R.W. Krpoun's Blog, page 20

Gamer Story XXXII (FS)

I’ve always had a web site devoted to my gaming campaign to help my players keep track of events. In the early days I wrote short stories based on the PCs and posted them on the site for my player’s amusement. This campaign was set in the Fading Suns setting.

“Sheeeeeeiiitttttt,” Hal muttered as he fought the
controls of the Black Eagle. “We’re not built for this!”

“Hang in there,” Damarus encouraged him. The assault
lander was coming in flying ‘nap of the earth’, barely two hundred feet over
the terrain, hugging the ground to avoid detection by the Dark-enhanced SAM
system set up in the village ahead.

The Templars had landed on the desolate planet of
Nowhere only to be met by a representative of the Imperial government: a
half-dozen street urchins had been found outside Fort Vladimir, murdered,
carved up, and emblazoned with the Templar insignia hacked into their flesh.

The commander at Fort Vladimir explained that this
was a common ‘challenge’ issued by a Dark-possessed former Eskatonic priestess;
a grid coordinate of her cult’s next target (a caravan, village, or pilgrim
group) would follow. The warning would be given in just enough time so that the
Imperial troop’s hoppers would arrive to a find a very fresh slaughter.

But the Black Eagle had changed things: the
Imperial forces here, at the least of the Empire’s outposts, had no assault
landers, only rotary-blade hoppers. The Templars, however, could reach the
indicated point by a simple ‘skip’ off the atmosphere in about sixty percent of
the time a hopper flight required. So, when the grid coordinate challenge came
in, the Iron Templars were loaded and ready.

Their wild approach was a result of a sensor scan
which showed that the Sorceress (as the ex-priestess was called) and her band
had gathered the inhabitants of the indicated village together in the village
common, apparently preparatory to executing them, under the watchful eye of a SAM
system much warped by the Dark. There was no time to waste, and only the most
cautious of approaches to be made.



***

“What?” Damarus demanded.

“Its not a SAM system warped by the Dark, its just
junk slapped together to look like it,” Nick’s voice explained over
the com earpiece. “Its junk, over.”

The young noble turned to look at where Tim and Hal
was cautiously examining the dead Sorceress. The Templars had landed out of
sight and stormed into the village square, where the Sorceress and her minions
were systematically executing the villagers. In a brief, one-sided firefight,
the cultists had been exterminated.

Hal straightened up and made a
chopping gesture with one hand: the corpse in the rune-encrusted robes was not
the Sorceress.

Damarus did a fast sweep of the
square, with its neat rows of villager dead and the shuttered houses beyond,
the stench of Dark rituals hanging thick in the still dry air, and flipped the
selector switch on Stormbringer II to full auto. “Heads up, men: we’re in an
ambush.”

As if on cue, the dead villagers
began to climb to their feet, Undead Husks one and all.



***

“Ahhhhgggghhhhhhghhha!” Quinn screamed as
an armor-piercing round smashed into the left leg of the Basilik combat walker
he was piloting. “Die, you bastards!” The line of 25mm caseless rounds caught
the jeep and its smoking 106mm recoilless rifle as it attempted to dart between
two cottages, and blew it apart.

An RPG round flashed in from his left and detonated
against his chest; inside his cockpit alarms squealed and red lights flashed.
“Gimme some cover fire, you guys! I’m getting creamed!”

Lungs burning, Hal dove to the ground next to a
wheel barrow filled with manure, rolled, and came up firing, raking bursts of
nails across the firing port cut into a shutter that hid the automatic rifleman
who had nearly gotten the bald Marine as he sprinted from cover to cover. Red
raced past to his left and heaved two frags into the cottage, then ducked
behind a pile of firewood as a sniper in another cottage opened up on him.

Nick slid in next to Hal as a 60mm mortar round
exploded nearby, the shock wave spraying them with bits of manure. “Quinn’s
calling for cover fire, say’s those jeeps and RPGs are clobbering him.”

“Poor freakin’ Quinn,” Hal snarled, raising up to
fire at another cottage. “My heart bleeds for his sorry butt perched inside the
toughest armor on the planet. Tell him we all got our problems.”

“No lie,” Nick gasped. The Templars had discovered
the hard way that the cultists had factored the Black Eagle into their
plan. The slow, brainless Husks had been easy enough to cut down, but the real
trouble was bandits dug into fortified cottages, laid out so that to attack one
position meant taking fire from two more.

“Rag, light up target fourteen!” Damarus yelled into
his mike as he shoved another grenade into his launcher. Ammo was running low,
the walker was damaged, and everyone was wounded to some degree, but they were
a hundred feet from their lander, and safety. The BUUURRRRRRRUUUUUUPP
of the Vorox’s minigun rumbled to the knight’s left. “Hal, get a assault team
onto fifteen; we got ‘em on the run!”



***

Jorge Three-eye emptied the last rounds in his
revolver at the figures darting from cover to cover as he raced from the
woodpile to the back of the cottage they called Position G.

Tomas Sandkiller was trying to get a Blue Lighting
shoulder-fired SAM launcher assembled; he looked up, startled, and grabbed for
his revolver before he recognized Jorge. “By the Abyss, you scared me! I
thought you were one of those maniacs. Where’s your Jeep?”

Burning.” Jorge snapped open his revolver and dumped
the empty cases. “Got any ammo? I lost my carbine when I bailed, had to roll to
put out my jacket, which was on fire. Where’s your crew?”

“Dead. Here.” Tomas handed Jorge his spare rounds
and returned to struggling with the launcher’s battery pack.

“What a disaster,” Jorge mumbled as he thumbed the
fat brass cylinders into his revolver, a copy of the old Enfield Bulldog in .455.
“They’re unstoppable.”

“Don’t let the Sorceress hear you,” his cousin
cautioned him.

“It’s not our fault. But even she wouldn’t call it
anything but a defeat,” Jorge complained, but he lowered his voice and glanced
over his shoulder. “They didn’t mention that metal man-giant. Or that
volley-gun the hairy thing is carrying.”

“Or the guns which shoot tiny bullets that drill
through walls,” Tomas agreed, then cursed as the weapon emitted several short
beeps. “Dark take this thing!”

“What’s the problem?”

“Some big bastard with a sword on his back shot the crew that was supposed to man this junk, and some other bastard threw a bunch of grenades in afterwards. Shrapnel penetrated the case, and the battery housing is damaged; the cover won’t hold the battery in properly.”

“I saw the guy with grenades; how many is the son of
a bitch carrying, anyway?”

“A lot. They all do, all different kinds, too. None
of the SAM teams are alive.”

“The Jeeps are gone, too. The only rifle teams left
are those whose positions were by-passed. I knew when that little guy made half
the Husks drop by waving his hands that it wasn’t going to be a good day.”

To their left, they heard the howl of engines
roaring to life. “That thing going to work?” Jorge asked, uncocking his revolver.

“Not in time.” Tomas punched the battery housing in
disgust.



***

Clinging to a cargo strap as the Black Eagle
angled up into the sky at full throttle, Blackie fumbled a bandage out of his
web gear. “Well, that didn’t go too badly.”

“You think?” Cody mumbled around an Elixir injector
as he worked on Nick’s arm. “Maybe I missed something.”

“Nobody died, and I cut a Husk clean in half,” the
big bodyguard reached back and patted his sword hilt lovingly.

“I kill many,” Ragnar nodded . “More than
Quinn.”

“Yes, yes, more than Quinn.” The Tech’s voice came
out high and squeaky over the walker’s damaged external speaker. “Many, many
more. Now will you please unlatch me? The inside controls are jammed,
and the last RPG hit knocked out the air conditioning and air recycling.”

“I need new ammo pack, hold more rounds,” the big
Vorox observed, planting one large hand on Julie’s chest and sliding him away
from the access release controls on the walker. “But you very, very busy all
the time.”

Damarus leaned in the hatch between the cockpit and
the cargo bay, watching his men. Blackie was bragging, Ragnar was tormenting
Quinn, Julie and Cody were patching up wounds, Nick was bitching, Red was
scrounging grenades, Tim was offering meaningful advice. Business as usual.

It took a lot more than a Dark ambush to rattle his
boys.

Gamer Story XXXI (FS)

I’ve always had a web site devoted to my gaming campaign to help my players keep track of events. In the early days I wrote short stories based on the PCs and posted them on the site for my player’s amusement. This campaign was set in the Fading Suns setting.

Sir Damarus Li Halan assembled his freshly-oiled rail carbine with economic precision. Sitting alone in his quarters, he methodically went about preparing for the operation tomorrow as if it where any of the dozens he had carried out to date. He went about his tasks, keeping his mind blank with a swordsman’s focus, willing his hands to be quick, sure, and above all, steady.

Because tomorrow a planet hung in the balance. Bad enough their own lives rode the line, but the lean noble had been a Marine before he was a Questing Knight and taking risks was just part of the game. But this time, though, millions of lives rode of their shoulders. They had one shot to take out the Furnace; fail, and no one on Rhand would survive. The Dark Between the Stars would win.

Slipping the fusion battery into
place, Damarus loaded the weapon and placed it next to his pack. His hands were
as steady as a rock.



***

The blade glided across the
oiled stone with smooth sweeps, each stroke honing the edge a milli-fraction
more. Perched on a stack of ration cases, Hal worked the knife and thought of
nothing at all. Not of dying, not of yet another Furnace, not of all the kids
killing themselves because they thought he was a hero who had shown them the
way, not of his wife, not of his friends. He sat in a stores locker on the Orion
II and sharpened his combat knife.



***

The combat walker was ready, and
Quinn disconnected the computer leads and stowed them. The unit was ready, and
in a while he would climb in, link up, and they would go. He would be the Templar’s
big gun, the heavy weapon that would carry them through the perimeter defenses
to the complex with the Furnace, then hold their exit so that, once they had
planted the bomb, they could withdraw to the Black Eagle.

He wished he had time to get completely, utterly blasted. Because tomorrow was getting very close and he couldn’t sleep, and Techs were supposed to build, learn, and modify. Not lead the charge on a fourth Singularity Furnace while rivers of Darkness entered the world of Light and those who still lived on Rhand waited to see who would win.

