Spoiler (click to show/hide):
Action Five
[signal bleed]
[patch error]
[disconnecting]
“God fucking damn it!”
[intermission]
Warrant Officer Ichi “Sugar” Katsuo
Communications Suite, Casa Nostra; Presidium Class, In Orbit Over Pressia
31 Hours after the scuttling of the Orion.
“Bridge this is Comm,” said Sugar, letting go of the send button and picking up the used water bottle sitting on the left-hand side of the console.
“This is Bridge, send it,” they replied from several decks above him. He spit a thick stream of brown tobacco juice into the bottle and wiped his lip on it before reengaging.
“Yeah, I’m getting signal bleed from a00021 again.” Ay triple-ought twenty-one. “Remote viewing is kicking out some weird shit on the peripherals. Same crap I got after those women went off the reservation with that spider-thing, over.” Sugar was not a fan of this assignment since the get go. He’d been in more than his share of shit-fucked situations before making it to a nice, comfy rank like warrant officer. This mission was different though. Even twenty miles above whatever bullshit was going on down there on the surface the old jittery feeling of live combat, of imminent danger, rolled up and down his arms in cold little waves.
The brass had been lying to them before they even hit transit-space, and now they weren’t talking at all. The “over-developed” pigs on the surface looked like normal humans with a birth defect, and the native fauna weren’t just highjack species, they were actively hunting and fucking the men and women who had crashed landed. The Orion’s mission logs were locked and the bridge was clueless about the next course of action. The best he had gotten was some tight-assed ensign that had come down and told him to remote view every active collar on the surface. He’d spent the next day and half watching terrified men and women fighting and dying from first person perspective. Worse still was that weird moss, and watching his fellow service members going crazy and fucking those things down there. Sugar shivered and set his spitter down. When you were blind from the bottom and deaf from the top, only bad things could happen.
“Comm, can you find any active channels?”
“That’s a negative bridge. Other than a00021 there are no working collars on the surface that aren’t imprisoned, insane, or currently being ingested by a gigantic living island monster.”
“Say again Comm?”
“Every last ground unit has succumbed in some respect to the native biosphere and its inhabitants, over.”
“Regarding the island monster. Is it the walking pitcher plant again?”
“Negative bridge, poor grammar on my part. The island that the Orion hit is a living organism, over.”
There’s a pause, and moments go by before the young man’s voice coming through Sugar’s headset is replaced by the gravely tones of an much older woman. Pity, he sounded cute.
“Comm, this is main.” Front Admiral Fontaine, Sugar thought to himself, I’ve got the ear of the big boss. Lucky me.
“This is Comm, good evening ma’am.”
“Dispense with the pleasantries Sugar. What evidence do you have to supplant your assertion of the Orion’s resting place being on the back of some sort of mega-fauna?” Her voice was gravely, clipped, and monotone. They hadn’t worked together for three years, but she had specifically requested him an hour before briefing. The last time he’d been on a ship with her, she had atmo-skipped a magnetic slug across a Stadtwelt that had been conducting planet-wide raids against neighboring systems. The house-sized metal slug had gouged a fifty-mile long trench in the surface and cast millions of tons of dirt and debris into the atmosphere. The surface temperature of the entire planet dropped 20 degrees centigrade in a manner of days, and the debris made evacuation by flight impossible. Three years later the entire population of 2 billion men, women, and children simply ceased to be. She was promoted, and Sugar never ran a mag-gun crew ever again.
“I’ve got visual confirmation from over twenty collars that thing is basically some floating leviathan. I may be wrong, but from what I’ve gathered the locals think of it as a god. Also, I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the signal bleed, over.”
“Understood. Have you been able to assess the enemy’s capabilities yet?”
“The only active collar that made it out of the detention facility was a00021.”
“Our little hero?” Sugar had to admit she was right. He’d seen dozens of bigger, faster, and seemingly better-trained personnel being destroyed by the surface conditions, but not Ensign Katie Teuschle. That girl had been written off as doomed from the start, but had somehow been performing well above expectations since she busted her way out of her escape pod. He was still rooting for her now, on her knees before that creepy Low King fucker.
“That’s the one, main.”
“And what were you able to glean from her perspective?”
“She’s in a coastal town, a couple of hours away from the landmass by air. The town is lightly fortified, mostly small arms and some anti-air.”
“Any anti-star units?”
“No ma’am.” Sugar leaned back in his chair and deftly flipped the wad of tobacco over in his lip, then spit. The answer to that question had been one of the bothersome conundrums of this shit detail. “They don’t have any, and there honestly doesn’t seem to be any within parallax of the Orion. Furthermore, I don’t believe they have a solid anti-star corps or any fighters on the whole planet.”
