Triaxx2]

Yes... breaking the forum is BAD.

Bit of a formatting snafu in the last section of the second post. Tags not behaving themselves.

Fantastic chapter. Tortoise and Hare race to S'jar's quarters? I love it. Split say: What up, doc?

Oh god, Ea't and the Doctor. Bugs and Daffy... It's gonna be messy.

[Olterin]

Posting to advance to the next chapter, aye sir.

...

Glad to hear that you're on a roll again, Scion.

[Zaitsev]

Zaitsev, Siberia, eh? That sounds mighty cold. So you're up north in that skinny part of the country, eh?

I live just where the skinny part starts. Still get some goddang freezing winds from the east, though. Maybe it's Sweden giving us the cold shoulder instead ...

[Zaitsev]

Also, since we're working our way to page 84 I'm gonna double post and needlessly inform everybody about my plans to cook a delicious meal and then sit down and enjoy it while I read the latest chapter.

[Olterin]

Also, since we're working our way to page 84 I'm gonna double post and needlessly inform everybody about my plans to cook a delicious meal and then sit down and enjoy it while I read the latest chapter.

Ah, but is this a meal inspired by Ea't's cooking? Inquiring minds want to know ... Given that Ea't will have tons of ingredients to work with ...

[Zaitsev]

Also, since we're working our way to page 84 I'm gonna double post and needlessly inform everybody about my plans to cook a delicious meal and then sit down and enjoy it while I read the latest chapter.

Ah, but is this a meal inspired by Ea't's cooking? Inquiring minds want to know ... Given that Ea't will have tons of ingredients to work with ...

(Un)fortunately no. Only cattle, rice, assorted vegetables and a bit of spice went into it. It was very good, though.

[Triaxx2]

Can't compare to Sassafras Steaks off the grill but you're welcome to try.

[Tohron]

Hope we reach the next page soon.

I'm wondering - once S'jar and Huritas are both dealt with, will Drake finally be able to resume the main plot? I fondly remember his commentary on the Terran Conflict plotline.

Edit: Yay, new page!

[Zaitsev]

Can't compare to Sassafras Steaks off the grill but you're welcome to try.

I made a mexican beef stew, so I'm not even gonna try to compare.

*secretly take notes in case I ever visit the US*

Edit: *pokes Scion with a pool noodle*

[Nathancros]

Nathancros, where do you live? Err... generally speaking. As in continent. I don't know why but I'm very surprised to realize you're from south of the equator

I live in australia mate, True blue Aussie bloke!


That chapter was GLORIOUS

Got the shivers just SEEING that in my head.. goddamn!

wonder if S'jar is gonna... Finish.. before someone gets to him.. Hahahah!

Keep this BEAUTIFUL shit up! i REALLY want to see who rips his head off first!

[Zaitsev]

Got the shivers just SEEING that in my head.. goddamn!

Same here, Nathan. Same here.

*offer Nathancros some cookies and prod Scion with the pool noodle again*

[Nathancros]

*offer Nathancros some cookies and prod Scion with the pool noodle again*

But of COURSE!

*nomms cookies, Pokes Scion with a fluffy pool noodle"