Chapter Thirty-Seven - Officious Officers

Seventeen, recently promoted Captain of his Very Much Dead Lord Harold the Bone Father, was enjoying his promotion quite a bit.

His position as Captain placed him as the highest ranking officer in the region. Previously, he had been the only officer in the region, and now he could rectify that... in a few minutes.

The position also came with a significant increase in the number of duties he had to attend. A welcome change after centuries of quiet toiling under the sea. Now there wasn't a waking moment in which he didn't have several urgent matters to attend to, and as an undead, he had no sleeping moments to begin with!

"Oh... hoho?" he tried. Had that been a pun? Certainly it wasn't worthy of the attention of his great master, but his fledgeling skill in the magic of wordplay would only ever remain fledgeling if he never found the will and the way to practice!

"S-s-sir?" one of his subordinates asked.

"Ah yes, forgive me," Seventeen said. He stood a little taller then and eyed his troops. His officer corps of officer corpses.

Five members in all, too few for the number of officers he needed, but about as many as he could train on-the-job and expect satisfactory results from. These five had stood out to him by being less stupid than the other undead and some even had a twinkle of ambition in their lifeless eyes.

The one who'd spoken was one of Seventeen's... experiments that had been slightly-less aligned with standard protocol.

One did get somewhat bored when there was nothing but water and the dead around, and Seventeen had decided to test his necromantic mettle by seeing what stuck.

The old 'throw it at the wall and see what sticks' method of science. As long as one took detailed notes for publication and future scientists to repeat the experiments, then it was entirely valid!

Officer Cadet Tine was the result. A human male with the head of a snake. A rather common snake. It... didn't quite fit. The proportions were entirely off, even with his human body being on the smaller side. He did have a rather long neck, but his head, cobra hood and all, was average sized for a snake.

"Forgive me, Officer Cadet Tine," Seventeen replied. "Merely lost in thought. Ah, but speaking of time, heh, we have a limited amount at our disposal, shall we begin the nightly reports?"

The six of them were currently located in the bridge of the formerly more-mobile fortress. At the moment the moving building was sitting pretty on a hilltop near Yu Xiang, serving as a fort between the city proper and the incoming invasion.

"Yesss, ssir!" Officer Cadet Tine said. "Sshall I begin?"

"Please do," Seventeen said with a nod. He could appreciate the initiative. This cadet in particular was always quick to act on such, surprisingly so, even, for a ghoul.

"My scouts, the Serpen Sscouts have made good time approaching the enemy camp. Sso far, I ssusspect that they've gone unnoticed. We've managed to gather a better count of the ssolidiery pressent."

"Go on," Seventeen said. He didn't comment on Cadet Tine naming the scout troop after himself. Such indiscretions were common with the ambitious.

"Sixteen thousand regulars, that iss, consscripted troopsss. Another Sseven thousssand proper sssoldierss. The officer core isss compossed of sssome three hundred officers."

"An unusually high number," Seventeen said. "Or perhaps we're just used to our own methodology." After all, the undead hardly needed a complex chain of command. There was Harold, then the rest. Easy. New officer posts only appeared when delegation was absolutely necessary.

He turned to the next officer waiting to report, then he looked down, then up. Finally, he found her hiding in a shadowy corner of the room. "Officer Cadet Ful, hiding is hardly appropriate at this time," he said gently.

"Sorry, sir!" she squeaked before floating back down. The young banshee--only a century old!--was quite shy. Under different circumstances he might have passed her over for promotion to cadet, but for all of her fear of attention, she was nonetheless a good mind.

"Your report?" Seventeen urged.

"Yes sir!" she said, wafting an arm into a salute. "The ghost core reports mostly good news from the city. We've successfully tracked all of the people linked to the assassin sent after Miss Fenfang. Those still alive are under constant surveillance."

