A short engagement - in every sense of the word - from the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
THE FISH WATCH (Warhammer 40k flash fiction)
- Thread starter DragonCobolt
- Start date
- Created
- Status
- Complete
- Watchers
- 13
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 1
-
Statistics (1 threadmarks, 3.3k words)
User Total DragonCobolt 1 Threadmarks Reader mode
The Fish Watch
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Author's Note: This uses the characters of my 40k quest thread TO BURN, VENT OR TAKE AS PRIZE, but is of dubious canonicity and I also wrote it for literally no reason!
It is impossible, in such moments as this, to not reflect momentarily upon the curious and circuitous history certain branches, strains if you will, of humanity have undertaken in the ten millennia since Horus said his t'dos and ceased to be a bother to the greater galaxy. And so, one must reflect upon the humble twist also to be known as, in turn, genus horribilus, homo framgentus, the splicer, the unfortunate damned, the mutant. Such a sorry lot, the mutant. For this particular strain, their origin could be found in the orbital megastructures of the forge world of Voss, where a trifecta of the Adeptus Mechanicus laid forth the theoprint and technsophicschema that would then be used to guide the sacred hand of their artisans and servitors in the laying of a mighty keel.
This keel would span two hundred meters in width and approximately one thousand four hundred meters in length, tapering such as to have significant points at the prow. It would be cast from adamantine and jacketed in solid stone and in this stone would be laid in the groundwork for future outgrowths of the shipmason's art: Gravitic field generators for mass reduction and redistribution, shield emitter channels for the void arrays, and storage bays for ammunition, torpedoes, spare armor plating, rigging, plasma vent conduits, micro-sealing kits, gears and camshafts and the like, and more, and more, a bewildering array of supply and munitions.
The construction of such cavities took many years, and during their construction, hovels and homes were thrown together by the work crews, so they might toil near where they worked. And it is here that that unstoppable branching came forth. When one places a certain number of humans together, of any variation of gender and sexuality and expressions therein, and provides for them a sufficient amount of nutrients and water, there will, perforce, somehow arise the complication of more humans.
This, they say, is the enduring miracle of our dogged and indefatigable race. Questions now arose: Were they subjects of the Magos of Voss? Were they, rather, part of the guild that had helped to construct this part of the ship in question - which, despite being part of the laity and not a member of the PRiesthood of Mars, still retained significant economic and political powers within the Voss orbital system (power primarily acquired and held through a string of brutal strikes known as the Unfortunate Affair of '598.) Or, perhaps, were they to be given up to the Administratum, who had technical oversight over the construction of ships (though not their deployment, this being given to the Imperial Governor of the solar system, a distinct and unenviable position that held all the responsibility of governorial duties with none of the actual power, wealth, or respect such positions nominally held thanks to the fact the only habitable world in system was owned entirely by the Tech Priests of Mars.)
This thorny political question only grew more pronounced when the ship was complete and the population had tripled, becoming in truth a real community, complete with church, schola, and guilds in miniature.
Which is why the tech priests walled the entire community up inside of a cistern, declared them crew, and decided to let the Imperial Navy deal with the logistics of it all.
And deal with it the Navy did by filling the cistern to half rather than full water rations and letting the poor blighters within do as they would for the better part of three millenia. Over this time, exposure to the elements and the mutagenic effects of radiation, warp exposure, and certain indelicacies best left off this page lest this book ever fall into the hands of a young gentlewoman of proper breeding and delicate constitution, created the aforementioned mutants. This particular branch was known for their grayish skin, their gills, their sharp teeth, their penchant for tattooing using the coolant fluid tapped from the port laser com array, and a curious breed of Emperor worship that was declared to be a mere heterodoxy rather than heresy by the thinnest of margins and only once they agreed to remove the tentacles from his Majesty's divine visage.
