The Fleet Assembles
The injuries were getting dumber every day, today the crew had rigged some hand trucks from engineering with makeshift EM thrusters and had raced through the halls, and apparently a whole other group of idiots had the same exact idea and set up a race of their own starting from a different side of the ship. The two groups collided at speed and now Alwen had to spend her morning setting bones; she wasn’t exactly gentle about it either. Maybe she would have been a month and a half ago, but after an impromptu sword fighting competition, that ended when someone inevitably impaled themselves, changing the soap to turn people skin green, which also acted as a nasty skin irritant on Alwen’s skin. And the replacement of some of Adela’s cooking oil with unscented soap that resulted in ship wide diarrhea. And Alwen was just about done with their shenanigans.
Not all of the restlessness resulted in stupid stunts, some of it was very constructive, like the ships new book club and card nights. It was just the really stupid ones that stuck in her memory, mainly because the really stupid ones interrupted Alwen’s research, which was only now hitting its stride. She had just developed a solution that could safely remove unwanted tattoos, something she started working on after the crew began making their own tattoos with less than stellar skill. Now if it would stop leaving large bleached patches on the skin she could remove Isabela’s back tattoo of a ‘bald eagle’ that looked more like a ‘retarded turkey’, Alwen had no idea what either of those birds looked like, but she could tell that the monstrosity on Isabela’s back had to go.
She had tried talking to the Bosun about increasing punishment, but he just laughed. “Lass, I cud work’em until de’are dead, an dea would stell manage to cause mayham. All I can doo es work sam o’dea excess stupid out o’em”
“Besides” Chief Heizer interjected “Sometimes these stupid stunts result in impressive innovations. Three years back they dubbed one of the cleaning drones ‘Stabby’ after taping a knife to it, it wasn’t very good at stabbing people until some of the communications officers began messing with its code. Not only did they subtly alter its code to stab the crew more often while still appearing to be accidental, they even coded in precision targeting to prevent from it from stabbing anything vital. Then they coded in stealth ability’s so that it would move around unnoticed by flying in people’s blind spots and blending in with the background. They were eventually found out when Stabby found a kink in the captain’s armor three times in a row. She was so impressed with how sophisticated Stabby’s code was she wasn’t even mad about the knife in her arm. We used that code in developing new tracking and targeting systems for our missiles, and even developed a line of drones for the Tempter’s based on that cleaning drones programming.” He explained.
“Aye, I heard dea Stabby class drones are a real menace on dea battlefield” the Bosun added with a nod.
“Your own research in dermal tattoo removal might eventually prove to be useful in helping people with heavy metal poisoning.” Heizer added pointedly. “At the very least we have laser-less tattoo removal
Alwen had to admit that despite the asinine nature of the pranks, they were pushing the limits of her abilities in new and interesting ways. She just wished it wasn’t so stupid sometimes.
She would have been growing restless from the long journey as well since they werent making for port very often. But her research, and her training with the marines was consuming much of her free time. Her two intense two-hour sessions with both marine teams were so thoroughly exhausting that she had to start asking Adela for triple portions every meal just keep up with the energy drain. Butch had just smiled and put her on the ‘marine diet’, which meant no breads, no deserts, just whole grains, and protein, with an assorted medley of vegetables. They tried to make her eat cheese and yogurt, but the idea of consuming another mammals spoiled lactation was just flat out gross. It was fine for little kids to do that, but a grown adult had no business in drinking milk. Even the fake powdered substitute they used aboard the Astaroth was too similar to the real thing for her.
She had pretended to be deaf when Alice tried to insinuate that the reason she was so short was because she didn’t drink enough milk, and was calcium deficient. Which was ridiculous, Alwen had gotten all the calcium she needed growing up from seaweed and Torwen’s version of spinach like everyone else. Besides, Alwen was average height for a Torweni woman. It wasn’t her fault that average was 155 cm to the Terrans 170 cm, or that Alice was 187cm tall, not counting the ropey length of her tail that easily wrapped around her waist a few times over. Which was shorter than the captains nearly 200cm, making her the tallest female aboard even when compared to the generally taller ‘uplifted’ Terrans, like Lacey the Gorilla engineer.
Dairy products aside, Alwen’s new diet and training regime had resulted in a significant weight gain. She was no longer slim and thin, with her ribs and other bones poking out. Now she was what Alice called ‘lean and mean’, meaning she was still slight of figure but packing enough muscle on her thinner bones to do some damage. Her real strength when compared to the non-human Terrans was her endurance, she had larger lungs and her blood was slightly more efficient with the oxygen it used than the Terrans, which put her on about equal footing with the human and their sweat glands that naturally cooled their skin through evaporation. Torweni also had sweat glands, but they weren’t as well adapted for endurance like human glands. It meant that at the end of the day she didn’t smell quite as bad as Limey or the twins, whose body odor assaulted her more delicate nose like Vaxis.
