Warriors For The Working Day
By
(UCSBdad)
Disclaimer: Stolen about equally from the Henson Co., David Drake and a bit from George MacDonald Fraser. Shakespeare is in the public domain, I hope. In any case, no money changes hands here. Rating: T due to language Time: Some twenty-five plus years after Peacekeeper Wars.
Author's note: This is a sequel to my crossover story Seeing the Elephant. These stories are crossovers from the Farscape universe and the universe of David Drake's Hammer's Slammers. I have tried to explain the back story, but you may wish to read Seeing the Elephant. You can learn more about Hammer's Slammers at . and / and
We are but warriors for the working-day;
Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch'd
With rainy marching in the painful field;
There's not a piece of feather in our host-
Good argument, I hope, we will not fly-
And time hath worn us into slovenry:
But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim;
King Henry V, By William Shakespeare
Every time my foot landed, a lance of pain from my broken ankle shot up my leg. I ignored it. I had too many other things to do to worry about pain. Firstly, I had to get to the rough hill country off to the west. Then I had to find a way to kill the bastard who had broken my ankle. Then I had to find my husband and children. If something had happened to John and the children…..That was another worry I had no time for. Not now.
I saw sunlight ahead of me and slowed to a stop, taking cover behind one of the small trees in the pitiful excuse for a forest I was trapped in. I dropped to all fours and then to my belly. I crawled another twenty motras, dragging my injured leg behind me.
Frell! The trees were thinning out. In less than a hundred motras the woods gave way entirely to an open prairie. Across more than a metra of prairie I could see another tree line. Big, thick trees, whose branches intertwined to create a nearly impenetrable barrier from above. And beyond those trees were the tangled hills whose caves could hide an army.
I lay there for long microts and finally told myself what I had known from the start. To cross into the open was death. My enemy had some sort of an airborne vehicle, he had the finest sensors money could buy, and he had excellent weapons. I had one good leg, my own senses and three water-smoothed stones I had plucked from a stream a day ago.
I sighed, turned around and dragged myself back into the trees. I used a tree to pull myself back upright. I considered trying to tear off a branch as a crutch or a club. I pulled at a likely looking branch. No luck. I swore softly and headed away from the open country behind me.
In another half an arn, I came upon a small pool of water. I checked for an ambush, and then knelt and drank deeply. When I was done, I looked at the mud surrounding the pool. I lay down and rolled in the mud, covering my nakedness, and, I hoped, camouflaging me.
I spent a good while piling mud onto the frelling tracking device my hunter had planted on my right shoulder. I had tried to knock it out yesterday by slamming my shoulder against a large boulder only to find that the barbs that held it to my shoulder were in too deep. If I did manage to get it off, I'd lose half my shoulder.
I was just about to leave when I spotted movement at the bottom of the pond. Something blue and six-legged was sitting at the bottom of the pond looking up at me. I slowly moved towards it, and then in a flash I had it in my hand. I popped it into my mouth. It had an exoskeleton and tasted gamy, but it was the first food I'd had since I had arrived on this frelling planet.
I kept moving for another two arns. It was mid-afternoon, as far as I could tell. So far, I had seen no sign of my hunter. He was out there, though. Somewhere.
The woods ended abruptly and I found myself at a small stream, not five motras across. On the other side was the deep, thick forest I had been heading for.
I pitched forward feeling like my skin was on fire. I tried to scream, but no sound came out. I tried to put my hands out to break my fall, but they didn't move. My head slammed into a rock and I felt blood running down my face.
Face down in the rocks, I could see nothing. There was a low, growling hum that told me that my hunter had arrived.
A booted foot kicked against my ribs, and then turned me over onto my back. Behind him I could see an aircycle. Nothing more than a grav bladder, a motor and some controls. I had expected something more luxurious. I managed, with some effort, to swing my eyes around to look at him. He was as tall as my John, but heavier. Most of that weight was around his middle or in one of his chins. He was dressed in a parody of a Luxan warrior's armor. His armor was bright and shiny and covered with engraving, mostly pornographic. He had a helmet literally covered with Ilanic perra bird feathers. His skin was the white of a Sebacean who rarely got outside and his small dark eyes stared out from a fat, vacuous face. All in all, any real warrior would have laughed himself sick at the sight of the hunter. The three guns in the holsters at his waist kept me from thinking of him as a figure of fun.
"Ah, my dear Aeryn. Such little sport you have afforded me." He couldn't stop smiling.
I managed to catch my breath enough to answer. "Give me ten microts to recover and see what sport I give you." I tried to move my arms and legs. No good. It might take me longer than that. I had to keep him talking. He did.
"It's my own fault, I'm afraid. The device in your shoulder beams a signal to a network of satellites around this planet. I had a civilized meal last night and then a jolly time with three companions who were so, so willing to please. Then off for a restful sleep. All the while my Master of the Hunt kept track of you, so that all I had to do was come and get you."