They were approached by the fifth captain of the ship - a doughy, five cheeked, mustached, red faced fellow named Stumivier Kalenjraskrovitch, who despite everything, somehow had contrived to have not been born on Vostroya. Captain Stumivier had come to the mutants during the Long Engagement of the 39th millennium, where the ship was stuck in an eternity of strafe and counter-strafing fought across and around the impassable accretion disk of a mighty singularity. Being a frigate, the ship was there only to escort the carriers and deck ships that sent forth the fighters and bombers that did the actual battling, and after three years, the crew had lost men from attrition and plundering (the carriers had a worrying habit of sending jollyboats over to snatch crew to replace their dead fighter pilots) and so, Captain Stumivier had asked the mutants if they might not want to perhaps lend a hand or three.
And so had begun the tradition of the Fish Watch - where the mutants took up some posts so the more mainstream of the human crew could get to bed without running themselves to the bone. The Fish Watch only came about when the ship was under the most dire of situations, and so, had been only logged three more times between the 39th and 41st. The second time was during the Battle of Macragge, when a quarter of the crew had been killed in a single horrid three hour hand to hand fight with three HIve Tyrants that had found their way aboard.
The third and final time was right now.
And it was all for quite a good cause.
The alternative would have been paying real crew, and your finances were far too in arrears for that.
And now, you had every reason to thank your lack of foresight now. And to think, you had been chiding yourself on not folding - you had been so very positive that that low down Trader Fekwind could not possibly have had both Emperors in his hand, and the winnings would have been enough for you to begin thinking about replacing the cracked casings on the port maglev culverines. But now, due to not folding, you had been forced to call upon the fishies, and now, one of them had knocked you over before an exploding lectern could rearrange your features.
The Fishie herself - a youngish girl of maybe eighteen years of age - blinked at you with that alarming, watery look of them - and then helped you to your feet as you snatched up your hat and placed it upon your head. "Well, my thanks, Mr…"
"...uh…" the fishie blinked at you - but before she could respond, the low rumbling of the starboard guns speaking their response to the wallowing Universe that was outside. The bloody ship was easily twelve times larger than yours, vaster than cities, and utterly dedicated to the most heinous of practical enterprises: Worldly ransom. Where many pirates would steal a raider or frigate (or, let us be sadly honest, when many naval captains realize that they could make significantly more for significantly less danger by pinching a few civilian ships then abdicating their colors and their spacecraft to disappear into civilian populations) and begin to strike at charist shipping, these fellows had decided to be a touch more flamboyant and spectacular.
A Universe class mass conveyor transport sits twelve kilometers from stem to stern and is three abeam, with enough space for a million passengers if they didn't mind the press, five hundred thousand if they preferred some wiggle room, and uncounted tonnes of loot. The sheer terrifying vastness of them gave room enough to mount guns aplenty, though they were nearly never needed for their particular profession: Arrive in orbit around some poorly defended world...state that the world is to give over its tithe to you...bombard a few low population settlements here and there...open your holds and go…
A pretty profit all in all, the larcenous dogs, but they wouldn't get away with it. You may be captaining a frigate, and they may outweigh you twelve to one, and their crew might number in the hundreds of thousands, but you are in the bloody Navy and you are not about to strike your colors to some upgunned, overpriced, wallowing tub of an ore hauling scallywags who weren't fit to polish boot one of the sorriest space dog on your whole bloody ship! "And that goes for you as well!" you exclaimed, aloud, pointing at the fishie who had saved you.
"I...I beg your-"
"What's your name, girl!" You shouted above the din.
The fishie said her name, the noise lost to the oblivion of the gun.
"Speak up, good Emperor, bellow if you must!"
"Birgitetta!" she bellowed into sudden silence as the last of the guns finished their firing.
"Very good! Mr. Es, mark Mr. Brigietta down as our newest midshipman!" you say. "You can read, right?"
"I, yes-" she stammered, as Mr. Es shouted out.
"Mark it down, Mr. Ted!"
