Four days later, the fleet emerged from hyperspace above Kharak. The surface glowed a sullen yellow, reflecting harsh sunlight. //Sheesh,// Kheran thought to himself, //what the hell did we do to deserve ending up here? I suppose nobody in their right mind would go to the trouble of invading the place, at least.//
"It's good to be back," Maala said from behind him. Kheran thanked He Whose Hand Shapes What Is that he hadn't given voice to his thoughts. "It might not be much of a vacation spot, but it's still my home." A lot of those who'd been born on Kharak felt that way about the 'old country'. The Hiigara-born generation, Kheran included, had never really understood. Kharak's suitability for colonisation had been described in Taiidan official survey records as 'marginal, with strong probability of coditions deteriorating within in next few centuries.' In other words, 'It's a desolate hole now, and things can only get worse.' The Kuun-Lan's commander was bright enough not to remark upon this, however.
"We're five k short of the Immediate Launch Response Perimeter, but the missile defences can still hit us," Kheran warned the weapons officer. "Bring the point defence array online, but leave all other weapons systems powered down. Let's not cause any more heart attacks than we can help, hmm?"
"Aye, sir. Hello! Just about every missile battery in the hemisphere just let fly, rules of engagement or no rules of engagement. Brown trousers across the board, methinks," the weapons officer said laconically. "PoDef guns tracking, locked on and... all missiles down. No impacts or blast damage."
"We REALLY need to think up a better acronym than that. Signals, switch to standard Kushan military frequency." Kheran cleared his throat, waiting for his cue.
"Frequency open, sir."
"Right. Ahem... Attention, Kharak Missile Defence Command, this is the Hiigaran warship Kuun-Lan. Apologies for scaring you. Can you put me through to the kiith council?"
"Um, yes. Of course." The voice at the other end sounded confused. "I'll patch you through now." There was a short interlude.
"This is the Inner Council chamber. Merak Nabaal-sa recieving. Now, would you care to explain what in the seven equatorial hells is going on?"
"I would prefer to discuss the exact details face-to-face, but I must warn you that Kharak is in grave danger. I request an audience with the Planetary Defence Committee." Kheran prayed quietly that nobody would remember the stories in some of the more obscure versions of the holy writings about 'a Destroyer come in Peacemaker's guise'. That would NOT have made his job any easier.
"We will discuss your request once we have learned more from you. I ask that you present yourself before the council as soon as possible."
"Understood," Kheran replied. "A shuttle will launch within the hour." He waited until the transmission ended before gently banging his head on his chair's pop-up console. "More bloody politics. I'd better go and find my dress uniform, I suppose. And Maala? Before you start wearing that smug see-why-I-didn't-want-the-job look of yours, I'm going to need the most able officer in this command down there with me. So you'd better go and find yours as well."
"Listen," Kheran pleaded to the council, "I know how fantastical it must sound. However, what you must believe is that when the forces that exiled us here discover that we are capable of returning to reclaim our world then they will seek to obliterate our whole civilisation. In my time only half a million people out our whole race survived; the Taiidan wiped out everybody on the surface and then turned their guns on the Scaffold and the cryo-trays. You must trust me!"
"I believe it, if only because anybody could invent a more plausible lie," interjected Somtaaw's kiith-sa. "You would!" a voice replied. "You probably had a hand in organising this deception!"
"You dare accuse me of treachery? Where is your proof!" The council session broke down into argument, and further down into exchange of abuse. The elected official whose role was to maintain some semblance of order banged his gavel ineffectually. Kheran exchanged rather harassed looks with him, and pulled his service pistol from its dress holster. He hadn't expected to need it, but he still kept it loaded.
BANG! BANG! Silence fell. "Thank you," Kheran said wearily. "Now, do you believe me or don't you? Am I a liar, or am I really here to help defend your world and people?"
"I say he speaks the truth," a new yet hauntingly familiar voice remarked over the general communications system. "I have searched the personnel and Sleeper lists. Kheran is not listed; by his own account, he has not yet been born here." Fleet Command paused, waiting for the uproar. It came, but mercifully tailed off. "Let her finish," called several council members who, whilst yet to be entirely convinced by his story, found Kheran's approach to the matter of crowd control highly efficient. Anybody who could get the kiith council to shut up deserved respect.
"However," Fleet Command continued, "Maala Kenrac is listed as one of the support crew. If there is any remaining doubt, then I shall have a DNA comparison test arranged."
