Unholy Alliance

“Well the good news is that your bones are healing quickly” Alwen said as she looked at Astarte’s chart. Out of nowhere Domnall Clancy, the knew King of the pirates, had stepped out onto the roof to inform Alice and Alwen that it was fine to transport Astarte back to the ship. He even graciously offered his own men to help with the transport.

As they were leaving the Great Hollow market Metallika and Mute had emerged out of the shadows with a large hexagonal canister in-between them ominously marked with radiation symbols. Nick, who was leading them home, eyed what was likely a nuclear bomb incredulously the whole time they walked back to the Hellworlder hanger bay. The Hellworlders and Alwen just talked and gossiped as if their wasn’t a nuke sitting between them.

Alwen then had to endure all the cheers and hurrahs the crew of the Astaroth gave her, word had spread that not only did she get the killing blow on Kazlum after stabilizing the Captain, but she also had made the discovery that the Aunviry were somehow susceptible to Molotov’s. She nearly passed out from embarrassment when Limey had told the tale of ‘Bones, the Godslayer”, and now had to deal with the new epithet of Godslayer. She was going to have to get back at Limey for that one day, maybe she could slip him something when they shared their Sunday tea.

But for now her full attention was on making sure Astarte made a full recovery.

“That’s good, right?” Astarte said inquisitively after noticing Alwens frown.

“Typically yes. As long as we set the bone right the body can take care of the rest, and with you Terrans it will even heal tougher than before, which is completely unfair.” Alwen added at the end.

Astarte did best approximation of a shrug with all the casts “We’re Hellworlders, anything to get a leg up. Life on Earth isn’t just about survival, but bouncing back from trauma stronger and faster than before.”

Alwen rolled her eyes. “Right, but with you specifically that’s a problem. You modified your bones with a highly experimental collagen latus, and some additional mineral reinforcements within the honeycomb like marrow, all to improve rigidity and tensile strength without greatly altering their density.”

“Yes, they’re the only reason I survived the blow right?”

“Yes, they are likely why you didn’t splatter on impact” Alwen said dryly, and Astarte grimaced at the mental imagery. “However healing them properly is going to be problematic, the structures they develop are very complicated, you practically have a mandala micro-inscribed into your skeleton.”

“I was under the impression that the procedure only laid down the pattern and let my body naturally fill in the rest, shouldn’t it fix itself?”

“If you had only broken you’re arm once or twice, maybe. But you shattered your humerus alone four different places, and that’s just one bone.”

“So what are you saying Bones?”

“Your recovery is going to be very long and painful, I essentially need to let your arm heal then break it again to make sure it heals right. And I might have to do this many times.” Alwen said grimly.

Astarte cringed “That sounds painful”

“Yes, the good news is that I wont need to worry about your ribs. Just your arm, shoulder, and ankle.”

“Oh wonderful, anything else I need to worry about going forward?”

“Nope” Alwen said cheerily “the MRI says that your concussion isn’t likely to develop into an aneurysm, and I can check every day just in case since you Terrans turned magnetic resonance imaging in to a standard check-up procedure.”

“That was sarcasm Bones, when’s the first operation I can look forward to” the Captain grumbled.

“This afternoon”

“What, no warning!” she burst out before she shuddered from the pain that out burst caused her.

“That’s what this chat is for, I can’t wait much longer since the bone pills have greatly sped up the healing process. By tomorrow it might be too late.”

The Captain glared at her before she sighed. “I have a meeting this afternoon, tell Karega to move it up immediately. And could you help me into that danm chair”

Alwen nodded and gently moved her into the wheelchair. She would have preferred to keep Astarte in the Med bay, but they did just change the entire political course of the Confederacy and the other captains needed Astarte at every meeting to make sure they didn’t overstep their bounds with the new King.

As Alwen wheeled the Captain across the gangway, crew members from the Astaroth stood up a little straighter and saluted their captain who had been grievously wounded fighting a colossal monster alone. They practically worshipped her like a god, but Alwen knew the truth. She had been there when the Captain went down, the sickening crunch now haunted her dreams along with the other things she had almost grown used to. She now looked at the impossibly capable and ferocious space pirate in a different light now. Now she not only noticed the toned muscles and proud demeaner, but also the deep set scars and bone deep weariness laying just beneath the surface.