Mr. Ted bobbed her head, her wild profusion of brown hair wobbling despite the smoking piece of debris that had landed in it, unnoticed. You then busied yourself with clapping your looking piece to your eye and through it peering at the pict-captors that were mounted at near your stunsel thrusters. There, you could see the position of the Universe, her name emblazoned in letters the height of some mountains (small mountains, but still!): THE CRIMSON SQUAT
"Pfah!" you scowl - but see that she has taken the shot you've laid upon her with annoying aplomb. They must have known they had not a chance in any level of the Warp's various hells to evade the armor piercing and canister your macros were laying into them, and so, they had rolled their ship so the shells had landed in parts of the ship the pirates clearly gave not a fig about. You saw ice water...armor plating...not a corpse, not a body or a hand or a merry leg. You lower your piece. "Mr. Khan, Mr. Vrook, come, I must pick your brains."
"Mr. Vrook is with the surgeons, sir," Mr. Khan said, stepping to stand beside you. Now that you notice, the bridge is terribly smoky. "Those damned pulse guns of theirs, bloody cheating pirate bastards."
"Pulse…" you gasp. "Ah, ionics? You're right, that is rather low, is it not?"
"Quite right, sir," Mr. Khan rumbled.
"Sir?" Mr. Brigietta asked.
"Ah, yes, a new midshipman should learn the way of such things. You see, an ionic weapon fires not a shell but a jacketed core of negative particles known as an electron, which itself is but a part of the atoms that make up our very-"
The blue-white flashes that signal the Crimson was returning fire winked in the corner of your eyes and you could see Mr. Brigietta began to hunch, but you cheerfully took her arm and held her up high.
"Now now, Mr. Brigietta, we stand tall on the quarter deck! Besides, even ionic weapons can't clear five hundred score kilometers in more than six, seven minutes - you see, the jacketing is a solid matter matrix, not actual raw electrons, so rather than a lance-"
Mr. Brigietta, looking quite frustrated, showed all of her teeth and said: "I know what pulse guns are, you giant lummox! I've lived a-ship my whole bloody life! In the cistern-" which she pronounced "siss-sthun" "-whenever the bloody void shields come aline, we need to throw up Saint Bucker's Basket! You know! The foil-weave? That Tech...Saint BUcker was a Magos of…"
"I believe she means a Faraday shield, Captain," Mr. Khan says.
"Good Emperor!" you exclaim, as if you have any idea what it is she is speaking of. "Could such a thing be done?"
"In a jiff, we have leagues of the stuff in storage! Just give me...a hundred void suits and two hours," Mr. Brigietta says, bobbing her head.
"Step to it and you have gold bars in your future, Mr. Brigietta!" you exclaim.
Mr. Khan frowns as the young mid sprints off. "You are aware that mutants cannot be officers?"
"Then how do you explain Mr. Lavery?"
"Psoriasis and gills are not equivalent, sir."
"Pfah!" you exclaim and, being captain, that is that.
Three barrages of pulse shells later, which kill several dozen more crew from shorting systems and maddened tech sprites, the vac-suited fishes finish their task, which you envy not a whit, though you must say, your newly promoted midshipman proves she has a definite handle of crew action on such a scale, and with such a goal. She took advantage of the fact that the gravitic field emitted by the graviplates creates a definite downward direction - many a groundling would exclaim 'oh what rubbish!' if shown how objects tossed off a ship behaved, and proclaim 'ah, such a thing is not so!' upon seeing, say, a bombshell dropped from the belly of a bomber.
But this is why groundlings are as they are - useless layabout lackwits who are best left at the bottom of gravity wells and not here in the void where they might get themselves hurt - and why Mr. Brigietta is going to be such a fine officer some day.
For you see, she disposed of her vac-suited voidsmen along the upper edge of the starboard flank of the ship, holding the Faraday shielding (which, to your eye, merely looked like a great wave of chickoon caging material) in a vast coil. First, they welded one end to the top, then they hurled it off, and let the graviplates drag the foil downwards thanks to the heavy weights she had attached to it. In the end, it took but a trice and the entire starboard side of your ship was entirely protected from the ionic disruption fired from the pulse guns.