That was not who he was. This
wasn’t right. They should have gotten someone else for this job.

The Iron Templars weren’t
world-savers, they were just a bunch of weird guys who followed this insane
Knight around. And he was definitely not a hero, he was just a really, really
good mechanic.



***

Ragnar laid back in the rope netting and pretended it was vine-work of the sort he’d slept in as a cub. He missed the jungle at times like these; he kept a container of wet mud and rotting vegetable matter in his cabin, but it only helped a little.

Several of the monkeys Damarus
thought he had chased off the ship were snuggled in around him. Normally he
obeyed his orders to the letter, but the Captain could not understand how
lonely it could get when you didn’t see your own kind. The Templars were a
pack, true and righteous, with females and lessers as was proper, but sometimes
you wanted to hang upside down amongst creatures with fur.

Tomorrow was going to be tough.
He was concerned as to the future of his monkeys should the Great Tree call him
home.



***

Arms trembling, Blackie managed
one last rep and collapsed onto the sweat-slick floor. Pushups; his wrists and
elbows ached, and his muscles burned as if dipped in acid. He had spent many a
night in prison fighting gravity in the leaning rest position, shoving his body
upwards until the pain and confusion left him.

He wasn’t afraid; he had taken
the worst the universe could dish out to him, and fought it to a draw. He might
die in the snow, true, but that mattered not at all. What did matter was to die
well, for he knew Tim would be watching.



***

He dozed, and in his sleep Cody
was once more with his people on his world so far away; the tri-flute and
wind-harp stirred in the background as he walked through the Grove of Memory.

A beeping brought him back to
the place of reality, and he reflexively reached out and slapped the alarm
clock’s plate. Stretching, the lean Obun sat up, a faint smile coming to him as
he recalled his dream.

It was good to dream of home. He
would only see it in his dreams; there was no going back. He had seen it when
he had first met Damarus years past: a young man marked for greatness and
accomplishment. A man who would lead those with him far down the road of
Destiny. Cody had taken his service, knowing that it would mean his own death,
and thus had died that day. The dead had no business with the living, and he
had set out without a backward glance, knowing his fate was to never see his family
or home again.

He did not regret it. They had
struck terrible blows against the Dark, the hol-raleta as his people
termed it, and shortly, they would take the field against it again.

And in his dreams, he returned
home. It was enough.



**

Nick clutched the sides of the
narrow shower stall and let the water run off his trembling body. He couldn’t
believe it; in forty minutes they were going to load up on the Black Eagle
and go off to die.

Another Furnace. Most
people lived their entire lives without ever meeting an Antimony cultist, and
in eighteen months the Templars has destroyed three Singularity Furnaces, and
were setting off at a fourth. Damarus was going to keep attacking the Dark
until every Templar was a mindless Undead husk.

He couldn’t believe it. How stupid
could he have been to sign on with this nuthouse crew, and why did he stick
around?



**

The elbow in his ribs finally
knocked Red awake. “Get up already!” Geri snarled sleepily. “Turn off
that damned alarm.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, slapping
around until he hit the cut-off plate. Sighing, he heaved himself to a sitting
position.

“Why are you getting up so
early?” Geri asked as she adjusted her blankets and pulled his pillow over.

“Mission…gonna blow up some
stuff. Raid,” Red muttered, standing and stretching.

“A raid?” Concern sharpened
Geri’s tone. “Where?”

“Practice,” Red flapped a hand
dismissively. “Full-scale drill.”



***

Sir Julius Li Halan sat
cross-legged on his bed, completing his prayers. Sighing, he stowed the linked
prayer-chain in its velvet bag and tucked it into his combat harness.

He wouldn’t have thought it, but he missed Tim dearly at times like these. The dour churchman was at his best in the short gray hours before a desperate mission, knowing exactly what to say as the seconds bled away and combat loomed. Both warrior and religious leader, he could understand exactly what the Templars felt. Julie, who had fired only a couple shots in two years of combat, could not hope to strike such a chord with his fellows.

It had always been that way for
the knight; alone amongst the grim, war-loving Li Halan he had followed the
path of non-violence and healing. He had been isolated all his life; even
amongst his sect-members he stood out, as part of a violent company. There was
nowhere he could feel as part of the group.

Such was his destiny, he knew. To
heal, to save, to replenish.

Perhaps there was one place he
belonged, he mused as he screwed the high-pressure air cylinder into his
weapon: facing the Dark, the enemies of all Life and Light, the opposite of all
he held sacred.

Perhaps, in his own small way, he was a Li Halan warrior after all.

***
Zack did his best to hide his fear as he helped load the assault lander, but his shaking hands gave him away. As always, he was awed at the other Templars’ calm and good humor. He despaired of ever achieving their unthinking courage.

Gamer Story XXX (FS)

I’ve always had a web site devoted to my gaming campaign to help my players keep track of events. In the early days I wrote short stories based on the PCs and posted them on the site for my player’s amusement. This campaign was set in the Fading Suns setting.

The aura of Darkness that clung to the place was growing stronger and making his sinuses ache; Sir Julius pulled his IR goggles away from his face with his left hand and massaged the bridge of his nose with his right. He hated operating with IR gear; there was something unholy about seeing in the darkness through electronic devices. Like many Churchmen, Sir Julius distrusted advanced technology.

Part of him wanted to strike down yet another Dark
Furnace, but a growing part of him was too weary, too worn by events. The raid
on the last Dark Base just weeks ago, the strange military undertakings since,
the terrible battle which had consumed so many young lives and bodies, and now
this foray…sometimes Sir Julius felt as if his nerves had been stripped of
their protective coatings, like wires stripped of their casings; he slept
poorly, jumped at sudden noise or movement, and had trouble making decisions.
This weakness while in the company of men who had unflinchingly borne the same
tribulations troubled the young knight.



***

The movement of reaching for a fresh 40mm grenade and loading it into the
breech of his underslung grenade launcher caused his armor to flex, rewarding
Damarus with a puff of his own sour, sweaty body odor. The mines had minimal
air circulation and were quite warm; those factors, combined with armor and
exertion, were draining the Templars quickly.

Raising Stormbringer, the knight placed the launcher
sight (which glowed orange in his IR goggles) on the low barricade and dropped
a second HE round behind the crude stone wall.

As he reloaded, Damarus gave the order to advance. He figured this was a
defense point, as side-shafts and galleries had been blasted shut, channeling
every approach into this choke point, a man-made gallery carved out of the
living stone by miners extracting ore.

The cultists had radically modified it; it was split
into fifths: the entrance and exit areas, about a hundred yards apart, and
three areas filled with thick, colored liquid: first pink, as you came the
direction the Templars had, then green, and finally red. All were the
consistency of gelatin, and vivid in color. Narrow walkways curved and zigged
across them, the convex surface of the walkways mere inches above the fluid,
while the green area had small stone islands with waist-high walls serving as
guard points. Those islands had been the targets for Damarus’ and Red’s
grenades, as they silenced the Undead guards.

Damarus had no idea what the various fluids would do
to anyone exposed to it, but he certainly did not want to find out. He ordered
the Templars forward singly, well-spaced in anticipation of a trap.

Nick was first; moving at a careful trot, SAW ready,
he made it halfway across the pink belt before slipping and plunking into the
thick liquid. Careful to keep his mouth and eyes shut, he rolled to his feet
and heaved himself up onto the walkway just in time to catch Ragnar’s middle
knee on his left ear and flop back into the fluid.

Damarus cursed bitterly as Ragnar, off-balance from
hitting Nick, scrabbled for traction he could not get as he tried to round the
corner onto the cross-walk that separated the pink from the green, only to end
up thigh-deep in green muck Moments later Remmie hit fluid splashed into the
walkway by Nick and crashed into the pink on the opposite side from Nick.



Quinn chose to crawl when his turn came, which kept him from losing his
footing, but slowed the rest down so badly that Tank, Cody, Elvis, Julie, and a
dripping Remmie were stacked up on the pink area’s walkway; Nick was still
floundering about trying to get back out, and Ragnar was back on the walkway
and half-way across the green area.

As he waited for Elvis to move forward, Julius let
his head sag forward to give his tired neck muscles a rest. The throbbing pain was
much worse, and the IR goggles weren’t helping. Sighing, he pushed them up on
his forehead and massaged his nose again. Looking down, he was shocked to see
that the pink fluid glowed faintly when seen with the naked eye; fishing a
small sample bottle out of his assault vest, he flicked on his flashlight to
collect a sample.

The white light of the flashlight caused every set
of IR goggles except Quinn’s and Ragnar’s to shut down; it also illuminated the
row of Templars on the walkway above the pink fluid. Instantly, a line of
muzzle flashes erupted above the stone wall immediately in front of the
chamber’s exit.

Cody gasped as a Dark round smashed into his knee,
the round being deflected by his fragmenting armor, but the impact numbing the
limb and sending him crashing to the catwalk. To his right he saw Tank get one
shot off before being knocked backwards into the pink fluid; behind him he
heard Elvis scream.

“STUPID,” Remmie screamed, flipping
up his inert goggles and shoving Julie, causing the churchman to slip and crash
into the fluid.



“Oh, crap,” Nick gasped as Dark rounds ripped through the thick fluid
around him. Shouldering his wet SAW, he pulled the trigger; the weapon fired
once and jammed. Cursing, he worked the action twice, ejecting a live round,
and pulled the trigger again. The weapon fired and jammed again. Jerking on the
charging handle accomplished nothing; the Marine realized that the pink fluid
had bound up the caseless action to the point of immobility.



Resetting his goggles, Damarus launched a grenade at the enemy firing line,
hearing Red fire as well. It was a disaster: half the Templars were caught in a
‘fatal funnel’ ambush and were getting chewed up; as he reloaded, the Captain
saw Remmie get hit and crash on top of Julie just as the priest was about to
climb onto the walkway, both flopping into the pink fluid.



The eruption of the enemy fire was about what Ragnar expected; he was well
ahead of the rest of the party, the green stuff on his legs was starting to
burn, and the mines and fluid stunk so bad that he couldn’t smell a thing. The
sudden appearance of a dozen Undead ambushers was practically anti-climatic.



