Twenty-Eight
Settlement
Jenny woke once, just as dawn was breaking. She found herself on a rough pallet in the middle of the Mercantile, an IV line running into her arm. She turned her head towards a familiar voice.
“Hey, girl,” Carrie Manns greeted her from the next pallet.
“Hey,” Jenny replied. Carrie reached out and took Jenny’s hand, giving it a squeeze.
“Whole town’s talking about you, girl.”
“Really?”
“Really, really,” Carrie smiled. “Jenny Crider, hell-cat of the Battle of Settlement.” The doxie laughed, wincing at the pain of her injuries. “Some farm couple is telling everyone who’ll listen how you shot up half the Grugell troops single-handed.”
“Half the Grugell troops?” Jenny laughed once, wincing at the pain of her injured side. “I think I only got two or three of them. Is there any word from Mike or the other scouts?”
“Not that I’ve heard, honey.”
Two days later
“Jenny! Jenny! Wake up!”
Jenny grumbled awake. Her head still ached, but she felt a great deal better, and had moved back into the borrowed shack that had been assigned to her and Mike. She opened her eyes to see Carrie Manns standing over her, her crutches tucked under one arm.
“A provisioning droid just lifted off out of the Mercantile’s lot. They picked up a beacon signal from just north of the river! Jenny, it’s got to be the scouts coming home!”
Jenny jumped from her chair and ran for the door, followed by the chuckling Carrie Manns. “Girl!” she shouted after the slim form sprinting for the landing field behind the Mercantile. “It’ll be an hour or more before the droid comes back!”
Carrie stumped around the corner of the Mercantile building, sweating in the hot sunlight, to find Jenny standing expectantly on the edge of the landing pad the provisioning droids used. Two of the flying dump trucks sat idle nearby.
“Honey,” she asked Jenny, “Why don’t you go on back to your house and wait a while?”
“Because Mike’s going to be on that droid!” The light in her eyes was all the veteran doxie needed. As rarely as she saw such emotion in her own line of work, she recognized love when she saw it.
“All right, then, let’s sit down, at least. This leg is killing me.”
They sat in the dust, leaning against the clapboard wall of the Mercantile, and waited. It was an hour and ten minutes before the clumsy droid floated in over the trees, settling to the red dirt of the field with agonizing – for Jenny – slowness.
She ran to the craft as the great cargo door opened. Mike was the first one out. She grabbed him, squealing her joy, kissing him hard before noticing the look in his eyes.
“Mike, what is it?”
Mike smiled sadly, and stepped aside just as Beauregard Rousseau, Yuri Pyak, Nathaniel Tzukuli, and Thomas Quiet Water appeared carrying the cloth-wrapped body of Gerald Richfield.
“He saved us all, baby.” The scouts laid the body gently down in the red dust of Forest while Mike explained. Carrie Manns crutched up to listen, smiling at Rousseau as she approached.
“We lost a lot of people here, too, Mike. Forest isn’t short on heroes today.”
“And that includes all of you boys, Lieutenant,” Colonel Davies’ voice boomed out as the heavy-set Security Chief walked up to the group. “Damn, though,” he grimaced, looking at the cloth-wrapped form. “That was a hell of a thing the Doc did, but y’all best remember that it was you, boy, that made the whole thing possible.”
“And, it was your girl here that fought off half the Grugell army down here,” Carrie Manns added. She looked sideways at Rousseau, winking at the old hunter.
“Comment allez-vous, des ma petite douce?” the Cajun grinned at her.
“I’m just fine, you old devil,” Carrie answered. “I see you came through safe and sound!”
“Oui, and I reckon a’ some point I’ll tell you about th’ hero Rousseau!”
Mike and Jenny looked at each other and smiled. “Life goes on,” Mike observed dryly.
A Grugell freighter, ten light years away
“Message from the Imperium, sir.”
Ottrattatisk VII sat up I the bridge chair suddenly. He’d been expecting this ever since a landing craft had brought the battered, broken remnants of the Occupation Group back to the Fleet transport in orbit.
“Very well. Play the message.”
“Commander Ottrattatisk, commanding Tactical Logistics Group XIX in support of Occupation Group XIX. You are ordered to return all surviving Occupation Group personnel to the Imperial Navy Base on Grugell for court-martial.”
Ottrattatisk winced. Grugell court-martials were short, and Grugell punishment was swift and brutal. The Emperor did not suffer failure lightly.
This Occupation Group had failed spectacularly, first suffering the loss of the Group Commander and his Assistant, and then stupidly allowing their broadcast power station to be sabotaged.
“Acknowledge the message, Technician. Helm, adjust our course to take us directly to Grugell.”
For the first time in Grugell’s history, an Occupation had failed, and the Occupation Group had taken serious losses. This planet was going to have to be abandoned to the occupying aliens, and the Grugell Empire was facing, also for the first time, a major adjustment in their expansion policy. There was now known to be another race of spacefaring, intelligent life forms in the Galaxy, and they were warriors to match the Grugell.