//Thank you, thank you, thank you!// Kheran breathed, wishing he'd dragged Maala in here as well. Last time he'd seen her she was deep in conversation with the leaders of the various fighter units.
Shortly thereafter, the two of them were in conference with the same fighter group commanders. Kheran pressed a button, and the wall screen of the little conference room flickered to life. It showed a schematic of the space around Kharak. The Kuun-Lan and the bigger ships were shown as small and surprisingly detailed representations, the rest as green dots. Kheran pressed another button, and a Saarkin-Cho carrier, a couple of desroyers and a dozen or so red dots appeared. [Author's note: any resemblance between this description and the Sensors Manager is completely intentional]
"That's what they plan to send to deal with Kharak," Maala explained. "The Kaar-Suuliem is being dealt with separately, but the force they're sending isn't up to much. It can wipe out an unarmed research ship, but that's about it. However, it's likely that when they realise that Kharak has additional protection, the Imperials will send everything they have. The most they can scrape together is this." Several more destroyers, a couple of cruisers, a second carrier and a lot more red dots appeared. The others winced.
Wordlessly, Kheran tapped a few more controls. Three blinking yellow circles moved towards the Taiidan fleet. Several ships disappeared. The greens moved in to finish the job. "I've left strikecraft out of this display, but the enemy will be using theirs against surface targets and the Scaffold. That's where you guys come in. We only have five squadrons, but they have a couple of dozen. We'll need all the help we can get from you. Exact tactics and deployment are down to you, but I've found that the less centralised the command structure the better it is for pilots."
"Spoken like a Manaan," replied one of the fighter group leaders. Kheran figured that this was meant to be complimentary.
"Well, we've got three weeks to rehearse, unless they were monitoring the slipgate exit or something..." An alarm began to scream. "Attention!" boomed a tannoy. "Large group of hyperspace signatures at extreme detection range. Ship profiles consistent with Taiidan military capital ships. All personnel to combat stations!"
"Typical," Kheran grumbled as they ran for the shuttle. "Even a beauracracy like the Empire's can get into gear when a huge battle fleet from the future turns up, I suppose."
He reached the bridge minutes later, slightly out of breath. "Sitrep!" he yelled at nobody in particular.
"It's worst case, sir," replied the sensors officer. "Everything we were worried about has happened."
"No worries," Kheran said more confidently than he actually felt. "Deploy all Sentinel squadrons; they know what to do."
One Sentinel unit formed a forcefield around the Scaffold and the Mothership -at Kheran and Fleet Command's combined insistence, the cryo trays had been towed into close orbit around the next planet along with a pair of Dervishes covering them- whilst the other two made for Kharak itself.
"This had better work," one Sentinel pilot remarked.
"Went alright around Hiigara, didn't it?" replied a colleague. "And Kharak's half the size with only the poles mattering much." Sentinels had been involved in a feasibility study regarding a permanent planetary forcefield system in orbit of the Homeworld. The purpose-built satellites were due to go online in a month or so.
Meanwhile, Kheran looked thoughtfully at his sensor screen repeater. "Standard wall formation, with the carriers and a couple of Tiifal defence field frigates hanging back. This is going to be funny," he grinned. "Weapons, target the main gun at the centre of the formation. Signals, have the Oracles target the flanks. Everybody else is to keep a safe distance until they go off." He rubbed his hands gleefully.
"Charging main gun now," the weapons officer reported, hastily calculating the impact point from the blast's rate of travel and the enemy force's closure. "Range set. Three, two, one..." The whole ship shook violently as the huge fireball blasted away. "Fire in the hole!"
Sensing the danger, the Imperial ships began to veer off in all directions. Two assault frigates collided, detonating in a flash. Then the seige cannon blast detonated in the midst of the fleet. Half a dozen ships were vaporised instantly, with still others tumbling across the void to explode moments later.
"Perfect hit!" Maala reported in grim triumph. "Casualty estimates exceeded by seventeen percent, and their formation is in total disarray."
"Signal the fleet to engage independently," Kheran replied. "Helm, take us towards those carriers at flank speed. Main armament, fire at will!" He turned to Maala. "See if you can't get rid of those Tiifals with ramming frigates. We'll give those carriers something to think about."
