All the King's Horses Pt. 09

Unnamed Planet, Sector 98-A, Neutral Space

The Milky Way Galaxy

2398

"So, what are we gonna call this ugly POS?" Chen asked, reaching up to adjust her helmet with her hands.

"It's got a name already, don't it?" Tiff asked. Her gesture took in the entire bulk of the refurbished starship, which still sat in a vast field of cracked, blackened glass. From the outside, she could see every hasty spot-weld and sealing patch that had been need to replace the skin after she and Chen had ripped the old hull plating off and slapped in new components. "The Scarlet Empress!"

"You do know that that name refers to Khan's wife who is personally responsible for the deaths of twenty million people, right?" Chen asked.

"No. I did not." Tiff put her hands on her hips. "We can call it...the Fangbuster."

"No," Bruce said.

"Yeah, we're going to rescue vampires, not kill them," Bryce said. He was on his feet now, but still looked faintly pale behind his helmet.

"Oh, uh..." Tiff kicked at the ground. "We can call it...the Enterprise!"

"From Star Trek?" Bruce sounded skeptical.

"Fine!" Tiff snapped. "We're calling it the...the...the Defiant."

"That's still from Star Trek," Bruce said.

"Fuck!" Tiff snapped. "Uh...V...Voyager! Like the space pr-"

"Also Star Trek," Bruce cut her off.

"Fucking what!?" Tiff spluttered. "How many Star Trek shows were there?"

"Fifteen," Bruce said. "I checked when Tobias first name dropped them."

"Fifteen!" Tiff looked forward at the Scarlet Empress. "Fuck it. The ship's old, beat up, and it's gonna have to be...reliable...so, we'll call it the Reliant! Is that from fucking Star Trek too, Bruce? Brucey? Brucerstone? Brucewolf? Wolfybruce?"

"Not to my knowledge," Bruce said, shrugging. "But I did just read the Alpha Site summaries of the shows, you know. I didn't actually watch the stuff."

"Name chosen," Tiff said, before tapping at her wrist mounted replicator. She fabricated a paint can sprayer, then sprang from the ground to the side of the ship. As she landed on the top of it, she called down to Chen, Bruce and Bryce. "You know, I really love being able to show off my super-strength. It sucked having to go through gym class without showing off?" She swept the spray paint around, then stepped back.

"Reliant is spelled with an I, not an E," Chen called up.

"Fuckery," Tiff muttered, then sprayed more.

"No, the...it's R E L I-" Chen called up.

"Fuuuuuuuck!" Tiff hissed.

"You know, I always thought our history textbooks were exaggerating the state of the Pre-Emergence school system," Bruce said, quietly.

"Listen, you try spelling while in a space suit!" Tiff said, then added a scowling smiley face next to the name. "There." She turned to them. "The ship's been named. Now, lets jet."

***

The interior of the Scarlet Empress - now the Reliant - had been just as modified as the exterior, with a large chunk of storage space filled to the brim with the rough shape of what Tiff referred to constantly as a warp drive. The basics, Chen had said, were simple. Which was why the first sentence had been utter gibberish to Tiff, and each sentence after that had only gotten worse. Something about using replicators to create negative energy masses, rapidly rotating hyperdimensional objects suspended in a focused probablistic field derived from paracausal technologies created by the Atlantian University.

Tiff was fine with it being gibberish, so long as it worked. But the fact that their warp drive looked like it had been thrown together out of spare components, bits of scrap iron, and welded together with luck, prayer and a roll of duct tape...that was a bit less reassuring. And there wasn't even a wall between it and the makeshift bridge of the Reliant only made her more nervous. The bridge itself was essentially a few chairs, a view screen made of printed out holographic projecting wallpaper (which was fairly low quality) and a single tablet that was held jealously by Chen. Chen tapped at the tablet, frowning as she did so, while Tiff took her seat in the most captain-ly looking chair.

"We're gonna need to vote whose in charge for the mission," Bruce said, nodding. "We don't have any one trained for quasi-executive control."

"Me," Tiff said, nodding. "No, no, before you argue, here's my rational: I know how Mark thinks. I knew him back when he was a dweeby little shit. And, I have a mental link with Shifter-Tiff, so I get up to date, second by second information about where Mark is and what he's doing. You need someone in charge who knows all that shit, and we can't waste time having me jaw jaw with Shifter-Tiff, then blip blap at you."

Bruce closed his mouth. Bryce grinned, slightly. "She's not dumb, that's true."