"Don't you feel you're missing something by not doing any of the real work yourself?" I asked, putting as much of a sting into it as I could.
"Dear me." He simpered. "Do you think you'll get to use those rocks on me?"
He leaned forward, put his boot on my hand and put all of his weight on it. I felt nothing, but I did hear a finger break as the rocks fell from my hand.
He shook his head. "By the god's three pricks, but you're exciting me. You're naked, covered in filth and totally defenseless. How arousing you are. I must have you now."
I managed a smile. "If you think you can without your Master of the Hunt to do all the work for you."
He pulled a long metal rod from behind his belt. "I regret having to use this on you at this stage, Aeryn. This is a development of the neural whip. I'm very much afraid that in order to knock you out sufficiently to frell you, I'll have to use it on you. Some part of your brain will be destroyed. In the long run, it's no matter since I'll have to destroy your higher brain centers anyway. Soon you'll be just an empty vessel awaiting my pleasure. And when I tire of you, I can sell you to the highest bidder. Who wouldn't want the infamous Aeryn Sun Crichton as a slave?"
"My husband might have something to say about your slave sale."
He laughed. "I don't think I'll waste much time worrying about John Crichton."
He leaned down, aiming the rod at my head. "I usually like to take my time and enjoy the process…."
There was a loud crack and a shower of mud hit my face.
"Frelling bugs!" he screamed. "I've told Goro and told him, that for the amount of money I pay to use this planet, it should be pristine. If my neural…."
He stopped in mid sentence. He lifted his hand to the side of his neck and then started clawing at his neck. He started to turn and then toppled to the ground. He landed with his face only denches from mine. I could see he was trying to breath, but couldn't. His face turned purple and his hands stopped clawing at his neck. He lost control of his bowels and bladder and then sagged. He was dead.
I lay there for another micron or so. With great effort I managed to raise my head up to look around me. What I saw wasn't encouraging. Just barely visible cross the stream were three, no, four, blurs. Not bug sized blurs, but anthropoid sized blurs.
After a microt, one blur headed up stream and the other down stream. The other two waded into the stream, headed for me.
"Ye daft keelie idjit." snarled one. "Ye've kilt 'im!"
"Awa' wi' ye, Jie Dee." growled the other.
They stopped by me and knelt down. One blur seemed to touch the dead man beside me.
"'E's deid. Intel'll get naught frae 'im."
The other one snorted. "An' 'im wi''is soul as black as the breeks o' the Earl o' Hell. 'E wiz gonna hae his way wi' 'er, wusn'e?"
"McAuslan, ye dozie chiel! Thim's tha sort intel wants. She'll tell us naught."
That seemed to draw their attention to me.
"She's a rare stotter." muttered one blur.
"A brammer, but." replied the other.
"Air ye gonna gab like fishwives all ta day?" came a voice from across the stream.
"Nae, Sarn't Telfer." They both replied.
"Air ye hurt, lass?" asked one.
"My ankle is broken." I managed to get out. The bastard had apparently missed my head with his neural weapon, but it had been close enough that my head was starting to pound and I was short of breath.
" 'Ere then." The other said. A stab of pain went up my leg as he raised my ankle. Then there was a feeling of extreme cold and then I couldn't feel my leg below my knee. I managed to glance down and saw the ankle was covered in a dull gray material.
"My finger, too." I managed.
One blur reached for my finger and after a stab of pain, followed by cold, I lost all the feeling in my hand.
"Ah pit a ban'age ain yer face, missus." The other said. I hadn't noticed.
One of them grabbed my shoulder to pull me into a sitting position. I could feel the tracking device tearing my muscle and scraping against the bone. I tried unsuccessfully to stifle a scream.
"Ye glaikit teuchter!" The one called McAuslan snarled at his companion. "Wha's wrong, missus?"
I managed to catch my breath. "There's a tracking device in my shoulder. It's held in by barbs. It'll have to come out."
They very gently raised me to a sitting position and examined the device on my shoulder with much swearing and muttering. I wondered how much damage the neural weapon had done to me. My head was pounding and then I threw up all down my front.
"'Ere, missus." Something appeared in McAuslan's blurred hand. A twist of his thumb caused it to open. "T'is nae the creature, but…" He tipped it over and a liquid shot out and into my mouth. It had an oddly sweet taste, but it did settle my stomach.
"See's yer tool, Jie Dee." Something small and metallic was passed from one blur to another. Frell! My stomach was better, but I was getting woozy.
"Air there any hex-plosives in'at?" Someone asked.
I shook my head. "No. I don't think there are anyway. " I managed to get out. By the goddess, but my head was spinning.
