“Oh get over yourself and your silly superstitions, Lady,” I scoffed, shaking my head for effect.
“How dare you,” she started, but I cut her off.
“Do you think I’m foolish enough to believe your façade,” I barked. “If you really believed Bandersnatch was a wicked, evil blade, you wouldn’t dare talk about it that way. At least not where it could hear you,” I said. Then I couldn’t help myself and added, “Don’t you know Bandersnatch eats snark like yours for breakfast,” I ended sarcastically, playing to what I presumed was her primitive superstitious nature.
She opened her mouth but then slowly closed it. She bowed her head. “You’re right of course. It’s foolish to insult any blade, how much more an Evil one such as this.”
I rolled my eyes and then gasped in pain as the movement pulled against the cuts in both sides of my face.
“Bandersnatch, I am genuinely sorry if I insulted you. You have my apologies, I was overcome,” she said holding up the blade while she was talking to it. Like she was some character in a fantasy vid where the blade was magical and glowed with light, whispering evil plots and schemes. She truly looked like the foolish primitive she was turning out to be.
“I’m so out of here, Lady,” I said and turned to my men. They hadn’t understood a word I had said, but seemed grateful I'd turned my attention to the natives.
“Gants,” I said, walking over to the man.
“Yes, your highness,” he said, caution in his eyes. Apparently he had been taken in with the whole mystic sword scene. Even though he didn’t seem to understand the language.
“It's Admiral, my good man,” I said and clapped Gants on the shoulders. “I haven’t thanked you for saving me. All of you, thank you,” I paused and glared down at Oleander. “Everyone that didn’t try to kill me, that is.”
“Err, you're welcome, Sir,” said Gants doubtfully, but looking at least mildly reassured that his Admiral hadn’t entirely lost his mind. Although the way he was looking at my face and neck, he was clearly concerned for another reason. I’m sure the big gashes in my cheeks didn’t help matters… Although maybe he couldn’t see it under the rest of the damage and bug gore, or it might have even been burned closed. I couldn’t tell, there were no handy mirrors nearby and I wasn’t about to touch myself with my gauntleted hands.
I didn’t care how I looked. I was ready to take on the entire world. I wanted to crush these Bugs and exterminate them from the entire galaxy. I wanted to…
I was later told I passed out on my feet. Shock from my wounds and combat exhaustion, they said. I’ll admit, I’ve never been in combat or horribly burned before, but fainting or passing out as they called it, just doesn’t sound like me. I have my suspicions that some sort of anesthetic was involved. Unfortunately, that’s all they are, suspicions.
Chapter 26: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
I gradually became aware that I was awake. Normally, you’re asleep and then you’re awake. You might be half awake, half asleep, but for the most part you just know which one is which. I mean, I’ve had a few instances where I dreamed that I was awake when I really wasn’t, but never before was I awake without knowing it.
At the time I didn’t really care, but afterwards the sensation was more than a little bit disconcerting. Apparently, the medical staff did this to me on purpose, to gauge my pain level and reaction to the surgical heal and burn heal they’d put on my wounds. They’d been hesitant to use quick heal on my various bruises for fear of a medication reaction. The same apparently went for slow heal.
I didn’t have the sort of intense pain I would have been feeling without access to a medical suite most hospitals would have been envious of… well, fifty years ago they might have been envious of the medical facilities onboard the Lucky Clover. I was mostly thankful that I didn’t feel the sort of discomfort from the neck up that a primitive like these Tractonian’s would expect. Or was that Tractoes? Trac-toes, now that was good. Tic-trac-toes. Apparently, I’m very funny when they gas me up in the infirmary. I usually don't have much appreciation for humor, but I laughed at every single one of my own jokes.
My sensation from the neck down was another matter, entirely. From the soles of my feet to just below my neck, I felt like one big bruise. I ached everywhere, and by that I mean everywhere. Places that you would normally discount just plain hurt.
I couldn’t even sit up from the pain in my stomach and abdomen where, alternately, the Monster Bug and then my men had taken turns trying to turn me into pre-canned human jelly. I know I couldn't sit up because I tried. All I can say is I got back to a flat position really quickly and waited for the pain I had just ignited to subside.
Now that I was awake and in pain again from my own efforts to get up, I was surprised I was back on the ship. Being back on the ship and knowing I had been brought here while unconscious, I was doubly surprised to wake up again. Must have been the ever-watchful eye of Gants and the commandoes from the Armory crew that kept me alive.
Maybe I hadn’t been giving my people enough credit. I’d thought for sure that if I was ever helpless and fell into their clutches, they would try to keep me sedated until we got home so they could court-martial me, or whatever it is they do to power-grabbing Montagne's when they get us down. I had been convinced they were out to get me, and this time I had been wrong.
“How long until he wakes up,” demanded that harsh voice I knew so well. It was blondie and once again, she sounded like she was out to get me. “How long,” she repeated.