Thus liberated from the endless disruptions, your guns were able to speak regularly - and though you feared that firing shot through the Faraday shield would wound it, it seemed that Mr. Brigietta had thought of that as well and already cut holes precisely so that they would hang before the macro-cannon barrels. The end result was, with careful firing from the gun crews, the shield remained intact and over the course of six more hours of shooting, the Crimson was forced, at last, to strike her colors.
Standing upon her bridge and watching as your armsmen marched the glum looking pirates off to their justice (which, for the crew, would be service aboard an Imperial navy ship, dispersed out so that they could not hatch and plot schemes together, whilst their officers would be hung, shot, drawn, quartered, and finally, keelhauled until dead, before being thrown into space) you clapped your hand to the fisher girl and said: "Mr. Brigietta, you are going to make a fine officer, you know?"
"Sir!"
You and your new finest officer turned and found several armsmen approaching - and with them, a bedraggled lot of poor blighters that you immediately recognize as prisoners.
"We found them in the hold," the armsman on the left says, stroking his impressive Vedic beard.
"Praise the Emperor, you saved us before they found him out," one of the prisoners - an older gentleman with skin the color of an improperly washed groxhide - said. He stepped forward. "Before those dogs took the ship, we were transporting Lord Alix Fasternesh, the son of the Imperial Governor of Parasito."
"Y-You didn't have to hide me," a shy voice said, and another boy stepped forward - maybe twenty if you were any judge of such a thing and devastatingly handsome, if you were the unfortunate type to be appreciative of men. Not that you had anything against heterosexual women, but...well...okay, you had to admit, it was rather adorable how immediately Mr. Brigietta swooned to see him.
"Oh but we did, imagine the ransom they would have tried to claim from your family," the older gentleman said, nodding.
You stroke your chin - and try to not dance, for it is quite an unbecoming thing of an officer, even if the Captain's share you are already calculating...for a prince's ransom! Ah! Delights and heavens above! And so, with great effort, you do compact yourself and manage to say: "Well, we'd never have saved you without the quick thinking of Mr. Brigietta, my newest Lieutenant!" you clap your hand to her shoulder. "...once she passes the exam, of course."
Lord Fasternesh took Brigietta's hand, his eyes wide. "I...you have my thanks, Lady...er..uh, Lieutenant, uh…" he stammered.
Brigietta's gills spread and flapped open, then shut again, then open, five or six times in very rapid succession.
You were overwhelmingly pleased with yourself for the entire cruise back to Parasito - to deliver news of your victory and drop off your prize. You felt even better still when word came of the engagement.
"It truly is a shame," you say, nodding, over the game of Regicide that you and your good and dear friend, Doctor Jonathan Balthezar, have set up, with the green and white and blue orb of Parasito hanging in your stateroom windows. "Quite an officer, yes, but such is young love, and I am not about to get in the way of a storybook romance, especially not after such an invitation! A week's festivities! The entire nobility of the world, invited, a hand in marriage, and you know what this shall bring, Jon, oh, it shall bring every fetching wife and charming daughter on the planet, and you know, ah, you know how fine I look in a uniform, with prize money to spend, ah, yes! Ha ha! You do, old boy."
"Indeed," Jon says, his voice waspish and knife sharp - the normal tone taken for all things, for Jon is unfortunately cursed to always sound moments away from striking you for saying a foolish thing. "And his parents do not mind her...geneomic irregularity?"
"Oh, pfha!" you wave your hand. "Nobles can do as they like and who is to say boo, so long as the tithes are paid and they are to say their Thees and Thous every Restday mass."
"Hmm, yes…" Jon frowns. "Though, it does seem as if it lands you in somewhat of a pickle, does it not?"
"Whyever will it?"
"She has brought her family with her to the planet, has she?"
"Yes, I agreed to the transfer myself."
"...and you do not see the issue?"
"No, good Emperor, so, she wishes to bring an auntie and a mother, maybe, and a father too, to totter around in some crystal palace, and-"
"My dear Vynn," Jon says, resting an elbow upon the table, his knuckles upon his chin, his eyes upon yours. "Princess Brigietta Fasternesh Nee Cthulas was related to everyone in Cistern A-2."
