Warriors For The Working Day

Chapter Two
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.

Aida turned to the doctor. "Is Mrs. Crichton well enough to have breakfast with me in my quarters?"

M'Boya glanced at the readouts one more time and nodded. "If she stays off that broken ankle."

In a few microts I was being pushed by the nurse through the ship in some frelling thing called a wheel chair. It had no wheels and it appeared to operate more like Rygel's hoverthrone. I took the opportunity to look around. The ship seemed to be quite large and the uniformed crew were well disciplined and, I was sure, military.

I was pushed into a small office with a dozen or more uniformed humans jammed into an equal number of workstations.

A muscular blonde looked up from whatever task she had been doing. "Mr. Vergraah is in your office, ma'am. Chief Mario says he'll have Mrs. Crichton's breakfast within three minutes. Meanwhile, he's put out coffee, tea, cocoa and orange juice."

The nurse pushed me into Aida's office and left. Aida sat behind her desk and motioned to a group of pitchers lined up on the edge of her desk, each with a glass in front of it.

"Isn't cocoa a type of chocolate?" I asked.

Aida nodded and reached for a pitcher and mug. She poured the hot, brown liquid out and handed me the mug.

"And you can help yourself to the tea, Rudy. I have no intention of serving you." She did say that with a smile and Rudy smiled back.

"I'd hardly expect you to." He replied, nodding to Aida.

While he poured himself some tea, I studied him. He was a K'hiff. He was from a race that had been descended from something like Earth dogs. He was covered with short brown fur and had a long snout. His mouth was filed with sharp teeth, but he was smiling at me. Instead of the robes I had seen on K'hiff, he wore what resembled what humans called a "suit." Blue trousers with a matching blue coat, a white shirt and a floppy red bow tie completed his clothing.

When he had poured his tea, be turned and bowed to me. "Rudyard Kipling Vergaah, your servant, Mrs. Crichton."

"Your first two names are human, aren't they?" I asked.

Aida laughed. "So they are. Rudy is our political, economic and diplomacy expert."

My eyes narrowed. "Will he be trying his diplomacy on the planet I just left?"

Aida shook her head. "I told you. I intend to free all of the prisoners down there and then hang all of the bastards running the place."

It was Rudy's turn to shake his head. "What Vice-Marshall O'Donnell means to say is that a court martial will be convened under the Laws of War to mete out any punishment that may be required."

"As I said, they'll be hung. For a pirate, you're starting to sound squeamish." Aida replied.

We were interrupted by Chief Mario with a cart piled high with enough food for a squad of starving Luxans. Mario himself was a slim, precise man with a neat mustache and black hair slicked back. The cart was lowered until it slid neatly over my chair and formed a table. The Chief identified food he had brought, most of which I remembered from my trip to Earth so long ago. Scrambled eggs. Sausages. Hash brown potatoes. Bacon. Fruits.

I found that I was very hungry and began eating before the Chief was finished loading my plate.

When I had taken the edge off of my hunger, I looked up at Rudy and Aida. "Why did you call Rudy here a pirate? He hardly looks like one."

Rudy laughed. "I'm afraid, Mrs. Crichton, that I started my career as a pirate. That's how I ended up here."

"You're pirates?" I asked, suddenly suspicious.

"No. No indeed." Rudy said laughing. Aida seemed to find that funny as well. Not that I cared. If they'd help me find John, they could kill and eat the frelling people on that planet for all I cared.

Rudy cleared his throat. "I was born on K'hiff, of course. You and your husband were near Thursday's Landing where most of the humans congregate. I was born far to the south and west, on a small island in the Scented Sea. We lived by fishing mostly, with some farming and domestic animals. When I was about fifteen years of age, the fish stayed away from our island and a long heat wave killed our crops and our animals. We were starving. The elders decided to raid a nearby merchant vessel. There were many of us compared to the crew of the ship."

Rudy sighed. "Things did not go as we planned. We had several boatloads of males, including me. I was big for my age and could handle a spear. That's all we had for weapons, spears and swords."