Her training with Gato was also going very well. She had Makaze resized in one of the ships metal shops to better fit her height, and the kind deck ‘apes even had enough to fashion another knife out of what remained. She had them work the shape of the knife into a ‘Balus’, an old multipurpose knife that healers used to carry on Torwen. Good for cutting bandages and splitting wood to make splints. They had followed almost all her requests with making it, but had categorically refused the blunt the tip like a true Balus would have.
Gato refused to let her train with Makaze directly, instead he had her work with the heavy wooden shinai until her arms were sore and her palms were blistered. Then he would drill her foot work endlessly.
“I guess you have a point” Alwen consented after her mind had wandered. She was about to say something else when a skinny brown skinned human walked in with a ruined cybernetic arm
Much of the crew were now equipped with mechanical limbs, which had led to the growing trend of customizing said limbs, and those customizations often broke said limbs
The girl in question was Fatima, she worked on the delicate sensor equipment in the ship’s above deck tower, and had come to the med bay three times this week “Hello Chief, Bosun” she said with a nod to Heizer and Highland. Since most of her job had to be performed on the ship’s exterior she was one of the rare few snipes who had EVA qualifications and the respect of the Bosun. She turned to Alwen and there was a slight blush on her cheeks “Doctor Bones”
“Hello Fatima, how did you break your arm this time?” Alwen asked testily.
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“I tried to add a soldering iron and a pair of pliers” she looked down dismayingly at the wrecked limb “I don’t know what went wrong this time”
Alwen sighed and shot Heizer and Highland an exhausted look and ushered the snipe into her workspace as the ship was raised to condition three.
~~~*~~~
The Astaroth had reached the meet up point first, a tidally locked Mercury like planet orbiting dangerously close to an unnamed main sequence star. It was the closest place to a backwater in the core sectors since the system was poor in heavy metals, far from any habital worlds, and just far enough from any hyperspace lanes to be out of sensor range. As busy as the core sectors were with traffic ranging from massive multi kilometer long freighters to little personal shuttles only large enough for one person, this place was highly unlikely to be visited. And even if someone found this obscure system interesting enough to visit they would have little chance of noticing the Astaroth, since they had hidden the ship in the long shadow of the little world’s many craters. Any wake left by their warp engines would have been wiped away by solar winds within hours of their passing.
Despite all of that Astarte ordered the ship to condition three when an unknown ship entered the system. The small micro-satellites they had left behind barely even registered its passing, and couldn’t give them any good measurements of its size or mass, their scans had all slipped off its sleek hull. Only when the ship came into view did she allow herself to relax, the sleek knife-like hull of the Asmodeus was in stark black relief against the bright blue star.
Modius landed his ship gently on the tiny planet’s surface with barely any excess force, mere meters from Astaroth’s port flank. If her crew desired to brave the intense heat and radiation outside they could have jumped across the small gap with ease. A cable was shot across the gap and tethered itself magnetically to the Asmodeus to allow for communication between to the two ships without broadcasting any signals. The two ships exchanged a perfunctory greeting, and then went silent once more.
There was a reason why Astarte chose this point, and four hours later as the micro-sats alerted the two ships of a fleet enter the little worlds obit Astarte didn’t even bother with raising the ship’s alert level. Astarte stood on the bridge and watched as several large shadows passed before the star. This point, while being tens of thousands of lightyears from Earth, and even further from first fleet’s last known position, was midway point between the two destinations if one included the network of sector gates.
Astarte watched as the shadowy silhouettes of the Hellworlder fleet descend into the crater. A slim silhouette longer than the other shapes was the Beelzebub, her lines based on the HMS Hood, a royal navy Battlecruiser that was once been Earths largest warship until her fateful engagement with the monstrous Bismarck. Two years ago, the Beelzebub had been identical to her elder sister Astaroth in speed and power, but after the creation of the two-fleet doctrine she had undergone a massive refit to allow her to better support fleet actions. Her aft pulse cannon battery had been removed to make way for quantum computing cores and more extensive sensor arrays to allow her to better serve as the fleets brains and tactical command center.
Larger, broader, and pricklier than Beelzebub was the Lucifer. Named after the great betrayer and king of Hell, this ship served as the Flagship for the Hellworlder fleet. Her original shape had been based off of the USS Texas, but after her major refit that was harder to tell. She was bristling with heavy armor, a fourth set of heavy pulse cannons, and the experimental shield breaker cannon set within her bow. She led the First Fleet from the center, hammering enemy formations with intense fire until a weak point in the enemy formation was spotted. Then she would engage the enemy head on and fire her massive shield breaker cannon, with the rest of the fleet moving to take advantage of a broken formation. Her crew took great pride in their ship, and all of them sported the phrase “Lucifer the Undaunted” under their brand marks.
