All the King's Horses Pt. 02

"A better question would be how Miss Winters detected it," he said, looking at Tiff. "We have legends about the Hunter -- but I'd prefer any concrete facts you may have, Miss Winters."

Tobias nodded.

"Sure," Tiff said. "Christian said, uh...you guys know about Gaia right?"

Mr. Werewolf snorted.

"Right, dumb question!" Tiff said, blushing. "So, Gaia's made of three chunks -- three big spirits. The Wyld, which makes. The Weaver, who orders. And the Wyrm, who destroys." She shrugged. "Christian said that the Hunter was forged out of a shard of the, um...the Wyrm." She blushed. "A tiny chunk of that big spirit, carved and shaped into a human...weapon..." She bit her lip, remembering what the Harrower had called her.

My lovely bioweapon.

She felt a sudden surge of her Hunter instincts. The urge to grab onto the werewolf and put her thumbs in his eyes. She tucked her hands under her armpits.

"Fascinating," Sebastian murmured.

Mr. Werewolf shook his head. "No wonder the humans and the Shifter Tribes were at war for four thousand years..." he said, his voice a deep, deep rumble. Then, shaking himself, he laughed. "But I'm glad you're on our side."

"Heh." Tiff gave him a little smile. "And you are?"

Tobias, meanwhile, was tapping at his handheld -- and the ship began to shudder slightly. It felt as if the floor was shifting underneath Tiff's feet. She gripped her seat armrests slightly as Mr. Werewolf tapped his chest. "Bruce Cheboi, tactical officer. Me and Xelnora..." he nodded to the blue chick. "Handle the arms and the hands of this ship."

"By that, Bruce means that we handle the weaponry and the Marines," Xelnora chimed in. "I'm the weapons officer -- I program torpedoes, fire railguns, that kind of thing. Bruce left off his rank, which is 2^nd Lieutenant."

"Why do marines have real ranks, but the Captains have quasi-blep boop fake ranks?" Tiff asked.

"The marines are weird," Tobias said.

"We have our traditions," Bruce said, his voice cheerful. "But, hey, people love us for our eccentricities."

"I thought that I hear that your traditions are merely the last vestiges of a decaying ideology," Sebastian said, his voice holding just an edge of snark, his eyes glittering faintly. Bruce burst out laughing at that.

Tobias held up his hand -- and the bridge crew quieted down immediately. "We're heading for the source of the signals, maximum fusion torch thrust," he said. "The ship will be remaining cloaked until then. Once there, Bruce, I want you to put together a team to investigate -- Sebastian, pick someone you think can determine what kind of technology and race we're looking at here. I want to know if its the Imperials, the Imperials, or the Imperials." He grinned slightly.

Sebastian sighed. "Of course, Captain."

"And don't just nominate yourself again," Tobias added.

"Of course Captain."

Tiff raised her hand. "Yo, can I go?"

Bruce leaned in. "I was actually just about to ask the same thing. If Winters here can spot a neutrino flux of only two point five isorems, I want her by my side. Though, preferably, without silver." He grinned at Tiff and Tiff found herself grinning back. She tried to shift her mental image of putting her thumbs in his eyes to...petting a big dog. A big wolfish dog. Her Hunter instincts subsided ever so slightly.

"I wish that you'd stop using made up terminology for whenever you don't have the actual SI notations," Sebastian muttered.

"Not so long as it keeps bothering you, Sebastian," Bruce said, cheerfully.

Sebastian sighed.

"And Bruce," Tobias said, pausing Bruce mid stand.

"Yeah?" Bruce asked.

"Get her a Paladin."

***

The door that Bruce led her too opened into darkness and Bruce stepped in first, before turning around and spreading his arms, cruciform style, as the lights flicked on, revealing that Deck 4, Room AB-9...was the ship's armory. There were racks of sleek pieces of what was clearly armor, rows upon rows of gloves, rifles, swords, crossbows, grenades, and other weapons that bedazzled Tiff's eyes and made her Hunter's instincts roar to life. She immediately shot past Bruce's broad, burly form and picked up one of the swords off the rack. It felt light weight and perfectly balanced -- she held out her arm with the sword resting on her knuckle, the hilt and the blade not even wobbling.