"The merchant ship traded with Thursday's Landing. They were equipped with weapons that human traders had provided. Oh, nothing as deadly as the weapons you're familiar with, Mrs. Crichton. The weapons' design was quite antique by human standards, but they shot us to pieces. Only two boats escaped out of five."

Rudy stopped for a microt and sadly shook his head at the memory. "I had been wounded in the first volley. My leg was broken and I was knocked to the bottom of the boat. That probably saved me from further wounds. The merchantman sent a boat over to see who we were and took me back as a prisoner. I was the only survivor on my boat."

"I was interrogated aboard the merchantman and my tribe noted. Since I was too badly injured to bother with otherwise, they were about to chop my head off and nail it to the top of the mast as a warning to others."

"I was saved by the oddest looking creature I had ever seen. He had only a tiny patch of hair on his head and no snout that I could see. He lacked fangs or claws, for that matter. He was the most misshapen and deformed K'hiff I had ever seen." Rudy laughed softly. "He was a human, of course. Father James, an Orthodox Catholic priest whose Order, the Order of Saint Anthony, was dedicated to bringing the Christian God to non-humans. He spoke trade talk with the worst accent I had ever heard, but he offered to cure my leg if the merchant captain would let me live and if I'd agree to serve his God for a year after I recovered."

"Well that required no thought on my part. I said yes at once and the captain grumpily agreed. While Father James was valued as a teacher and medic with the merchant community, his religion and its tenets weren't so valued."

Rudy stopped briefly to pick a sausage off of my table and pop it into his mouth.

"Father James took me back to his mission. It was at a large trading port located nearly on Khiff's equator. I was quite surprised to find that my duties included going to school, an indignity that I had previously been spared. At first I resented having to sit with mere children to learn my letters. However, at the end of my year of service, I was quite the student. I stayed there for another local year, reading every book I could find and pestering Father James incessantly with questions. I sent money back to my village. I even became the assistant teacher and was quite proud of myself. "

Aida snorted. "Intellectual pride has always been Rudy's failing."

Rudy nodded. "I have also been able to teach ill-educated mercenaries such as Vice Marshall O'Donnell to use words of more than one syllable."

Aida laughed. There was no doubt in my mind that these two were friends.

Rudy went on. "I had considered taking holy orders myself by that time. I had become a Christian and took the Christian names Rudyard Kipling. He's an obscure human poet, but one of his poems was a favorite of Father James'. However, I was told that there was an opening in the church school at Thursday's Landing. I had been selected to fill that opening."

Rudy leaned back and stared at the ceiling, a wistful smile playing over his face.

"I was quite the yokel. Marveling at buildings of six or seven stories high. Gazing in awe at flying machines. Talking hesitantly to computers. My, my, my." He finished with a chuckle.

"But, I was determined to work hard and for four years I did. There never seemed to be enough hours in the day to learn all the wonderful things the Universe had to offer. Then one day, Monsignor Gallo called me to his office. I had won a scholarship at an off world college. I was to be the first of my race to leave my home world to study."

Rudy smiled and looked around at us. "I was very determined to make Father James and everyone who had befriended me proud. My scholarship was for four years at the Tudor Union University. When my scholarship ran out, I took any job I could get and eventually stayed there for eight years, securing a doctorate in political economy."

He sadly shook his head. "I fear that I had forgotten all about going into the priesthood. I often think I would have been happier as a simple parish priest."

"Like Cardinal Richelieu?" Aida asked innocently.

"Heathen!" Rudy sniffed.

Well, at least these two had seemed to have mastered the human art of talking incomprehensively.

Rudy continued. "On the Frontier, there is little in the way of law unless you are strong enough to impose it. I took a job with the Klaapedia Corporation, a very large concern, advising them of political and economic developments on the Frontier."

"Oh, for God's sake, Rudy. You were a damned spy." Aida interrupted.