"I see, well done," Seventeen said. Discovering that a local had tried to kill the master's apprentice was quite distressing. He had forgotten what it was like to work with humans. Or rather, he never knew from personal experience and only had testimonials and warnings from his books to go on.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He didn't expect any of them to try to kill the apprentice. It was a moment of short-sightedness on his part.

Officer Cadet Ful was correcting that for him by recruiting from the city's store of local ghosts and apparitions. Yu Xiang had had a few exorcists going around and clearing the nastier ghosts away, and the more obvious, but that didn't mean they got all of them.

Those that remained were equally citizens of the city, and as undead, they were charged with working for him. It was conscription of a sort, but the work mostly involved busy work like some light spying and snooping about.

"Good job, Fret," one of the cadets said to Cadet Ful. Seventeen turned his attention to the mummy in question and he quickly noticed. "Ah, ready to report, sir."

"Go on, Officer Cadet Wrapture," Seventeen said.

Officer Cadet Wrapture saluted smartly. He had stood out to Seventeen, initially, because of his neatness. Mummies often allowed their wrappings to flop and undo themselves somewhat. The cleverer often used these as weapons, but it was nonetheless rather untidy. Officer Cadet Wrapture was neat. His wrappings wrapped just-so, and never dirty or stained. That same tidiness carried on to his demeanour. He was actually quite kind and helpful as well. Not necessary, but welcome all the same.

"Sir! The city militia's training is coming along at a satisfying pace. Within the week I expect them all to know which end of the spear is the sharp one!"

Seventeen nodded. That was about as good as they could expect from highly volatile humans. The unfortunate truth was that the human contingent of their militia was likely no better than the army approaching them.

Actually, they were likely to be even less well-trained and equipped. They did have two advantages. They'd be fighting for their homes at their home, with walls and palisades and the knowledge that failure meant more than just their own death. The other advantage came from tiredness. The army coming towards them would be exhausted from the long march.

The third, secret advantage, came from having necromancers on their side. A fallen soldier now was a risen zombie later.

"Officer Cadet Rotney?" Seventeen asked. Speaking of zombies...

Rotney was as sloppy as Officer Wrapture was neat. "Ah, yes, hmm," he said. His entire being was the personification of slumpedness. Seventeen suspected that even in life, Rotney's posture wasn't ideal. "The troops are as ready as can be. We have them buried where they need to be. The practice has been alright. We're being strict about it, I guess. Don't expect miracles, but we'll manage."

A lackadaisical reply. Seventeen regretted this promotion above all others, but Rotney was a rare zombie whose thirst for brains wasn't merely literal. He was actually smart... sometimes.

"And finally Officer Cadet Appari."

"Please, call me Shawn," the officer said as he shifted on the spot. He was a very emotive, personably, even charismatic wraith. A fantastic leader for their assassination and covert OPs division.

"Report," Seventeen suggested.

"With Serpen's targets marked out amongst the enemy officer core, we are ready to begin our first culling tonight. My wraiths have also noticed a few lower-ranked, weaker cultivators in the enemy formation. Might I have permission to take care of them as well?"

Seventeen considered it. It might anger the cultivators. Then again, they were ill equipped for dealing with them already. "Go ahead," he said. Even a few dead might demoralise the other lower-ranked cultivators, and it might make the slightly stronger ones stay up at night and disrupt their of-so-important meditations. "We might suffer some losses from that."

"It's all in the job, I'm afraid," Officer Cadet Appari said with a languid shrug. "It happens."

"I suppose so," Seventeen replied.

He eyed his officer corps. It wasn't much, but it was a start. A decade or so of constant war and turmoil would sort them out and turn them into a proper corps suitable for the Bone Father's grand return.

Now he just needed to arrange things for that great war to get underway. But all things in due time. First, these interlopers kindly volunteering to test their mettle. Then the rest of the human empire.

"For the Glory of the Bone Father!"

"For the Glory of the Bone Father!" the cadets repeated.

***