"This is fucking fine ass forging," Tiff whispered. "Nanocomposite alloys, uhhh. Uhh, it folds up? It folds uppppp!" She squeaked as she pushed a button on the hilt and the sword actually compacted itself into the hilt, retracting and collapsing and slipping into itself. "Ahhhhh!" She caught the hilt as it dropped away from her wrist. "And this is a..." she picked up the grenade, hefting it, closing her eyes. "Monofilament wire mesh expanding grenades. Cuts and its white hot. Burny. Ow." She set the grenade down, walking past several more. "Flashbang, flashbang, flashbang..." She paused, tapping one. "Localized ionizing field to...shut down electronics..."

Bruce was watching her with increasingly wide eyes. "How...do you know all that?"

Tiff grabbed one of the gloves down. "Holy shit!" She whispered, lifting it up and eying it over. "It fires lasers out of its fingers?"

"Yeah, that's a AL-PLPE combat clove," Bruce said, snatching it from her fingers -- Tiff just barely bit back a whiny 'heyy' as he held it in his hand, turning it to show her the knuckles. "And it's not what we're here for. No one takes a weapon out of..." His nose flared. He sniffed. Then he held out his hand. "Tiff."

"Whaaat?" Tiff asked.

"The sword, Tiff."

Tiff pouted. "What if I ask Kfap to replicate-"

"These weapons are paracausal, they can't be replicated," Bruce said. "Gimmi the sword."

Tiff sighed, reached into the pocket she had slipped the hilt into, then slapped it down into Bruce's palm. "You guys keep using that word, paracausal. What the flip does it mean?"

"Magic," Bruce said, hanging up the glove and the sword back in their niches. "But it makes the eggheads less nervous to call it paracasual."

"Makes sense," Tiff said, nodding. "So, if I'm not here to get rad weapons..."

"You're here for this," Bruce said. "The Paladin battledress is the standard combat and field operations uniform for all Federation Marines. You'll be getting a copy of the Paladin Battledress mark three, B class." He grinned at her. "B for baseline, see. There are several others -- uh, V for vampires, L for lycanthropes, G for gargoyles, M for Paracausal Specialists-"

"Mages, heh, I see what you did there..." Tiff muttered.

"Heh," Bruce said, then held out a single, massive, granite like knuckle. Tiff bumped her knuckles against his and grinned back at him as he picked out several pieces of the battledress for her. He held them up to her body and Kfap announced if the pieces he had picked out would fit or wouldn't fit. A few required a short adjustment, using a multitool that he pulled off his belt. As Bruce worked, Tiff managed to ask what had been bugging her for a while.

"So, how do you go into your warform without making humans go bugaboo?" She asked. "Since, like, when I was bopping around, a werewolf in a full on fuckup force form make humans lose it so hard that their brains break and they remember you as a, like, a guy in a costume."

"It's a byproduct of the Eugenics War, actually," Bruce said. "The terror was evolved into humans during the, uh..." he coughed. "Well, in prehistory, the werewolf tribes decided that genocide was the right solution for the problem of humans destroying natural environments. Sanity won out, but not before the only survivors of humanity were those who had an inborn terror of wolves." He glanced at her, guardedly. "It's not entirely unfair that humans made a Hunter, you know?"

"Yeah..." Tiff said.

A long awkward pause.

"Anywho, during the Eugenics War, some rich fuck named Abaddon Tusk funded research in finding a way to crack Lunacy. He made a retrogene injection that does it. Sold like hotcakes. Made him richer than Jesus before World War Three." He nodded, picking up the final piece of the Paladin armor. Tucking it under his broad arm, he gestured out the door. Tiff abandoned the armory only with a tiny pout and a sigh. Bruce led her down the corridors, continuing his narration as he walked. "Afterwards, the Federation health commission did a survey. Since the retrogene had no major negative side effects and Lunacy has a huge mental health and social issue, they provided it for free. Ninety eight percent of the baseline population snapped it up. The remaining two percent get counseling if they run into one of us in our war forms."