"Ah weel…" A voice said. Then I heard the sound of one of the metal barbs being cut, then the next and the next. Then I felt the comforting feeling of cold followed by the loss of feeling.
"Tha' barbs air still in, missus. Awfy sorry. The MO'll hae ta pull 'em oot." Was that McAuslan?
"She cannae move hersel'." Someone said.
"Wee Wullie." Someone called.
One of the blurs crossed the stream. Up close, this blur was the size of a Luxan warrior. The blur, I assumed this was Wee Wullie, leaned down, picked me up and slung me over his shoulder. At his feet was a bulky black rifle of some unknown type. Someone reached for it, and as soon as the blurred hand touched it, the rifle resolved into just another blur.
"Darkie'll hae ye on jankers frae 'im." Wee Wullie said, kicking the dead body at his feet.
"Pit the hems in, big yin." One blur growled. McAuslan?
We crossed the stream. The fourth blur was already heading upstream. "Mr. MacNeill called in the transport. Twenty minutes to pickup."
I was over Wee Wullie's shoulder with my head down and I was starting to get very woozy and lose consciousness. Minutes. Why was that important? Was it important?
I came to with a start when my eema hit the ground. My four rescuers, at least I hoped that was what they were, had been joined by others. About a dozen blurs were in a loose circle, facing outwards from me. Their weapons moved slowly back and forth covering the area around us. We were at the edge of a small clearing in the forest.
"Summat there."
"Aye." Was the reply.
There was something outlined against the sky. Another frelling blur. Was I ever going to actually see these people?
There was a low hum, more of a vibration against my diaphragm than a sound. Suddenly the hum died and the frelling blur stopped in the clearing. Wee Wullie slung me over his shoulder as someone screamed, "Move! Move!"
As we ran to the blur in the clearing, a hole suddenly appeared in the blur. No! Not a hole, a hatch. This must be the transport, camouflaged like the soldiers around me. We pounded up a ramp and into the spartan interior of a small craft.
"Clear! Clear!" Someone yelled. "Go. Go. Go."
I was dumped unceremoniously, but fairly gently onto a stretcher.
"Sarn't Tefler, get everyone strapped in. Send Andrews and Hepburn up front to give the gunners a hand. Where's Grant? Corporal Grant?"
"Here, sir." called a female voice. "Just getting my kit ready for my patient."
A blur knelt beside me. Then she pushed a hood off of her head to reveal a round and friendly Sebacean face. She had pale skin, dusted with freckles and very short red hair.
"Now just relax while I look you over." She said with a concerned smile. She had an oversized glove on that made her hand seem twice its size. She ran it over me from head to toe. She stared at the back of the glove for a microt or two.
"I don't like the readings I'm getting for your nervous system. You may have some neural damage." She said finally.
"Yon bastid said sumpin' aboot damagin''er brain." called an unfamiliar voice.
"I'm going to give you something to put you to sleep." She said.
I tried to tell her no. I tried to tell her that I had to find my husband and children. Something cold pricked the base of my neck.
"Put a damned blanket over her, Grant." Was the last thing I heard.
People talking. People talking very far away.
I opened my eyes. Pipes and wires above me. A ceiling on a ship?
I was moving.
Very tired.
"She's awake."
Nothing.
I inhaled and exhaled slowly. I slowly opened one eye. I was lying on a bed in a small compartment surrounded my unfamiliar machinery. The metal walls, the steady hum of an engine somewhere and the stale air told me I was on a ship.
My brain finally seemed to be working properly. I had been picked up by someone looking for prisoners to interrogate. A perfectly normal operation. I had been on several such missions myself long ago when I was a Peacekeeper.
Who were these people though? Enemies of the people on the planet I'd been trapped on, most likely. But, that didn't make them my friends. At best, I'd be held until whatever operation they were planning was over. At worst…What had John said once? "Dead men tell no tales."
I decided that my best chance was to escape while they still thought I was unconscious. I swung my feet out of bed, stood up and fell flat on my face.
Frell! My frelling leg was still numb from the knee down.
I heard a noise in the corridor outside and tried to pull myself up. My hand was still numb.
"Dear me! Now you've gone and fallen, haven't you, Mrs. Crichton."
There was a woman standing in the doorway, dressed in baggy green clothes. She was small enough that I thought I could take her even in my present state. Her skin was a warm brown, but her arms seemed muscular enough. She smiled at me and walked forward, obviously not afraid that I'd try to attack her.
"Did you want some water, dear? Well, no need to get it yourself. Just ring the buzzer. The little button there by the bed. That'll call one of the nurses." She put her arms around my back and under my knees and easily lifted me back onto the bed. Maybe she wouldn't be that easy to take in a fight after all.
"Here's a glass of water, Mrs. Crichton." She said, holding out a cup she had filled.