"Darn straight tootin rooting cootin rocket rollers I'm not," Tiff said. "I'm sharper than Excalibur." She coughed. "Plus, I figure you guys can give me advice and shit."

Bruce nodded. "All right, you got my vote. Chen?"

"Agreed," Chen said. "Ready?"

"Ready as a bready!" Tiff rubbed her hands together and swung her chair around to look at the screen. She focused, thinking at Shifter-Tiff: Any updates?

They're still torturing your boyfriend. I told him you're coming, but...it's harsh. They're good at this, Tiff.

Is that some actual factual fucking concern I feel hear in your thinker thoughts? Tiff thought, grinning despite the grim news. But she had faith in Sebastian. She knew he wouldn't break. He wouldn't bend. He'd survive and she'd rip Mark Hanson's heart out through his ribcage and toss it to Sebastian as a snack. She grinned a fearl little grin at that thought.

Is that some actual factual fucking bloodthirstiness I feelhear in your thinker thoughts? Shifter-Tiff thought back.

Bitch you don't know me! I've been bloodier and thirstier than you've ever been in your entire glip glob life! Tiff thought with a laugh as Chen started to count down.

"Three," she said.

"Two."

Tiff buckled herself in, remembering at the last second.

She lifted her hand. "Make it engage." She said, cutting Chen off. Chen looked at her, then sighed.

"One."

The Reliant shuddered as the agrav emitters they had painstakingly built into the hull were pumped full of replicated vampire blood. They surged and flared - and Tiff heard a gurgling, glugging noise. She glanced back and saw that the wall mounted racks of vitae tanks were beginning to grow sloshy and full with dark red synthetic vampire blood. She nodded. Since their ship wasn't a standard Federation ship, it lacked the captured quantum singularity dyad that most Federation ships used to simulate the lunar effects needed to power their replicators. That'd mean that once they were out of the gravity well of this planet and its moons, they'd have to rely only on the vitae that they had replicated to power their gravity and their shields and...well, most other things that depended on vamptech.

Then she felt the engines kick on. The fusion-torch that the Reliant had used before it had crashed here still functioned - and with replicated hydrogen filling her fuel tanks, she was able to soar towards the edge of the atmosphere. The pressure was less than she expected - but that was because the engine's acceleration was actually less than one G. Chen had explained this: the agrav emitters reduced their effective mass via suspending the ship in a telekinetic field, and then the engine pushed them. It was like taking off in space, but on a planet.

Made sense to Tiff, but that meant that it had to be fucking complicated as hell and she wasn't understanding it.

"Woop!" Tiff laughed as she saw, through the view screen, the brown smear of the nameless world they had been trapped on fall away. The nose of the Reliant pointed to the stars, and then the engine kicked off. She felt the weightlessness of space settle on her and she bobbed against the straps, grinning as Bryce tapped away at the only console that hadn't been shifted or moved around - the same sensor console that had detected the incoming ordinance during their little nuclear escapades.

"The system's clear," he said.

"Okay," Tiff said. "Set a course...for the Nor'Guk'bubblebr Empire!"

"Excuse me?" Bruce said, turning to look at her from his seat beside Bryce. "You mean the K'za'Ngork?"

"Yes!" Tiff said.

"And why the hell are we doing that?"

"According to Shifter-Tiff, Mark is going around, collecting up Reman clone soldiers," Tiff said, smiling. "He started with the border outposts in the Centurion Star Empire. Now, he's grabbing the Reman clone troops in the Neo-Imperium. That means he's going to be on the boarder of the KZN Empire. Right?" She nodded. "And the KZN are those weird warrior culture honor bound types, right?"

"They're a race of genetically engineered super soldiers who killed their creators - their gods - and became independent," Bruce said, making Bryce nod.

"They're also one of the few things out there that can stand up to the Garou without fucking power armor," he said, frowning. "And that's in their Crinos warforms."

Tiff grinned, slowly. "And how many times have the Feddies fought them?"

"Well, there was the First Contact War, the Kitomer Incident, the Neural Invasion, the Chronos Gap War, the Seven Hour War, the-" Bruce stopped himself. "Okay, yeah, a lot. That makes going into their territory even more suspect, Quasicaptain."

Tiff smiled. "Ah ah ah. But we're not in a Feddy ship. Mark is. And you know what they say about how the enemy of my friend is my friend?" She paused. "The...I mean, the enemy of my friend...no, the enemy of my ENEMY is my friend, right. Fuck. I have no idea why that was so had to say."

"I regret my vote," Chen said, her voice dry as space.