"And they don't just go and get the shot?" Tiff asked. "Why?"

"Tiff, something we learned in the 21^st century?" Bruce asked, grinning at her toothily. "It doesn't matter how good an idea is, at least two to ten percent of the human race will absolutely refuse to do it."

They came to the a large, mostly empty room. Tiff looked around curiously as they walked inside -- their feet echoing. "What is this?" She asked.

"This is an industrial replicator," Bruce said, setting down his load. "This thing can make anything from a nuclear bomb to a shuttlecraft in two shakes of a werehorses tail." He stood up. "Kfap, make...a piece of rebar reinforcement one meter in length." He said, holding out his hand. A glowing beam of silvery light shot out, shimmering as it created the rebar in his palm. He gripped it and hefted the weight, nodding. "Thanks, Kfap."

"Is...replicating shit that easy?" Tiff asked. "Like, anything?"

"Most things, yeah," Bruce said. "The only things that are hard to replicate are paracausal patterns and quantum effects -- in other words, spells and souls."

Tiff paused. "So, I could say, hey, kfap, replicate me, like...a super...nuclear bomb?" Tiff asked. "Then I could blow up the ship?" She asked.

"I mean, yeah, you can," Bruce said. "But replicators like this aren't exactly a dime a dozen. Most of them are under the direct control of shipsouls like Kfap or under democratic control -- nothing can be produced without a vote. Hacked replicators exist. And terrorists exist. But that's why Gaia made marines." He grinned at her and tossed her the rebar -- which she caught. "Bend that shit in half."

Tiff grinned. "You just want to see me show off the guns."

"Yeah, but also, I need to calibrate the Paladin's exoskeletal structures," Bruce said, casually. "The force multipliers. The kinesthetic feedback systems. You know, boring stuff." He said, as Tiff blinked at him.

"I'm going to be even stronger?" she asked.

"Ayyyup," Bruce said.

"Wicked," Tiff whispered, then purred. "Okay, rebario, lets go." She focused, then clenched her teeth. Her hands tightened and her biceps strained as she started to bend the bar. Sweat beaded as the bar strained -- then refused to move. Tiff slowly blew out a sigh, shaking her head. "Sorry, that's as good as I can go..." She placed her palms to either end of the rebar, then shoved. The rebar crumpled inwards with a crunching and crackling noise, squealing as her palms forced it together into a pretzel of crushed metal. She tossed it over her shoulder casually.

Bruce gaped at her.

Tiff grinned, impish.

"Holy shit, Winters." Bruce walked past her, picking up the rebar. "How strong are you?"

"I once punched a cyber-zombie in the nose," Tiff said, throwing her fist out in a quick jab. "So hard that my fist went through. Like, out the back of its skull." She turned back to face him, smiling. "So, how much stronger will the armor make me?" She grinned. "Rhino strong? Superman strong? Come on, ball park me, wolfzone!"

***

The Desta Damtew darted through the uncharted solar system like a shadow. Cloaked by the obfuscating pallor of harnessed vampiric power, and accelerated by needle thing thrust plumes of super-heated plasma -- mostly water, replicated and pumped into the fusion engines and then shot out the back of the ship. No longer constrained by the limitations of reaction mass, as she could perpetually replicate more, the Desta Damtews was able to accelerate halfway to their destination, flip, then decelerate the remaining half of their voyage.

What would have taken humans of Tiffany Winter's time decades to cross, the Desta Damtew crossed in a mere handful of days. In this time, Tiffany Winters was given a chance to rest, to read more detailed histories of her family, her friends.

She cried.

She lay in her bed and thought about everything she had missed.

And when she wasn't able to deal with that anymore, she did pushups until she passed out.

