With a slight thump, the Dawn of Stars, not my first choice for a space ship much less a shuttle, touched down in the hangar of the starship Last Life of Cal-nok. Waving his squad into position around me, the squad leader, a Sergeant Jul-ves, approached me and began to instruct me about what he wanted to do.
"Commander James," he started nervously, "my squad and I were instructed to escort you to the set of quarters that had been prepared for you, but the act of bringing a Scourge Queen's corpse and an embryo of another Queen aboard the Last Life will require an escort of its own. I would like for the majority of my squad to guard and escort the corpse as it is transported to the researchers that are aboard the vessel. As I cannot simply leave you unescorted given your rank as Commander and Captain of two Galaxy-Jumpers, I would like to send two of my squad members to escort you and to act as your guards until you have been debriefed by the other Commander and his aides aboard the Last Life. Will you allow this, Commander?"
I thought about what he had said for a moment and tried to imagine what all this might cause and I made a decision that would have made my father proud, since it came from his own brand of wisdom that he spouted off whenever I tried to lie or hide something embarassing. I would own what I had done and who and what I was.
"No Sergeant, I will not allow that," I told Jul-ves. "I will carry the Queen's corpse on full display. Cai, what's the atmosphere of this starship like? Can I breathe without a helmet?"
"You can, Rickshaw," my AI told me.
"Good," I turned my eyes back to the sergeant, not that he could see them. Yet. "I will also be making my way without my helmet. You and your squad will act as honorguard for this and if needed you will clear a path to our destination. We want to get this corpse to the researchers, and whoever might be on this starship, including civilians, need to see the win that has happened for all races within the Wardens of Life. You will follow at my right and two steps behind me carrying my helmet. Choose a squad member to follow at my left and behind me. They will carry the Queen's head."
I watched the much larger alien visibly flinch at my words and my orders, but he didn't hesitate to immediately change his orders to his squad and form them into a different formation, one that looked as though it was more at home for parades and marching long distances than escorting a totally foreign and alien creature that many of the races within the Wardens hadn't seen, all while said alien carried the slain body of their biggest boogeyman and public enemy number one.
I pulled the Queen out of the medical box the squad members had placed her in for transport and handed my helmet off to the sergeant as he took his place behind me while the chosen squad member grabbed the Queen's head.
"Can the pilots hear me?" I asked Jul-ves.
"They can, Commander," his answer came quickly.
"Alright then. Pilot, open the doors. Once those doors open I want the first two lines to make their way out and I will follow them. After me will be Sergeant Jul-ves and, sorry what was your name? Nevermind that right now. Anyway, after they exit the last three lines will follow after us. Everyone understand?"
A round of "yessirs" answered my orders and I had a brief thought that I could get used to something like this. I didn't like politics and ass-kissing but if I was the guy on the top of the heap, maybe I could learn to do those or at least recognize them before I was forced to do them all the time. Cai of course had something to say as the doors opened and gave me my first view of the shuttle-bay we had landed in.
"I will count off your marching rhythm for you Rickshaw."
Before I had time to respond to him, he was doing that with an instruction to step in time with the rhythm he had chosen; I guess it was run of the mill stuff because it was just him repeating the word "left" with a bigger than normal pause before he spoke again. Oh well, I wanted, no needed, to make an impression to whoever saw me; one that said I was someone who had plans and the answers to every problem that had plagued these races for the last several centuries, millennia even.
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As soon as the doors of the shuttle opened fully, the first two in line stepped forward and began to lead us from the shuttle to the researchers and wherever they were. When I began to make my way after them, I did my best to not be overwhelmed by the sight of so many aliens working the shuttle bay of the starship. Well they were working, but when they saw the pompous procession that began marching out of the shuttle, they all quickly turned in curiousity and once they saw me they all began to whisper amongst themselves and a few pointed at me. When they saw the Scourge corpse in my arms, all those whispers stopped dead and I saw several drop their jaws or gape with what passed for mouths with them. I think I even heard some tools clatter when they were dropped to the floor.
My escort approached a door and two of the ones behind me moved ahead and began to clear the way for me and my other escorts. As we walked I heard several of the races we passed in the halls gasp and whisper and saw some of them move away before dashing down other corridors, maybe to gather others because it wasn't long before the hallways we were moving through were packed with members of more alien races than I had thought there would be on this ship. All of them stared as I approached, and it wasn't long before my leading escorts weren't able to push them aside so that we could get through. I didn't stop for that though, I had a mission and I was going to see it finished.
As I walked closer to the aliens that blocked my way they all began to edge backwards and to the sides leaving room for me to pass easily and have my escort follow in my wake.
The whole time Cai kept up his marching rhythm for me and I matched it. Maybe it was how simple it was to keep in tune with it or maybe I had just gotten used to it quicker than I thought, but it was easy to follow now and I didn't need him crowding my mind with total focus on it anymore.
The procession I was only loosely leading now began to approach a set of doors that were bigger than the other doors we had passed through on our way here. I hoped it was the end of the line soon because I was a little over having people staring at me and whispering as I went by. When the doors opened and I saw what was waiting on the other side, I knew that we were getting closer but still no where close to finished with my impromptu parade, I was starting to think that my escort had decided to take us on a long way instead of a direct route to make certain that everyone knew what had happened on that planet, BS-HP-003. To make certain that everyone knew a Scourge Queen had been killed and there was a chance, there was hope, that the Scourge, unbeatable horrors that hunted them and everything else no mattter what, were not indestructible and eventually all planets and galaxies they had claimed would be taken back and put back in the hands of everyone who had fought for them and never given up.
At some point of my march across the entire starship, a few other aliens joined the procession. They didn't wear armored suits the way my escorts and I did; instead they wore suits that were more like the ones the other aliens wore. Clothe with colored stripes to mark them as workers in specific areas or off-duty soldiers and pins that set them apart and higher than anyone else who might surround them. These had to be the commanders, the same ones who had thrown me and one hundred humans down to that planet and given us a vague mission while hoping we would survive. I hated them, but I forced myself to keep my face the same neutral expression I had worn since stepping off the shuttle nearly thirty minutes ago. My legs were starting to cramp a bit.
Finally, we came to another large set of doors and standing outside of them was a group of aliens wearing uniforms that held white stripes diagonally across them that passed over any other set of stripes that may have marked their suits. When they saw me, they began to push a floating bed towards me and met me nearly thirty feet from the doors; damn this ship was massive.
"Commander Rickshaw James?" one of them with tentacles flowing from the edge of its jaws asked.
"That would be me," I answered it.
"Would you please place the Scourge Queen here upon the gurney? We will escort it from here."
The creature's words were a welcome relief, my arms were very tired and almost jelly at this point. I stepped past the creature, a Muthnar Cai informed me, and carefully laid the Queen's corpse out on the floating gurney.
"Cai, my Cybernetic Artificial Intellect, said that you guys might want that," I told the gathered scientists. "Sorry I couldn't get the other one I killed, but Guardians found it before I could get back to it."
I swear one of the aliens looked at me with shock but I couldn't be sure, I'd never learned to read Gurtmic facial expressions.