“What do you mean by that Sugar?” She was too smart to not know what he meant, and he was nervous just saying it. The Orion had been a Presidium class, just like the Casa Nostra. Using fighters against it would be no more effective that firing slingshots into the air and praying. The Pressians simply didn’t have the capacity to take on the Orion defensively, much less scuttle it during an offensive.
“What I mean is that the only confirmation I have of Pressian craft taking out the Orion is from here-say of here-say. I don’t know what sunk her ma’am. Even the Pressians don’t know who to give credit to.”
The line went silent and for a moment Sugar relaxed and took in the Communications suite. His little plinth set in the massive bank of super computers that stretched the length of a football pitch around him, all of them humming and glowing in the cool dark at the near center of the ship. His tiny seat in the center of the glowing HUD connections that extended like broken arms from the sleek black console that sat around him like a crescent moon. The seat itself, a red and black swivel chair that seemed an anachronism amidst the technology he manipulated from his perch in it. Sugar silently wished he were a farmer on some half-terraformed mud-ball far away from starships and mag-guns and rapist flowers. He’d grow corn, soy, and raise a few cows. Maybe even hire a nice little farmhand with a cute butt who knew how cook eggs benedict. Sugar promised to buy eggs benedict just as soon as the mission was over and he was back on Grand. He actually didn’t even know what it looked like.
“Comm, until further notice ensure to be doubly attentive to any mentions of anti-star capability from the Pressians. Until we know what brought down the Orion we will assume that the enemy retains this capability.”
“Roger that main.”
“Also, based on your observation, what was the most recent heading of that leviathan?" Sugar picked up a clipboard from the side of his console. He had used it to do a quick calculation earlier, and had fortunately not covered the results of his work with the doodle he had drawn of Teuschle wearing sunglasses and throwing up a peace sign with a cigarette in her mouth. In big letters beside it he had scribbled “Like a Bo$$”.
“Telemetry indicates that it’s heading to the same coastal town that a00021 is in. If it maintains speed, then it’ll arrive within the hour.”
“Roger Comm, main out.”
Sugar breathed a sigh of relief as Fontaine left the airwaves, then pulled out his dip and shoved it into his spitter. Farms and farmhands were a billion miles away right now, and he had work to do.
[intermission over]
[error not resolved]
[searching for signals]
[…]
[signal found]
[unmapped ad hoc device xxxxxxx]
[begin trans]
Unregistered Thought Collar, Listening Mode
Royal Armory, Relei, Pressia
31 Hours after the Scuttling of the Orion
“How are you keeping up sir? I heard that Imperial eviscerated you, I’m surprised to see you on your feet already.”
Per had always been a nice boy, and a spectacular adjunct, but Eld wasn’t in the mood for dealing with him at the moment. That girl had done a number on him, both in pride and body, and he was getting testy in his old age.
“I’m fine, Per,” Eld responded, lifting up his shirt and showing the glittering silver line the nanobots had left after healing him. The metallic “stitches” would be there for years as the tiny machines slowly fell out of his healing skin. “No Imperial is getting a leg up on your old man.” Per’s eyes were nearly glittering with hero worship. He was Eld’s youngest son, and the only one that had stayed with his aging father in Relei. The other two boys had headed inland to the central cities to attend the old universities. One was a lawyer, the other a politician. In his mind Eld called them Pride and Prejudice, respectively. Per had always been attached to his father though, and Eld had to force his stoic façade the day his youngest told him he would be going to Officer Candidate School. It was a decision he would still be happy with, had the Imperials not suddenly decided to start flexing their military might. My son could live his life a beggar, thought Eld, and I would be happy with him so long as he lived. “Why did you have me come here anyway? Any of the medics could have briefed you on my condition.”
“I know, sir, but I saw something strange and now I don’t know what to do.” Per’s eyes darted nervously around the armory and Eld hoped beyond hope the revelation wouldn’t be anything weird or time consuming. His son had a flair for the dramatic that he had inherited from his late mother. Per unconsciously ran a hand over his short-cropped red hair and looked down at the ground by his feet. The boy was the epitome of professionalism on duty, but in the presence of his father he always reverted to his old, childhood habits. Eld felt the slightest of shifts in his heart. A surge of pride for the man his son had become, and a pang of guilt for all the times he hadn’t been there as a father. Per wouldn’t remember, but Eld would carry those mixed emotions to the grave, a parent’s burden.
“What is it son?”
“Dad. Sir. Sorry, uh. It’s about the Low King, sir.”
“What about him?”
