MGiS 6 - Proportional Response - Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Research into this ‘cult’ continues apace. Our speed is not helped by the fanatic nature of many of its followers, or by how deep its roots slunk while we dealt with other issues.

As an aside, it never seems like we can recruit enough trusted people into the questers to keep up with the trouble that crops up. We can’t risk lowering the recruitment standards, but it feels like the overall situation is getting worse each year rather than better.

Continuing my report: The local duchess, a member of the Los’Andros family, is entirely unaware of what was going on. Her husband, the military administrator of the station, had only scattered reports of increased violence amongst the gangs but was investigating at least.

Eliminating that cell of the cult sent the others into hiding, sadly, but was necessary. We uncovered plans to sabotage not only food supplies passing through, but also information that brings further focus to our major concern.

We’ve managed to wring leads to fourteen other cells along frontier space. Fourteen! We’ve only been able to follow up on six so far, and those were all dead ends.

Let us hope our luck turns.

~Faye Un’Killandra, Imperial Quester. A report sent back to the Empress.

“So even after Desmond challenged the dumb bitch to a duel and whipped her ass so hard I half expected her hair to be falling out when we saw her again, she decided to try and play popularity games,” Raegan explained excitedly as the combined group of three adepts and their teams filed through the ship.

They’d made the requisite stops to get the new teams moved in, as well as giving them a quick tour of the Fist of Defiance. Now, Desmond and company were heading back out onto the station for leave, with Jorgia and Natalie in tow as guides.

“I still can’t believe that she had the tits to pull what she did after that,” Bell sighed from her spot on the far side of Audra. The Gaur woman had finished her shift and met up with the group during the tail end of the tour. While she wasn’t avoiding Desmond, she was lingering on the edges of the group right now.

“Are we allowed to talk about that?” Desmond asked cautiously. Of course, this had the effect of drawing the attention of everyone unaware of the ‘Windracer Events’ directly to him, only for over a dozen gazes to bounce to Bell a moment later when she spoke.

“The trial is over and she’s been sentenced. Weren’t you informed?”

“Nope,” Desmond said with a shake of his head. “Why would I be? It wasn’t like it was me she tried to attack.” That statement got snorts and giggles of derision from his squad.

“Desmond…” Bell said with a sigh and rubbed her forehead like a headache had set in. “You were the reason that it was just assault rather than attempted murder charges, and against an officer no less. You immediately saw her beginning to cast a spell and reacted before it even got started. For all that you got hurt doing it.”

Scratching his cheek with one hand, Desmond bit down on the urge to correct Bell. He hadn’t actually gotten going that fast. In fact, Windracer had already cast her attack spell before he reacted. But interrupting her before it launched had caused the spell to start to cascade out of control. Something he was intimately familiar with. 

Nope, let them believe that was what happened. The only other way is to tell more people about Charybdis and every instinct I have screams that is a bad idea, Desmond thought while the others traded murmurs back and forth.

“So wait, that’s why there were two slots open on this ship? I knew that something happened to cause an adept to get transferred, but not why,” Jorgia asked. 

They turned down the passage that led to the docking port and would let them onto the station proper. Thankfully, the earlier masses of crew vying to get off ship as fast as possible had thinned to nearly nothing now, while the Fist of Defiance ran with a skeleton crew now.

Desmond was about to answer the question, planning to deflect it regardless, when Bell answered it for him.

“Yes. That same adept that Desmond challenged because of unbecoming conduct—who, by the way, got her chops busted and officially put on notice for her actions and the results of the investigation—decided that she was going to respond to another reprimand by attacking the captain.”

Gasps of surprise filled the air and all eyes darted to Desmond. He saw concern, respect, and a little fear mixed in amongst the guards, while Jorgia and Natalie were studying him curiously.

“I just stopped her from making an even bigger mistake than she already was,” Desmond brushed off, wanting to end this particular conversation before they got off the ship.

Even if we are allowed to discuss it now, probably best to not do so in front of civilians, he thought. But Bell was not done yet.