Swinging his mini-gun on line, he flipped up his IR goggles on his forehead
triggered a long burst, knowing fully well that the yard-long cone of
muzzle-flash was illuminating him like a spotlight. The top of the wall
dissolved into gravel and dust under the torrent of 7.62 rounds, and several
Undead likewise suffered serious structural damage. A second burst traversing
back the other way toppled several more Undead, and vastly lightened the
backpack ammunition storage unit. By the time he ripped off a third, short,
burst to insure that the ambushers were either inert or hiding, he estimated he
had less than a hundred rounds left, one moderate burst at best.



Cody hardly noticed that the firing had stopped as he worked on Elvis. Julie
had vanished, leaving him to cope with all the wounded, and he had his hands
full.



Cursing viciously, Nick managed to heave himself up onto the walkway as an
equally pink Julie squished up. “Where’s Tank?”



“Tank?” Nick tried to get his IR goggles to work, then gave up; cylumes were
staring to glow here and there, and he could hear Ragnar giving the all clear,
so he pulled one of the plastic tubes from his harness and bent it, breaking
the inner cells, causing the now-mixed chemical to glow. “Hell, I hardly know
where I am.”



“Oh, no,” Julie breathed, pointing.



Nick turned, and saw Tank floating face-down in the pink fluid. “It figures,”
he muttered as he slid back into the fluid and grabbed Tank’s arm. “Here, pull
him up.”



They rolled the hulking knight onto his back before they lifted him onto the
walkway; doing so exposed a row of entry holes blasted through his chest armor.
Julie immediately set to work as Cody came up, but after a moments examination,
he sat back on his heels. “Dead. Looks like at least one round hit his heart.”



***

Hal could feel the anger radiating off Damarus like heat off a stove as he came
over to report. “The pink stuff has jammed up every weapon it got into; they’ll
have to be soaked in solvent to clear. Elvis is pretty weak, and we’re down to
a quart of water apiece after washing the stuff off Ragnar’s legs.”



“Have you redistributed weapons?”



“Pretty much; we’re short one for Nick.”



“Here, he can use my SMG; I’ve got it in my pack.”



“Great, thanks.”



“This was the worst foul-up I’ve ever seen,” Damarus snarled as he assembled
the submachinegun. “One dead and three wounded for nothing. If it hadn’t been
for Ragnar, we would have lost a lot more.”



“It wasn’t our best day,” Hal agreed. “The guys are tired. Too much, too fast.
Hell, I bet there isn’t more’n four hundred guys in the Known Worlds who have
taken out a Dark Furnace, and here we are going after our second in three
months.”



“True.” Damarus sighed. “But it has to be done. The Suns fade, and Darkness
encroaches; if we do not push ourselves to ever-greater efforts, the Light will
fall.”



As Hal went to arm Nick, the young knight flexed his hands; lately, he had
noticed that they trembled, even when he wasn’t tired. Of course, he was tired
a great deal: too many different climates, too much responsibility, too many
missions. He had lost three of his tiny band in less than a year, twenty-five
per cent losses, and still the missions came in. It seemed as if the entire
Empire was being held together by tiny bands such as his, who spent their lives
and health in desperate actions against the many-fold enemies of Mankind.

He shook his head. Hal was right: this definitely was not their best day. And he didn’t think there were many good days in their immediate future.

Gamer Story XXIX (FS)

I’ve always had a web site devoted to my gaming campaign to help my players keep track of events. In the early days I wrote short stories based on the PCs and posted them on the site for my player’s amusement. This campaign was set in the Fading Suns setting.

Darren waited for Old Man Fish
after the job was done, even though he was whipped after eleven hours of
carrying baled wool, but it didn’t pay to walk around after dark alone anymore.
Daytime wasn’t too terribly safe in Carrizozo, either, for that matter.

Old Man Fish was a whippet-lean
eldster a good three inches taller than Darren’s six feet, with a tight goatee
and connecting mustache the color of good steel. You could tell he’d been a
Yeoman in his day, off-continent. Darren, now, was serf to the bone, and not so
long off the farm that he wasn’t willing to listen to those smarter than him.
And there was no gainsaying that Old Man Fish wasn’t smart. He could read and
everything.

Darren had paired up with Fish on day jobs for a while before the lean, hawk-faced man had offered any advice; once he started, though, Darren’s life got a lot easier. It quickly became apparently that Fish knew more about how things worked than Darren ever would, and the old man side-stepped a lot of the trouble that dogged everyone else.

The old man was suddenly beside
him; it always creeped Darren out how he moved so quick and sure, as if gaunt
old men in long gray military coats didn’t stand out. “You ready?” he asked, by
way of greeting.

“Yup.” Old Man Fish’s voice was
soft but clear, the kind of voice that could give orders and expect them to be
obeyed.

The two set off down the street,
heading for the lodging house where both had small, cheap rooms. “Heard we’re
getting some new Prefect,” Darren observed as they walked along. “Another
Imperial hotshot.”

“Li Halan Questing Knight,” Old
Man Fish said thoughtfully. Catching Darren’s look, he explained. “A knight
who’s out running errands for the Emperor. Li Halan, now, they’re a serious and
blood-thirsty bunch. Straight arrows, too; he might have a bit to say about how
things have been run around here.”

“The last one was a nancy-boy.”

“Most are, but I’ve heard of
this one. House Marine, and a bloody path as a Questing Knight. Formed his
bodyguards into a real outfit, call themselves the Iron Templars. Hard lads.
Fought damn near everything that’ll kill a man inside Known Space, and outside,
too.”

“Huh. So things’ll get better,
maybe?”

“Doubt it. Different, but things
don’t get better where you and I live. This one will be tough, he’ll get the
grays off their asses, the Rebels won’t like that, and when bullets start to
fly you can count of a bunch of common folk catching it square in the neck.”

“So we lay low?”

“Only way to do it. Never choose
a side until you’re sure who’s gonna win. In fact, never choose a side until
they got a gun to your head asking who you support.”

“Reds!”



****

Sergeant Dupoy heard the younger
man hiss ‘reds’ to the taller, older man as the first of his squad stepped out
of the alley. The locals called the Muster mercs ‘reds’ because the street
patrols wore their red dress berets instead of their helmets, as did off-duty
mercs. Technically, the Muster battalion was here to guard their contracted’s
property, namely the area being strip-mined northwest of town, but the mine
manager had convinced the last Prefect to hand law enforcement over to the
Muster.

The NCO watched without interest
as his men patted the two locals down and asked them the usual questions. Both
were armed with knives, which was not unusual, and neither had any money
readily apparent, which was equally common. Street patrol was a useful way to
augment your pay around here, at least with those locals dumb enough to carry
anything worth having. These two weren’t so simple, and it was too early in the
evening to worry about it. The Muster patrol sent them on their way and resumed
their patrolling.

Corporal Harris fell into step
alongside his squad leader. “Slow night; not many workers yet.”

“Quiet,” Sergeant Dupoy agreed.
Busses hauled off-duty workers with their daily pittance of pay into town,
where the Scravers had various entertainments waiting for the miners and the
miners’ money. Only a couple busses had arrived so far tonight. Normally at
least a thousand workers hit town of an evening.

“The new Prefect’s due
tomorrow,” Harris observed, flicking open a lighter as Sergeant Dupoy chose a
cigarette from the fancy case he’d taken off a local a week ago.

“Another Imperial asshole.”
Sergeant Dupoy blew out blue-gray smoke in a disgusted puff. “At least the last
one left us alone.”

“And gave us the town,” the
Corporal agreed cheerfully. “Hello, who’s this?” The two point men, walking a
block ahead of the main body, were escorting two figures back towards them.

As they drew close Sergeant Dupoy saw that it was a young woman in her early twenties, plain-faced but well-built, and a boy in his teens who was weaving a bit, flushed of face and sweating. He motioned for Harris to handle it.

“What’s your business being out
tonight?” the Corporal drawled, crossing his hands on the receiver of the B-2
assault rifle lying across his chest. The rest of the squad fanned out in a
circle around the two.

“We’re….my brother is sick, an
infection in his ear, we walked to the infirmary to get his medicine, the
brothers are treating him,” the woman was afraid, and Harris grinned, smelling
it.

“They treatin’ him after dark, these
days?”

“Its busy: there’s people coming in hurt from the fighting out on the range, and from…” she had started to say ‘from the workers’ Sergeant Dupoy knew; the miners were all indentured street scum from the worst slums, press-ganged straight into the strip mines, where one in five was killed or maimed before his bond was through. Scum, but also the property of the Engineer’s Guild, who were the Muster’s paymasters here. So it did not do to point out that every night hundreds of those shiftless, Codium-coated scum came to town and raised three kinds of Hell while the Muster street patrols did nothing more than prevent arson and riots. “From…accidents,” she finished lamely. “We had to wait.”

“For this?” Harris deftly
plucked a bottle from her pocket. “Lets see,” he flicked on his red-lens
flashlight. “Yep, antibiotics.” He grinned at her. “Probably for some Rebel out
on the range, eh?”

“No…no, my brother is sick,
his ear is infected, the medicine is for him. We’re loyal folk, we love the
Emperor, and we served House Cameron faithfully, we obtained permission to
leave the House and move here five years ago.”

Harris didn’t care about Rebels
any more than he did the Emperor. The Rebels knew better than to tangle with
the Muster, and the last three Prefects had been in the Engineers’ pocket. “So
you say. ‘Course, there’s the curfew tax on cartin’ medicine around after
dark.”

Sergeant Dupoy saw the hope in her eyes, and shook his head slightly. She was relaxing, getting the idea that she was just getting shaken down. Harris liked letting them have a little hope. Hope cuts deeper than fear, he always said. “I’ve six Talons.”

“Well, that’ll pay the curfew
tax and the medicine rate, too,” the Corporal nodded judiciously, passing her
the bottle and accepting the alloy coins she produced from an embroidered
kerchief. He waited until the young woman had buttoned the bottle safely into
her brother’s coat pocket before continuing. “Of course, it don’t cover the
loitering with intent fee.”

“Loitering…but we were walking
home,” she pointed, presumably in the direction of home, the flush of hope
draining from her face.