"And if the Buffers tell us to go fuck ourselves?" Bryce asked.

"Hey, we don't got guns," Tiff said. "If that part of the plan fails, any future plan fails. Unless you think this clanker can get us to Federation space in time to warn them about Khan?"

"We're going to be lucky if our negative energy cores and vitae last us a parsec," Chen admitted.

"So, bingo bongo, off we go!" Tiff thrust her finger. "Make it so! I got the quote right this time." She paused. "Engage. I wanted to say that one too."

Chen sighed.

***

Planet-991, K'za'Ngork Empire

The Milky Way Galaxy

2398

Force Captain Left Fist was in the middle of his sleep cycle when he shaken awake by his under-officer, Right Fist. They had both come from the same creche, and this meant that sometimes, Right Fist was overly familiar. But even he would not have woken Left Fist up from his sleep cycle had it been anything but the most important, most dire of situations. Even so, Left Fist growled as he uncurled, his arms sliding from his belly, his claws springing free.

"Forgiveness, Force Captain," Right Fist said, showing his belly and spreading his arms wide. "But a ship has approached this solar system and begun to hail us using a tightbeam laser. They are human."

Left Fist was fully awake then.

The interior of Fast Attack Frigate 91,811 was cramped and close and devoid of comfort - everything was hard edges and angles and, as per usual, the frantic scramble from the sleeping nooks to the bridge ended with Left Fist balking his elbows and knees on half a dozen poorly thought out, unergonomic flourishes in the ship's superstructure. Like all Fast Attack Frigates of this generation, the 91,811th had been built along three questions.

One: Could it be built fast?

(Yes, a skilled factory could construct a Fast Attack Frigate in twenty four hours, if pressed to.)

Two: Could it be built cheaply?

(Yes - the fact that there were 91,810 before the 91,811th had been constructed should have made that obvious enough)

Three: Could it kill things?

Left Fist nodded happily as he crawled into the bridge. Four officers were in the turret controls - which themselves were linked to the arrays of heavy railgun, flak turrets, shredder mine launchers, and nuclear missile tubes. Their most common enemy, the Centurions, preferred to use nimble ships with antiproton weaponry. To counter that, the K'za'Ngork had realized, long ago, that slabbing armor onto a ship did little when it was being hit with antimatter. So, there was barely an inch of cheap composites between Left Fist and space as he strapped himself into the command chair.

"Bring the human on," he growled, before punching in the command keys to translate his words into the human trade tongue of English.

"...hello?" A human voice - higher pitched than some - spoke through the speaker grille. "Yo! Kubbly Wubblies! You there?"

"Who is this?" Left Fist asked, his eyes blinking in a rippling pattern, from left to right.

"The name's Tiffany Winters," the human said. "You hate the Federation, right?"

"No," Left Fist said. "My people and the Federation have fought many times before. We will fight many times again. But we do not bear them ill will. The truth of the universe is comprised in a singular maxim: Only those who are strong can survive. This is shown in the derived maxim of territory: Those with the strength to conquer territory become stronger. We and the Federation breathe the same air. We use the same resources. We construct ships using those resources, and those ships are how we both express strength. The fact that we both struggle for the same territory is no reason to hate. Hatred, itself, is a weakness - it clouds judgment and distracts from the truth of battle."

"Oh."

There was a long, crackle filled pause.

"Well, uh, there's a Federation ship that's lurking around your territory-"

"There is always a Federation ship lurking around our territory," Left Fist said, his voice growing stern. "They have cloaking technology and we do not. They would be fools to not use it. When we find their ships, we fire warning shots at them and they depart, but we do not destroy them. To do so would invite another War of Assassins. We fight in the field where we are strongest. The Federation is better at fighting from the shadows than we are." He chuckled. "We bow in respect to this skill."

"Wait, you..." The voice paused. Left Fist's brow furrowed as he heard a muttered voice coming over the transmission. "A War of What? ...you did what? You just blew up their Prime Minister?"

"Tiff, the mic!"

"Oh, F-"

The line clicked off. When it clicked back on, the human was continuing: "A highly dangerous ship filled with human super-soldiers is wandering out there. They're preparing to conquer the Federation. This will make the Federation stronger and they'll start conquering the galaxy next. What does your maxims say about that?"

"It is best to strike an enemy in their regenerated limb before the process has finished, for it is the weakest and will one day become the strongest," Left Fist said, slowly, considering his knowledge of the Maxim and the Derived Maxims. "What do you propose? We cannot leave our assigned position."

"...can we have your guns?"

Left Fist considered.

