Chief Warrant Officer Charlie David Wasserman-
I sighed as I trudged back up to monitoring. This billet was the last spot I’d be serving before I’d turn over my uniform and re-join the civilian universe. That goofy little big-eared goblin had been right. When my Caliban had gotten fried by that overlord on Grunion, I should have guessed that I was done. The damned thing was even giving me twinges now.
Combat paths were like that. I’d gotten as far as orichalcum on the path of the paladin, all the way up to a rare category when a gold core necromantic deviant had seared half of my base meridians.
The caliban allowed me to slowly continue my current path, despite barely being able to handle a force blade, but there’s only so much damage a human body can take, so many repairs, replacements, and upgrades you can handle before rebuilding at gold core becomes impossible. I was well past that point, which meant any further advancement was impossible, so right now I was just counting down the days until my commission ended, and with it my driving force.
I was still fairly young for a human that passed base metals, at only 40 years in I barely looked like a scarred thirty, but looking forward to the next 200+ years as a twisted cripple was not high on my list of enjoyable activities, as inevitable as it was. There had been a few offers from interested third parties to ‘loan’ me a new, lower-ranked but working caliban, but I was a scrotting divine paladin… I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life killing mafia competition or fighting in a ring on a slaver world for the amusement of jaded narcissists to pay off the debt.
I flopped heavily into my seat next to the school commandant, Commander Mike Jenkins, the guy who had delivered the stunning introductory address that bid fair to put half of the new class to sleep.
“Hey, Dave. You sparking again?”
I nodded slowly, letting out a groan. “Yeah. My caliban’s throwing a fit again. I don’t know how long I can deal with it before I just go ahead and get a neural balancer and give up on ever seeing a new core rank.”
“I was monitoring your little speech. I agree with you, in principle, but you just pissed on about half the fleet’s captains with that bit about trooper’s lives. You are right, pinching pennies costs us worlds, but the admiralty doesn’t see it that way.”
I shrugged, settling a little more comfortably. “You know I am a paladin. Big picture by necessity. A few of them… Taxon, Reynard, Grunnik, Denvar, and, and Milliner, show huge potential. What the hell is with that Reynard anyway? He looks scrotting weird for a goblin. Is he right about repairing my caliban? It seems like a hell of a risk, but if it’s a possibility, you know I will let him have a shot.”
“Her,” Mike replied.
“What?” I said in confusion.
“Her. She’s a Gremlin. A First-stage Maenad.” Mike was actually a lot older than me, nearly 200, even if he looked like a freshly minted lieutenant with a face for film.
“What the scrot?”
He laughed, “I know, right? Seriously, though… one of our privateers scouts, a Valkyrie, was cruising the indent camps, looking for potential, and she spotted this one in an orc Stormtrooper training camp. She was holding her own, too, hiding her gender by using constant latrine scrubbing punishments to clean up, and of course, young gremlins and goblins look damned similar to anyone that’s not a goblin.”
“How young?”
Mike shrugged, “Probably less than a year before she starts looking like a girl. Once she sprouts, though, Maenads are a hell of a set of lookers. Remember the full mod ban? Maenads were one of the reasons.”
“Bond slaves?”
He nodded, “Yeah, which is why the Crow got her sent to goblin camp and why she wound up here. Apparently, there’s an entire protected colony on Korse that gets hit by mercs for press gangs every few years under the Evasion Act.
“And they Shanghai girls? That’s seriously illegal.”
He shook his head, “The entire Maenad species is female. They breed true with other human types. Boys are the father’s race, girls are Maenads. They round them up as gremlins, hang onto them for a month or so to ripen, and then sell them on the slaver worlds as perfect slaves. And they ARE perfect slaves, heavy worlders, fiercely loyal, and usually incredibly gifted in affinities.”
“This one is no exception, but she was a late bloomer, she passed as a goblin and they sent her to boot for the bounty. She was wearing some kind of pheromone-retardant coveralls to try and escape the press gangs and avoid… disturbing some of the native monsters when she was picked up, and wound up in a beanstalk capsule with a bunch of orcs.”
“So what are we supposed to do about… her?”
He shrugged, “it’s not the first time they’ve sent females through this school. The thing is, if folks find out she’s a girl, she might get bonded early, and that’s where you come in.”
“Me?”
Mike nodded, “Yeah, Paladin. You have decent aura control when you choose to exercise it instead of trying to smother the whole scrotting class. There’s a reason that Maenads were the trigger. A strong aura, veteran level, decent karma… Maenads can be force-bonded with rape, but they gravitate towards guys like you. The problem is, she was right… with a few tools, she could probably take you apart and put you together better than new, and you’d be blessing every minute of it.”
I sighed. “Let me guess. This is the part where you say “Your mission, if you choose to accept it…”
Mike nodded, “Yeah. This room’s shielded right now. This has to be kept beyond the strictest confidence. She has technomancer potential. Class A.”
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“The scrot!” I yelled, getting to my feet suddenly. Technomancers were the bogeyman, they brought down the first empire. One of them was singlehandedly capable of ripping a titan to pieces.
“Calm down, Dave! It’s not like that. Technomancers were actually the reason the Empire even existed in the beginning. Their problem was not power, it’s instability. The highest levels have decided since she can be bonded, the trick is to find the right bond to keep her stable and productive. They don’t know who it is yet, but the reason you were asked to be an instructor here was because you are a paladin, and still had the path open… Most of them lose the way eventually, but you made divine paladin even WITH scorched pathways. That takes a kind of self-control and discipline that made you the obvious choice to keep an eye on her, and especially keep her unbonded by some rat bastard who’d use her to carve out his own little empire.”