“Could be, could be,” Corporal
Harris conceded. “But now, see, you’re loitering with the intent of pullin’ a
train. Riding the Red Beret Express, as it were.” The squad of mercs, standing
in a loose circle, chuckled, and the woman’s eyes went round.

“But…please…no…,”
she began as hands grabbed her.

“Two,” Sergeant Dupoy snapped
over her protests and the sound of a B-2’s stock slamming into her brother’s
head. “We’ve work to do.”

“Jones ‘n Frampton, I figure,”
Harris said thoughtfully, after glancing in his notebook.

“Imps,” a sentry reported over
the radio.



***

Corporal Jannis, the platoon
sergeant of Second Platoon, Alpha Company, 1/27 Infantry, 6th Imperial Legion,
knew he shouldn’t be cutting through the edge of town on his way back from
patrol, but technically they weren’t supposed to be patrolling at all; the
newly-departed Prefect had banned most ‘aggressive operations’ in order to
protect the business interests which kicked back into his fat, useless, inbred
noble pockets. But the Colonel had ordered a few covert patrols to keep an eye
on the area.

He had sixteen men with him, two
being veteran NCOs, one a veteran who couldn’t keep his stripes to save his
life, and thirteen half-trained privates, and was cutting through the outskirts
of town to get to the military camp around the airstrip north of town. They had
seen that only a couple busses had arrived, and he had thought it possible to
get back to base without trouble.

That was looking less possible,
though: they had spotted a half-dozen reds standing around talking, while a
young man lay on the street bleeding from a head-gash a few feet away. “What
the blazes is going on here?” he demanded of the Muster Sergeant, a
swarthy-looking bastard with a bad knife-scar across his chin; the reds
immediately spread out, and he could hear his own men doing the same.

“Nothing that concerns you,
boy.”

“I got your boy,”
Jannis advised the merc, spitting a gob of tobacco juice dangerously close to
the man’s boot. A muffled wail from the alley nearby and two reds missing from
the squad filled in the spaces for him; he had seen the Muster at work before.
“Phillips, check the kid.”

“Ear infection, I bet,” a merc with
Corporal stripes grinned as he fondled his assault rifle.

“Some kind of parasite,” Jannis
nodded. “You candy-asses ever take on anybody that you don’t outnumber?” His
right hand was on the pistol-grip of his R-9 assault carbine; casual pressure
eased its lean barrel and the wide mouth of the attached M-23 40mm grenade
launcher to waist height.

“Wanna find out?” the Corporal
snarled. There was a soft metallic rattle as selector switches clicked on both
sides.

Jannis chuckled. “Figure I
already have. Or are you just real slow?”

“Fast enough for you.”

“Really?” Jannis held up his
left hand; the pin of the grenade it cradled hung free from its ring around the
Imperial NCO’s thumb; only his grip on the spring-loaded arming spoon kept it
safe. “Damn, I forgot to move the fuse setting off ‘zero’.” His heart was
thumping double-time, and the adrenalin sang in his ears; this was crazy, but
he didn’t care.

The mercs tensed at the sight.
“You could get yourself in some trouble, Imp,” the scarred sergeant warned.

“What, they might give me a
short haircut and put me in the Infantry? We’re just back from Stigmata,
butt-munch; ever heard of it? Symbiots? They do a bit more than a turnip-herder
can. You assholes want to throw, then lets throw. Otherwise, clear out.”

The merc stared at him for a
moment, gauging the odds, then tossed aside his cigarette. “We’ll settle this
later.”

“You do that.” Jannis waited
until the mercs, joined by two men from the alley, moved off down the street
before replacing the pin in his grenade.

“Phillips, see about who’s in the alley. The rest of you keep a sharp eye: the reds might circle around.”

“Man, Dave, you’re gonna catch a
rocket over this,” Corporal Tims, Jannis’ best friend and the squad leader of
First Squad, sighed.

“Sod ‘em. They can’t pull a
stripe, bein’ too short of NCOs as it is. Maybe a month’s pay at worst. Some
extra duty. Confinement to barracks.” Jannis shook his head. “If only the
Prefect would get those bastards out of town.”

“Maybe this new one’ll be
better.”

“Not likely. There’s more rectums than bodies on Byzantium Secundus.”

To the green fields beyond

That was the dream that haunted both sides in Europe during WW1: to break through the enemy’s layered defenses and reach the open terrain beyond, where armies could maneuver and victory could be obtained.

Writing a novel is a great deal like that for me: the first 20,000 words flow freely as the setting and story arc foundations are set as the words flow fast, much like the heady first days in 1914.

But then comes the bitter days after 21,000 or so, where things seem set in stone, and a project stalls, our is advanced by just a paragraph or two a day as I struggle manfully to push the arcs through.

And then finally, after weeks or months of trying to balance plot and story
development against total word count needed, I reach a point, usually around 45,000 words, when I realize that I have come up with enough ideas and twists, and the words begin to flow.

By 50,000 it is 1500-2000 words a day, and the breath-through is unstoppable, and the only impediments are going back and inserting sections in earlier parts of the story to ensure continuity.

But so many projects are stalled in the trenches of the late 20ks and 30ks, brave and willing but lacking the strategic plan that will let them punch through to the green fields beyond…

Gamer Story XXVIII (FS)

I’ve always had a web site devoted to my gaming campaign to help my players keep track of events. In the early days I wrote short stories based on the PCs and posted them on the site for my player’s amusement. This campaign was set in the Fading Suns setting.

Filthy, tired, half-starved, and in a terrible mood, Damarus fumbled the card twice before he hit the slot and opened the door of his quarters. A whiff of perfumed air greeted him, and for a moment he hoped that it was another courtesan hired by his men, but it was just the little box on the bulkhead above his door that squirted out a bit of air freshener at periodic intervals.

His quarters were as he had left them, neat and
sterile. Others decorated their quarters with trinkets, souvenirs, loot, and
even girlfriends, but the commander of the Templars’ quarters were as Spartan as
only a Li Halan’s could be.

He slipped his Typhoon close assault weapon into the
rack, and followed it with his pistol and flux blade. Hanging his (empty)
combat harness on its hook, he methodically stripped off his armor and his
battle dress beneath it, tossing the filthy, worn-for-eight-days garments into
the laundry basket.

Showered and shaved, he dressed in a worn tee shirt
bearing the insignia of the HWS Nero, sweat pants, and flip-flops, and
headed for the galley.

They had been decorating more, he noted sourly; the
girlfriends that had come aboard on Nowhere (one of whom was now a wife, for
Light’s sake) had fussed about the grim decor of the Orion until he
had finally given in and set aside a thousand firebirds for improvements. The
main deck, save for the gunnery and bridge areas, were now soft pastels with
lightly contrasting trim, and potted planets cropped up here and there. Gone
were the Navy-issue folding table and bench units of ballistic white plastic
and stainless steel; woven wicker tables and chairs (with discreet grav-loss
clips) had replaced them; along with more potted plants, an aquarium, and a
long oak sideboard. Plus a large mural painted by Ragnar which was really
getting on Damarus’ nerves.

When he strode into the empty galley three Rhandite spider-monkeys in tiny starched white steward jackets sat up and nervously saluted. Damarus tossed off a crisp return, and they scattered. They were smart, far smarter than Urth primates, and they knew a monkey-hater when they saw one.

Opening the main fridge, the
lean Knight stared moodily at the contents. Half-rations for eight days had
left him six or seven pounds lighter and mean as a snake. The knowledge that
half his men were being served their favorite meals by scantily-clad women did
not improve his mood.

Pulling two one-pound porter
house steaks out, he peeled off the wrap and tossed them in the oven, typing in
his specs before hitting the ‘on’ button. The smell of tea made him turn, and
he saw a monkey carefully waddling with a steaming beaker to a table covered by
a crisp white linen tablecloth; another monkey was carefully positioning
silverware next to a china plate. A third couched nervously on the sideboard,
watching the captain carefully.

Apparently the girls had spent a
lot of time training them, he guessed. “I don’t suppose you know where the
bread is?”

The monkey hopped off the
sideboard, vaulted onto the counter (staying, Damarus noted, on a strip of
cloth at the edge, and off the food-preparation areas), grabbed a package of
buns, poked a hole in the wrap, and slid it into the microwave. After hitting
the ‘on’ button, it ran to get a butter dish, while a second opened the fridge
and got a stick of butter, and the third arranged a linen napkin in a wicker
basket.

“How about ‘whiskey’?”

A monkey darted to the sideboard
and opened a door; dusky bottles were lined within.

“Damn. OK, Red Label, three
fingers over one rock.”

Dumping a bag of pre-shredded
salad into a bowl, he carried it and his steaks to the place set for him as one
monkey poured him a cup of tea and another arranged the butter dish and bread
basket. The third set a crystal tumbler with a single ice cube floating in dark
liquid that smelled of well-aged mash, old oak, and wood smoke. “That’s more
like four fingers, but what the hell.”

He ripped apart and devoured the
first steak without taking his eyes from the plate. Sitting back with a sigh,
he tossed back a stiff drink and realized that the three monkeys were sitting
side-by-side in a row at the far end of the table, watching him warily. “Your
health,” he toasted them and threw back a shot. The glass was empty, which
surprised him. “One more, recycle the rock.”

He cut up his second steak and ate it leisurely with salad and rolls. “I was really hungry,” he advised the row of concerned little faces. “Short on rations, ammo running out, cold as hell, and Undead everywhere. Did I mention the creepy little girl? No point: you’ve no ‘need to know’. What do you care, after all? This place is nice and quiet with us out there dying under some damned tower. They just keep coming, its like shooting…shooting trees, shoot enough and they fall down, but they don’t care if bits are flying off, they just keep coming at you.” He shuddered. “Same again, fresh ice.”