"If you're thinking what I am, then I like the way your mind works," Maala replied. "I'll do what I can, but everybody's got their hands pretty full out there." She wasn't kidding.
The Imperials had quite quickly realised that they still outnumbered the Somtaaw by a good margin, and were in a position to group their fire on a single ship. This worked fairly well against the biggest ships, but most frigates were able to literally fly circles around the Taiidani vessels. The remaining missile destroyers were finding that their armament was nearly useless against the point defence equipped capital ships, and turned on the strikecraft darting among the big engagements, with limited success. Arrow scouts and the Kuun-Lan's Seeker squadron were actually faster than the missiles, and even Acolytes and the Mothership's Blade interceptors gave a tracking system designed for targets the size of frigates a hard time. At this stage it was hard to say who had the upper hand, and things seemed fairly even.
The Kuun-Lan moved slowly through the battle, turrets blasting at anything that came into view. The Taiidan had little time to fire on an oversized carrier, and had yet to realise the full, deadly potential of the monolithic vessel. It was raked by one or two opportunistic ion blasts, but no other damage was taken.
Aboard one of the Imperial carriers, the fleet commander was getting worried. Her fleet was getting steadily worn down, and that huge ship was moving steadily towards the carriers. She spoke to the fighter direction officer. "Get a bomber group to make a couple of runs at that thing. I'll try and get one of the cruisers to engage it as well. What in-?" One of those ramships slammed into a defence field frigate, pushing it out of position. A second ramship smashed into the other guard frigate, crumpling its fusion drive array and immobilising it.
"This is very, very bad."
The Kuun-Lan slid between the two carriers. "Side turrets, volley fire!" Kheran ordered. The dozen twin turrets opened up, hurling raw plasma at the carriers. The turrets were fed directly from the main engine, and a concentrated volley could shred a frigate. Three blasts destroyed one carrier and severely damaged the other. Apparently the fleet commander realised that things were now becoming hopeless, and the Imperials hyperspaced out. Their strikecraft were abandonned, and hastily shut down their engines and weapons. Frantic messages of surrender were broadcast from the Imperial fighters, and also from a seriously damaged heavy cruiser that hadn't made it into hyperspace.
"All Taiidan strikecraft, you are ordered to set down aboard the Mothership. You will be offered asylum, and a position in our fighter corps," Fleet Command informed them. "Your own military has abandonned you, and we offer a chance to strike back for your betrayal. If you do not wish to join us, you will be regarded as prisoners of war and be treated accordingly, which does NOT mean the same thing as it would in the Empire."
"The pay's better with us, too," Kheran added. There was nervous laughter from the Taiidani pilots. Kheran turned his attention to the cruiser. "Same goes for all of you. We need all the manpower we can grab."
"I will allow my crew to decide for themselves," the ship's captain replied. "In the meantime, we have taken many casualties and we require medical aid. The political officer is trying to organise the marines to attack anybody coming through the airlocks, and some of them are listening. You will need armed guards."
"Thanks for the warning," Kheran said. "I'll arrange it. Kuun-Lan out. Maala, pack our workers with med-response teams, and a few assault troopers for protection. Better give the docs sidearms as well; that poor bastard'll have a war onboard his ship in a few minutes."
"Right. I take it that we're keeping the cruiser for ourselves?"
"And we would want one precisely why?" Kheran replied mildly. "Fleet Command's welcome to it, if they actually want such an utterly useless ship design. They can back engineer the shiptech, I guess. It'll only be much cop for that and learning important lessons about the importance of wide turret coverage in a combat situation."
All in all, the Hiigarans had fared well. Half a dozen fighters had been destroyed, for the loss of two pilots who had been unable to eject. A few capital ships had been pretty badly shot up, but none had been lost. "Damn good start," Kheran concluded.
Half a lightyear distant, the commander of the battered fleet exchanged exceedingly worried looks with her political officer, with whom she was unusually united in acute, bowel-loosening terror.
"I'll inform his majesty in my report that you were in no way responsible for the failure of our objective, and kept our losses to the very minimum they could have been." He fingered his collar. "Of course, he'll just proportion the blame equally as a result."
"Oh. He's going to be annoyed, isn't he," the fleet commander said slowly. He gave a hollow laugh.
"Annoyed isn't the word. He's going to be so pissed he'll have to invent entirely new sorts of cruel and unusual punishment especially for the two of us, and just about everybody who can't get out of the way fast enough."