“Sure, you stopped her from making a bigger mistake. Through gross trauma and some of the fastest shooting I’ve ever seen.” What surprised Desmond was the pride in Bell’s voice. She’d been angry and derisive for most of the story, but now she sounded so proud of him that it was confusing.

“What Adept McLaughlin is trying to downplay is that he neutralized a violent criminal before anyone besides the criminal could get hurt. Using a handgun while she was still in her combat armor, Adept McLaughlin blew her leg off at the knee. He likely saved the captain's life, and mine as well.”

That statement from Bell was delivered in a proud growl that drew Desmond’s eye to the winged woman, and she met his eyes with hers.

Bell was staring at him with a mixture of respect and devotion in those pink orbs, and it felt more than a little daunting to realize there was a bit of hero worship mixed in there too.

“I did what I needed to do to ensure no one else got hurt,” Desmond said simply before trying to push the conversation away from his actions and to what he hoped was the natural conclusion of the subject. “Her clan got her out of trouble the first time, but I doubt they would be able to pull the same thing a second time. What did the trial end up resulting in?”

Bell didn’t answer him immediately, watching him for several moments before finally speaking aloud.

“She’s serving time in a detention facility for the next twenty years. At a minimum.”

“That’s surprising,” Chloe muttered. “I expected her to get a summary execution given the situation.”

“Oh that’s not the end of it,” Bell’s proud grin turned savage. “The fines that were levied against the Windracer clan are extensive. She’s also facing the sealing of her dynamo on the day she leaves the detention facility.”

“Why wait till her release day?” Sasha asked from her spot at the front of the group. “Wouldn’t that make her a more dangerous prisoner?”

Bell shook her head, her wings rustling in the Gaur equivalent of a shrug with raised eyebrows, before she answered. And it was an answer that Desmond had not expected.

“It’s necessary actually. The facility that she is being detained at is a maximum security facility for rogue adepts, and they put the adepts kept there to work assembling power cells, refining mana-fuel, and other such things. Adepts have a natural resistance to mana toxicity, so why not use it is the thought process.”

“But what keeps them from trying to break out?” Sasha insisted, her tail lasing the air in frustration. “Especially if they know they are going to be sealed when they get done.”

Bell’s black-toothed grin was full of vindictive glee now, but it was Jorgia who answered the question, the Va’Aelfa clearly having figured it out.

“Because it’s not guaranteed. If even one out of a hundred of the confined adepts are allowed to leave the facility with their dynamo intact for good behavior, it will drive all of them to behave. It’s further enforced by suppression collars, if it's the facility that I am thinking of.”

“Yup,” Bell chuckled. “The high-and-mighty adepts who broke the laws face decades in prison, minimally double their expected military service, stuck doing work like a common laborer. This is the punishment that is saved for those who grossly violate the laws of the Hegemony. The only one higher is summary execution.”

“Which doesn’t benefit anyone, besides removing a rabid animal from the population,” sighed Natalie. “It’s both demoralizing to realize that there are people who, when handed the opportunities of an adept, still manage to find a way to ruin it, and reassuring to know that the Hegemony has ways to stop it.”

“Yeah,” Desmond replied, one hand rubbing at his neck idly.

He’d had some experience with the technology that the Hegemony had to lock an adept away from their dynamo. There were collars and cuffs that could be applied to separate an adept and their dynamo, one such set was used in the VR pods to prevent the adept from conjuring their magic directly in the pods. 

“Anyway, that’s her sentence: twenty years to life on an assembly line in a prison, and if she does get out, the odds of her keeping her dynamo are very very small,” Bell finished triumphantly. “Also, she was issued a peg leg, rather than a full cybernetic or healing treatment. So I know she’s not gonna forget how a man whooped her ass not just once, but twice.”

Bell’s final statement brought a bit of laughter back to the group and allowed some levity to flow back in as they finally reached the airlock. There was a bit of shuffling needed for everyone to scan themselves as departing the ship, but soon enough they were all assembled in the cavernous loading bay on the far side.