He sipped his drink, scowling at
the clean bones and bread crumbs on his plate. “They don’t care; hell, nobody
cares. Go in through the sewers and wear those clothes eight days, by the way,
hit a Management Tower and fight it room-to-room to the top, yeah, as per the
mission, rescue the girl, tell Hal he did good, then down outside and out the
hole, hell, that’s the job, right? Did anyone care? Hell, no: good, you brought
Thelma out, great: the city is a big crater. Sorry about our lousy security and
a cultist getting fifty pounds of C-10 into the ORCA control station so you
have to spend eight days under a damn tower fighting off hundreds of Undead.
Gee, sorry we prepped you for a two-hour in and out urban hit, so we carried
short-range weapons and no field gear, then stick us out in the boonies for eight
days.”

He set his empty glass next to
the plate, absently chewing the ice cube. “Then you come back to the ship, and
there’s girls in lingerie with meals ready for some, sure, for some,
and the Corps has take-out for some, hell, for the rest. But me? I’m
just the freakin’ commander, that’s all. Spend eight days trying to
think faster than a Dark commander who’s got a full staff and field gear and a tent,
and that’s just the job, right? Might as well make it one more round.”

He sipped the whiskey, frowning
into the middle distance. “Yeah, not so much as a mint on my pillow, for cryin’
out loud. Gotta forage for myself.” He sighed. “I gotta do it all
myself, gotta make sure Blackie doesn’t egg out and leave his firearms behind,
gotta make sure Quinn isn’t speakin’ Mungol or wearing tree leaves in his hair,
gotta have a plan no matter what, and does anybody care? Hell, no!” He
thumped the tumbler down. “Never a word. Bitch about the climate, bitch ‘cause
there’s no bonus money, bitch ‘cause your girlfriend is nagging you, but…you
know…when there’s a plan to be made….it always ends up bein’ me.”

“Thanks,” he said, as a
monkey set a fresh tumbler in front of him. “You guys…you monkeys…you’re
pretty good, you know? Everybody else…all those bastards….they’re off
partyin’, bunch disloyal bast…bastards. But you guys…you’re on
duty. You’re squared away.” He tossed off the drink. “One more. Anyway, you
guys know what it means to have to go the hard road while everyone else is
havin’ fun. In here makin’ rolls an’…an’…rolls and stuff. Thanks.” He
took a swing from the fresh drink.

“Anyhow, what I was sayin’,
was that you guys are pretty good. I know….I know I was not pro-monkey at
first, I know that. I admit that. Anti-monkey. Not a good thing. No.”

He leaned back in his chair, and
pointed a solemn finger at the monkeys. “But that’s different. This time and
tomorrow, you know, I’m not that way. I’m for you guys. For you guys.
‘Cause you guys were here for me. And that’s what bein’ a Marine anna
monkey is all about. Being there. When…when…being there needs doin’. Cause
that’s, yeah, that’s what it’s all about. So, you know, anybody anti-monkeys,
you tell me, and I’ll set ‘em right into a big hole. Right on the brig, like they
never thought it coming.”

With a groan, the Knight pushed
himself to his feet. “I gotta go. Helluva dinner. You guys are great. You ever
wanna hang out, shoot the breeze, my cabin’s got ‘Damarus Li Halan’ over the
door. Come right on in. Sir Damarus Li Halan. Colonel, I’m a colonel now,
Captain normally, been in a buncha different outfits, but you monkeys, you’re
all right.” He staggered towards the door, then caught himself and made a
textbook return salute as the trio of white-clad monkeys saluted him.

With some difficulty, he made it
down the passage to his quarters, fumbled his key card into the lock, and
staggered to his bed as the liter of whiskey caught up with an exhausted body.

In his dreams, a young Damarus
sat on a flowered hillside with a pretty young girl who once had held his heart
in silken chains. In the master cabin of a worn starship on a world threatened
and besieged by the Dark, the wind-chapped features of a warrior made old
beyond his years softened into a gentle smile.

Gamer Story XXVII (FS)

I’ve always had a web site devoted to my gaming campaign to help my players keep track of events. In the early days I wrote short stories based on the PCs and posted them on the site for my player’s amusement. This campaign was set in the Fading Suns setting.

Thelma Ducote shifted a shell casing slightly and frowned. The slender ten-year-old was sitting in a battered plastic swivel chair at an equally battered metal desk in the cavernous parking area beneath a power relay tower on Rhand. She was cold, and hadn’t had much of a bath in three days, nor changed her outer clothing. The food was bland field rations, and there was nothing much to do; there were no lights inside the garage, and the thin winter daylight that came through the five-foot gap between the tops of the side walls and the ceiling didn’t illuminate much, and the day was short, anyway. Mostly she sat in this chair in the dark, her thin legs drawn up under her coat, which was down-filled and intended for someone much larger.

She wasn’t alone: the Iron Templars were here with her, trapped as she was by the disabling of the ORCA teleport satellite, eight men, a alien who mostly looked like a man, and a big furry six-limbed Vorox. The Templars were grim and quiet; the Undead that the Dark used for soldiers attacked every night, and had attacked twice during the first day they had been here. There had been a lot of shooting, but none of the Undead had gotten in yet.

They didn’t like her much, she knew; she had always know stuff like that, how people felt about things. They had rescued her from Bondsman-16 after the Vissers had stormed the orphanage’s farm and carried her off. When she knew that the Templars were close, she had kicked her door until the guards opened it, and asked to speak to Martin, the boss who had the Dark in him. She had tucked Molly her bear, which she was too old for but still had, and her toothbrush and clean underwear into her coat first. The bald man they called ‘Hal’ who spit tobacco juice had shot Martin, who had been holding her as a shield, when the Templars reached the top of the tower.

They weren’t from Rhand, but they were sort of like soldiers; she didn’t understand most of the things she Saw about them, but she tried to help. She had always had seen things that others couldn’t see, and it had gotten a lot stronger since the Dark attacked. Things were clearer. She wished they weren’t. No one liked her because of it, and most of the things she saw weren’t very nice.

The Dark was attacking because they wanted her, and the Templars were fighting to protect her because of what she could See. They didn’t like her much, either. She had tried to help, but it just made them unhappy. So she stayed out of the way as best she could. She collected the expended shell casings for something to do, and used them as markers in the checkerboard, tic-tac-toe set, and hopper-checker boards she had scratched into the desktop with a nail. The nice churchman they called Julie would play with her, and the one they called Zack would too.

It was getting too dark to play, though, so she was just making patterns with the different casings. Dull stuff, but it was better than sitting wrapped up in her coat in the dark. It would have been better if they had had some lanterns or something, but there weren’t any; the Templars had planned on a quick in and out raid. Instead, ORCA had gone down, and now they had to wait eight days for the satellite to line up again. Which was why they did not have sleeping bags, or spare clothes, or enough food. Thelma got enough to eat, but the men weren’t.

Sighing, she climbed out of the chair and began walking. Once it got fully dark, she would have to stay in her chair, or feel her way about on all fours. The room they were in was the base of the big power relay tower; it was about eighty feet on a side, with a center pillar about thirty feet across in the middle taking up a lot of room. The ceiling was twelve feet overhead, and everything was maxicrete; the walls were only seven feet high, leaving five feet open to the sky. There was a doorway-gap in the north wall, but the Templars had closed it up with logs. There was a washroom and toilet in niches in the central pillar, but not a shower or bath.

The Templars mostly stayed at their spots on the wall where they fought, since they didn’t have anything to do. Thelma would have liked to have talked with them, but they got nervous around her and made fun of her when they thought she couldn’t hear. Except for Julie and Zack, who were nice, and the Vorox, who didn’t seem to notice her.

The big man named Quinn was muttering over his big mug; he had a anti-grav platform that followed him around like a puppy; it was covered with tool boxes, and Thelma would have loved to have explored the boxes and to have led it around, but he was mean and stupid, and she didn’t bother to ask.

The bald man, Hal, was sharpening his knife again; she often heard the steel and stone moving together in the darkness. He nodded to her as she passed, and she smiled shyly. Hal was nice enough; he wasn’t scared of anything, and liked to fight. He kept the others in line, and had told Quinn to shut up one time when Quinn was saying something bad about her.

Zack was nearby, crouching on top of an old file cabinet in order to get enough light to read; he was trying to help Nick be a better person and not like Quinn who was stupid and mean. She liked Nick, too: he was funny and personable. It made her sad, though, to look at him: no one should have to die like that. She wanted to tell him how sorry she was, but she had found that it was best to keep those things to herself, .

Julie, who was nice and friendly and held her hand when there was fighting was kneeling with the alien they called Cody, looking at medical things with a flashlight. Thelma squatted nearby and solemnly examined the things as well. It was something to do, and Cody was nice enough. It might have been his race, but she didn’t get much of a picture from him.

She moved on when they packed up the gear; watching them wasn’t much, but there wasn’t anything else to do. She strolled along through the growing twilight. Sir Damarus, the Templar’s leader, was standing on a chair and looking out with a pair of binoculars; the big Vorox was leaning against the wall next to him pointing at something.

As always, whenever she looked at the knight she saw a pretty dark-haired girl behind him, and red wax; the girl’s name was MeeKee, and she loved Damarus dearly. She wasn’t very old, the girl, but very nice; Thelma wasn’t sure why she would love the knight so, since he seemed very grim and harsh. She had told him how much the girl loved him, but he had only seemed to get angry. She had tried to help him, too, when she saw the Dark coming out of the clouds, but he just kept asking more questions, as if she had a book to read from. He wasn’t mean like Quinn, though.

Blackie was sitting in a corner cleaning a sword-hilt; Thelma wondered why it didn’t have a blade, but never asked; he made her uneasy. There was cold concrete walls and steel doors in his mind, and ugly sharp blades. There was a nice man, too, who sometimes only had one arm, following him around trying to get Blackie to listen.

Red was sitting in a chair moving things around on a table, much like she did with her casings; he did that a lot. The things were grenades, she had figured out, and the number of them bothered Red a great deal. She liked Red: he hadn’t gotten upset when she talked to him.

It was getting very dark; she worked her way around to her chair and desk and settled in for a long, cold, boring night. Someone stomped past her desk and banged into the corner, making the shell casings rattle and roll, some clattering onto the floor. He grunted a curse: Quinn, she recognized his voice.

He was surly because he had not smoked a cigar in a day, and she was glad, because they stunk. Curling up, she tucked her legs inside the long skirt of her coat, and pulled her arms in from the sleeves. Even though she was too old, she slipped Molly from the big inside pocket and cradled her close. It helped, some, especially when the shooting started and bullets hit the concrete pillar.