Then he nodded. "Yes."

"Yes!" The human sounded delighted.

"If you successfully prove that you have the strength needed to use them," Left Fist continued.

"Fuck!" the human hissed.

***

"I'll do it," Bruce said, simply.

"Fuck no," Tiff said, scowling. "This is my plan, I should do it."

Through the smudged, pitted porthole that looked out of the airlock and into the depths of space, the ugly, angular bulk of the oncoming K'na'Ngork ship was growing slowly larger and lager. Tiff crossed her arms over her chest, scowling as she watched it getting closer. "You know, I really thought that they'd be fucking reasonable about this. They were sounding so freaking reasonable, then BOOM! Honorable warrior bullshit culture."

"That's not it," Bruce said, seriously. "The Ngork are genetically engineered soldiers. Their brains are literally wired to fight and act in certain ways - one of them includes a certain submission/combat pattern that's as ingrained and irresistible as your cell division." He frowned. "They recognize this, they know it exists, and so, they've constructed a culture around dealing with it. It's...actually kind of admirable."

"Their method is to strip naked and beat each other sensesless," Chen said from the cot she was sitting on.

The K'na'Ggork ship filled the porthole. Then darkness. Then the entire Reliant shuddered faintly as the docking clamps sealed around the door.

"Hey, what works, works," Bruce said, nodding as the airlock opened and Tiff saw her first K'na'Ngork. She had seen a picture - but nothing prepared her for what she witnessed in the airlock. She stepped backwards, her mouth open. Then she squealed, her hands going to her mouth as the armor-plated disk that was the k'na'Ngork rolled from the airlock and into the ship. The armor plating - the same color and hue as that of an armadillo - clattered on the deck plating and then the whole alien unrolled himself from the ring shape to his low, slumped form. He had six arms - though two of them were used as legs - and a long, blunt tail. His head was flat and low, with an armored crest that came down over six eyes, spreading outward to either side of a blunt, lipless face.

"THEY'RE FRIGGING ARMADILLOSSSSSSSSSSS!" Tiff squealed. "Oh my GODDDDD!"

The K'na'Ngork turned to look at her, his six eyes rippling in their blink pattern - left and right eyes blinking inwards towards the middle, then blinking back out again.

"What did you call me?" he asked, his voice translated by a small necklace looped around his throat.

"Right!" Tiff clapped her hands together. "How do we get this Ritual of Channeling Ingrained Emotions done?" She paused. "Wow, you guys suck at name."

The K'na'Ngork pointed to the airlock. "Enter there, human. We have created a makeshift combat arena. But we will only take the one of you who will fight in the Ritual of Channeling Emotions." He nodded. "The rest of you are a security risk."

"I-" Bruce started.

"I'll do it!" Tiff said, leaning in close.

The K'na'ngork looked between Tiff and Bruce.

"Do you two need to discuss this?" he asked, sounding only faintly discomforted.

"Yes," Bruce said.

"No," Tiff said.

"You voted me as the quasicaptain," Tiff hissed. "That means I get a say."

"We can have a vote of no confidence - we're not in an immediately dangerous situation," Bruce growled back. "And I'm not having you fighting the K'na'ngork. You're the only link that we have to Shifter-Tiff. If you die, then we're fucked."

"If you die then we're fucked anyway because we already lost the RCE!" Tiff said. At his blink, she muttered. "The...Ritual of Channeling Emotions. It's a bit of a mouthful."

Bruce frowned.

Tiff snapped her fingers. "Arm wrestle."

"What?" Bruce asked.

"We arm wrestle," Tiff said.

"Bryce, stun her," Bruce said.

"Huh?"

Tiff turned and Bryce, with a casual flick of his hand, lifted his arm up, aimed his laser finger at her, and fired. The beam ionized the air between Tiff and the fingertip, allowing a sharp electrostatic pulse to leap from his glove to her chest. Tiff slammed back into the wall with a groan and slumped forward, then to the side. She made a soft, whining sound, curling up around the bruise forming under her shirt.

"Our races do have more in common than I think many of us think," the K'na'ngork said, clapping all four of his hands together. "I believe this will be a most excellent ritual!"

***

Being stunned wasn't an instant on/off switch. For Tiffany, it was closer to five or six minutes of just floating around in a puddle of agonized pain, even after she was gently helped up and placed onto bed. As the fog cleared and her muscles started working again, she saw that Bryce was sitting beside her, frowning - while the distant sound of roaring and cheering came through the tinny speakers on Chen's handheld terminal. She was watching, her knuckles white.