“He, well. I don’t want to seem like a sneak, but I’ve seen him… doing things.” The Low King’s perversions were something that Eld was more than well aware of. When Cer had been appointed to Low King of Relei and given the throne at Crasil, Eld had fought the appointment. Low King Cer was the High King’s brother, however, and blind fraternal patronage had secured the placement. He thought of the Imperial girl’s plight. He’d have rather given her a good death. She deserved to die on her feet as a warrior, not forced to her knees. Eld remembered the little black switch that Cer had pushed into his hand hours before. It was an unfair advantage, but this was war.
“Like what, son? I don’t have all day.”
“He talks to some man in his private quarters, and the other adjuncts have noticed as well, but no one ever comes out the room.” Eld’s eyebrow raised, his interest piqued.
“So a communicator then, but what’s so strange about that?”
“Well, sir. I peeked in once, and I saw him on the screen.” Per fidgeted, rubbing his upper arm above his shoulder uncomfortably. “It was an Imperial, dad. A man in a long black coat that talked like they were old friends.” Eld’s blood ran cold and millions of possibilities ran through his mind. How the Imperials found their planet, the starship that crashed onto god’s back. The little black switch and the sweaty palm that handed it to him.
“The Imperial spoke in our tongue? What did he say Per? This is important, you have to remember exactly.”
“It was just before that ship crashed. The Imperial said something about a mountain crushing people who didn’t know to get out from under it and the Low King laughed and told him everything was ready. The man didn’t laugh though, he just told the king not to fail him, and that the sky would fall soon.”
It was too much. Eld fell back and rested against the stack of rifle crates that had been liberated from the remains of the Imperial starship. If Cer was in league with the Imperials, then everything was in jeopardy. This was all way over his head; he was just an infantry commander. A good one, but intrigue and deception had always flown over his head. All of Crasil could have been compromised. He had to call the High King.
“Per,” he said, reaching forward and grabbing his son by the shoulders. “Go to the hangar and tell Leftenant Cray that I need my bird in the air in fifteen minutes. Don’t hesitate, don’t talk to anyone along the way, and don’t repeat what you just told me. Do you understand?” A bit of steel found its way into the boy’s eyes and he nodded, and then bolted through the weapons racks and out the door into the hall.
Eld leaned against the crates again and looked up at the green-painted steel of the ceiling fan that lazily circled overhead. For the first time in his long tenure as a commander, he wished that he were a grunt again. He yearned for the simplicity of orders.
[end trans]
[signal bleed resolved]
[pinging device a00021]
[device online]
[begin trans]
Ensign Teuschle
Throne Room, Relei, Pressia
31 Hours after the scuttling of the Orion.
[take on the troops]
Teuschle grits her teeth again and stands as her guard detail lifts her to her feet. There’s really no getting out of this one, she thinks, screaming in her mind to make sure her hands don’t tremble and betray her fear. The Low King stands in front of her. His eyes crawl up and down her body, pausing at her chest. She decides she won’t give him the satisfaction.
“You wouldn’t even know what to do with it,” she says, staring him in the eyes. “You fat sack of shit.” The king cocks an eyebrow and a playful smile turns up the corners of his mouth.
“What a shame, I could have given you everything your foolish heart desired.” He turns away and snaps his fingers over his shoulder. “You heard the lady. Take care not to damage her in any way, and shoot her a few times if you find her lacking vigor.” The king motions to one of his retainers and a young pig boy runs up with purple silk folding chair that he opens for the king a few meters in front of Teuschle. He looks at her and laughs. “Ringside seating is one of the many pleasures afforded my position.”
There’s a sharp tug at her back and Teuschle’s top is ripped off, and her breasts are free for just a moment before on of the guards grabs one with a rough hand. He kneads it firmly and Teuschle can feel the tingle of the moss in her mind again. If they want to play, she thinks, I’ll play. She leans against him and raises her hands over her head to give him better access then arches her neck back and slowly runs her tongue along his jawline, her breath is hot against his neck and she feels him shiver. He bends down to meet her mouth, but she breaks contact just as he gets closer and turns around to grab him by the belt. The pig man looks back at his compatriots and they laugh at each other hesitantly while Teuschle unhooks his belt and jerks his pants down with one sharp pull. He’s already erect, and Teuschle bends at the waist, wiggling her butt she gets closer.