"Sometimes I wish I'd stayed at home with my kids. But I just had to get ambition, didn't I?" she muttered. "Oh, well. I'd better go make my report."
"It's good to be back," Maala said from behind him. Kheran thanked He Whose Hand Shapes What Is that he hadn't given voice to his thoughts. "It might not be much of a vacation spot, but it's still my home." A lot of those who'd been born on Kharak felt that way about the 'old country'. The Hiigara-born generation, Kheran included, had never really understood. Kharak's suitability for colonisation had been described in Taiidan official survey records as 'marginal, with strong probability of coditions deteriorating within in next few centuries.' In other words, 'It's a desolate hole now, and things can only get worse.' The Kuun-Lan's commander was bright enough not to remark upon this, however.
"We're five k short of the Immediate Launch Response Perimeter, but the missile defences can still hit us," Kheran warned the weapons officer. "Bring the point defence array online, but leave all other weapons systems powered down. Let's not cause any more heart attacks than we can help, hmm?"
"Aye, sir. Hello! Just about every missile battery in the hemisphere just let fly, rules of engagement or no rules of engagement. Brown trousers across the board, methinks," the weapons officer said laconically. "PoDef guns tracking, locked on and... all missiles down. No impacts or blast damage."
"We REALLY need to think up a better acronym than that. Signals, switch to standard Kushan military frequency." Kheran cleared his throat, waiting for his cue.
"Frequency open, sir."
"Right. Ahem... Attention, Kharak Missile Defence Command, this is the Hiigaran warship Kuun-Lan. Apologies for scaring you. Can you put me through to the kiith council?"
"Um, yes. Of course." The voice at the other end sounded confused. "I'll patch you through now." There was a short interlude.
"This is the Inner Council chamber. Merak Nabaal-sa recieving. Now, would you care to explain what in the seven equatorial hells is going on?"
"I would prefer to discuss the exact details face-to-face, but I must warn you that Kharak is in grave danger. I request an audience with the Planetary Defence Committee." Kheran prayed quietly that nobody would remember the stories in some of the more obscure versions of the holy writings about 'a Destroyer come in Peacemaker's guise'. That would NOT have made his job any easier.
"We will discuss your request once we have learned more from you. I ask that you present yourself before the council as soon as possible."
"Understood," Kheran replied. "A shuttle will launch within the hour." He waited until the transmission ended before gently banging his head on his chair's pop-up console. "More bloody politics. I'd better go and find my dress uniform, I suppose. And Maala? Before you start wearing that smug see-why-I-didn't-want-the-job look of yours, I'm going to need the most able officer in this command down there with me. So you'd better go and find yours as well."
"Listen," Kheran pleaded to the council, "I know how fantastical it must sound. However, what you must believe is that when the forces that exiled us here discover that we are capable of returning to reclaim our world then they will seek to obliterate our whole civilisation. In my time only half a million people out our whole race survived; the Taiidan wiped out everybody on the surface and then turned their guns on the Scaffold and the cryo-trays. You must trust me!"
"I believe it, if only because anybody could invent a more plausible lie," interjected Somtaaw's kiith-sa. "You would!" a voice replied. "You probably had a hand in organising this deception!"
"You dare accuse me of treachery? Where is your proof!" The council session broke down into argument, and further down into exchange of abuse. The elected official whose role was to maintain some semblance of order banged his gavel ineffectually. Kheran exchanged rather harassed looks with him, and pulled his service pistol from its dress holster. He hadn't expected to need it, but he still kept it loaded.
BANG! BANG! Silence fell. "Thank you," Kheran said wearily. "Now, do you believe me or don't you? Am I a liar, or am I really here to help defend your world and people?"
"I say he speaks the truth," a new yet hauntingly familiar voice remarked over the general communications system. "I have searched the personnel and Sleeper lists. Kheran is not listed; by his own account, he has not yet been born here." Fleet Command paused, waiting for the uproar. It came, but mercifully tailed off. "Let her finish," called several council members who, whilst yet to be entirely convinced by his story, found Kheran's approach to the matter of crowd control highly efficient. Anybody who could get the kiith council to shut up deserved respect.
"However," Fleet Command continued, "Maala Kenrac is listed as one of the support crew. If there is any remaining doubt, then I shall have a DNA comparison test arranged."