“If you keep staring like that I might get the wrong impression” Astarte said wryly, cutting Alwen out of her mind.

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“Hmm” Alwen hummed innocently.

“That look you had, I’ve seen it plenty of times on your brothers face, I appreciate it but I cant entangle myself with a subordinate.”

Alwen’s face soured, “Ew, gross, don’t talk about my brother like that, not around me at least”

“Why not, don’t you want to hear how he is in be-“

“If you don’t stop right now I will push you off the gangway.” Alwen interrupted. “I’ve already put you back together once, what’s one more.”

The Captain laughed, “Alright, I get it.”

~~~*~~~

Aster had fun teasing Bones, it took her mind off her worries for a bit. She could handle pain, it was a very old friend of hers in fact, what she couldn’t stand was all the bed rest her recovery would require. She couldn’t even walk anyway, she had to rely on someone to push her there. And since Bones seemed convinced that Aster was going to hurt herself again somehow it was always her who pushed her stupid chair.

Alwen pushed Astarte to the meeting room in the Yard house and passed her off to her brother before stepping outside the meeting room to wait until it was over. Modius had already cleared a spot for her next to him at the table, and Aster didn’t complain.

Her mother cleared her throat “If we’re all here then lets begin. Captain Bell if you would please start us off.”

Bell nodded before she passed out file folders to everyone around the table. Their number was down by five since the captains died with their ship. In total the Hellworlders had lost three Tempter class drone frigates, the Armor of God, the Idol of Canaan, and the Mount Zephan, along with two Fiend class destroyers, the Gaddar, and the Cambion. The later had been a part of the fleet since for a long time.

“With the reward King Clancy had graciously given us we have more than enough to make repairs, it’ll be only one week before all ships are space worthy. After that week passes we must decide whether we wish to remain here longer or head back to Mars to fully repair our assets.” She summarized.

“The situation is still pretty fluid here; we might be able to take advantage of that.” Lucile said.

“But if we stay then we might fall pray to Domnall’s schemes, and we are not in a place to fight off a sufficiently determined force.” Astarte countered. Everyone tried to be discreet about it when their eyes briefly darted to her wheelchair.

“But retuning home in our condition might prove to be just as dangerous” Bell pointed out. “We still have the Kruhur to contend with, this is the second time we have come to blows with them. Their leaders are probably looking for any chance they can get to eliminate us.”

“Do we need to travel alone?” Modius asked. “Can we meet up with a caravan of armored freighters and head off to Sol that way?”

“That is possible” Lucile said while rubbing her chin “It might be slower though”

“We can only move as fast as our slowest ship, which right now is the Asmodeus” Modius stated to the table. “Will it be that much slower than going alone.”

“No, you have a point. Right now your ship is only a little faster than a freighter. And we will be able to cut down on travel time if we use the Confederacy’s stargate.”

“Are we in agreement then?” Bell asked. There was a round of ayes and they moved on to their next topic.

“We have earned a significant lump sum of cash after our contributions to the confederacy.” Bell stated openly “Not to mention the fortune in metals we are expected to gain from the salvage. We must decide what to do with the profits.”

“How does it compare to our goals from the Bedona conflict?” Modius asked.

“It blows it out the water” Lucile said bluntly.

Bel cleared her throat “yes, to put it a bit more tactfully we have more than enough to fully repair our current assets and begin construction on the rest of the second fleet, though we might send the price of many metals through the roof just to fulfill our quota.”

“And the other thing” Aster asked leadingly.

Bell nodded in confirmation “Yes, the Terraforming equipment. Since the equipment needs to be perfectly adapted for each planet the price could vary greatly, but based on the initial estimate we should be well within our means to order the first installations.”

Aster nodded “Then my proposal is this, we send the alloys from the salvage to Pandemonium as well as a large sum of money to further our efforts there. We should finally set up those mining operations in Antares and its surrounding star systems, if our few ships can greatly alter the price of metals then Earth needs a larger supply or else we’ll run into inflated building costs in the future. We should also order the first set of Terraforming installations.”

“And building second fleet?” Her mother asked.

“It will have to be delayed until those mining opps are up and ready. Though if we can I would like to begin building two Frigates and another destroyer to flush out the Torweni navy, when they’re completed they can remain in the vicinity of Torwen and patrol their space in secret.”

Modius stared at Aster in shock “You don’t need to do that for us”

“Modius” Bell said from across the table “we value our partnership greatly. We already have enough to defend ourselves, now we need to extend that to you as well.”

“Right” her mother agreed “Whatever happens, going forward it’ll be you and us against the galaxy.”

Modius looked very moved by the support around the table.

“There is one more thing I think we should do” Aster said. “I think we need to use some of the money to buy the Obama and begin funding the development of short range fighter, and long range interceptors.”

“I’m in agreement” Modius said. “Smaller more agile attack craft would have been exactly what we needed in that battle. The Union doesn’t use small attack-craft and I think that has subconsciously colored our opinions of them, but we need to remember that most Union species can’t physically use a good fighter to its fullest. We can.”

“Creating a wing of fighters is more than just building a jet and buying a carrier, finding pilots is also going to be a struggle. Earth had a century and a half of fighter pilot tradition at its disposal, building a flight school to try and recapture all that old knowledge could potentially set us back.” Lucile said firmly.

“Actually I’ve put some thought into this” Karega said. Normally lieutenants didn’t join these meetings, but since he was the ships acting Captain while Aster was out of commission he needed to be here. “On Mars we have supersonic races that stretch from one pole to the other, with electronic tags to simulate gun fire. Sports pilots might have the technical expertise we’re looking for. It isn’t exactly what we need, but at least we wont be starting from scratch.”

There were approving nods all around the table as people seriously considered starting a space fighter wing.

“All in favor of Astarte’s proposed plan”

There was a round of ayes. They accepted her plan and moved on to the next order of business.