There was going to be hell to pay.
Settlement
The days that followed were filled with goodbyes, with surprises, and with news from the north. The remnants of the Grugell occupation force fled north on foot, watched but not attacked by OWME Security troops in Forest’s one available flyer. While OWME Security hadn’t bothered the retreating Grugell, Forest’s native predators showed no such compunctions. When the rocs started to close in, the OWME Security troops weren’t of a mind to be forgiving, and so they didn’t interfere as one of the great predators after another homed in on the column of weaponless aliens. Only ten or so made it back to the largely wrecked base camp, where a small shuttle was waiting to take the survivors off the planet.
A week after the scout’s return, a funeral service was held for Gerald Richfield, which Jenny, Mike and the rest of the scouts attended. An hour afterwards, Yuri Pyak came to shake Mike’s hand. His pack was loaded, and the monstrous Krupp cannon slung on his back.
“So, you’re off to the woods again, eh Yuri?” Mike asked him. “Back out to hunt loggers?”
“Da!” the little Nenets replied, laughing. “Logger! BOOM!” His ever-present grin widened as he embraced Mike, kissing him on both cheeks. “Do svidanyia, tovarisch,” he said, and then he turned and walked away, bearing north by northeast, his short, bandy-legged form vanishing at last into the timber.
“You know,” Mike told Jenny, “I never did understand much of anything the little guy ever said.”
“An’ neither did I,” Beauregard Rousseau’s voice boomed out from behind them, “But ‘e was a ‘ell of a shot, I tell you dat!” The Cajun laughed, slapping Mike on the shoulder. “Well, boy, we gon’ be off to th’ woods agin, too.”
“We?” Mike and Jenny turned to see Rousseau and Carrie Manns, both with loaded packs. Rousseau cradled his Parks double, while Carrie Manns had her Steyr Magnetic slung on her shoulder.
“Well, I’ll be!” Mike grinned widely. Jenny went to Carrie and hugged her.
“Someone has to keep this old gumbo-eating bastard out of trouble,” Carrie explained seriously. Her eyes sparkled as Rousseau sputtered in feigned outrage.
Thomas Quiet Water took his leave that evening, coming by the borrowed shack to squat in the dust next to where Mike and Jenny sat on the step, watching the sun set.
He placed his hand on Mike’s shoulder and spoke once.
“You will always be my friend. Walk in peace for the rest of your days, Michael.” Then the tall Cheyenne turned and walked off into the forest.
“I think that’s the most I ever heard him say at one time,” Mike noted.
“When can we go back home, Mike?” Jenny asked, watching the tall, lean figure disappear into the trees.
“Soon. I’ve got a few things I want to work out down here first.”
“Like getting a bunch of wrecked Grugell equipment out of our clearing?”
“Something like that, yeah. I’ve got a feeling that Colonel Davies may be able to help us.” “I’d say the Company owes us a favor or two,” Jenny agreed, fingering the bandage on her head.
To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.
I think the Grugell will come back with a larger force after this defeat, but hopefully our heroes will gain some knowledge from the Grugell’s technology and be ready when they reappear again. Great story!
A couple minutes before I can read….dogs, coffee, wives…whatchagonnado?
Creech: I dont know if Warren read Atlas Shrugged or not but she and her ilk are people who have definitly thought it out explicitly and decided that morals are for suckers. Remember harry Reid when called out on an absurd lie? His casual response was “We won, didnt we.”
Morals are for suckers.
How many you got down there?
I refer to her as the Ivy Starnes of the Senate.
“She had pale eyes that looked fishy, cold, and dead. And if you ever want to see pure evil, you should have seen the way her eyes glinted when she watched some man who’d talked back to her once and who’d just heard his name on the list of those getting nothing above basic pittance.”
Rather, human settlers, farmers and whores were a match for Grugell warriors.
The same thing with the Brits. A bunch of farmers chased away an emerging world power.
Well, along with an actual army and the French navy.
And all the Hessians that could make it.
The French Navy and Hessians weren’t involved in the First Boer War.
I don’t remember if there is FTL communications in this universe or if it is like the Condominium era of Pournelle’s Faulkenburg’s Leigion.
Ship transport of information between systems is faster than “radio”.
I’ll read this one from the beginning.
Hopefully the Grugell will learn to stop relying on mission-critical tech systems with exposed single points of failure, before they kick off any more wars of conquest.
The Grugell will address the problem of being entirely too easy to kill by painting a large red bullet resistant circle over each of their vital areas. Also, they will hire local thugs to protect their infrastructure, thereby preventing the needless deaths of important Grugell troops.
‘Til death do us part
Former federal prosecutor Maurene Comey sued the Trump administration on Monday, alleging that her firing earlier this year “without cause, without advance notice, and without an opportunity to contest it” was unlawful and unconstitutional.