But at last, the ship came within visual identification of the nutrino blip that Tiff had spotted -- and she was called to the bridge. Standing there, looking at what she had helped them to find. Tobias was in his chair, but Sebastian was standing near the tactical console with Xelnora, who was pointing down at the blips and bleeps they were getting. Tiff watched Sebastian at work. He was so tall. She knew vampires tended for tall, but Sebastian was pushing it. He was like a stork, or a giraffe. His neck was frigging long.

So, why are you spending so long admiring his neck? Snakey thought. You just want a fang fuck again, you little-

"Hey Bryce!" Tiff said, clapping her hands to shut her own internal voice up as she saw that Bryce was standing near Bruce -- and that was not going to get confusing, great, fantastic. Bruce himself was looking down at his own console and at the scanner-bleps that he was getting, while Bryce was watching past his elbow. Bryce glanced over at her and grinned.

"Hey Tiff," he said. "The LT picked my fireteam to go in with you guys."

Bruce nodded. "Don't get John killed. He's our only Gal'sem marine -- it'll look bad on the reports."

Tiff snorted. "What are you guys looking at?" she asked, leaning over and peering down at the scanner. It looked like they were all peering at a large, black egg. Faint, ghostly indications of a cross-section was laid over it -- etching out rectangular chambers and long, sinuous corridors like intestines.

"It's a Capellan drone ship," Bruce said. "The CTA is a minor power -- they only have control over one solar system, but their drone ships are everywhere. They buy, they sell, they're capitalists."

"Like the...what were they called..." Tiff snapped her fingers. "The...the...the..." She snapped her fingers a few more times.

"I assure you, whatever fictional alien species you're thinking of, the Capellans aren't like them," Bruce said, grinning at her. "Or, alternatively, they may be exactly like them." Seeing Tiff's confused expression, he elaborated: "No one's ever met a Capellan. They only send out robots Factors to buy, sell, trade, assassinate, invade." He shook his head. "Like, uh, like..." he snapped his fingers. "Bryce, help me out here, you've been reading up on early 21^st century pop culture, right?"

"Like the bad guys from the Phantom Menace!" Bryce said, sounding like he had just had an inspiring idea.

Tiff blinked. "The what?"

"The...uh, I was reading, that was when the first edition of the Anakin Trilogy came out..." Bryce said, trailing off as he looked at Tiff's uncomprehending expression. "Star Wars?" He asked.

"Ana...oh! Darth Vader?" Tiff asked.

"Yeah, the Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones-" Bryce said, ticking them off.

"They made more Star Wars movies?" Tiff whispered, her eyes bugging out of her head in shock. "Were they any good?"

"I don't know! I just read their Alpha Site summaries," Bryce said, blushing. "But yeah, sure? I mean, they were popular and famous enough to be put into the Alpha Site, like Shakespeare and the Journey to the West and the Bhagavad Gita and..." He trialed off as Bruce lifted his hand, silencing him.

"You got the basic picture, though?" he asked. "Capitalist robots -- not hugely dangerous unless they think they can make a profit. When they do fight, they tend to rely on mercs and drones. Those can be a danger, but they're not nearly on par with any of the imperial powers. But you still get killed as dead if you're taken out by an untrained merc with a rifle butt as you are if a Buffer takes you out with a headshot with their PBC disruptor cannon. So be frosty." He frowned. "Tiffany, you'll be taking orders from Bryce while on the mission. If you don't agree to that, you don't go."

Tiff nodded. "I've gone on missions before. Uh, Bryce, just an FYI, I have super-strength and super-regeneration and super-reflexes and stuff, so...put me on point."

Bryce nodded.

"But remember," Bruce said, quietly. "This is not a military mission. DSI might be one of the military branches of the Federation, but we're being led by the Survey attaches. This is all about peaceful contact and understanding." He leaned in close. "But if any of those Capellan droids show any sign of twitching wrong, blow them into bits."

Tiff and Bryce...grinned.

Together, they headed for the airlock.

TO BE CONTINUED