I was surprised to hear her words repeated in a dry computer simulated voice. Only they weren’t repeated in the secret language, they had been translated into Confederation Standard. A language anyone on the ship could understand.
There was a strangled gurgle.
I looked over and saw that a blond valkyrie, but better known to me as the pit viper in human form, had a metal-pronged fork pressed into the neck of the very same grey haired security guard who had first tried to arrest and then kill me on the flag bridge. In the back of my mind I had been blaming myself for his presumed death at my power armored hands ever since our last, apparently un-fatal encounter.
To see him not only alive but, other than a fork such partway in his neck and a line of dried blood running down the same, in good health was shocking. To know that he had also been in the same room as my recently unconscious self...well, it's safe to say my blood pressure went through the roof.
I looked around the room, the sense of panic starting to take hold.
I was in one of the sickbays of the main infirmary on the ship. A number of people in Caprian SDF uniforms with blue stripes running up and down their legs, indicating they were medical personnel, were sprawled out unconscious on several of the other beds. Even more alarming was that this sick bay was filled with what looked like most, if not all, of the natives from Bug ship.
My eyes widened in shock. I was surrounded! The natives had also backed a number of other crewmen up against the walls of the sick bay with improvised weapons pressed to their necks. Black hats lay scattered on the beds and floor.
They were taller than I expected. The natives, that is. Much taller. I hadn’t really noticed when I was clomping around in power armor, but now that I was back on a more natural plane, I was surprised. They were taller than the men they were holding up against wall. It was my understanding that natives without advanced medical care and a balanced diet tended to be smaller than our well-fed Caprian norm, not larger.
If possible, my eyes bulged even further as I counted the men pressed up against the wall and came up with a total of eight. I did a double take when I recognized a pair of them. They were the same two men who had come along with the grey haired security lieutenant to arrest me and then opened fire when things didn’t go as expected. I had broken one man’s arm. As I recalled, he had an itchy trigger finger.
I looked closer, and my suspicions were confirmed as he definitely had some kind of healing cast on. It puffed up the a
rm of his uniform quite noticeably. At least when you were looking for it. I obviously had missed that detail on first glance.
“He’s awake,” said a grey haired Doctor I recognized from the incident on the bridge. He was one of the department heads. Medical obviously, since he was a Doctor. He was stating the obvious, that I was alive and likely to remain so. At least now that I was awake anyway. A man asleep in the presence of his enemies generally didn't last too long.
The Doc looked ill-used. He was grey faced and had a big red abrasion on his forehead. Someone had hit him with something solid. I just hoped it was the grey haired security lieutenant who had hit him because, frankly, I was itching for an excuse to put the security officer off the ship and maroon his ungrateful hide.
I couldn’t help myself and stared at the officer, still processing the scene. My head must have been fuzzy because I was having a hard time figuring out what was going on. For the first time since we'd met, I wasn’t filled with the urge to strangle the intolerable witch. She had tried to get me killed after all but, well, anyone who stuck a fork in that prejudiced parliamentary servant got points in my book.
Not that there were enough points in the universe to make me forget what she’d done. I felt my face harden into an iron mask. That’s when I received my next big shock.
The doctor rattled off a series of vital signs and other information the pit viper couldn’t understand. She hid it well, but a trained person like myself could tell if you were watching her as closely as I was. He finished by saying, “I think it's safe to say that the Admiral is going to live.”
“I don’t understand that word you use,” she said trying to pronounce the confederation standard word she didn’t know.
“Your… ah, your husband is going to be fine,” the Doctor said.
My mind filled with white noise and a ringing sound. Something here just didn’t compute.
I was still recovering from my battle with a bug ship as evidenced by my still very much battered and bruised body. That was it. I must have dropped a thread somewhere and missed part of the conversation along the way. It must have been while I was really asleep, rather than zonked out in some chemically-induced half-sleep. Although I was honestly surprised that any man would actually have her, it made sense that her husband was a native and if so had been on the bug ship with her. And since all the natives were here in medical, at least as best I could tell with my fallible human memory, where else would he be?
The white noise retreated and the ringing faded.
I realized they were still talking so I did my best to pay attention. Just because it looked like the pit viper had the good taste to desire the bodily harm of the security lieutenant, it was a non sequitur that she meant no harm to me as well. For all I knew she was a natural psychotic who simply hated all foreigners (or men, for that matter) equally. Which would explain why everyone, excluding the natives who were looking to her for directions was either unconscious, wounded, or pinned against the wall.
She was looking at me impatiently. “Are you paying attention now, or is your brain still addled,” she demanded.
“Pfahh,” I scoffed. Not my finest moment.
Seeing I was paying attention again, she decided now was the perfect time to insult me. “I’m surprised you only look ugly instead of completely disfigured,” she said in that icy voice of hers. Then grudgingly added, “Your healers are obviously much better than ours.”