~~~*~~~

Ah’ared felt the Venom shudder beneath him as it latched onto the badly damaged ship that had fled the massacre on the Confederacy capital. He had watched it flee the battle as everything went to shit when the Hellworlders somehow tricked the Kruhur into running into each other. And had tracked it into the blackest depths of space, running to who knows where.

Ah’ared only barely escaped that nightmare on the capital when Kazlum betrayed him, and now he was here to tie up loose ends.

His men brought the indignant Sk’tharc before him. “Ah’ared, what do you think your doing” she clicked angrily.

“Tying up loog endth” He said menacingly. Without Kazlum to protect her Ah’ared was going to avenge his pride.

Sk’tharc stared at him before she trilled her horrible laughter, “Are you actually serious? You’re a bigger fool than I thought you were.”

“Eckplain youfelf” he growled, his jaws and venom primed to bite into her neck and watch as she died slowly.

“Neither you or I will ever be able to show our faces in the galaxy so long as those Hellworlders remain. Their kind are vengeful and petty, they wont ever stop until we’re dead.”

Ah’ared backed off and considered her words. She had been right, Astarte and her minions had taken their grudge all the way to the capital and had destroyed the Aunviry and Kruhur to get their vengeance. He had been worrying how far he would need to run to escape her blade.

“And how would you handle thig?”

Sk’tharc saw that she had a chance at survival. “We are not her only enemies. The Kruhur have a divine kill order out on her head, and the Guthulu cartels have long wanted her gone. And Kazlum had some loyal allies on Draxar” She said smoothly.

Draxar was the half destroyed homeworld of Kruhur, where the Aunviry had made their own by carving out its cold metallic core into a fortress. The Aunviry constantly fought with each other over their precious remaining females, and were to internally discordant to effect the greater galaxy anymore. But if this cannibal before him had some willing contacts within that nightmare scape then Ah’ared could use that to his advantage.

“I thee your point, I methelf have contactg with the Cegick and many allieg back home” Ah’ared mused softly. “Yeg, let uth build our alienth agaith Atharte, we can divide the loot later”

“Yes, but you’ll need me alive if you want any chance at getting in touch with them”

“Fine” he fixed his eyes on his men, “Release her, but watch her every move” he ordered in his native tongue that fit his mouth much better than galactic commen.

He walked back to his private chambers and mirthful contemplated Astarte’s death. He would let Sk’tharc until then.