I needed to make a report. If Reynard already bonded, especially to a stranger, certain individuals needed to know to bring him into the loop. It probably wouldn’t kill me, but it might if her new bond decided that she didn’t need to risk her talents fixing a beat-up old warrant officer.
I just prayed that whoever it was wasn’t a typical goblin. Most of them, if they had the chance, would steal the shirt off your back and then sell it back to you at a huge markup, especially since it was already sized perfectly for you, and you could be confident that it was comfortable, without even a shred of remorse. It wasn’t a sin, it was simply the way they were built, survival above all else. That would be… bad, like giving a teenage thug a pistol loaded with tactical nuclear bullets.
She’d been growing quickly when she left, almost 5 inches in six months, but how much taller could she have grown? Last I’d seen she’d been a little over four feet, barely taller than most dwarves, and her head had looked much smaller in comparison to her stretched-out frame. Had she grown another inch or two in a month? Ugh. It was impossible to keep up.
I took a quick look around the barracks. That little petty girl… Princeton? Yes, Princeton, was right. This place was one of the most comfortable-looking barracks I’d ever seen, clean and tight as a whistle, and it even had tac walls to block off the racks for anyone looking for a little privacy. The fire watch, a big orc that was, surprisingly, already a bronze, greeted me when I entered, and showed me where my new berthing was located.
It was a combination office/bedroom, which was expected, but it was sized more like a captain or admiral’s quarters, with a small tactical grid conference table for planning in the main area, and a wall screening off the living area and head from the rest… it even had an actual water shower, very old-school, and the whole thing had been done up in wood facade like it was a yacht in the 20th century… facade? That was real wood!
The amount of resources that had to have been poured into this place was staggering. Unless it had come fitted like this when it was a reward for a great rift, back before I was born. The bed was wide, a real bed rather than an officer’s rack, and the whole thing was done up for a major, the slot I was technically filling. A major who preferred a touch of class and had pockets deeper than a singularity’s gravity well, anyway. I was simply surprised that it didn’t have gold spigots in the sanitary fixtures, but then, that would have been kind of gauche.
It even had a sunken tub as part of the bathing area. An actual sunken tub, like medical centers used for emergency repairs. I had taken a real bath instead of a shower or cleanse the last time… about 30 years ago unless you counted occasionally diving into a water hazard in a rift, but scummy water while a wraith was trying to take your head off was a far cry from a heated bathtub.
Then again, this ship HAD spent some time as a diplomatic yacht and high-security transport. I might have just been the lucky recipient of a refitting that wasn’t as complete as it could have been.
I did another minor inspection, carefully watched by the orc, and noted that the heavy armors were all kept in maintenance, a decent precaution to keep everything up to date and in perfect repair that most ships lacked, keeping them in lock storage instead and demanding that the troopers drag them into the mechanized bay when they noticed any damage.
But, as part of the kit, each trooper also kept a well-oiled and honed low-tech weapon locked into a frame over their racks… and some of those weapons actually glowed with enchantments to essence sight! This place was a rifter’s paradise, and the fire watch opened up the armory as well, where racked weapons and carefully maintained heavy armor for low-tech delves were kept carefully.
“Sorry, Mister Wasserman. Regs usually state that the troopers and ship’s guard remain armed at all times outside of training and quarters, but the yards got really... antsy at so many enchanted weapons hanging around, so they forced us to keep them locked down in the dock. We’ll re-establish proper shipboard procedure the moment we get clear of the docks next week.”
I nodded, “That’s fine.” I wouldn’t have personally allowed the yards to cripple the ship’s defenses just because it was getting refitted, but the Captain probably had to dance on more political eggshells than I did. Warrants, oddly enough, have more freedom to enforce ship regs under such circumstances, if the regs demanded the ship’s company remain armed at all times.
Not a bad precaution if you have decent discipline… Fleet ships usually locked everything up in the armory between assaults, and the best, or most powerful weaponry got assigned to the highest ranks rather than allowing people to keep personal weapons, especially not enchanted ones, and one of the poleaxes carefully locked above a rack had the purplish sheen normally associated with Mithral, which meant it might be worth more than the entire armory put together.
But then, fleet ships often had ethnic flare-ups that had to be handled in a particularly delicate way. Social justice types had been put down, but they always had the strangest ability to pop back up in the worst places at the worst possible times, and they always brought violence and death with their suicidally stupid ideology. Fleet ships were no exception.
But on a private ship like this, where the captain and XO could carefully groom a crew and never had to deal with conscripts or social climbers except for the occasional house spy like Miss Princeton, discipline, and personal freedom, could thrive under the Captain’s benevolent tyranny. Based on the quarters for even the scrappers on board the ship, the least-respected profession outside of deck labor, her tyranny was benevolent indeed.
What struck me as I made my way back towards the XO’s office was how HEALTHY everyone looked. I know that the Crow had three high-ranking spiritualists on board, outside of Reynard, but it seemed like even the working crew were all at least copper, with the increased health and life that came with it.
Was THIS why she was so dead set against conscription? Was this what a working rifter was supposed to look like? If so, she had a heavy body of evidence against the UPF’s current policies. I had always imagined privateer ships as dirty scrotholes full of angry, undisciplined men who were rifters one day and pirates the next, and raiders only when local fleet ships forced them to participate or face getting their contract, writ, and freedom revoked.