“Are the rest of you just going to stand there?” Inquires the Low King. His retainer has brought him some red drink in long fluted glass, and he crosses his legs and sips at it. The pig men move around Teuschle, and when one of them places his hands on her hips she pushes her ass against his crotch and slowly grinds against him. The pig man curses to himself and Teuschle slowly lowers herself to her knees, pulling down the pig’s pants down the rest of the way on her descent. The two pigs kneel with her, and she pulls the first one into her mouth as the one behind her yanks down the gauzy pants she had been given in the prison. Teuschle thinks of Rick as she guides her tongue in circles around the pig man’s head, applying suction here and there in a plodding rhythm. Her pants are around her knees now and the pig behind her starts to gently rub her pussy with two thick, calloused fingers. She focuses harder on her time with Rick and soon she’s wet.
Time to send this into overdrive, she thinks. She stops sucking the first pig’s dick for a moment, and turns to see that the one behind her has taken his pants off, but seems to be a bit nervous. She grabs him by his cock and slowly jerks him off while pulling him in closer. He obliges, and soon she can feel the tip of him gently poking at her opening. She takes a second to rub him up and down her lips, and then slowly pushes back with her hips. Despite herself, she relishes the feel of him parting her, pushing her wider as he moves in deeper and deeper. It’s been awhile, she thinks to herself as she feels the pig man’s dick stretching her pussy. She takes the first one into her mouth again and relaxes her throat as she begins to go deeper and deeper. The pig man behind her picks up a rhythm and warmth floods her body, making her arch her back and moan around the dick in her mouth. The pig runs his hands through her golden hair and makes a fist, pulling her hair and making her scalp tingle.
Teuschle decides to take charge, and throws her self back against the pig behind her in a quick, hard rhythm that she counts out in her head. One, two, three, ONE! One, two, three, TWO! She can hear her ass slapping harder and harder against him, and her pussy is so wet that she can feel her juices drying halfway down her thighs. The pig behind her gasps in pleasure and falls forward over her, pushing his forehead into the soft, tanned skin of her upper back. The pig in front of her has both of his hands on her head now, and she reaches under his legs and pushes a finger into his ass, curling it and firmly pressing against his prostate. A moment later she can feel them both begin to shudder in ecstasy. She feels it too, but forces herself to concentrate and not let the idiot behind her cum inside. She shifts her hips down at the last moment, and feels him orgasm on top of her. He comes like a bomb, and she can feel the hot rivulets of his semen running down the inside of her thighs. The vice grip on her hair tightens and first pig man comes hard in her mouth, filling it though she doesn’t swallow. The two pigs collapse away from her, sweating and panting hard and she calmly stands and uses one of their discarded shirts to clean her legs and mouth. She pulls her pants up back up with shaking, exhausted hands and turns to face the Low King.
“Splendid show Imperial! If I didn’t know better I would have thought you were a classically trained wh—“ She spits the pig’s load and time almost stands still as the molten white globule arcs through the air, glittering in the dusty light before impacting the king solidly in his left eye. He screams and his head snaps back from the shock of it, throwing his body back into the chair, which tilts up and back, off balance. His legs kick comically in the air as he tries to reset himself, but it slowly passes the tipping point and he falls backward, rolling out of the chair with his ass over his head. “MOTHERFUCKING CUNT BITCH OF AN IMPERIAL WHORE! FUCKING BLEEDING TWAT, I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU!”
Teuschle spits again to clear her mouth and raises her hands over her head as the rest of the guards bring their rifles to bear on her. She starts laughing. The king continues to roll around and curse her as several of his retainers rush out to untangle him and help him to his feet. When he’s finally put right he turns to face her but keeps his distance. His left eye is so bloodshot it seems to glow, and stream of milky white tears run down his cheek.
“You fucking bitch I’ll have you killed! Gutted, raped, strung out and left in the sun for the birds to peck out your whore fuck eyes!” His face has passed the red of rage and transitioned to a sickly purple, like some giant over-ripe grape. Somewhere outside the castle an air raid siren begins to wail out its lone note over the city. The crowd inside the hall shifts uneasily and looks to the windows, but neither the king nor Teuschle move. Their eyes stay locked on each other. The king radiates hatred. “Any last words you fucking cunt?” Teuschle smiles to defy his sullen rage.
“Yeah, you’ve got something.” She keeps her hands raised but tilts her head and points at the left side of her face. “Right here.” She laughs and he screams and raises the little black switch. A moment later everything becomes electric darkness and Teuschle falls to floor.
[end trans]
END ACTION FIVE: [defiance] TIME ELAPSED: D-9 TO CLEANSING: CASA NOSTRA ON STATION IN ORBIT AROUND PRESSIA, AMBASSADOR CLASS PERICLES ON STATION FOR EVAC
A LUX, DEO
by TheDaughterOfHades14 » Sat May 05, 2012 5:22 am 