"Ah! My patient has awoken at last." Boomed a voice from the doorway. This one I knew I couldn't fight. He wore the same shapeless green uniform as the nurse and had an even darker skin. However, he looked more like an Isillion wrestler than anything else. His short thick legs bulged against the trouser he wore. He had a long, thick torso and very long arms that were corded with muscles. However, he was smiling happily at me.
"Here, now. Let me take a look. I'm Surgeon-Major M'Boya, by the by, your doctor. The young charmer who's been looking after you is Captain Cromwell." He pushed some sort of control and what was obviously the outline of my body appeared on a screen beside my bed.
"Hmmm!" he said, vigorously massaging his shaved head as he checked the lettering running along the screen.
"Very good, Mrs. Crichton. You should have the full use of your leg back in another two or three days and your hand should be fine by tomorrow. You appear to have suffered no lasting neural damage, but I'm going to have you examined again in a week just to be sure."
I stopped and stared at him. Minutes. Days. Weeks. These people were speaking English. I tried to push the translations the translator microbes had given me out of my mind and concentrate on the language. It was very oddly accented, but it was English. But not the English my John spoke. Who were these people?
Someone's head poked into the little room. "Herself was notified when the telltale light went on when Mrs. Crichton awoke. She's on her way."
"Alas! We'll all have to look busy now." M'Boya said with a laugh. The nurse joined his laughter.
I had no idea what they found to be funny, but it looked like I might get some answers. I didn't have long to wait.
She walked in and all I could do was stare at her.
I finally said something. "Frell me dead."
She had a generous mouth that was split by a radiant smile. Above that was a generously sized nose, high cheekbones, a pair of grey-blue eyes with thick eyebrows above them and a mane of coal black hair. She wore a pair of tan pants tucked into a pair of well worn, but highly polished, brown boots. Over a black high necked shirt she wore a green jacket with what looked like some sort of insignia on it.
She strode forward and hugged me. "Welcome, Aeryn."
More than twenty cycles ago John and I and our friends had been chased by a pair of Peacekeeper warships. Unable to outrun them, we decided to try a slingshot maneuver around a long dead planet. But, what we had thought was a planet was actually an incredibly ancient planet-sized machine that used a quantum singularity to provide a gateway between our universe and another one.
We had been shot into this other universe along with the two Peacekeeper ships. Our engine was damaged, but theirs had been destroyed. We headed for the nearest habitable planet while the two Peacekeeper ships had started using their transports to ferry their surviving personnel to the same planet. If we could just avoid them long enough to repair our engines, we could leave them far behind.
The planet was called K'hiff as were its natives. The local K'hiff were well enough armed, but didn't appear to be a serious threat to two shiploads of Peacekeepers. Then we found that a human army was on the planet. How the frell could that be? John's people could hardly get into orbit over their own planet. They had no interstellar capabilities at all.
We soon found out we were wrong. We had crossed into a different universe and traveled a thousand cycles forward in time. We were in a universe that had no Peacekeepers, Luxans, Hynerians, Delvians, Nebari or any other race I had ever heard of. They did have an endless supply of humans. Humans had spread out over the galaxy, occupying any habitable worlds they came upon.
There was indeed a human army on the planet, composed entirely of mercenaries. These humans were nothing like the pitifully armed soldiers I had seen when I had visited Earth with John. They were also very different from Peacekeepers.
Peacekeepers depended upon their warships, Marauders and Prowlers to soften up their enemies. Once that had been accomplished, lightly armed Commandos were landed to mop up any remaining resistance.
Humans had warships, too. But none were around the K'hiff system when we arrived. What were there were heavily armed and armored ground forces like Colonel Alois Hammer's mercenary armored regiment. One hundred and seventy ton fusion powered tanks had run over the Peacekeepers with very little trouble.
Most of the Peacekeepers chose to fight to the death rather than surrender. One Peacekeeper Prowler pilot had been captured and had decided to live. She had taken the advice of a Peacekeeper renegade and decided she'd try to be more.
"You're Aida Borzon!" I gasped.
Her smile broadened. "I'm Aida Borzon O'Donnell. You're not the only former Peacekeeper to marry a human."
"Frell me dead." I repeated, stunned. Then her words sank in and I remembered what I needed to do.
"Aida, you have to help me look for John and my children. If you can loan me a weapon and transport me to the planet, that would be fine. But you have soldiers. If you could allow some to come with me….."
My heart sank when she waved me to silence.
"In a while, Aeryn." She said.
"I don't have time. Please. Just a weapon and transport to the planet. I swear to you…"
"Aeryn, I have every intention of raiding that frelling planet and liberating everyone there. Please! Just wait for a while and trust me."
I nodded. Suppose John was being hunted now as I had been? How could I wait? Did I have a choice?