"I was an analyst and then a case officer." Rudy shot back. "My last job for Klaapedia was as liaison with Colonel Edmund O'Donnell's Regiment in the campaign on Ain Jalut. When the other mercenaries hired by Klaapedia collapsed, leaving dear Aida and her husband at the mercy of their opponents, I negotiated a surrender that let them leave the planet honorably with all of their weapons and troops. I was advised by Klaapedia that I should have allowed O'Donnell's command to be exterminated, thereby absolving Klaapedia of the need to pay the colonel. Management was quite angry with me and it seemed a good time to change employers. I accepted a position with Colonel O'Donnell."

"Actually, Klaapedia send a couple of assassins after Rudy. His first position with us was hiding behind a combat car." Aida added.

Rudy nodded. "It would have been smarter in the long run to have handed me over to Klaapedia's thugs. I do fear that your soft heartedness will be the end of you."

Before Aida could reply, there was a knock on her door.

"Enter."

Another uniformed woman entered. She was tall. Slender with light brown hair done up in a typical Peacekeeper pigtail. "I've re-run our intercepts as you asked, ma'am." She said, handing Aida a sheaf of papers.

While Aida read the report, the officer turned and looked at me. Stared, actually. Finally she spoke. "You're Aeryn Sun Crichton?"

"Yes." I looked at her but didn't recognize her.

"I'm Colonel Kathleen O'Donnell. I've been hoping to meet you again for a long time."

My confusion must have been obvious. I had met only one human O'Donnell and that was Eddie O'Donnell. Who was this?

The colonel blushed. "How stupid of me. You don't remember me as Kathleen O'Donnell. When you met me I was Cadet Pertha Lekka. I was adopted by the O'Donnells."

The Sebacean name rang a bell. A large group of Peacekeeper techs had wanted to surrender to the forces of President Azzule, the local K'hiff leader. They had been afraid, not knowing if they could trust anyone in this strange and savage universe they had found themselves in. They had asked for Aeryn Sun to come and reassure them before they'd surrender. John and I had gone and met with their leaders, two elderly and long retired Peacekeeper officers. Admiral Kurta and Captain Neem had decided to die fighting rather than try to start a new life in this human run universe, but saw no reason their techs shouldn't surrender. Cadet Lekka had intended to die with them. As it happened, the Peacekeepers heard of the surrender negotiations and tried to stop them. Kurta and Neem died, Lekka didn't although she had been wounded. She had kicked a Peacekeeper off of one of the evacuation trucks just as he was about to shoot John, though.

"I do remember you. You saved my husband's life, Colonel."

"I what?" she said disbelievingly.

"When we were being chased by the Peacekeepers one of them jumped on the back of the truck we were in. he was about to shoot John when you booted him in the crotch from a stretcher. You don't remember?"

She shook her head. "Not a bit of it. I remember nothing until I woke up in a human hospital "

Aida broke in. "Aeryn, what do you remember about your abduction?"

"Very little, I'm afraid. I was with John and the children on a planet called Onetria. I walked into a shop and the next thing I knew, I was being unloaded from a transport pod, bare assed naked. That bastard your people killed broke my ankle, attached the tracker to me and told me I was his prey."

Aida nodded and shuffled the papers in her hand. "We've been in orbit for a little over a week. We've been intercepting their communications. I asked Kathleen to re-analyze the intercepts asking the computers to look for the words like "Aeryn Sun Crichton" or" John Crichton."

She looked at Kathleen. "Can you brief Mrs. Crichton?"

She nodded and took a microt or two to gather her thoughts. "The man who kidnapped you is Settiette Brissollino of Oom Kiep. He's the richest and most powerful being on his planet. He comes to this planet to relax. If you can call it that." She added distastefully. "When he got here he announced that he had captured the "infamous" Aeryn Sun Crichton and intended to hunt her. There's been an enormous amount of comm chatter about that ever since. There's been nothing about your husband or children. That leads us to believe he doesn't have John."

"You believe, but don't know." I said. There was no reply.