She then turned and glared at the security officer. Pushing on the fork, she caused him to squirm and try to pull up to relieve the pain from the tongs.
“Are you here just to insult me? Or is there a purpose floating around somewhere,” I said waving at the room in general.
“This blethkurl,” I had no idea what a blethkurl was, but that didn't seem to slow her down, “laid hands on me when I was unprepared and took the sword,” she said and looked down almost as if ashamed of something. Then she glanced at me almost defiantly, before turning with fresh anger on the security officer. She gave him such a look that I was grateful it was aimed at the grey haired lieutenant and not me, and she pushed the tongs in until the man squealed and a fresh trickle of blood slid down his neck.
“All the natives were given a simple sedative after they arrived,” muttered the grey haired Doc low enough that the translator wouldn’t pick it up. “It wore off faster than expected.”
I nodded after it registered that he was talking to me. I was somewhat focused on the fact that parliamentary agents, the old ship’s security section, were not only aware that Bandersnatch was on the ship but had commandeered it as well. This was bad.
Realizing her word hadn’t been properly translated only seemed to make her angrier.
“This worm. This slive. This utter…,” she sputtered off into another incoherent stream of native gibberish.
“Oh, get over yourself, Lady,” I said, unable to stomach all of this outrage over a sword she had proclaimed was evil and seemed to hate nearly as much as she hated myself. “It’s not like you wanted anything to do with that sword since the beginning. But now that it's been stolen, oh, you’re outraged?” I would have thrown my hands in the air if I hadn’t feared the pain that would follow.
“And you!” I turned to the grey haired security officer. “Come to finish the job and kill me while I was asleep? You and your parliamentary hit team,” I waved in the direction of the security guards pinned against the wall.
I’m sure he would have answered me but in her excitement she must have increased the pressure on the fork and he held his peace instead.
“He did try to murder you in your sleep,” the pit viper said too enthusiastically for my comfort. “But we know him, after he steals my Bandersnatch,” she said awkwardly pronouncing the name of the sword without using the translator. “So when he comes back with his men,” she scoffed as if the security guards didn’t deserve to be called real men, then slammed her fist into the wall. “We captured them using the foreign dinner ware.”
The security guard grunted in protest, as if there was more he would say if given the chance but for once she continued to ignore him and he didn’t press his luck by actually speaking without permission.
“His war-band is not very good,” she said matter-of-factly, “Not like your hoplites, who fight well and have fearsome battle armor.”
For some reason I couldn’t place, she seemed to be inordinately proud of this. As if the armory crew being better warriors than the security detachment was, if not a big deal, at least a favorable check in some primitive values system of hers. I decided not to mention that the Armory crew was essentially untrained amateurs and carried the day on the bug ship by virtue of their powerful battle suits and headstrong nature. Not because they were exceptionally skilled boarders, combatants, or anything else, really.
They were not unlike myself in that way, and for a moment I felt ashamed of stomping on Oleander. It was true he’d done the same exact thing to me when he tried to kill me, but at the time he obviously thought I was a Bug. I sighed to myself. I probably owed the idiot an apology or a promotion or something. I paused. Definitely an apology, or something to that effect. The ship needed that man walking around with a promotion like I needed a hole in the head.
I realized I had just assumed we carried the day on the Bug ship because I was safe back on the Lucky Clover along with the former bug prisoners. I’d have to find out what happened after my suspicious loss of consciousness.
“I’m surprised you didn’t let him kill me,” I said.
She looked at me like I was off in the head. “Pillow in face is not a good death for a warrior.”
“Ah,” I replied. That probably meant that in her culture a pillow in the face was a big no-no. So she couldn’t just stand by and let one of their rescuers die while her fellow natives were looking, no matter how much she might have wanted to. So instead she got all outraged at the attempted pillow murderer.
Finally things were starting to gel into a pattern
I could understand.
“If pillow murdering is such a big deal, why didn’t you just kill him then,” I asked, morbidly curious. Something had to be holding her and the rest of these natives back from killing anyone. I looked over at the door to make sure. Yes indeed, they had actually managed to barricade themselves in the sickbay as well. From what I could tell from interacting with the blond psycho ice maiden, they were also a deeply superstitious people as well. Maybe that played into this situation somehow.
“Are you slow in head or just stupid,” she flared. “I already told you he took the sword. He stole my Bandersnatch!”
“Your Bandersnatch,” I groaned, starting to roll my eyes at her, but surrounded by a bunch of potentially superstitious natives armed with weaponry that would have made life-sentence prisoners wince, I thought better of the idea and managed to restrain myself. If the sword could be said to belong to anyone on the ship, then the vibro-blade was mine, not some crazy native woman. Still, if it disappeared on a primitive world never to be seen again…
Admiral Who? (A Spineward Sectors Novel:) Page 25