//Thank you, thank you, thank you!// Kheran breathed, wishing he'd dragged Maala in here as well. Last time he'd seen her she was deep in conversation with the leaders of the various fighter units.
Shortly thereafter, the two of them were in conference with the same fighter group commanders. Kheran pressed a button, and the wall screen of the little conference room flickered to life. It showed a schematic of the space around Kharak. The Kuun-Lan and the bigger ships were shown as small and surprisingly detailed representations, the rest as green dots. Kheran pressed another button, and a Saarkin-Cho carrier, a couple of desroyers and a dozen or so red dots appeared. [Author's note: any resemblance between this description and the Sensors Manager is completely intentional]
"That's what they plan to send to deal with Kharak," Maala explained. "The Kaar-Suuliem is being dealt with separately, but the force they're sending isn't up to much. It can wipe out an unarmed research ship, but that's about it. However, it's likely that when they realise that Kharak has additional protection, the Imperials will send everything they have. The most they can scrape together is this." Several more destroyers, a couple of cruisers, a second carrier and a lot more red dots appeared. The others winced.
Wordlessly, Kheran tapped a few more controls. Three blinking yellow circles moved towards the Taiidan fleet. Several ships disappeared. The greens moved in to finish the job. "I've left strikecraft out of this display, but the enemy will be using theirs against surface targets and the Scaffold. That's where you guys come in. We only have five squadrons, but they have a couple of dozen. We'll need all the help we can get from you. Exact tactics and deployment are down to you, but I've found that the less centralised the command structure the better it is for pilots."
"Spoken like a Manaan," replied one of the fighter group leaders. Kheran figured that this was meant to be complimentary.
"Well, we've got three weeks to rehearse, unless they were monitoring the slipgate exit or something..." An alarm began to scream. "Attention!" boomed a tannoy. "Large group of hyperspace signatures at extreme detection range. Ship profiles consistent with Taiidan military capital ships. All personnel to combat stations!"
"Typical," Kheran grumbled as they ran for the shuttle. "Even a beauracracy like the Empire's can get into gear when a huge battle fleet from the future turns up, I suppose."
He reached the bridge minutes later, slightly out of breath. "Sitrep!" he yelled at nobody in particular.
"It's worst case, sir," replied the sensors officer. "Everything we were worried about has happened."
"No worries," Kheran said more confidently than he actually felt. "Deploy all Sentinel squadrons; they know what to do."
One Sentinel unit formed a forcefield around the Scaffold and the Mothership -at Kheran and Fleet Command's combined insistence, the cryo trays had been towed into close orbit around the next planet along with a pair of Dervishes covering them- whilst the other two made for Kharak itself.
"This had better work," one Sentinel pilot remarked.
"Went alright around Hiigara, didn't it?" replied a colleague. "And Kharak's half the size with only the poles mattering much." Sentinels had been involved in a feasibility study regarding a permanent planetary forcefield system in orbit of the Homeworld. The purpose-built satellites were due to go online in a month or so.
Meanwhile, Kheran looked thoughtfully at his sensor screen repeater. "Standard wall formation, with the carriers and a couple of Tiifal defence field frigates hanging back. This is going to be funny," he grinned. "Weapons, target the main gun at the centre of the formation. Signals, have the Oracles target the flanks. Everybody else is to keep a safe distance until they go off." He rubbed his hands gleefully.
"Charging main gun now," the weapons officer reported, hastily calculating the impact point from the blast's rate of travel and the enemy force's closure. "Range set. Three, two, one..." The whole ship shook violently as the huge fireball blasted away. "Fire in the hole!"
Sensing the danger, the Imperial ships began to veer off in all directions. Two assault frigates collided, detonating in a flash. Then the seige cannon blast detonated in the midst of the fleet. Half a dozen ships were vaporised instantly, with still others tumbling across the void to explode moments later.
"Perfect hit!" Maala reported in grim triumph. "Casualty estimates exceeded by seventeen percent, and their formation is in total disarray."
"Signal the fleet to engage independently," Kheran replied. "Helm, take us towards those carriers at flank speed. Main armament, fire at will!" He turned to Maala. "See if you can't get rid of those Tiifals with ramming frigates. We'll give those carriers something to think about."
"If you're thinking what I am, then I like the way your mind works," Maala replied. "I'll do what I can, but everybody's got their hands pretty full out there." She wasn't kidding.