“What should we do first?” Raegan asked, sidling up behind Desmond as the groups sorted themselves out once more. “I’m kinda hungry at this point, it's nearly time for lunch since we spent so much time wandering about.”

“Food would be good, but we also need to take a look at the shops,” Sasha insisted. “I’m confident in my assembling and design skills, but there are some parts and accessories that it’s better to just buy new.”

“Audra, did you want to go look at weapons?” Lila asked, turning towards the towering serpentine woman. “You’ve been drilling on plenty of different equipment, so it might be good to have a look around. I know we can shop with the online catalogs, but it’s not the same as physically handling the items ourselves.”

“Oh that’s a good idea!” Raegan added on to Lila’s statement. “Plus we can have a look around for those parts Sasha mentioned.”

Chloe remained silent while Desmond accessed his comm-cuff and started typing in a message, reading it over his shoulder and squeezing his shoulder in approval at what she read.

Once the message was sent off, Desmond shut down the holographic interface with a flourish. The motion caught the attention of the others, who had moved to questioning Jorgia and Natalie about if they’d taken the time to scope out the shops on the station.

“Well then, we’ve got two days in port and plenty to get done. But I think food is first on the list,” Desmond said as he clapped his hands together. “My treat to welcome our newest adept teams on board. You ladies spent some time on station already, where’s the good food at?”

Jorgia’s eyes lit up and Natalie’s grin widened at the prospect, while the guards for both new adepts traded looks of surprise and delight. While Jorgia began to ramble on about different options for good food, Desmond listened with a smile. Not because of her words, but because he’d seen Bell and Audra talking quietly to one side, the winged woman wearing an apologetic expression while Audra smiled gently.

<><><>

Wandering the station with such a large group definitely made them stand out. Even with the crew for the Fist of Defiance currently loose on shore leave, having three adepts and nearly twenty guards moving about as one drew attention.

Thankfully, it was mostly positive attention. People moved out of the way, vendors scooted over to offer merchandise, and people just stared in surprise and awe. Desmond ended up shielded from most of it by his girls and their regular formation around him, but he still caught snippets of it despite their best attempts.

Most comments were positive, with folks impressed to see the Hegemony’s elite forces on leave here. But there was occasionally muttering about the ‘entitled bastards’ that he knew were directed at him and the other two adepts.

Not like I asked for the girls to clear folks out or for the vendors to get so insistent, Desmond thought to himself. The girls are doing their jobs, and the vendors are the ones choosing to skip past regular customers to hopefully score a big sale or something. Whatever, you can’t make everyone happy.

They’d eaten lunch from one of the many hovering food carts that scudded about like humming clouds in the retail district of the station. He hadn’t caught the name of the particular dish, but when the plastic sleeve holding a trio of what looked like street tacos was presented to Desmond, he didn’t question it.

Those tacos were everything that he hadn’t realized he’d been missing from home, complete with a spicy sauce to go with them that complemented the meat inside perfectly.

Making a note of the vendor’s sign, Desmond promised to be back again for lunch the next day before their combined group began to mosey towards the section of the station that was the least populated with day-to-day shoppers, but was most important for them.

The weapons and armor shops.

Those shops, more than any others, immediately recognized the potential sales that walked in their doors when three adepts showed up. Even though only one of the three had the money to really spend at the moment.

“It will be a bit of a change from what we were used to,” Jorgia was saying as the three adepts studied a rack of laser rifles while their guards spread out around them. “The way they disburse the pay. Back on the Valor’s Bid, the quartermaster would simply pay us flat rates for Rift anchors, but here they adjust for the market.”

“Probably because the Valor’s Bid likely uses everything that the cadets bring in onboard,” Desmond answered with a shrug, shifting so that he leaned back into Raegan’s hip at a more comfortable angle while the big Uth’ra woman played with his hair idly.

Chloe had, for once, stepped away from Desmond in order to talk Audra through a few of the larger repeaters and discuss shields.

He hadn’t caught them talking about it, but seconds after Chloe stepped away, Raegan had replaced her as an impromptu backrest. Due to the differences in the two women’s height, Raegan’s boobs were pressing into the upper side of his head, rather than resting on or just above it like he was used to.