Not undeservedly either, the captain of the Lucifer, Lucile, had a distinctive penchant for rushing into battle guns blazing and always coming out victorious. It made sense considering Lucile had once been a bomb mule in the terrorist organization known as the Terrors. Before her inevitable arrest she spent two years strapping explosives to buildings, all culminating in her disastrous demolition of New-Mombasa’s second space elevator. Its destruction had decimated an entire section of the city. She was only released from prison because the Union didn’t actually have any evidence, though it took them ten years to get her release papers processed.
Along with the two Terran titans were an assortment of eleven Destroyers and ten smaller Frigates. Tempter class drone frigates were little more than missile gun boats, their real contribution to the fleet were the six Mk-3 Stabby drones they deployed and commanded with lethal precision. The Fiend class destroyers were just scaled down versions of their Archdevil counterparts. Faster, smaller, and stealthier they reinforced the fleet’s flanks and often operated in a solo capacity to fulfill a wider array of tasks that were beneath the Cruisers. And it was common for a pair of them to be operating many lightyears away from the fleet, projecting power, scouting hyperlanes, or conducting quick hit and runs.
The small Tempter and Fiend class ships weren’t based on any specific historical naval vessel, but they did share the navally inspired hulls of the Archdevils. And were also capable of landing and submerging within an aquatic environment.
In order to support the large demands of a far-flung fleet they traveled with three massive battle freighters, Joan D’arc, Boudica, and Calamity Jane. While the Astaroth still maintained a large cargo capacity, the rest of the fleet had filled those open spaces in order to expand their functionality. Which meant for their mission far, far away from Earth they needed these three ships to support and supply them. Of course that didn’t mean they were lacking in teeth and claws of their own. These three had been retro fitted with enough anti-shipping weapons to make any enterprising pirates think twice about touching them.
Astaroth and Asmodeus were supposed to make up the core of second fleet, a fleet that was meant to stay behind and continue to support their ongoing efforts in Orion while the expeditionary fleet traveled far and wide. Unfortunately they were having a little trouble with expanding both their business and home fleet at the same time, Astarte had to make a choice early on and chose to focus on expanding their investments rather than increasing their fleet size. It made more sense to focus on ventures that would yield a decent return rather than an expensive fleet that wouldn’t be able to earn back their initial cost for many years.
Quick flashes of the ship’s running lights confirmed each other’s status and the First Fleet slowly descended to the barren world, all landing within meters of each other. Astarte turned to Karega “Is Succubus ready?” she asked. The dropship was to take her to the Lucifer were a meeting of the captains was to be held in person.
“Of course” he answered.
“Good, then I transfer the helm to you lieutenant” Astarte said as she checked the straps on her armor and placed a hand on Tenken to confirm it was by her side.
They had no smaller ships to transfer her to the fleet’s flagship, so Astarte sat silently within the seemingly cavernous passenger area of the dropship as it made the short jump to the Lucifer’s docking hatch within its bulky conning tower.
Her mother’s ship lacked the familiar quirks of the Astaroth, they had both been built in mostly the same way, but where Astarte had begrudgingly fallen in love with her ship’s quirks and thought of them as the ship’s personality, her mother had found them distracting and had them replaced. The corridors were still wide and roomy like the Astaroth, but gone was the fine wood floor, replaced instead with shiny and polished lyonium that gave everything a harsh contrast and didn’t feel as alive as her ship. Instead of flushed pneumatic sliding doors, Lucifer had proper steal hatches that you had open with a heavy turn wheel. The crew obviously cared about the ship, she could see an attention to detail in every aspect of the ship, but it still felt grittier and dirtier than the Astaroth.
Two broad shouldered men greeted her at the hatch, and they exchanged the perfunctory request to come abord, and a salute to the ships devilish insignia. Completely superfluous and unnecessary, but appreciated all the same. She walked through the familiar halls with her escorts in tow, the metallic clang of her boots reverberating against the walls until she reached the center of the ship were the officers deck was located, along with a meeting room for official business.
The hatch squeaked open and admitted her into a finely decorated room. Unlike the rest of the ship’s utilitarian sterility, this room was richly carpeted, with a solid wooden round table dominating the center. Lucifer had gotten a similarly satanic marble alter like the Astaroth, but her mom had taken one look at it and had it slashed to bits with sledge hammers threw out the rubble. Instead she dragged in crates and pallets and used those until something more suitable could be found.
Her mother and Bell were already seated next to each other, with a few other captains invited for posterity’s sake. They wouldn’t have much say in the actual decisions being made, but their opinions and concerns would be a welcome addition. Not to mention they would get a firsthand report of the events.
Astarte exchanged a nod of the head with the two women she hadn’t seen for a long while and took her seat across from them. Theirs eyes widened as they saw that she was missing an eye and wore a black leather eyepatch with the ships seal embossed on it, but they didn’t say a word. They waited in silence until the door squeaked once more and the slender violet figure of Modius entered the room, his long white hair pulled up behind his head. He glanced around the room before silently taking a seat next to Astarte.
Astarte cleared her throat “Now that we are assembled I am disturbed to inform you that we are now at war” she said with a deadly calm tone, one that told everyone her just how grave things were.