Kathleen reached over and tapped something on Aida's desk. A hologram schematic of the planet appeared. I stood up and staggered a step or two to get a better look. "The planet has no native inhabitants and is a long way from any inhabited planets or any spacelanes. As near as we can tell, it hasn't been given a name for security reasons, just navigational coordinates."

Kathleen tapped the desk again. The schematic changed to one section of the planet.

"There are one hundred and twenty seven separate compounds on the planet, spread almost entirely along this river valley. "

A river flashed blue on the map and a series of red dots appeared, one for every compound.

"One hundred and twenty seven rich, sadistic bastards who come here to do whatever they want to, with absolutely no limits. Hunting intelligent beings is a favorite, although they like gladiator games, plain old fashioned torturing, the kidnap and murder of their enemies, rape and even cannibalism. "

The hologram returned to the view of the whole planet. Kathleen went on. "There are thirty-one ships in orbit. From what we can tell, mostly armed merchant vessels and the occasional armed yacht. Communications intercepts shows there are thirty two compounds in full operation now. The rest are manned by cadres when the bosses aren't around."

I looked at the number of dots. "How many people are there down there?"

"Not many trained fighters. We estimate twenty or thirty for the compounds that are fully staffed, a half a dozen for the rest. Even on your private pleasure planet, you have to watch your back, I guess. The rest are slaves. They're not trusted with weapons, even if they decided to fight us."

I stared at Aida. "Do you have enough combat power to take these people? If John is on the planet, do you have the power to take these compounds before they kill John?"

That got a smile from Aida and Kathleen. Aida took over the briefing.

"The ship you're on is the armored cruiser Agincourt, 44. No, that doesn't mean we have forty three more just like her. It means she has 44 offensive long range missile tubes as her main battery."

Aida tapped her desk and a hologram of a command carrier appeared. Next to it was a ship about three-quarters the length of the carrier. "Agincourt is a bit smaller than a command carrier, but she's faster and I can pound a carrier with my missiles from well outside the range of a frag cannon."

A second schematic appeared. This ship was perhaps half the size of the carrier. "We also have Tamerlane, 36. Tammy's a light cruiser. She can outrun a command carrier easily, but she'd have to get lucky to take one in a fight."

More, smaller, holograms appeared. "We have eight "J" class destroyers, each with twelve tubes: Jupiter, Juin, Janus, Jackal, Jaguar, Jewel, Javelin and Jawan. And we also have twelve missile frigates. They're also 12s. Since they're less than half the size of a destroyer, they're little more than metal tubes packed with weapons and sensors with a crew fitted into whatever space is left over. They have hull numbers, but the names are entirely unofficial. We also have a half dozen or so unarmed but very fast couriers to keep in touch with our base."

"Very well, if you plan on blowing the planet to bits. You'll need soldiers otherwise." I said coldly.

Aida laughed. "Soldiers? Yes. That brings us to the assault carrier, Marshall Soult." Yet another schematic of a ship blinked into existence. "I think old Nicholas John-of-God Soult would have been pleased to command the five thousand troops we have aboard her, Aeryn. In any case, it'll be enough to take those bastards down there."

Some incomprehensible icons appeared next to the assault carrier. Kathleen took over. "Three armored infantry battalions, an artillery battalion, a support battalion and various company strength units. About the size of Hammer's Slammers, if less powerful."

Frell! When I first had seen Aida, I had assumed she was a refugee as John and I had been so many years ago when we had first met. Aida was in command of a powerful force. And where was her husband? What forces did he command?

I thought about it for a microt and then dismissed it from my mind. First and foremost I had find John and our children. Until then, the O'Donnells's intentions weren't my problem. Frell! Our universe had enough problems as it was. Human mercenaries could hardly frell things up more.

There was a chime and a mechanical voice intoned, "Staff meeting in ten minutes."

"Aeryn, I'd like you to attend the staff meeting with us."

Rudy nodded. "As long as she doesn't bend over." He said cryptically.