"..."
"Did you not ask why she requested each lander for transport?"
At that moment, a polite knock came and Mr. Vrook, quite recovered, called through: "Captain, we need to find some hands - the 8th watch is entirely gone."
Jon's uproarious laughter did not, in any way, help.
***
It is impossible, in such moments as this, to not reflect momentarily upon the curious and circuitous history certain branches, strains if you will, of humanity have undertaken in the ten millennia since Horus said his t'dos and ceased to be a bother to the greater galaxy. And so, one must reflect upon the humble twist also to be known as, in turn, genus horribilus, homo framgentus, the splicer, the unfortunate damned, the mutant. Such a sorry lot, the mutant. For this particular strain, their origin could be found in the orbital megastructures of the forge world of Voss, where a trifecta of the Adeptus Mechanicus laid forth the theoprint and technsophicschema that would then be used to guide the sacred hand of their artisans and servitors in the laying of a mighty keel.
This keel would span two hundred meters in width and approximately one thousand four hundred meters in length, tapering such as to have significant points at the prow. It would be cast from adamantine and jacketed in solid stone and in this stone would be laid in the groundwork for future outgrowths of the shipmason's art: Gravitic field generators for mass reduction and redistribution, shield emitter channels for the void arrays, and storage bays for ammunition, torpedoes, spare armor plating, rigging, plasma vent conduits, micro-sealing kits, gears and camshafts and the like, and more, and more, a bewildering array of supply and munitions.
The construction of such cavities took many years, and during their construction, hovels and homes were thrown together by the work crews, so they might toil near where they worked. And it is here that that unstoppable branching came forth. When one places a certain number of humans together, of any variation of gender and sexuality and expressions therein, and provides for them a sufficient amount of nutrients and water, there will, perforce, somehow arise the complication of more humans.
This, they say, is the enduring miracle of our dogged and indefatigable race. Questions now arose: Were they subjects of the Magos of Voss? Were they, rather, part of the guild that had helped to construct this part of the ship in question - which, despite being part of the laity and not a member of the PRiesthood of Mars, still retained significant economic and political powers within the Voss orbital system (power primarily acquired and held through a string of brutal strikes known as the Unfortunate Affair of '598.) Or, perhaps, were they to be given up to the Administratum, who had technical oversight over the construction of ships (though not their deployment, this being given to the Imperial Governor of the solar system, a distinct and unenviable position that held all the responsibility of governorial duties with none of the actual power, wealth, or respect such positions nominally held thanks to the fact the only habitable world in system was owned entirely by the Tech Priests of Mars.)
This thorny political question only grew more pronounced when the ship was complete and the population had tripled, becoming in truth a real community, complete with church, schola, and guilds in miniature.
Which is why the tech priests walled the entire community up inside of a cistern, declared them crew, and decided to let the Imperial Navy deal with the logistics of it all.
And deal with it the Navy did by filling the cistern to half rather than full water rations and letting the poor blighters within do as they would for the better part of three millenia. Over this time, exposure to the elements and the mutagenic effects of radiation, warp exposure, and certain indelicacies best left off this page lest this book ever fall into the hands of a young gentlewoman of proper breeding and delicate constitution, created the aforementioned mutants. This particular branch was known for their grayish skin, their gills, their sharp teeth, their penchant for tattooing using the coolant fluid tapped from the port laser com array, and a curious breed of Emperor worship that was declared to be a mere heterodoxy rather than heresy by the thinnest of margins and only once they agreed to remove the tentacles from his Majesty's divine visage.
They were approached by the fifth captain of the ship - a doughy, five cheeked, mustached, red faced fellow named Stumivier Kalenjraskrovitch, who despite everything, somehow had contrived to have not been born on Vostroya. Captain Stumivier had come to the mutants during the Long Engagement of the 39th millennium, where the ship was stuck in an eternity of strafe and counter-strafing fought across and around the impassable accretion disk of a mighty singularity. Being a frigate, the ship was there only to escort the carriers and deck ships that sent forth the fighters and bombers that did the actual battling, and after three years, the crew had lost men from attrition and plundering (the carriers had a worrying habit of sending jollyboats over to snatch crew to replace their dead fighter pilots) and so, Captain Stumivier had asked the mutants if they might not want to perhaps lend a hand or three.