Quinn was coming back from the bathroom. “Don’t say anything to me, I don’t want to know,” he snapped as he passed, missing the desk this time.

Thelma nodded to herself. He was mean and stupid, and she did not like to talk to people who were mean and stupid and knocked her shell casings down and didn’t even offer to help pick them up. Or who wouldn’t even offer to let her look in his tool boxes even though it was very dull and sad in here with nothing to do. He was just mean.

And stupid. He had a full box of cigars taped to the inside of the lid of one of his toolboxes, but he was too stupid to remember. Molly sat on top of the cigars now, or she did when she was in Thelma’s pocket. Cigars were nasty, but still too nice for mean people.

Thelma sighed and tried to get comfortable. When she dreamed about this place a week ago, sometimes the satellite got fixed and they went to a safe place; other times the Undead came over the wall and killed all of them. She hoped the satellite would get fixed, and soon. There were a lot of Undead out there, hundreds, and more coming every time the black ships came; she could tell the Templars were very worried.

So was she.

Gamer Story XXVI (FS)

I’ve always had a web site devoted to my gaming campaign to help my players keep track of events. In the early days I wrote short stories based on the PCs and posted them on the site for my player’s amusement. This campaign was set in the Fading Suns setting.

“They’re still out there,” Private Lynn Estes observed mournfully. “It’s getting late.”

“They’ll be back,” Private Barry Moreglove assured her. “They’re the Iron Templars. They took out the whole space station and the Black Gate on it ; a one night patrol isn’t nuthin.”

“Promise?” Estes whispered, her face twisted with worry.

Moreglove patted her clumsily. “You bet. You saw their stuff: all those guns and armor and ammo.”

The girl nodded, looking far younger than her fourteen years. “I just…I mean, if they get killed…what would we do?”

“Die fighting.” The voice from the corner belonged to Lance-Corporal Devon Squires, their squad leader, and it held no doubt. “The Templars have shown us the way: no sacrifice is too great, and victory belongs only to those willing to pay the price.” The sixteen-year-old NCO leaned back and closed his eyes again.

The two sentries resumed their watch. It was cool in the trench, no more than fifty degrees, and their over-large battle dress uniforms were slimy with mud. The trench was seven feet deep, with raised firing steps, and slightly zig-zagged to prevent a direct hit from the artillery that constantly probed the line from sending shrapnel down an entire section. It was muddy after two days of rain; sumps were clogged, and the duckboards were under six inches of filthy water that stank of rotting blood. Expended brass floated on it, along with wrappers from bandages and discarded medical supply packaging.

Their squad had come here three days earlier with the rest of the Second Battalion, Third Imperial Rhand Infantry on a five-day rotation; the Dark had mounted three assaults since they had arrived, one of which having gotten to bayonet range before it was beaten back. Only seven of the twelve squad members were still able-bodied, and there were nearly two days to go before relief.

Runners brought up hot tea to supplement their cold field rations, but it failed to raise their spirits; Sergeant Tomlin had been killed in the third attack, leaving Squires in command and the oldest; Squires was tough and competent, true, but he also wore the canvas head-strap of a Kona Guardsman, with a grenade snuggled against the back of his skull. For Squires, the term ‘victory or death’ was definitely not a catch-phrase.

The teens were young and not very well versed in military matters, but they understood that their battalion was holding too long of a section of trench-line, too long for a full-strength battalion, that is; they still manned the same length with only sixty per cent of the strength they had brought in three days earlier. The thick, cloying mud crept into their rifles and magazines, and despite the constant cleaning, they experienced a large number of stoppages. They knew that the next attack would carry their trench when it came; the only question was where the blow would fall.

And then, yesterday, the Iron Templars had arrived in their battalion HQ, the off-world heroes who had given them their first victory, months ago, when they had destroyed Rhand’s only space station, and the Black Gate that had been opened on it. The Templars had been busy since then, defeating Dark Pathfinders, inventing an inoculation against the bio-weapons the Dark had created, restoring order to Bondsman-40, a major city, designing fusion weapons, and frustrating the Dark’s efforts to conquer Rhand at every turn. Just the idea that they were here had sent a wave of enthusiasm through the cold, tired, and filthy infantry.

Estes had been in the rear picking up more ammunition, and had actually seen them: large men, heroes straight out of the vid, covered in weapons and armored like knights of yore. Just looking at them put the truth to everything she had seen and heard.

She had been within mere feet of Quinn the Engineer, a hulking wall of a man, a huge weapon slung casually yet ready for instant use at his side. He had winked at her as he passed down a communications trench, the blade-scar on his cheek (suffered while slaying an Entity-possessed Brother Battle in single combat, she knew) standing out sharply in the light of a lantern. Just the sight of such a man, who had never known fear, failure, or lack of conviction, had fanned the hope within her to a fever pitch.

With such men on their side, how could they possibly fail?

***

The rattle of gunfire, hundreds of yards away, made them jump. “The Templars,” Estes breathed; Moreglove nodded. The heroes has slipped into the darkness of no-man’s-land like wraiths several hours before, bound on some mission of crucial importance.

Small arms fire punctuated by grenade explosions rattled on for several seconds before tapering off into single spots, and then halted.

“The Darks’ weapons stopped first,” Moreglove whispered gleefully. “The Templars won!”

“They always win,” Estes grinned.

***

A Dark artillery round’s impact dislodged a sprinkling of dirt and pebbles from the bunker’s ceiling onto the diagram Quinn was trying to draw by the light of a lantern. “Remind me again why we had to come a day early?” the tech asked the room at large.

The Templars had teleported in the day before, and successfully used an experimental fusion device to vaporize about two acres of ground, which included an intact Spectral Pod and about two hundred yards of the Dark’s front line. Now it was night again, and they were waiting for the first teleport ‘window’ to open, which would be just after dawn.

“This place blows.”

“At least we’re dry,” Hal pointed out. The Templars had been put up in a large earthen bunker in the battalion rear area. “That’s more than the kids in the trenches can say.” He jerked his head at the growing rumble of Dark rounds impacting a quarter-mile south. “And from the sound of it, the Dark’s coming to visit. Better see to your gear.”

Damarus finished thumbing rounds into a magazine and slipped it into the side unit of his MCLS. He was tired, despite several hours’ sleep in the dry. He was always tired these days, tired and edgy. Two years of leading his company of misfits into every hell-hole in Known Space (and now, beyond) had ground his nerves into dust. It was affecting his men, too: Quinn was constantly doing strange things, Hal had gotten married, Ragnar was carrying little stuffed Vorox dolls, Red had a pet monkey, and Blackie had found religion. If it wasn’t for Cody, the young noble believed he would have given up.

And if monkeys running off with his medals, Blackie having a sock-puppet persona, or Quinn chanting all spoken communication wasn’t enough, there was the weight of an entire world hanging in the balance to crush him down. The Dark was coming for Rhand, coming in a way never seen before, and the Templars were shouldering a lot of the burden of the fight. If they couldn’t knock out the backup Furnace Rhand would go under, and the Dark Between the Stars would advance upon Known Space.

Being a hero, he was discovering, was not so sweet as he had thought.

***

Another shell flung mud and red-hot metal over the trench. Estes and Moreglove huddled miserably on the duckboards, helmets clamped down, boot-tops underwater, waiting and praying. Squires had gone to check with the platoon leader, the land-line having been knocked out by the bombardment, and a direct hit had killed or wounded the rest of the squad. The two teens and their squad leader were all that remained to guard thirty yards of trench.

Suddenly, Squires was beside them. “Get ready, they’re in the minefield. Flares in one minute.”

“Any help coming?” Moreglove yelled over the shells crashing around the trench.

“No; the Company CP is gone, a direct hit. Lieutenant’s dead, and Corporal Fox is platoon commander now. We can’t reach battalion anymore, either.” He grabbed his two soldiers’ web gear. “Look, we’re got to hold. They’re re-forming back back behind us; if we don’t hold here the Dark’ll carry through into the ruins and we’ll never get them out. We’ve got to make a stand. The rest of the Company’s standing tall. We have to, as well.” The Lance Corporal was careful not to mention that only eighty-two of the Company’s one hundred ninety-five complement was still alive and able-bodied.

The three crawled up onto the firing step and peered out as mortar-launched flares burst overhead. In the yellow glare they saw a wave of shadowy forms trotting across the muddy field between the outer and inner wire barriers, stolidly ignoring the eruptions of mines that shredded their fellows. Undead warriors, hundreds of them, attacking on a front a kilometer across.

Mortar rounds and light artillery began to blast the Dark ranks as they reached the inner wire barrier (and the end of the minefield); the barrier was that in name only: Dark artillery had shredded the coils of razor tape, and line charges opened up those sections which still could impede. Machineguns began stabbing tracers into the enemy, and as they trotted across the final hundred yards command-detonated mines and barrels of thickened gas punched still more holes in the Undead ranks, but they pressed on.

“Our turn!” Squires yelled. “Fix bayonets and have at ‘em.”

The three ripped open the ponchos they had taped shut around their rifles and magazines. Estes was sobbing silently as she clipped her bayonet in place and shouldered her assault rifle. On either side small arms were adding their fire to the torrent striking the charging enemy, but they were too few, too few.

Three Undead fell out of every four as they crossed the final muddy ground between the inner wire barrier and the trenches, but the remaining quarter closed without hesitation, firing as they advanced. As the figures loomed Squires slammed a fresh magazine into his weapon, jerked the pin from his headband grenade, and leapt from the trench.

“AS HAL WOULD HAVE IT!” he screamed, charging. “KONA GUARDS! FOR RHAND AND LIGHT!”

Estes fired and fired again, the three-round bursts ripping into Undead scant feet away. She saw Squires, blazing away on full auto and wounded in several places, close with an enemy SAW team as his grenade went off. A burst toppled an Undead so close his helmet fell into the trench; she had felt the familiar jerk of the bolt of her assault rifle locking open on an empty magazine, and reflexively hit the magazine release as she scrabbled with her free hand for another.