The Imperials had quite quickly realised that they still outnumbered the Somtaaw by a good margin, and were in a position to group their fire on a single ship. This worked fairly well against the biggest ships, but most frigates were able to literally fly circles around the Taiidani vessels. The remaining missile destroyers were finding that their armament was nearly useless against the point defence equipped capital ships, and turned on the strikecraft darting among the big engagements, with limited success. Arrow scouts and the Kuun-Lan's Seeker squadron were actually faster than the missiles, and even Acolytes and the Mothership's Blade interceptors gave a tracking system designed for targets the size of frigates a hard time. At this stage it was hard to say who had the upper hand, and things seemed fairly even.
The Kuun-Lan moved slowly through the battle, turrets blasting at anything that came into view. The Taiidan had little time to fire on an oversized carrier, and had yet to realise the full, deadly potential of the monolithic vessel. It was raked by one or two opportunistic ion blasts, but no other damage was taken.
Aboard one of the Imperial carriers, the fleet commander was getting worried. Her fleet was getting steadily worn down, and that huge ship was moving steadily towards the carriers. She spoke to the fighter direction officer. "Get a bomber group to make a couple of runs at that thing. I'll try and get one of the cruisers to engage it as well. What in-?" One of those ramships slammed into a defence field frigate, pushing it out of position. A second ramship smashed into the other guard frigate, crumpling its fusion drive array and immobilising it.
"This is very, very bad."
The Kuun-Lan slid between the two carriers. "Side turrets, volley fire!" Kheran ordered. The dozen twin turrets opened up, hurling raw plasma at the carriers. The turrets were fed directly from the main engine, and a concentrated volley could shred a frigate. Three blasts destroyed one carrier and severely damaged the other. Apparently the fleet commander realised that things were now becoming hopeless, and the Imperials hyperspaced out. Their strikecraft were abandonned, and hastily shut down their engines and weapons. Frantic messages of surrender were broadcast from the Imperial fighters, and also from a seriously damaged heavy cruiser that hadn't made it into hyperspace.
"All Taiidan strikecraft, you are ordered to set down aboard the Mothership. You will be offered asylum, and a position in our fighter corps," Fleet Command informed them. "Your own military has abandonned you, and we offer a chance to strike back for your betrayal. If you do not wish to join us, you will be regarded as prisoners of war and be treated accordingly, which does NOT mean the same thing as it would in the Empire."
"The pay's better with us, too," Kheran added. There was nervous laughter from the Taiidani pilots. Kheran turned his attention to the cruiser. "Same goes for all of you. We need all the manpower we can grab."
"I will allow my crew to decide for themselves," the ship's captain replied. "In the meantime, we have taken many casualties and we require medical aid. The political officer is trying to organise the marines to attack anybody coming through the airlocks, and some of them are listening. You will need armed guards."
"Thanks for the warning," Kheran said. "I'll arrange it. Kuun-Lan out. Maala, pack our workers with med-response teams, and a few assault troopers for protection. Better give the docs sidearms as well; that poor bastard'll have a war onboard his ship in a few minutes."
"Right. I take it that we're keeping the cruiser for ourselves?"
"And we would want one precisely why?" Kheran replied mildly. "Fleet Command's welcome to it, if they actually want such an utterly useless ship design. They can back engineer the shiptech, I guess. It'll only be much cop for that and learning important lessons about the importance of wide turret coverage in a combat situation."
All in all, the Hiigarans had fared well. Half a dozen fighters had been destroyed, for the loss of two pilots who had been unable to eject. A few capital ships had been pretty badly shot up, but none had been lost. "Damn good start," Kheran concluded.
Half a lightyear distant, the commander of the battered fleet exchanged exceedingly worried looks with her political officer, with whom she was unusually united in acute, bowel-loosening terror.
"I'll inform his majesty in my report that you were in no way responsible for the failure of our objective, and kept our losses to the very minimum they could have been." He fingered his collar. "Of course, he'll just proportion the blame equally as a result."
"Oh. He's going to be annoyed, isn't he," the fleet commander said slowly. He gave a hollow laugh.
"Annoyed isn't the word. He's going to be so pissed he'll have to invent entirely new sorts of cruel and unusual punishment especially for the two of us, and just about everybody who can't get out of the way fast enough."
"Sometimes I wish I'd stayed at home with my kids. But I just had to get ambition, didn't I?" she muttered. "Oh, well. I'd better go make my report."