And so had begun the tradition of the Fish Watch - where the mutants took up some posts so the more mainstream of the human crew could get to bed without running themselves to the bone. The Fish Watch only came about when the ship was under the most dire of situations, and so, had been only logged three more times between the 39th and 41st. The second time was during the Battle of Macragge, when a quarter of the crew had been killed in a single horrid three hour hand to hand fight with three HIve Tyrants that had found their way aboard.
The third and final time was right now.
And it was all for quite a good cause.
The alternative would have been paying real crew, and your finances were far too in arrears for that.
And now, you had every reason to thank your lack of foresight now. And to think, you had been chiding yourself on not folding - you had been so very positive that that low down Trader Fekwind could not possibly have had both Emperors in his hand, and the winnings would have been enough for you to begin thinking about replacing the cracked casings on the port maglev culverines. But now, due to not folding, you had been forced to call upon the fishies, and now, one of them had knocked you over before an exploding lectern could rearrange your features.
The Fishie herself - a youngish girl of maybe eighteen years of age - blinked at you with that alarming, watery look of them - and then helped you to your feet as you snatched up your hat and placed it upon your head. "Well, my thanks, Mr…"
"...uh…" the fishie blinked at you - but before she could respond, the low rumbling of the starboard guns speaking their response to the wallowing Universe that was outside. The bloody ship was easily twelve times larger than yours, vaster than cities, and utterly dedicated to the most heinous of practical enterprises: Worldly ransom. Where many pirates would steal a raider or frigate (or, let us be sadly honest, when many naval captains realize that they could make significantly more for significantly less danger by pinching a few civilian ships then abdicating their colors and their spacecraft to disappear into civilian populations) and begin to strike at charist shipping, these fellows had decided to be a touch more flamboyant and spectacular.
A Universe class mass conveyor transport sits twelve kilometers from stem to stern and is three abeam, with enough space for a million passengers if they didn't mind the press, five hundred thousand if they preferred some wiggle room, and uncounted tonnes of loot. The sheer terrifying vastness of them gave room enough to mount guns aplenty, though they were nearly never needed for their particular profession: Arrive in orbit around some poorly defended world...state that the world is to give over its tithe to you...bombard a few low population settlements here and there...open your holds and go…
A pretty profit all in all, the larcenous dogs, but they wouldn't get away with it. You may be captaining a frigate, and they may outweigh you twelve to one, and their crew might number in the hundreds of thousands, but you are in the bloody Navy and you are not about to strike your colors to some upgunned, overpriced, wallowing tub of an ore hauling scallywags who weren't fit to polish boot one of the sorriest space dog on your whole bloody ship! "And that goes for you as well!" you exclaimed, aloud, pointing at the fishie who had saved you.
"I...I beg your-"
"What's your name, girl!" You shouted above the din.
The fishie said her name, the noise lost to the oblivion of the gun.
"Speak up, good Emperor, bellow if you must!"
"Birgitetta!" she bellowed into sudden silence as the last of the guns finished their firing.
"Very good! Mr. Es, mark Mr. Brigietta down as our newest midshipman!" you say. "You can read, right?"
"I, yes-" she stammered, as Mr. Es shouted out.
"Mark it down, Mr. Ted!"
Mr. Ted bobbed her head, her wild profusion of brown hair wobbling despite the smoking piece of debris that had landed in it, unnoticed. You then busied yourself with clapping your looking piece to your eye and through it peering at the pict-captors that were mounted at near your stunsel thrusters. There, you could see the position of the Universe, her name emblazoned in letters the height of some mountains (small mountains, but still!): THE CRIMSON SQUAT
"Pfah!" you scowl - but see that she has taken the shot you've laid upon her with annoying aplomb. They must have known they had not a chance in any level of the Warp's various hells to evade the armor piercing and canister your macros were laying into them, and so, they had rolled their ship so the shells had landed in parts of the ship the pirates clearly gave not a fig about. You saw ice water...armor plating...not a corpse, not a body or a hand or a merry leg. You lower your piece. "Mr. Khan, Mr. Vrook, come, I must pick your brains."