"What?" The three of us said in unison.

Rudy gestured to me. "Human hospital gowns seem to be designed to display a human's least attractive side."

Aida grinned. "You robe is open down the back Aeryn." She then turned on Rudy sternly. "Many males of many races have complimented me on my behind and I'm sure the same applies to Aeryn. Not that a Frontier barbarian could tell."

Rudy sniffed and muttered something about ugly hairless bottoms.

Aida called Chief Mario and in a few microts they had found me a plain, dark green workout suit for me. It fit perfectly, reminding me again how alike Aida and I were. Or were we?

I insisted on walking to the briefing room, which was only a few steps away. For my troubles, Aida, Kathleen and Rudy hovered over me like I was some aged and fragile Peacekeeper commander, hauled out of retirement to bore the troops stupid with tales of her long forgotten victories. Still, it was better than the frelling wheelchair.

A door opened and someone called. "Attention!" A dozen humans shot to their feet.

As she entered, Aida waved them back into their seats. Aida, Rudy, Kathleen and I sat at the head of a long conference table. Along one side were a half a dozen humans in dark blue high-collared uniforms. Along the other side were another half dozen dressed in the green and tan uniform that Aida and Kathleen wore.

Aida began abruptly. "I'm sure everyone knows who Aeryn Sun Crichton is by now. I want it clearly understood that the safe recovery of her husband and her children is a very personal priority of mine. If we don't find them here, we'll look elsewhere."

There were nods up and down the table. It was likely that half of them thought that looking for John and our children was a complete and useless distraction to whatever they had come here for, but no one said anything.

"Aeryn, Rear Admiral Nagumo commands our naval task force." Nagumo nodded at me. She was a small woman with a smooth, golden skin and close cropped white hair. Only her dark eyes gave away her age. There was a fold of skin in the corner of her eyes. I tried to remember what that signified with humans. Some frelling geographical distinction?

Aida went on. "Brigadier General Stoll is in command of our ground combat element, Assault Regimental Tactical Group "Szent Istvan". Stoll was younger and much larger than the admiral. He sported a shaven head and a truly monumental mustache. He smiled and nodded. "Lady Crichton, my pleasure."

Introductions over, Aida got to work. "What's the task force come up with?"

A holographic representation of the planet and its moons blinked into existence over the table. Just visible, were some blinking dots representing the ships in orbit.

Nagumo was blunt. "This is the biggest cluster fuck I've seen in my fifty years of service, ma'am. All of the ships are in a geosynchronous orbit over that inhabited valley. There are no surveillance satellites or anything on the other side of the planet. If we had the time, we could sneak up on them by keeping the planet between us and those ships and blow them to bits at point blank range. Most of them don't have anything more than basic navigations sensors active. There are only two running long range sensors, one is oriented towards the damned planet and the other is sweeping only dead astern of the ship. They're in no tactical formation that I can discern. Half of them can't shoot in any direction without hitting a neighbor."

"We've confirmed that two ships are cold iron." Nagumo glanced at me. "Mrs. Crichton, that means the engines aren't running at all. All but one of the rest are keeping the engines ticking over just enough to run life support and minimal ship's systems. My engineers have decided that the one that does have its engines up is running maintenance."

Nagumo stared hard at me. "Mrs. Crichton, unless these people have sensors, weapons and engines the like of which we've never seen, they're practically asking to be destroyed."

I thought for a microt and shook my head. "Our technology isn't greatly different from yours. My guess is that they know that any pirate or raider than comes by here is going to leave rather than face any kind of armed opposition. There are too many defenseless planets and ships around to loot for a pirate to risk his skin in an actual fight. For that matter, the local bad guys are more likely to come in quietly to sell their loot. Any local navies, and there are damned few this far out, can be scared off, or bought off, by the number of rich, powerful beings here."

"So?" Aida raised an eyebrow and stared at Admiral Nagumo.

Nagumo smiled. "Then they can be had. And we're going to have them."