A bullet snatched at her sleeve and another struck the lip of the trench beside her, flinging mud into her face. Screaming, she turned and dove into the stinking water at the bottom of the trench, crawling blindly to get away.

Things went hazy for a moment; when her senses cleared she found herself squeezed into a sump entrance, water lapping at her chin, and her hair (she had lost her helmet somewhere) pressing hard into the sump’s ceiling.

By the light of the flares she saw Undead dropping into the trench; Moreglove came out of nowhere, firing wildly and then closing with the bayonet. An Undead leader, called a Centurion by the Rhand troops, blocked her friend’s bayonet thrust with his forearm and cut the youth down with a brutal slash of his wickedly barbed short sword before returning to the task of shouting orders at those Undead which had reached this section of the trench line.

She was safe, she realized: the Undead were too busy deploying to receive the inevitable counter-attack to bother to search; she had seen Moreglove stagger away down a communications trench, badly wounded but alive. All she had to do was wait for the reaction force to seal the breach.

An Undead climbed atop the trench and began flashing signals back towards the south with a signal lantern. The Centurion roared and howled, deploying the handful of Dark warriors that remained. They moved slowly in response to his orders; she knew that Undead, while fearless and tough, were incapable of much independent action, and needed a lot of leadership to be effective in the attack.

Unbidden, the image of Quinn the Engineer walking past rose up in her mind, the big easy grin, the confident wink, the badge of honor on his cheek proclaiming to the world that here was a man who would never falter, never quit, never yield. In a water-tight container in the breast pocket of her shirt, along with a letter from her mother and pictures of her family, was a playing card bearing the image of Sir Damarus Li Halan in full dress uniform, the medal for the Knight Commander of the Order of the Griffon hanging at his throat, the breast of his uniform aglow with medals from many different worlds. She could feel it there, burning her like a brand, his fiery gaze condemning her.

She had dropped her rifle and bayonet when she had fled her post, but there were grenades still in their pouches on her web gear, four in all. Working swiftly, she pulled the pins and massaged the outsides of the pouches, allowing the spoons enough room to release. Rolling out onto the trench floor, she leapt to her feet and half-ran, half-staggered towards the Centurion. She saw the muzzle-flash of his pistol, and felt her left side go numb and burning, but she had momentum and determination; she slammed into his fetid bulk and grabbed him in a one-handed hug, her left arm limp and useless. The spiked knuckle-guard of his sword broke her jaw and pulped her cheek but failed to dislodge her grip. The grenades’ fuses ran out before the Centurion could strike again.

***

Moreglove had made it a dozen feet up the communications trench, holding his intestines in with both hands, before his legs turned to water and he collapsed. Undead trotted by, ignoring him; he wished for his rifle, but it was gone and his arms felt like wood, anyhow.

The world was fading away when suddenly a man was kneeling over him, a hand on his shoulder. “Where are you hit, son?”

“M…M…Moreglove, Barry Allen, Private…” the boy’s voice trailed away.

“Cody, up,” Damarus whispered into his mike, motioning Ragnar forward as he did so. “Hold on,” he urged the teen. “You’re going to be all right.”

When the medic slid beside the boy, digging for bandages, the lean noble stood, plucking the hilt of his flux blade from his assault vest. Ahead Ragnar gestured and pointed: Undead to either side in the fighting trench.

Damarus pulled a grenade from his thigh pouch and held it where the big Vorox could see it.

It was up to the Templars to retake the trench and seal this portion of the breach. Valor on the field, the young Captain was discovering, came far easier than dealing with the problems that arose when the shooting stopped.

Gamer Story XXV (FS)

I’ve always had a web site devoted to my gaming campaign to help my players keep track of events. In the early days I wrote short stories based on the PCs and posted them on the site for my player’s amusement. This campaign was set in the Fading Suns setting.

Zarrack the Hungry, warlord of Legion Death Cloud of the Rhand invasion force scowled up at the unfinished bulk of the Singularity Furnace. “Still not done.”

Hermas Red-blade, warlord of the still-forming Legion Dark Storm grunted sourly. “They promise and promise, but nothing is done.”

The two massive creatures, nine-foot humanoid abominations built from dead flesh and Dark arts, were centuries older than their bodies; they had fought for the Dark on a dozen worlds over the last two centuries. Neither liked or trusted the other, but that was hardly uncommon in those who served the Dark Between the Stars. Zarrack had once been Human, long ago, while Hermas had been an Obun.

Footsteps on the metal stairs leading to their platform heralded the arrival of Illa World-taker, the commander of the Dark’s corporeal forces on Rhand. The slender, pale Illa seemed but a child next to the armored, be-weaponed hulks of his field commanders, but the power in the unblinking yellow orbs that filled his eye sockets left no doubt as to who commanded here.

“It grows,” he murmured, pausing to regard the Furnace.

“Slowly,” Zarrack observed curtly.

“But steadily. More steadily than Legion Death Cloud advances north.”

“The Humans fight with fanatical fury, and my supplies of weapons and replacements is insufficient.” Zarrack gestured towards the Furnace. “Until this is fully operational, we must rely solely upon the Black Rivers, and that is not enough.”

“Not enough to drive back children without adequate training or weapons?”

“Children who fight like wolverines, who strap explosives to themselves, who die rather than surrender ground. You said the virus would break them, but it didn’t. And with the loss of our station and the Black Gate, we have no bio-war capabilities left.”

“That was a set-back,” Illa conceded.

“We knew more of Belew’s predictions than the Humans did, and still they cut us deep,” Hermas pointed out.

“Things did not work out as we intended,” Illa admitted. “We have eliminated a large amount of Belew’s writings, but some survived. Some always survive-it is very hard to eradicate any written work completely. But his predictions did not explain why things have gone as they have.”

“Nowhere was supposed to have been sealed off,” Hermas pointed out. “Yet it was not rendered uninhabitable in the strikes during the Fall. These ‘Templars’ were supposed to be eliminated when they reached Nowhere, yet they were not. We were told they were idiots led by a narrow-sighted puritan, and yet they destroyed our station. We have been dogged by bad information and worse luck since we began.”

“There have been setbacks,” Illa nodded. “But they are not insurmountable. The Templars are fierce, true: no one destroys three Furnaces without possessing skill. But they are followers, simple-minded warriors who must be led by the hand. Someone in the monastery on Nowhere warned them to be ready for a boarding action, influenced by some overlooked copy of Belew’s, no doubt. And then that young cleric carried the Gate of Rhand to them. Without it, they would have been helpless.”

“Why was a monastery allowed to be built on Nowhere?” Zarrack growled. “Why wasn’t it destroyed long ago? Why do these oversights keep happening?”

“Attacking monasteries in out-of-the-way places is something that must be done with caution,” Illa shrugged. “The followers of the Light are not complete fools. At least we eliminated the stocks of heavy weapons on Rhand long ago. The Gate was a problem, true, but such things defend themselves. And in any case, who could have expected the Templars to have gotten ahold of it in time, much less have a man willing to carry it into a Black Gate?”

“If you’re such a student of Belew’s, why weren’t WE waiting at the Gate instead of that cleric?” Hermas snarled.

“Ah, Belew.” Illa shook his head. “Such an odd young man. I remember him well. Yes, I suppose we should have had forces there, but frankly, I thought his predictions over-rated.”

“Until the Black Gate imploded,” Zarrack slammed a mailed fist into a support post, denting the metal.

“Yes,” Illa agreed, mildly. “But this Furnace was already under construction, and the Rivers hold our forces in the field. These Templars have done little save inflame the uninfected survivors.”

“That isn’t ‘a little’; they were ready to fold before the station was lost,” Hermas grumbled.

“But their factories are unable to sustain the demands of war, their stockpiles diminish, and their numbers dwindle. Our strength grows each day; slower than we would like, admittedly, but it grows. These Templars do nothing but delay us.” Illa oozed confidence.

“More than just ‘delay’; they killed our only Pathfinder, and last night they knocked a hole in my front line with a fusion weapon,” Zarrack snarled.

“A weapon too small to affect a Furnace,” Illa shrugged. “We knew that if there was any delay the locals would develop such weapons. What of it? We control the orbital path with our satellites, and the entire Furnace area is shielded against their feeble teleporters. Even if the Templars were the heroes as SCAN’s media claims them to be, they would have to walk, drive, and sail half a globe to deliver a weapon they do not yet have into our Furnace. Last night’s attack was simply intended to strike fear into you.”

“It failed. However, it is proof of the pace of their weapons program. We must take action.”

“We will,” Illa assured them. “First, though, she must be dealt with.”

The two commanders nodded. “You know her location?”

“Yes, and we will soon strike. I have plans for the Templars, as well, although they are a second priority. So long as we rule the skies, the off-worlders are nothing more than a rallying point.”

“There is no threat to our satellites?” Hermas asked.

“None. They have no orbital craft remaining save those of the Templars. And every factory capable of building air frames has been destroyed or is in our hands. The most they could build these days are gliders and chemical rocket engines.”

The two warlords nodded thoughtfully.

“If there is nothing more, I will depart.”

“What about the Furnace?” Hermas asked.

“Soon. We had not planned on bring it on-line so quickly. Problems have arisen, and are dealt with. Keep up the pressure, Warlord Zarrack; we shall complete both Legion Dark Storm soon, and the Furnace as well.” The glowing orbs flared like tiny novas. “Rhand will be ours.”

Gamer Story XXIV (FS)

’ve always had a web site devoted to my gaming campaign to help my players keep track of events. In the early days I wrote short stories based on the PCs and posted them on the site for my player’s amusement. This campaign was set in the Fading Suns setting.

The figure in the chair steepled its long, slender fingers; in the chamber’s dim light the pale, tight-fleshed digits appeared skeletal. The man who was using the name Austin Marjay on the tickets which had taken him to this backward place tried not too look too closely at the decoration on the warped, throne-like chair, and even less at its occupant. The lighting in here was dim, nothing more than a couple candles of yellowish tallow which smelled very odd, and whose feeble light barely picked out the cluttered desk in one corner, or the bookshelves which encased the room, broken only by the heavy wooden door he had come in through.