"Mr. Vrook is with the surgeons, sir," Mr. Khan said, stepping to stand beside you. Now that you notice, the bridge is terribly smoky. "Those damned pulse guns of theirs, bloody cheating pirate bastards."
"Pulse…" you gasp. "Ah, ionics? You're right, that is rather low, is it not?"
"Quite right, sir," Mr. Khan rumbled.
"Sir?" Mr. Brigietta asked.
"Ah, yes, a new midshipman should learn the way of such things. You see, an ionic weapon fires not a shell but a jacketed core of negative particles known as an electron, which itself is but a part of the atoms that make up our very-"
The blue-white flashes that signal the Crimson was returning fire winked in the corner of your eyes and you could see Mr. Brigietta began to hunch, but you cheerfully took her arm and held her up high.
"Now now, Mr. Brigietta, we stand tall on the quarter deck! Besides, even ionic weapons can't clear five hundred score kilometers in more than six, seven minutes - you see, the jacketing is a solid matter matrix, not actual raw electrons, so rather than a lance-"
Mr. Brigietta, looking quite frustrated, showed all of her teeth and said: "I know what pulse guns are, you giant lummox! I've lived a-ship my whole bloody life! In the cistern-" which she pronounced "siss-sthun" "-whenever the bloody void shields come aline, we need to throw up Saint Bucker's Basket! You know! The foil-weave? That Tech...Saint BUcker was a Magos of…"
"I believe she means a Faraday shield, Captain," Mr. Khan says.
"Good Emperor!" you exclaim, as if you have any idea what it is she is speaking of. "Could such a thing be done?"
"In a jiff, we have leagues of the stuff in storage! Just give me...a hundred void suits and two hours," Mr. Brigietta says, bobbing her head.
"Step to it and you have gold bars in your future, Mr. Brigietta!" you exclaim.
Mr. Khan frowns as the young mid sprints off. "You are aware that mutants cannot be officers?"
"Then how do you explain Mr. Lavery?"
"Psoriasis and gills are not equivalent, sir."
"Pfah!" you exclaim and, being captain, that is that.
***
Three barrages of pulse shells later, which kill several dozen more crew from shorting systems and maddened tech sprites, the vac-suited fishes finish their task, which you envy not a whit, though you must say, your newly promoted midshipman proves she has a definite handle of crew action on such a scale, and with such a goal. She took advantage of the fact that the gravitic field emitted by the graviplates creates a definite downward direction - many a groundling would exclaim 'oh what rubbish!' if shown how objects tossed off a ship behaved, and proclaim 'ah, such a thing is not so!' upon seeing, say, a bombshell dropped from the belly of a bomber.
But this is why groundlings are as they are - useless layabout lackwits who are best left at the bottom of gravity wells and not here in the void where they might get themselves hurt - and why Mr. Brigietta is going to be such a fine officer some day.
For you see, she disposed of her vac-suited voidsmen along the upper edge of the starboard flank of the ship, holding the Faraday shielding (which, to your eye, merely looked like a great wave of chickoon caging material) in a vast coil. First, they welded one end to the top, then they hurled it off, and let the graviplates drag the foil downwards thanks to the heavy weights she had attached to it. In the end, it took but a trice and the entire starboard side of your ship was entirely protected from the ionic disruption fired from the pulse guns.
Thus liberated from the endless disruptions, your guns were able to speak regularly - and though you feared that firing shot through the Faraday shield would wound it, it seemed that Mr. Brigietta had thought of that as well and already cut holes precisely so that they would hang before the macro-cannon barrels. The end result was, with careful firing from the gun crews, the shield remained intact and over the course of six more hours of shooting, the Crimson was forced, at last, to strike her colors.