——-
“Defendants did not identify any cause or provide Ms. Comey any due process for her removal. She simply received an email with an attachment stating that she was being terminated ‘[p]ursuant to Article II of the United States Constitution and the laws of the United States.”
Article II of the Constitution establishes the powers of the president.
According to the suit, then-interim U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton came to see Maurene Comey shortly after she learned of her firing. Asked why she was being terminated, Clayton said, “All I can say is it came from Washington. I can’t tell you anything else.”
Government employees are unfireable? How does that work?
The bitch lost the Diddy case and then asks why she was being fired.
^This right here.
She screwed up / lost a number of other cases too, seemed to always over-charge. I can’t lay my hands on a list right now I am at work.
“without cause, without advance notice, and without an opportunity to contest it” was unlawful and unconstitutional.”
I’m not a Constitutional expert, but I didn’t see anywhere on the document where the Executive needed a reason to fire anyone from the Justice Department. It sucks, but as a lawyer she should know that she is wrong and full of shit.
Considering her demonstrated incompetence as a federal prosecutor, she might actually not know this.
After Comey was ousted, she wrote a letter to colleagues in which she said, “If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain.”
She added, “Do not let that happen. Fear is the tool of a tyrant, wielded to suppress independent thought.”
She knows how the game is played. Fear is an integral part of a federal prosecutor’s toolkit.
What i see in common with all of the deep state fucksticks Trump fires is a breathtaking arrogance and sense of entitlement.
Isnt this one James Comey’s wife? What the hell is she doing working there at all? The DC crowd seems to be more incestuous than Hollywood.
daughter
spawn of evil
Stochastic terrorism
While he called for a “dissolution of parliament” and a “change of government”, the comments that attracted particular scrutiny were when he told the crowd: “This is a message to the reasonable centre, the people who ordinarily wouldn’t get involved in politics, who just want to live their lives. They don’t want that, they’re quiet, they just go about their business.
“My message is to them: if this continues, that violence is going to come to you, you will have no choice. You’re in a fundamental situation here.
“Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die, that’s the truth, I think.”
——-
The laws reflect the balance that the government maintains on free speech, which is a qualified right under the European convention of human rights, meaning it can be restricted for certain reasons.
While many will argue that Musk’s rhetoric will have harmful consequences, by, for example, requiring the threat of “immediate unlawful violence” parliament has set a threshold that inflammatory speech must cross to constitute criminality.
To the Tower with him.
Was there immediate unlawful violence?
“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.” -Pericles
Fondle more. Punch less. – Testicles
Via book of faces . . .
Jordon Hudson, the 24-year-old girlfriend of former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, has filed to trademark the phrase “Gold Digger” through her company, TCE Rights Management LLC.
The August 25 application outlines plans to use the term on jewelry, keychains, and other accessories, a move seen as an attempt to reclaim and monetize a label critics have used against her since her relationship with the 73-year-old coach became public.
Hudson has faced intense scrutiny over the couple’s nearly 50-year age gap, but by embracing the controversial term, she appears to be turning criticism into a branding opportunity.
She got balls . . . .
I like this chick. However I wouldnt turn my back on her.
I appreciate the leaning-into it.
Is this the final installment of the series?
*checks copy of book*
There’s an epilogue to come.
Then Books 2 & 3.
thanks
🙂
If I’m counting correctly, there’s 55 more weeks of content to come (assuming Animal wants to continue with Books Two and Three).
Plus 58 weeks or so if he wants to roll into Sky Of Diamonds
‘Course, we’ll all be driving fire-spewing hot-rods through the wastelands, looking for guzzoline by that point.
I have to say, I do like all of Animal’s work, but this one made me look forward to Mondays more than any other.
M I A?
yes
I fly like paper, get high like planes
Flypaper doesn’t get very high.
*stoned Mulder* F. B. I.
THIS IS THE NEW FORMAT COMRADE. PRAY WE DO NOT ALTER IT FURTHER.
Mechwarrior Internet Activity?
S A R A!
Sara?
Sara
My small-ish town is growing, and with it comes a mainstay of major cities: Homeless people! I’ve identified about five of them and occasionally scare the shit out of them when I’m jogging at night and pass by whatever doorway they are sleeping in. I’ve never seen them directly bother anyone, although one guy roams around angrily talking to himself and seems like he could be dangerous.
One thing they do is leave fucking trash everywhere. One lady sleeps in a doorway and has plastered the wall with lids from yogurt and peanut butter like some kind of territory marker. Another guy spends a lot of time on a bench outside a church. They appear to have placed a trash can right next to that bench, yet I walked past the other day and there was garbage still all over the bench and the ground. Whenever I see a pile of trash, cigarette butts, and half-eaten convenience store snacks, I know one of them has camped out there. The downtown area has trash cans almost on every corner; there’s really no excuse. I’ve never seen any human excrement thankfully, but I guess they must be doing it somewhere.
I can’t imagine living in a city with thousands of homeless people just shitting up the place.