If this gives me a crick in my neck, Desmond thought, but paused as he couldn’t quite come up with a complaint to go with his mental statement. Well… I just hope it doesn’t.

“Yeah,” he said aloud instead. “It does take a bit of getting used to, but I feel like we get better prices and subsequently, better payouts for our efforts doing this. Our regular weekly pay is good, but if you do well in the Rifts?” Desmond let it drop at that, allowing their imagination to fill in the rest.

“I figured that we’d be seeing more action once we deployed officially rather than the two to four Rifts a year that we’d been doing on board the Academy. Suddenly, it doesn’t feel so bad that they are making us buy our own gear,” Natalie said with a laugh.

“Yeah, and why they focused so heavily on acquainting us with the different options while on board the Academy,” Desmond replied with a smart nod that made him wince when his hair caught between Raegan’s fingers and tugged on his scalp.

“Oop, sorry Little Boss,” Raegan said, gently smoothing the hair back into place.

“Gonna pluck me bald one of these days, Rae,” Desmond teased, reaching back with one hand to pat her thigh reassuringly.

“Never!” Raegan protested lovingly, letting the arm that had been playing with his hair drop down to drape over Desmond’s chest and pull him into her hip. Lila watched on in amusement from Desmond’s other side.

“I have to ask, Desmond. Are you in a relationship with all your guards?” Natalie asked curiously, studying the threesome before glancing to where Bell and Sasha stood by the door, discussing something about scopes while keeping an eye on Desmond’s group.

“Not all of them, no,” Desmond answered with a shrug, reaching up to squeeze Raegan’s forearm with his hand, making the Uth’ra hum happily.

“Yet,” Raegan asserted a moment later, waggling her eyebrows meaningfully. “But we aren’t looking to grow the clan too quickly.”

“Oh? Oh!” Natalie blushed sharply, waving both hands through the air as if to wave the very idea away. “I wasn’t asking for that reason! I’ve just heard from my guards about the issues that part-Taari face and—”

“Hopefully they don’t ascribe to that idiocy,” Desmond growled, interrupting her. “None of the Taari aboard the Fist of Defiance allow it to linger, and those kinds of prejudices don’t have a place aboard a warship anyway.”

“Not at all,” Natalie was quick to reassure him. “I’d just seen some bullying going on back aboard the Valor’s Bid and had asked about it. Does it really cause that much of a problem?”

“You’d be surprised,” Desmond growled. “Chloe got a lot of shit since she’s a straight half-and-half. Sasha less so because it’s easier to miss. I’m glad that your guards aren’t going to stir up trouble.”

The finality of Desmond’s statement there wasn’t missed by either of the Va’Aelfa, who traded glances before Jorgia decided to shift the subject back to safer ground.

“It’s good that you have solid support, Desmond. My family still owes you several favors for what you did before, so don’t forget to call on us if you have a need.”

Jorgia’s lips turned up in a wry smile and she leaned closer to him conspiratorially. Since none of the people present had done anything to make him wary, Desmond leaned forward as well. At least as much as he could while still wearing Raegan like a shoulder bag.

“Truth be told, my mother and a few of my aunts wanted me to try and court you. To see if you could be teased into joining the Tre’Unath family. But I told them that was foolish, and Auntie Lo backed me up on that. She insisted you would make a far better ally for the family than a manipulated underling.”

“I also would put good money on the fact that you didn’t appreciate being told what to do, right?” Desmond asked with a smirk. He’d only known Jorgia briefly from their limited interactions, but the Va’Aelfa’s independent streak was obvious at even a casual glance.

“That too,” Jorgia said with a wink before leaning back. “Regardless, it sounds like you are getting good advice on your clan. My family has plenty of dealings with the Uth’ra Kindred, so we hear stories all the time of small clans that rise up only to fall to ruin by moving too quickly.”

“Hard to move quickly on anything political while still in our mandatory term of service,” Desmond said with a shrug, raking his eyes over the room to check on his girls out of habit.