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I had no idea they could be like this. Then again, I’d always been fleet, even when I’d been in independent action or attached to the Church. It wasn’t like this sort of thing would become public knowledge if it was true.
The most interesting part was that the crew seemed to be an even split between male and female. Obviously, most of the heavy grunt work was being done by the male crew, but there were often females, even a few female orcs, who were heaving oversized munitions loads aboard right alongside the men. Yes, there was the expected jawing and teasing, but it didn’t seem particularly malicious, they worked like a seasoned unit that had grown to trust each other with their lives.
And some of the people were frankly gorgeous. There was an Elf in greasy coveralls running one of the cargo loaders that could probably have made a fortune just opening his coveralls and taking an ‘action shot’ to sell to the tabloids, and even a short green girl, staggeringly lovely of a breed I was unfamiliar with, with medium-length blue hair and an amazing body clearly directing the cargo drones while I watched.
When I knocked at the XO’s door, it was only a moment before I heard ‘Enter!’. Taers were well-known empaths, and she’d probably felt me coming while I was still back at the troop barracks by the painful twinges of my caliban alone.
Ugh. If I’d thought MY new quarters were amazing, the XOs were staggering. It made me wonder what the CO”s quarters looked like, but even warrant officers have limits… she’d see me when she was ready for me, and not a moment sooner.
For a Taer she was remarkably cute, in that weird, androgynous way they had. Taers had been designed to be perfect immortals, with all extravagances like sex, reproduction, dropped alleles, and even hair removed from their genes before they were born.
Commander Taera had clearly chosen to identify, at least socially, as female. She had a smart, attractive haircut that was likely implanted, and looked, and behaved, remarkably female. She was so good at it that I suspected she’d been practicing it since before the Empire fell… or possibly even before it was founded in the first place.
“Hello Mister Wasserman! Or should I call you Mister Greene?” she asked.
I grumbled a little. I had changed my name over twenty years before in an attempt to shield my family and acquaintances from the fallout of being connected to me, an attempt that had been largely successful. It did not pay to be a known asset of an incorruptible, unstoppable force of justice like a paladin. It didn’t surprise me too much that she knew my identity, though, as I said, she had her finger in a lot of pies… immortality gave you a lot of time to catch up on history and intelligence. “Wasserman is fine, please.”
She smiled, very friendly, but I knew damned well that this was not the heart of her power. She was playing a role here, and I didn’t know what it was… Then again, I’d never heard of a Paladin getting a quest to deal with her, so it was unlikely that she was a powerful force of corruption.
“Now that we have both frightened the scrot out of each other, me by knowing your real name, and you simply by being what you are, Welcome to the Crow. I assume you are not simply slumming it among us uneducated pirates to expand your employment horizons?”
I shook my head, “Not really in the mood for verbal gymnastics today, sweety, I’m having a bad hair day. I am sure you know exactly why I am here, probably better than I do. Instead of spending an hour intimidating me with every fact you could dig up about me, from the name of the first girl I had sex with to listing all my traits in reverse order, what do we do?”
Her lips thinned a little, and then she smiled again. “While I do love the game, I understand your pain. And yes, she can fix it, and a lot of other problems besides. I am a little sad, however, that you were more unobservant than I expected, although that should be expected with what you are going through.”
“Believe it or not, I am incredibly glad to have you aboard. I got a quest, you see, and you are an important part of it. A mind-blowing, world-changing quest that I have sought for my entire life. Please tell me, and don’t beat around the bush, did you get a quest involving Reynard too?”
She sounded almost a little desperate, but as with anything Taer, it was almost certainly artifice. It was good artifice though, so while I wouldn’t bother with a smug smile, I could… probably… engage her game instinct for a moment. Never play poker with a Taer. Either of them. “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine?”
She laughed brightly! “Did you know, in my entire life, that is the first time anyone has said that to me? No one ever wants to see mine, since there’s nothing to see. Do I have your word that it’s a deal? System contract?
I nodded, “System contract. Share your quest, entirely, no hidden parts or redactions”
Suddenly my UI flashed, and I checked the text.
System contract acknowledged. Share the quest, ‘Help Roisin Gabrielle Reynard’ acknowledge?
Yes/No
I tapped on the ‘yes’ and suddenly got a flash of system-encrypted data from the XOs UI.
Quest text sent from User Experimental genetic upgrade, project Netzach, subject 3001 code named ‘Taer 2’
Help Roisin Gabrielle Reynard come safely into her power without being enslaved, murdered, or forced to bond for unethical, criminal, or political reasons.
Quest Benchmark: Recover Gabrielle’s protector, Divine Paladin Kushiel, David Kushiel Greene (Charlie David Wasserman), and prevent his deviation and loss of Paladin status.
Benchmark Rewards: Spiritual Root and true name
Quest Benchmark: Assist Kushiel in discovering the celestial heart in Rift 121.630.477
Benchmark Rewards: Form a basic dantian
Quest benchmark: Assist Kushiel and Gabrielle in defeating Chaos Lord Baalanor
Benchmark Rewards: cultivation manual, ‘forming elementary meridians’
Rewards:
A pair of powerful allies
Advancement to wood-tier cultivation
Failure:
Loss of human presence in galactic sector 18 (Southwest spiral arm) Universe 7
This quest cannot be shared. Rewards incompatible with baseline human physiology.
I sighed at Taer. “Well, Jennifer, it looks like I got the carrot and you got the stick.”