I sat back down. “So what, you want me to be her babysitter until she grows up? And why are you letting children into the program anyway?”
He chuckled, “She has forces affinity. I mean, both tech and spiritual at the same time are already dangerous, usually it’s only something the elves have, and they are… overly stable. No drive to attain a higher path when you are already looking forward to a lifespan of millennia. Forces paired with both a magical AND a tech affinity set is what made technomancers so scary in the first place. And she’s not really a child OR an adult. Maenads were like taero… they could hold off on physical maturation until they bonded. I am guessing, in her case, she never found anyone to bond to early.”
“Once we found out about it, I mean, what if there are more of them hiding on Korse? What if their susceptibility to bond is what’s keeping them from going evil overlord all over the universe? A tame technomancer would be BEYOND an amazing asset for the UPF and for humanity in general… Can you imagine hitting a greater rift that spits out Earth-like worlds as a reward for clearing it of titans, tyrants, and planet eaters?”
He shrugged, “She had the entry camp fooled with her little UI trick, but even at tin, she re-wrote a conscript band to hide her little secret. Seriously. The things are packed to the gills with security measures, several of which are lethal. The only other option was to space her while she’s still weak and sterilize her planet.”
I winced.
“Yeah. Help us Obi-Wan Wasserman. You’re our only hope. If you refuse, well, we have a few other people we could try, but most of them could never have gotten to divine paladin. Which means, it’s likely Plan B.”
“So you are basically extorting me, holding the life of an entire planet over my head, if I don’t do this?”
Mike shook his head. “Naww. I knew you would say yes even if I didn’t bring it up. You are as much a paladin at heart as your class. Protect the innocent, help the weak grow strong, champion morality, protect the meek from the depredations of the strong and unethical, refuse a beer if you know you have to drive… Here’s a little girl who desperately needs your help to remain alive and sane, who is lost in a place full of terrifying and unethical strangers who are threatening everything she knows, kidnapped by slavers and sold to a military that condones such acts, desperately hiding who and what she is for fear of getting murdered… I bet she’s terrified of crying because that might identify her as a girl, get her thrown out of the fleet, and easy prey for the first strong-willed stranger that comes along to turn her into their loyal monster.”
I growled at Mike, “Scrotter.”
Mike grinned, “Language, Dave. You are a divine paladin, a shining example of morality and justice to the masses, an Icon of everything that’s good and right with the world. Try not to sink to the verbal level of a dockside goblin.”
I shook my head, “I am a broken-down ex-warrior who’s just looking for a good way to go out so I don’t have to spend the next couple of centuries trying to figure out how to live with burnt-out body and a world of regrets. But fine, you win. It probably qualifies as a noble quest anyway, or it should.”
He grinned, “Yoda can stick it in his pointy ear, you will train this girl.”
I shook my head, “I never should have let you near that reward cache of old earth vids. Especially not the Weird Al.”
He shrugged, “Too late for that. Seriously, though… she could probably fix your caliban without the help of the others. Push her, but don’t push her aura control too hard, or you WILL bond her. Your aura is like sunshine and clean water to a sensitive, even if you are a broken-down old has-been. That’s why you still get hit on all the time even looking like you spent the best part of your life dragged under a grav-lift over dirty concrete. Be very careful.”
“If you can, also get her to push her spiritual and physical gifts. I am going to change the program slightly to encourage physical enhancement, even though it’s not a normal procedure for drop-ship pilots. The stronger her spiritual affinity is, the better she will be at resisting… unapproved bonds. Sensei Ramuel is already a good start, he will push her a bit, and he’s an ascetic neuter, he’s NOT in the know… It’s just you, me, and command. Make her a mushroom.”
“I won’t lie.”
Mike nodded, “I know that. But you don’t have to share secrets or drop hints either. Oh, and Dave?”
I looked at him closely as I stood, wincing as the caliban tried to make me overshoot my goal of standing smoothly.
“Try really hard not to bond with her. She’s young enough to be your daughter. That won’t matter soon, and it wouldn’t be the worst thing, but command wants to have a say in who’s directing her power, and they’d feel bad about getting cut out of the loop. You can rest assured whoever it is won’t be a paladin.”
I growled. ‘feel bad’ meant they’d bring a pile of scrot down on my head that could make a star collapse. Getting disappeared would be the least of my worries if I screwed up. Then again, if I couldn’t handle a challenge, I wouldn’t be a paladin. It just bugged me that they’d probably try to bond her to a political climber or ‘safe’ old-guard military type.
He grinned, “Remember, Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side.”
I shook my head, “That’s bullshit. Fear leads to making smart decisions, anger leads to action, and hate is the only sane way to respond to evil. That media was fun nonsense. Selfishness leads to evil, not hate.”
Rule #1 of being a paladin. Courage is not the absence of fear, it is overcoming it to do what’s right. And maybe, just maybe, refusing to give in the face of a destroyed future was what a paladin should do.
My UI blinked, and I checked my wristband.
You have a new quest!
Help Roisin Gabrielle Reynard come safely into her power without being enslaved, murdered, or forced to bond for unethical or political power.
Rewards:
A powerful ally.
Advancement to gold core.
Paladin path-specific cycling scripture.
A potential path to body and path rejuvenation.
Failure:
Loss of potent world resource “Korse”
Loss of Paladin path.
2 SECRET ACHIEVEMENTS AVAILABLE
Quest pre-accepted.
What the SCROT!?