Chloe and Audra were both hefting heavy, segmented shields that looked more like the shuttle doors than anything else, discussing in low voices. Bell and Sasha were wandering back towards them, passing several of the other guards that were browsing the shop too.

“Still, if my knowledge of how the Kindred operates is good, then it will give you a solid foundation. Especially since your military exploits while completing your term will be accounted for in those,” Jorgia said pointedly, turning back to the rack with a thoughtful look once more.

“Yeah, my mentor was telling me that,” Desmond agreed with a nod. Jorgia glanced back at him with a raised eyebrow, but when he didn’t elaborate she let it drop. 

“Hey Desmond, do you have a moment?” Bell asked as she and Sasha got close enough.

“For you, Bell? Always. What’s up?” Desmond said, turning his full attention to the Gaur woman as Sasha slipped in and effortlessly traded spots with Lila on his right. The Va’Aelfa gave the Hyreh-Taari woman a smile and pattered away, angling for a rack of what looked like spear-guns.

“Uh, could I talk to you privately?” Bell asked, her wings shuffling nervously behind her. “At least, as much as you are okay with?”

“Corner?” Raegan offered when Desmond glanced up at her. “Chloe would never let me hear the end of it if we just stepped off, but that’ll give you privacy and let Sasha and I give you some space.”

Desmond didn’t speak, but turned his questioning look back to the Gaur. Bell nodded nervously, her wings rustling constantly now.

“We’ll give you some space. Come on, Lee. I’m curious about those shields that Chloe and Audra are looking at,” Jorgia said with an understanding look on her face. She hooked her arm in Natalie’s and dragged the other woman away, their combined guards falling in around them as the two headed to the other side of the shop.

The shop floor was set up in a wide rectangle, with large racks of different weapons set up for the shopper to browse, but the camera’s set in every corner ensured that nowhere in the shop was truly private. Three shop-assistants were flitting about, and as soon as one saw the two adepts on the move, they shifted over to attach themselves to Jorgia and Natalie.

Beckoning Bell over, Desmond guided her into a corner where one of the counters met a display wall. Thankfully, the shop assistant manning the counter was busy helping one of Jorgia’s guards—Desmond was fairly certain it was Giselle, the one that had been with Jorgia when he’d first run into her—so they were left alone for now.

Raegan and Sasha silently settled into place with their backs to Bell and Desmond.

It’s a mark of how much they already trust and like Bell that they do that, Desmond thought with a smirk before turning his attention fully on the nervous Gaur woman in front of him.

“What’s up, Bell? I assume this is in relation to my offer?” Desmond asked. “You still have some time if you are undecided.”

“Oh, I decided within seconds of you offering,” Bell said quickly before cutting herself off with a grimace. “I just… well my squads…”

“Ah,” Desmond said, his heart falling a bit. That was something that he hadn’t considered. Bell was a sergeant in charge of several squads on board the Fist of Defiance, and naturally she’d not want to leave them hanging.

Shows what kind of person she is that she’s more worried about those under her than anything else, Desmond thought with a sad smile.

“I talked it over with them, and two-thirds of my girls gave me shit for making you wait at all. The other third nearly kicked my ass,’ Bell said with a wry chuckle. “Elle was annoyed, but not surprised when I told her.”

“Wait, are you saying yes or no to joining? You’ve got me confused now,” Desmond asked, blinking up at the winged woman.

Bell stared down at him before snorting a breath out through her nose. She shifted from her slumped posture to stand at attention and snapped off a crisp salute to Desmond, her wings flicking back and locking into place at her back.

“I would be honored to accept the offered slot as an adept-guard under Adept McLaughlin,” Bell said formally, her pink irises sparkling in restrained amusement. “I might be an idiot at times, but when every woman under me unites to call me out on it, I have to listen to reason. Right?”

“Every one? Really now?” Desmond said with a laugh.

“Every one, and a few that were listening in too,” Bell answered with a wink. “Today was my last shift in security, as long as I didn't accidentally overrun the time limit Chloe gave me.”

“You did not,” Desmond reassured Bell with a chuckle.