Standing upon her bridge and watching as your armsmen marched the glum looking pirates off to their justice (which, for the crew, would be service aboard an Imperial navy ship, dispersed out so that they could not hatch and plot schemes together, whilst their officers would be hung, shot, drawn, quartered, and finally, keelhauled until dead, before being thrown into space) you clapped your hand to the fisher girl and said: "Mr. Brigietta, you are going to make a fine officer, you know?"
"Sir!"
You and your new finest officer turned and found several armsmen approaching - and with them, a bedraggled lot of poor blighters that you immediately recognize as prisoners.
"We found them in the hold," the armsman on the left says, stroking his impressive Vedic beard.
"Praise the Emperor, you saved us before they found him out," one of the prisoners - an older gentleman with skin the color of an improperly washed groxhide - said. He stepped forward. "Before those dogs took the ship, we were transporting Lord Alix Fasternesh, the son of the Imperial Governor of Parasito."
"Y-You didn't have to hide me," a shy voice said, and another boy stepped forward - maybe twenty if you were any judge of such a thing and devastatingly handsome, if you were the unfortunate type to be appreciative of men. Not that you had anything against heterosexual women, but...well...okay, you had to admit, it was rather adorable how immediately Mr. Brigietta swooned to see him.
"Oh but we did, imagine the ransom they would have tried to claim from your family," the older gentleman said, nodding.
You stroke your chin - and try to not dance, for it is quite an unbecoming thing of an officer, even if the Captain's share you are already calculating...for a prince's ransom! Ah! Delights and heavens above! And so, with great effort, you do compact yourself and manage to say: "Well, we'd never have saved you without the quick thinking of Mr. Brigietta, my newest Lieutenant!" you clap your hand to her shoulder. "...once she passes the exam, of course."
Lord Fasternesh took Brigietta's hand, his eyes wide. "I...you have my thanks, Lady...er..uh, Lieutenant, uh…" he stammered.
Brigietta's gills spread and flapped open, then shut again, then open, five or six times in very rapid succession.
You were overwhelmingly pleased with yourself for the entire cruise back to Parasito - to deliver news of your victory and drop off your prize. You felt even better still when word came of the engagement.
"It truly is a shame," you say, nodding, over the game of Regicide that you and your good and dear friend, Doctor Jonathan Balthezar, have set up, with the green and white and blue orb of Parasito hanging in your stateroom windows. "Quite an officer, yes, but such is young love, and I am not about to get in the way of a storybook romance, especially not after such an invitation! A week's festivities! The entire nobility of the world, invited, a hand in marriage, and you know what this shall bring, Jon, oh, it shall bring every fetching wife and charming daughter on the planet, and you know, ah, you know how fine I look in a uniform, with prize money to spend, ah, yes! Ha ha! You do, old boy."
"Indeed," Jon says, his voice waspish and knife sharp - the normal tone taken for all things, for Jon is unfortunately cursed to always sound moments away from striking you for saying a foolish thing. "And his parents do not mind her...geneomic irregularity?"
"Oh, pfha!" you wave your hand. "Nobles can do as they like and who is to say boo, so long as the tithes are paid and they are to say their Thees and Thous every Restday mass."
"Hmm, yes…" Jon frowns. "Though, it does seem as if it lands you in somewhat of a pickle, does it not?"
"Whyever will it?"
"She has brought her family with her to the planet, has she?"
"Yes, I agreed to the transfer myself."
"...and you do not see the issue?"
"No, good Emperor, so, she wishes to bring an auntie and a mother, maybe, and a father too, to totter around in some crystal palace, and-"
"My dear Vynn," Jon says, resting an elbow upon the table, his knuckles upon his chin, his eyes upon yours. "Princess Brigietta Fasternesh Nee Cthulas was related to everyone in Cistern A-2."
"..."
"Did you not ask why she requested each lander for transport?"
At that moment, a polite knock came and Mr. Vrook, quite recovered, called through: "Captain, we need to find some hands - the 8th watch is entirely gone."
Jon's uproarious laughter did not, in any way, help.
THE END