“So, you have the report?” The voice from the figure in the chair was wispy, faint, but at the same time was nothing that could be called weak. Austin knew that it was the voice of a…man, he supposed, who was referred to as ‘Grimm’ when others passed on his instructions. It was a code name, of course, but Austin could see that it was far too apt to be chosen by accident.

“I have…sir,” Austin decided to stick with the male salutation until told otherwise. The lean figure was so poorly seen as to be any sex, or any Human-proportioned race for that matter. “Not in writing, although I could make it so if you should wish….”

A finger slid sideways in an economic negative gesture.

“V-very well.” Austin, who had risen to his current positions by being willing to take chances, take lives, and survive all manner of deadly attempts on his person, struggled to steady his voice. “I have virtually all of their data….”

“We have been…become concerned about a variable in the weave, a random factor whose actions are in fact appearing to be less random with each step taken.” The figure interrupted. “Begin with Stigmata.”

“Stigmata…the preparation for the raid on Daishan?”

“No. The defeat of the Symbiot’s ambitions.”

“Ah. For unknown reasons, possibly a religious pilgrimage, the Iron Templars went directly to the old military base on Stigmata used as a hospice by travelers. They were not deceived at all by the Symbiot servitors’ cover story….”

“You say you do not know why they went to the base?”

“No…no sir; they took a…vacation, for lack of a better term, on their commander’s family estates after the raid on Daishan. After that, for no apparent reason, they traveled back to Stigmata, pulled some routine details for their ship and Guilds, then headed straight to the base. There is no indication of why they did so.”

“Continue.”

“They assaulted the Symbiot force, and secured the base. I understand it involved very heavy fighting against a veteran band of Human servitors and several true Symbiots. They radioed for pickup, the transmissions being intercepted by the Symbiot security team. A follow-on Symbiot force was dispatched, and nearly succeeded in duping the Templars. In a series of engagements, the Templars eliminated the force, capturing an assault lander the Symbiots had used to move their security force. Again, there was heavy combat, but they prevailed.”

“And then?”

“They looted the base of all Second Republic goods, including an operational walker combat unit, reported the situation to the Imperial forces, and departed.”

“They did not uncover the Symbiot’s ambitions?”

“No, sir. It appears they had a vague idea, but in the end were satisfied with the immediate military gains and loot.”

“Loot.”

“Yes, sir. It appears that the acquisition of Second Republic weaponry is of primary importance to them.”

“Really.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We recall issuing orders for the integration of such random elements.”

“We had been in compliance, sir. We had established a tracking and monitoring element upon their ship, and were in the process of implementing a full discreditation.”

“And?”

“It was uncovered. One of the Templars had a wife…a camp follower, really. She uncovered our operation prior to completion, and the subsequent investigation by the Templars uncovered our device. We were forced to initiate full a cut-out to insure that they could not back-track the operation.”

“Your operation was uncovered by a camp follower.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you claim you were in compliance.”

“We were, sir. This…girl, she came out of nowhere. A latent Talent, possibly.

“She was from Nowhere itself?”

“Ah…no, sir, Hira, actually. We really know nothing about her. One of the Templars brought her back as a sort of war trophy.”

“Hira,” the figure mused. “A strange place.”

“Yes sir.” Austin paused, but Grimm said nothing more. “From Stigmata they returned to Byzantium Secundus, where they went about their usual post-mission training. They seemed very interested in jungle worlds; we confirmed several lines of inquiry, as well as some research into legends regarding the Darkness.”

“And?”

“They proceeded directly to Severus, sir. And on that planet, directly to a previously unknown Second Republic ruin, a former military base deep in Ascorbite-haunted jungle.”

“A suitable end, no doubt?”

“Ah…well, it would have been, sir. The base was occupied by a descendant of caretaker staff; the Templars fought their way past automated defenses and scores of traps in order to loot the base, acquiring a number of advanced small arms and an operational engineering walker unit. In order to extract their loot, they established a landing zone, despite the concerted onslaught of a full Ascorbite sub-Hive.”

“Their losses?”

“About fifty percent seriously or critical wounded, but no deaths.”

“None?”

“None, sir. They have access to both advanced medical treatment and Church Ritual.”

“Their movements thereafter?”

“They returned to Byzantium Secundus for an extended period of training and preparation, sir, a longer and more organized period than was usual for them. In particular, they seemed to focus on military skills and unit applications. It was during this period that a contact on Severus reported that the Templars acquired two jump keys in their raid on the old base.”

“Jump keys.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And where do these jump keys lead to?”

“Of that, we are uncertain. The Templars have given no indication that they have them; however, contacts in drinking establishments established very early on that they were bound for Nowhere.”

“Nowhere.”

“Yes, sir. But the Gate….”

“Stop them before they reach the Gate. They’ll have to make planetfall before jumping, to return the Keys which brought them. Use any assets available.”

“We have some stock-piled vehicles and heavy weapons….,” Austin realized he was thinking aloud, and stopped.

“And more to the point: find out how they have reached this point. Their actions speak of a hidden power guiding them.”

“A hidden power, sir?”

“Yes. There was no connection between the Daishan raid and the base on Stigmata, other than both were Symbiot operations. There was no connection between those two operations and Severus at all. And how could some serf-girl from a backwards planet possibly uncover a dedicated operation? No, these Templars are the tools of a more cunning power. Find out who it is. There is no point in killing the tool; we must seek out the one who wields it. Bring me at least one living Templar.”

“As you command.”

*******

Two men sat in a spartan office watching a Magic Lantern show on a think machine. The tiny speaker rattled with gunfire and shouts as, on the screen, a Symbiot hidden on a ceiling snatched a man in combat armor and slammed him into the stone ceiling before discarding his limp body.

“Dead?” the older of the pair gestured at the screen as the scene froze.

“No, your Eminence, although he did have a fractured spine. That is Damien Black, known as Blackie to the Iron Templars, a former convict and bodyguard.”

“A convict?”

“Yes your Eminence, although he has served his term.”

“Incredible.” The older man activated the screen again. He suddenly leaned forward. “That has to be a Knight.”

“Yes, your Eminence, Sir Damarus Li Halan, the Templar commander. A fine product of Li Halan breeding.”

“Then why’s he in the Questing Knights?”

“Apparently a true believer, your Eminence.”

“Huh. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. Still, the Li Halan don’t have good men to waste.”

“He apparently is very strong-willed, your Eminence, except in regards to women.”

The older man sighed. “A common enough weakness. And the Vorox?”

“His personal bodyguard, albeit Muster, your Eminence. Apparently its loyalty is unquestionable.”

“Those are the Churchmen in the group?”

“Yes, your Eminence; the one with only one arm is a member of the Orthodox, a White Order Canon named Timothy Zondervan.”

“Is that a cyber implant on his stump?”

“Yes, your Eminence; he is a maniac.”

“Such men have their uses. The other?”

“Sanctuary Aeon, your Eminence; Protos Sir Julius Li Halan.”

“Aeon, with that bunch? And a Li Halan?”

“A cousin of Sir Damarus’, your Eminence, sent by the family with two other equally less…traditional Li Halan cousins. Apparently he is quite devout.”

“He would have to be, and busy, too. What about the other two cousins?”

“Dead, your Eminence. There, the Obun with the pistol is Codinesh Trandez, Sir Damarus’ personal medic.”

“Who’s the lunatic with the grenades?”

“Calvin Farva, called ‘Red’, your Eminence. An expert with explosives. The man near him….there… is Nicolas Scarpeti, a Marine.”

“I could have guessed that. That’s a caseless SAW he’s carrying; the Red fellow has a rail SAW.”

“Yes, your Eminence, the Iron Templars have become rather well-equipped during the course of their operations.”

“Why is that bald fellow hanging from a rope?”

“It’s a winch cable, your Eminence. He is being lowered with explosives to clear a landing zone on Severus.”

“Severus? That’s…yes, there’s an Ascorbite. Light-less creatures. Why did they cut the winch cable?”

“A shooting accident, your Eminence.”

“Ah. So he dies, then?”

“No, your Eminence, the Vorox assists him, although….yes, see? He is quite a capable Marine. His name is Halill Kona, known as Hal, a somewhat disturbed individual who acts as Sir Damarus’ second in command.”

“That’s an engineering Walker!”

“Yes, your Eminence, they recovered it and a combat unit during their recent operations.”

The older man flinched as on the screen an Ascorbite leapt onto the walker and stabbed the operator. “A shame. The man had a nice touch with a saw. Hard way to go, taking a sword in the chest.”

“Actually, he lives, your Eminence; in fact, he is badly wounded again in just a few minutes. He is Andrew Quinn, the Templar’s chief Technician, a respected man within his Guild.”

“Why didn’t they just use one of the walker’s spare arms to hold a cage in front of the operator so he was out of sword range?”

“They prefer to do things the hard way, your Eminence. Some sort of warrior’s code.”

“I’m surprised any are still alive.”

“Critical wounds are common, your Eminence, but they have first-rate medical treatment, and Church Ritual. From my studies of this document, the regular maiming is a Templar tradition. They award medals for it.”

“Really? Why?”

“As a mark of their fighting spirit; these are primitive thinkers, your Eminence.”

The older man sat back and sighed. “They captured a Dark Library, destroyed two Singularity Furnaces, and killed two transformed Entities?”

“Yes, your Eminence. And exposed a Shapra cult, and defeated Symbiot forces on several occasions. They have been used as expendable assets on several occasions by various agencies, and still returned with most of their personnel.”

“Amazing. They look like a band of madmen.”

“Protective coloration, your Eminence.”

“The Pancreator works with tools of His own choosing. Can they do it?”

“No, your Eminence. But they may buy us time.”

The older man watched the fire-fight in the jungles of Severus for a minute. “Any chance of any surviving?”

“None, your Eminence.”

The small-arms fire died, and a voice-over began. The older man killed the sound with the touch of a button. “I do not like this.”

“I know, your Eminence. But they are what we have to work with. For the most part, they are the dregs of their respective factions.”

“They are children of the Light, however wayward.” The older man stared at nothing, then shook his head. “Still….we have no choice, as you say. Let it continue.”

“Yes, your Eminence. By your command.”