The Governor’s
Retribution was not a new ship. It
was not even a Navy ship, being a charter vessel. Other adjectives not attributable to her
might include; spacious, comfortable, well maintained and/or sanitary. However, a working Geller Field and a lick of
speed that some fleet escorts would struggle to match kept her in
business. And would hopefully shorten
the excruciating journeys of her passengers.
These were the thoughts of First Sergeant
Maxwell as Private Wharee (apparently a qualified medic) fussed over the latest
round of inoculations. The young, skinny
and above all, pedantic soldier fussed and clucked like a mother hen; but
without the useful egg producing capability, mused 1Sgt Maxwell. Since the void hardening around the liquid recycling
apparatus failed on the second day, the medic had been stabbing them full of
needles. Which he was quite sure was unnecessary
following the regulation embarkation procedure. But it kept Wharee from bothering Captain
Aelius, which was a blessing.
He took a Lho stick out of the cardboard
packet, tapped it against the side and then put the filter end in his mouth,
sighed and reversed the procedure, replacing the packet in his pocket. Seventeen days without a Lho stick, seventeen
days pissing and crapping in a bucket. Whoever
the apocryphal Governor was, his retribution was pretty good, as retributions
went. The ship was pushing the concept
of serviceability to its limit.
Capt Aelius had asked 1Sgt Maxwell to keep
their tiny detachment busy whilst he worked his way through the pile of data
slates provided by the Departmento.
Every eight hours 1Sgt Maxwell would check on the Captain, red eyed,
surrounded by half cups of cold recaf and discarded data slates. He was obviously sleeping in fits as he ploughed
his way through the material. 1Sgt
Maxwell did not let Guardsman Wharee visit Capt Aelius unattended, instead
listening to the lectures about health and wellbeing himself until he could
take no more and sent Wharee to monitor the rest of the detachment.
The crew had informed him that they would
be dropping out of warp and back into the materium in five days. The auguries were favourable and they should
be fairly close to Devos XII, which was the edge of system way station. They would then have another week of travel
before making planetfall. 1Sgt Maxwell
had put the men to work uncrating the Salamander and prepping it for use. It wasn’t too often that brand new equipment
was issued from a Forge World to a Palladian unit; they were normally supplied
from munitions store worlds where used, refurbished and new (but been in
storage for perhaps a century or more) items were issued from.
Cornelius Maxwell favoured the command
model Salamander over any other vehicle he had ever used in his forty seven year
career. For a start, being part of a command squad
was preferable to being in charge of a rifle squad. And now, after years of waiting, he had a
rear echelon job, after three tours in the firing line as a Platoon Sergeant, he
would be in a Salamander where he wanted to be; the open top meant that one
could leap over the edge if the vehicle took a critical hit and the lack of
weight made the chimera chassis truly fast.
And the heavy flamer was a Praetorian’s weapon of choice for self
defence.
Guardsman Hur was also a talented driver
mechanic, whilst 1Sgt Maxwell had no say in who joined Capt Aelius’ liaison
team, it was nonetheless reassuring to have a couple of men that he at least knew
of, men who were good at their job. Guardsman
Hur slouched into view, looking glum.
1Sgt Maxwell arched an eyebrow.
Guardsman Hur snapped to attention.
The conversation that followed was not the high point of anybodies
military career. But it was no fault of
anyone on board, it was a proper Departmento error.
For the third time, 1Sgt Maxwell looked at the docket. He looked at their embarkation orders from
the Regiment. He looked at the entry in
the ships manifest. He looked at the labels
on the outside of the crate. Salamander,
Salamander, Salamander and Salamander. He
looked at the Centaur artillery tractor sat truculently in the remains of the
crate. He left Guardsman Hur to make the
best of it. It could not be the end of
the world (any world), but if the Vostroyans were as concerned with proper form
as the Palladians were, it would reflect badly on the Palladians when their
first liaison team turned up in a cart, rather than a chariot. He breathed deeply of the recycled air and
went in search of Capt Aelius. Which
would not he hard, he would be in his cabin, not smoking a Lho stick because
the damn ship’s systems couldn’t handle it.
So, he had a Commanding Officer who had
been given too great a workload and was unable to smoke his way through
it. He had a squad medic whose neuroses
were beginning to become a liability, rather than a joke. Their dedicated transport vehicle, whilst
functionally up to the job, was not what protocol required, especially
important when their superiors were going to be Vostroyans. And their ship always felt as if it was in
constant danger of not working the next day.
You’re not in the firing line now, Cornelius Maxwell thought to himself,
but things in the guard weren’t getting any better.
He took a Lho stick out of the cardboard
packet, tapped it against the side and then put the filter end in his mouth,
sighed and reversed the procedure, replacing the packet in his pocket. The sooner they made planetfall, the better. There being no point in prevaricating, he
knocked on the door of Capt Aelius’ cabin and then thumbed the access rune on
the door control panel.
